There is, I fancy, a good deal in that. We are too fond of taking the cream from the strawberries, and the strawberries from the cream. I have on my plate here, not two things, but one thing; and that one thing is _strawberriesandcream_. One of the oldest and one of the silliest mistakes that men have made is their everlasting inclination to divide _strawberries-and-cream_ into strawberries _and_ cream. Think of the toothless chatter concerning the sexes. Have men or women done most for the world? Is the husband or is the wife most essential to the home? It will be quite time enough to attempt to answer such ridiculous questions when the waitresses at the restaurants begin to ask us whether we will have strawberries _or_ cream! In the beginning, we are told, God created man in His own image, male and female created He them. It is not so much a matter of male _and_ female: it is _maleandfemale_, just as it is _strawberriesandcream_. The thing takes other forms. Which do you prefer--summer or winter? As though we should appreciate summer if we never had a winter, or winter if we never had a summer! Is song or speech the most effective evangelistic agency? As though there would be anything to sing about if the gospel had never been preached! Or anything worth preaching if the gospel had never set anybody singing! It is so very ridiculous to try to separate the strawberries from the cream. Miss Rosaline Masson, in commenting upon Wordsworth's beautiful sonnet on Westminster Bridge, says that it is the outcome of Dorothy Wordsworth's divine power of perception and her brother's divine power of expression. But who would dare to take the sonnet to pieces and say how much is Dorothy's, and how much is William's? It is Dorothy's and William's. It is strawberries and cream.
I always feel extremely sorry for the man who tries to move a vote of thanks at the close of a pleasant and successful function. Not for worlds could I be persuaded to attempt it. It is a most difficult and complicated business, and I should collapse utterly. It consists in taking the whole performance to pieces and allocating the praise. So much for the decorators; so much for the singers; so much for the elocutionists; so much for the speakers; so much for the chairman; so much for the pianist; so much for the secretary; and so on. To me it would be like furnishing a statistical table on leaving the restaurant showing how much of my enjoyment I owed to the strawberries and how much to the cream. Dissection is not in my line. I only know that I thoroughly enjoyed the _strawberriesandcream_.