human
Gentlemen,--I beg to thank you for appointing me your president. I know it will be hard to follow worthily in the footsteps of the gentleman who has just left the room--(groans)--and of the gentleman who has just vacated this chair, leaving some of his sweetness behind him. (Derisive cheers.) Still, I would like to do something to help make this club a credit. I think we might look over the rules and see if we can get anything in which will keep cowards and cads out of the club. Of course that wouldn't affect any of you, but it would help to keep us more select for the future. (Cheers.) In fact, I don't see, gentlemen, why we shouldn't make the club big enough to take in any fellow who, like all of you, hates cowardice, and meanness, and dirtiness, and that sort of thing. (Cheers, not unmixed with blushes.) We may not all think alike about everything, but, if we are all agreed it's good form to be gentlemen, and honest and brave, I don't see why we can't be 'Select Sociables' still. We pride ourselves at Templeton on being one of the crack schools in the country. (Loud cheers.) Well, any lot of fellows who set up for the 'Select' here ought to be the crack of the crack--like you all, for instance. However, these are only suggestions. Now I'm your president I mean to work hard for the club and do my best--(cheers)--and I ask you to back me up. (Cheers.) I think, by way of a start, we might appoint a committee of, say, half a dozen, to look into the rules and see how they can be improved, and how the club can be made of most use to Templeton. What do you say?