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The Keeley
Banquet
The Pilot
Newspaper, January 28, 1892
The formal opening of the new Institute building
and the accompanying banquet, on last Thursday evening,
was in point of success all, and in some respects
perhaps, more, than was anticipated by its managers.
Some 300 people were in attendance, mostly ex-graduates
of the Institute with their ladies and a few other
distinguished guest from abroad. Outside of
stockholders and their families, the band, waiters and
other necessary workers, Blair people were not in it to
any extent. Blair newspaper men were an exception,
but formal invitations sent out to some of the prominent
ministers, were withdrawn before the day of the banquet.
The assembled guest, composed of fair women and bra---[illegible]
as they were drawn about long lines of tables graced
with flowers and an elegant repast, presented a most
attractive appearance and was perhaps the most brilliant
assemblage, as it was certainly the largest, ever
gathered about one board in Blair. The address of
welcome was delivered by Judge Jesse T. Davis in his
usual happy vein and was followed by responses to
appropriate sentiments, on the part of Dr. Keeley of
Dwight, Dr. G. L. Miller of Omaha. Dr. B.F. Monroe of
Blair and others together with several original poems
read by graduates and ex-graduates. The speeches
were all able, entertaining and mostly well delivered,
but in the connection it may be said of Dr. Monroe that
to be a successful public speaker he needs more
practice. The exercises were concluded after
midnight and the brilliancy of these together with the
numbers of guests present justifies the conclusion that
from the standpoint of the management, the fondest
anticipations were realized. It was in one sense a
grand affair, conducted throughout on a grand scale and
should have resulted in making the Blair Keeley
Institute more solid with the people of its own town.
The result has in fact been precisely the reverse of
this. Mutterings of adverse criticism and open
censure are deep and loud. Either through
lamentable mismanagement of more palpable design, the
people of Blair were slapped in the face most
effectually. Not alone in the general slight to
prominent citizens, en masses, but in special
discourtesy in specific cases. Prominent
ministers, pastors of home churches, after receiving and
official invitation were deliberately told not to come;
the orchestra, composed of eight well-known business and
professional men after playing four hours for the
assembled guests, was permitted to go home without
supper; table waiters and door keepers were subject to
the same oversight, and people of Blair who were not
invited to the banquet were offered a ticket to the
gallery as compensation, if they would open their homes
for the overnight entertainment of Institute guests.
These are some of the unpleasant features of the great
banquet and which have aroused the indignation of many
Blair people. Local public sentiment has been so
absorbed by these things during the past week that they
could not be passed by in silence, hence the Pilot as no
other paper in Blair will do, gives the facts as they
are known to exist.
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