PRIZE-GIVING SPEECHES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1933, Page 13

PRIZE-GIVING SPEECHES

TEN MINUTES THE LIMIT

Dr. Ada Paterson, in her charming speech to the girls of Queen Margaret College last evening) included some delightful touches of humour. She said she met a couple of the girls in the street recently, and told them that.she expected to be present at the annual prize-giving shortly. They replied that they knew she had had an invitation. She then asked them if they looked forward with pleasure to these occasions, and they said, "In a way, but that sometimes there were too many and too long speeches. " Then she asked them how long a speech should be, and the reply was that " ten minutes was the limit." "Now it takes a very clever person to make aiiy sort of a decent speech in ten minutes," said Dr..Paterson, and added that she would certainly do her best to be brief. She went on to discuss.the differences between the girls of today and those of former times, and said thftt nowadays they were taller, bigger, a:v*t heavier. "I know that that is true of feet," she said quaintiy,.'and added that a member of a school board who was a.boot manufacturer had said that tho shoes of today had to be both j longer and wider than:formerly. "So I hope that altogether you have a wider understanding, and a better one than the girls of earlier times!" ' Dr. Paterson also said that it was a great amusement to people of her own time to find, after all the talk about the foolish and uncomfortable fashions of twenty or thirty. years ago, that these same fashions were coming back and were being adopted by the women todayi However, she was thankful that the schoolgirls did not have them thrust upon them, but had most comfortable, as well aa sensible and pretty clothing.