How did you get selected to speak? Were you the first choice or the 51st?

The Pearls Before Swine cartoon for August 24th asked that question. Stephan got invited to speak as an author at the National Book Festival. Then Rat asked him if their first fifty choices for speaker had died.

That putdown is a reminder that a speaker’s focus should be on his audience rather than how important he thinks he is for having been chosen.

A Puck cartoon from 1899 came from the Library of Congress.