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2.

latter part of that sentence might be applied to this company tonight.
There is no limit to the width of their interests and the
variety of their inclinations.

It is very pleasant, gentlemen, for
me to meet so many representatives of so many different human
activities. In recent years in Eneland I have always tended to
live too much with members of my own calling. I have had a good
many different callings in my time, so perhaps I have not been so
circumscribed as most people. But still, I have felt that I was
in a groove, and saw perhaps a little too much of my colleagues in
the same line of country, whether they were academic dignitaries,
or writers, or politicians. The society of one's fellow-workers is
always pleasant, but there are moments when it palls, and one
longs for a wider world. When I was Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood
I was told of a Committee of the General Assembly in which a
Highland minister, who had never before attended an Assembly, sat
solidly through debate after debate. In the end he rose and unburdened
his soul. He said he had been having a little too much of
his own profession. His fellow ministers, he said, seemed to him
to be a little like manure, "which, when dispersed over a wide
area, is wholesome and beneficial, but which, when collected into
one place, is somewhat nauseous."

The habit of dining together, gentlemen, is deeply rooted
in the British character, and I believe most firmly in its value.
If I had Mr. Winston Churchill's gift of sonorous language I should
talk about its "therapeutic and thaumaturgic value as an emollient of
human corrugositis, or some such splendiferous phrase. There is a
famous legal dining club in London at which I have sometimes been a