1 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. G. A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1358a-b.

2 Ibid., 7, 47.

3 See D. J. Ochs, Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco-Roman Era (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993).

4 W. D. Hansen and G. N. Dionisopoulos, “Eulogy Rhetoric as a Political Coping Mechanism: The Aftermath of Proposition 8,” Western Journal of Communication 76, no. 1 (2012): 26.

5 To review some of Twain’s more famous after-dinner speeches, see B. Blaisdell, ed., Great Speeches by Mark Twain (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2013).