April 3, 1968 was the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King's last speech. He was murdered within 24 hours of giving it. Because of the tragic context, it is often remembered as the "I've been to the mountaintop" speech because, at the end, Dr. King compared himself to Moses on the mountaintop looking out over the Promised Land. He knew he would not cross over, but that his people would.

And yet this speech also contains another striking use of Biblical imagery -- the parable of the Good Samaritan. Those who disparage using stories to make a point in speeches should remember that most of the teachings of Jesus have come down to us in the form of parables -- stories.

In his speech, Dr. King takes a familiar parable and amplifies it by using his own experience and insights. The result is both powerful and deeply moving:

"One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....

"Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the 'I' into the 'thou,' and to be concerned about his brother.

"Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that 'One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.' And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a 'Jericho Road Improvement Association.' That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.

"But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, 'I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.' It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the 'Bloody Pass.' And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'"

My last posting was about Dr. Martin Luther King's final speech, in which he compared himself to Moses on the mountaintop, viewing the Promised Land that his people would enter, but without him.

By an interesting coincidence, a woman friend of mine, an African-American who works at the American Pharmacists Association, recently sent me a remarkable speech given by a colleague of hers, one Robert D. Gibson, who has also made the difficult passage from the Jim Crow era to the present. Mr. Gibson spoke on the occasion of his receiving the 2006 Remington Honor Medal from the APA, and he spoke with passion, eloquence, wisdom -- and dignity.

In fact, he titled his speech, "The Pursuit of Dignity."

Mr. Gibson's pursuit of dignity began at an early age. Even though he grew up in Washington State and not in Mississippi, he wasn't spared the lash of racism. He said: "The boy inside me was too young to understand why I wasn't invited to my white friends' birthday parties. As I grew older, I began to understand why racial slurs were directed at me when playing with my all-white high school athletic teams. When drafted into a segregated Army in World War II, and sent to the southern states to learn to become a soldier, I suffered the indignities of the pre-civil rights era, as did other African-Americans during those days. That is, being unwelcome in hotels and restaurants, the insult of riding in Jim Crow cars, being relegated to the back of the bus, entering a movie theatre through an alley entrance and being required to sit in the balcony, and being jailed for casually strolling, in Army uniform, on what, as I was told by an angry cop, the wrong side of town. I tell you, for any individual who has suffered those indignities, time cannot diminish the offensiveness nor erase the indignation, humiliation and anger..."

That was the beginning of Mr. Gibson's passage, and he does not feel that all Americans have crossed over to the Promised Land of full equality even now. But at the end of his speech, he gave some signs that would indicate when that day has finally arrived:

"I look forward to the day when the civil rights conflict really will be history. We will know the war has been won when a bright eight-year-old student has the same chances in life, whether she lives in Watts or Belvedere/Tiburon, an affluent community just across the Golden Gate Bridge. We will know that the battle is over when the son of a barber in San Francisco's Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood looks to the future with the same optimism as the son of a doctor who lives in Pacific Heights, We will know that the fight is won when the affluent city of Atherton, adjacent to Silicon Valley, and the low-income city of Richmond, just across San Francisco Bay, have the same college graduation rates ... and the same low prison incarceration rates as well.

"We will know that we have won when it's yesterday's news that a newly-elected governor, senator or president is a woman or person of color, or both. We will know that we have won when diversity in our classrooms or in the workplace is no longer mentioned because it is a fait accompli. And we will know that the war has been won when New Orleans or some other area with large numbers of impoverished people floods again and the poor and people of color are among the first to be evacuated.

"I know that you in this room have already reported for duty in the battle to seek paths of racial amity, to understand that conscience has no color, and that injustice anywhere threaten's justice everywhere. But not everyone has joined this battle, so I hope that you will assist me in recruiting them because there are still among us children who sleep in hunger, rise in cold, and live in ignorance -- and they are of every color and every tribe. Their suffering is unacceptable, I hope I have conveyed to you my belief that the dignity and rights of any one of us is the concern of us all. In this I am ever vigilant."

I'm sorry that space consideration preclude me from excerpting more of this very moving human document, but I think I've conveyed the essence of it.

In conclusion, I can but say to Robert Gibson, Sir, your "pursuit" is over. You have attained a dignity which, like these words of yours, cannot do other than command universal respect .

As a veteran speechwriter, I am sometimes asked for advice by aspiring wordsmiths on how to break into our profession. Usually, I reply with a question of my own: "Why on earth does anybody want to be a speechwriter these days? It's a thankless job at best, and an insecure one at worst. Moreover, given the decline of full-time speechwriters in favor of all-around PR operatives -- to say nothing of the popularity of PowerPoint and video presentations -- it's doubtful that our profession will survive another decade or two."

Yet, just over the past few days, I've had two inquiries from aspiring speechwriters -- one an established writer who wants to get into corporate speechwriting, and the other a college freshman who wants to become a political speechwriter.

After giving both of them fair warning, I replied to my first correspondent as follows:

"Assuming you want to write speeches as a freelancer, the first thing you need to do is to get a portfolio of speeches together to show to potential clients. To do that, you may need to work for nothing at first — i.e., offer to write for some local candidate for office, or perhaps the head of some charity. That way, you establish yourself as a speechwriter. Then you can start charging money for your services ... Also, you might do an internet search for freelance speechwriters and get some tips on how other speechwriters market themselves."

And then, to the second, I wrote:

"Major in English or journalism. To be a speechwriter, you have to write effectively on tight deadlines. A good command of the English language is essential. Join the debate team if your college has one. Offer to help write speeches for candidates for student government. If you have time, volunteer for a local political campaign, or perhaps some local charity that is mounting a fundraising drive. Study the great speeches of the past. They are you best models. Also, there is very little in political speechwriting that has not been said before in one form or another."

What do you think, readers? Did I give these speechwriter wannabes good advice? Since neither has written to thank me, I don't know how my suggestions were received.

As I said, ours is a thankless profession.

In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the "unsinkable" Titanic slid into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, carrying 1,500 souls to a watery grave. This is familiar history. What is not as widely known is that the first inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic was held not in London, but in Washington, owing to the number of Americans -- including some very prominent Americans -- who lost their lives in the disaster.

One of the survivors who gave evidence at the Senate hearings on the sinking was a Mrs. D.H. Bishop. Her testimony, quoted below, may be found in the excellent anthology, In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century. To me, Mrs. Bishop's simple words are as gripping as any movie version of how the great ship went down.

"We did not begin to understand the situation till we were perhaps a mile or more away from the Titanic. Then we could see the rows of lights along the decks beging to slant gradually upward from the bow ... The sinking was so slow that you could not perceive the lights of the deck changing their position. The slant seemed to be greater about every quarter of an hour. That was the only difference.

"In a couple of hours, though, she began to go down more rapidly. Then the fearful sight began. The people in the ship were just beginning to realize how great their danger was. When the forward part of the ship dropped suddenly at a faster rate, so that the upward slope became marked, there was a sudden rush of passengers on all the decks towards the stern. It was like a wave ...

"The panic went on, it seemed, for an hour. Then suddenly the ship seemed to shoot up out of the water and stand there perpendicularly. It seemed to us that it stood upright in the water for four full minutes.

"Then it began to slide gently downwards. Its speed increased as it went down head first so that the stern shot down with a rush.

"The lights continued to burn till it sank. We could see the people packed densely in the stern till it was gone.

"As the ship sank, we could hear the screaming a mile away. Gradually it became fainter and fainter and died away. Some of the lifeboats that had room for more might have gone to their rescue, but that would have meant that those who were in the water would have swarmed aboard and sunk her."

April 18 is the hundreth anniversary of the "Big One" -- the earthquake that destroyed San Franciso.

As they did as recently as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, some members of the clergy professed to see the earthquake as judgement of a wrathful God on a sinful metropolis. But, even a hundred years ago, there were Christian preachers who took another tack, and employed compassion, humility and common sense in attempting to comprehend the tragic event.

One of these enlightened preachers was the Rev. Dr. Donald Sage Mackay of the Collegiate Church in New York City. In a sermon delivered the Sunday after the earthquake, Dr. Mackay spoke these healing words:

"It is not the function of the Christian pulpit to justify, far less defend, the dealings of the Almighty. The calamity of San Francisco has a profound religous significance, but that significance is not to be discovered by human ingenuity scrutinizing the methods of divine judgement. In itself, in all its appalling horrors, the catastrophe, which in a few hours wiped out the pride and glory of a modern city, staggers the mind. It is an impressive picture of the awful resources of natural law working out in periodic course their appointed destiny. That we cannot explain, but we can give to this calamity a profound religious experience by recognizing in it not an opportunity for vindicating God, but for helping man. God does care for his children, and that love of his is not limited by death. It is for us who believe in that love to mediate its power through the channels of human sympathy and human brotherhood. We make this disaster beautiful in light of our Christian charity."

Amen, Dr. Mackay. Would that other members of your profession were less willing to "vindicate God" when natural disasters strike, and more willing to extend your brand of Christian charity.

Today's New York Times reports that poet and translator Richard Wilbur has won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize of the Poetry Foundation. The article quotes Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine and chairman of the selection committee as saying, "If you had to put all your money on one living poet whose work will be read in a hundred years, Richard Wilbur would be a good bet."

I concur. I've loved Wilbur's work for years, and still cherish the copy of his book, Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems that he autographed for me when I heard him lecture at Vanderbilt University some thirty years ago.

To me, the endearing thing about Wilbur's verse is the ingenious way in which he breathes new life into traditional verse forms. Robert Frost once compared writing free verse to playing tennis without a net. Wilbur expressed a similar view when he said that writing a poem using rhyme and meter is like solving a puzzle. If it is, his solutions are nothing short of dazzling.

Consider the opening stanzas of his poem, "A Summer Morning":

"Her young employers, having got in late
From seeing friends in town
And scraped the right front fender on the gate
Will not, the cook expects, be coming down.

"She makes a quiet breakfast for herself.
The coffee-pot is bright,
The jelly where it should be on the shelf.
She breaks an egg into the morning light."

The mood is both wry and folksy -- and then we are suddenly startled by that wonderful image of breaking an egg into the morning light.

Wilbur's playfulness and power to surprise is also apparent in the gentle mockery of his poem, "Playboy":

"High on his stockroom ladder like a dunce,
The stockboy sits and studies like a sage
The subject matter of one glossy page,
As lost in curves as Archimedes once."

Browse through a book of his poems, and I think you will agree that Wilbur is a good bet for a poet whose work will be read in a hundred years.

April 21 is the 80th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain. In honor of this occasion, I quote from a radio address that the Queen made on her 21st birthday in 1947, when she was still Princess Elizabeth. The broadcast was made from Cape Town, South Africa, while she was on a Commonwealth tour.

The boadcast concluded as follows:

"There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors - a noble motto, 'I serve'. Those words were an inspiration to many bygone heirs to the Throne when they made their knightly dedication as they came to manhood. I cannot do quite as they did.

"But through the inventions of science I can do what was not possible for any of them. I can make my solemn act of dedication with a whole Empire listening. I should like to make that dedication now. It is very simple.

"I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

"But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do: I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it."

In the nearly sixty years since that broadcast, the high and honored lady who spoke those words has more than made good her vow. She has led a life characterized by unfailing devotion to duty and exemplary service to her people. Well done, Ma'am. May you have a joyous birthday.

If there is such a thing as a "speechwriter's speechwriter," Dr. Alan M. Perlman more than qualifies for the title.

Dr. Perlman's Ph.D. is in linguistics, the scientific study of language. He taught the subject, along with English composition, for 12 years at various colleges and universities. In addition, he spent more than 20 years as an executive speechwriter at Burroughs Corporation (now Unisys), General Motors and Kraft Foods.

Dr. Perlman has written two books on speechwriting: "It Gives Me Great Pleasure..." -- A Guide to Writing Ceremonial Speeches (Ragan Communications, 1992) and Writing Great Speeches: Professional Techniques You Can Use (Allyn & Bacon, 1997).

And now he has just published a third: Perfect Phrases for Executive Presentations (McGraw Hill, $9.95).

The book is a bargain, particularly for beginning speechwriters or communications professionals who are not speechwriters but who write speeches occasionally as part of their other duties. As the title suggests, this book contains scores of effective openings, conclusions and transitions to enliven almost every kind of speech, from the ceremonial to the routine. And each of these perfect phrases is vouched for by a man who has been writing speeches for over two decades.

Speechwriters of any level of proficiency will be especially grateful for the suggested openings. As James Russell Lowell once said, and as any writer will agree, "In creating, the only hard thing's to begin." What do you say after you've typed, "Ladies and Gentlemen..." ?

Say that you need to write a speech for managers on employee development. Dr. Perlman suggests startling the audience by challenging them: "I have a simple piece of advice: become the person you would like to promote."

Or say that your CEO has to make a speech on why the company is changing strategies. Don't be passive, be proactive. Have the CEO say, "To be successful in this environment, indeed to survive, we must create the change that leads to distinct competitive advantages."

Got an audience for whom English is not a first language? Dr. Perlman will steer you towards terminology that will be less likely to create misunderstandings.

However long one may have been plying the speechwriter's craft, the quotes and stories Dr. Perlman has included in this new book make it fun to peruse and instructive as well.

Nice work, Alan. Anybody who reads your book will never have fall back on, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking ..." to break the ice with the audience.

(The book may be ordered through Perlman’s Web site: www.alanperlman.com)

Oscar Wilde once ridiculed the fox-hunting Englishman as "the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

A cover story in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal has given Wilde's quip a new twist.

Two years ago, under pressure from animal rights activists, Parliament outlawed the traditional English fox hunt. I recall the furious protests at the time from the country folk, who insisted that city dwellers couldn't appreciate that foxes were awful pests.

Well, if they couldn't then, they can now. According to the Journal article, there are now approximately 10,000 foxes living in the London area, even in the heart of the city.

The bushy-tailed intruders raid garbage pails, dig up gardens, gnaw through television cables and terrorize household pets.

In retalliation, Londoners are arming themselves with water jets, pepper sprays and traps. But so far, they have been unable to keep the clever critters at bay for long.

One Londoner has suggested a stronger measure: ban fox hunting in the country, but allow it in the towns.

If Parliament pays heed to this tongue-in-cheek advice, the English fox hunt may return in a new form. Instead of scarlet-coated equestrians leaping over hedges to the sound of hunting horns, we may see bowler-hatted bankers and solicitors flailing away with their umbrellas at the despoilers of their flower beds -- the unspeakable once again in full pursuit of the uneatable.