Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



PUBLIC SPEAKING
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE

BY IRVAH LESTER WINTER




IN OFFERING A BOOK TO STUDENTS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
THE AUTHOR WOULD PAY WHAT TRIBUTE IS HERE POSSIBLE
TO
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
WHO FOR MANY YEARS HAS TAUGHT BY EXAMPLE
THE POWER AND BEAUTY OF PERFECTED SPEECH




PREFACE



This book is designed to set forth the main principles of effective
platform delivery, and to provide a large body of material for student
practice. The work laid out may be used to form a separate course of
study, or a course of training running parallel with a course in
debating or other original speaking. It has been prepared with a view
also to that large number who want to speak, or have to speak, but
cannot have the advantage of a teacher. Much is therefore said in the
way of caution, and untechnical language is used throughout.

The discussion of principles in Part One is intended as a help towards
the student's understanding of his task, and also as a common basis of
criticism in the relation between teacher and pupil. The preliminary
fundamental work of Part Two, Technical Training, deals first with the
right formation of tone, the development of voice as such, the securing
of a fixed right vocal habit. Following comes the adapting of this
improved voice to the varieties of use, or expressional effect,
demanded of the public speaker. After this critical detailed drill, the
student is to take the platform, and apply his acquired technique to
continued discourse, receiving criticism after each entire piece of
work.

The question as to what should be the plan and the content of Part
Three, Platform Practice, has been determined simply by asking what are
the distinctly varied conditions under which men most frequently speak.
It is regarded as profitable for the student to practice, at least to
some extent, in all the several kinds of speech here chosen. In thus
cultivating versatility, he will greatly enlarge his power of
expression, and will, at length, discover wherein lies his own special
capability.

The principal aim in choosing the selections has been to have them
sufficiently alive to be attractive to younger speakers, and not so
heavy as to be unsuited to their powers. Some of them have proved
effective by use; many others are new. In all cases they are of good
quality.

It is hoped that the new features of the book will be found useful. One
of these is a group of lighter after-dinner speeches and anecdotes. It
has been said that, in present-day speech-making, humor has supplanted
former-day eloquence. It plays anyway a considerable part in various
kinds of speaking. The young speaker is generally ineffective in the
expression of pleasantry, even his own. Practice in the speaking of
wholesome humor is good for cultivating quality of voice and ease of
manner, and for developing the faculty of giving humorous turn to one's
own thought. It is also entertaining to fellow students. Other new
features in the book are a practice section for the kind of informal
speaking suited to the club or the classroom, and a section given to
the occasional poem, the kind of poem that is associated with speech-
making.

A considerable space is given to argumentative selections because of
the general interest in debating, and because a need has been felt for
something suited for special forensic practice among students of law.
Some poetic selections are introduced into Part Two in order to give
attractive variety to the student's work, and to provide for the
advantage of using verse form in some of the vocal training. The few
character sketches introduced may serve for cultivating facility in
giving entertaining touches to serious discourse. All the selections
for platform practice are designed, as seems most fitting, to occupy
about five minutes in delivery. Original speeches, wherein the student
presents his own thought, may be intermingled with this more technical
work in delivery, or may be taken up in a more special way in a
subsequent course.

It should, perhaps, be suggested that the plan of procedure here
prescribed can be modified to suit the individual teacher or student.
The method of advance explained in the Discussion of Principles is
believed to be the best, but some who use the book may prefer, for
example, to begin with the second group of selections, the familiar,
colloquial passages, and proceed from these to those more elevated and
sustained. This or any other variation from the plan here proposed can,
of course, be adopted. For any plan the variety of material is deemed
sufficient, and the method of grouping will be found convenient and
practical.

The making of this kind of book would not be possible except for the
generous privileges granted by many authors and many publishers of
copyrighted works. For the special courtesies of all whose writings
have a place here the editor would make the fullest acknowledgment of
indebtedness. The books from which extracts are taken have been
mentioned, in every case, in a prominent place with the title of the
selection, in order that so far as possible students may be led
carefully to read the entire original, and become fully imbued with its
meaning and spirit, before undertaking the vocal work on the selected
portion. For the purpose of such reading, it would be well to have
these books collected on a section of shelves in school libraries for
easy and ready reference.

The publishers from whose books selections have been most liberally
drawn are, Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, Messrs. Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Messrs. Little, Brown, and Company, of Boston, and Messrs.
Harper and Brothers, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, Messrs. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, Messrs. G. W. Dillingham Company, Messrs. Doubleday,
Page and Company, and Mr. C. P. Farrell, New York. Several of the
after-dinner speeches are taken from the excellent fifteen volume
collection, "Modern Eloquence," by an arrangement with Geo. L. Shuman
and Company, Chicago, publishers. In the first three volumes of this
collection will be found many other attractive after-dinner speeches.

I. L. W. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.




CONTENTS



PREFACE
INTRODUCTION


PART ONE

A DISCUSSION OF PRINCIPLES

TECHNICAL TRAINING
  Establishing the Tone
  Vocal Flexibility
  The Formation of Words
  Making the Point
  Indicating Values and Relations
  Expressing the Feeling
  Showing the Picture
  Expression by Action

PLATFORM PRACTICE
  The Formal Address
  The Public Lecture
  The Informal Discussion
  Argumentative Speech
  The After-Dinner Speech
  The Occasional Poem
  The Making of the Speech


PART TWO

TECHNICAL TRAINING

ESTABLISHING THE TONE
  O Scotia!.......................... _Robert Burns_
  O Rome! My Country!................ _Lord Byron_
  Ring Out, Wild Bells!.............. _Alfred Lord Tennyson_
  Roll On, Thou Deep!................ _Lord Byron_
  Thou Too, Sail On!................. _Henry W. Longfellow_
  O Tiber, Father Tiber!............. _Lord Macaulay_
  Marullus to the Roman Citizens..... _William Shakespeare_
  The Recessional.................... _Rudyard Kipling_
  The Cradle of Liberty.............. _Daniel Webster_
  The Impeachment of Warren Hastings. _Edmund Burke_
  Bunker Hill........................ _Daniel Webster_
  The Gettysburg Address............. _Abraham Lincoln_

VOCAL FLEXIBILITY
  Cęsar, the Fighter................. _Henry W. Longfellow_
  Official Duty...................... _Theodore Roosevelt_
  Look Well to your Speech........... _George Herbert Palmer_
  Hamlet to the Players.............. _William Shakespeare_
  Bellario's Letter.................. _William Shakespeare_
  Casca, Speaking of Cęsar........... _William Shakespeare_
  Squandering of the Voice........... _Henry Ward Beecher_
  The Training of the Gentleman...... _William J. Tucker_

MAKING THE POINT
  Brutus to the Roman Citizens....... _William Shakespeare_
  The Precepts of Polonius........... _William Shakespeare_
  The High Standard.................. _Lord Rosebery_
  On Taxing the Colonies............. _Edmund Burke_
  Justifying the President........... _John C. Spooner_
  Britain and America................ _John Bright_

VALUES AND TRANSITIONS
  King Robert of Sicily.............. _Henry W. Longfellow_
  Laying the Atlantic Cable.......... _James T. Fields_
  O'Connell, the Orator.............. _Wendell Phillips_
  Justification for Impeachment...... _Edmund Burke_
  Wendell Phillips, the Orator....... _George William Curtis_
  On the Disposal of Public Lands.... _Robert Y. Hayne_
  The Declaration of Independence.... _Abraham Lincoln_

EXPRESSING THE FEELING
  Northern Greeting to Southern Veterans.
  ................................... _Henry Cabot Lodge_
  Matches and Overmatches............ _Daniel Webster_
  The Coalition...................... _Daniel Webster_
  In His Own Defense................. _Robert Emmet_
  On Resistance to Great Britain..... _Patrick Henry_
  Invective against Louis Bonaparte.. _Victor Hugo_

SHOWING THE PICTURE
  Mount, the Doge of Venice!......... _Mary Russell Mitford_
  The Revenge........................ _Alfred Lord Tennyson_
  A Vision of War.................... _Robert G. Ingersoll_
  Sunset Near Jerusalem.............. _Corwin Knapp Linson_
  A Return in Triumph................ _T. De Witt Talmage_
  A Return in Defeat................. _Henry W. Grady_

EXPRESSION BY ACTION
  In Our Forefathers' Day............ _T. De Witt Talmage_
  Cassius against Cęsar.............. _William Shakespeare_
  The Spirit of the South............ _Henry W. Grady_
  Something Rankling Here............ _Daniel Webster_
  Faith in the People................ _John Bright_
  The French against Hayti........... _Wendell Phillips_
  The Necessity of Force............. _John M. Thurston_
  Against War with Mexico............ _Thomas Corwin_
  The Murder of Lovejoy.............. _Wendell Phillips_

DEPICTING CHARACTER
  A Tale of the Plains............... _Theodore Roosevelt_
  Gunga Din.......................... _Rudyard Kipling_
  Address of Sergeant Buzfuz......... _Charles Dickens_
  A Natural Philosopher.............. _Maccabe_
  Response to a Toast................ _Litchfield Moseley_
  Partridge at the Play.............. _Henry Fielding_
  A Man's a Man for a That........... _Robert Burns_
  Artemus Ward's Lecture............. _Charles Farrar Brown_
  Jim Bludso, of the Prairie Belle... _John Hay_
  The Trial of Abner Barrow.......... _Richard Harding Davis_


PART THREE

PLATFORM PRACTICE

THE SPEECH OF FORMAL OCCASION
  The Benefits of a College Education _Abbott Lawrence Lowell_
  What the College Gives............. _Le Baron Russell Briggs_
  Memorial Day Address............... _John D. Long_
  William McKinley................... _John Hay_
  Robert E. Lee...................... _John W. Daniel_
  Farewell Address to the United States Senate.
  ...................................._Henry Clay_
  The Death of Garfield.............. _James G. Blaine_
  The Second Inaugural Address....... _Abraham Lincoln_
  The Death of Prince Albert......... _Benjamin Disraeli_
  An Appreciation of Mr. Gladstone... _Arthur J. Balfour_
  William E. Gladstone............... _Lord Rosebery_
  The Soldier's Creed................ _Horace Porter_
  Competition in College............. _Abbott Lawrence Lowell_

THE PUBLIC LECTURE
  A Master of the Situation.......... _James T. Fields_
  Wit and Humor...................... _Minot J. Savage_
  A Message to Garcia................ _Elbert Hubbard_
  Shakespeare's "Mark Antony"........ _Anonymous_
  André and Hale..................... _Chauncey M. Depew_
  The Battle of Lexington............ _Theodore Parker_
  The Homes of the People............ _Henry W. Grady_
  General Ulysses S. Grant........... _Canon G. W. Farrar_
  American Courage................... _Sherman Hoar_
  The Minutemen of the Revolution.... _George William Curtis_
  Paul Revere's Ride................. _George William Curtis_
  The Arts of the Ancients........... _Wendell Phillips_
  A Man without a Country............ _Edward Everett Hale_
  The Execution of Rodriguez......... _Richard Harding Davis_

THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION
  The Flood of Books................. _Henry van Dyke_
  Effectiveness in Speaking.......... _William Jennings Bryan_
  Books, Literature and the People... _Henry van Dyke_
  Education for Business............. _Charles William Eliot_
  The Beginnings of American Oratory. _Thomas Wentworth Higginson_
  Daniel Webster, the Man............ _Thomas Wentworth Higginson_
  The Enduring Value of Speech....... _Thomas Wentworth Higginson_
  To College Girls................... _Le Baron Russell Briggs_
  The Art of Acting.................. _Henry Irving_
  Address to the Freshman Class at Harvard University
  ...................................._Charles William Eliot_
  With Tennyson at Farringford....... _By His Son_
  Notes on Speech-Making............. _Brander Matthews_
  Hunting the Grizzly................ _Theodore Roosevelt_


ARGUMENT AND PERSUASION

DEBATES AND CAMPAIGN SPEECHES
  On Retaining the Philippine Islands _George F. Hoar_
  On Retaining the Philippine Islands _William McKinley_
  Debate on the Tariff............... _Thomas B. Reed_
  Debate on the Tariff............... _Charles F. Crisp_
  South Carolina and Massachusetts... _Robert Y. Hayne_
  South Carolina and Massachusetts... _Daniel Webster_
  The Republican Party............... _John Hay_
  Nominating Ulysses S. Grant........ _Roscoe Conkling_
  The Choice of a Party.............. _Roscoe Conkling_
  Nominating John Sherman............ _James A. Garfield_
  The Democratic Party............... _William E. Russell_
  The Call to Democrats.............. _Alton B. Parker_
  Nominating Woodrow Wilson.......... _John W. Wescott_
  Democratic Faith................... _William E. Russell_
  England and America................ _John Bright_
  On Home Rule in Ireland............ _William E. Gladstone_

THE LEGAL PLEA
  The Dartmouth College Case......... _Daniel Webster_
  In Defense of the Kennistons....... _Daniel Webster_
  In Defense of the Kennistons, II... _Daniel Webster_
  In Defense of John E. Cook......... _D. W. Voorhees_
  In Defense of the Soldiers......... _Josiah Quincy, Jr._
  In Defense of the Soldiers, II..... _Josiah Quincy, Jr._
  In Defense of the Soldiers, III.... _Josiah Quincy, Jr._
  In Defense of Lord George Gordon... _Lord Thomas Erskine_
  Pronouncing Sentence for High Treason
  ................................... _Sir Alfred Wills_
  The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.. _George S. Boutwell_
  The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.. _William M. Evarts_
  The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, II
  ................................... _William M. Evarts_

THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
  At a University Club Dinner........ _Henry E. Howland_
  The Evacuation of New York......... _Joseph H. Choate_
  Ties of Kinship.................... _Sir Edwin Arnold_
  Canada, England and the United States
  ................................... _Sir Wilfred Laurier_
  Monsieur and Madame................ _Paul Blouet (Max O'Rell)_
  The Typical American............... _Henry W. Grady_
  The Pilgrim Mothers................ _Joseph H. Choate_
  Bright Land to Westward............ _E. O. Wolcott_
  Woman.............................. _Theodore Tilton_
  Abraham Lincoln.................... _Horace Porter_
  To Athletic Victors................ _Henry E. Howland_

THE OCCASIONAL POEM
  Charles Dickens.................... _William Watson_
  The Mariners of England............ _Thomas Campbell_
  Class Poem......................... _Langdon Warner_
  A Troop of the Guard............... _Hermann Hagedorn, Jr._
  The Boys........................... _Oliver Wendell Holmes_

THE ANECDOTE
  The Mob Conquered.................. _George William Curtis_
  An Example of Faith................ _Henry W. Grady_
  The Rail-Splitter.................. _H. L. Williams_
  O'Connell's Wit.................... _Wendell Phillips_
  A Reliable Team.................... _Theodore Roosevelt_
  Meg's Marriage..................... _Robert Collyer_
  Outdoing Mrs. Partington........... _Sidney Smith_
  Circumstance not a Cause........... _Sidney Smith_
  More Terrible than the Lions....... _A. A. McCormick_
  Irving, the Actor.................. _John De Morgan_
  Wendell Phillips's Tact............ _James Burton Pond_
  Baked Beans and Culture............ _Eugene Field_
  Secretary Chase's Chin-Fly......... _F. B. Carpenter_


INDEX OF TITLES
INDEX OF AUTHORS




INTRODUCTION


Happily, it is no longer necessary to argue that public speaking is a
worthy subject for regular study in school and college. The teaching of
this subject, in one form or another, is now fairly well established.
In each of the larger universities, including professional schools and
summer schools, the students electing the courses in speaking number
well into the hundreds. These courses are now being more generally
placed among those counted towards the academic degrees. The demand for
trained teachers in the various branches of the work in schools and
colleges is far above the present supply. Educators in general look
with more favor upon this kind of instruction, recognizing its
practical usefulness and its cultural value. The question of the
present time, then, is not whether or not the subject shall have a
place. Some sort of place it always has had and always will have.
Present discussion should rather bear upon the policy and the method of
that instruction, the qualifications to be required of teachers, and
the consideration for themselves and their work that teachers have a
right to expect.

Naturally, public speaking in the form of debating has received favor
among educators. It seems to serve the ends of practice in speaking and
it gives also good mental discipline. The high regard for debating is
not misplaced. We can hardly overestimate the good that debating has
done to the subject of speaking in the schools and colleges. The rigid
intellectual discipline involved in debating has helped to establish
public speaking in the regular curriculum, thus gaining for it, and for
teachers in it, greater respect. To bring training in speech into close
relation with training in thought, and with the study of expression in
English, is most desirable. This, however, does _not_ mean that
training in speech, as a distinct object in itself, should be allowed
to fall into comparative neglect. It is quite possible that, along with
the healthy disapproval of false elocution and meaningless declamation,
may come an underestimation of the important place of a right kind and
a due degree of technical training in voice and general form.

In a recent book on public speaking, the statement is made that it is
all well enough, if it so happens, for a speaker to have a pleasing
voice, but it is not essential. This, though true in a sense, is
misleading, and much teaching of this sort would be unfortunate for
young speakers. It would seem quite unnecessary to say that beauty of
voice is not in itself a primary object in vocal training for public
speaking. The object is to make voices effective. In the effective use
of any other instrument, we apply the utmost skill for the perfect
adjustment or coordination of all the means of control. We do this for
the attainment of power, for the conserving of energy, for the insuring
of endurance and ease of operation. This is the end in the training of
the voice. It is to avoid friction. It is to prevent nervous strain,
muscular distortion, and failing power, and to secure easy response to
the will of the speaker. The point not wholly understood or heeded is
that, as a rule, the unpleasing voice is an indication of ill
adjustment and friction. It denotes a mechanism wearing on itself--it
means a voice that will weaken or fail before its time--a voice that
needs repair.

Since speech is to express a speaker's thought, training in speech
should not be altogether dissociated from training in thinking. It
ought to go hand in hand, indeed, with the study of English, from first
to last. But training in voice and in the method of speech is a
technical matter. It ought not to be left to the haphazard treatment,
the intense spurring on, of vocally unskilled coaches for speaking
contests. Discussions about the teaching of speaking are often very
curious. We are frequently told by what means a few great orators have
succeeded, but we are hardly ever informed of the causes from which
many other speakers have been embarrassed or have failed. A book or
essay is written to prove, from the individual experience of the
author, the infallibility of a method. He was able to succeed, the
argument runs, only by this or that means; therefore all should do as
he did. It seems very plausible and attractive to read, for instance,
that to succeed in speaking, it is only necessary to plunge in and be
in earnest. But another writer points out that this is quite absurd;
that many poor speakers have not lacked in intense earnestness and
sincerity; that it isn't feeling or intense spirit alone that insures
success, but it is the attainment as well of a vocal method. Yet he
goes on to argue that this vocal method, this forming of a public
speaking voice and style, cannot be rightly gained from the teachers;
it must be acquired through the exercise of each man's own will; if a
man finds he is going wrong he must will to go right--as if many men
had not persistently but unsuccessfully exercised their will to this
very end. It is so easy, and so attractive, to resolve all problems
into one idea. President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton University, once
said that he always avoided the man or the book that proclaimed one
idea for the correcting of society's ills. These ideas on which books
or essays are written are too obviously fallacious to need extended
comment; the wonder is that they are often quoted and commended as
being beneficial in their teaching. If we want to row or sprint or play
golf, we do not simply go in and do our utmost; we apply the best
technical skill to the art; we seek to learn how, from the experience
of the past, and through the best instructors obtainable. Both common
sense and experience show that the use of the human voice in the art of
speaking is not the one thing, among all things, that cannot be
successfully taught. The results of vocal teaching show, on the
contrary, from multitudes of examples, from volumes of testimony, that
there are few branches of instruction wherein the specially trained
teacher is so much needed, and can be so effective as in the art of
speaking.

In an experience extending over many years, an experience dealing with
about all the various forms of public speaking and vocal teaching, the
present writer has tried many methods, conducted classes on several
different plans, learned the needs, observed the efforts, considered
the successes and failures, of many men and women of various ages and
of many callings. The constant and insistent fact in all this period of
experience has been that skillful, technical instruction, as such, is
the one kind of instruction that should always be provided where public
speaking is taught, and the one that the student should not fail to
secure when it is at hand. Other elements in good speech-making may, if
necessary, be obtained from other sources. The teacher of speaking
should teach speech. He should teach something else also, but he
should, as a technician, teach that. The multitude of men and women
who, in earlier and later life, come, in vocal trouble, to seek help
from the experienced teacher, and the abundance of testimony as to the
satisfactory results; the repeated evidences of failure to produce
rightly trained voices wholly by so-called inspirational methods; the
frequent evidences of pernicious vocal results from the forcing of
young voices in the overintense and hasty efforts made in preparing for
prize speaking, acting, and debating,--all these may not come to the
understanding of the ordinary observer; they may not often, perhaps,
come within the experience of the exceptionally gifted individuals who
are usually cited as examples of distinguished success; they cannot
impress themselves on educators who have little or no relation with
this special subject; they naturally come into the knowledge and
experience of the specially trained teacher of public speaking, who is
brought into intimate relations with the subject and deals with all
sorts and conditions of men. Out of this experience comes the strong
conviction that the teacher of public speaking should be a vocal
technician and a vocal physician, able to teach constructively and to
treat correctively, knowing all he can of all that has been taught
before, but teaching only as much of what he knows as is necessary to
any individual.

For the dignity and worth of the teaching, the teacher of speaking
should be trained, and should be a trainer, as has been indirectly
said, in some other subject--in English literature or composition, in
debating, history, or what not. He should be one of the academic
faculty--concerned with thought, which speech expresses. He should not,
for his other subject, be mainly concerned with gymnastics or
athletics; he should not, for his own good and the consequent good of
his work, be wholly taken up merely with the teaching of technical form
in speaking. He should not be merely--if at all--a coach in inter-
collegiate contests; nor should his service to an institution be
adjudged mainly by the results of such contests. He should be an
independent, intellectually grown and growing man, one who--in his
exceptionally intimate relations with students--will have a large and
right influence on student life. The offer recently held out by a
university of a salary and an academic rank equal to its best, to a
sufficiently qualified instructor in public speaking, was one of the
several signs of a sure movement of to-day in the right direction--the
demand for a man of high character and broad culture, specially skilled
in the technical subject he was to teach, and the providing of a worthy
position.

One fact that needs to be impressed upon governing bodies of school and
college is that the cultivation of good speaking cannot but be
unsatisfactory when it is continued over only a very brief time. It may
only do mischief. A considerable period is necessary, as is the case
with other subjects, for reaching the student intelligence, for molding
the faculties, for maturing the powers, for adapting method to the
individual, and for bringing the personality out through the method, so
that method disappears. Senator George F. Hoar once gave very sensible
advice in an address to an audience of Harvard students. He did not
content himself with dwelling on the inevitable platitude, first have
something to say, and then say it; he said he had been, in all his
career, at a special disadvantage in public speaking, from the want of
early training in the use of his voice; and he urged that students
would do well not only to take advantage of such training in college,
but to have their teacher, if it were possible, follow them, for a
time, into their professional work. This idea was well exemplified in
the case of Phillips Brooks--a speaker of spontaneity, simplicity, and
splendid power. It is said that, in the period of his pulpit work, in
the midst of his absorbing church labors, he made it a duty to go from
time to time for a period of work with his teacher of voice, that he
might be kept from falling back into wrong ways. It is often said that,
if a man has it in him, he will speak well anyway. It is emphatically
the man who has it in him, the man of intense temperament, like that of
Phillips Brooks, who most needs the balance wheel, the sure reliance,
of technique. That this technique should not be too technical; that
form should not be too formal; that teaching should not be too good, or
do too much, is one of the principles of good teaching. The point
insisted on is that a considerable time is needed, as it is in other
kinds of teaching, for thoroughly working out a few essential
principles; for overcoming a few obstinate faults; for securing matured
results by the right process of gradual development.

There is much cause for gratification in the evidences of a growing
appreciation, in all quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a
study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. Much
progress has also been made toward making youthful platform speaking,
as well as youthful writing, more rational in form, more true in
spirit, more useful for its purpose. In good time written and spoken
English, conjoined with disciplinary training in thought and
imagination, will both become firmly established in their proper place
as subjects to be thoroughly and systematically taught. Good teaching
will become traditional, and good teachers not rare. And among the
specialized courses in public speaking an important place should always
be given to an exact training in voice and in the whole art of
effective delivery.




PART ONE


A DISCUSSION OF PRINCIPLES

TECHNICAL TRAINING

ESTABLISHING THE TONE


The common trouble in using the voice for the more vigorous or intense
forms of speaking is a contraction or straining of the throat. This
impedes the free flow of voice, causing impaired tone, poor
enunciation, and unhealthy physical conditions. Students should,
therefore, be constantly warned against the least beginnings of this
fault. The earlier indications of it may not be observed, or the nature
of the trouble may not be known, by the untrained speaker. But it ought
to have, from the first, the attention of a skilled teacher, for the
more deep-seated it becomes, the harder is its cure. So very common is
the "throaty" tone and so connected is throat pressure with every other
vocal imperfection, that the avoiding or the correcting of this one
fault demands constant watchfulness in all vigorous vocal work. The way
to avoid the faulty control of voice is, of course, to learn at the
proper time the general principles of what singers call voice
production. These principles are few and, in a sense, are very simple,
but they are not easily made perfectly clear in writing, and a perfect
application of them, even in the simpler forms of speaking, often
requires persistent practice. It will be the aim here to state only
what the student is most likely to understand and profit by, and to
leave the rest to the personal guidance of a teacher.

The control of the voice, so far as it can be a conscious physical
operation, is determined chiefly by the action of the breathing muscles
about the waist and the lower part of the chest. The voice may be said
to have its foundation in this part of the physical man. This
foundation, or center of control, will be rightly established, not by
any very positive physical action; not by a decided raising of the
chest; not by any such marked expansion or contraction as to bring
physical discomfort or rigid muscular conditions. When the breath is
taken in, by an easy, natural expansion, much as air is taken into a
bellows, there is, to a certain degree, a firming of the breathing
muscles; but this muscular tension is felt by the speaker or singer, if
felt at all, simply as a comfortable fullness around, and slightly
above, the waistline, probably more in front than elsewhere. An eminent
teacher of singing tells his pupils to draw the breath into the
stomach. That probably suggests the sensation. When the breath has been
taken in, it is to be gently withheld,--not given up too freely,--and
the tone is formed on the top, so to speak, of this body of breath,
chiefly, of course, in the mouth and head. For the stronger and larger
voice the breath is not driven out and dissipated, but the tone is
intensified and given completer resonance within--within the nasal or
head cavities, somewhat within the pharynx and chest. This body of
breath, easily held in good control, by the lower breathing muscles,
forms what is called the vocal "support." It is a fixed base of
control. It is a fundamental condition, and is to be steadily
maintained in all the varied operations of the voice.

Since this fundamental control of voice is so important, breathing
exercises are often prescribed for regular practice. Such exercises,
when directed by a thoroughly proficient instructor, may be vocally
effective, and beneficial to health. Unwisely practiced, they may be
unfitted to vocal control and of positive physical harm. Moderately
taking the breath at frequent intervals, as a preparation or
reėnforcement for speaking, should become an unconscious habit.
Excessive filling of the lungs or pressing downward upon the abdomen
should be avoided. In general, the hearing of the voice, and an
expressional purpose in making the voice, are the better means of
acquiring good breathing. For the purposes of public speaking, at
least, it is seldom necessary to do much more, in regard to the
breathing, than to instruct a student against going wrong. The speaker
should have a settled feeling of sufficiency; he should hold himself
well together, physically and morally, avoiding nervous agitation and
physical collapse; he should allow the breath freedom rather than put
it under unnatural constraint. Perfect breathing can only be known by
certain qualities in the voice. When it is best, the process is least
observed. The student learns the method of breathing mainly by noting
the result, by rightly hearing his voice. He must, after all, practice
through the hearing.

The discussion of vocal support has brought us to the second main
principle, the government of the throat. The right control of the
voice, by placing a certain degree of tension upon the breathing
muscles, tends to take away all pressure and constraint from the
throat, leaving that passage seemingly open and free, so that the
breath body or column; as some conceive it, seems almost unbroken in
continued speech, much as it is, or should be, in prolonging tone in
singing. The throat is opened in a relaxed rather than a constrained
way, so as to give free play for the involuntary action of the delicate
vocal muscles connected with the larynx, which determine all the finer
variations of voice. Whatever kind of vocal effort is made, the student
should constantly guard himself against the least throat stiffening or
contraction, against what vocalists call a "throat grip." He is very
likely to make some effort with the throat, or vocal muscles, when
putting the voice to any unusual test--when prolonging tone, raising or
lowering the pitch, giving sharp inflections, or striking hard upon
words for emphasis. In these and other vocal efforts the throat muscles
should be left free to do their own work in their own way. The throat
is to be regarded as a way through; the motive power is below the
throat; the place for giving sound or resonance, to voice, for stamping
upon words their form and character, is in the mouth, front and back,
and especially in the head.

The last of the three main considerations, the concentration of tone
where it naturally seems to be formed, is often termed voice "placing,"
or "placement." The possible objection to this term is that it may
suggest a purely artificial or arbitrary treatment or method. Rightly
understood, it is the following of nature. Its value is that it
emphasizes the constancy of this one of the constant factors in voice.
Its result is a certain kind and degree of monotony; without that
particular kind of monotony the voice is faulty. When the tone is
forced out of its proper place, it is dissipated and more or less lost.
A student once told the writer, when complimented on the good placement
of his voice, that he learned this in his summer employment as a public
crier at the door of a show tent. He said he could not possibly have
endured the daily wear upon the voice in any other way. Voices are
heard among teamsters, foremen on the street, and auctioneers, that
conform to this and other principles perfectly. We may say that in such
cases the process of learning is unconscious. In the case of the
untaught student it was conscious, and was exactly what he would have
been instructed to do by a teacher. The point is that many cannot learn
by themselves, and our more unconscious doings are likely to become our
bad habits.

Just what this voice placement is can perhaps be observed simply by
sounding the letter "m," or giving an ordinary hum, as the mother sings
to the child. It is merely finding the natural, instinctive basal form
of the voice, and making all the vowels simply as variations of this
form. The hum is often practiced, with a soft pure quality, by singers.
It is varied by the sound of "ng," as in "rung" or "hung," and the
elemental sound of "l." The practice should always be varied, however,
by a fuller sounding of the rounder vowels, lest the voice become too
much confined or thinned. The speaker, like the singer, must find out
how, by a certain adjustment all along the line from the breathing
center to the point of issue of the breath at the front of the mouth,
he can easily maintain a constant hitting place, to serve as the hammer
head; one singing place for carrying the voice steadily through a
sustained passage; one place where, as it were, the tone is held in
check so it will not break through itself and go to pieces,--a "placing
of the voice," which is to be preserved in every sort of change or play
of tone, whether in one's own character or an assumed character; a
constant focus or a fixed center of resonance, a forming of tone along
the roof of the mouth and well forward in the head, the safeguard and,
practically, the one most effective idea in the government of voice.

And now it should be hastily stated that this excellent idea, like
other good things, may be easily abused. If the tone is pushed forward
or crowded into the head or held tight in its place, in the least
degree, there is a drawing or a cramping in the throat; there is a
"pressing" of the voice. It should be remembered that the constancy of
high placement of tone depends upon the certainty of the tone
foundation; that, after all, the voice must rest upon itself, and must
not sound as if it were up on tip-toe or on stilts; that tone placement
is merely a convenient term for naming a natural condition.

As a final word on this part of the discussion, the student should of
course be impressed with the idea that though these three features of
vocal mechanism have been considered separately, all ideas about voice
are ultimately to become one idea. The voice is to be thought of as
belonging to the whole man, and is to become the spontaneous expression
of his feelings and will; it should not draw attention to any
particular part of the physical man; whatever number of conditions may
be considered, the voice is finally to be one condition, a condition of
normal freedom.

A lack of freedom is indicated in the voice, as in other kinds of
mechanism by some sign of friction--by a harsh tone from a constrained
throat; by a nasal or a muffled tone, from some obstruction in the
nasal passages of the head, either because of abnormal physical
conditions, or because of an unnatural direction of the breath, mainly
due probably to speaking with a closed mouth; by a bound-up, heavy,
"chesty" tone, resulting from a labored method of breathing.

Voice in its freer state should be pure, clear, round, fairly musical,
and fairly deep and rich. Its multitude of expressive qualities had
better be cultivated by the true purpose to express, in the simplest
way, sentiments appropriated to one's self through an understanding and
a comprehensive appreciation of various passages of good literature. As
soon as possible all technique is to be forgotten, unless the
consciousness is pricked by something going wrong.

Voices in general need, in the larger development, to be rounded. The
vowel forms "oo" as in moon, "o" as in roll, and "a" as in saw, greatly
help in giving a rounded form to the general speech; for all vowels can
be molded somewhat into the form of these rounder ones. The vowels "e"
as in meet, "a" as in late, short "e" as in met, short "a" as in sat,
are likely to be made very sharp, thin, and harsh. When a passage for
practice begins with round vowels, as for example, "Roll on, thou deep
and dark blue ocean, roll!" the somewhat rounded form of the lips, and
the opened condition of the throat produced in forming the rounder
vowels, can be to some extent maintained through the whole of the
passage, in forming all the vowels; and this will give, by repeated
practice, a gradually rounded and deepened general character to the
voice. On the other hand the thinner, sharper vowels may serve to give
keenness and point to tones too thick and dull. In applying these
suggestions, as well as all other vocal suggestions, moderation and
good sense must be exercised, for the sake of the good outward
appearance and the good effect of the speaking. The chief vowel forms
running from the deepest to the most shallow are: "oo" as in moon, "o"
as in roll, "a" as in saw, "a" as in far, "a" as in say, "e" as in see.

Since the making of tones means practically the shaping of vowels,
something should here be said about vowel forms. The mouth opening
should of course be freely shaped for the best sounding of the vowels.
For the vowel "a" as in far, the mouth is rather fully opened; for "a"
as in saw, it is opened deep, that is, the mouth passage is somewhat
narrowed, so as to allow increased depth. The vowel "o," as in no, has
two forms, the clear open "o," and the "o" somewhat covered by a closer
form of the lips, Commonly, when the vowel is prolonged, the initial
form, that is the open "o," is held, with the closed form, like "oo" in
moon, touched briefly as the tone is finished. So with long "i" (y), as
in thy, and "ou," as in thou--the first form is like a broad "a" as in
far, with short "i" (sit) ending the "i" (y), and "oo" (moon) ending
the "ou." This final sound, though sometimes accentuated for humorous
effect, is usually not to be made prominent. The sound of "oi," as in
voice, has the main form of "aw" as in saw, and the final form in short
"i," as in pin. The vowel "u" is sounded like "oo" (moon) in a few
words, as in rule, truth. Generally, it sounds about like "ew" in new
or mew. In some of the forms the front of the mouth will be open, in
some half open, and in some, as in the case of long "e" (meet), nearly
closed. Whatever the degree of opening, the jaw should never be allowed
to become stiffly set, nor the tongue nor lips to be held tight, in any
degree or way. These faults cause a tightening in the throat, and
affect the character of the tone. It will generally be advantage to the
tone if the lips are trained to be very slightly protruding, in bell
shape, and if the corners of the mouth be not allowed to droop, but be
made very slightly to curve upward. The tongue takes of course various
positions for different vowels. For our purposes, it may be sufficient
to say that it will play its part best if it be not stiffened but is
left quite free and elastic, perhaps quite relaxed, and if the tip of
it be made to play easily down behind the lower teeth.

Since voice has here been discussed in an objective sort of way, it is
fitting to emphasize the importance of what is called naturalness, or
more correctly, simplicity. Everybody desires this sort of result. It
can readily be seen, however, that about everything we do is a second
nature; is done, that is to say, in the acquired, acceptable,
conventional way. Voice and speech are largely determined by
surrounding influences, and what we come to regard as natural may be
only an acquired bad habit, which is, in fact, quite unnatural. Voice
should certainly be what we call human. Better it should have some
human faults than be smoothed out into negative perfection, without the
true ring, the spunk of individuality. There is, nevertheless, a best
naturalness, or second nature, and a worst. The object of training is
to find the best.

In this discussion of voice some of the ideas often applied to the
first steps in the cultivation of singing have been presented, as those
most effective also for training in speech. Although, on the surface,
singing and speaking are quite different, fundamentally they are the
same. Almost all persons have, if they will use it, an ear for musical
pitch and tone, and the neglect to cultivate, in early life, the
musical hearing and the singing tone is a mistake. To prospective
public speakers it is something like a misfortune. The best speakers
have had voices that sang in their speaking. This applies distinctly to
the speaking, for example, of Wendell Phillips, who is commonly called
the most colloquial of our public speakers. It has often been commented
on in the case of Gladstone, and applies peculiarly to some of our
present-day speakers, who would be called, not orators, but impressive
talkers. The meaning is, not of course that speaking should sound like
singing, or necessarily like oratory, but that to the trained ear the
best speaking has fundamentally the singing conditions, and the voice
has singing qualities; and the elementary exercises designed for
singing are excellent, in their simpler forms and methods, for the
speaking voice.  In carrying out this idea in voice training, the
selections here given for the earliest exercises, are such as naturally
call for some slight approach to the singing tone. Some are in the
spirit and style of song or hymn; others are in the form of address to
distant auditors, wherein the reciter would call to a distance, or
"sing out," as we say. This kind of speaking is a way of quickly
"bringing out" the voice. Young students especially are very apt in
this, getting the idea at once, though needing, as a rule, special
cautions and guidance for keeping the proper vocal conditions, so as to
prevent "forcing." The passages are simple in spirit and form. They
carry on one dominant feeling, needing little variation of voice. The
idea is to render them in a way near to the monotone, that the student
may learn to control one tone, so to speak, or to speak nearly in one
key, before doing the more varied tones of familiar speech or of
complex feeling. We might say the passages are to be read in some
degree like the chant; but the chant is likely to bring an excess of
head resonance and is too mechanical. The true spirit of the selections
is to be given, from the first, but reduced to its very simplest form.
Difficulties arise, in this first step, in the case of two classes of
student: those who lack sentiment or imagination, or at least the
faculty of vocally expressing it, and those with an excess of feeling.
The former class have to be mentally awakened; for some motive element,
aesthetic appreciation or imaginative purpose, should play a part, as
has been said, even in technical vocal training. The latter class must
be restrained. Excessive emotion either chokes off expression, or runs
away with itself. Calmness, evenness, poise, the easy control that
comes from a degree of relaxation, without loss of buoyancy,--these are
the conditions for good accomplishment of any kind. This self-mastery
the high-strung, ardent spirit must learn, in order to become really
strong. This is accomplished, in the case of a nervous temperament, not
by tightening up and trying hard, but by relaxing, by letting down. In
the use of these passages the voice will be set at first slightly high
in pitch, in order to help in keeping a continuous sounding of tone
against the roof of the mouth and to a proper degree in the head. This
average pitch, or key, or at least the character of the tone, will be
maintained without much change, and with special care that the tone be
kept up in its place at the ends of lines or sentences, and be kept
well fixed on its breath foundation. The simpler inflections indicating
the plain meaning, will of course be observed, the tone will be kept
easily supported by the frequently recovered breath that is under it.
The back of the mouth will seem to be constantly somewhat open. There
will be no attempt at special power, but only a free, mellow, flowing
tone of moderate strength. In the exercise each voice will be treated,
in detail, according to its particular needs, and in each teacher's own
way.

At the time of student life, when physical conditions are not matured,
the counsel should repeatedly be given, not only that the voice, though
used often and regularly, should be used moderately, but also that the
voice should be kept youthful--youthful, if it can be, even in age--but
especially in youth, whatever the kind of literature used for practice.
Also youth should be counseled not to try to make a voice like the
voice of some one else, some speaker, or actor, or teacher. It will be
much the best if it is just the student's own.


VOCAL FLEXIBILITY


In the earliest exercises here given the tone will be, for the best and
most immediate effect, kept running on somewhat in a straight line, so
to speak; will have a certain sameness of sound; will be perhaps
somewhat monotonous, because kept pretty much in one key, or in one
average degree of pitch. It will perhaps be necessary to make the
utterance for the time somewhat artificial. The voice is in the
artificial stage, as is the work of an oarsman, for example, in
learning the parts of the stroke, or that of a golfer in learning the
"swing," although in the case of some students, when the vocal
conditions are good and the tone is well balanced, very little of the
artificial process is necessary. In that case the voice simply needs,
in its present general form, to be developed.

The next step in the training is to try a more varied use of the voice,
without a loss of what has been acquired as to formation of tone. The
student is to make himself able to slide the voice up and down in
pitch, by what is called inflection, to raise or lower the pitch by
varied intervals, momentarily to enlarge or diminish the tone, in
expressive ways; in short, to adapt the improved tone, the more
effective method of voice control, to more varied speech. In the early
practice for getting tone variation, the student must guard most
carefully against "forcing." Additional difficulties arise when we have
vocal changes, and moderate effort, in the degree of the change, is
best. In running the tone up, one should let the voice take its own
way. The tone should not be pushed or held by any slightest effort at
the throat. The control should, as has been said, be far below the
throat. In running an inflection from low to high, the tone may be
allowed, especially in the earlier practice, to thin out at the top.
And always when the pitch is high the tone should be smaller, as it is
on a musical instrument, though it should have a consistent depth and
dignity from its proper degree of connection with the chest. This
consistent character in the upper voice is attained by giving the tone
a bit of pomp or nobleness of quality. In taking a low pitch there is,
among novices, always a tendency to bear down on the tone in order to
gain strength or to give weight to utterance. The voice is thus crowded
into, or on, the throat. The voice should never be pushed down or
pressed back in the low pitch. This practice leads to raggedness of
tone, and finally to virtual loss of the lower voice. The voice should
fall of itself with only that degree of force which is legitimately
given by the breath tension, produced easily, though firmly, by the
breathing muscles. Breadth will be given to the tone by some degree of
expansion at the back of the mouth, or in the pharynx. As soon as can
be, the speech should be brought down to the utmost of simplicity and
naturalness, so that the thought of literature can be expressed with
reality and truth; can be made to sound exactly as if it came as an
unstudied, spontaneous expression of the student's own mind, and yet so
it can be heard, so it will be adequate, so it will be pleasing in
sound. The improved tone is to become the student's inevitable,
everyday voice.


THE FORMATION OF WORDS


The term enunciation means the formation of words, including right
vocal shape to the vowels and right form to the consonants.
Pronunciation is scholastic, relating to the word accent and the vowel
sound. Authority for this is in the dictionary. Enunciation, belonging
to elocution, is the act of forming those authorized sounds into
finished speech.

There is a common error regarding enunciation. It is usual, if a
speaker is not easily understood, to say that he should "articulate"
more clearly; that is, make the consonants more pronounced, and young
students are thus often urged into wrongly directed effort with the
tongue and lips. Sometimes in books, articulation "stunts," in the form
of nonsense alliterations, are prescribed, by which all the vowels are
likely to be chewed into consonants. The result is usually an
overexertion, and a consequent tightening, of the articulating muscles.
At first, and for a time, it may appear that this forcing of the
articulation brings the desired result of clearer speech, but it will,
in the end, be destructive to voice and bring incoherent utterance.
Articulation exercises too difficult for the master, should not be
given to the novice. All teachers of singing train voices, at first, on
the vowel, and it should be known that, without right vowel, or tone,
formation, efforts at good articulation are futile. Every technical
vocal fault must be referred back to the fundamental condition of right
formation of tone, that is, the vowel. Sputtering, hissing, biting,
snapping, of consonants is not enunciation. The student should learn
how without constraint, to prolong vowels; learn, if you please, the
fundamentals of singing, and articulation, the formation of consonants,
the jointing of syllables, will become easy. The reason for this is
that when the vowel tone is rightly produced, all the vocal muscles are
freed; the tongue, lips, and jaw act without constraint.

The principle of rhythm simplifies greatly the problem of enunciation.
It is easier, not only to make good tone, but also to speak words, in
the reading of verse than of prose. It is much easier to read a
rhythmical piece of prose than one lacking in rhythm. All prose, then,
should be rendered with as much rhythmical flow as is allowed
consistently with its spirit and meaning. Care must be taken of course
that no singsong effect occurs; that the exact meaning receives first
attention. In case of long, hard words, ease is attained by making a
slight pause before the word or before its preposition or article or
other closely attached word, and by giving a strong beat to its
accented syllable or syllables, with little effort on the subordinate
syllables.

The particular weakness among Americans, in the speaking of words, is
failure adequately to form the nasal, or head, sounds. The letters "l,"
"m," "n," are called vowel consonants. They can be given continuous
sound, a head resonance. This sounding may be carried to a fault, or
affectation; but commonly it is insufficiently done, and it should be
among the first objects of cultivation in vocal practice. The humming
of these head sounds, with very moderate force, is excellent for
developing and clearing this resonance. The "ng" sound, as in rung, may
be added.

Improper division of words into syllables is a common fault. The word
"constitution," for example, is made "cons-titution," instead of "con-
stitution;" "prin-ciple" is pronounced "prints-iple." A clean, correct
formation should be made by slightly holding, and completing the
accented syllable. The little word "also" is often called "als-o" or
"als-so" or "alt-so"; chrysanthemum is pronounced "chrysant-themum";
coun-try is called "country," band so forth. In the case of doubled
consonants, as in the word "mellow," "commemorate," "bubble," and the
like, a momentary holding of the first consonant, so that a bit of
separate impulse is given to the second, makes more perfect speaking.
There is a slight difference between "mel-low" and "mel-ow," "bub-ble"
and "bub-le," "com-memorate" and "com-emorate." These finer
distinctions, if one cares to make speech accurate and refined, can be
observed in words ending in "ence" and "ance" as in "guidance" and
"credence"; in words with the ending "al," "el," or "le," as in
"general," "principal," "final," "vessel," "rebel," "principle," and
"little." If that troublesome word "separate" were from the beginning
rightly pronounced, it would probably be less often wrongly spelled.
One should hasten to say, however, that over-nicety in enunciation,
pedantic exactness, obtrusive "elocutionary" excellence, or any sort of
labored or affected effort should be carefully guarded against. The
line of distinction between what is perfect and what is slightly
strained is a fine one. Very often, for example, one hears such endings
as "or" in "creator," "ed" in "dedicated," "ess" in "readiness," "men"
in "gentlemen," pronounced with incorrect prominence. These syllables,
being very subordinate, should not be made to stand out with undue
distinctness, and though the vowels should not be distorted into a
wrong form, they should be obscured. In "gentlemen," for example, the
"e" is, according to the dictionary, an "obscure" vowel, and the word
is pronounced almost as "gentlem'n,"--not "gentle_mun_," of course,
but not "gentlem_e_n." The fault in such forms is more easily
avoided by throwing a sharp accent on the accented syllable,
letting the other syllables fall easily out. The expression of
greeting, "Ladies and gentlemen," should have a strong accent on each
first syllable of the two important words, with little prominence given
to other syllables or the connecting word; as, "La'dies 'nd
gen'tlem'n."

In the same class of errors is that of making an extra syllable in such
words as "even," "seven," "heaven," "eleven," and "given," where
properly the "e" is elided, leaving "ev'n," "heav'n," and so forth. The
mouth should remain closed when the first syllable is pronounced; the
"n" is then simply sounded in the head. The same treatment should be
given to such words as "chasm" and "enthusiasm." If the mouth is opened
after the first part of the word is sounded, we have "chas-_u_m,"
"enthusias-_u_m." The little words "and," "as," "at" and the like
should, of course, when not emphatic, be very lightly touched, with the
vowel hardly formed, and the mouth only slightly opened. The word "and"
is best sounded, where not emphatic, with light touch, slight opening
of the mouth, and hardly any forming of the vowel; almost like "'nd."
These words should be connected closely with the word which follows, as
if they were a subordinate syllable of that word.

Often we hear such words as "country," "city," and their plurals,
pronounced "countree," "citee," and "citees"; "ladies" is called
"ladees." The sound should properly be that of short "i" not of long
"e." The vowel sound, short "a," as in "cast," "fast," "can't," must be
treated as a localism, and yet it is hardly necessary to adhere to any
decided extreme because of local associations. Vocally, the very narrow
sound of short "a," called "Western," is impossible. It can't be sung;
in speech it is usually dry and harsh. As a matter of taste the very
broad sound of the short "a," when it is made like "a" in "far," is
objectionable because it is extraordinary. There is a form between
these extremes, the correct short "a"; this ought to be acceptable
anywhere. It is suggestive to observe that localisms are less
pronounced among artists than among untrained persons. Trained singers
and actors belonging to different countries or sections of country,
show few differences among themselves in English pronunciation. Among
localisms the letter "r" causes frequent comment. In singing and
dramatic speaking, this letter is best formed at the tip of the tongue.
In common speech it may be made only by a very slight movement at the
back of the tongue. A decided throaty "burr" should always be avoided.
In the case of vigorous dramatic utterance, the "r" may be quite
decidedly rolled, on the principle that, in such cases, all consonants
become a means of effectiveness in expression. In the expression of
fine, delicate, or tender sentiment, all consonants should be lightly
touched or should be obscured. Enumeration of the many kinds of
carelessness of speech would be to little purpose. Scholarly speech
requires a knowledge of correct forms, gained from the dictionary, and
vocal care and skill in making these forms clear, smooth, and finished
in sound.

This discussion has perhaps suggested the extreme of accuracy in
speech. But as has already been said, any degree of overnicety, of
pedantic elegance, of stilted correctness, is especially irritating to
a sensitive ear. Excessive biting off of syllables, flipping of the
tongue, showing of the teeth, twisting of the lips, is carrying
excellence to a fault. The inactive jaw, tongue, and lips must be made
mobile, and in the working away of clumsiness and slovenliness of
speech, some degree of stiltedness must perhaps, for a time, be in
evidence, but matured practice ought finally to result, not only in
accuracy and finish, but in simplicity and ease in speaking.


MAKING THE POINT


When the student has made a fair degree of progress in the more
strictly mechanical features of speech, the formation of tone, and the
delivery of words, he is ready to give himself up more fully to the
effective expression of thought. Of first importance to the speaker, as
it is to the writer, is the way to make himself clear as to his
meaning. The question has to be put again and again to the young
speaker, What is your point? What is the point in the sentence? What is
the point in some larger division of the speech? What is the point, or
purpose, of the speech as a whole? This point, or the meaning of what
is said, should be so put, should be so clear, that no effort is
required of a listener for readily apprehending and appreciating it.
Discussing now only the question of delivery, we say that the making of
a point depends mainly upon what we commonly call emphasis. Extending
the meaning of emphasis beyond the limit of mere stress, or weight, of
voice, we may define it as special distinctness or impressiveness of
effect. In the case of a sentence there is often one place where the
meaning is chiefly concentrated; often the emphasis is laid sharply
upon two or more points or words in the sentence; sometimes it is put
increasingly on immediately succeeding words, called a climax, and
sometimes the stress of utterance seems to be almost equally
distributed through all the principal words of the sentence.

The particular point of a sentence is determined, not so much by what
the sentence says as it stands by itself, as by its relation to what
goes before or what follows after. The first thing, then, for the
student to do is to become sure of the precise meaning of the sentence,
with reference to the general context. Then he must know whether or not
he says, for the understanding of others, exactly what is meant. The
means of giving special point to a statement is in some way to set
apart, or to make prominent, the word or words of special significance.
There are several ways in which this is done. Commonly a stress or
added weight of voice is put upon the word; generally, too, there is an
inflection, a turning of the tone downward or upward; there is
frequently a lengthening out of the vowel sound, and a sudden stop
after, in some cases before, the word. Any or all these special
noticeable vocal effects serve to draw attention to the word and give
it expressive significance. These effects are everywhere common in good
everyday speech. In the formal art of speaking, they have to be more or
less thought out and consciously practiced.

Emphasis is determined by the comparative importance of ideas. An idea
is important when, being the first to arise in the mind, it becomes the
motive for utterance. We see an object, the idea of high or broad or
beautiful arises in the mind; we so form a sentence as to make that
idea stand forth; this idea, or the word expressing it, becomes vocally
emphatic. In this sentence, "He has done it in a way to impress upon
the Filipinos, so far as action and language can do it, his desire, and
the desire of our people, _to do them good_," the idea "to do them
good" is the one that arose first in the mind of the speaker and called
up the other ideas that served to set this one prominently forth. It is
the emphatic idea. It should be carried in the mind of the student
speaker from the beginning of the sentence. Again, an idea is important
when it arises as closely related to the first, and becomes the chief
means of giving utterance concerning the first. This second idea may be
something said about the first; it may be compared or contrasted with
the first. Being matched against the first, it may become of equal
significance with it. "Who is here so _base_ that would be a
_bondman_?" Here the idea "base" is used to emphasize the quality
of "bondman," and becomes equally emphatic with that idea. Other ideas,
or other words expressing them, being formed around these principal
ones, will be subordinated or more loosely run over, since they simply
serve as the setting for the principal ones, or the connecting links,
holding them together. Sometimes an idea arising in the mind grows in
intensity, asserting itself by stronger and stronger successive words.
For example, "He _mocks_ and _taunts_ her, he _disowns, insults_ and
_flouts_ her"; and, "I impeach him in the name of human nature itself,
which he has cruelly _outraged, injured_, and _oppressed_, in both
sexes in every _age, rank, situation_, and _condition of life_." The
impressiveness in delivering these successive words is increased not
because they are in the form of a climax, but they are in the form of a
climax because the thought is so insistent as to require new words for
its expression. The student will be true and sure in his emphasis only
when he takes ideas into his mind in the natural way; that is, he
should seize upon the central idea before he gives utterance to any
part of a statement. If that idea is constantly carried foremost in the
mind, he will then, in due time, give it its true emphasis. So, in the
case of a climax, he must realize the spirit and force behind the
utterance, and not depend upon any mechanical process of merely
increasing the strength of his tones.

Sometimes emphasis must be made to stand so strong as not merely to
arrest the movement of thought, and fix the mind of the hearer upon a
point, but to turn the attention of the hearer for the moment aside; to
draw his mind to the thought of something very remote in time or place
or relation, as in the case of making momentary reference to some
historic fact or some well-known expression of literature. Allusions
and illustrations, then, should be given, not only with color but also
with special emphasis. Byron, contemplating the ruins of Rome, calls
her "the _Niobe_ of nations." The hearer's mind should be arrested, his
imagination stirred, at that word. Words used in contrast with one
another are given opposing effect by contrasting emphasis: "Not that I
loved _Cęsar_ less, but that I loved _Rome more_." "My _words fly up_;
my _thoughts remain below_." When words are used with a double meaning,
as in the case of a pun, or with a peculiar implication, or are
repeated for some peculiar effect of mere repetition,--when we have, in
any form, what is called a play upon words,--a peculiar pointedness is
given, wherein the circumflex inflection plays a large part. "Now is it
_Rome_ indeed and _room_ enough, when there is in it but one only man."
"I had rather _bear with_ you than _bear_ you; yet if I did bear you, I
should bear no _cross_, for I think you have no _money_ in your purse."
"But, sir, the _Coalition_! The _Coalition_! Aye, the _murdered
Coalition_!"

Although, as has been said, the usual method of making a point is to
give striking force to an idea, very often the same effect, or a better
effect, is produced by a striking sudden suppression of utterance, by
way of decided contrast. When the discourse has been running vigorously
and inflections have been repeatedly sharp and strong, the sudden stop,
and the stilled utterance of a word, are most effective. Only, the
suppressed word must be set apart. There must be the pause before or
after, or both before and after. Robert Ingersoll, when speaking with
great animation, would often suddenly stop and ask a question in the
quietest and most intimate way. This gave point to the question and was
impressive.

We have been considering thus far only primary or principal emphasis.
Of equal importance is the question of secondary emphasis. The
difference in vocal treatment comes in regarding the principal emphasis
as absolute or final, as making the word absolved from, cut off from,
the rest of the sentence following, and having a final stop or
conclusive effect, while the secondary may be regarded as only
relatively emphatic, as being related in a subordinate way to the
principal, and as maintaining a connection with the rest of the
sentence, or as hanging upon the words which follow, or as being a step
leading up to the main idea. The vocal indication of this connective
principle is the circumflex inflection. The tone will be raised, as in
the principal emphasis, but instead of being allowed to fall straight
to a finality, it is turned upward at the finish, to hook on, as it
were, to the following. The weight of voice will be less marked, the
inflection less long, and the pause usually less decided, than in the
case of the primary emphasis. "Recall _romance_, recite the names
of heroes of legend and _song_, but there is none that is his
peer." At the words romance and song there is a secondary emphasis; the
voice is not dropped, it is kept suspended with the pause.

A common failing among students is an inability to avoid a frequent
absolute emphatic inflection when it is not in place. Many are unable
steadily to sustain a sentence till the real point is reached. They
fail to keep the voice suspended when they make a pause. It is very
important that a student should have a sure method of determining what
the principal emphasis is. He should, as has already been said, follow,
in rendering the thought of another, the method of the spontaneous
expression of his own ideas. He should take into his mind the principal
idea or ideas, before he speaks the words leading thereto. He should
then, at every pause, keep the thought suspended, incomplete, till he
reaches that principal idea; he should then make the absolute stop,
with the effect of finality, afterwards running off in a properly
related way, such words as serve to complete the form of expression.
Take the following sentence: "I never take up a paper full of Congress
squabbles, reported as if sunrise depended upon them, without thinking
of that idle English nobleman at Florence, who when his brother, just
arrived from London, happened to mention the House of Commons,
languidly asked, Ah! is that thing still going?" It is rather curious
that very rarely will a student keep the thought of such a sentence
suspended and connected until he arrives at the real point at the end.
He will first say that he never takes up a paper, though of course he
really does take up a paper. Then he says he never takes up this kind
of paper; and this he does not mean. So he goes on misleading his
audience, instead of helping them properly to anticipate the form of
statement and so be prepared for the point at the right moment. He
should not, as a general rule, let his voice take an absolute drop at
the places of secondary emphasis.

In reference to the emphatic point in a larger division of the speech,
and to the main or climactic points of the whole speech, the principles
for emphasis in the sentence are applied in a larger way. And the way
to make the point is, first of all, to think hard on what that point
is, what is the end or purpose to be attained. If this does not bring
the result--and very often it does not--then the mechanical means of
producing emphasis should be studied and consciously applied--the
increase, or perhaps the diminution, of force, the lengthening or
shortening of tones on the words; a change in the general level of
pitch; the use of the emphatic pause; and a lengthening of the emphatic
inflection. A more impressive general effect must, in some way, be
given to the parts of greater importance.


INDICATING VALUES AND RELATIONS


Perhaps the most commonly criticized fault among beginners in speaking
is that of monotony. Monotony that arises from lack of inflection of
voice or from lack of pointed-ness or emphasis in a sentence, will
presumably be corrected in the earlier exercises. The monotony that is
caused by giving to all sentences an equal value, saying all sentences,
or a whole speech, in about the same force, rate, and general pitch, is
one that may be considered from another point of view. One fault in the
delivery of sentences--perhaps the most frequent one--is that of
running them all off in about the same modulation. By modulation we
mean the wavelike rise and fall of the voice that always occurs in some
degree in speech,--sometimes called melody--and the change of key, or
general pitch, in passing from one sentence, or part of a speech, to
another. Frequently, novices in speaking and in reading, will swing the
voice upward in the first part of every sentence, give it perhaps
another rise or two as the sentence proceeds, and swing it down, always
in precisely the same way, at the end. The effect of this regular
rising at the beginning, and this giving of a similar concluding
cadence at the end, is to make it appear that each sentence stands
quite independent of the others, that each is a detached statement; and
when, besides, each sentence is given with about the same force and
rate of speed, they all seem to be of about equal importance, all
principal or none principal, but as much alike as Rosalind's halfpence.
Sentences that have a close sequence as to thought should be so
rendered that one seems to flow out from the other, without the regular
marked rise at the beginning or the concluding cadence at the end.
Sentences, and parts of sentences, which are of less importance than
others with which they are associated, should be made less prominent in
delivery. Often students are helped by the suggestion that a sentence,
or a part of a sentence, or a group of sentences, it may be, be dropped
into an undertone, or said as an aside, or rapidly passed over, or in
some way put in the background--said, so to speak, parenthetically.
Other portions of the speech, or the sentence, the important ones,
should, on the same principle, be made to stand out with marked effect.

Notice, in the following quotation, how the first and the last parts
arc held together by the pitch or key and the modulation of the voice,
and the middle part, the group of examples, is held together in a
different key by being set in the background, as being illustrative or
probative. "Why, all these Irish bulls are Greek,--every one of them.
Take the Irishman carrying around a brick as a specimen of the house he
had to sell; take the Irishman who shut his eyes, and looked into the
glass to see how he would look when he was dead; take the Irishman that
bought a crow, alleging that crows were reported to live two hundred
years, and he meant to set out and try it. Well, those are all Greek. A
score or more of them, of the parallel character, come from Athens."

The speaker should cultivate a quick sensitiveness as to close unity
and slight diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate,
as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the
way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of
close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling
for perspective, so-called, can be acquired only by continued practice,
for sharpening the faculty of apprehension and appreciation. It is
usually the last attainment in the student's work, but the neglect of
it may result in a confirmed habit of monotony. The term transition is
commonly used to denote a passing from one to another of the main
divisions of the discourse. The making of this transition, though often
neglected, is not difficult. The finishing of one part and the making
of a new beginning on the next, usually with some change of standing
position, as well as of voice, has an obvious method. The slighter
transition, or variation, within a main division, and the avoidance of
the slight transition where none should be made, require the keener,
quicker insight.

Sentences will have many other kinds of variation in delivery according
to the nature and value of the thought. Some will flow on with high
successive waves; some will be run almost straight on as in a monotone.
Some will be on a higher average tone, or in a higher key; others will
be lower. Some will have lengthened vowel sound, and will be more
continuous or sustained, so that groups of successive words seem to run
on one unbroken tone; others will be abrupt and irregular. Some will be
rapid, some slow; some light, others weighty; some affected by long
pauses, others by no pause, and some will be done in a dry, matter-of-
fact, or precise, or commonplace, or familiar manner, others will be
touched with feeling, colored by imagination, glowing with persuasive
warmth, elevated, dignified, or profound. A repetition of the
selections to be learned, with full expression by voice and action,
repetition again, and again, and again, until the sentiment of them
becomes a living reality to the speaker, is the only way to acquire the
ability to indicate to others the true proportions, the relative
values, and the distinctive character, of what is to be said.


EXPRESSING THE FEELING


We are in the habit of distinguishing between what proceeds from mere
thinking, what is, as we say, purely intellectual, and what arises more
especially from feeling, what we call emotional. We mean, of course,
that one or the other element predominates; and the distinction is a
convenient one. The subject, the occasion, to a great extent the man,
determine whether a speech is in the main dispassionate or impassioned,
whether it is plain or ornate in statement, whether it is urgent or
aggressive, or calm and rather impassive. It would be beyond our
purpose to consider many of the variations and complexities of feeling
that enter into vocal expression. We call attention to only a few of
the simpler and more common vocal manifestations of feeling,
counselling the student who is to deliver a selected speech, to adapt
his speaking to the style of that speech. In so doing he will get a
varied training, and at length will find his own most effective style.

The speech which is matter-of-fact and commonplace only, has
characteristically much short, sharp inflection of voice, with the
rapidly varying intervals of pitch that we notice in one's everyday
talking. As the utterance takes on force, it is likely to go in a more
direct line of average pitch, with stronger inflection on specially
emphatic words. As it rises to sentiment, the inflections are less
marked, and in the case of a strain of high, nobler feeling, the voice
moves on with some approach to the monotone. According as feeling is
stronger and firmer, as in the expression of courage, determination,
firm resolve, resistance, intense devotion, the voice is kept
sustained, with pauses rather abrupt and decisive; if the feeling,
though of high sentiment, is tranquil, without aggressiveness, the
voice has more of the wavelike rise and fall, and at the pausing places
the tone is gradually diminished, rather than abruptly broken off. In
the case of quickly impulsive, passionate feeling, the speech is likely
to be much varied in pitch, broken by frequent abrupt stops, and
decisive inflections. In the case of the expression of tenderness or
pathos, there is a lingering tone, with the quality and inflection of
plaintiveness, qualified, in public speech, by such dignity and
strength as is fitting. In all cases the quality of voice is of course
the main thing, and this, not being technical or mechanical, must
depend on the speaker's entering into the spirit of the piece and
giving color, warmth, and depth to his tones. The spirit of gladness or
triumph has usually the higher, brighter, ringing tone; that of
gravity, solemnity, awe, the lower, darker, and less varied tone.

In the case of the expression of irony, sarcasm, scorn, contempt, and
kindred feelings, the circumflex inflection is the principal feature.
This is the curious quirk or double turn in the voice, that is heard
when one says, for example, "You're a _fine_ fellow," meaning,
"You are anything but a fine fellow." In the earlier part of Webster's
reply to Hayne are some of the finest examples of irony, grim or
caustic humor, sarcasm, and lofty contempt. They need significant turns
and plays of voice, but are often spoiled by being treated as high
declamation.

In the expression of the various kinds and degrees of feeling there may
be a fully expressed force or a suppressed or restrained force. Often
the latter is the more natural and effective. This is intense, but not
loud, though at times it may break through its restraint. It is most
fitting when the hearers are near at hand, as in the case of a jury or
judge in court, when the din of loudness would offend.

The climax is a gradually increasing expression of feeling. It may be
by a gradual raising of the voice in pitch; it may be by any sort of
increasing effectiveness or moving power. It is rather difficult to
manage, and may lead to some strained effort. The speaker should keep a
steady, controlled movement, without too much haste, but rather a
retarded and broadened utterance as the emphatic point is approached;
and always the speaker should keep well within his powers, maintaining
always some vocal reserve.

The practice of emotional expression gives warmth, mellowness, sympathy
and expansiveness to the voice, and must have considerable cultural
value.


SHOWING THE PICTURE


A difficult attainment in speaking is that of vividness. The student
may see the picture in his own mind's eye, but his mode of expression
does not reveal the fact to others. Imagination in writing he may have,
with no suggestion of it in the voice. Too often it is erroneously
taken for granted that the human voice, because it is human, will at
any call, respond to all promptings of the mind. It will no more do so,
of course, than the hand or the eye. It must be trained. Often it is a
case not merely of vocal response, but of mental awakening as well, and
in that case the student must, if he can, learn to see visions and
dream dreams.

A way to begin the suiting of speech to imaginative ideas is to
imitate; to make the voice sound like the thing to be suggested. Some
things are fast, some slow, some heavy, some light, some dark and
dismal, some bright and joyous; some things are noisy, some still; some
rattle, others roar; the sea is hoarse; the waves wash; the winds blow;
the ocean is level, or it dashes high and breaks; happy things sing,
and sad things mourn. All life and nature speak just as we speak. How
easy it ought to be for us to speak just as nature speaks. And when our
abstract notions are put in concrete expression, or presented as a
picture, how easy it would seem, by these simple variations of voice,
to speak the language of that picture, telling the length, breadth,
action, color, values, spirit of it. That it is a task makes it worth
while. It affords infinite variety, and endless delight.

One necessary element in so-called word-painting is that of time. When
a speaker expresses himself in pictures for the imagination he must
give his hearers time to see these pictures, and to sufficiently see
and appreciate the parts, or lines of them, and the significance of
them. It is a common fault to hasten over the language of imagination
as over the commonplace words. The speaker or reader had better be sure
to see the image himself before, and indeed after, he speaks it. Others
will then be with him. Although among most young speakers the tone of
imagination is lacking, yet often young persons who become proficient
vocally are fain greatly to overdo it, till the sound that is suited to
the sense becomes sound for its own sake, and thereby obscures the
sense. Regard for proportion and fitness, in relation to the central
idea or purpose, should control the feeling for color in the detail.


EXPRESSION BY ACTION


It should always be borne in mind that gesture means the bearing or the
action of the whole man. It does not mean simply movement of the arm
and hand. The practice of gesture should be governed by this
understanding of the term. A thought, an emotion, something that moves
the man from within, will cause a change, it may be slight, or it may
be very marked, in eye, face, body. This is gesture. This change or
movement may, from the strength of the feeling that prompts it, extend
to the arm and hand. But this latter movement, in arm and hand, is only
the fuller manifestation of one's thought or feeling--the completion of
the gesture, not the gesture itself. Arm movement, when not preceded or
supplemented by body movement, or body pose, is obtrusive action; it
brings a member of the body into noticeable prominence, attracting the
auditor's eye and taking his mind from the speaker's thought. Better
have no gesture than gesture of this kind. The student, then, should
first learn to appreciate the force of ideas, to see and feel the full
significance of what he would say, and indicate by some general
movement of body and expression of face, the changing moods of mind.
Then the arm and hand may come--in not too conspicuous a way--to the
aid of the body. When Wendell Phillips pointed to the portraits in
Faneuil Hall and exclaimed: "I thought those pictured lips would have
broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American,--the slanderer of
the dead," it was not, we may be sure, the uplifted arm alone, but the
pose of the man, the something about his whole being, which bespoke the
spirit within him, and which was really the gesture. In less positive
or striking degrees of action, the body movement will, of course, be
very slight, at times almost imperceptible, but the principle always
holds, and should be from the first taught. In gesture, the bodily man
acts as a unit.

The amount of gesture is, of course, determined by the temperament of
the speaker, the nature of the speech, the character of the audience,
and the occasion of the address. One speaker will, under certain
conditions, gesticulate nearly all the time; another will, under the
same conditions, seem seldom to move in any way. The two may be equally
effective. A speech that is charged with lively emotion will usually be
accompanied by action; a speech expressive of the profound feeling that
subdues to gravity, or resignation, would be comparatively without
action. The funeral oration by Mark Antony is full of action because it
is really intended to excite the will of his audience; in a funeral
address simply expressive of sorrow and appreciation, gesture would, as
a rule, be out of place. A sharply contested debate may need action
that punctuates and enforces; the pleasantry of after-dinner talk may
need only the voice. So, one audience, not quick in grasping ideas, may
need, both in language and action, much clear, sharp indication of the
point by illustration, much stirring up by physical attack, so to
speak, while another audience would be displeased by this unnecessary
effort to be clear and expressive. Yet again, given a certain speaker
and a certain subject and a certain audience, it is obvious that the
occasion will determine largely how the speaker will bear himself. The
atmosphere of a college commencement will be different from that of a
barbecue, and the speaker would, within the limits set by his own
personality and his own dignity, adapt himself to the one or the other.
The general law of appropriateness and good taste must determine the
amount of gesture.

For the purposes of this work there is probably very little, if any,
value in a strict classification of gestures. It may, at times, be
convenient to speak of one gesture as merely for emphasis, of another
as indicating location, of another as giving illustration, of one as
more subjective, expressing a thought that reflects back upon the
speaker, or is said more in the way of self-communion, of another as
objective, concerned only with outer objects or with ideas more apart
from the person or the inward feeling of the speaker. But it can easily
be shown that one idea, or one dominant feeling, may be expressed by
many kinds of action, in fact, so far at least as prescribed movements
are concerned, in directly opposite kinds, and gesture is so largely a
matter of the individual, and is governed so much by mixed motive and
varying circumstance, that the general public speaker will profit
little by searching for its philosophic basis, and trying to practice
according to any elaborated system. The observing of life, with the
exercise of instinct, taste, sense, above all of honest purpose--these,
with of course the help of competent criticism, will serve as
sufficient practical guides in the cultivation of expressive action.

Some observations, or perhaps general principles, may be offered as
helpful. When a speaker is concerned with driving ideas straight home
to his audience, as in putting bare fact in a debate, his action will
be more direct; it will move in straighter lines and be turned, like
his thought, more directly upon his audience. As his statement is more
exactly to a point, so his gesture becomes more pointed and definite.
When the speaker is not talking to or at his audience, to move them to
his will, but is rather voicing the ideas and feelings already
possessed by them, and is in a non-aggressive mood, he is likely to use
less of the direct and emphasis-giving gesture, and to employ
principally the gesture that is merely illustrative of his ideas, more
reposeful, less direct, less tense.

To consider more in detail the principle that the man, and not the arm,
is the gesture, a man should look what he is to speak. The eye should
always have a relation to gesture. The look may be in the direction of
the arm movement or in another direction. No practical rule can be
given. It can only be said that the eye must play its part. Observing
actions in real life, we see that when one person points out an object
to another, he looks now at the object, now at the person, as if to
guide that person's look. When he hears a sound he may glance in the
direction of it, but then look away to listen. Often a suspended
action, with a fixed look of the face, will serve to arrest the
attention of auditors and fix it upon an idea. One should cultivate
first the look, then the supporting or completing action.

As to the movement of the arm and the form of the hand, one should be
careful not to become stiff and precise by following exact rules. In
general, it may be said that the beginning of the arm movement, being
from the body, is in the upper arm; the finish of it is at the tips of
the fingers, with the forefinger leading, or bringing the gesture to a
point. There is generally a slightly flexible, rythmical movement of
the arm and hand. This should not, as a rule, be very marked, and in
specially energetic action is hardly observable. In this arm action
there is an early preparatory movement, which indicates or suggests,
what is coming. Often a moment of suspense in the preparation enhances
the effect of the finish, or stroke, of the gesture, which corresponds
usually to the vocal emphasis. At the final pointing of the action, the
hand is, for a moment or for moments, fixed, as the mind and the man
are fixed, for the purpose of holding the attention of the auditor;
then follows the recovery, so-called, from the gesture, or it may be,
the passing to another gesture. And all the while, let it again be
said, slight changes of bodily pose with proper adjustments of the
feet, will make the harmonious, unified action. It should be remembered
that, as in viewing a house or a picture we should be impressed by the
main body and the general effect, rather than by any one feature, so on
the same principle, no striking feature of a man's action should
attract attention to itself. On the same principle, no part of the hand
should be made conspicuous--the thumb or forefinger should not be too
much stuck out, nor the other fingers, except in pointing, be very much
curved in. Generally, except in precise pointing, there is a graduated
curving, not too nice, from the bent little finger to the straighter
forefinger. As the gesture is concerned with thought more delicate, the
action of the hand is lighter and tends more to the tips of the
fingers; as it is more rugged and strong, the hand is held heavier. It
is bad to carry the arm very far back, causing a strained look; to
stretch the arms too straight out, or to confine the elbow to the side.
The elbow is kept somewhat away even in the smallest gesture. While
action should have nerve, it should not become nervous, that is, over-
tense and rigid. It should be free and controlled, with good poise in
the whole man.

Before leaving this subject, in its physical aspect, let us consider
somewhat the matter of standing and moving on the platform. Among
imperfections as regards position, that kind of imperfection which
takes the form of perfectly fixed feet, strictly upright figure, hands
at the side, head erect, and eyes straight-of all bad kinds, this kind
is the worst. This is often referred to as school declamation, or the
speaking of a piece. We have discarded many old ideas of restriction in
education. Let us discard the strait-jacket in platform speaking.
Nobody else ever speaks as students are often compelled to speak. Let
them speak like boys--not like men even--much less like machines. There
is of course a good and a bad way of standing and moving, but much is
due to youth, to individuality, and to earnest intention, and a student
should have free play in a large degree.

In walking, the step should neither be too fast nor too slow, too long
nor too short, too much on the heel or too much on the toe. A simple,
straightforward way of getting there is all that is wanted. The arms
are left to swing easily, but not too much; nor should one arm swing
more than the other. The head, it will be noted, may occasionally rise
and fall as one goes up or down steps or walks the platform. Before
beginning to speak, one should not obviously take a position and
prepare. He should easily stop at his place, and, looking at his
auditors, begin simply to say something to them. As to the feet, they
will, of course, be variously placed or adjusted according to the pose
of the body in the varying moods of the speech. In general, the body
will rest more on one foot than on the other. In a position of ease, as
usually at the beginning of a speech, one foot will bear most of the
weight. In this case, this foot will normally be pointed nearly to the
front; the other foot will be only very slightly in advance of this and
will be turned more outward. The feet will not be close together; nor
noticeably far apart. They need not--they had better not--as it is
sometimes pictured in books, be so set that a line passing lengthwise
through the freer foot will pass through the heel of the other foot. As
a man becomes earnest in speaking, his posture will vary, and often he
will stand almost equally on his two feet. In changing one's position,
it is best to acquire the habit of moving the freer foot, the one
lighter on the floor, first, thus avoiding a swaying, or toppling look
of the body.

In connection with the subject of standing, naturally comes the
question of the arms in the condition of inaction. It is possibly well
to train one's self, when learning to speak, to let the arms hang
relaxed at the side, but speakers do not often so hold the arms.
Usually there is a desk near, and the speaker when at rest drops one
hand upon this, or he lets one arm rest at the waist, or he brings the
two hands together. Any of these things may be done, if done simply,
easily, without nervous tightening, or too frequent shifting. One
thing, for practical reasons, should not be allowed, the too common
habit of clasping the hands behind the back. It will become a fixed
mannerism, and a bad one, for the hands are thus concealed, the
shoulders and head may droop forward, and the hands may be so tightened
together behind the back as to cause nervous tension in the body and in
the voice. The hands should be in place ready for expressive action.
The back is not such a place.

Nearly every movement that a man makes in speaking should have some
fitting relation to what he is at the moment saying. These movements
will then be varied. When certain repeated actions, without this proper
relation, are acquired, they are called mannerisms. They have no
meaning, and are obtrusive and annoying. Repeated jerking or bobbing of
the head, for a supposed emphasis; regularly turning the head from side
to side, for addressing all the audience; nervous shaking of the head,
as of one greatly in earnest; repeated, meaningless punching or
pounding of the air, always in the same way; shifting of one foot
regularly backward and forward; rising on the toes with each emphatic
word,--although single movements similar to these often have
appropriate place, none of these or others should be allowed to become
fixed mannerisms, habitually recurring movements, without a purpose. We
are sometimes told that certain manneristic ways are often a speaker's
strength. Probably this is at least half true. But eccentricities
should not be cultivated or indulged. They will come. We should have as
few as possible, or they won't count. One thing, however, should here
be said. Positive strength, with positive faults, is much better than
spiritless inoffensiveness. One should not give all his attention to
the avoiding of faults.

In the application of gesture to the expression of ideas, one is
helped, as has been said, by constantly heeding the general principle
of suiting the form of the gesture to the nature of the thought, or of
suiting the action to the word. Inasmuch as gesture so generally takes
the form of objects or actions, it is undoubtedly easier to begin with
the more concrete in language, or with the discussion of tangible
objects, and work from these to the more abstract and remotely
imaginary--from the more, to the less, familiar. Let the student
indicate the location, or the height, or the width, or the form of an
object. His action will probably be appropriate. Let him apply similar,
probably less definite, action to certain abstract ideas. Let him pass
to ideas more remote and vague, by action largely suggestive, not
definite or literal.

The most important, because the most fundamental, principle to be borne
in mind is that gesture should be made to enforce, not the superficial,
or incidental, ideas appearing in a statement, but the ideas which lie
behind the form of expression and are the real basis, or inhere in the
fundamental purpose, of the speaker's discourse.

At the close of Senator Thurston's speech on intervention in behalf of
Cuba, there is picturesque language for impressing the contention that
force is justified in a worthy cause. The speaker cites graphically
examples of force at Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Shiloh, Chattanooga,
and Lookout Heights. The student is here very likely to be led astray
by the fine opportunity to make gesture. He may vividly see and picture
the snows of Valley Forge, marked with bloodstained feet, and the other
scenes suggested, but forget about the central idea, the purpose behind
all the vivid forms of expression. Graphic, detailed gestures may have
the effect of making the pictures in themselves the main object. The
action here should be informal, unstudied, and merely remotely
suggestive. The speaker should keep to his one central idea, and keep
with his audience. Otherwise the speech will be insincere and
purposeless, perhaps absurd. The fundamental, not the superficial,
should determine the action. Young speakers almost invariably pick out
words or phrases, suggesting the possibility of a gesture, and give
exact illustration to them, as if the excellence of gesture were in
itself an object, when really the thing primarily to be enforced is not
these incidental features in the form of expression, but the underlying
idea of the whole passage. It is as if the steeple were made out of
proportion to the church, or a hat out of proportion to the man. This
misconception of what gesture really means is doubtless, in large
measure, the cause of making platform recitation often false and
offensive. The remedy does not lie in omitting gesture altogether, as
some seem to think, but in making gesture simple and true.

Finally, let the student remember that he goes to the platform, not to
make a splendid speech and receive praise for a brilliant exhibition of
his art, but that he goes there because the platform is a convenient
place from which to tell the people something he has to say. Let him
think it nothing remarkable that he should be there; let him so bear
himself, entering with simplicity, honesty, earnestness, and modesty,
into his work, that no one will think much about how his work is done.
Spirited oratory, with the commanding presence, the sweeping action,
and an overmastering force of utterance, may at times be called forth,
but these are given to a man out of his subject and by the occasion;
they are not to be assumed by him merely because he is before an
audience, or as necessary features of speech-making. Let the student
speak, first and always, as a self-respecting, thinking man, earnest
and strong, but self-controlled and sensible.




PLATFORM PRACTICE

THE FORMAL ADDRESS


The selections in the several sections for platform practice are to be
used for applying, in appropriate combination, the principles
heretofore worked out, one by one. The first group provides practice in
the more formal style. The occasion of the formal address requires, in
large degree, restraint and dignity. The thought is elevated; the mood
serious, in some cases subdued, the form of expression exact and firm.
The delivery should correspond. The tone should be, in some degree,
ennobled; the movement deliberate, and comparatively even and measured;
the modulation not marked by striking variations in pitch; the pauses
rather regular, and the gesture always sparing, perhaps wholly omitted.
The voice should be generally pure and fine; the enunciation should be
finished and true. Whatever action there may be should be restrained,
well poised, deliberate, with some degree of grace. In general it
should be felt that carelessness or looseness or aggressiveness or
undue demonstrativeness would be out of harmony with the spirit of the
occasion. Good taste must be exercised at every step, and the audience
should be addressed, from the outset, as in sympathy with the speaker
and ready at once to approve. The spirit and manner of contention is
out of place.

In this style of discourse the liability to failure lies in the
direction of dullness, monotony, lack of vitality and warmth. This is
because the feeling is deep and still; is an undercurrent, strong but
unseen. This restrained, repressed feeling is the most difficult
fittingly to express. In this kind of speech some marring of just the
right effect is difficult to avoid. Simplicity, absolute genuineness,
are the essential qualities. The ideas must be conveyed with power and
significance, in due degree; but nothing too much is particularly the
watchword regarding the outward features of the work.


THE PUBLIC LECTURE


In the public lecture the element of entertainment enters prominently.
The audience, at first in a passive state, must be awakened, and taken
on with the speaker. Probably it must be instructed, perhaps amused.
The speaker must make his own occasion. He has no help from the
circumstance of predisposition among his auditors. He must compel, or
he must win; he must charm or thrill; or he must do each in turn.
Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are
the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of
the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic
illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the
imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or
incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of
these, gesture of course has an important place.

The lecture platform is perhaps the only field, with possibly the
exception of what is properly the after-dinner speech, wherein public
speaking may be viewed as strictly an art, something to be taken for
its own sake, wherein excellence in the doing is principally the end in
view. This means, generally, that individual talent, and training in
all artistic requirements, count for more than the subject or any
"accidents of office," in holding the auditor's interest. An animated
and versatile style can be cultivated by striving to make effective the
public lecture.


THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION


Informal discussion is the name chosen for the lecture or talk in the
club or the classroom. It implies a rather small audience and familiar
relations between audience and speaker. While the subject may be
weighty, and the language may be necessarily of the literary or
scientific sort, the style of speaking should be colloquial. It ought
to bring the hearer pretty near to the speaker. If the subject and
language are light, the speaking will be sprightly and comparatively
swift.

Since the occasion for this kind of speaking is frequent, and the
opportunity for it is likely to fall to almost any educated man,
proficiency in it might well be made an object in the course of one's
educational training. The end aimed at is the ability to talk well.
This accomplishment is not so easy as it may seem. It marks, indeed,
the stage of maturity in speech-making. Since authoritative opinion
from the speaker and interest in the subject on the part of the
audience are prime elements in this form of discussion, little
cultivation of form is usually given to this kind of speaking. The
result is much complaining from auditors about inaudibleness, dullness,
monotony, annoying mannerisms, or a too formal, academic tone that
keeps the audience remote, a lack of what is called the human quality.
A good talker from the desk not only has the reward of appreciation and
gratitude, but is able to accomplish results in full proportion to all
that he puts into the improvement of his vocal work. An agreeable tone,
easy formation of words, clear, well-balanced emphasis, good phrasing,
or grouping of words in the sentence, some vigor without continual
pounding, easy, unstudied bodily movement without manneristic
repetition of certain motions, in short, good form without any
obtrusive appearance of form,--these are the qualities desired.


ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH


In the case of the forensic, we come nearer to the practical in public
speaking. The speaker aims, as a rule, to effect a definite purpose,
and he concentrates his powers upon this immediate object. Since the
speech is for the most part an appeal to the reason, and therefore
deals largely with fact and the logical relations of ideas, precision
and clearness of statement are the chief qualities to be cultivated.
But since the aim is to overcome opposition, and produce conviction,
and so to impress and stir as to affect the will to a desired action,
the element of force, and the moving quality of persuasion enters in as
a reėnforcement of the speaker's logic. Generally the speech is very
direct, and often it is intense. It has in greater degree than any
other form the feature of aggressiveness. Some form of attack is
adopted, for the purpose of overthrowing the opposing force. That
attack is followed up in a direct line of argument, and is carried out
to a finish. In delivery the continuous line of pursuit thus followed
often naturally leads to a kind of effective monotone style, wherein
the speaker keeps an even force, or strikes blow after blow, or sends
shot after shot. The characteristic feature of the forensic style is
the climax--climax in brief successions of words, climax in the
sentence, climax in giving sections of the speech, climax in the speech
as a whole.

Special notice should be taken of the fact that, in earnest argument,
sentences have, characteristically, a different run from that in
ordinary expository speaking. Whereas in the expository style the
sentence flows, as a rule, easily forth, with the voice rising and
falling, in an undulatory sort of way, and dropping restfully to a
finish, in the heated forensic style, the sentence is given the effect
of being sent straight forth, as if to a mark, with the last word made
the telling one, and so kept well up in force and pitch. The
accumulating force has the effect of sending the last word home, or of
making it the one to clinch the statement.

The dangers to be guarded against in debate are wearying monotony,
over-hammering--too frequent, too hard, too uniform an emphasis--too
much, or too continued heat, too much speed, especially in speaking
against time, a loss of poise in the bearing, a halting or jumbling in
speech, nervous tenseness in action, an overcontentious or bumptious
spirit. Bodily control, restraint, good temper, balance, are the saving
qualities. A debater must remember that he need not be always in a
heat. Urbanity and graciousness have their place, and the relief
afforded by humor is often welcome and effective.

In no form of speaking, except that of dramatic recitation, is the
liability to impairment of voice so great as it is in debating. One of
the several excellent features of debating is that of the self-
forgetfulness that comes with an earnest struggle to win. But perhaps a
man cannot safely forget himself until he has learned to know himself.
The intensity of debating often leads, in the case of a speaker vocally
untrained, to a tightening of the throat in striving for force, to a
stiffening of the tongue and lips for making incisive articulation, to
a rigidness of the jaw from shutting down on words to give decisive
emphasis. Soon the voice has the juice squeezed out of it. The tone
becomes harsh and choked; then ragged and weak. The only remedy is to
go straight back and begin all over, just as a golfer usually does when
he has gone on without instruction. The necessity of going back is
often not realized till later in life; then the process is much harder,
and perhaps can never be entirely effective. The teacher in the course
of his experience meets many, many such cases. The time to learn the
right way is at the beginning.

Among the selections here offered for forensic practice, examples in
debate serve for the cultivation of the aggressiveness that comes from
immediate opposition; examples in the political speech for acquiring
the abandon and enthusiasm of the so-called popular style; in the legal
plea for practice in suppressed force. In the case of the last of
these, it is well that the audience be near to the speaker, as is the
case in an address to a judge or jury. The idea is to be forcible
without being loud and high; to cultivate a subdued tone that shall, at
the same time, be vital and impressive. The importance of a manner of
speaking that is not only clear and effective, but also agreeable, easy
to listen to, is quite obvious when we consider the task of a judge or
a jury, who have to sit for hours and try to carry in their minds the
substance of all that has been said, weighing point against point,
balancing one body of facts against another. A student can arrange
nearly the same conditions as to space, and can, by exercise of
imagination, enter into the spirit of a legal conflict.


THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH


After-dinner speaking is another form that many men may have an
opportunity to engage in. It can also be practiced under conditions
resembling those of the actual occasion, that is, members of the class
can be so seated that the speaking may become intimate in tone, and
speeches can be selected that will serve for cultivating that
distinctive, sociable quality of voice that, in itself, goes far in
contributing to the comfort and delight of the after-dinner audience.
The real after-dinner speech deals much in pleasantry. The tone of
voice is characteristically unctuous. Old Fezziwig is described by
Dickens as calling out "in a comfortable, rich, fat, jovial, oily
voice." Something like this is perhaps the ideal after-dinner voice,
although there is a dry humor as well as an unctuous, and each speaker
will, after all, have his own way of making his hearers comfortable,
happy, and attentive. Ease and deliberation are first requisites.
Nervous intensity may not so much mar the effect of earnest debate. The
social chat is spoiled by it. Humor, as a rule, requires absolute
restfulness. Especially should a beginner guard himself against haste
in making the point at the finish of a story. It does no harm to keep
the hearer waiting a bit, in expectation. The effect may be thus
enhanced, while the effect will be entirely lost if the point, and the
true touch, are spoiled by uncontrolled haste. The way to gain this
ease and control is not by stiffening up to master one's self, but by
relaxing, letting go of one's self. Practice in the speech of
pleasantry may have great value in giving a man repose, in giving him
that saving grace, an appreciation of the humorous, in affording him a
means of relief or enlivenment to the serious speech.


THE OCCASIONAL POEM


The occasional poem is so frequently brought forth in connection with
speech-making that some points regarding metrical reading may be quite
in place in a speaker's training. Practice in verse reading is of use
also because of the frequency of quoted lines from the poets in
connection with the prose speech.

To read a poem well one must become in spirit a poet. He must not only
think, he must feel. He must exercise imagination. He must, we will say
it again, see visions and dream dreams. What was said about vividness
in the discussion of expressional effects applies generally to the
reading of poetry. One will read much better if he has tried to write--
in verse as well as in prose. He will then know how to put himself in
the place of the poet, and will not be so likely to mar the poet's
verses by "reading them ill-favoredly." He will know the value of words
that have been so far sought, and may not slur over them; he may feel
the sound of a line formed to suggest a sound in nature. He will know
that a meter has been carefully worked out, and that, in the reading,
that meter is of the spirit of the poem; it is not to be disregarded.
Likewise he will appreciate the place of rhyme, and may not try so to
cover it up as entirely to lose its effect. In humorous verse,
especially, rhyme plays an effective part; and in all verse,
alliteration, variations in melody, the lighter and the heavier touch,
acceleration and retard in movement, the caesura, or pause in the line,
and the happy effect of the occasional cadence, are features which one
can come to appreciate and respect only with reading one's favorite
poems many times, with spirit warm, with faculties alert.




THE MAKING OF THE SPEECH


Although the use of selected speeches is best for effective drill in
delivery, yet a student's training for public speaking is of course not
complete until he has had experience in applying his acquired skill to
the presenting of his own thought. Thinking and speaking should be made
one operation. The principles of composition for the public speech
belong to a separate work. A few hints only can be given here, and
these will be concerned with the informal, offhand speech rather than
with the formal address.

The usual directions regarding the choosing of the subject, the
collecting of material, and the arranging of it in the most effective
order, with exceptions and variations, hold in all forms of the speech.
The subject chosen should be one of special interest to the speaker,
one on which it is known he can speak with some degree of authority,
because of his personal study of it, or because of his having had
exceptional personal relations with it. It must also be, because of the
nature of it, or because of some special treatment, of particular
interest to the audience to be addressed. Either new, out-of-the-way
subjects, or new, fresh phases of old subjects are usually interesting.
The subject must be limited in its comprehensiveness to suit the time
allowed for speaking, and the title of the speech should be so phrased
as to indicate exactly what the subject, or the part of a subject, is
to be. To this carefully limited and defined subject, the speaker
should rigidly adhere.

How to find a subject is generally a topic on which students are
advised. Though it is often a necessity to hunt for a suitable special
topic on which to speak, the student should know that when he gets
outside the classroom, he will find that he will not be invited to
speak because he is ready at finding subjects and clever in speech. It
is not strange, in view of the many advertisements that reach young
men, offering methods of home training, or promising sure success from
this or that special method of schooling, that they may come to believe
that any one has only to learn to stand up boldly on a platform, and
with voice and gesture exercise some mysterious sort of magical control
over an audience, and his success as an orator is secure. They will
find that their time and money have been wasted, so far as public
speaking is concerned, unless, having at the start some native ability,
they have secured, in addition, a kind of training that is fundamental.
A man is wanted as a speaker primarily because he stands for something;
because he has done some noteworthy work. His subjects for discussion
arise out of his personal interests, and, to a large extent, his method
of treatment will be determined by his relation to these subjects. A
young man may well be advised, then, not simply how to choose and how
to present a subject, but first to secure a good mental training, and
then to find for himself an all-absorbing work to do. The wisdom that
comes from a concentrated intellectual activity, and an interest in
men's affairs, both directed to some unselfish end, is the essential
qualification of the speaker.

In considering the arrangement of a speech, the student will do well to
ask himself first, not what is to be the beginning of it, but what is
to be the end of it; what is the purpose of it; and what shall be the
central idea; what impression, or what principal thought or thoughts,
shall be left with the audience. When this is determined, then a way of
working out this central idea or of working up to it--in a short
speech, by a few points only--must be carefully and thoroughly planned.
Extemporaneous speaking is putting spontaneously into words what has
previously been well thought out and well arranged. Without this state
of preparation, the way of wisdom is silence.

The language of a speech is largely determined by the man's habit of
mind, the nature of his subject, and the character of his audience.
Students often err in one of two directions, either by being too
bookish in language or by allowing the other extreme of looseness, weak
colloquialism in words, and formless monotony of sentence, with the
endless repetition of the connective "and." Language should be fresh,
vital, varied. It should have some dignity. Much reading, writing, and
speaking are necessary to secure an adequate vocabulary, and a
readiness in putting in firm form a variety of sentences. Concreteness
of expression and occasional illustration are more needed in speech
than in writing, and the brief anecdote or story is welcome and useful
if there is room for it, and if it comes unbidden, by virtue of its
fitness and spontaneity, and is not drawn in by the ears for half-
hearted service. The inevitable story at the opening of an after-dinner
speech might often be spared. Although a good story is in itself
enjoyable, yet when a speaker feels that he must make one fit into the
speech, whether or no, by applying it to himself or his subject or the
occasion, the effect is often very unhappy. A man is best guided in
these things simply by being true, by being sincere rather than artful.
On this same principle, a student may need some advice with regard to
his spirit and manner in giving expression to his own ideas before an
audience. He need not, as students often seem to think they must,
appear to have full knowledge or final judgment on the largest of
subjects. It is more fitting that he should speak as a student, an
inquirer, not as an authority. If his statements are guarded and
qualified; if he speaks as one only inclined to an opinion when
finality of judgment is obviously beyond his reach; if he directly
refers, and defers, to opinions that must be better than his can be,
his speech will have much more weight, and he will grow in strength of
character by always being true to himself. It is a question whether
students are not too often inspired to be bold and absolute, for the
sake of apparent strength in speaking, rather than modest and judicious
and sensible, for the sake of being strong as men.

In the form of delivering one's thought to an audience, it is of the
first importance that one should speak and not declaim. There is, of
course, a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively
good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There
should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any
necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over the
heads of an audience. A college president recently said, "Our boys
declaim a good deal, though they're not so bad as they used to be. It
seems to me," he added, "that the idea is to say something to your
audience." That is what a teacher must be continually insisting on,
that the student say something to somebody, not chant or declaim into
space. And the student should be continually testing himself on this
point, whether he is looking into the faces of his hearers and
speaking, though on a larger scale, yet in the usual way of
communicating ideas.

It is not desirable that men should become overready speakers. Methods
of training in extemporaneous discussion that require speaking without
thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are
likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact
thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice
for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and
produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may
be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is
accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches are spoiled by
the last third or quarter of them, when a point well made has lost its
effect by being overenforced or obscured by a wordy conclusion. Let the
student study for rare thought and economy of speech.

Books on speaking have repeatedly insisted that after all has been
said, the public speaker's word will be taken for what he is known to
be worth as a man; that his utterances will have effect according as
they are given out with soul-felt earnestness. This has already been
touched upon here, and it is well that it should be often repeated. It
may be well, however, also to consider quite carefully what part is
played in men's efforts by the element of skill. Of two equally worthy
and equally earnest men, the man of the superior skill, acquired by
persistent training in method, will be the stronger man, the man who
will be of more service to his fellows. More than this, inasmuch as
public men can seldom be perfectly known or judged as to character, and
may often, for a time at least, deceive, it is quite possible that the
unscrupulous man with great skill will, at some moment of crisis, make
the worse appear to be the better cause. Equally skilled men are
therefore wanted to contend for the side of right. The man whose
service to men depends largely upon his power of speech--in the pulpit,
at the bar, or in non-professional capacity--must have, either from
gift or from training, the speaker's full equipment, for matching
himself against opposing strength.




REVIEW EXERCISES


For convenience of practice, a few pages of brief exercises,
exemplifying the foregoing principles, are given at the end of the
book. By using each day one example in each group, and changing from
time to time, the student will have sufficient variety to serve
indefinitely. This vocal practice may be made a healthful and
pleasurable daily exercise.




PART TWO


TECHNICAL TRAINING

ESTABLISHING THE TONE


O SCOTIA!

From "The Cotter's Saturday Night"

BY ROBERT BURNS

  O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
    For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
  Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
    Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
    And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
  From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
    Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
  A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.

  O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide,
    That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,
  Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
    Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
    (The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art,
  His friend, inspirer, guardian and reward!)
    Oh never, never, Scotia's realm desert;
  But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!


O ROME! MY COUNTRY!

From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

BY LORD BYRON

  O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
  The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
  Lone mother of dead empires! and control
  In their shut breasts, their petty misery.
  What are our woes and sufferance?--Come and see
  The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
  O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
  Whose agonies are evils of a day:--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

  The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
  Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
  An empty urn within her withered hands,
  Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;--
  The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
  The very sepulchers lie tenantless
  Of their heroic dwellers:--dost thou flow,
  Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!


RING OUT, WILD BELLS!

From "In Memoriam"

BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.


ROLL ON, THOU DEEP!

From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

BY LORD BYRON

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
  Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
  A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
  He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
  Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

The armaments, which thunderstrike the walls
  Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
  The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
  Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
  They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
  Alike th' Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee:
  Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,--what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
  And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
  Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves play,
  Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow;
  Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
  Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
  I wanton'd with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
  Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear.


THOU, TOO, SAIL ON!

From "The Building of the Ship," by permission of, and by special
Arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers
of this author's works.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.

Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;

'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,--are all with thee!


O TIBER, FATHER TIBER!

From "Horatius"

BY LORD MACAULAY

"O Tiber, Father Tiber!
  To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
  Take thou in charge this day!"
So he spake, and, speaking, sheathed
  The good sword by his side,
And, with his harness on his back,
  Plunged headlong in the tide.

No sound of joy or sorrow
  Was heard from either bank,
But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
  Stood gazing where he sank;
And when above the surges
  They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
  Could scarce forbear to cheer.

But fiercely ran the current,
  Swollen high by months of rain,
And fast his blood was flowing,
  And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
  And spent with changing blows;
And oft they thought him sinking,
  But still again he rose.

And now he feels the bottom;--
  Now on dry earth he stands;
Now round him throng the Fathers
  To press his gory hands.
And now, with shouts and clapping,
  And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River Gate,
  Borne by the joyous crowd.


MARULLUS TO THE ROMAN CITIZENS

From "Julius Cęsar"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

_Flavius_. Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

_Second Citizen_. Indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see
Cęsar, and to rejoice in his triumph.

_Marullus_. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live-long day, with patient expectation
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome;
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.


THE RECESSIONAL

From "Collected Verse," with the permission of A. P. Watt and Son,
London, and Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, publishers

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

God of our fathers, known of old--
  Lord of our far-flung battle-line--
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
  Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget.

The tumult and the shouting dies--
  The captains and the kings depart--
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
  An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget.

Far-called our navies melt away--
  On dune and headland sinks the fire,
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget.

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
  Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
  Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget.

For heathen heart that puts her trust
  In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
  And guarding calls not Thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord.


THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY

From Webster's Reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate. Little,
Brown and Company, Boston, publishers of "The Great Speeches and
Orations of Daniel Webster"

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she
needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There
is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is
secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill;
and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in
the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of
every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie
forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the
strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and
disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk
at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and
necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union by
which alone its existence is made sure,--it will stand, in the end, by
the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will
stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over
the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it
must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very
spot of its origin.


THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS

Delivered in the House of Lords, February 13, 1788

BY EDMUND BURKE

My Lords, I do not mean to go further than just to remind your
Lordships of this,--that Mr. Hastings's government was one whole system
of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public,
and of suppression of the whole system of the English government, in
order to vest in the worst of the natives all the power that could
possibly exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all
governments ought, in common, to have in view. In the name of the
Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in
this last moment of my application to you.

Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons of Great
Britain, I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament
assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has abused.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose
national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights,
and liberties he has subverted.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose property he has
destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly
outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes. And I impeach him in
the name and by the virtue of those eternal laws of justice, which
ought equally to pervade every age, condition, rank, and situation, in
the world.


BUNKER HILL

From the oration at the laying of the corner stone of the monument,
June 17, 1825. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers of "The
Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster"

By DANIEL WEBSTER

This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves the feeling
which the occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing
with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude
turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament,
proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling
have made a deep impression on our hearts.

If, indeed, there be anything in local association fit to affect the
mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions which agitate
us here. We are among the sepulchers of our fathers. We are on ground
distinguished by their valor, their constancy, and the shedding of
their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals,
nor to draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble
purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born,
the 17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent
history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we stand a
point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. But we are
Americans. We live in what may be called the early age of this great
continent; and we know that our posterity, through all time, are here
to enjoy and suffer the allotments of humanity. We see before us a
probable train of great events; we know that our own fortunes have been
happily cast, and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved by
the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our destiny before
many of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should pass
that portion of our existence which God allows to man on earth.


THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

In dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa., Nov. 19,
1863

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we
cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.




VOCAL FLEXIBILITY


CĘSAR, THE FIGHTER

From "The Courtship of Miles Standish," by permission of, and by
Special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized
publishers of this author's works

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

                        "A wonderful man was this Cęsar!

You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a fellow
Who could both write and fight, and in both was equally skillful!"
Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the comely, the youthful:
"Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his pen and his weapons.
Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could dictate
Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his memoirs."
"Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or hearing the other,
"Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius Cęsar!
Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village,
Than be second in Rome, and I think he was right when he said it.
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after;
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered;
He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has recorded;
Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator Brutus!
Now, do you know what he did on a certain occasion in Flanders,
When the rear-guard of his army retreated, the front giving way too,
And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so closely together
There was no room for their swords? Why, he seized a shield from a
soldier,
Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and commanded the
captains,
Calling on each by his name, to order forward the ensigns;
Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for their weapons;
So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other.
That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be well done,
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!"


OFFICIAL DUTY

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I want to talk to you of the attitude that should properly be observed
by legislators, by executive officers, toward wealth, and the attitude
that should be observed in return by men of means, and especially by
corporations, toward the body politic and toward their fellow citizens.

I utterly distrust the man of whom it is continually said: "Oh, he's a
good fellow, but, of course, in politics, he plays politics" It is
about as bad for a man to profess, and for those that listen to him by
their plaudits to insist upon his professing something which they know
he cannot live up to, as it is for him to go below what he ought to do,
because if he gets into the habit of lying to himself and to his
audience as to what he intends to do, it is certain to eat away his
moral fiber.

He won't be able then to stand up to what he knows ought to be done.
The temptation of the average politician is to promise everything to
the reformers and then to do everything for the organization. I think I
can say that, whatever I have promised on the stump or off the stump,
either expressly or impliedly, to either organization or reformers, I
have kept my promise; and I should keep it just as much if the
reformers disapproved.

A public man is bound to represent his constituents, but he is no less
bound to cease to represent them when, on a great moral question, he
feels that they are taking the wrong side. Let him go out of politics
rather than stay in at the cost of doing what his own conscience
forbids him to do.


LOOK WELL TO YOUR SPEECH

From "Self-Cultivation in English," with the permission of the author,
and of Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, publishers

BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER

First, then, "Look well to your speech." It is commonly supposed that
when a man seeks literary power he goes to his room and plans an
article for the press. But this is to begin literary culture at the
wrong end. We speak a hundred times for every once we write. The
busiest writer produces little more than a volume a year, not so much
as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it
is usually decided whether a man is to have command of his language or
not. If he is slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can
seldom pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the hundredth case
of writing. A person is made in one piece, and the same being runs
through a multitude of performances. Whether words are uttered on paper
or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the same. Vigor or
feebleness results according as energy or slackness has been in
command. I know that certain adaptations to a new field are often
necessary. A good speaker may find awkwardnesses in himself when he
comes to write, a good writer when he speaks. And certainly cases occur
where a man exhibits distinct strength in one of the two, speaking or
writing, and not in the other. But such cases are rare. As a rule,
language once within our control can be employed for oral or for
written purposes. And since the opportunities for oral practice
enormously outbalance those for written, it is the oral which are
chiefly significant in the development of literary power. We rightly
say of the accomplished writer that he shows a mastery of his own
tongue.

Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the use of English must
chiefly come through speech; because we are always speaking, whatever
else we do. In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language, the
poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage as compared with the
leisured rich. It is true the strong impulse which comes from the
suggestion and approval of society may in some cases be absent; but
this can be compensated by the sturdy purpose of the learner. A
recognition of the beauty of well-ordered words, a strong desire,
patience under discouragements, and promptness in counting every
occasion as of consequence,--these are the simple agencies which sweep
one on to power. Watch your speech, then.


HAMLET TO THE PLAYERS

From "Hamlet"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

_Hamlet_. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-
shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing
Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

_I Player_. I warrant your honor.

_Hamlet_. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be
your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature;
for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end,
both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror
up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and
the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this
overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must
in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that
highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted
and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made
men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.


BELLARIO'S LETTER

From "The Merchant of Venice"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

_Duke_. This letter from Bellario doth commend A young and learned
doctor to our court. Where is he?

_Nerissa_. He attendeth here hard by, To know your answer, whether
you'll admit him.

_Duke_. With all my heart. Some three or four of you Go give him
courteous conduct to this place. Meantime the court shall hear
Bellario's letter.

_Clerk_ (reads). "Your grace shall understand that at the receipt
of your letter I am very sick; but in the instant that your messenger
came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor of Rome; his name
is Balthasar. I acquainted him with the cause in controversy between
the Jew and Antonio the merchant: we turned o'er many books together:
he is furnished with my opinion; which, bettered with his own learning,
the greatness whereof I cannot enough commend, comes with him, at my
importunity, to fill up your grace's request in my stead. I beseech
you, let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend
estimation; for I never knew so young a body with so old a head. I
leave him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish
his commendation."


CASCA, SPEAKING OF CĘSAR

From "Julius Cęsar"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

_Casca_. You pull'd me by the cloak; would you speak with me?

_Brutus_. Ay, Casca; tell us what hath chanc'd to-day, That Cęsar
looks so sad.

_Casca_. Why, you were with him, were you not?

_Brutus_. I should not, then, ask Casca what had chanc'd.

_Casca_. Why, there was a crown offered him; and being offered him, he
put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell
a-shouting.

_Brutus_. What was the second noise for?

_Casca_. Why, for that too.

_Cassius_. They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

_Casca_. Why, for that too.

_Brutus_. Was the crown offered him thrice?

_Casca_. Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every time
gentler than other; and at every putting-by mine honest neighbors
shouted.

_Cassius_. Who offered him the crown?

_Casca_. Why, Antony.

_Brutus_. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

_Casca_. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was
mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a
crown;--yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets;--
and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my
thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again;
then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loth to lay
his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it
the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement shouted,
and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps,
and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Cęsar refused the
crown, that it had almost choked Cęsar; for he swooned, and fell down
at it: and for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my
lips, and receiving the bad air.


SQUANDERING OF THE VOICE

From "Lectures on Oratory" BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

How much squandering there is of the voice! How little there is of the
advantage that may come from conversational tones! How seldom does a
man dare to acquit himself with pathos and fervor! And the men are
themselves mechanical and methodical in the bad way who are most afraid
of the artificial training that is given in the schools, and who so
often show by the fruit of their labor that the want of oratory is the
want of education.

How remarkable is the sweetness of voice in the mother, in the father,
in the household! The music of no chorded instruments brought together
is, for sweetness, like the music of familiar affection when spoken by
brother and sister, or by father and mother.

Conversation itself belongs to oratory. How many men there are who are
weighty in argument, who have abundant resources, and who are almost
boundless in their power at other times and in other places, but who,
when in company among their kind, are exceedingly unapt in their
methods. Having none of the secret instruments by which the elements of
nature may be touched, having no skill and no power in this direction,
they stand as machines before living, sensitive men. A man may be a
master before an instrument; only the instrument is dead; and he has
the living hand; and out of that dead instrument what wondrous harmony
springs forth at his touch! And if you can electrify an audience by the
power of a living man on dead things, how much more should that
audience be electrified when the chords are living and the man is
alive, and he knows how to touch them with divine inspiration!


THE TRAINING OF THE GENTLEMAN

From "Personal Power," by permission of, and by special arrangement
with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's
works.

BY WILLIAM J. TUCKER

In this talk about the part which the college may take in the training
of a gentleman, I have not dwelt, as you have noticed, upon forms or
conventionalities. Every gentleman respects form. Respect for form can
be taught, or at least inculcated, but not form itself. One comes to be
at ease in society by going into society. Manners come by observation.
We imitate, we follow the better fashion of society, the better
behavior of men. Good breeding consists first in the attention of
others in our behalf to certain necessary details, then in our
attention to them. We come in time to draw close and nice distinctions.
This little thing is right, that is not quite right. So we grow into
the formal habits of a gentleman. "Good manners are made up of constant
and petty sacrifices," says Emerson. It is well to keep this saying in
mind as a qualification of another of his more familiar sayings: "Give
me a thought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go
right. It is only when mind and character slumber that the dress can be
seen."

I like to see the well-bred man, to whom the details of social life
have become a second nature. I like also to see the play of that first
healthy instinct in a true man which scorns a mean act, which will not
allow him to take part in the making of a mean custom, which for
example, if he be a college fellow, will not suffer him to treat
another fellow as a fag. I am entirely sure that that man is a
gentleman.

So then it is, in this world of books, of companionship, of sport, of
struggle with some of us, of temptation also, and yet more of high
incentives, we are all set to the task of coming out, and of helping
one another to come out, as gentlemen. Do not miss, I beseech you, the
greatness of the task. Do not miss its constancy. It is more than the
incidental work of a college to train the efficient, the honorable, the
unselfish man. A college-bred man must be able to show at all times and
on all occasions the quality of his distinction.




MAKING THE POINT


BRUTUS TO THE ROMAN CITIZENS

From "Julius Cęsar"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Be patient till the last.

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent,
that you may hear: believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine
honor, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and awake your
senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this
assembly, any dear friend of Cęsar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love
to Cęsar was no less than his. If, then, that friend demand why Brutus
rose against Cęsar, this is my answer,--Not that I loved Cęsar less,
but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Cęsar were living, and die
all slaves, than that Cęsar were dead, to live all free men? As Cęsar
loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate I rejoice at it; as he
was valiant, I honor him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There
is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor; and
death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If
any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not
be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile
that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended.
I have done no more to Cęsar than you shall do to Brutus. The question
of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated,
wherein he was worthy; nor his offenses enforced, for which he suffered
death. Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony: who, though he had
no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place
in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart,--
that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same
dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.


THE PRECEPTS OF POLONIUS

From "Hamlet"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!


THE HIGH STANDARD

From the Lord Rector's address, University of Edinburgh, 1882

BY LORD ROSEBERY

Let us win in the competition of international well-being and
prosperity. Let us have a finer, better educated, better lodged, and
better nourished race than exists elsewhere; better schools, better
universities, better tribunals, ay, and better churches. In one phrase,
let our standard be higher, not in the jargon of the Education
Department, but in the acknowledgment of mankind. The standard of
mankind is not so exalted but that a nobler can be imagined and
attained. The dream of him who loved Scotland best would lie not so
much in the direction of antiquarian revival, as in the hope that his
country might be pointed out as one that in spite of rocks, and rigor,
and poverty, could yet teach the world by precept and example, could
lead the van and point the moral, where greater nations and fairer
states had failed. Those who believe the Scots to be so eminently vain
a race, will say that already we are in our opinion the tenth legion of
civilization. Well, vanity is a centipede with corns on every foot: I
will not tread where the ground is most dangerous. But if we are not
foremost, we may at any rate become so. Our fathers have declared unto
us what was done in their days and in the old time before them: we know
that we come of a strenuous stock. Do you remember the words that young
Carlyle wrote to his brother nine years after he had left this
University as a student, forty-three years before he returned as its
Rector?--

"I say, Jack, thou and I must never falter. Work, my boy, work
unweariedly. I swear that all the thousand miseries of this hard fight,
and ill-health, the most terrific of them all, shall never chain us
down. By the river Styx it shall not! Two fellows from a nameless spot
in Annandale shall yet show the world the pluck that is in Carlyles."

Let that be your spirit to-day. You are citizens of no mean city,
members of no common state, heirs of no supine empire. You will many of
you exercise influence over your fellow men: some will study and
interpret our laws, and so become a power; others will again be in a
position to solace and exalt, as destined to be doctors and clergymen,
and so the physical and spiritual comforters of mankind. Make the best
of these opportunities. Raise your country, raise your University,
raise yourselves.


ON TAXING THE COLONIES

Delivered in the House of Commons, March, 1775

BY EDMUND BURKE

Reflect, sirs, that when you have fixed a quota of taxation for every
colony, you have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. You must
make new Boston Port Bills, new restraining laws, new acts for dragging
men to England for trial. You must send out new fleets, new armies. All
is to begin again. From this day forward the empire is never to know an
hour's tranquillity. An intestine fire will be kept alive in the bowels
of the colonies, which one time or other must consume this whole
empire.

Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual
quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who proposed this project seems himself
to be of that opinion. His project was rather designed for breaking the
union of the colonies than for establishing a revenue. But whatever his
views may be, as I propose the peace and union of the colonies as the
very foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation
is perpetual discord.

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple; the
other full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild; that harsh.
This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a
new project. This is universal; the other calculated for certain
colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the
other remote, contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the
dignity of a ruling people--gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out
as a matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in proposing it to
you. I have indeed tried you by a long discourse; but this is the
misfortune of those to whose influence nothing will be conceded, and
who must win every inch of their ground by argument. You have heard me
with goodness. May you decide with wisdom!


JUSTIFYING THE PRESIDENT

From a speech in the Senate, 1900

By JOHN C. SPOONER

Some one asked the other day why the President did not bring about a
cessation of hostilities. Upon what basis could he have brought about a
cessation of hostilities? Should he have asked Aguinaldo for an
armistice? If so, upon what basis should he have requested it? What
should he say to him? "Please stop this fighting"? "What for,"
Aguinaldo would say; "do you propose to retire?" "No." "Do you propose
to grant us independence?" "No, not now." "Well, why, then, an
armistice?" The President would doubtless be expected to reply: "Some
distinguished gentlemen in the United States, members of the United
States Senate, and others, have discovered a doubt about our right to
be here at all, some question whether we have acquired the Philippines,
some question as to whether we have correctly read the Declaration of
Independence; and I want an armistice until we can consult and
determine finally whether we have acquired the Philippines or not,
whether we are violating the Declaration of Independence or not,
whether we are trampling upon the Constitution or not." That is
practically the proposition.

No, Mr. President, men may say in criticism of the President what they
choose. He has been grossly insulted in this chamber, and it appears
upon the record. He has gone his way patiently, exercising the utmost
forbearance, all his acts characterized by a desire to do precisely
what the Congress had placed upon him by its ratification of the treaty
and its increase of the army. He has done it in a way to impress upon
the Filipinos, so far as language and action could do it, his desire,
and the desire of our people, to do them good, to give them the largest
possible measure of liberty.


BRITAIN AND AMERICA

From an address in the House of Commons, March, 1865

BY JOHN BRIGHT

Why should we fear a great nation on the American Continent? Some
people fear that, should America become a great nation, she will be
arrogant and aggressive. But that does not follow. The character of a
nation does not depend altogether upon its size, but upon the
intelligence, instruction, and morals of its people. You fancy the
supremacy of the sea will pass away from you; and the noble lord, who
has had much experience, and is supposed to be wiser on the subject
than any other man in the House, will say that "Rule Britannia," that
noble old song, may become obsolete. Well, inasmuch as the supremacy of
the seas means arrogance and the assumption of dictatorial power on the
part of this country, the sooner that becomes obsolete the better. I do
not believe that it is for the advantage of this country, or of any
country in the world, that any one nation should pride itself upon what
is termed the supremacy of the sea; and I hope the time is coming--I
believe the hour is hastening--when we shall find that law and justice
will guide the councils and will direct the policy of the Christian
nations of the world. Nature will not be baffled because we are jealous
of the United States--the decrees of Providence will not be overthrown
by aught we can do.

The population of the United States is now not less than 35,000,000.
When the next Parliament of England has lived to the age which this has
lived to, that population will be 40,000,000, and you may calculate the
increase at the rate of rather more than 1,000,000 of persons per year.
Who is to gainsay it? Will constant snarling at a great republic alter
this state of things, or swell us up in these islands to 40,000,000 or
50,000,000, or bring them down to our 30,000,000? Honorable members and
the country at large should consider these facts, and learn from them
that it is the interest of the nations to be at one--and for us to be
in perfect courtesy and amity with the great English nation on the
other side of the Atlantic.




VALUES AND TRANSITIONS


KING ROBERT OF SICILY

From "King Robert of Sicily," by permission of, and by special
arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of
this author's works.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

Days came and went; and now returned again
To Sicily the old Saturnian reign;
Under the Angel's governance benign
The happy island danced with corn and wine.

Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate,
Sullen and silent and disconsolate.
Dressed in the motley garb that Jesters wear,
With look bewildered and a vacant stare,
Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn,
By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn,
His only friend the ape, his only food
What others left,--he still was unsubdued.
And when the Angel met him on his way,
And half in earnest, half in jest, would say,
Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel
The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel,
"Art thou the King?" the passion of his woe
Burst from him in resistless overflow,
And, lifting high his forehead, he would fling
The haughty answer back, "I am, I am the King!"
Almost three years were ended; when there came
Ambassadors of great repute and name
From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine,
Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane
By letter summoned them forthwith to come
On Holy Thursday to his city of Rome.
And lo! among the menials, in mock state,
Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait,
His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind,
The solemn ape demurely perched behind,
King Robert rode, making huge merriment
In all the country towns through which they went.
The Pope received them with great pomp and blare
Of bannered trumpets, on Saint Peter's square,
Giving his benediction and embrace
Fervent and full of apostolic grace.
While with congratulations and with prayers
He entertained the Angel unawares,
Robert, the Jester, bursting through the crowd,
Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud:
"I am the King! Look, and behold in me
Robert, your brother, King of Sicily!
This man who wears my semblance to your eyes,
Is an imposter in a king's disguise.
Do you not know me? does no voice within
Answer my cry, and say we are akin?"
The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien,
Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene;
The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport
To keep a madman for thy Fool at court!"
And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace
Was hustled back among the populace.


LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE

An extract from "Masters of the Situation," a lecture

BY JAMES T. FIELDS

When I talk across an ocean of 3000 miles, with my friends on the other
side of it, and feel that I may know any hour of the day if all goes
well with them, I think with gratitude of the immense energy and
perseverance of that one man, Cyrus W. Field, who spent so many years
of his life in perfecting a communication second only in importance to
the discovery of this country. Think what that enthusiast accomplished
by his untiring energy. He made fifty voyages across the Atlantic.
Eight years more he encountered the odium of failure, but still kept
plowing across the Atlantic, flying from city to city, soliciting
capital, holding meetings and forcing down this most colossal
discouragement. At last day dawned again, and another cable was paid
out--this time from the deck of the "Great Eastern." Twelve hundred
miles of it were laid down, and the ship was just lifting her head to a
stiff breeze then springing up, when, without a moment's warning, the
cable suddenly snapped short off, and plunged into the sea. Nine days
and nights they dragged the bottom of the sea for this lost treasure,
and though they grappled it three times, they could not bring it to the
surface. In five months another cable was shipped on board the "Great
Eastern," and this time, by the blessing of heaven, the wires were
stretched unharmed from continent to continent. Then came that never-
to-be-forgotten search, in four ships, for the lost cable. In the bow
of one of these vessels stood Cyrus Field, day and night, in storm and
fog, squall and calm, intensely watching the quiver of the grapnel that
was dragging two miles down on the bottom of the deep.

At length on the last night of August, a little before midnight, the
spirit of this great man was rewarded. I shall here quote his own
words, as none others could possibly convey so well the thrilling
interest of that hour. He says: "All felt as if life and death hung on
the issue. It was only when the cable was brought over the bow and onto
the deck that men dared to breathe. Even then they hardly believed
their eyes. Some crept toward it to feel of it to be sure it was there.
Then we carried it along to the electricians' room, to see if our long-
sought treasure was dead or alive. A few minutes of suspense and a
flash told of the lightning current again set free. Then the feeling
long pent up burst forth. Some turned away their heads and wept. Others
broke into cheers, and the cry ran from man to man, and was heard down
in the engine rooms, deck below deck, and from the boats on the water,
and the other ships, while the rockets lighted up the darkness of the
sea. Then, with thankful hearts, we turned our faces again to the West.
But soon the wind rose, and for thirty-six hours we were exposed to all
the dangers of a storm on the Atlantic. Yet, in the very height and
fury of the gale, as I sat in the electricians' room, a flash of light
came up from the deep, which, having crossed to Ireland, came back to
me in mid-ocean, telling me that those so dear to me, whom I had left
on the banks of the Hudson, were well, and following us with their
wishes and their prayers. This was like a whisper of God from the sea,
bidding me keep heart and hope."

And now, after all those thirteen years of almost superhuman struggle
and that one moment of almost superhuman victory, I think we may safely
include Cyrus Field among the masters of the situation.


O'CONNELL, THE ORATOR

From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

Broadly considered, O'Connell's eloquence has never been equaled in
modern times, certainly not in English speech. Do you think I am
partial? I will vouch John Randolph of Roanoke, the Virginia
slaveholder, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he hated a Yankee,
himself an orator of no mean level. Hearing O'Connell, he exclaimed,
"This is the man, these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak the
English tongue in my day!" I think he was right. I remember the
solemnity of Webster, the grace of Everett, the rhetoric of Choate; I
know the eloquence that lay hid in the iron logic of Calhoun; I have
melted beneath the magnetism of Sergeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi,
who wielded a power few men ever had; it has been my fortune to sit at
the feet of the great speakers of the English tongue on the other side
of the ocean; but I think all of them together never surpassed, and no
one of them ever equaled O'Connell.

Nature intended him for our Demosthenes. Never, since the great Greek,
has she sent forth one so lavishly gifted for his work as a tribune of
the people. In the first place, he had a magnificent presence,
impressive in bearing, massive, like that of Jupiter. Webster himself
hardly outdid him in the majesty of his proportions. To be sure, he had
not Webster's craggy face, and precipice of brow, not his eyes glowing
like anthracite coal. Nor had he the lion roar of Mirabeau. But his
presence filled the eye. A small O'Connell would hardly have been an
O'Connell at all. These physical advantages are half the battle.

I remember Russell Lowell telling us that Mr. Webster came home from
Washington at the time the Whig party thought of dissolution, a year or
two before his death, and went down to Faneuil Hall to protest; drawing
himself up to his loftiest proportion, his brow clothed with thunder,
before the listening thousands, he said, "Well, gentlemen, I am a Whig,
a Massachusetts Whig, a Faneuil-Hall Whig, a revolutionary Whig, a
constitutional Whig. If you break the Whig party, sir, where am I to
go?" And says Lowell, "We held our breath, thinking where he
_could_ go. If he had been five feet three, we should have said,
'Who cares where you go?'" So it was with O'Connell. There was
something majestic in his presence before he spoke; and he added to it
what Webster had not, what Clay might have lent--infinite grace, that
magnetism that melts all hearts into one. I saw him at over sixty-six
years of age; every attitude was beauty, every gesture grace. You could
only think of a greyhound as you looked at him; it would have been
delightful to watch him, if he had not spoken a word. Then he had a
voice that covered the gamut. The majesty of his indignation, fitly
uttered in tones of superhuman power, made him able to "indict" a
nation. Carlyle says, "He is God's own anointed king whose single word
melts all wills into his." This describes O'Connell. Emerson says,
"There is no true eloquence unless there is a man behind the speech."
Daniel O'Connell was listened to because all England and all Ireland
knew that there was a man behind the speech.

I heard him once say, "I send my voice across the Atlantic, careering
like the thunderstorm against the breeze, to remind the bondman that
the dawn of his redemption is already breaking." You seemed to hear the
tones come echoing back to London from the Rocky Mountains. Then, with
the slightest possible Irish brogue, he would tell a story, while all
Exeter Hall shook with laughter. The next moment, tears in his voice
like a Scotch song, five thousand men wept. And all the while no
effort. He seemed only breathing.

  "As effortless as woodland nooks
  Send violets up, and paint them blue."


JUSTIFICATION FOR IMPEACHMENT

Against Warren Hastings, House of Lords, February, 1788

BY EDMUND BURKE

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon
Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national
justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You have the cause of oppressed
princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and
of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever
laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to
punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not
left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons
of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun,
in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more
glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the
material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bonds of a social
and moral community--all the Commons of England resenting, as their
own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people
of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in
the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply
us with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the
mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the Crown, under whose authority you
sit and whose power you exercise.

We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation
between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject--
offering a pledge, in that situation, for the support of the rights of
the Crown and the liberties of the people, both of which extremities
they touch.


WENDELL PHILLIPS, THE ORATOR

From "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III.
Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

It was not until Lovejoy fell, while defending his press at Alton, in
November, 1837, that an American citizen was killed by a raging mob for
declaring, in a free State, the right of innocent men and women to
their personal liberty. This tragedy, like the deadly blow at Charles
Sumner in the Senate Chamber, twenty years afterward, awed the whole
country with a sense of vast and momentous peril. Never since the
people of Boston thronged Faneuil Hall on the day after the massacre in
State Street, had that ancient hall seen a more solemn and significant
assembly. It was the more solemn, the more significant, because the
excited multitude was no longer, as in the Revolutionary day, inspired
by one unanimous and overwhelming purpose to assert and maintain
liberty of speech as the bulwark of all other liberty. It was an
unwonted and foreboding scene. An evil spirit was in the air.

When the seemly protest against the monstrous crime had been spoken,
and the proper duty of the day was done, a voice was heard,--the voice
of the high officer solemnly sworn to prosecute, in the name of
Massachusetts, every violation of law, declaring, in Faneuil Hall,
sixty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, and amid a howling storm
of applause, that an American citizen who was put to death by a mad
crowd of his fellow citizens for defending his right of free speech,
died as the fool dieth. Boston has seen dark days, but never a moment
so dark as that. Seven years before, Webster had said, in the famous
words that Massachusetts binds as frontlets between her eyes, "There
are Boston and Concord, and Lexington and Bunker Hill, and there they
will remain forever." Had they already vanished? Was the spirit of the
Revolution quite extinct? In the very Cradle of Liberty did no son
survive to awake its slumbering echoes? By the grace of God such a son
there was. He had come with the multitude, and he had heard with
sympathy and approval the speeches that condemned the wrong; but when
the cruel voice justified the murderers of Lovejoy, the heart of the
young man burned within him. This speech, he said to himself, must be
answered. As the malign strain proceeded, the Boston boy, all on fire,
with Concord and Lexington tugging at his heart, unconsciously
murmured, "Such a speech in Faneuil Hall must be answered in Faneuil
Hall." "Why not answer it yourself?" whispered a neighbor, who
overheard him. "Help me to the platform and I will,"--and pushing and
struggling through the dense and threatening crowd, the young man
reached the platform, was lifted upon it, and, advancing to speak, was
greeted with a roar of hostile cries. But riding the whirlwind
undismayed, as for many a year afterward he directed the same wild
storm, he stood upon the platform in all the beauty and grace of
imperial youth,--the Greeks would have said a god descended,--and in
words that touched the mind and heart and conscience of that vast
multitude, as with fire from heaven, recalling Boston to herself, he
saved his native city and her Cradle of Liberty from the damning
disgrace of stoning the first martyr in the great struggle for personal
freedom. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down
principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of
Alton, side by side with Otis and Hancock, and Quincy and Adams, I
thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the
recreant American--the slanderer of the dead." And even as he spoke
the vision was fulfilled. Once more its native music rang through
Faneuil Hall. In the orator's own burning words, those pictured lips
did break into immortal rebuke. In Wendell Phillips, glowing with holy
indignation at the insult to America and to man, John Adams and James
Otis, Josiah Quincy and Samuel Adams, though dead, yet spake.

In the annals of American speech there had been no such scene since
Patrick Henry's electrical warning to George the Third. It was that
greatest of oratorical triumphs when a supreme emotion, a sentiment
which is to mold a people anew, lifted the orator to adequate
expression. Three such scenes are illustrious in our history: that of
the speech of Patrick Henry at Williamsburg, of Wendell Phillips in
Faneuil Hall, of Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg,--three, and there is no
fourth.


ON THE DISPOSAL OF PUBLIC LANDS

From reports of the Webster-Hayne debate in the United States Senate,
January, 1830

BY ROBERT Y. HAYNE

In 1825 the gentleman told the world that the public lands "ought not
to be treated as a treasure." He now tells us that "they must be
treated as so much treasure." What the deliberate opinion of the
gentleman on this subject may be, belongs not to me to determine; but I
do not think he can, with the shadow of justice or propriety, impugn my
sentiments, while his own recorded opinions are identical with my own.
When the gentleman refers to the conditions of the grants under which
the United States have acquired these lands, and insists that, as they
are declared to be "for the common benefit of all the States," they can
only be treated as so much treasure, I think he has applied a rule of
construction too narrow for the case. If, in the deeds of cession, it
has been declared that the grants were intended "for the common benefit
of all the States," it is clear, from other provisions, that they were
not intended merely as so much property; for it is expressly declared
that the object of the grants is the erection of new States; and the
United States, in accepting this trust, bind themselves to facilitate
the foundation of those States, to be admitted into the Union with all
the rights and privileges of the original States.

This, sir, was the great end to which all parties looked, and it is by
the fulfillment of this high trust that "the common benefit of all the
States" is to be best promoted. Sir, let me tell the gentleman that, in
the part of the country in which I live, we do not measure political
benefits by the money standard. We consider as more valuable than gold,
liberty, principle, and justice. But, sir, if we are bound to act on
the narrow principles contended for by the gentleman, I am wholly at a
loss to conceive how he can reconcile his principles with his own
practice. The lands are, it seems, to be treated "as so much treasure,"
and must be applied to the "common benefit of all the States." Now, if
this be so, whence does he derive the right to appropriate them for
partial and local objects? How can the gentleman consent to vote away
immense bodies of these lands for canals in Indiana and Illinois, to
the Louisville and Portland Canal, to Kenyon College in Ohio, to
schools for the deaf and dumb, and other objects of a similar
description?


THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

From "Speeches and Presidential Addresses," Current Literature
Publishing Company, New York.

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this place,
where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion
to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.
You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of
restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in return, sir,
that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far
as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated
in, and were given to the world from, this hall. I have never had a
feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied
in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the
dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed
and adopted that Declaration. I have pondered over the toils that were
endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that
independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or
idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the
mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that
sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not
alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all
future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the
weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all
should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the
Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved
on that basis? If it can, I shall consider myself one of the happiest
men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon
that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be
saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view
of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and
war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course;
and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is
forced upon the government. The government will not use force, unless
force is used against it.

My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I did not expect to be
called on to say a word when I came here. I supposed I was merely to do
something toward raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something
indiscreet. But I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by,
and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.




EXPRESSING THE FEELING


NORTHERN GREETING TO SOUTHERN VETERANS

From "Speeches and Addresses," with the permission of the author and of
Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers.

BY HENRY CABOT LODGE

I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend
Washington. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the
streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black
regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body, but dauntless in soul, ride
by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the
Republic. I saw Andrew, standing bareheaded on the steps of the State
House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I
can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes
and fire to the hearts of all who listened. To my boyish mind one thing
alone was clear, that the soldiers, as they marched past, were all, in
that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Other feelings have, in the
progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple
belief of boyhood has never altered.

And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or
any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it
was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a
mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold
out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. We have no bitter memories
to revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand
other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us
differ with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I
have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We
welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and
at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll
back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your
great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental
Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New
Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an
American."

A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves of Arlington,
said: "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add
with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great
reconciliation. Side by side Virginia and Massachusetts led the
colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the
government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox,
Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought
shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,--the
uniform of Washington.

Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true
sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and
sentiment has reunited us.

So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren
of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, tells
us that if war should break again upon the country the sons of Virginia
and Massachusetts would, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder
to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is
fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in
the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one
and inseparable!"


MATCHES AND OVERMATCHES

From Webster's reply to Hayne in the United States Senate, January,
1830, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

If, sir, the honorable member, _modestia gratia_, had chosen thus
to defer to his friend and to pay him a compliment without intentional
disparagement to others, it would have been quite according to the
friendly courtesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own
feelings. I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any tribute of regard,
whether light and occasional or more serious and deliberate, which may
be bestowed on others, as so much unjustly withholden from themselves.
But the tone and manner of the gentleman's question forbid me thus to
interpret it, I am not at liberty to consider it as nothing more than a
civility to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparagement,
something of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not
allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for
me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer,
whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in
debate here. It seems to me, sir, that this is extraordinary language
and an extraordinary tone for the discussions of this body.

Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than
here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman
seems to forget where and what we are. This is a senate, a senate of
equals, of men of individual honor and personal character and of
absolute independence. We know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators.
This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for
the exhibitions of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no
man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But then, sir,
since the honorable member has put the question in a manner that calls
for an answer, I will give him an answer; and tell him that, holding
myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in
the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the
arm of _his_ friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me
from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating
whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see
fit to say on the floor of the Senate.


THE COALITION

From the reply to Hayne

"The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster," Little, Brown
and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion,
to betray myself into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I
never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable
member may perhaps find that, in that contest, there will be blows to
take as well as to give; that others can state comparisons as
significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity may possibly
demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I
commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.

But, sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Aye, "the murdered Coalition!"
The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the
specter of the Coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,"
he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which,
like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?" "The murdered Coalition!"
Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late
administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not
spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an
embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, from a very
low origin, and a still lower present condition. It is one of the
thousand calumnies with which the press teemed during an excited
political canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only no proof
or probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true.
No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was
of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, through all
the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who
are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling
into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less
degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the
general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off
slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further
mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now,
sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency
by attempting to elevate it and to introduce it into the Senate. He
cannot change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and
scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more
likely to drag him down, down to the place where it lies itself.


IN HIS OWN DEFENSE

BY ROBERT EMMET

I am asked what I have to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced on me, according to law.

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France!
and for what end? It is alleged that I wish to sell the independence of
my country; and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And
is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles
contradictions? No; I am no emissary; and my ambition was to hold a
place among the deliverers of my country, not in power nor in profit,
but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to
France! and for what? Was it for a change of masters? No, but for
ambition. O my country! was it personal ambition that could influence
me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not by my education and
fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself
amongst the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol! To it
I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now
offer up my life.

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. Be yet patient! I have
but a few more words to say--I am going to my cold and silent grave--my
lamp of life is nearly extinguished--my race is run--the grave opens to
receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at
my departure from this world: it is--the charity of its silence. Let no
man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dares now
vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them
and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed,
until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my
country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not
till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.


ON RESISTANCE TO GREAT BRITAIN

From a speech in the Provincial Convention, Virginia, March, 1775

BY PATRICK HENRY

I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the
world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir,
she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose
them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We
have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it
has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble
supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already
exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm
which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we
have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and
have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the
ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our
remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our
supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with
contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after all these things,
may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no
longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve
inviolate these inestimable privileges for which we have been so long
contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in
which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves
never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be
obtained, we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to
arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!


INVECTIVE AGAINST LOUIS BONAPARTE

From a reprint in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George Ridde,
Duffield and Company, New York, publishers.

BY VICTOR HUGO

I have entered the lists with the actual ruler of Europe, for it is
well for the world that I should exhibit the picture. Louis Bonaparte
is the intoxication of triumph. He is the incarnation of merry yet
savage despotism. He is the mad plenitude of power seeking for limits,
but finding them not, neither in men nor facts. Louis Bonaparte holds
France; and he who holds France holds the world. He is master of the
votes, master of consciences, master of the people; he names his
successor, does away with eternity, and places the future in a sealed
envelope. Thirty eager newspaper correspondents inform the world that
he has frowned, and every electric wire quivers if he raises his little
finger. Around him is heard the clanking of the saber and the roll of
the drum. He is seated in the shadow of the eagles, begirt by ramparts
and bayonets. Free people tremble and conceal their liberty lest he
should rob them of it. The great American Republic even hesitates
before him, and dares not withdraw her ambassador.

Europe awaits his invasion. He is able to do as he wishes, and he
dreams of impossibilities. Well, this master, this triumphant
conqueror, this vanquisher, this dictator, this emperor, this all-
powerful man, one lonely man, robbed and ruined, dares to rise up and
attack.

Yes, I attack Louis Napoleon; I attack him openly, before all the
world. I attack him before God and man. I attack him boldly and
recklessly for love of the people and for love of France. He is going
to be an emperor. Let him be one; but let him remember that, though you
may secure an empire, you cannot secure an easy conscience!

This is the man by whom France is governed! Governed, do I say?--
possessed in supreme and sovereign sway! And every day, and every
morning, by his decrees, by his messages, by all the incredible drivel
which he parades in the "Moniteur," this emigrant, who knows not
France, teaches France her lesson! and this ruffian tells France he has
saved her! And from whom? From herself! Before him, Providence
committed only follies; God was waiting for him to reduce everything to
order; at last he has come!

II

For thirty-six years there had been in France all sorts of pernicious
things,--the tribune, a vociferous thing; the press, an obstreperous
thing; thought, an insolent thing, and liberty, the most crying abuse
of all. But he came, and for the tribune he has substituted the Senate;
for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; and for
liberty, the saber; and by the saber and the Senate, by imbecility and
censorship, France is saved. Saved, bravo! And from whom, I repeat?
From herself. For what was this France of ours, if you please? A horde
of marauders and thieves, of anarchists, assassins, and demagogues. She
had to be manacled, had this mad woman, France; and it is Monsieur
Louis Bonaparte who puts the handcuffs on her. Now she is in a dungeon,
on a diet of bread and water, punished, humiliated, garotted, safely
cared for. Be not disturbed; Monsieur Bonaparte, a policeman stationed
at the Élysée, is answerable for her to Europe. He makes it his
business to be so; this wretched France is in the straitjacket, and if
she stirs--Ah, what is this spectacle before our eyes? Is it a dream?
Is it a nightmare? On one side a nation, the first of nations, and on
the other, a man, the last of men; and this is what this man does to
this nation. What! he tramples her under his feet, he laughs in her
face, he mocks and taunts her, he disowns, insults, and flouts her!
What! he says, "I alone am worthy of consideration!" What! in this land
of France where none would dare to slap the face of his fellow, this
man can slap the face of the nation? Oh, the abominable shame of it
all! Every time that Monsieur Bonaparte spits, every face must be
wiped! And this can last! and you tell me it will last! No! No! by
every drop in every vein, no! It shall not last! Ah, if this did last,
it would be in very truth because there would no longer be a God in
heaven, nor a France on earth!




SHOWING THE PICTURE


MOUNT, THE DOGE OF VENICE!

From the play, "Foscari"

BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

_Doge_. What! didst thou never hear
Of the old prediction that was verified
When I became the Doge?

_Zeno_. An old prediction!

_Doge_. Some seventy years ago--it seems to me
As fresh as yesterday--being then a lad
No higher than my hand, idle as an heir,
And all made up of gay and truant sports,
I flew a kite, unmatched in shape or size,
Over the river--we were at our house
Upon the Brenta then; it soared aloft,
Driven by light vigorous breezes from the sea
Soared buoyantly, till the diminished toy
Grew smaller than the falcon when she stoops
To dart upon her prey. I sent for cord,
Servant on servant hurrying, till the kite
Shrank to the size of a beetle: still I called
For cord, and sent to summon father, mother,
My little sisters, my old halting nurse,--
I would have had the whole world to survey
Me and my wondrous kite. It still soared on,
And I stood bending back in ecstasy,
My eyes on that small point, clapping my hands,
And shouting, and half envying it the flight
That made it a companion of the stars,
When close beside me a deep voice exclaimed--
Aye, mount! mount! mount!--I started back, and saw
A tall and aged woman, one of the wild
Peculiar people whom wild Hungary sends
Roving through every land. She drew her cloak
About her, turned her black eyes up to Heaven,
And thus pursued: Aye, like his fortunes, mount,
The future Doge of Venice! And before
For very wonder any one could speak
She disappeared.

_Zeno_. Strange! Hast thou never seen
That woman since?

_Doge_. I never saw her more.


THE REVENGE

From "Tennyson's Poetical Works," published by Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston.

BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon don or devil yet."
Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen.
And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea lane between.

And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out, far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and
  flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her
  shame,
For some were sunk, and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no
  more--
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said: "Fight on! fight on!"
Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed, he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again, in the side and the head,
And he said: "Fight on! Fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer
  sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could
  sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain
and half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken and bent, and the powder was all of it
  spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die--does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"


A VISION OF WAR

From a Memorial Day address, with the permission of C. P. Farrell, New
York, publisher and owner of the Ingersoll copyrighted books.

BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation; the
music of boisterous drums; the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the
pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with
flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they
enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they
love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places with
the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of
eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over
cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the
blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and
press them to their hearts again and again and say nothing. Kisses and
tears, tears and kisses--divine mingling of agony and joy! And some are
talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old
tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We
see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing
in the sunlight, sobbing. At the turn in the road a hand waves--she
answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and
forever.

We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the grand, wild music of war,--marching down the
streets of the great cities, through the towns and across the prairies,
down to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.

A vision of the future rises:--

I see our country filled with happy homes, with firesides of content--
the foremost of all the earth.

I see a world where thrones have crumbled and kings are dust. The
aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces
have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave,
frost and flame, and all the secret-subtle powers of earth and air are
the tireless toilers for the human race.

I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's
myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and
truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on
which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its
full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl
trying to win bread with the needle--the needle that has been called
"the asp for the breast of the poor"--is not driven to the desperate
choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.

I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's
heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of
lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain,--shapely and fair,--the
married harmony of form and function,--and, as I look, life lengthens,
joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome,
shines the eternal star of human hope.


SUNSET NEAR JERUSALEM

From an article in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1906, with the
Permission of the Century Company and of the author.

BY CORWIN KNAPP LINSON

To our Northern eyes the intense brilliancy of the tropical and semi-
tropical sky comes as a revelation. Sometimes at noon it is painfully
dazzling; but the evening is a vision of prismatic light holding
carnival in the air, wherein Milton's "twilight gray" has no part.
Unless the sky is held in the relentless grip of a winter storm, the
Orient holds no gray in its evening tones; these are translucent and
glowing from the setting of the sun until the stars appear. In Greece
we are dreamers in that subtle atmosphere, and in Egypt visionaries
under the spell of an ethereal loveliness where the filigree patterning
of white dome and minaret and interlacing palm and feathery pepper tree
leaves little wonder in the mind that the ornamentation of their
architecture is so ravishing in its tracery.

Outside the walls of Jerusalem on the north there is a point on a knoll
which commands the venerable city that David took for his own. From
here you can watch the variable glow of color spread over the whole
breadth of country, from the ground at one's feet to the distant purple
hilltops of Bethlehem. The fluid air seems to swim, as if laden with
incense. The rocks underfoot are of all tones of lavender in shadow,
and of tender, warm gleams in the light, casting vivid violet shadows
athwart the mottled orange of the ground.

Down in the little valley just below us a tiny vineyard nestles in the
half-light; the gray road trails outside; and beyond rise the walls,
serene and stately, catching on their highest towers the last rays of
the sun.

The pointed shaft of the German church lifts a gray-green finger tipped
with rose into the ambient air. The sable dome of the Holy Sepulcher
yields a little to the subtle influence, and shows a softer and more
becoming purple.

All the unlovely traits and the squalor of the city are lost, so
delicately tender is the mass of buildings painted against the
background of distance.

It had been one of those days in March when the clouds of "the latter
rains" had been blowing from the west. As the day drew near its close,
the heavy mists assembled in great masses of ominous gray and blue,
golden-edged against the turquoise sky. With such speed did they move
that they seemed suddenly to leap from the horizon, and the vast dome
of the heaven became filled with weird, flying monsters racing
overhead. The violence of the wind tore the blue into fragments, so
that what only a moment since was a colossal weight of cloud
threatening to ingulf the universe, was now like a great host marshaled
in splendid array, flying banners of crimson, whose ranks were ever
changing, until they scattered in disordered flight across the face of
the sky.

As the lowering sun neared the horizon, the color grew more and more
vivid, until the whole heaven was aflame with a whirlwind of scarlet
and gold and crimson, of violet and blue and emerald, flecked with
copper and bronze and shreds of smoky clouds in shadow, a tempestuous
riot of color so wild and extraordinary as to hold one spellbound.

Had not David beheld a similar sky when he wrote:--

  O Lord my God, thou art very great;
  Thou art clothed with honor and majesty.
  Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment:
  Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
  Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters:
  Who maketh the clouds his chariot:
  Who walketh upon the wings of the wind:
  Who maketh winds his messengers;
  His ministers a flaming fire.


A RETURN IN TRIUMPH

From a speech before the New England Society of New York, December,
1886

BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE

I never so realized what this country was and is as on the day when I
first saw some of these gentlemen of the Army and Navy. It was when at
the close of the War our armies came back and marched in review before
the President's stand at Washington. I do not care whether a man was a
Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had
any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping. God
knew that the day was stupendous, and He cleared the heaven of cloud
and mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for
the returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring
foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and
the sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of
the battalions as they came to the Long Bridge and in almost
interminable line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as
on that morning: snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that
came surging down, billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet I heard
in every step the thunder of conflicts through which they had waded,
and seemed to see dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood
of our country's martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and
watched the filing on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after
brigade, division after division, host after host, rank beyond rank;
ever moving, ever passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp--
thousands after thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns
solid, shoulder to shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger,
nostril to nostril.

Commanders on horses with their manes entwined with roses, and necks
enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the
line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white,
standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of
hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!"
Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon
wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of
the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from
balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed
to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen.
Those came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one
great cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers
in peril, on their way home from Chancellorsville and Kenesaw Mountain
and Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on.

We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end
had come, but no! Looking from one end of that long avenue to the
other, we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond
host, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as
it were from under the Capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets,
caught in the sun, glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed
like one long river of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of
fire. No end of the procession, no rest for the eyes. We turned our
heads from the scene, unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop
our ears, but still we heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp,
tramp. But hush,--uncover every head! Here they pass, the remnant of
ten men of a full regiment. Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on
and wring their hands. But wheel into line, all ye people! North,
South, East, West--all decades, all centuries, all millenniums!
Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza!


A RETURN IN DEFEAT

From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Junior

BY HENRY W. GRADY

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master hand, the picture of your
returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of
war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread,
reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I
tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late
war? An army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos
and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as
loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore
Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the
parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and
faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865.
Think of him, as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want
and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings
the hands of his comrades in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and
pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia
hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful
journey. What does he find?--let me ask you who went to your homes
eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for
four years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the
battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half
so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and
beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves
free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;
his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very
traditions gone; without money, credit, employment, material training;
and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met
human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast body of
his liberated slaves.

What does he do--this hero in gray, with a heart of gold? Does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had
stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The
soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had
charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and the fields that ran
red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June;
women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their
husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a
garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all
this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. I want to say to General
Sherman--who is considered an able man in our parts, though some people
think he is kind of careless about fire--that from the ashes he left us
in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or
other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our
homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.

But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work?
We have found that in the general summary the free negro counts more
than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop
and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in
the place of theories, and put business above politics.

Above all, we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of
peace" a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers
sought to win in the forum by their eloquence, or compel on the field
by their swords.




EXPRESSION BY ACTION


IN OUR FOREFATHERS' DAY

From a speech before the New England Society of New York, December,
1886

BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE

I must not introduce a new habit into these New England dinners, and
confine myself to the one theme. For eighty-one years your speakers
have been accustomed to make the toast announced the point from which
they start, but to which they never return. So I shall not stick to my
text, but only be particular to have all I say my own, and not make the
mistake of a minister whose sermon was a patchwork from a variety of
authors, to whom he gave no credit. There was an intoxicated wag in the
audience who had read about everything, and he announced the authors as
the minister went on. The clergyman gave an extract without any credit
to the author, and the man in the audience cried out: "That's Jeremy
Taylor." The speaker went on and gave an extract from another author
without credit for it, and the man in the audience said: "That is John
Wesley." The minister gave an extract from another without credit for
it, and the man in the audience said: "That is George Whitefield." When
the minister lost his patience and cried out, "Shut up, you old fool!"
the man in the audience replied: "That is your own."

Well, what about this Forefathers' Day? In Brooklyn they say the
Landing of the Pilgrims was December the 21st; in New York you say it
was December the 22d. You are both right. Not through the specious and
artful reasoning you have sometimes indulged in, but by a little
historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see,
the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about
noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American
beach looking for a New England dinner and a band of savages out for a
tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought it best
for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the night.
And during the night there came up a strong wind blowing off shore that
swept the Mayflower from its moorings clear out to sea, and there was a
prospect that our Forefathers, having escaped oppression in foreign
lands, would yet go down under an oceanic tempest. But the next day
they fortunately got control of their ship and steered her in, and the
second time the Forefathers stepped ashore.

Brooklyn celebrated the first landing; New York the second landing. So
I say Hail! Hail! to both celebrations, for one day, anyhow, could not
do justice to such a subject; and I only wish I could have kissed the
blarney stone of America, which is Plymouth Rock, so that I might have
done justice to this subject. Ah, gentlemen, that Mayflower was the ark
that floated the deluge of oppression, and Plymouth Rock was the Ararat
on which it landed.

But let me say that these Forefathers were of no more importance than
the Foremothers. As I understand it, there were eight of them--that is,
four fathers and four mothers--from whom all these illustrious New
Englanders descended.

Now I was not born in New England, but though not born in New England,
in my boyhood I had a New England schoolmaster, whom I shall never
forget. He taught us our A, B, C's. "What is that?" "I don't know,
sir." "That's A" (with a slap). "What is that?" "I don't know, sir."
(With a slap)--"That is B." I tell you, a boy that learned his letters
in that way never forgot them; and if the boy was particularly dull,
then this New England schoolmaster would take him over his knee, and
then the boy got his information from both directions.

But all these things aside, no one sitting at these tables has higher
admiration for the Pilgrim Fathers than I have--the men who believed
in two great doctrines, which are the foundation of every religion that
is worth anything: namely, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
Man--these men of backbone and endowed with that great and magnificent
attribute of stick-to-it-iveness.


CASSIUS AGAINST CĘSAR

From "Julius Cęsar"

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favor.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.--
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Cęsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he:
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cęsar said to me, "Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And bade him follow: so, indeed, he did.
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy;
But ere we could arrive the point propos'd,
Cęsar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!"
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cęsar. And this man
Is now become a god; and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Cęsar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And, when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their color fly;
And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose his luster: I did hear him groan:
Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas, it cried, "Give me some drink, Titinius,"
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.

II

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Cęsar: what should be in that "Cęsar"?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cęsar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cęsar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was fam'd with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.


THE SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH

From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady Junior

BY HENRY W. GRADY

The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the
breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her
face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and
prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the
people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the
expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because
in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her
brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has
nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own
convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South
has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument
that crowns its central hills--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its
shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a
brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all
the glories of New England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I
exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of
that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who
ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the
shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I
say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life
was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am
glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his Almighty
hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil--the
American Union saved from the wreck of war.

This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground.
Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a
battle ground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed
to you by the blood of your brothers, sacred soil to all of us, rich
with memories that make us purer and stronger and better, speaking an
eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble
union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the
American people.

Now what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the
prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it
has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this
prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never
felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? Will she
withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his
soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the
vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch
of your dying captain, [Footnote: General Ulysses S. Grant.] filling
his heart  with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his
path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of
his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If
she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must
accept with dignity a refusal; but if she does not, if she accepts in
frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then
will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty
years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest and
final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands,
we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of
the same country, members of the same government, united, all united
now and united forever. There have been difficulties, contentions, and
controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,--

                        "'Those opposed eyes,
  Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
  All of one nature, of one substance bred,
  Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
  Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
  March all one way.'"


SOMETHING RANKLING HERE

From the reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate, January, 1830.
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers of "The Great Speeches
and Orations of Daniel Webster"

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the
Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that there was
something rankling _here_ which he wished to relieve. It would
not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those
around him upon the question whether he did in fact make use of that
word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough
that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that
particular word, he had yet something _here_, he said, of which he
wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I
have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing
_here_, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither
fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than
either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is
nothing, either originating _here_, or now received _here_ by
the gentleman's shot. Nothing originating here, for I had not the
slightest feeling of unkindness towards the honorable member. Some
passages, it is true, had occurred since our acquaintance in this body,
which I could have wished might have been otherwise; but I had used
philosophy and forgotten them. I paid the honorable member the
attention of listening with respect to his first speech; and when he
sat down, though surprised, and I must even say astonished, at some of
his opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than to commence
any personal warfare. Through the whole of the few remarks I made in
answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought
possible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, while there is thus
nothing originating _here_ which I wished at any time or now wish
to discharge, I must repeat also, that nothing has been received
_here_ which _rankles_, or in any way gives me  annoyance. I
will not accuse the honorable member of violating the rules of
civilized war; I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. But whether
his shafts were or were not dipped in that which would have caused
rankling if they had reached their destination, there was not, as it
happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark.
If he wishes now to gather up those shafts, he must look for them
elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at
which they were aimed.

But the gentleman inquires why _he_ was made the object of such a
reply. Why was _he_ singled out? If an attack has been made on the
East, he, he assures us, did not begin it; it was made by the gentleman
from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech because I
happened to hear it; and because, also, I chose to give an answer to
that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce
injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original
drawer of the bill. I found a responsible indorser before me, and it
was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just
responsibility, without delay.


FAITH IN THE PEOPLE

BY JOHN BRIGHT

Our opponents have charged us with being the promoters of a dangerous
excitement. They have the effrontery to say that I am the friend of
public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely, if there be one thing
in a free country more clear than another, it is, that any one of the
people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of
their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them,--if I speak
of their danger to the monopolists of power,--am I not a wise
counsellor, both to the people and to their rulers?

Suppose I stood at the foot of Vesuvius, or Aetna, and, seeing a hamlet
or a homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that
hamlet, or in that homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from
the summit of the mountain. That vapor may become a dense, black smoke,
that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the
crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become
a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain.
That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent
convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet
is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as
histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away,
and their names have been known no more forever."

If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if
there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder,
am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or
fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in
danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent
pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.

The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has failed
miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a
terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has
neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation.

That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry. Let us try the
nation. This it is which has called together these countless numbers of
the people to demand a change; and from these gatherings, sublime in
their vastness and their resolution, I think I see, as it were, above
the hilltops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a
nobler day for the country and the people that I love so well.


THE FRENCH AGAINST HAYTI

From a lecture, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," with the permission of
Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, Boston, publishers

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

You remember when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis XVIII sent an
army against him, Bonaparte descended from his carriage, opened his
coat, offering his breast to their muskets, and saying, "Frenchmen, it
is the Emperor!" and they ranged themselves behind him, his soldiers
shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" That was in 1815. Twelve years before,
Toussaint, finding that four of his regiments had deserted and gone to
Leclerc, drew his sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field
to them, folded his arms, and said, "Children, can you point a bayonet
at me?" The blacks fell on their knees, praying his pardon. It was
against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General
Leclerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand
of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. Among these
soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes.

Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be
neutral; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending
arms to tyrants. England promised neutrality, and the black looked out
on the whole civilized world marshaled against him. America, full of
slaves, of course was hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at
a very high price. Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of
the island, Samana, he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever
seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of
Europe, rounded the point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an
equal, whose tread, like Cęsar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had
scaled the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on the Walls of
Rome. He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on
the neck of his horse, and turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All
France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves; and we
are lost!" He then recognized the only mistake of his life,--his
confidence in Bonaparte, which had led him to disband his army.

Returning to the hills, he issued the only proclamation which bears his
name and breathes vengeance: "My children, France comes to make us
slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right to take it away. Burn
the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison
the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make";--and he was
obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV cover Holland
with troops, he said, "Break down the dikes, give Holland back to
ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander saw the armies of
France descend upon Russia, he said, "Burn Moscow, starve back the
invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw all Europe
marshaled to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example
of defiance.


THE NECESSITY OF FORCE

From a speech in the United States Senate, March 24, 1898

BY JOHN M. THURSTON

I counseled silence and moderation from this floor when the passion of
the nation seemed at white heat over the destruction of the
_Maine_; but it seems to me the time for action has now come. No
greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every
hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and
death. Only one power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours
is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American
republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the
peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her
glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise the flag
of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to accept this
responsibility which the God of the universe has placed upon us as the
one great power in the New World. We must act! What shall our action
be? Some say, The acknowledgment of the belligerency of the
revolutionists. The hour and the opportunity for that have passed away.
Others say, Let us by resolution or official proclamation recognize the
independence of the Cubans. It is too late for even such recognition to
be of great avail. Others say, Annexation to the United States. God
forbid! I would oppose annexation with my latest breath. The people of
Cuba are not our people; they cannot assimilate with us; and beyond all
that, I am utterly and unalterably opposed to any departure from the
declared policy of the fathers, which would start this republic for the
first time upon a career of conquest and dominion utterly at variance
with the avowed purposes and the manifest destiny of popular
government.

There is only one action possible, if any is taken; that is,
intervention for the independence of the island. We cannot intervene
and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war
means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the
divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not
peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will
toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their
fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in the
doctrine of peace; but men must have liberty before there can come
abiding peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won
except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has
ever been carried except by force?

Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna
Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made
effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force waved the flag of
revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with
bloodstained feet; force held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the
flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout
Heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in
the Valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men.
The time for God's force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of
American patriots once more take up the song:--

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
  With a glory in His bosom that transfigured you and me.
  As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
  For God is marching on.

Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for
further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay, but for me, I am
ready to act now, and for my action, I am ready to answer to my
conscience, my country, and my God.


AGAINST WAR WITH MEXICO

From a speech to the United States Senate, February 11, 1847

BY THOMAS CORWIN

The President has said he does not expect to hold Mexican territory by
conquest. Why, then, conquer it? Why waste thousands of lives and
millions of money fortifying towns and creating governments, if, at the
end of the war, you retire from the graves of your soldiers and the
desolated country of your foes, only to get money from Mexico for the
expense of all your toil and sacrifice? Who ever heard, since
Christianity was propagated among men, of a nation taxing its people,
enlisting its young men, and marching off two thousand miles to fight a
people merely to be paid for it in money? What is this but hunting a
market for blood, selling the lives of your young men, marching them in
regiments to be slaughtered and paid for like oxen and brute beasts?

Sir, this is, when stripped naked, that atrocious idea first
promulgated in the President's message, and now advocated here, of
fighting on till we can get our indemnity for the past as well as the
present slaughter. We have chastised Mexico, and if it were worth while
to do so, we have, I dare say, satisfied the world that we can fight.

Sir, I have read in some account of your Battle of Monterey, of a
lovely Mexican girl, who, with the benevolence of an angel in her bosom
and the robust courage of a hero in her heart, was busily engaged
during the bloody conflict, amid the crash of falling houses, the
groans of the dying, and the wild shriek of battle, in carrying water
to slake the burning thirst of the wounded of either host. While
bending over a wounded American soldier, a cannonball struck her and
blew her to atoms! Sir, I do not charge my brave, generous-hearted
countrymen who fought that fight with this. No, no! We who send them--
we who know what scenes like this, which might send tears of sorrow
"down Pluto's iron cheek," are the invariable, inevitable attendants on
war--we are accountable for this. And this--this is the way we are  to
be made known to Europe. This--this is to be the undying renown of
free,  republican America! "She has stormed a city--killed many of its
inhabitants of both sexes--she has room"! So it will read. Sir, if this
were our only history, then may God of His mercy grant that its volume
may  speedily come to a close.

Why is it, sir, that we, the United States, a people of yesterday
compared with the older nations of the world, should be waging war for
territory--for "room?" Look at your country, extending from the
Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining
in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one
hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your
population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last
session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier
of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the
ridiculous assertion, "I want room." One would imagine, from the
frequent reiteration of the complaint, that you had a bursting, teeming
population, whose energy was paralyzed, whose enterprise was crushed,
for want of space. Why should we be so weak or wicked as to offer this
idle apology for ravaging a neighboring Republic? It will impose on no
one at home or abroad.

Do we not know, Mr. President, that it is a law never to be repealed
that falsehood shall be short-lived? Was it not ordained of old that
truth only shall abide for ever? Whatever we may say to-day, or
whatever we may write in our books, the stern tribunal of history will
review it all, detect falsehood, and bring us to judgment before that
posterity which shall bless or curse us, as we may act now, wisely or
otherwise. We may hide in the grave (which awaits us all) in vain; we
may hope there, like the foolish bird that hides its head in the sand,
in the vain belief that its body is not seen; yet even there this
preposterous excuse of want of "room" shall be laid bare and the quick-
coming future will decide that it was a hypocritical pretense under
which we sought to conceal the avarice which prompted us to covet and
to seize by force that which was not ours.


THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY

From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

Mr. Chairman: We have met for the freest discussion of these
resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. I hope I shall be
permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last
speaker,--surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at
the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has
been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at
Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great
Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at
Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot
fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil
Hall doctrine? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his
just rights,--met to resist the laws. We have been told that our
fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary
precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their
title to such defense, the gentleman says that the British Parliament
had a _right_ to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without
this, his parallel falls to the ground; for Lovejoy had stationed
himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the
freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the
sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against
and over the laws. The _mob_, as the gentleman terms it,--mob,
forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvelously
patient generation!--the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South
to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal
exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act
_laws!_ Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the
King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our
Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with
arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British
Parliament unconstitutional,--beyond its power. It was not till this
was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments
of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and
sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have
enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the
excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness
to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the man of that day went
for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to
sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our
day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the
gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side
by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those
pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken
into voice to rebuke the recreant American,--the slanderer of the dead.
The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared
to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments
he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the
blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.

I am glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be
here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her
duty, to strike the keynote for these United States.




DEPICTING CHARACTER


A TALE OF THE PLAINS

From "Hunting the Grizzly," with the permission of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York and London, publishers.

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

One of my valued friends in the mountains, and one of the best hunters
with whom I ever traveled, was a man who had a peculiarly light-hearted
way of looking at conventional social obligations. Though in some ways
a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of much shrewdness and of
great courage and resolution. Moreover, he possessed what only a few
men do possess, the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they
were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth
unless for very weighty reasons. He was preeminently a philosopher, of
a happy, skeptical turn of mind. He had no prejudices.

On one occasion when we were out together we killed a bear, and after
skinning it, took a bath in a lake. I noticed he had a scar on the side
of his foot, and asked him how he got it, to which he responded, with
indifference:--

"Oh, that? Why, a man shoo tin' at me to make me dance, that was all."

I expressed some curiosity in the matter, and he went on:

"Well, the way of it was this: It was when I was keeping a saloon in
New Mexico, and there was a man there by the name of Fowler, and there
was a reward on him of three thousand dollars--"

"Put on him by the State?"

"No, put on by his wife," said my friend; "and there was this--"

"Hold on," I interrupted; "put on by his wife, did you say?"

"Yes, by his wife. Him and her had been keepin' a faro bank, you see,
and they quarreled about it, so she just put a reward on him, and so--"

"Excuse me," I said, "but do you mean to say that this reward was put
on publicly?" to which my friend answered with an air of gentlemanly
boredom at being interrupted to gratify my thirst for irrelevant
detail:--

"Oh, no, not publicly. She just mentioned it to six or eight intimate
personal friends."

"Go on," I responded, somewhat overcome by this instance of the
primitive simplicity with which New Mexican matrimonial disputes were
managed, and he continued:--

"Well, two men come ridin' in to see me to borrow my guns. My guns was
Colt's self-cockers. It was a new thing then, and they was the only
ones in town. These come to me, and 'Simpson,' says they, 'we want to
borrow your guns; we are goin' to kill Fowler.'

"'Hold on for a moment,' said I, 'I am willin' to lend you them guns,
but I ain't goin' to know what you'r' goin' to do with them, no, sir;
but of course you can have the guns.'" Here my friend's face lightened
pleasantly, and he continued:--

"Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next day when Fowler
come ridin' in, and, says he, 'Simpson, here's your guns!' He had shot
them two men! 'Well, Fowler,' says I, 'if I had known them men was
after you, I'd never have let them have the guns nohow,' says I. That
wasn't true, for I did know it, but there was no cause to tell him
that."

I murmured my approval of such prudence, and Simpson continued, his
eyes gradually brightening with the light of agreeable reminiscence:--

"Well, they up and they took Fowler before the justice of peace. The
justice of the peace was a Turk."

"Now, Simpson, what do you mean by that?" I interrupted.

"Well, he come from Turkey," said Simpson, and I again sank back,
wondering briefly what particular variety of Mediterranean outcast had
drifted down to Mexico to be made a justice of the peace. Simpson
laughed and continued: "That Fowler was a funny fellow. The Turk, he
committed Fowler, and Fowler, he riz up and knocked him down and
tromped all over him and made him let him go!"

"That was an appeal to a higher law," I observed. Simpson assented
cheerily, and continued:--

"Well, that Turk, he got nervous for fear Fowler was goin' to kill him,
and so he comes to me and offers me twenty-five dollars a day to
protect him from Fowler; and I went to Fowler, and 'Fowler,' says I,
'that Turk's offered me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from
you. Now, I ain't goin' to get shot for no twenty-five dollars a day,
and if you are goin' to kill the Turk, just say so and go and do it;
but if you ain't goin' to kill the Turk, there's no reason why I
shouldn't earn that twenty-five dollars a day!' and Fowler, says he, 'I
ain't goin' to touch the Turk; you just go right ahead and protect
him.'"

So Simpson "protected" the Turk from the imaginary danger of Fowler,
for about a week, at twenty-five dollars a day.

Then one evening he happened to go out and meet Fowler, "and," said he,
"the moment I saw him I know he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at my
feet," which certainly did seem to offer presumptive evidence of
meanness. Simpson continued:--

"I didn't have no gun, so I just had to stand there and take it until
something distracted his attention, and I went off home to get my gun
and kill him, but I wanted to do it perfectly lawful; so I went up to
the mayor (he was playin' poker with one of the judges), and says I to
him, 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I am goin' to shoot Fowler.' And the mayor
he riz out of his chair and he took me by the hand, and says he, 'Mr.
Simpson, if you do I will stand by you'; and the judge he says, 'I'll
go on your bond.'"

Fortified by this cordial approval of the executive and judicial
branches of the government, Mr. Simpson started on his quest.
Meanwhile, however, Fowler had cut up another prominent citizen, and
they already had him in jail. The friends of law and order, feeling
some little distrust as to the permanency of their own zeal for
righteousness, thought it best to settle the matter before there was
time for cooling, and accordingly, headed by Simpson, the mayor, the
judge, the Turk, and other prominent citizens of the town, they broke
into the jail and hanged Fowler. The point in the hanging which
especially tickled my friend's fancy as he lingered over the
reminiscence was one that was rather too ghastly to appeal to our own
sense of humor. In the Turk's mind there still rankled the memory of
Fowler's very unprofessional conduct while figuring before him as a
criminal. Said Simpson, with a merry twinkle of the eye: "Do you know,
that Turk, he was a right funny fellow too after all. Just as the boys
were going to string up Fowler, says he, 'Boys, stop; one moment,
gentlemen,--Mr. Fowler, good-by,' and he blew a kiss to him!"


GUNGA DIN

From "Departmental Ditties," with the permission of A. P. Watt and
Son, London, and Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

  You may talk o' gin and beer
  When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
  But when it comes to slaughter
  You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
  Now in Injia's sunny clime,
  Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
  Of all them blackfaced crew
  The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
  He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
  Hi! slippery hitherao!
  Water, get it! Panee lao! [Footnote: Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

  The uniform 'e wore
  Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
  For a piece o' twisty rag
  An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
  When the sweatin' troop-train lay
  In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
  We shouted "Harry By!" [Footnote: O Brother]
  Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
  It was "Din! Din! Din!
  You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
  You put some juldee in it
  Or I'll marrow you this minute, [Footnote: Hit you]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

  'E would dot an' carry one
  Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
  If we charged or broke or cut,
  You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
  With 'is mussick [Footnote: Water skin] on 'is back,
  'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire,"
  An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
  'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
  It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
  When the cartridges ran out,
  You could hear the front-files shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

  I sha'n't forgit the night
  When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
  I was chokin' mad with thirst,
  An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
  'E lifted up my 'ead,
  An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
  It was crawlin' and it stunk,
  But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
  It was "Din! Din! Din!"
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
  'E's chawin' up the ground,
  An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"

  'E carried me away
  To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
  'E put me safe inside,
  An' just before 'e died:
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.
  So I'll meet 'im later on
  At the place where 'e is gone--
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
  'E'll be squattin' on the coals,
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
  Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
  Though I've belted you and flayed you,
  By the living Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!


ADDRESS OF SERGEANT BUZFUZ

From "The Pickwick Papers"

BY CHARLES DICKENS

Sergeant Buzfuz rose with all the majesty and dignity which the grave
nature of the proceedings demanded, and having whispered to Dodson, and
conferred briefly with Fogg, pulled his gown over his shoulders,
settled his wig, and addressed the jury.

Sergeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his
professional experience,--never, from the very first moment of his
applying himself to the study and practice of the law, had he
approached a case with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed
upon him,--a responsibility he could never have supported, were he not
buoyed up and sustained by a conviction, so strong that it amounted to
positive certainty, that the cause of truth and justice, or, in other
words, the cause of his much-injured and most oppressed client,
_must_ prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men
whom he now saw in that box before him.

Counsel always begin in this way, because it puts the jury on the best
terms with themselves, and makes them think what sharp fellows they
must be. A visible effect was produced immediately; several jurymen
beginning to take voluminous notes.

"The plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr.
Bardell, after enjoying, for many years, the esteem and confidence of
his sovereign, as one of the guardians of his royal revenues, glided
almost imperceptibly from the world, to seek elsewhere for that repose
and peace which a custom-house can never afford."

This was a pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had
been knocked on the head with a quart-pot in a public-house cellar.

"Of this man Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few
attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen,
the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness and
of systematic villainy."

Here Mr. Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence, gave a violent
start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Sergeant Buzfuz, in the
august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to his mind.

"I say systematic villainy, gentlemen," said Sergeant Buzfuz, looking
through Mr. Pickwick, and talking _at_ him, "and when I say
systematic villainy, let me tell the defendant, Pickwick,--if he be in
court, as I am informed he is,--that it would have been more decent in
him, more becoming, in better judgment, and in better taste, if he had
stopped away.

"I shall show you, gentlemen, that for two years Pickwick continued to
reside without interruption or intermission at Mrs. Bardell's house. I
shall show you that, on many occasions, he gave halfpence, and on some
occasions even sixpences, to her little boy; and I shall prove to you,
by a witness whose testimony it will be impossible for my learned
friend to weaken or controvert, that on one occasion he patted the boy
on the head, and, after inquiring whether he had won any _alley
tors_ or _commoneys_ lately (both of which I understand to be a
particular species of marbles much prized by the youth of this town),
made use of this remarkable expression: 'How should you like to have
another father?' I shall prove to you, gentlemen, on the testimony of
three of his own friends,--most unwilling witnesses, gentlemen,--most
unwilling witnesses,--that on that morning he was discovered by them
holding the plaintiff in his arms, and soothing her agitation by his
caresses and endearments.

"And now, gentlemen, but one word more. Two letters have passed between
these parties,--letters which are admitted to be in the handwriting of
the defendant. Let me read the first:--'Garraway's, twelve o'clock.
Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and Tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.' Gentlemen, what
does this mean? Chops! Gracious heavens! and Tomato sauce! Gentlemen,
is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away
by such shallow artifices as these? The next has no date whatever,
which is in itself suspicious. 'Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home
till to-morrow. Slow coach.' And then follows this very remarkable
expression. 'Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan.' Why,
gentlemen, who _does_ trouble himself about a warming-pan? Why is
Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this
warming-pan, unless it is, as I assert it to be, a mere cover for
hidden fire,--a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise,
agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully
contrived by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion, and
which I am not in a condition to explain?

"Enough of this. My client's hopes and prospects are ruined. But
Pickwick, gentlemen,--Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic
oasis in the desert of Goswell Street,--Pickwick, who has choked up the
well, and thrown ashes on the sward,--Pickwick, who comes before you
to-day with his heartless Tomato sauce and warming-pans,--Pickwick
still rears his head with unblushing effrontery, and gazes without a
sigh on the ruin he has made. Damages, gentlemen, heavy damages, are
the only punishment with which you can visit him, the only recompense
you can award to my client. And for those damages she now appeals to an
enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a
dispassionate, a sympathizing, a contemplative jury of her civilized
countrymen."


A NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

BY MACCABE

Ladies and Gentlemen: I see so many foine-lookin' people sittin' before
me that if you'll excuse me I'll be after takin' a seat meself. You
don't know me, I'm thinking, as some of yees 'ud be noddin' to me afore
this. I'm a walkin' pedestrian, a travelin' philosopher. Terry
O'Mulligan's me name. I'm from Dublin, where many philosophers before
me was raised and bred. Oh, philosophy is a foine study! I don't know
anything about it, but it's a foine study! Before I kirn over I
attended an important meetin' of philosophers in Dublin, and the
discussin' and talkin' you'd hear there about the world 'ud warm the
very heart of Socrates or Aristotle himself. Well, there was a great
many _imminent_ and learned _min_ there at the meetin', and I
was there too, and while we was in the very thickest of a heated
argument, one comes to me and says he, "Do you know what we're talkin'
about?" "I do," says I, "but I don't understand yees." "Could ye
explain the sun's motion around the earth?" says he. "I could," says I,
"but I'd not know could you understand or not." "Well," says he, "we'll
see," says he. Sure'n I didn't know anything, how to get out of it
then, so I piled in, "for," says I to myself, "never let on to any one
that you don't know anything, but make them believe that you do know
all about it." So says I to him, takin' up me shillalah this way
(holding a very crooked stick perpendicular), "We'll take that for the
straight line of the earth's equator"--how's that for gehography? (to
the audience). Ah, that was straight till the other day I bent it in an
argument. "Wery good," says he. "Well," says I, "now the sun rises in
the east" (placing the disengaged hand at the eastern end of the
stick). Well, he couldn't deny that. "And when he gets up he

  Darts his rosy beams
  Through the mornin' gleams."

Do you moind the poetry there? (to the audience with a smile). "And he
keeps on risin' and risin' till he reaches his meriden." "What's that?"
says he. "His dinner-toime," says I; "sure'n that's my Latin for
dinner-toime, and when he gets his dinner

  He sinks to rest
  Behind the glorious hills of the west."

Oh, begorra, there's more poetry! I fail it creepin' out all over me.
"There," says I, well satisfied with myself, "will that do for ye?"
"You haven't got done with him yet," says he. "Done with him," says I,
kinder mad like; "what more do you want me to do with him? Didn't I
bring him from the east to the west? What more do you want?" "Oh," says
he, "you'll have to bring him back again to the east to rise next
mornin'." By Saint Patrick! and wasn't I near betrayin' me ignorance,
Sure'n I thought there was a large family of suns, and they rise one
after the other. But I gathered meself quick, and, says I to him,
"Well," says I, "I'm surprised you axed me that simple question. I
thought any man 'ud know," says I, "when the sun sinks to rest in the
west--when the sun--" says I. "You said that before," says he. "Well, I
want to press it stronger upon you," says I. "When the sun sinks to
rest in the east--no--west, why he--why he waits till it grows dark,
and then he goes _back in the noight toime_!"


RESPONSE TO A TOAST

From "A Charity Dinner"

BY LITCHFIELD MOSELEY

"Milors and Gentlemans!" commences the Frenchman, elevating his
eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders. "Milors and Gentlemans--You
excellent chairman, M. le Baron de Mount-Stuart, he have say to me,
'Make de toast.' Den I say to him dat I have no toast to make; but he
nudge my elbow ver soft, and say dat dere is von toast dat nobody but
von Frenchman can make proper; and, derefore, wid your kind permission,
I vill make de toast. 'De brevete is de sole of de feet,' as you great
philosophere, Dr. Johnson, do say, in dat amusing little vork of his,
de Pronouncing Dictionnaire; and, derefore, I vill not say ver moch to
de point. Ven I vas a boy, about so moch tall, and used for to
promenade de streets of Marseilles et of Rouen, vid no feet to put onto
my shoe, I nevare to have expose dat dis day vould to have arrive. I
vas to begin de vorld as von garēon--or, vat you call in dis countrie,
von vaitaire in a café--vere I vork ver hard, vid no habillemens at all
to put onto myself, and ver little food to eat, excep' von old blue
blouse vat vas give to me by de proprietaire, just for to keep myself
fit to be showed at; but, tank goodness, tings dey have change ver moch
for me since dat time, and I have rose myself, seulement par mon
industrie et perseverance. Ah! mes amis! ven I hear to myself de
flowing speech, de oration magnifique of you Lor' Maire, Monsieur
Gobbledown, I feel dat it is von great privilege for von étrangé to sit
at de same table, and to eat de same food, as dat grand, dat majestique
man, who are de terreur of de voleurs and de brigands of de metropolis;
and who is also, I for to suppose, a halterman and de chef of you
common scoundrel. Milors and gentlemans, I feel dat I can perspire to
no greatare honneur dan to be von common scoundrelman myself; but,
hélas! dat plaisir are not for me, as I are not freeman of your great
cité, not von liveryman servant of von of you compagnies joint-stock.
But I must not forget de toast. Milors and Gentlemans! De immortal
Shakispeare he have write, 'De ting of beauty are de joy for
nevermore.' It is de ladies who are de toast. Vat is more entrancing
dan de charmante smile, de soft voice, der vinking eye of de beautiful
lady! It is de ladies who do sweeten de cares of life. It is de ladies
who are de guiding stars of our existence. It is de ladies who do cheer
but not inebriate, and, derefore, vid all homage to de dear sex, de
toast dat I have to propose is, "De Ladies! God bless dem all!"


PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAY

From "Tom Jones"

BY HENRY FIELDING

In the first row of the first gallery did Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, her
youngest daughter, and Partridge, take their places. Partridge
immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in. When
the first music was played, he said, "It was a wonder how so many
fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out."
While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs.
Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of
the common-prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could
he help observing, with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted,
"That here were candles enough burnt in one night, to keep an honest
poor family for a whole twelvemonth."

As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began,
Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance
of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones, "What man that was in the
strange dress; something," said he, "like what I have seen in a
picture. Sure it is not armor, is it?" Jones answered, "That is the
ghost." To which Partridge replied with a smile, "Persuade me to that,
sir, if you can. ... No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such dresses
as that, neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the
neighborhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, till the scene
between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr.
Garrick, which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a
trembling, that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him
what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the
stage? "O la! sir," said he, "I perceive now it is what you told me. ...
Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little man
there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened
in my life. Ay, ay: go along with you: Ay, to be sure! Who's fool then?
Will you? Lud have mercy upon such foolhardiness!--Whatever happens,
it is good enough for you.--Follow you? I'd follow the devil as soon.
Nay, perhaps it is the devil--for they say he can put on what likeness
he pleases.--Oh! here he is again.--No farther! No, you have gone far
enough already; farther than I'd have gone for all the king's
dominions." Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, "Hush, hush!
dear sir, don't you hear him?" And during the whole speech of the
ghost, he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost and partly on
Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions which succeeded each
other in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in him.

During the second act, Partridge made very few remarks. He greatly
admired the fineness of the dresses; nor could he help observing upon
the king's countenance. "Well," said he, "how people may be deceived by
faces! _Nulla fides fronti_ is, I find, a true saying. Who would
think, by looking into the king's face, that he had ever committed a
murder?" He then inquired after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he
should be surprised, gave him no other satisfaction than "that he might
possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of fire."

Partridge sat in a fearful expectation of this; and now, when the ghost
made his next appearance, Partridge cried out, "There, sir, now; what
say you now? is he frightened now or no? As much frightened as you
think me, and, to be sure, nobody can help some fears. I would not be
in so bad a condition as what's his name, squire Hamlet, is there, for
all the world. Bless me! what's become of the spirit! As I am a living
soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth." "Indeed, you saw
right," answered Jones, "Well, well," cries Partridge, "I know it is
only a play: and besides, if there was any thing in all this, Madam
Miller would not laugh so; for as to you, sir, you would not be afraid,
I believe, if the devil was here in person.--There, there--Aye, no
wonder you are in such a passion; shake the vile wicked wretch to
pieces. If she was my own mother, I would serve her so. To be sure all
duty to a mother is forfeited by such wicked doings.--Aye, go about
your business, I hate the sight of you."

Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at the end of
which Jones asked him which of the players he had liked best? To this
he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, "The
king, without doubt." "Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you
are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed,
that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." "He
the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, "why, I
could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I
should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as ne did.
And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and
his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why, Lord help me, any
man, that is, any good man, that had such a mother, would have done
exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me; but indeed,
madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting
before in the country; and the king for my money; he speaks all his
words distinctly, half as loud again as the other.--Anybody may see he
is an actor."


A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT

BY ROBERT BURNS

Is there for honest poverty
  That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by--
  We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
  Our toils obscure, an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
  The man's the gowd [Footnote: gold] for a' that!

What tho' on hamely [Footnote: homely, plain] fare we dine,
  Wear hoddin [Footnote: homespun] gray, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine--
  A man's a man, for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
  Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
  Is king o' men for a' that!

Ye see yon birkie [Footnote: fellow], ca'd a lord,
  Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
  He's but a coof [Footnote: fool (pronounce like German _o_ or
    _oe_)] for a' that;
For a' that, an' a' that,
  His riband, star, an' a' that;
The man of independent mind,
  He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
  A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon [Footnote: above] his might--
  Gude faith, he maunna fa' [Footnote: must not claim (to make the
    honest man)] that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
  Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
  Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
  As come it will for a' that,
That sense an' worth, o'er a' the earth,
  Shall bear the gree, [Footnote: prize] an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
  It's comin' yet, for a' that--
That man to man, the warld o'er,
  Shall brothers be for a' that.


ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE

From "Complete Works of Artemus Ward" with the permission of the
G. W. Dillingham Company, New York, publishers.

BY CHARLES FARRAR BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD)

I don't expect to do great things here--but I have thought that if I
could make money enough to buy me a passage to New Zealand I should
feel that I had not lived in vain. I don't want to live in vain. I'd
rather live in Texas--or here.

If you should be dissatisfied with anything here to-night--I will
admit you all free in New Zealand--if you will come to me there for the
orders. Any respectable cannibal will tell you where I live. This shows
that I have a forgiving spirit.

I really don't care for money. I only travel round to see the world and
to exhibit my clothes. These clothes I have on have been a great
success in America.

How often do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined,
but I can get on very well as I am.

I am not an Artist. I don't paint myself--though perhaps if I were a
middle-aged single lady I should--yet I have a passion for pictures.--I
have had a great many pictures--photographs--taken of myself. Some of
them are very pretty--rather sweet to look at for a short time--and as
I said before, I like them. I've always loved pictures. I could draw on
wood at a very tender age. When a mere child I once drew a small
cartload of raw turnips over a wooden bridge.--The people of the
village noticed me. I drew their attention. They said I had a future
before me. Up to that time I had an idea it was behind me.

Time passed on. It always does, by the way. You may possibly have
noticed that Time passes on.--It is a kind of way Time has.

I became a man. I haven't distinguished myself at all as an artist--but
I have always been more or less mixed up with art. I have an uncle who
takes photographs--and I have a servant who--takes anything he can get
his hands on.

When I was in Rome--Rome in New York State, I mean--a distinguished
sculpist wanted to sculp me. But I said "No." I saw through the
designing man. My model once in his hands--he would have flooded the
market with my busts--and I couldn't stand it to see everybody going
round with a bust of me. Everybody would want one of course--and
wherever I should go I should meet the educated classes with my bust,
taking it home to their families. This would be more than my modesty
could stand--and I should have to return home--where my creditors are.

I like art. I admire dramatic art--although I failed as an actor.

It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as an actor.--The play was
"The Ruins of Pompeii."--I played the ruins. It was not a very
successful performance--but it was better than the "Burning Mountain."
He was not good. He was a bad Vesuvius.

The remembrance often makes me ask--"Where are the boys of my youth?" I
assure you this is not a conundrum. Some are amongst you here--some in
America--some are in jail.

Hence arises a most touching question--"Where are the girls of my
youth?" Some are married--some would like to be.

Oh, my Maria! Alas! she married another. They frequently do. I hope she
is happy--because I am.--Some people are not happy. I have noticed
that.

A gentleman friend of mine came to me one day with tears in his eyes. I
said, "Why these weeps?" He said he had a mortgage on his farm--and
wanted to borrow $200. I lent him the money--and he went away. Some
time afterward he returned with more tears. He said he must leave me
forever. I ventured to remind him of the $200 he borrowed. He was much
cut up. I thought I would not be hard upon him--so told him I would
throw off $100. He brightened--shook my hand--and said,--"Old friend--
I won't allow you to outdo me in liberality--I'll throw off the other
hundred."

I like Music.--I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am
saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even
than I am.

I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth--not a tooth in his head--
yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever
met. He kept a hotel. They have queer hotels in Oregon. I remember one
where they gave me a bag of oats for a pillow--I had nightmares of
course. In the morning the landlord said,--"How do you feel--old hoss--
hay?"--I told him I felt my oats.

As a manager I was always rather more successful than as an actor.

Some years ago I engaged a celebrated Living American Skeleton for a
tour through Australia. He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was a
splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh anything scarcely--and I said to
myself--the people of Australia will flock to see this tremendous cu-
riosity. It is a long voyage--as you know--from New York to Melbourne--
and to my utter surprise the skeleton had no sooner got out to sea than
he commenced eating in the most horrible manner. He had never been on
the ocean before--and he said it agreed with him--I thought so!--I
never saw a man eat so much in my life. Beef, mutton, pork--he
swallowed them all like a shark--and between meals he was often
discovered behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs. The result was that,
when we reached Melbourne, this infamous skeleton weighed sixty-four
pounds more than I did!

I thought I was ruined--but I wasn't. I took him on to California--
another very long sea voyage--and when I got him to San Francisco I
exhibited him as a fat man.

This story hasn't anything to do with my entertainment, I know--but one
of the principal features of my entertainment is that it contains so
many things that don't have anything to do with it.


JIM BLUDSO, OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE

By permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin
Company, authorized publishers of this author's work.

BY JOHN HAY

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Because he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the "Prairie Belle"?

He weren't no saint,--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,--
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,--
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,--
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the "Prairie Belle" took fire,--
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,--
The "Movastar" was a better boat,
But the "Belle" she _wouldn't_ be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night--
The oldest craft on the line--
With a nigger squat on her safety valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she cleared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin' and cursing but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,--
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the "Prairie Belle."

He weren't no saint,--but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,--
And he went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't agoing to be too hard
On a man that died for men.


THE TRIAL OF ABNER BARROW

From "The Boy Orator of Zepata City" in "The Exiles and Other Stories."
Copyrighted, 1894, Harper and Brothers. Reprinted with permission.

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Abe Barrow had been closely associated with the early history of
Zepata; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens. His
fight with Thompson had been a fair fight--as those said who remembered
it--and Thompson was a man they could well spare; but the case against
Barrow had been prepared by the new and youthful district attorney, and
the people were satisfied and grateful.

Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, turned
slowly on his heels, and swept the court room carelessly with a glance
of his clever black eyes. The moment was his.

"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors
hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata city of to-day.
He comes to us a relic of the past--a past that was full of hardships
and glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments,
embitterments and rebuffs. But the part _this_ man played in that
past lives only in the court records of that day. This man, Abe Barrow,
enjoys, and has enjoyed, a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and
brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such
reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like
evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and
boast that you were afraid to touch him--_afraid_, gentlemen--and
children and women will point after him as the man who has sent nine
others into eternity, and who yet walks the streets a free man. And he
will become, in the eyes of the young and the weak, a hero and a god.

"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
serving a term of imprisonment in the state penitentiary; I ask you to
send him back there again for the remainder of his life. Abe Barrow is
out of date. This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city
where he left a prairie town; a bank where he spun his roulette-wheel;
this magnificent courthouse instead of a vigilance committee! He is
there, in the prisoner's pen, a convicted murderer and an unconvicted
assassin, the last of his race,--the bullies and bad men of the
border,--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the sight of
men. And I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he will not hear
the voice of man nor children's laughter, nor see a woman's smile. Bury
him with the bitter past, with the lawlessness that has gone--that has
gone, thank God--and which must not return."

The district attorney sat down suddenly, and was conscious of nothing
until the foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder
in the second degree.

Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in his
power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years' confinement
in the state penitentiary, or for the remainder of his life.

"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said with an old
man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
behalf?"

Barrow's face was white with the prison tan, and pinched and hollow-
eyed and worn. When he spoke his voice had the huskiness which comes
from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.

"I don't know, Judge," he said, "that I have anything to say in my own
behalf. I guess what the gentleman said about me is all there is to
say. I _am_ a back number, I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a
blackguard. He told you I had no part or parcel in this city, or in
this world; that I belonged to the past; that I ought to be dead. Now
that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city, and to
this world--and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
and I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my wife.
You, sir, remember her, sir, when I married her twelve years ago. She
gave up everything a woman ought to have, to come to me. She thought
she was going to be happy with me; that's why she come, I guess. Maybe
she was happy for about two weeks. After that first two weeks her life,
sir, was a hell, and I made it a hell. Respectable women wouldn't speak
to her because she was my wife--and she had no children. That was her
life. She lived alone over the dance-hall, and sometimes when I was
drunk--I beat her.

"At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the pen
for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back to her folks
and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me again. It was
an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and thanked their Maker
for.

"But what did this woman do--my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back to
her people, or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.

"And for what? To get _me_ free again; to bring _me_ things to eat in
jail, and picture papers, and tobacco--when she was living on bacon and
potatoes, and drinking alkali water--working to pay for a lawyer to
fight for _me_--to pay for the _best_ lawyer.

"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out of
jail to show her how I feel about it. It's all I've thought of when I
was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for her,
working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.

"And I can't, I can't! It's too late! It's too late! Don't send me back
for life! Give me a few years to work for her--to show her what I feel
here, what I never felt for her before. Look at her, gentlemen, look
how worn she is, and poorly, and look at her hands, and you men must
feel how I feel--I don't ask you for myself. I don't want to go free on
my own account. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked
you to. Give me this last chance. Let me prove that what I'm saying is
true."

Judge Truax looked at the papers on his desk for some seconds, and
raised his head, coughing as he did so.

"It lies--it lies at the discretion of this Court to sentence the
prisoner to a term of imprisonment of two years, or for an indefinite
period, or for life. Owing to--on account of certain circumstances
which were--have arisen--this sentence is suspended. This Court stands
adjourned."




PART THREE


PLATFORM PRACTICE

THE SPEECH OF FORMAL OCCASION


THE BENEFITS OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION

From an address by the President to the students of Harvard University,
at the announcement of Academic Distinctions, 1909

BY ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL

This meeting is held not merely to honor the men who have won prizes,
attained high rank, or achieved distinction in studies. In a larger
sense it is a tribute paid by the University to the ideals of
scholarship. It is a public confession of faith in the aims for which
the University was established. We may, therefore, not inappropriately
consider here the nature and significance of scholarship.

Without attempting an exhaustive catalogue of the benefits of
education, we may note three distinct objects of college study. The
first is the development of the mental powers with a view to their use
in any subsequent career. In its broadest sense this may be called
training for citizenship, for we must remember that good citizenship
does not consist exclusively in rendering public service in political
and philanthropic matters. It includes also conducting an industrial or
professional career so as not to leave the public welfare out of sight.

Popular government is exacting. It implies that in some form every man
shall voluntarily consecrate a part of his time and force to the state,
and the better the citizen, the greater the effort he will make. On the
function of colleges in fitting men for citizenship and for active
work, much emphasis has been laid of late. Yet it is not the only aim
of college studies. Another object is cultivation of the mind,
refinement of taste, a development of the qualities that distinguish
the civilized man from the barbarian. Nor does the value of these
things lie in personal satisfaction alone. There is a culture that is
selfish and exclusive, that is self-centered and conceited. The
intellectual snob is quite as repellant as any other. But this is true
of the moral distortion of all good qualities. The culture that narrows
the sympathies, instead of enlarging them, has surely missed the object
that should give its chief worth and dignity. The culture that reveals
beauty in all its forms, that refines the sensibilities, and expands
the mental horizon, that, without a sense of superiority, desires to
share these things with others, and makes the lives of all men better
worth living, is like the glow of fire in a cold room. It is a form of
social service of a high order.

A third benefit of college education is the contact it affords with the
work of creative imagination. The highest type of scholar is the
creative scholar, just as the highest type of citizen is the statesman.
The greatest figures in history, as almost every one will admit, are
the thinkers and the rulers of men. People will always differ in the
relative value they ascribe to these two supreme forms of human power.
But if one may indulge in apocalyptic visions, I should prefer in
another world to be worthy of the friendship of Aristotle rather than
of Alexander, of Shakespeare or Newton than of Napoleon or Frederick
the Great.

When I spoke of the benefit of college life in training for
citizenship, and in imparting culture, I was obviously dealing with
things which lie within the reach of every student; but in speaking of
creative scholarship you may think that I am appealing only to the few
men who have the rare gift of creative genius. But happily the progress
of the world is not in the exclusive custody of the occasional men of
genius. Great originality is, indeed, rare; but on a smaller scale it
is not uncommon, and the same principles apply to the production of all
creative work. The great scholar and the lesser intellectual lights
differ in brilliancy, but the same process must be followed to bring
them to their highest splendor. Nor is it the genius alone, or even the
man of talent, who can enjoy and aid productive thought. It is not
given to all men to possess creative scholarship themselves; but most
men by following its footsteps can learn to respect it and feel its
charm; and for any man who passes through college without doing so,
college education has been in one of its most vital elements a failure.
If he has not recognized the glowing imagination, the lofty ideals, the
patience and the modesty, that characterize the true scholar, his time
here has been spent, not perhaps without profit, but without
inspiration.

All productive work is largely dependent upon appreciation by the
community. The great painters of Italy would have been sterile had not
the citizens of Florence been eager to carry Cimabue's masterpiece in
triumph through the streets. Kant would never have written among a
people who despised philosophy; and the discoveries of our own day
would have been impossible in an unscientific age. Every man who has
learned to respect creative scholarship can enter into its spirit, and
by respecting it he helps to foster it.


WHAT THE COLLEGE GIVES

From "Girls and Education," a commencement address, Bryn Mawr College,
1911, by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's works.

BY LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS

One of the best gifts that a college can bestow is the power of taking
a new point of view through putting ourselves into another's place. To
many students this comes hard, but come it must, as they hope to be
saved.

To the American world the name of Charles Eliot Norton stands for all
that is fastidious, even for what is over-fastidious; but Charles Eliot
Norton's collection of verse and prose called "The Heart of Oak Books"
shows a catholicity which few of his critics could approach, a refined
literary hospitality not less noteworthy than the refined human
hospitality of his Christmas Eve at Shady Hill. As an old man this
interpreter of Dante saw and hailed with delight the genius of Mr.
Kipling. If you leave college without catholicity of taste, something
is wrong either with the college or with you.

As in literature, so in life. The greatest teachers--even Christ
himself--have taught nothing greater than the power of seeing with the
eyes of another soul. "Browning," said a woman who loves poetry, "seems
to me not so much man as God." For Browning, beyond all men in the past
century, beyond nearly all men of all time, could throw himself into
the person of another.

  "God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
  One to show a woman when he loves her,"

said this same great poet, writing to his wife. But Browning has as
many soul-sides as humanity. Hence it has been truly called a new life,
like conversion, or marriage, or the mystery of a great sorrow,--a
change and a bracing change in our outlook on the whole world, to
discover Browning. The college should be our Browning, revealing the
motive power of every life, the poetry of good and bad. It is only the
"little folk of little soul" who come out of college as the initiated
members of an exclusive set. Justify yourself and your college years by
your catholic democracy.

It is the duty of the college not to train only, but to inspire; to
inspire not to learning only, but to a disciplined appreciation of the
best in literature, in art, and in life, to a catholic taste, to a
universal sympathy. It is the duty of the student to take the
inspiration, to be not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but to
justify four years of delight, by scholarship at once accurate and
sympathetic, by a finer culture, by a leadership without self-seeking
or pride, by a whole-souled democracy. How simple and how old it all
is! Yet it is not so simple that any one man or woman has done it to
perfection; nor so old that any one part of it fails to offer fresh
problems and fresh stimulus to the most ambitious of you all.

Nothing is harder than to take freely and eagerly the best that is
offered us, and never turn away to the pursuit of false gods. Now the
best that is offered in college is the inspiration to learn, and having
learned, to do:--

  "Friends of the great, the high, the perilous years,
  Upon the brink of mighty things we stand--
  Of golden harvests and of silver tears,
  And griefs and pleasures that like grains of sand
  Gleam in the hourglass, yield their place and die."

So said the college poet.

"Art without an ideal," said a great woman, "is neither nature nor art.
The question involves the whole difference between Phidias and Mme.
Tussaud." Let us never forget that the chief business of college
teachers and college taught is the giving and receiving of ideals, and
that the ideal is a burning and a shining light, not now only, or now
and a year or two more, but for all time. What else is the patriot's
love of country, the philosopher's love of truth, the poet's love of
beauty, the teacher's love of learning, the good man's love of an
honest life, than keeping the ideal, not merely to look at, but to see
by? In its light, and only in its light, the greatest things are done.
Thus the ideal is not merely the most beautiful thing in the world; it
is the source of all high efficiency. In every change, in every joy or
sorrow that the coming years may bring, do you who graduate to-day
remember that nothing is so practical as a noble ideal steadily and
bravely pursued, and that now, as of old, it is the wise men who see
and follow the guiding star.


MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

From "After-Dinner and Other Speeches," with the permission of the
author.

BY JOHN D. LONG

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our
children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with
flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh
recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the
romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it
were but yesterday, you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The
exquisite tint of youthful health was in his cheek. His pure heart
shone from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from
beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or
walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just
entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this
season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering
vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mother
and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth:--

  "In face and shoulders like a god he was;
  For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm
  Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth,
  A generous gladness in his eyes: such grace
  As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when
  Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold
  Is set."

And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the
stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward.
You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written
as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him
the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish
to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause! What
pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its
strap upon his shoulder!

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and grew gaunt and haggard
with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror
of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He
tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of
recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept
in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who
pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the
line; and, with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took him
back to his captivity. He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when
he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he had grown.
But he soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades.
They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the rifle pits
around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one
who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt
the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned
to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion
of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last
glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay
with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis
over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village
churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin,
nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he
was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every
Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every Massachusetts burying ground.
Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but
there is none that is his peer.


WILLIAM MCKINLEY

From an address in the United States Senate

BY JOHN HAY

For the third time the Congress of the United States are assembled to
commemorate the life and the death of a President slain by the hand of
an assassin. The attention of the future historian will be attracted to
the features which reappear with startling sameness in all three of
these awful crimes: the uselessness, the utter lack of consequence of
the act; the obscurity, the insignificance of the criminal; the
blamelessness--so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may
be held blameless--of the victim. Not one of our murdered Presidents
had an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of
life that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime;
they were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have
offended the most jealous advocates of equality; they were of kindly
and generous nature, to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; of
moderate fortune, whose slender means nobody could envy. They were men
of austere virtue, of tender heart, of eminent abilities, which they
had devoted with single minds to the good of the Republic. If ever men
walked before God and man without blame, it was these three rulers of
our people. The only temptation to attack their lives offered was their
gentle radiance--to eyes hating the light that was offense enough.

The obvious elements which enter into the fame of a public man are few
and by no means recondite. The man who fills a great station in a
period of change, who leads his country successfully through a time of
crisis; who, by his power of persuading and controlling others, has
been able to command the best thought of his age, so as to leave his
country in a moral or material condition in advance of where he found
it,--such a man's position in history is secure. If, in addition to
this, his written or spoken words possess the subtle qualities which
carry them far and lodge them in men's hearts; and, more than all, if
his utterances and actions, while informed with a lofty morality, are
yet tinged with the glow of human sympathy,--the fame of such a man
will shine like a beacon through the mists of ages--an object of
reverence, of imitation, and of love. It should be to us an occasion of
solemn pride that in the three great crises of our history such a man
was not denied us. The moral value to a nation of a renown such as
Washington's and Lincoln's and McKinley's is beyond all computation. No
loftier ideal can be held up to the emulation of ingenuous youth. With
such examples we cannot be wholly ignoble. Grateful as we may be for
what they did, let us be still more grateful for what they were. While
our daily being, our public policies, still feel the influence of their
work, let us pray that in our spirits their lives may be voluble,
calling us upward and onward.

There is not one of us but feels prouder of his native land because the
august figure of Washington presided over its beginnings; no one but
vows it a tenderer love because Lincoln poured out his blood for it; no
one but must feel his devotion for his country renewed and kindled when
he remembers how McKinley loved, revered, and served it, showed in his
life how a citizen should live, and in his last hour taught us how a
gentleman could die.


ROBERT E. LEE

From an address at the unveiling of a statue of General Lee, at
Washington and Lee University, 1883

BY JOHN W. DANIEL

Mounted in the field and at the head of his troops, a glimpse of Lee
was an inspiration. His figure was as distinctive as that of Napoleon.
The black slouch hat, the cavalry boots, the dark cape, the plain gray
coat without an ornament but the three stars on the collar, the calm,
victorious face, the splendid, manly figure on the gray war horse,--he
looked every inch the true knight--the grand, invincible champion of a
great principle.

The men who wrested victory from his little band stood wonder-stricken
and abashed when they saw how few were those who dared oppose them, and
generous admiration burst into spontaneous tribute to the splendid
leader who bore defeat with the quiet resignation of a hero. The men
who fought under him never revered or loved him more than on the day he
sheathed his sword. Had he but said the word, they would have died for
honor. It was because he said the word that they resolved to live for
duty.

Plato congratulated himself, first, that he was born a man; second,
that he had the happiness of being a Greek; and third, that he was a
contemporary of Sophocles. And in this audience to-day, and here and
there the wide world over, is many an one who wore the gray, who
rejoices that he was born a man to do a man's part for his suffering
country; that he had the glory of being a Confederate; and who feels a
justly proud and glowing consciousness in his bosom when he says unto
himself: "I was a follower of Robert E. Lee. I was a soldier in the
army of Northern Virginia."

As president of Washington and Lee University, General Lee exhibited
qualities not less worthy and heroic than those displayed on the broad
and open theater of conflict when the eyes of nations watched his every
action. In the quiet walks of academic life, far removed from "war or
battle's sound," came into view the towering grandeur, the massive
splendor, and the loving-kindness of his character. There he revealed
in manifold gracious hospitalities, tender charities, and patient,
worthy counsels, how deep and pure and inexhaustible were the fountains
of his virtues. And loving hearts delight to recall, as loving lips
will ever delight to tell, the thousand little things he did which sent
forth lines of light to irradiate the gloom of the conquered land and
to lift up the hopes and cheer the works of his people.

Come we then to-day in loyal love to sanctify our memories, to purify
our hopes, to make strong all good intent by communion with the spirit
of him who, being dead, yet speaketh. Let us crown his tomb with the
oak, the emblem of his strength, and with the laurel, the emblem of his
glory. And as we seem to gaze once more on him we loved and hailed as
Chief, the tranquil face is clothed with heaven's light, and the mute
lips seem eloquent with the message that in life he spoke, "There is a
true glory and a true honor; the glory of duty done, the honor of the
integrity of principle."


FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE

BY HENRY CLAY

From 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theater, with
short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public
councils, at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long
and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history,
if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my
humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the
truest, and the most impartial judges.

I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur
censure and detraction of the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most
malignant character. But I have not meanwhile been unsustained.
Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had
cordial, warmhearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me,
loved me, and appreciated my motives.

In the course of a long and arduous public service, especially during
the last eleven years in which I have held a seat in the Senate, from
the same ardor and enthusiasm of character, I have no doubt, in the
heat of debate, and in an honest endeavor to maintain my opinions
against adverse opinions alike honestly entertained, as to the best
course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often
inadvertently and unintentionally, in moments of excited debate, made
use of language that has been offensive, and susceptible of injurious
interpretation towards my brother Senators. If there be any here who
retain wounded feelings of injury or dissatisfaction produced on such
occasions, I beg to assure them that I now offer the most ample apology
for any departure on my part from the established rules of
parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure
Senators, one and all, without exception and without reserve, that I
retire from this chamber without carrying with me a single feeling of
resentment or dissatisfaction toward the Senate or any one of its
members.

In retiring, as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer me
to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects
of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high
destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its
deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the
prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor
abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a
period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my
leave of you under more favorable auspices; but, without meaning at
this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad
condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the Senate and to the
world to bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert
it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.

May the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole Senate
and each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the
benefit of the nation and the advancement of his own fame and renown.
And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you
receive that most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards--their
cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servant."

And now, Mr. President, and Senators, I bid you all a long, a lasting,
and a friendly farewell.


THE DEATH OF GARFIELD

From an address before both houses of Congress, February, 1882

BY JAMES G. BLAINE

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been
a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest
premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him
in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the
years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded,
bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and
the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,
its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And
he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned
and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,
but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not
less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he
looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes
whose lips may tell--what brilliant broken plans, what baffled high
ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what
bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant
nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy
mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the
wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet
emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the
sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every
day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his
heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him
desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His
countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal
sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a
nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love
and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod
the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With
unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of
the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple
resignation he bowed to the divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should
will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he
looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders--on its far
sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling
shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds
of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining
pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic
meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe
that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves
breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the
breath of the eternal morning.


THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865.

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course
to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of
four years, during which public declarations have been constantly
called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still
absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little
that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all
sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war--
seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than
let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let
it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized
in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of
the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread
from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither
has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto
the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come,
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence
of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations.


THE DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT

From an address in the House of Commons, February, 1862

BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI

No person can be insensible to the fact that the House meets to-night
under circumstances very much changed from those which have attended
our assembling for many years. Of late years--indeed, for more than
twenty years past--whatever may have been our personal rivalries, and
whatever our party strife, there was at least one sentiment in which we
all coincided, and that was a sentiment of admiring gratitude to that
Throne whose wisdom and whose goodness had so often softened the
acerbities of our free public life, and had at all times so
majestically represented the matured intelligence of an enlightened
people.

Sir, all that is changed. He is gone who was "the comfort and support"
of that Throne. It has been said that there is nothing which England so
much appreciates as the fulfillment of duty. The Prince whom we have
lost not only was eminent for the fulfillment of duty, but it was the
fulfillment of the highest duty under the most difficult circumstances.
Prince Albert was the Consort of his Sovereign--he was the father of
one who might be his Sovereign--he was the Prime Councillor of a realm,
the political constitution of which did not even recognize his
political existence.

Sir, it is sometimes deplored by those who admired and loved him that
he was thwarted occasionally in his undertakings, and that he was not
duly appreciated. But these are not circumstances for regret, but for
congratulation. They prove the leading and original mind which has so
long and so advantageously labored for this country. Had he not
encountered these obstacles, had he not been subject to this occasional
distrust and misconception, it would only have shown that he was a man
of ordinary mold and temper. Those who improve must change, those who
change must necessarily disturb and alarm men's prejudices. What he had
to encounter was only a demonstration that he was a man superior to his
age, and therefore admirably adapted for the work of progress. There is
one other point, and one only, on which I will presume for a moment to
dwell, and it is not for the sake of you, Sir, or those who now hear
me, or of the generation to which we belong, but it is that those who
come after us may not misunderstand the nature of this illustrious man.
Prince Albert was not a mere patron; he was not one of those who by
their gold or by their smiles reward excellence or stimulate exertion.
His contributions to the cause of State were far more powerful and far
more precious. He gave to it his thought, his time, his toil; he gave
to it his life. On both sides and in all parts of the House I see many
gentlemen who occasionally have acted with the Prince at those council
boards where they conferred and consulted upon the great undertakings
with which he was connected. I ask them, without fear of a denial,
whether he was not the leading spirit, whether his was not the mind
which foresaw the difficulty, his not the resources that supplied the
remedy; whether his was not the courage which sustained them under
apparently overpowering difficulties; whether every one who worked with
him did not feel that he was the real originator of those plans of
improvement which they assisted in carrying into effect?

But what avail these words? This House to-night has been asked to
condole with the Crown upon this great calamity. No easy office. To
condole, in general, is the office of those who, without the pale of
sorrow, still feel for the sorrowing. But in this instance the country
is as heart-stricken as its Queen. Yet in the mutual sensibility of a
Sovereign and a people there is something ennobling--something which
elevates the spirit beyond the level of mere earthly sorrow. The
counties, the cities, the corporations of the realm--those illustrious
associations of learning and science and art and skill, of which he was
the brightest ornament and the inspiring spirit, have bowed before the
Throne. It does not become the Parliament of the country to be silent.
The expression of our feelings may be late, but even in that lateness
may be observed some propriety. To-night the two Houses sanction the
expression of the public sorrow, and ratify, as it were, the record of
a nation's woe.


AN APPRECIATION OF MR. GLADSTONE

From an address in the House of Commons

BY ARTHUR J. BALFOUR

I feel myself unequal even to dealing with what is, perhaps, more
strictly germane to this address--I mean, Mr. Gladstone as a
politician, as a Minister, as a leader of public thought, as an eminent
servant of the Queen; and if I venture to say anything, it is rather of
Mr. Gladstone, the greatest member of the greatest deliberative
assembly, which, so far, the world has seen.

Sir, I think it is the language of sober and unexaggerated truth to say
that there is no gift which would enable a man to move, to influence,
to adorn an assembly like this that Mr. Gladstone did not possess in a
supereminent degree. Debaters as ready there may have been, orators as
finished. It may have been given to others to sway as skillfully this
assembly, or to appeal with as much directness and force to the simpler
instincts of the great masses in the country; but, sir, it has been
given to no man to combine all these great gifts as they were combined
in the person of Mr. Gladstone. From the conversational discussion
appropriate to our work in committees, to the most sustained eloquence
befitting some great argument, and some great historic occasion, every
weapon of Parliamentary warfare was wielded by him with the success and
ease of a perfect, absolute, and complete mastery. I would not venture
myself to pronounce an opinion as to whether he was most excellent in
the exposition of a somewhat complicated budget of finance or
legislation, or whether he showed it most in the heat of extemporary
debate. At least this we may say, that from the humbler arts of
ridicule or invective to the subtlest dialectic, the most persuasive
eloquence, the most cogent appeals to everything that was highest and
best in the audience that he was addressing, every instrument which
could find place in the armory of a member of this House, he had at his
command without premeditation, without forethought, at the moment and
in the form which appeared best suited to carry out his purpose.

It may, perhaps, be asked whether I have nothing to say about Mr.
Gladstone's place in history, about the judgment we ought to pass upon
the great part which he has played in the history of his country and
the history of the world during the many years in which he held a
foremost place in this assembly. These questions are legitimate
questions. But they are not to be discussed by me to-day. Nor, indeed,
do I think that the final answer can be given to them--the final
judgment pronounced--in the course of this generation. But one service
he did--in my opinion incalculable--which is altogether apart from the
judgment which we may be disposed to pass on the particular opinions,
the particular views, or the particular lines of policy which Mr.
Gladstone may from time to time have adopted. Sir, he added a dignity
and he added a weight to the deliberations of this House by his genius
which I think it is impossible adequately to express.

It is not enough, in my opinion, to keep up simply a level, though it
be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere virtue of civic
honesty is not sufficient to preserve this assembly from the fate which
has overcome so many other assemblies, the products of democratic
forces. More than this is required, more than this was given to us by
Mr. Gladstone. Those who seek to raise in the public estimation the
level of our proceedings will be the most ready to admit the infinite
value of those services, and realize how much the public prosperity is
involved in the maintenance of the work of public life. Sir, that is a
view which, it seems to me, places the services of Mr. Gladstone to
this assembly, which he loved so well, and of which he was so great a
member, in as clear a light and on as firm a basis as it is possible to
place them.


WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

From an address in the House of Lords, May, 1898

BY LORD ROSEBERY

My Lords, this is, as has been pointed out, an unique occasion. Mr.
Gladstone always expressed a hope that there might be an interval left
to him between the end of his political and of his natural life. That
period was given to him, for it is more than four years since he
quitted the sphere of politics. Those four years have been with him a
special preparation for his death, but have they not also been a
preparation for his death with the nation at large? Had he died in the
plenitude of his power as Prime Minister, would it have been possible
for a vigorous and convinced Opposition to allow to pass to him,
without a word of dissent, the honors which are now universally
conceded? Hushed for the moment are the voices of criticism; hushed are
the controversies in which he took part; hushed for the moment is the
very sound of party conflict. I venture to think that this is a notable
fact in our history. It was not so with the elder Pitt. It was not so
with the younger Pitt. It was not so with the elder Pitt--in spite of
his tragic end, of his unrivaled services, and of his enfeebled old
age. It was not so with the younger Pitt--in spite of his long control
of the country and his absolute and absorbed devotion to the State. I
think that we should remember this as creditable not merely to the man,
but to the nation.

My Lords, there is one deeply melancholy feature of Mr. Gladstone's
death--by far the most melancholy--to which I think none of my noble
friends have referred. I think that all our thoughts must be turned,
now that Mr. Gladstone is gone, to that solitary and pathetic figure
who, for sixty years, shared all the sorrows and all the joys of Mr.
Gladstone's life; who received his every confidence and every
aspiration; who shared his triumphs with and cheered him under his
defeats; who, by her tender vigilance, I firmly believe, sustained and
prolonged his years. I think that the occasion ought not to pass
without letting Mrs. Gladstone know that she is in all our thoughts to-
day. And yet, my Lords--putting that one figure aside--to me, at any
rate, this is not an occasion for absolute and entire and unreserved
lamentation. Were it, indeed, possible so to protract the inexorable
limits of human life that we might have hoped that future years, and
even future generations, might see Mr. Gladstone's face and hear his
matchless voice, and receive the lessons of his unrivaled experience--
we might, perhaps, grieve to-day as those who have no hope. But that is
not the case. He had long exceeded the span of mortal life; and his
latter months had been months of unspeakable pain and distress. He is
now in that rest for which he sought and prayed, and which was to give
him relief from an existence which had become a burden to him. Surely
this should not be an occasion entirely for grief; when a life
prolonged to such a limit, so full of honor, so crowned with glory, had
come to its termination. The nation lives that produced him. The nation
that produced him may yet produce others like him; and, in the
meantime, it is rich in his memory, rich in his life, and rich, above
all, in his animating and inspiring example. Nor do I think that we
should regard this heritage as limited to our own country or to our own
race. It seems to me that, if we may judge from the papers of to-day,
that it is shared by, that it is the possession of, all civilized
mankind, and that generations still to come, through many long years,
will look for encouragement in labor, for fortitude in adversity, for
the example of a sublime Christianity, with constant hope and constant
encouragement, to the pure, the splendid, the dauntless figure of
William Ewart Gladstone.


THE SOLDIER'S CREED

From a centennial address at the United States Military Academy at West
Point, with the author's permission.

BY HORACE PORTER

As we stand here to-day a hundred years of history pass in review
before us. The present permanent Academy was founded in 1802. The class
that year contained two cadets. During the ten years following the
average number was twenty. We might say of the cadets of those days
what Curran said of the books in his library--"not numerous, but
select."

And now a word to the Corps of Cadets, the departure of whose
graduating class marks the close of the first century of the Academy's
life. The boy is father to the man. The present is the mold in which
the future is cast. The dominant characteristics of the cadet are seen
in the future general. You have learned here how to command, and a
still more useful lesson, how to obey. You have been taught obedience
to the civil, as well as to the military, code, for in this land the
military is always subordinate to the civil law. Not the least valuable
part of your education is your service in the cadet ranks, performing
the duties of a private soldier. That alone can acquaint you with the
feelings and the capabilities of the soldiers you will command. It
teaches you just how long a man can carry a musket in one position
without overfatigue, just how hard it is to keep awake on sentry duty
after an exhausting day's march. You will never forget this part of
your training. When Marshal Lannes's grenadiers had been repulsed in an
assault upon the walls of a fortified city, and hesitated to renew the
attack, Lannes seized a scaling ladder and, rushing forward, cried:
"Before I was a marshal I was a grenadier, and I have not forgotten my
training." Inspired by his example, the grenadiers carried the walls
and captured everything before them.

Courage is the soldier's cardinal virtue. You will seldom go amiss in
following General Grant's instructions to his commanders, "When in
doubt move to the front."

A generous country has with fostering care equipped you for your
career. It is entitled to your undivided allegiance. In closing, let me
mention, by way of illustration, a most touching and instructive scene
which I once witnessed at the annual meeting in the great hall of the
Sorbonne in Paris for the purpose of awarding medals of honor to those
who had performed acts of conspicuous bravery in saving human life at
sea. A bright-eyed boy of scarcely fourteen summers was called to the
platform. The story was recounted of how one winter's night when a
fierce tempest was raging on the rude Normandy coast, he saw signals of
distress at sea and started with his father, the captain of a small
vessel, and the mate to attempt a rescue. By dint of almost superhuman
effort the crew of a sinking ship was safely taken aboard. A wave then
washed the father from the deck. The boy plunged into the seething
waves to save him, but the attempt was in vain, and the father
perished. The lad struggled back to the vessel to find that the mate
had also been washed overboard. Then lashing himself fast, he took the
wheel and guided the boat, with its precious cargo of human souls,
through the howling storm safely into port. The minister of public
instruction, after paying a touching tribute to the boy's courage in a
voice broken with emotion, pinned the medal on his breast, placed in
his hands a diploma of honor, and then, seizing the brave lad in his
arms, imprinted a kiss on each cheek. For a moment the boy seemed
dazed, not knowing which way to turn, as he stood there with the tears
streaming down his bronzed cheeks while every one in that vast hall
wept in sympathy. Suddenly his eyes turned toward his old peasant
mother, she to whom he owed his birth and his training, as she sat at
the back of the platform with bended form and wearing her widow's cap.
He rushed to her, took the medal from his breast, and, casting it and
his diploma into her lap, threw himself on his knees at her feet.

Men of West Point, in the honorable career which you have chosen,
whatever laurels you may win, always be ready to lay them at the feet
of your country to which you owe your birth and your education.


COMPETITION IN COLLEGE

From an address at Columbia University, June, 1909

BY ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL

We have seen that the sifting out of young men capable of scholarship
is receiving to-day less attention than it deserves; and that this
applies not only to recruiting future leaders of thought, but also to
prevailing upon every young man to develop the intellectual powers he
may possess. We have seen also that, while the graduate school can
train scholars, it cannot create love of scholarship. That work must be
done in undergraduate days. We have found reasons to believe that
during the whole period of training, mental and physical, which reaches
its culmination in college, competition is not only a proper but an
essential factor; and we have observed the results that have been
achieved at Oxford and Cambridge by its use. In this country, on the
other hand, several causes, foremost among them the elective system,
have almost banished competition in scholarship from our colleges;
while the inadequate character of our tests, and the corporate nature
of self-interest in these latter times, raise serious difficulties in
making it effective.

Nevertheless, I have faith that these obstacles can be overcome, and
that we can raise intellectual achievement in college to its rightful
place in public estimation. We are told that it is idle to expect young
men to do strenuous work before they feel the impending pressure of
earning a livelihood; that they naturally love ease and self-
indulgence, and can be aroused from lethargy only by discipline, or by
contact with the hard facts of a struggle with the world. If I believed
that, I would not be president of a college for a moment. It is not
true. A normal young man longs for nothing so much as to devote himself
to a cause that calls forth his enthusiasm, and the greater the
sacrifice involved, the more eagerly will he grasp it. If we were at
war and our students were told that two regiments were seeking
recruits, one of which would be stationed at Fortress Monroe, well-
housed and fed, living in luxury, without risk of death or wounds,
while the other would go to the front, be starved and harassed by
fatiguing marches under a broiling sun, amid pestilence, with men
falling from its ranks killed or suffering mutilation, not a single man
would volunteer for the first regiment, but the second would be quickly
filled. Who is it that makes football a dangerous and painful sport? Is
it the faculty or the players themselves?

A young man wants to test himself on every side, in strength, in
quickness, in skill, in courage, in endurance; and he will go through
much to prove his merit. He wants to test himself, provided he has
faith that the test is true, and that the quality tried is one that
makes for manliness; otherwise he will have none of it. Now we have not
convinced him that high scholarship is a manly thing worthy of his
devotion, or that our examinations are faithful tests of intellectual
power; and in so far as we have failed in this we have come short of
what we ought to do. Universities stand for the eternal worth of
thought, for the preeminence of the prophet and the seer; but instead
of being thrilled by the eager search for truth, our classes too often
sit listless on the bench. It is not because the lecturer is dull, but
because the pupils do not prize the end enough to relish the drudgery
required for skill in any great pursuit, or indeed in any sport. To
make them see the greatness of that end, how fully it deserves the
price that must be paid for it, how richly it rewards the man who may
compete for it, we must learn--and herein lies the secret--we must
learn the precious art of touching their imagination.


A MASTER OF THE SITUATION

From a lecture, entitled "Masters of the Situation"

BY JAMES T. FIELDS

There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, freighted with a
rich cargo, steaming at full speed from England to America. Two thirds
of a prosperous voyage thus far were over, as in our mess we were
beginning to talk of home. Fore and aft the songs of good cheer and
hearty merriment rose from deck to cabin.

  "As if the beauteous ship enjoyed the beauty of the sea,
  She lifteth up her stately head, and saileth joyfully,
  A lovely path before her lies, a lovely path behind;
  She sails amid the loveliness like a thing of heart and mind."

Suddenly, a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but as this was a
common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly
mentioned in our talk that afternoon. There are always croakers on
board ship, if the weather changes however slightly, but the
_Britannia_ was free, that voyage, of such unwelcome passengers. A
happier company never sailed upon an autumn sea! The storytellers are
busy with their yarns to audiences of delighted listeners in sheltered
places; the ladies are lying about on couches, and shawls, reading or
singing; children in merry companies are taking hands and racing up and
down the decks,--when a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers
and men, and we are grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race! One of
those strong currents, always mysterious, and sometimes impossible to
foresee, had set us into shore out of our course, and the ship was
blindly beating on a dreary coast of sharp and craggy rocks.

I heard the order given, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that
meant--the masts were in danger of falling. Looking over the side, we
saw bits of the keel, great pieces of plank, floating out into the deep
water. A hundred pallid faces were huddled together near the stern of
the ship where we were told to go and wait. I remember somebody said
that a little child, the playfellow of passengers and crew, could not
be found, and that some of us started to find him; and that when we
returned him to his mother she spake never a word, but seemed dumb with
terror at the prospect of separation and shipwreck, and that other
specter so ghastly when encountered at sea.

Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the
wheelhouse, ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves, and the
clashing sounds on shipboard, and it had in it an assuring, not a
fearful tone. As the orders came distinctly and deliberately through
the captain's trumpet, to "ship the cargo," to "back her," to "keep her
steady," we felt somehow that the commander up there in the thick mist
on the wheelhouse knew what he was about, and that through his skill
and courage, by the blessing of heaven, we should all be rescued. The
man who saved us so far as human aid ever saves drowning mortals, was
one fully competent to command a ship; and when, after weary days of
anxious suspense, the vessel leaking badly, and the fires in danger of
being put out, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of
the line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck
on the rocks and had been saved only by the captain's presence of mind
and courage, simply replied, "Just what might have been expected in
such a disaster;  Captain Harrison is always master of the situation."
Now, no man ever became master of the situation by accident or
indolence. I believe with Shelley, that the Almighty has given men and
women arms long enough to reach the stars if they will only put them
out! It was an admirable saying of the Duke of Wellington, "that no
general ever blundered into a great victory." St. Hilaire said, "I
ignore the existence of a blind chance, accident, and haphazard
results." "He happened to succeed," is a foolish, unmeaning phrase. No
man happens to succeed.


WIT AND HUMOR

Reprinted from "American Wit and Humor," copyrighted in "Modern
Eloquence," Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY MINOT J. SAVAGE

Wit may take many forms, but it resides essentially in the thought or
the imagination. In its highest forms it does not deal in things but
with ideas. It is the shock of pleased surprise which results from the
perception of unexpected likeness between things that differ or of an
unexpected difference between things that are alike. Or it is where
utterly incongruous things are apparently combined in the expression of
one idea. Wit may be bitter or kindly or entirely neutral so far as the
feelings are concerned. When extremes of feeling, one way or the other,
are concerned, then it takes on other names which will be considered by
themselves.

But not to stop any longer with definition, it is almost pure wit when
some one said of an endless talker that he had "occasional brilliant
flashes of silence." So of the saying of Mr. Henry Clapp. You know it
is said of Shakespeare, "He is not for a day, but for all time."
Speaking of the bore who calls when you are busy and never goes, Mr.
Clapp said, "He is not for a time, but for all day." And what could be
more deliciously perfect than the following: Senator Beck of Kentucky
was an everlasting talker. One day a friend remarked to Senator Hoar,
"I should think Beck would wear his brain all out talking so much."
Whereupon Mr. Hoar replied, "Oh, that doesn't affect him any: he rests
his mind when he is talking." This has, indeed, a touch of sarcasm; but
it is as near the pure gold of wit as you often get. Or, take this.
There being two houses both of which are insisted on as the real
birthplace of the great philosopher and statesman, Mark Twain gravely
informs us that "Franklin was twins, having been born simultaneously in
two different houses in Boston."

One of the finest specimens of clear-cut wit is the saying of the Hon.
Carroll D. Wright. Referring to the common saying, he once keenly
remarked: "I know it is said that figures won't lie, but,
unfortunately, liars will figure."

In contradistinction from wit, humor deals with incidents, characters,
situations. True humor is altogether kindly; for, while it points out
and pictures the weaknesses and foibles of humanity, it feels no
contempt and leaves no sting. It has its root in sympathy and blossoms
out in toleration.

It would take too long at this point in my lecture to quote complete
specimens of humor; for that would mean spreading out before you
detailed scenes or full descriptions. But fortunately it is not
necessary. Cervantes, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb, Dickens, and a host of
others will readily occur to you. But what could be better of its kind
than this? General Joe Johnston was one day riding leisurely behind his
army on the march. Food had been scarce and rations limited. He spied a
straggler in the brush beside the road. He called out sharply, "What
are you doing here?" Being caught out of the ranks was a serious
offense, but the soldier was equal to the emergency. So to the
General's question he replied, "Pickin' 'simmons." The persimmon, as
you know, has the quality of puckering the mouth, as a certain kind of
wild cherry used to mine when I was a boy. "What are you picking
'simmons for?" sharply rejoined the General. Then came the humorous
reply that disarmed all of the officer's anger and appealed to his
sympathy, while it hinted all "the boys" were suffering for the cause.
"Well, the fact of it is, General, I'm trying to shrink up my stomach
to the size of my rations, so I won't starve to death."


A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

From an article in The Philistine, with the permission of the author

BY ELBERT HUBBARD

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very
necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.
Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba--no one knew
where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President
must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

What to do!

Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan
will find Garcia for you if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and given
a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of
Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it
over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from
an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out
on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on
foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special
desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be
delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is
he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in
deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It
is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and
that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be
loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the
thing--"Carry a message to Garcia!"

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has
endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but
has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average
man--the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do
it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and
half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or
crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or
mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an angel
of light for an assistant.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this
infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to catch hold and lift, are
the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will
not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of the
effort is for all?

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away
as well as when he is at home. And the man, who, when given a letter
for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic
questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the
nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid
off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one
long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks
shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to
let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village--in every
office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such; he is
needed, and needed badly-the man who can carry a message to Garcia.


SHAKESPEARE'S "MARK ANTONY"

ANONYMOUS

A Roman, an orator, and a triumvir, a conqueror when all Rome seemed
armed against him only to have his glory "false played" by a woman
"unto an enemy's triumph,"--such is Shakespeare's story of Mark Antony.
Passion alternates with passion, purpose with purpose, good with evil,
and strength with weakness, until his whole nature seems changed, and
we find the same and yet another man.

In "Julius Cęsar" Antony is seen at his best. He is the one triumphant
figure of the play. Cęsar falls. Brutus and Cassius are in turn
victorious and defeated, but Antony is everywhere a conqueror. Antony
weeping over Cęsar's body, Antony offering his breast to the daggers
which have killed his master, is as plainly the sovereign power of the
moment as when over Cęsar's corpse he forces by his magnetic oratory
the prejudiced populace to call down curses on the heads of the
conspirators.

Cęsar's spirit still lives in Antony,--a spirit that dares face the
conspirators with swords still red with Cęsar's blood and bid them,

  Whilst their purple hands do reek and smoke,

fulfill their pleasure,--a spirit that over the dead body of Cęsar
takes the hand of each and yet exclaims:--

  "Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
  Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
  It would become me better than to close
  In terms of friendship with thine enemies."

Permission is granted Antony to speak a farewell word over the body of
Cęsar in the crowded market place. Before the populace, hostile and
prejudiced, Antony stands as the friend of Cęsar. Slowly, surely,
making his approach step by step, with consummate tact he steals away
their hearts and paves the way for his own victory. The honorable men
gradually turn to villains of the blackest dye. Cęsar's mantle, which
but a moment before had called forth bitter curses, now brings tears to
every Roman's eye. The populace fast yields to his eloquence. He
conquers every vestige of distrust as he says:--

  "I am no orator, as Brutus is;
  But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
  That love my friend; and that they know full well
  That gave me public leave to speak of him."

And now the matchless orator throws off his disguise. With resistless
vehemence he pours forth a flood of eloquence which bears the fickle
mob like straws before its tide:--

  "I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
  Show you sweet Cęsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
  And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
  And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
  Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
  In every wound of Cęsar, that would move
  The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny."

The effect is magical. The rage of the populace is quickened to a white
heat; and, baffled, beaten by a plain, blunt man, the terror-stricken
conspirators ride like madness through the gates of Rome.


ANDR. AND HALE

From "Orations and After-Dinner Speeches," the Cassell Publishing
Company, New York, publishers.

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

André's story is the one overmastering romance of the Revolution.
American and English literature is full of eloquence and poetry in
tribute to his memory and sympathy for his fate. After the lapse of a
hundred years, there is no abatement of absorbing interest. What had
this young man done to merit immortality? The mission whose tragic
issue lifted him out of the oblivion of other minor British officers,
in its inception was free from peril or daring, and its objects and
purposes were utterly infamous.

Had he succeeded by the desecration of the honorable uses of passes and
flags of truce, his name would have been held in everlasting
execration. In his failure the infant Republic escaped the dagger with
which he was feeling for its heart, and the crime was drowned in tears
for his untimely end. His youth and beauty, the brightness of his life,
the calm courage in the gloom of his death, his early love and
disappointment, surrounded him with a halo of poetry and pity which
have secured for him what he most sought and could never have won in
battles and sieges,--a fame and recognition which have outlived that of
all the generals under whom he served.

Are kings only grateful, and do not republics forget? Is fame a
travesty, and the judgment of mankind a farce? America had a parallel
case in Captain Nathan Hale. Of the same age as André, he, after
graduation at Yale College with high honors, enlisted in the patriot
cause at the beginning of the contest, and secured the love and
confidence of all about him. When none else would go upon a most
important and perilous mission, he volunteered, and was captured by the
British.

While André received every kindness, courtesy, and attention, and was
fed from Washington's table, Hale was thrust into a noisome dungeon in
the sugarhouse. While André was tried by a board of officers and had
ample time and every facility for defense, Hale was summarily ordered
to execution the next morning. While André's last wishes and bequests
were sacredly followed, the infamous Cunningham tore from Hale his
cherished Bible and destroyed before his eyes his last letter to his
mother and sister, and asked him what he had to say. "All I have to
say," was his reply, "is, I regret I have but one life to lose for my
country."

The dying declarations of Andre and Hale express the animating spirit
of their several armies, and teach why, with all her power, England
could not conquer America. "I call upon you to witness that I die like
a brave man," said André, and he spoke from British and Hessian
surroundings, seeking only glory and pay. "I regret I have but one life
to lose for my country," said Hale; and, with him and his comrades,
self was forgotten in that absorbing, passionate patriotism which
pledges fortune, honor, and life to the sacred cause.


THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON

BY THEODORE PARKER

One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the nineteenth day
of this month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great
Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an
officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to
seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of
Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia
came together before daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with
a large head and a high, wide brow, their captain,--one who had "seen
service,"--marshaled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade
"every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the
first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered. "Don't
fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war, let it begin
here."

Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics "fired
the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the bones of
such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the
Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born
in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a
boy, my mother lifted me up, on Sunday, in her religious, patriotic
arms, and held me while I read the first monumental line I ever saw--
"Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind."

Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome, in
many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks, have read what was
written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt,
but no chiseled stone has ever stirred me to such emotion as these
rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of God and their
Country."

Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early fanned
into a flame in my boyish heart. The monument covers the bones of my
own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass
at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone;
the tall Captain who marshaled his fellow farmers and mechanics into
stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war
of American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my
father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket
he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious
lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them
both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both
"In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country."


THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Reprinted with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill; my
heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's
Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its
tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the
judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that
was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not
look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that
had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if
honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last
owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is
lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.

Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest
man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious
house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich
with the promise of harvest.

Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside, there
stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright man, with no mortgage on
his roof, no lien on his growing crops, master of his own land and
master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man,
but happy in the heart and home of his son.

They started to their home, and as they reached the door the old mother
came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her
deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of
her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was
the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and
conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came
the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do
the quiet of their home nest.

And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the
wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled bird called
from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and
the stars were swarming in the sky--got the family around him, and,
taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the
little baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed
the record of that simple day by calling down God's benediction on that
family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble
Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I
said, "Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last
the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and
the promise of this republic."


GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY CANON G. W. FARRAR

When Abraham Lincoln sat, book in hand, day after day, under the tree,
moving round it as the shadow crossed, absorbed in mastering his task;
when James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Institute on the very stroke
of the hour and swept the schoolroom as faithfully as he mastered his
Greek lesson; when Ulysses Grant, sent with his team to meet some men
who came to load his cart with logs, and, finding no men, loaded the
cart with his own boy's strength, they showed in the conscientious
performance of duty the qualities which were to raise them to become
kings of men. When John Adams was told that his son, John Quincy Adams,
had been elected President of the United States, he said, "He has
always been laborious, child and man, from infancy."


But the youth was not destined to die in the deep valley of obscurity
and toil, in which it is the lot--and perhaps the happy lot--of most of
us to spend our little lives. The hour came; the man was needed. In
1861 there broke out that most terrible war of modern days. Grant
received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers, and in four years the
struggling toiler had been raised to the chief command of a vaster army
than has ever been handled by any mortal man. Who could have imagined
that four years would make that enormous difference? But it is often
so. The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have stepped often,
as it were, out of a door in the wall which no man had noticed; and,
unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, have made their way silently
and single-handed to the front. And there was no luck in it. It was a
work of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of
sleepless energy, and iron purpose and tenacity. In the campaigns at
Fort Donelson; in the desperate battle at Shiloh; in the siege of
Corinth; in battle after battle, in seige after seige; whatever Grant
had to do, he did it with his might. Other generals might fail--he
would not fail. He showed what a man could do whose will was strong. He
undertook, as General Sherman said of him, what no one else would have
ventured and his very soldiers began to reflect something of his
indomitable determination.

His sayings revealed the man. "I have nothing to do with opinions," he
said at the outset," and shall only deal with armed rebellion." "In
riding over the field," he said at Shiloh, "I saw that either side was
ready to give way, if the other showed a bold front. I took the
opportunity, and ordered an advance along the whole line." "No terms,"
he wrote to General Buckner at Fort Donelson (and it is pleasant to
know that General Buckner stood as a warm friend beside his dying bed);
"no terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted." "My
headquarters," he wrote from Vicksburg, "will be on the field." With a
military genius which embraced the vastest plans while attending to the
smallest details, he defeated, one after another, every great general
of the Confederates except Stonewall Jackson. The Southerners felt that
he held them as in the grasp of a vise; that this man could neither be
arrested nor avoided. For all this he has been severely blamed. He
ought not to be blamed. He has been called a butcher, which is grossly
unjust. He loved peace; he hated bloodshed; his heart was generous and
kind. His orders were to save lives, to save treasure, but at all costs
to save his country--and he did save his country.

After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the war was over. He had
put his hand to the plow and had looked not back. He had made blow
after blow, each following where the last had struck; he had wielded
like a hammer the gigantic forces at his disposal, and had smitten
opposition into the dust. It was a mighty work, and he had done it
well. Surely history has shown that for the future destinies of a
mighty nation it was a necessary and blessed work!


AMERICAN COURAGE

From the copyrighted print in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George
Riddle, with the permission of Duffield and Company, New York,
publishers.

BY SHERMAN HOAR

I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a
contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel
that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation
too much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has
been done here. Courage is the characteristic of no one land or time.
The world's history is full of it and the lessons it teaches. American
courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest
national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality
to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a
strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal
sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest
study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.

  "Let him who will, sing deeds done well across the sea,
  Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."

The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid
quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but
for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by
dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire;
the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.

In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General
Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when
suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after
the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The
general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he
could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder
have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I
may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who
lay wounded between the Union and Confederate lines. To go to them,
Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose
himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that
day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a
head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to
allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted
in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for
action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from
the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens
he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks,
started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the
open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder
their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about
doing good under circumstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon,
however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character
of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him,
and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and
beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him,
saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and
two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving-
kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work,
giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack
pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more
comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to
his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a more exalted
example of personal courage and self-denial than that of that
Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of
Christian fortitude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland
gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but
I cannot help thanking God that, in our reunited country, we are joint
heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that
come from such heroic deeds as his.


THE MINUTEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION

Reprinted, with permission, from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

The Minuteman of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the old, the
middle-aged, and the young. He was the husband and the father, who left
his plow in the furrow and his hammer on the bench, and marched to die
or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the
singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his
country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English
cavalier:--

  "I could not love thee, dear, so much,
  Loved I not honor more."

He was the man who was willing to pour out his life's blood for a
principle. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy
him; enthroned in the love of his fellow citizens, the king's writ
could not take him; and when, on the morning of Lexington, the king's
troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds
of the moment, the rising sun of the America we behold, and, careless
of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh,
what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the
ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty
British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling
through the streets of the village, panic-stricken and broken.

Him we gratefully recall to-day; him we commit in his immortal youth to
the reverence of our children. And here amid these peaceful fields,--
here in the heart of Middlesex County, of Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of Liberty, as the minuteman stood at the
old North Bridge. But should we or our descendants, false to justice or
humanity, betray in any way their cause, spring into life as a hundred
years ago, take one more step, descend, and lead us, as God led you in
saving America, to save the hopes of man.

No hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor
is any army but our own likely to tread our soil. Not such are our
enemies to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat,
their bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit
shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and
ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of
caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very
springs of national life,--there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your
Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and
your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed,
spare not the enemy. Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the
clouds, pour in resistless might. Fire from every rock and tree, from
door and window, from hearthstone and chamber. Hang upon his flank from
morn to sunset, and so, through a land blazing with indignation, hurl
the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back--back in
utter defeat and ruin.


PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Reprinted with permission from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

On Tuesday, April 18, 1775, Gage, the royal governor, who had decided
to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads
from Boston into Middlesex, to prevent any report of the intended march
from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the
tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In
the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable
where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a son of
liberty; and when the groom idly remarked in nervous English "about
what would occur to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook,
and, asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend,
who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.

Gage thought that his secret had been kept, but Lord
Percy, who had heard the people say on the Common that
the troops would miss their aim, undeceived him. Gage
instantly ordered that no one should leave the town. But
Dr. Warren was before him, and, as the troops crossed the
river, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down
to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert
Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North
Church,--

  "One, if by land, and two, if by sea,"

as a signal of the march of the British.
 It was a brilliant April night. The winter had been unusually mild and
the spring very forward. The hills were already green; the early grain
waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with blossoming orchards.
Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul Revere
swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing
every house as he went, spurring for Lexington and Hancock and Adams,
and evading the British patrols, who had been sent out to stop the
news.

Stop the news! Already the village church bells were beginning to ring
the alarm, as the pulpits beneath them had been ringing for many a
year. In the awakening houses lights flashed from window to window.
Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal guns flashed and
echoed. The watchdogs barked; the cocks crew.

Stop the news! Stop the sunrise! The murmuring night trembled with the
summons so earnestly expected, so dreaded, so desired. And as, long
ago, the voice rang out at midnight along the Syrian shore, wailing
that great Pan was dead, but in the same moment the choiring angels
whispered, "Glory to God in the highest, for Christ is born," so, if
the stern alarm of that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal
heart to portend the passing glory of British dominion and the tragical
chance of war, it whispered to them with prophetic inspiration, "Good
will to men; America is born!"

There is a tradition that long before the troops reached Lexington an
unknown horseman thundered at the door of Captain Joseph Robbins in
Acton, waking every man and woman and babe in the cradle, shouting that
the regulars were marching to Concord and that the rendezvous was the
old North Bridge. Captain Robbins' son, a boy of ten years, heard the
summons in the garret where he lay, and in a few minutes was on his
father's old mare, a young Paul Revere, galloping along the road to
rouse Captain Isaac Davis, who commanded the minutemen of Acton. The
company assembled at his shop, formed, and marched a little way, when
he halted them and returned for a moment to his house. He said to his
wife, "Take good care of the children," kissed her, turned to his men,
gave the order to march, and saw his home no more. Such was the history
of that night in how many homes!

The hearts of those men and women of Middlesex might break, but they
could not waver. They had counted the cost. They knew what and whom
they served; and, as the midnight summons came, they started up and
answered, "Here am I!"


THE ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS

From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

We have a pitying estimate, a tender compassion, for the narrowness,
ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages. We seem to ourselves not
only to monopolize, but to have begun, the era of light. In other
words, we are all running over with a fourth-day-of-July spirit of
self-content. I am often reminded of the German whom the English poet
Coleridge met at Frankfort. He always took off his hat with profound
respect when he ventured to speak of himself. It seems to me, the
American people might be painted in the chronic attitude of taking off
its hat to itself.

Considering their employment of the mechanical forces, and their
movement of large masses from the earth, we know that the Egyptians had
the five, seven, or three mechanical powers; but we cannot account for
the multiplication and increase necessary to perform the wonders they
accomplished.

There is a book telling how Domenico Fontana of the sixteenth century
set up the Egyptian obelisk at Rome on end, in the Papacy of Sixtus V.
Wonderful! Yet the Egyptians quarried that stone, and carried it a
hundred and fifty miles, and the Romans brought it seven hundred and
fifty miles, and never said a word about it.

Take canals. The Suez canal absorbs half its receipts in cleaning out
the sand which fills it continually, and it is not yet known whether it
is a pecuniary success. The ancients built a canal at right angles to
ours; because they knew it would not fill up if built in that
direction, and they knew such a one as ours would. There were
magnificent canals in the land of the Jews, with perfectly arranged
gates and sluices. We have only just begun to understand ventilation
properly for our houses; yet late experiments at the Pyramids in Egypt
show that those Egyptian tombs were ventilated in the most perfect and
scientific manner.

Again, cement is modern, for the ancients dressed and joined their
stones so closely, that, in buildings thousands of years old the thin
blade of a penknife cannot be forced between them. The railroad dates
back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they had a knowledge of steam. A
painting has been discovered of a ship full of machinery, and a could
only be accounted for by supposing the motive power to have been steam.
Bramah acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock from
an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says that there was no
social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt.

"Well," say you, "Franklin invented the lightning rod." I have no doubt
he did; but years before his invention, and before muskets were
invented, the old soldiers on guard on the towers used Franklin's
invention to keep guard with; and if a spark passed between them and
the spearhead, they ran and bore the warning of the state and condition
of affairs. After that you will admit that Benjamin Franklin was not
the only one that knew of the presence of electricity, and the
advantages derived from its use. Solomon's Temple you will find was
situated on an exposed point of the hill: the  temple was so lofty that
it was often in peril, and was guarded by a system exactly like that of
Benjamin Franklin.

Well, I may tell you a little of ancient manufactures. The Duchess of
Burgundy took a necklace from the neck of a mummy, and wore it to a
ball given at the Tuileries; and everybody said they thought it was the
newest thing there. A Hindoo princess came into court; and her father,
seeing her, said, "Go home, you are not decently covered,--go home;"
and she said, "Father, I have seven suits on;" but the suits were of
muslin so thin that the king could see through them, A Roman poet says,
"the girl was in the poetic dress of the country." I fancy the French
would be rather astonished at this. Four hundred and fifty years ago
the first spinning machine was introduced into Europe. I have evidence
to show that it made its first appearance two thousand years before.

Why have I groped among these ashes? I have told you these facts to
show you that we have not invented everything--that we do not
monopolize the encyclopedia. The past had knowledge. But it was the
knowledge of the classes, not of the masses. "The beauty that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" were exclusive, the possession
of the few. The science of Egypt was amazing; but it meant privilege--
the privilege of the king and the priest. It separated royalty and
priesthood from the people, and was the engine of oppression. When
Cambyses came down from Persia and thundered across Egypt, treading out
royalty and priesthood, he trampled out at the same time civilization
itself.

The distinctive glory of the nineteenth century is that it distributes
knowledge; that it recognizes the divine will, which is that every man
has a right to know whatever may be serviceable to himself or to his
fellows; that it makes the church, the schoolhouse, and the town hall,
its symbols, and humanity its care. This democratic spirit will animate
our arts with immortality, if God means that they shall last.


A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

An extract from "A Man Without a Country"

BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at some
dinner party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
took him a day or two's voyage in his flatboat, and, in short,
fascinated him. For the next year, barrack life was very tame to poor
Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man
had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the
poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in
reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at
him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a
politician the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and
high-low-jack. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came
down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place for his office, but
as a disguised conquerer. He had defeated I know not how many district
attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public dinners; he had
been heralded in I don't know how many "Weekly Arguses," and it was
rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him. It was
a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort
an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him
out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cottonwood  tree, as he
said--really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan
was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know
it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

What Burr meant to do I know no more than you. It is none of our
business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson
and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel
all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great
treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is to-
day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, to
while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
"spectacles," a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
enough--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any
one who would follow him had the order been signed, "By command of His
Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped--rightly
for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
would never have heard of him, but that, when the president of the
court asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to show
that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in
a fit of frenzy:--"Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of
the United States again!"

I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
was holding the court. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of
those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the
rest. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses
in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States" was scarcely a
reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all the years since
he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be
true to "United States." It was "United States" which gave him the
uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. I do not excuse Nolan; I
only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he
might never hear her name again.

He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.

Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. He called the court into
his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a
sheet, to say:--

"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the court! The court decides, subject
to the approval of the president, that you never hear the name of the
United States again."

Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added:--

"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and
deliver him to the naval commander there."

The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.

"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty
here this evening. The court is adjourned without day."

The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
followed ever after. The Secretary of the Navy was requested to put
Nolan on board a government vessel bound on a long cruise, and to
direct that he should be only so far confined there as to make it
certain that he never saw or heard of the country. One afternoon a lot
of the men sat on the deck smoking and reading aloud. Well, so it
happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others;
and he read very well. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem,
only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten thousand years
ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto without a thought
of what was coming:--

  "Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
  Who never to himself hath said,"--

It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
still unconsciously or mechanically:--

  "This is my own, my native land!"

Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on:--

  "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
  As home his footsteps he hath turned
  From wandering on a foreign strand?--
  If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"--

By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on:--

  "For him no minstrel raptures swell;
  High though his titles, proud his name,
  Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
  Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
  The wretch, concentred all in self,"--

and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
the book into the sea, vanished into his stateroom, and we did not see
him for two months again. He never entered in with the young men
exactly as a companion again; but generally he had the nervous, tired
look of a heart-wounded man.

And when Nolan died, there was found in his Bible a slip of paper at
the place where he had marked the text:--

"They desire a country, even a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city."

On this slip of paper he had written:--

"Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:--
  "In Memory of
  "PHILIP NOLAN,
  "_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States_.
  "He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but
  no man deserved less at her hands."


THE EXECUTION OF RODRIGUEZ

From "Cuba in War Time," with the author's permission

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer. When the
revolution broke out, young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving
his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken by the
Spanish, was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the
government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before
sunrise. His execution took place a half mile distant from the city, on
the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond
which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years.

There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when
the squad of soldiers marched out from town, it was still shining
brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent
broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass and
with bunches of cactus and palmetto.

The execution was quickly finished with rough, and, but for one
frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it
came to the square of soldiery, and the condemned man, the priests, and
the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the lines closed
behind them.

Rodriguez bent and kissed the cross which the priest held up before
him. He then walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and
turned his back to the square and faced the hills and the road across
them which led to his father's farm. As the officer gave the first
command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and
held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light
which had just begun to show above the hills.

The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and
the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were
pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most
cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can
very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory
to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and
pointed out silently--the firing squad were so placed that when they
fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme
end of the square.

Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked
across the grass and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting
prisoner. It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been.
The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets in the back.
He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he
had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the
locks caught--and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been
laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear.

You would expect that any man who had been snatched back to life in
such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break
down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed
with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded his
head gravely, and with his shoulders squared, took up a new position,
straightened his back again, and once more held himself erect. As an
exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of
heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to
give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew,
with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but
that which lay within himself.

The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily
whipped up his sword, the men once more leveled their rifles, the sword
rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head
snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as
though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had
stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or
sound, and did not move again.

At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in
the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the
splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air
with warmth and light.




THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION


THE FLOOD OF BOOKS

From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, publishers.

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

There is the highest authority for believing that a man's life, even
though he be an author, consists not in the abundance of things that he
possesses. Rather is its real value to be sought in the quality of the
ideas and feelings that possess him, and in the effort to embody them
in his work.

The work is the great thing. The delight of clear and steady thought,
of free and vivid imagination, of pure and strong emotion; the
fascination of searching for the right words, which sometimes come in
shoals like herring, so that the net can hardly contain them, and at
other times are more shy and fugacious than the wary trout which refuse
to be lured from their hiding places; the pleasure of putting the fit
phrase in the proper place, of making a conception stand out plain and
firm with no more and no less than is needed for its expression, of
doing justice to an imaginary character so that it shall have its own
life and significance in the world of fiction, of working a plot or an
argument clean through to its inevitable close: these inward and
unpurchasable joys are the best wages of the men and women who write.

What more will they get? Well, unless history forgets to repeat itself,
their additional wages, their personal dividends under the profit-
sharing system, so to speak, will be various. Some will probably get
more than they deserve, others less.

The next best thing to the joy of work is the winning of gentle readers
and friends who find some good in your book, and are grateful for it,
and think kindly of you for writing it.

The next best thing to that is the recognition, on the part of people
who know, that your work is well done, and of fine quality. That is
called fame, or glory, and the writer who professes to care nothing for
it is probably deceiving himself, or else his liver is out of order.
Real reputation, even of a modest kind and of a brief duration, is a
good thing; an author ought to be able to be happy without it, but
happier with it.


EFFECTIVENESS IN SPEAKING

From the Introduction to "The World's Famous Orations," with the
permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York and London,
publishers.

BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

While it is absolutely necessary for the orator to master his subject
and to speak with earnestness, his speech can be made more effective by
the addition of clearness, brevity and apt illustrations.

Clearness of statement is of very great importance. It is not
sufficient to say that there are certain self-evident truths; it is
more accurate to say that all truth is self-evident. Because truth is
self-evident, the best service that one can render a truth is to state
it so clearly that it can be comprehended, needs no argument in its
support. In debate, therefore, one's first effort should be to state
his own side so clearly and concisely as to make the principles
involved easily understood. His second object should be so to divest
his opponent's argument of useless verbiage as to make it stand forth
clearly; for as truth is self-evident, so error bears upon its face its
own condemnation. Error needs only to be exposed to be overthrown.

Brevity of statement also contributes to the force of a speaker. It is
possible so to enfold a truth in long-drawn-out sentences as
practically to conceal it. The epigram is powerful because it is full
of meat and short enough to be remembered. To know when to stop is
almost as important as to know where to begin and how to proceed. The
ability to condense great thoughts into small words and brief sentences
is an attribute of genius. Often one lays down a book with the feeling
that the author has "said nothing with elaboration," while in perusing
another book one finds a whole sermon in a single sentence, or an
unanswerable argument couched in a well-turned phrase.

The interrogatory is frequently employed by the orator, and when wisely
used is irresistible. What dynamic power for instance, there is in that
question propounded by Christ, "What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?" Volumes could not have
presented so effectively the truth that he sought to impress upon his
hearers.

The illustration has no unimportant place in the equipment of the
orator. We understand a thing more easily when we know that it is like
something which we have already seen. Illustrations may be drawn from
two sources--nature and literature--and of the two, those from nature
have the greater weight. All learning is valuable; all history is
useful. By knowing what has been we can better judge the future; by
knowing how men have acted heretofore we can understand how they will
act again in similar circumstances. But people know nature better than
they know books, and the illustrations drawn from everyday life are the
most effective.

If the orator can seize upon something within the sight or hearing of
his audience,--something that comes to his notice at the moment and as
if not thought of before,--it will add to the effectiveness of the
illustration. For instance, Paul's speech to the Athenians derived a
large part of its strength from the fact that he called attention to an
altar near by, erected "to the Unknown God," and then proceeded to
declare unto them the God whom they ignorantly worshiped.

Abraham Lincoln used scripture quotations very frequently and very
powerfully. Probably no Bible quotation, or, for that matter, no
quotation from any book ever has had more influence upon a people than
the famous quotation made by Lincoln in his Springfield speech of
1858,--"A house divided against itself cannot stand." It is said that
he had searched for some time for a phrase which would present in the
strongest possible way the proposition he intended to advance--namely,
that the nation could not endure half slave and half free.

It is a compliment to a public speaker that the audience should discuss
what he says rather than his manner of saying it; more complimentary
that they should remember his arguments, than that they should praise
his rhetoric. The orator should seek to conceal himself behind his
subject. If he presents himself in every speech he is sure to become
monotonous, if not offensive. If, however, he focuses attention upon
his subject, he can find an infinite number of themes and, therefore,
give variety to his speech.


BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE

From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, publishers.

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

Every one knows what books are. But what is literature? It is the ark
on the flood. It is the light on the candlestick. It is the flower
among the leaves; the consummation of the plant's vitality, the crown
of its beauty, and the treasure house of its seeds. It is hard to
define, easy to describe.

Literature is made up of those writings which translate the inner
meanings of nature and life, in language of distinction and charm,
touched with the personality of the author, into artistic forms of
permanent interest. The best literature, then, is that which has the
deepest significance, the most lucid style, the most vivid
individuality, and the most enduring form.

On the last point contemporary judgment is but guess-work, but on the
three other points it should not be impossible to form, nor improper to
express, a definite opinion.

Literature has its permanent marks. It is a connected growth, and its
life history is unbroken. Masterpieces have never been produced by men
who have had no masters. Reverence for good work is the foundation of
literary character. The refusal to praise bad work, or to imitate it,
is an author's personal chastity.

Good work is the most honorable and lasting thing in the world. Four
elements enter into good work in literature:--An original impulse--not
necessarily a new idea, but a new sense of the value of an idea. A
first-hand study of the subject and the material. A patient, joyful,
unsparing labor for the perfection of form. A human aim--to cheer,
console, purify, or ennoble the life of the people. Without this aim
literature has never sent an arrow close to the mark. It is only by
good work that men of letters can justify their right to a place in the
world. The father of Thomas Carlyle was a stonemason, whose walls stood
true and needed no rebuilding. Carlyle's prayer was, "Let me write my
books as he built his houses."


EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS

From an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce, 1890

BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

Before we can talk together to advantage about the value of education
in business, we ought to come to a common understanding about the sort
of education we mean and the sort of business.

We must not think of the liberal education of to-day as dealing with a
dead past--with dead languages, buried peoples, exploded philosophies;
on the contrary, everything which universities now teach is quick with
life and capable of application to modern uses. They teach indeed the
languages and literature of Judea, Greece, and Rome; but it is because
those literatures are instinct with eternal life. They teach
mathematics, but it is mathematics mostly created within the lifetime
of the older men here present. In teaching English, French, and German,
they are teaching the modern vehicles of all learning--just what Latin
was in medieval times. As to history, political science, and natural
science, the subjects, and all the methods by which they are taught,
may properly be said to be new within a century. Liberal education is
not to be justly regarded as something dry, withered, and effete; it is
as full of sap as the cedars of Lebanon.

And what sort of business do we mean? Surely the larger sorts of
legitimate and honorable business; that business which is of advantage
both to buyer and seller, and to producer, distributor, and consumer
alike, whether individuals or nations, which makes common some useful
thing which has been rare, or makes accessible to the masses good
things which have been within reach only of the few--I wish I could say
simply which make dear things cheap; but recent political connotations
of the word cheap forbid. We mean that great art of production and
exchange which through the centuries has increased human comfort,
cherished peace, fostered the fine arts, developed the pregnant
principle of associated action, and promoted both public security and
public liberty.

With this understanding of what we mean by education on the one hand
and business on the other, let us see if there can be any doubt as to
the nature of the relations between them. The business man in large
affairs requires keen observation, a quick mental grasp of new
subjects, and a wide range of knowledge. Whence come these powers and
attainments--either to the educated or to the uneducated--save through
practice and study? But education is only early systematic practice and
study under guidance. The object of all good education is to develop
just these powers--accuracy in observation, quickness and certainty in
seizing upon the main points of new subjects, and discrimination in
separating the trivial from the important in great masses of facts.
This is what liberal education does for the physician, the lawyer, the
minister, and the scientist. This is what it can do also for the man of
business; to give a mental power is one of the main ends of the higher
education. Is not active business a field in which mental power finds
full play? Again, education imparts knowledge, and who has greater need
to know economics, history, and natural science than the man of large
business?

Further, liberal education develops a sense of right, duty, and honor;
and more and more, in the modern world, large business rests on
rectitude and honor, as well as on good judgment. Education does this
through the contemplation and study of the moral ideals of our race;
not in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague enjoyment of poetic
and religious abstractions, but in the resolute purpose to apply
spiritual ideals to actual life. The true university fosters ideals,
but always to urge that they be put into practice in the real world.
When the universities hold up before their youth the great Semitic
ideals which were embodied in the Decalogue, they mean that those
ideals should be applied in politics. When they teach their young men
that Asiatic ideal of unknown antiquity, the Golden Rule, they mean
that their disciples shall apply it to business; when they inculcate
that comprehensive maxim of Christian ethics, "Ye are all members of
one another," they mean that this moral principle is applicable to all
human relations, whether between individuals, families, states, or
nations.


THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ORATORY

From the author's lectures on oratory, with his permission

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

It is a singular fact that the three leaders of the revolution, in the
Massachusetts colony, John Adams, Sam Adams, and Oxenbridge Thatcher,
were all trained originally to be clergymen, and all afterwards
determined to be lawyers, and get their legal training in addition.
John Adams did it; Oxenbridge Thatcher did it. Sam Adams's parents held
so hard to the doctrine that the law was a disreputable profession that
they never allowed him to enter it. He went into business, but before
he got through, mixed himself up with legal questions more than the two
others put together. And what is more, and what has only lately been
brought out distinctly, there existed in the southern colonies
represented by Virginia very much the same feeling, only coming from a
different source. It was not a question of church membership or of
ecclesiastical training--the southern colonies never troubled
themselves very much about those things--but turned upon a wholly
different thing. The southern colonies were based on land ownership;
the aim was to build up a type of society like the English type, an
aristocratic system of landowners as in England. And these
miscellaneous men who, without owning large estates or large numbers of
slaves, came forward to try cases in court, were regarded with the same
sort of suspicion which the same class had to meet in Massachusetts.

Patrick Henry, the greatest of Virginians for the purpose for which
Providence had marked him out, was always regarded by Jefferson in very
much the same light in which Sam Adams was by his uncles, who were
afraid he wanted to be a lawyer. Henry was regarded as a man from the
people, an irregularly trained man. Jefferson, you will find,
criticizes his pronunciation severely. He talked about "yearth" instead
of "earth." He said that a man's "nateral" parts needed to be improved
by "eddication." Jefferson had traveled in Europe and talked with
cultivated men in other countries. He did not do that sort of thing,
and he, not being a man of the most generous or candid nature, always
tries to make us think that Patrick Henry was a nobody who had very
little practice. And it was not until the admirable life of him written
for the "American Statesmen" series by my predecessor in this
lectureship, Moses Coit Tyler, whose loss we so greatly mourn, that it
was clearly made out that, on the contrary, he had an immense legal
practice and was wonderfully successful in a great variety of cases.

So, both North and South, there was this antagonism to this new class
coming forward; and yet that new class stepped forward and took the
leadership of the American Revolution. Not that the clergy were false
to their duty. They did their duty well. There is a book by J. Wingate
Thornton, called "The Clergy of the American Revolution," which
contains an admirable and powerful series of sermons by those very
clergymen whom I have criticized for their limitations. They did their
part admirably, and yet one sees as time goes on that the lawyers are
taking matters into their own hands.

But the change was not always a benefit to the style of oratory. It was
a period of somewhat formal style; it was not a period when the English
language was reaching to its highest sources. You will be surprised to
find, for instance, in the books and addresses of that period how
little Shakespeare is quoted, how much oftener much inferior poets. In
Edmund Burke's orations he quotes Shakespeare very little; and Edmund
Burke's orations are interesting especially for this, that they are not
probably the original addresses which he gave, are literature rather
than oratory, and are now generally supposed to have been written out
afterwards.

Like Burke most of the orators of that period have a certain formal
style. When all is said and done, the clergy got a certain pithiness
from that terrific habit they had of going back every little while and
pinning down their thought with a text. One English clergyman of the
period compared his text to a horse block on which he ascended when he
wished to mount his horse, and then he rode his horse as long as he
wished and might or might not come back to that horse block again.
Therefore we see in the oratory of that time a certain formality.

Moreover, in the absence of the modern reporter, we really do not know
exactly what was said in the greatest speeches of that day. The modern
reporter, whose aim is to report everything that is said, and who
generally succeeds in putting in a great many fine things which haven't
occurred to the orators--the modern reporter was not known, and we have
but very few descriptions even of the great orations.


DANIEL WEBSTER, THE MAN

From the author's lectures on oratory, with his permission

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

It happened to me, when I was in college, to be once on some business
at an office on State Street in Boston, then as now the central
business street of the place, in a second-story office where there were
a number of young men writing busily at their desks. Presently one of
the youths, passing by accident across the room, stopped suddenly and
said,--

"There is Daniel Webster!"

In an instant every desk in that room was vacated, every pane in every
window was filled with a face looking out, and I, hastening up behind
them, found it difficult to get a view of the street so densely had
they crowded round it. And once looking out, I saw all up and down the
street, in every window I could see, just the same mass of eager faces
behind the windows. Those faces were all concentrated on a certain
figure, a farmer-like, sunburned man who stood, roughly clothed, with
his hands behind him, speaking to no one, looking nowhere in
particular; waiting, so far as I could see, for nothing, with broad
shoulders and heavy muscles, and the head of a hero above. Such a brow,
such massive formation, such magnificent black eyes, such straight
black eyebrows I had never seen before.

That man, it appeared, was Daniel Webster! I saw people go along the
street sidling along past him, looking up at him as if he were the
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World in New York harbor. Nobody
knew what he wanted, it never was explained; he may have been merely
waiting for some companion to go fishing. But there he was, there he
stands in my memory. I don't know what happened afterwards, or how
these young men ever got back to their desks--if they ever did.

For me, however, that figure was revealed by one brief duplicate
impression, which came in a few months afterwards when I happened to be
out in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, where people used to drive then,
as they drive now, on summer afternoons for afternoon tea--only,
afternoon tea not having been invented, they drove out to their
neighbors' houses for fruit or a cup of chocolate.

You have heard Boston perhaps called the "Hub of the universe." A lady,
not a Bostonian, once said that if Boston were the hub of the universe,
Brookline ought to be called the "Sub-hub." In the "sub-hub" I was
sitting in the house of a kinsman who had a beautiful garden; who was
the discoverer, in fact, of the Boston nectarine, which all the world
came to his house to taste. I heard voices in the drawing-room and went
in there. And there I saw again before me the figure of that day on
State street, but it was the figure of a man with a beamingly good-
natured face, seated in a solid chair brought purposely to accommodate
his weight, sitting there with the simple culinary provision of a cup
of chocolate in his hand.

It so happened that the great man, the godlike Daniel, as the people
used to call him, had expressed the very mortal wish for a little more
sugar in his chocolate; and I, if you please, was the fortunate youth
who, passing near him, was selected as the Ganymede to bring to him the
refreshment desired. I have felt ever since that I, at least, was
privileged to put one drop of sweetness into the life of that great
man, a life very varied and sometimes needing refreshment. And I have
since been given by my classmates to understand--I find they recall it
to this day--that upon walking through the college yard for a week or
two after that opportunity, I carried my head so much higher than usual
as to awaken an amount of derision which undoubtedly, if it had been at
West Point, would have led to a boxing match.

That was Daniel Webster, one of the two great lawyers of Boston--I
might almost say, of the American bar at that time.


THE ENDURING VALUE OF SPEECH

From the author's lectures on oratory, with his permission

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

The Englishman, as far as I have observed, as a rule gets up with
reluctance, and begins with difficulty. Just as you are beginning to
feel seriously anxious for him, you gradually discover that he is on
the verge of saying some uncommonly good thing. Before you are fully
prepared for it he says that good thing, and then to your infinite
amazement he sits down!

The American begins with an ease which relieves you of all anxiety. The
anxiety begins when he talks a while without making any special point.
He makes his point at last, as good perhaps as the Englishman's,
possibly better. But then when he has made it, you find that he goes on
feeling for some other good point, and he feels and feels so long, that
perhaps he sits down at last without having made it.

My ideal of a perfect speech in public would be that it should be
conducted by a syndicate or trust, as it were, of the two nations, and
that the guaranty should be that an American should be provided to
begin every speech and an Englishman provided to end it.

Then, when we go a little farther and consider the act of speech
itself, and its relation to the word, we sometimes meet with a doubt
that we see expressed occasionally in the daily papers provided for us
with twenty pages per diem and thirty-two on Sunday, whether we will
need much longer anything but what is called sometimes by clergymen
"the printed word"--whether the whole form of communication through
oral speech will not diminish or fade away.

It seems to me a truly groundless fear--like wondering whether there
will ever be a race with only one arm or one leg, or a race of people
who live only by the eye or by the ear. The difference between the
written word and the spoken word is the difference between solitude and
companionship, between meditation and something so near action that it
is at least halfway to action and creates action. It is perfectly
supposable to imagine a whole race of authors of whom not one should
ever exchange a word with a human being while his greatest work is
being produced.

The greatest work of American literature, artistically speaking,
Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," was thus produced. His wife records that
during the year that he was writing it, he shut himself up in his study
every day. She asked no questions; he volunteered no information. She
only knew that something was going on by the knot in his forehead which
he carried all that year. At the end of the year he came from his study
and read over to her the whole book; a work of genius was added to the
world. It was the fruit of solitude.

And sometimes solitude, I regret as an author to say, extends to the
perusal of the book, for I have known at least one volume of poems of
which not a copy was ever sold; and I know another of which only one
copy was sold through my betraying the secret of the author and
mentioning the book to a classmate, who bought that one copy.

Therefore, in a general way, we may say that literature speaks in a
manner the voice of solitude. As soon as the spoken word comes in, you
have companionship. There can be no speech without at least one person
present, if it is only the janitor of the church. Dean Swift in reading
the Church of England service to his manservant only, adapted the
service as follows: "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth thee
and me in sundry places," etc.; but in that very economy of speech he
realized the presence of an audience. It takes a speaker and an
audience together to make a speech--I can say to you what I could not
first have said to myself. "The sea of upturned faces," as Daniel
Webster said, borrowing the phrase, however, from Scott's "Rob Roy"--
"the sea of upturned faces makes half the speech." And therefore we may
assume that there will always be this form of communication. It has,
both for the speaker and for the audience, this one vast advantage.


TO COLLEGE GIRLS

From "Girls and Education," by permission of, and by special
arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of
this author's works.

BY LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS

I doubt whether any one has told more effectively what a college may do
for a girl's mind than Dr. Thomas Fuller. In his "Church History of
Britain" he gives a short chapter to "The Conveniency of She-Colleges."
(I once quoted this chapter at Smith College, and was accused of making
it up.) "Nunneries also," he observes, "were good She-Schools, wherein
the girls and maids of the neighborhood were taught to read and work;
and sometimes a little Latin was taught them therein. Yea, give me
leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, haply
the weaker sex might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto
hath been attained. That sharpness of their wits, and suddenness of
their conceits, which their enemies must allow unto them, might by
education be improved into a judicious solidity."

The feminine mind, with its quick intuitions and unsteady logic, may
keep the intuitions and gain a firmness which makes it more than
transiently stimulating. The emotional mind has its charm, especially
if its emotions are favorable to ourselves.

In some things it may be well that emotion is greater than logic; but
emotion _in logic_ is sad to contend with, sad even to contemplate--and
such is too often the reasoning of the untrained woman. Do not for a
moment suppose that I believe such reasoning peculiar to women; but
from the best men it has been in great measure trained out.

In a right-minded, sound-hearted girl, college training tends toward
control of the nervous system; and control of the nervous system--
making it servant and not master--is almost the supreme need of women.
Without such control they become helpless; with it they know scarcely a
limit to their efficiency. The world does not yet understand that for
the finest and highest work it looks and must look to the naturally
sensitive, whether women or men. I remember expressing to the late
Professor Greenough regret that a certain young teacher was nervous.
His answer has been a comfort to me ever since. "I wouldn't give ten
cents for any one who isn't." The nervous man or woman is bound to
suffer; but the nervous man or woman may rise to heights that the
naturally calm can never reach and can seldom see. To whom do you go
for counsel? To the calm, no doubt; but never to the phlegmatic-never
to the calm who are calm because they know no better (like the man in
Ruskin "to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose because he
does not love it"). You go to the calm who have fought for their
calmness, who have known what it is to quiver in every nerve, but have
put through whatever they have taken in hand.

There are numberless sweet and patient women who never studied beyond
the curriculum of the district school, women who help every one near
them by their own unselfish loveliness; but the intelligently patient,
the women who can put themselves into the places of all sorts of
people, who can sympathize not merely with great and manifest griefs,
but with every delicate jarring of the human soul--hardest of all, with
the ambitions of the dull--these women, who must command a respect
intellectual as well as moral, reach their highest efficiency through
experience based on college training.

College life, designed as it is to strengthen a girl's intellect and
character, should teach her to understand better, and not worse,
herself as distinguished from other beings of her own sex or the
opposite, should fortify her individuality, her power of resisting, and
her determination to resist, the contagion of the unwomanly.
Exaggerated study may lessen womanly charm; but there is nothing loud
or masculine about it. Nor should we judge mental training or anything
else by scattered cases of its abuse. The only characteristics of women
that the sensible college girl has lost are feminine frivolity, and
that kind of headless inaccuracy in thought and speech which once
withheld from the sex--or from a large part of it--the intellectual
respect of educated men.

At college, if you have lived rightly, you have found enough learning
to make you humble, enough friendship to make your hearts large and
warm, enough culture to teach you the refinement of simplicity, enough
wisdom to keep you sweet in poverty and temperate in wealth. Here you
have learned to see great and small in their true relation, to look at
both sides of a question, to respect the point of view of every honest
man or woman, and to recognize the point of view that differs most
widely from your own. Here you have found the democracy that excludes
neither poor nor rich, and the quick sympathy that listens to all and
helps by the very listening. Here too, it may be at the end of a long
struggle, you have seen--if only in transient glimpses--that after
doubt comes reverence, after anxiety peace, after faintness courage,
and that out of weakness we are made strong. Suffer these glimpses to
become an abiding vision, and you have the supreme joy of life.


THE ART OF ACTING

From an address to the students of Harvard University, 1885. Published
in "The Drama; Addresses by Henry Irving," William Heinemann, London,
publisher, 1893

BY HENRY IRVING

What is the art of acting? I speak of it in its highest sense, as the
art to which Roscius, Betterton, and Garrick owed their fame. It is the
art of embodying the poet's creations, of giving them flesh and blood,
of making the figures which appeal to your mind's eye in the printed
drama live before you on the stage. "To fathom the depths of character,
to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quiverings of emotion,
to comprehend the thoughts that are hidden under words, and thus
possess one's self of the actual mind of the individual man"--such was
Macready's definition of the player's art; and to this we may add the
testimony of Talma. He describes tragic acting as "the union of
grandeur without pomp and nature without triviality." It demands, he
says, the endowment of high sensibility and intelligence.

You will readily understand from this that to the actor the well-worn
maxim that art is long and life is short has a constant significance.
The older we grow the more acutely alive we are to the difficulties of
our craft. I cannot give you a better illustration of this fact than a
story which is told of Macready. A friend of mine, once a dear friend
of his, was with him when he played Hamlet for the last time. The
curtain had fallen, and the great actor was sadly thinking that the
part he loved so much would never be his again. And as he took off his
velvet mantle and laid it aside, he muttered almost unconsciously the
words of Horatio, "Good-night, sweet Prince" then turning to his
friend, "Ah," said he, "I am just beginning to realise the sweetness,
the tenderness, the gentleness of this dear Hamlet!" Believe me, the
true artist never lingers fondly upon what he has done. He is ever
thinking of what remains undone: ever striving toward an ideal it may
never be his fortune to attain.

It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the
moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be such
moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage with a
flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is
impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great
actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. We
know that Edmund Kean constantly practiced before a mirror effects
which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the
accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years,
to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.

I do not want to overstate the case, or to appeal to anything that is
not within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether a
scene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed on
your minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcible
word. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to you than
all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critic has said
that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had he heard the
"Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actors are not
Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making a dramatic
character step out of the page, and come nearer to our hearts and our
understandings.

After all, the best and most convincing exposition of the whole art of
acting is given by Shakespeare himself: "To hold, as 'twere, the mirror
up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and
the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." Thus the poet
recognized the actor's art as a most potent ally in the representation
of human life. He believed that to hold the mirror up to nature was one
of the worthiest functions in the sphere of labor, and actors are
content to point to his definition of their work as the charter of
their privileges.


ADDRESS TO THE FRESHMAN CLASS AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

From "The Harvard Graduates Magazine"

BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

Just in the last few years we have had a striking illustration of
strong reaction against prevailing educational policies. There has come
upon us right here on these grounds and among Harvard's constituents,
and widespread over the country as well, a distrust of freedom for
students, of freedom for citizens, of freedom for backward races of
men. This is one of the striking phenomena of our day, a distrust of
freedom.

Now, there is no moment in life when there comes a greater sudden
access of freedom than this moment in which you find yourselves. When
young men come to an American college, I care not at all which
college--to any American college from the parents' home or from school,
they experience a tremendous access of freedom. Is it an injury? Is it a
danger? Are you afraid of it? Has society a right to be afraid of it?
What is freedom for? What does it do for us? Does it hurt us or help
us? Do we grow in it, or do we shrink in it? That is quite an important
question in the management of Harvard University. It is the important
question in modern government. It is pretty clear that when young men
or old men are free, they make mistakes, and they go wrong; having
freedom to do right or wrong, they often do right and they often do
wrong. When you came hither, you found yourselves in possession of a
new freedom. You can overeat yourselves, for example; you can
overdrink; you can take no care for sleep; you can take no exercise or
too much; you can do little work or too much; you can indulge in
harmful amusements: in short, you have a great new freedom here. Is it
a good thing for you or a bad thing? Clearly you can go astray, for the
road is not fenced. You can make mistakes; you can fall into sin. Have
you learned to control yourselves? Have you got the will-power in you
to regulate your own conduct? Can you be your own taskmaster? You have
been in the habit of looking to parents, perhaps, or to teachers, or to
the heads of your boarding schools or your day schools for control in
all these matters. Have you got it in yourselves to control yourselves?
That is the prime question which comes up with regard to every one of
you when you come to the University. Have you the sense and the
resolution to regulate your own conduct?

It is pretty clear that in other spheres freedom is dangerous. How is
it with free political institutions? Do they always yield the best
government? Look at the American cities and compare them with the
cities of Europe. Clearly, free institutions do not necessarily produce
the best government. Are then free institutions wrong or inexpedient?
What is freedom for? Why has God made men free, as he has not made the
plants and the animals? Is freedom dangerous? Yes! but it is necessary
to the growth of human character, and that is what we are all in the
world for, and that is what you and your like are in college for. That
is what the world was made for, for the occupation of men who in
freedom through trial win character. It is choice which makes the
dignity of human nature. It is habitual choosing after examination,
consideration, reflection, and advice, which makes the man of power. It
is through the internal motive power of the will that men imagine,
invent, and thrust thoughts out into the obscure beyond, into the
future. The will is the prime motive power; and you can only train your
wills, in freedom. That is what freedom is for, in school and college,
in society, industries, and governments. Fine human character is the
ultimate object, and freedom is the indispensable condition of its
development.

Now, there are some clear objects for choice here in college, for real
choice, for discreet choice. I will mention only two. In the first
place, choose those studies--there is a great range of them here--which
will, through your interest in them, develop your working power. You
know it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in
college or in the world. Choose those studies on which you can work
intensely with pleasure, with real satisfaction and happiness. That is
the true guide to a wise choice. Choose that intellectual pursuit which
will develop within you the power to do enthusiastic work, an internal
motive power, not an external compulsion. Then choose an ennobling
companionship. You will find out in five minutes that this man stirs
you to good, that man to evil. Shun the latter; cling to the former.
Choose companionship rightly, choose your whole surroundings so that
they shall lift you up and not drag you down. Make these two choices
wisely, and be faithful in labor, and you will succeed in college and
in after life.


WITH TENNYSON AT FARRINGFORD

From "Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by His Son," with the permission
of The Macmillan Company, New York and London, publishers.

Before leaving for Aldworth we spent some delightful sunny days in the
Farringford gardens. In the afternoons my father sat in his summerhouse
and talked to us and his friends.

This spring he had enjoyed seeing the unusually splendid blossom of
apple and pear tree, of white lilacs, and of purple aubretia that
bordered the walks.

At intervals he strolled to the bottom of the kitchen garden to look at
the roses, or at the giant fig tree ("like a breaking wave," as he
said) bursting into leaf; or he marked the "branching grace" of the
stately line of elms, between the boles of which, from his summerhouse,
he caught a glimpse of far meadows beyond. He said that he did not
believe in Emerson's pretty lines:--

  "Only to children children sing,
  Only to youth the Spring is Spring."

"For age does feel the joy of spring, though age can only crawl over
the bridge while youth skips the brook." His talk was grave and gay
together. In the middle of anecdotes he would stop short and say
something of what he felt to be the sadness and mystery of life.

What impressed all his friends was his choice of language, the felicity
of his turns of expression, his imagery, the terseness of his unadorned
English, and his simple directness of manner, which none will ever be
able to reproduce, however many notes they may have taken. His dignity
and repose of manner, his low musical voice, and the power of his
magnetic dark eye kept the attention riveted. His argument was clear
and logical and never wandered from the point except by way of
illustration, and his illustrations were the most various I have ever
heard, and were taken from nature and science, from high and low life,
from the rich and from the poor, and his analysis of character was
always subtle and powerful.

While he talked of the mysteries of the universe, his face, full of the
strong lines of thought, was lighted up; and his words glowed as it
were with inspiration.

When conversing with my brother and myself or our college friends, he
was, I used to think, almost at his best, for he would quote us the
fine passages from ancient or modern literature and show us why they
are fine, or he would tell us about the great facts and discoveries in
astronomy, geology, botany, chemistry, and the great problems in
philosophy, helping us toward a higher conception of the laws which
govern the world and of "the law behind the law." He was so sympathetic
that the enthusiasm of youth seemed to kindle his own. He spoke out of
the fullness of his heart, and explained more eloquently than ever
where his own difficulties lay, and what he, as an old man, thought was
the true mainspring of human life and action; and

  "How much of act at human hands
  The sense of human will demands
  By which we dare to live or die."

The truth is that real genius, unless made shallow by prejudice, is
seldom frozen by age, and that, until absolute physical decay sets in,
the powers of the mind may become stronger and stronger.

On one of these June mornings, Miss L--, who was a stranger to us, but
whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father
took her over the bridge to the summerhouse looking on the Down. After
a little while he said: "Miss L--, my son says I am to read to you,"
and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud,"
"The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden."

His voice, as Miss L-- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and
quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in
his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written
the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him. This
had an extraordinary influence on the listener, who felt that the
reader had been _present_ at the scenes he described, and that he
still felt their bliss or agony.

He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when
he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L-- to listen to the sound of
the sea in the line,

  "The league-long roller thundering on the reef,"

and to mark Miriam Lane's chatter in

  "He ceased; and Miriam Lane
  Made such a voluble answer promising all."


NOTES ON SPEECH-MAKING

From "Notes on Speech-Making," with the permission of Longmans, Green
and Company, New York and London, publishers.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

We are told that the five-minute speeches with which Judge Hoar year
after year delighted the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa
contained but one original idea, clearly stated, and but one fresh
story, well told. This is indeed a model to be admired of all men; yet
how few of us will take the trouble of copying it!

The speaker who rambles and ambles along, saying nothing, and his
fellow, the speaker who links jest to jest, saying little more, are
both of them unabashed in the presence of an audience. They are devoid
of all shyness. They are well aware that they have "the gift of the
gab"; they rejoice in its possession; they lie in wait for occasions to
display it. They have helped to give foreigners the impression that
every American is an oratorical revolver, ready with a few remarks
whenever any chairman may choose to pull the trigger. And yet there are
Americans not a few to whom the making of an after-dinner speech is a
most painful ordeal. When the public dinner was given to Charles
Dickens in New York, on his first visit to America, Washington Irving
was obviously the predestined presiding officer. Curtis tells us that
Irving went about muttering: "I shall certainly break down; I know I
shall break down." When the dinner was eaten, and Irving arose to
propose the health of Dickens, he began pleasantly and smoothly in two
or three sentences; then hesitated, stammered, smiled, and stopped;
tried in vain to begin again; then gracefully gave it up, announced the
toast, "Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation," and sank into his
chair amid immense applause, whispering to his neighbor, "There! I told
you I should break down, and I've done it."

When Thackeray came, later, Irving "consented to preside at a dinner,
if speeches were absolutely forbidden; the condition was faithfully
observed" (so Curtis records), "but it was the most extraordinary
instance of American self-command on record." Thackeray himself had no
fondness for after-dinner speaking, nor any great skill in the art. He
used to complain humorously that he never could remember all the good
things he had thought of in the cab; and in "Philip" he went so far as
to express a hope that "a day will soon arrive (but I own, mind you,
that I do not carve well) when we shall have the speeches done by a
skilled waiter at a side table, as we now have the carving."

Hawthorne was as uncomfortable on his feet as were Thackeray and
Irving; but his resolute will steeled him for the trial. When he dined
with the Mayor of Liverpool, he was called upon for the toast of the
United States. "Being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my
legs and made a response," he wrote in his notebook, appending this
comment: "Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will be content
to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two
or three inches long; ... but, being once started, I felt no
embarassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going to be
hanged."

He also notes that his little speech was quite successful, "considering
that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I
am wholly unpracticed in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing
to say." To each of these three considerations of Hawthorne's it would
be instructive to add a comment, for he spoke under a triple
disadvantage. A speech cannot really be successful when the speaker has
nothing to say. It is rarely successful unless he knows the tastes and
the temper of those he is addressing. It can be successful only
casually unless he has had some practice in the simpler sort of
oratory.


HUNTING THE GRIZZLY

From "Hunting the Grizzly" with the permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons,
New York and London, publishers.

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

For half a mile I walked quickly and silently over the pine needles,
across a succession of slight ridges separated by narrow, shallow
valleys. The forest here was composed of lodge-pole pines, which on the
ridges grew close together, with tall slender trunks, while in the
valleys the growth was more open. Though the sun was behind the
mountains, there was yet plenty of light by which to shoot, but it
faded rapidly.

At last, as I was thinking of turning toward camp, I stole up to the
crest of one of the ridges, and looked over into the valley some sixty
yards off. Immediately I caught the loom of some large, dark object;
and another glance showed me a big grizzly walking slowly off with his
head down. He was quartering to me, and I fired into his flank, the
bullet, as I afterward found, ranging forward and piercing one lung. At
the shot he uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a
heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off.
After going a few hundred feet, he reached a laurel thicket, some
thirty yards broad, and two or three times as long, which he did not
leave. I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to venture
into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems and glossy foliage.
Moreover, as I halted, I heard him utter a peculiar, savage kind of
whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly, I began to skirt the
edge, standing on tiptoe and gazing earnestly to see if I could not
catch a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the
thicket, he suddenly left it directly opposite, and then wheeled and
stood broadside to me on the hillside, a little above. He turned his
head stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips;
his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.

I held true, aiming at the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point
or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great
bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody
foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and
then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the
laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited till he came to a
fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his
chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved
nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him.
He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired
for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth,
smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side
almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first
thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush
of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward,
leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he
recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly
jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only
four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did
so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head dropped, and he
rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets
had inflicted a mortal wound.

It was already twilight, and I merely opened the carcass, and then
trotted back to camp. Next morning I returned and with much labor took
off the skin. The fur was very fine, the animal being in excellent
trim, and unusually bright colored. Unfortunately, in packing it out I
lost the skull, and had to supply its place with one of plaster. The
beauty of the trophy, and the memory of the circumstances under which I
produced it, make me value it perhaps more highly than any other in my
house.




ARGUMENT AND PERSUASION

DEBATES AND CAMPAIGN SPEECHES


ON RETAINING THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

SPEECH OF GEORGE F. HOAR

A famous orator once imagined the nations of the world uniting to erect
a column to Jurisprudence in some stately capital. Each country was to
bring the name of its great jurist to be inscribed on the side of the
column, with a sentence stating what he and his country through him had
done toward establishing the reign of law and justice for the benefit
of mankind.

I have sometimes fancied that we might erect here in the capital of the
country a column to American Liberty which alone might rival in height
the beautiful and simple shaft which we have erected to the fame of the
Father of the Country. I can fancy each generation bringing its
inscription, which should recite its own contribution to the great
structure of which the column should be but the symbol.

The generation of the Puritan and the Pilgrim and the Huguenot claims
the place of honor at the base. "I brought the torch of freedom across
the sea. I cleared the forest. I subdued the savage and the wild beast.
I laid in Christian liberty and law the foundations of empire."

The next generation says: "What my fathers founded I builded. I left
the seashore to penetrate the wilderness. I planted schools and
colleges and churches."

Then comes the generation of the great colonial day: "I stood by the
side of England on many a hard-fought field. I helped humble the power
of France."

Then comes the generation of the revolutionary time: "I encountered the
power of England. I declared and won the independence of my country. I
placed that declaration on the eternal principles of justice and
righteousness which all mankind have read, and on which all mankind
will one day stand. I affirmed the dignity of human nature and the
right of the people to govern themselves."

The next generation says: "I encountered England again. I vindicated
the right of an American ship to sail the seas the wide world over
without molestation. I made the American sailor as safe at the ends of
the earth as my fathers had made the American farmer safe in his home."

Then comes the next generation: "I did the mighty deeds which in your
younger years you saw and which your fathers told. I saved the Union. I
freed the slave. I made of every slave a freeman, and of every freeman
a citizen, and of every citizen a voter."

Then comes another who did the great work in peace, in which so many of
you had an honorable share: "I kept the faith. I paid the debt. I
brought in conciliation and peace instead of war. I built up our vast
domestic commerce. I made my country the richest, freest, strongest,
happiest people on the face of the earth."

And now what have we to say? What have we to say? Are we to have a
place in that honorable company? Must we engrave on that column: "We
repealed the Declaration of Independence. We changed the Munroe
Doctrine from a doctrine of eternal righteousness and justice, resting
on the consent of the governed, to a doctrine of brutal selfishness,
looking only to our own advantage. We crushed the only republic in
Asia. We made war on the only Christian people in the East. We
converted a war of glory into a war of shame. We vulgarized the
American flag. We introduced perfidy into the practice of war. We
inflicted torture on unarmed men to extort confession. We put children
to death. We established reconcentrado camps. We devastated provinces.
We baffled the aspirations of a people for liberty"?

No, Mr. President. Never! Never! Other and better counsels will yet
prevail. The hours are long in the life of a great people. The
irrevocable step is not yet taken.

Let us at least have this to say: "We, too, have kept the faith of the
fathers. We took Cuba by the hand. We delivered her from her age-long
bondage. We welcomed her to the family of nations. We set mankind an
example never beheld before of moderation in victory. We led hesitating
and halting Europe to the deliverance of their beleaguered ambassadors
in China. We marched through a hostile country--a country cruel and
barbarous--without anger or revenge. We returned benefit for injury,
and pity for cruelty. We made the name of America beloved in the East
as in the West. We kept faith with the Philippine people. We kept faith
with our own history. We kept our national honor unsullied. The flag
which we received without a rent we handed down without a stain."


SPEECH OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY

I do not know why in the year 1899 this Republic has unexpectedly had
placed before it mighty problems which it must face and meet. They have
come and are here, and they could not be kept away. We have fought a
war with Spain.

The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, were intrusted to our hands
by the war, and to that great trust, under the Providence of God and in
the name of human progress and civilization, we are committed. It is a
trust we have not sought; it is a trust from which we will not flinch.
The American people will hold up the hands of their servants at home to
whom they commit its execution, while Dewey and Otis and the brave men
whom they command will have the support of the country in upholding our
flag where it now floats, the symbol and assurance of liberty and
justice.

There is universal agreement that the Philippines shall not be turned
back to Spain. No true American consents to that. Even if unwilling to
accept them ourselves, it would have been a weak evasion of manly duty
to require Spain to transfer them to some other power or powers, and
thus shirk our own responsibility. Even if we had had, as we did not
have, the power to compel such a transfer, it could not have been made
without the most serious international complications. Such a course
could not be thought of. And yet had we refused to accept the cession
of them, we should have had no power over them even for their own good.

We could not discharge the responsibilities upon us until these islands
became ours, either by conquest or treaty. There was but one
alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the
Philippines. The other suggestions--first, that they should be tossed
into the arena of contention for the strife of nations; or, second, be
left to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all--were too
shameful to be considered.

The treaty gave them to the United States. Could we have required less
and done our duty? Could we, after freeing the Filipinos from the
domination of Spain, have left them without government and without
power to protect life or property or to perform the international
obligations essential to an independent state? Could we have left them
in a state of anarchy and justified ourselves in our own consciences or
before the tribunal of mankind? Could we have done that in the sight of
God or man?

No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to
American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles
undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. They are
wrought in every one of its sacred folds, and are indistinguishable as
its shining stars.

  "Why read ye not the changeless truth,
  The free can conquer but to save?"

If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object? If in the
years of the future they are established in government under law and
liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not
rejoice in our heroism and humanity? Always perils, and always after
them safety; always darkness and clouds, but always shining through
them the light and the sunshine; always cost and sacrifice, but always
after them the fruition of liberty, education, and civilization.

I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not
prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot bound my
vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red
drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided
Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future
years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just
past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a
land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from
savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch
with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of
freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and
whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the
American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland
and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.


DEBATE ON THE TARIFF

SPEECH OF THOMAS B. REED

Whether the universal sentiment in favor of protection as applied to
every country is sound or not, I do not stop to discuss. Whether it is
best for the United States of America alone concerns me now, and the
first thing I have to say is, that after thirty years of protection,
undisturbed by any menace of free trade, up to the very year now last
past, this country was the greatest and most flourishing nation on the
face of this earth. Moreover, with the shadow of this unjustifiable
bill resting cold upon it, with mills closed, with hundreds of
thousands of men unemployed, industry at a standstill, and prospects
before it more gloomy than ever marked its history--except once--this
country is still the greatest and the richest that the sun shines on,
or ever did shine on.

According to the usual story that is told, England had been engaged
with a long and vain struggle with the demon of protection, and had
been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment
when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing
system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by
reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary,
destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially
appeared, and after a hard struggle established a principle for all
time and for all the world, and straightway England enjoyed the sum of
human happiness. Hence all good nations should do as England has done
and be happy ever after.

Suppose England, instead of being a little island in the sea, had been
the half of a great continent full of raw material, capable of an
internal commerce which would rival the commerce of all the rest of the
world.

Suppose every year new millions were flocking to her shores, and every
one of those new millions in a few years, as soon as they tasted the
delights of a broader life, would become as great a consumer as any one
of her own people.

Suppose that these millions, and the 70,000,000 already gathered under
the folds of her flag, were every year demanding and receiving a higher
wage and therefore broadening her market as fast as her machinery could
furnish production. Suppose she had produced cheap food beyond all her
wants, and that her laborers spent so much money that whether wheat was
sixty cents a bushel or twice that sum hardly entered the thoughts of
one of them, except when some Democratic tariff bill was paralyzing his
business.

Suppose that she was not only but a cannon shot from France, but that
every country in Europe had been brought as near to her as Baltimore is
to Washington--for that is what cheap ocean freights mean between us
and European producers. Suppose all those countries had her machinery,
her skilled workmen, her industrial system, and labor forty per cent
cheaper. Suppose under that state of facts, with all her manufacturers
proclaiming against it, frantic in their disapproval, England had been
called upon by Cobden to make the plunge into free trade, would she
have done it? Not if Cobden had been backed by the angelic host.
History gives England credit for great sense.


SPEECH OF CHARLES F. CRISP

I assume that the cause of protection has no more able advocate than
the gentleman from Maine. I assume that the argument for protection can
be put in no more alluring form than that to which we have listened to-
day. So assuming, I shall ask you calmly and dispassionately to examine
with me that argument, to see upon what it is based, and then I shall
invoke the unprejudiced judgment of this House as to whether the cause
attempted to be sustained by the gentleman from Maine has been
sustained, or can be before any tribunal where the voice of reason is
heard or the sense of justice is felt.

The gentleman from Maine, with a facility that is unequaled, when he
encounters an argument which he is unable to answer passes it by with
some bright and witty saying and thereby invites and receives the
applause of those who believe as he does. But the gentleman does not
attempt, the gentleman has not to-day attempted, to reply to the real
arguments that are made in favor of freer trade and greater liberty of
commerce.

The gentleman points to the progress of the United States, he points to
the rate of wages in the United States, he points to the aggregated
wealth of the United States, and claims all this is due to protection.
But he does not explain how we owe these blessings to protection. He
says, we have protection in the United States, wages are high in the
United States; therefore protection makes high wages.

When we ask the gentleman from Maine to give us a reason why a high
protective tariff increases the rate of wages he points to the glory,
the prosperity, and the honor of our country. We on this side unite
with him in every sentiment, in every purpose, in every effort that has
for its object the advancement of the general welfare of the people of
the United States, but we differ from him as to the method of promoting
their welfare. The gentleman belongs to that school who believe that
scarcity is a blessing, and that abundance should be prohibited by law.
We belong to that school who believe that scarcity is a calamity to be
avoided, and that abundance should be, if possible, encouraged by law.

The gentleman belongs to that class who believe that by a system of
taxation we can make the country rich. He believes that it is possible
by tax laws to advance the prosperity of all the industries and all the
people in the United States.

Either, Mr. Speaker, that statement is an absurdity upon its face, or
it implies that in some way we have the power to make some persons not
resident of the United States pay the taxes that we impose. I insist
that you do not increase the taxable wealth of the United States when
you tax a gentleman in Illinois and give the benefit of that tax to a
gentleman in Maine. Such a course prevents the natural and honest
distribution of wealth, but it does not create or augment it.


SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS

Delivered in the United States Senate, January, 1830

BY ROBERT Y. HAYNE

The gentleman has made a great flourish about his fidelity to
Massachusetts. I shall make no profession of zeal for the interests and
honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there
be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a
boastful spirit), that may challenge comparison with any other for a
uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that
State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the
Revolution up to this hour there is no sacrifice, however great, she
has not cheerfully made, no service she has ever hesitated to perform.
She has adhered to you in your prosperity; but in your adversity she
has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was
the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her
resources, divided by parties, or surrounded with difficulties, the
call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic
discord ceased at the sound; every man became at once reconciled to his
brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to
the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.

What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I
honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But great
as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is
due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a
generous zeal, which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their
interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of
neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might
have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be
forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But, trampling on all
considerations either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the
conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause
of freedom. Never were there exhibited in the history of the world
higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic
endurance than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The
whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an
overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the
spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains
of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black
and smoking ruins marked the places where had been the habitations of
her children. Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost
impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and
South Carolina (sustained by the example of her Sumters and her
Marions) proved by her conduct that, though her soil might be overrun,
the spirit of her people was invincible.


REPLY BY DANIEL WEBSTER

The eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman on the character of
the State of South Carolina for her Revolutionary and other merits
meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable
member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent,
or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part
of the honor, I partake in the pride, of her great names. I claim them
for countrymen, one and all,--the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the
Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions, Americans all, whose fame is no
more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism
were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In
their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the
whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole
country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,--does he
esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for
his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of
Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his
power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my
bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank
God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to
raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other
spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my
place here in the Senate or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because
it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or
neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the
homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere
devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment
of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the
South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy,
I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and
just fame,--may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early
times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and
feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that
harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the
Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of
Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind
feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth,
unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are
weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she
needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There
is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is
secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill;
and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in
the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of
every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie
forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the
strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and
party strife shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which
alone its existence is made sure,--it will stand in the end by the side
of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked, and it will fall at
last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory
and on the very spot of its origin.


THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

BY JOHN HAY

Our platform is before the country. Perhaps it is lacking in novelty.
There is certainly nothing sensational about it. Its principles have
been tested by eight years of splendid success and have received the
approval of the country. It is in line with all our platforms of the
past, except where prophecy and promise in those days have become
history in these. We stand by the ancient ways which have proved good.
We come before the country in a position which cannot be successfully
attacked in front, or flank, or rear. What we have done, what we are
doing, and what we intend to do--on all three we confidently challenge
the verdict of the American people. The record of fifty years will show
whether as a party we are fit to govern; the state of our domestic and
foreign affairs will show whether as a party we have fallen off; and
both together will show whether we can be trusted for a while longer.

I want to say a word to the young men whose political life is
beginning. Any one entering business would be glad of the chance to
become one of an established firm with years of success behind it, with
a wide connection, with unblemished character, with credit founded on a
rock. How infinitely brighter the future when the present is so sure,
the past so glorious! Everything great done by this country in the last
fifty years has been done under the auspices of the Republican Party.
Is not this consciousness a great asset to have in your mind and
memory? As a mere item of personal comfort is it not worth having?
Lincoln and Grant, Hayes and Garfield, Harrison and McKinley--names
secure in the heaven of fame--they all are gone, leaving small estates
in worldly goods, but what vast possessions in principles, memories,
sacred associations! It is a start in life to share that wealth. Who
now boasts that he opposed Lincoln? who brags of his voting against
Grant? though both acts may have been from the best of motives. In our
form of government there must be two parties, and tradition,
circumstances, temperament, will always create a sufficient opposition.
But what young man would not rather belong to the party that does
things, instead of one that opposes them; to the party that looks up,
rather than down; to the party of the dawn, rather than of the sunset?
For fifty years the Republican Party has believed in the country and
labored for it in hope and joy; it has reverenced the flag and followed
it; it has carried it under strange skies and planted it on far-
receding horizons. It has seen the nation grow greater every year and
more respected; by just dealing, by intelligent labor, by a genius for
enterprise, it has seen the country extend its intercourse and its
influence to regions unknown to our fathers. Yet it has never abated
one jot or tittle of the ancient law imposed on us by our God-fearing
ancestors. We have fought a good fight, but also we have kept the
faith. The Constitution of our fathers has been the light to our feet;
our path is, and will ever remain, that of ordered progress, of liberty
under the law. The country has vastly increased, but the great-brained
statesmen who preceded us provided for infinite growth. The discoveries
of science have made miraculous additions to our knowledge. But we are
not daunted by progress; we are not afraid of the light. The fabric our
fathers builded on such sure foundations will stand all shocks of fate
or fortune. There will always be a proud pleasure in looking back on
the history they made; but, guided by their example, the coming
generation has the right to anticipate work not less important, days
equally memorable to mankind. We who are passing off the stage bid you,
as the children of Israel encamping by the sea were bidden, to Go
Forward; we whose hands can no longer hold the flaming torch pass it on
to you that its clear light may show the truth to the ages that are to
come.


NOMINATING ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY ROSCOE CONKLING

In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard--
expressing, also, my own firm convictions--I rise to propose a
nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly
win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American
politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the country shall be
Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate
who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need
is not of a candidate who is popular in the Territories, because they
have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States.
Not the doubtful States of the North alone, but doubtful States of the
South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take
little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but
everything to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the
conscience of this Convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful
States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than
any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry
not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for
Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the
most illustrious borne by living man.

His services attest his greatness, and the country--nay, the world--
knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written
and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and
emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in
vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such
confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the
will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the
people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest
eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised,
having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the
highborn and the titled, but the poor and the lowly, in the uttermost
ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the
needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he has
returned a better American than ever.

His integrity, his common-sense, his courage, his unequaled experience,
are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only
one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one
that would have dumbfounded Solomon, because he thought there was
nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him
faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of
years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen! what
stultification does not such a fallacy involve! Is this an
electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy's masquerade? There is no
field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational
beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance
and not found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason
in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience making
him exceptionally competent and fit.

This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the
next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not
only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration.

Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the
dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its
ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain
and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.


THE CHOICE OF A PARTY

From a speech delivered in New York, 1880. Depew's "Library of
Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company, New York, publishers.

BY ROSCOE CONKLING

We are citizens of a republic. We govern ourselves. Here no pomp of
eager array in chambers of royalty awaits the birth of boy or girl to
wield an hereditary scepter. We know no scepter save a majority's
constitutional will. To wield that scepter in equal share is the duty
and the right, nay, the birthright, of every citizen. The supreme, the
final, the only peaceful arbiter here, is the ballot box; and in that
urn should be gathered and from it should be sacredly recorded the
conscience, the judgment, the intelligence of all. The right of free
self-government has been in all ages the bright dream of oppressed
humanity,--the sighed-for privilege to which thrones, dynasties, and
power have so long blocked the way. In the fullness of freedom the
Republic of America is alone in the earth; alone in its grandeur; alone
in its blessings; alone in its promises and possibilities, and
therefore alone in the devotion due from its citizens.

The time has come when law, duty, and interest require the nation to
determine for at least four years its policy in many things. Two
parties exist; parties should always exist in a government of
majorities, and to support and strengthen the party which most nearly
holds his views is among the most laudable, meritorious acts of an
American citizen; and this whether he be in official or in private
station. Two parties contend for the management of national affairs.
The question is, Which of the two is it safer and wiser to trust? It is
not a question of candidates. A candidate, if he be an honest, genuine
man, will not seek and accept a party nomination to the presidency,
vice presidency, or Congress, and after he is elected become a law unto
himself. The higher obligations among men are not set down in writing
and signed or sealed; they reside in honor and good faith. The fidelity
of a nominee belongs to this exalted class, and therefore the candidate
of a party is but the exponent of a party. The object of political
discussion and action is to settle principles, policies, and issues. It
is a paltry incident of an election affecting fifty million people that
it decides for an occasion the aspirations of individual men. The
Democratic party is the Democratic candidate, and I am against the
ticket and all its works.

A triumphant nationality--a regenerated constitution--a free Republic--
an unbroken country--untarnished credit--solvent finances--unparalleled
prosperity--all these are ours despite the policy and the efforts of
the Democratic party. Along with the amazing improvement in national
finances, we have amazing individual thrift on every side. In every
walk of life new activity is felt. Labor, agriculture, manufactures,
commerce, enterprises, and investments, all are flourishing, content
and hopeful. But in the midst of this harmony and encouragement comes a
harsh discord crying, "Give us a change--anything for a change." This
is not a bearing year for "a change." Every other crop is good, but not
the crop of "change"--that crop is good only when the rest are bad. The
country does not need nor wish the change proposed, and to the pressing
invitation of our Democratic friends a good-natured but firm "No, I
thank you," will be the response at the polls.

Upon its record and its candidates the Republican party asks the
country's approval, and stands ready to avow its purposes for the
future. It proposes to rebuild our commercial marine. It proposes to
foster labor, industry, and enterprise. It proposes to stand for
education, humanity, and progress. It proposes to administer the
government honestly, to preserve amity with all the world, observing
our own obligations with others and seeing that others observe theirs
with us, to protect every citizen in his rights and equality before the
law, to uphold the public credit and the sanctity of engagements; and
by doing these things the Republican party proposes to assure to
industry, humanity, and civilization in America the amplest welcome and
the safest home.


NOMINATING JOHN SHERMAN

From a speech nominating a candidate for President of the United States
at the Republican National Convention, 1880

BY JAMES A. GARFIELD

I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep
solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of
honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and
witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human
ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into
spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I
remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea,
from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has
passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight
bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the
level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths.

Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the
healthful pulse of our people. Not here, in this brilliant circle,
where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of
the Republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here, where I
see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates,
waiting to cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of the
Republic, but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the
thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm
thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the
past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have
adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their
hearts,--there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom
of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the
ballot boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the
silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled.

Now, gentlemen, I am about to present a name for your consideration,--
the name of one who was the comrade, associate, and friend of nearly
all the noble dead, whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-
night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years
ago.

You ask for his monument. I point you to twenty-five years of national
statutes. Not one great, beneficent law has been placed on our statute
books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided in formulating
the laws to raise the great armies and navies which carried us through
the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that
restored and brought back "the unity and married calm of States." His
hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency,
and in all the still greater work that redeemed the promises of the
government and made the currency equal to gold.

When at last he passed from the halls of legislation into a high
executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness,
and poise of character, which have carried us through a stormy period
of three years, with one half the public press crying "Crucify him!"
and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success. In all this he
remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of
the nation, and the vast business interests of the country, he guarded
and preserved while executing the law of resumption, and effected its
object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one half of
the press and of all the Democratic party.

He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies
of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous
heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne
his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of "that fierce light
that beats against the throne"; but its fiercest ray has found no flaw
in his armor, no stain upon his shield. I do not present him as a
better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we
honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable
consideration. I nominate JOHN SHERMAN, OF OHIO.


THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted
1893, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY WILLIAM E. RUSSELL

As I stand here to-night, a Democrat, speaking to Democrats, and to men
whose conscience party could not bind,--men who carry their sovereignty
each under his own hat,--there comes vividly back to me the stirring
words with which the chairman opened a similar meeting on the eve of
the great battle of 1884, "This is a union meeting;" and, as he spoke,
the minds of his hearers went back to war days, when principle was
placed above party, and patriotism above partisanship.

Our union is not for the triumph of any man, but for the triumph of
ideas; for a living faith, a progressive spirit. It is of that to-night
I speak.

It has often been said that there was little difference between the two
parties. Perhaps that was the criticism of honest men, whose earnest
desire for honest candidates led them to look no farther. To-day every
intelligent man in Massachusetts knows that there is a wide difference
between the parties,--all the difference that there is between standing
still and moving forward. I do not believe that this difference is
accidental. It is the natural evolution of the history and purpose of
the parties. A political prophet of a generation ago, who knew this
history, who had studied the Democratic faith, had seen the birth of
the Republican party and its purpose, could have predicted the position
of the parties to-day. The Democratic party is old enough to have
outlived and defeated all other parties, young enough to represent the
progressive spirit of to-day. It must be founded on vital principles
and have a living faith. Its creed from its first to its thirty-ninth
article is an abiding trust in the people, a belief that men,
irrespective of the accident of birth or fortune, have a right to a
voice in the government that rules them. Its principles are the
equality and freedom of all men in affairs of State and before the
altar of their God,--that there should be allowed the greatest possible
personal liberty, that a government least felt is best, that it should
lightly and never unnecessarily impose its burdens of taxation and
restriction, that in its administration there should be simplicity,
purity, and economy, and in its form it should be closely within the
reach and control of the people.

Progress, merely as progress, is nothing; but progress that sees the
changes of a generation,--a blessed, lasting peace in place of the
horrors and burdens of civil war, a reunited, loyal country; progress
that hears the demand of the people for pure and economic
administration, for relief from restrictions and taxation; progress
that feels the discontent and suffering of great masses of the
people,--this progress, if willing and ready to shape into legislation
the new wishes and the new wants, rises to the height of statesmanship.


THE CALL TO DEMOCRATS

From a speech opening the National Democratic Convention, at Baltimore,
Maryland, June, 1912.

BY ALTON B. PARKER

It is not the wild and cruel methods of revolution and violence that
are needed to correct the abuses incident to our Government as to all
things human. Neither material nor moral progress lies that way. We
have made our Government and our complicated institutions by appeals to
reason, seeking to educate all our people that, day after day, year
after year, century after century, they may see more clearly, act more
justly, become more and more attached to the fundamental ideas that
underlie our society. If we are to preserve undiminished the heritage
bequeathed us, and add to it those accretions without which society
would perish, we shall need all the powers that the school, the church,
the court, the deliberative assembly, and the quiet thought of our
people can bring to bear.

We are called upon to do battle against the unfaithful guardians of our
Constitution and liberties and the hordes of ignorance which are
pushing forward only to the ruin of our social and governmental fabric.

Too long has the country endured the offenses of the leaders of a party
which once knew greatness. Too long have we been blind to the bacchanal
of corruption. Too long have we listlessly watched the assembling of
the forces that threaten our country and our firesides.

The time has come when the salvation of the country demands the
restoration to place and power of men of high ideals who will wage
unceasing war against corruption in politics, who will enforce the law
against both rich and poor, and who will treat guilt as personal and
punish it accordingly.

What is our duty? To think alike as to men and measures? Impossible!
Even for our great party! There is not a reactionary among us. All
Democrats are Progressives. But it is inevitably human that we shall
not all agree that in a single highway is found the only road to
progress, or each make the same man of all our worthy candidates his
first choice.

It is possible, however, and it is our duty to put aside all
selfishness, to consent cheerfully that the majority shall speak for
each of us, and to march out of this convention shoulder to shoulder,
intoning the praises of our chosen leader--and that will be his due,
whichever of the honorable and able men now claiming our attention
shall be chosen.


NOMINATING WOODROW WILSON

At the National Democratic Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, June, 1912.

BY JOHN W. WESCOTT

The New Jersey delegation is commissioned to represent the great cause
of Democracy and to offer you as its militant and triumphant leader a
scholar, not a charlatan; a statesman, not a doctrinaire; a profound
lawyer, not a splitter of legal hairs; a political economist, not an
egotistical theorist; a practical politician, who constructs, modifies,
restrains, without disturbance and destruction; a resistless debater
and consummate master of statement, not a mere sophist; a humanitarian,
not a defamer of characters and lives; a man whose mind is at once
cosmopolitan and composite of America; a gentleman of unpretentious
habits, with the fear of God in his heart and the love of mankind
exhibited in every act of his life; above all a public servant who has
been tried to the uttermost and never found wanting--matchless,
unconquerable, the ultimate Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

New Jersey has reasons for her course. Let us not be deceived in our
premises. Campaigns of vilification, corruption and false pretence have
lost their usefulness. The evolution of national energy is towards a
more intelligent morality in politics and in all other relations. The
situation admits of no compromise. The temper and purpose of the
American public will tolerate no other view. The indifference of the
American people to politics has disappeared. Any platform and any
candidate not conforming to this vast social and commercial behest will
go down to ignominious defeat at the polls.

Men are known by what they say and do. They are known by those who hate
and oppose them. Many years ago Woodrow Wilson said, "No man is great
who thinks himself so, and no man is good who does not try to secure
the happiness and comfort of others." This is the secret of his life.
The deeds of this moral and intellectual giant are known to all men.
They accord, not with the shams and false pretences of politics, but
make national harmony with the millions of patriots determined to
correct the wrongs of plutocracy and reestablish the maxims of American
liberty in all their regnant beauty and practical effectiveness. New
Jersey loves Woodrow Wilson not for the enemies he has made. New Jersey
loves him for what he is. New Jersey argues that Woodrow Wilson is the
only candidate who can not only make Democratic success a certainty,
but secure the electoral vote of almost every State in the Union.

New Jersey will indorse his nomination by a majority of 100,000 of her
liberated citizens. We are not building for a day, or even a
generation, but for all time. New Jersey believes that there is an
omniscience in national instinct. That instinct centers in Woodrow
Wilson. He has been in political life less than two years. He has had
no organization; only a practical ideal--the reestablishment of equal
opportunity. Not his deeds alone, not his immortal words alone, not his
personality alone, not his matchless powers alone, but all combined
compel national faith and confidence in him. Every crisis evolves its
master. Time and circumstance have evolved Woodrow Wilson. The North,
the South, the East, and the West unite in him. New Jersey appeals to
this convention to give the nation Woodrow Wilson, that he may open the
gates of opportunity to every man, woman, and child under our flag, by
reforming abuses, and thereby teaching them, in his matchless words,
"to release their energies intelligently, that peace, justice and
prosperity may reign." New Jersey rejoices, through her freely chosen
representatives, to name for the presidency of the United States the
Princeton schoolmaster, Woodrow Wilson.


DEMOCRATIC FAITH

From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted,
1894, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers

BY WILLIAM E. RUSSELL

For the honor and privilege of addressing this gathering of Young
Democracy I am deeply grateful. With earnestness and enthusiasm, with
devotion to the party and its principles, and with unflinching loyalty
to its glorious leaders, Young Democracy meets to-day for organization
and action. Gladly it volunteers in a campaign where its very faith is
at stake; impatiently it awaits the coming of the battle.

We fight for measures, not men; the principles of government, not men's
characters, are to be discussed; a nation's policy, not personal
ambition, is to be determined.

Thank God, we enter the fight with a living faith, founded upon
principles that are just, enduring, as old as the nation itself, yet
ever young, vigorous, and progressive, because there is ever work for
them to do. Our party was not founded for a single mission, which
accomplished, left it drifting with no fixed star of principle to guide
it. It was born and has lived to uphold great truths of government that
need always to be enforced. The influence of the past speaks to us in
the voice of the present. Jefferson and Jackson still lead us, not
because they are glorious reminiscences, but because the philosophy of
the one, the courage of the other, the Democracy of both, are potent
factors in determining Democracy to-day.

We believe that a government which controls the lives, liberties, and
property of a people in its administration should be honest,
economical, and efficient; and in its form a local self-government kept
near to the power that makes and obeys it. To safeguard the rights and
liberty of the individual, the Democratic party demands home rule.
Democracy stands beside the humblest citizen to protect him from
oppressive government; it is the bulwark of the silent people to resist
having the power and purpose of government warped by the clamorous
demands of selfish interests. Its greatest good, its highest glory, is
that it is, and is to be, the people's party. To it government is a
power to protect and encourage men to make the most of themselves, and
not something for men to make the most out of.

And, lastly, we believe in the success, the glory, and the splendid
destiny of this great Republic. It leaped into life from the hands of
Democrats. More than three-quarters of a century it has been nurtured
and strengthened by Democratic rule. Under Democratic administrations,
in its mighty sweep, it has stretched from ocean to ocean, not as a
North and South and East and West, but now as a glorious Union of
sovereign States, reunited in love and loyalty, a great nation of
millions of loyal subjects.

The faith we profess is distinctly an American faith; the principles we
proclaim are distinctly American principles, and have been from their
first utterance in the Declaration of Independence to their latest in
the platform of the St. Louis Convention; the policy they demand of us
as Democrats is emphatically an American policy.

Our great leader lives in the faith we profess. He speaks in the
principles we assert. He leads because we follow Democracy, its faith,
its principles, and its policy and hail him as the foremost Democrat of
the Nation. Thus comes victory. Thus victory means something. Thus
power and responsibility go together, and the only influence behind him
are the wishes, the rights, and the welfare of the great American
people. In such a cause, with such a leader, there is no room for
failure.

  "To doubt would be disloyalty,
  To falter would be sin."


ENGLAND AND AMERICA

BY JOHN BRIGHT

What can be more monstrous than that we, as we call ourselves, to some
extent, an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation--at a moment when
an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation
to the American government, before we have heard a word from it in
reply--should be all up in arms, every sword leaping from its scabbard,
and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses? I
think the conduct pursued--and I have no doubt just the same is pursued
by a certain class in America--is much more the conduct of savages than
of Christian and civilized men. No, let us be calm. You recollect how
we were dragged into the Russian war--how we "drifted" into it. You
know that I, at least, have not upon my head any of the guilt of that
fearful war. You know that it cost one hundred millions of money to
this country; that it cost at least the lives of forty thousand
Englishmen; that it disturbed your trade; that it nearly doubled the
armies of Europe; that it placed the relations of Europe on a much less
peaceful footing than before; and that it did not effect a single thing
of all those that it was promised to effect.

Now, then, before I sit down, let me ask you what is this people, about
which so many men in England at this moment are writing, and speaking,
and thinking, with harshness, I think with injustice, if not with great
bitterness? Two centuries ago, multitudes of the people of this country
found a refuge on the North American continent, escaping from the
tyranny of the Stuarts and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits
from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on
that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his own country, has
said, in his own graphic and emphatic language, "The history of the
colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe."

At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who
personally, or whose immediate parents have at one time been citizens
of this country. They found a home in the Far West; they subdued the
wilderness; they met with plenty there, which was not afforded them in
their native country; and they have become a great people. There may be
persons in England who are jealous of those States. There may be men
who dislike democracy, and who hate a republic; there may be those
whose sympathies warm only toward an oligarchy or a monarchy. But of
this I am certain, that only misrepresentation the most gross, or
calumny the most wicked, can sever the tie which unites the great mass
of the people of this country with their friends and brethren beyond
the Atlantic.

Now, whether the Union will be restored or not, or the South achieve an
unhonored independence or not, I know not, and I predict not. But this
I think I know--that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty
millions of freemen in the North will be thirty millions, or even fifty
millions--a population equal to or exceeding that of this kingdom. When
that time comes, I pray that it may not be said among them, that in the
darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the land of their
fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and
calamities of her children. As for me, I have but this to say: I am but
one in this audience, and but one in the citizenship of this country;
but if all other tongues are silent, mine shall speak for that policy
which tends, and which always shall tend, to generous thoughts, and
generous words, and generous deeds, between the two great nations who
speak the English language, and from their origin are alike entitled to
the English name.


ON HOME RULE IN IRELAND

BY WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

There has been no great day of hope for Ireland, no day when you might
hope completely and definitely to end the controversy till now--more
than ninety years. The long periodic time has at last run out, and the
star has again mounted into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for
herself in 1795 we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been
emancipated--emancipated after a woeful disregard of solemn promises
through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullenly, not from good
will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences
which will always follow that method of legislation. The second problem
has been also solved, and the representation of Ireland has been
thoroughly reformed; and I am thankful to say that the franchise was
given to Ireland on the readjustment of last year with a free heart,
with an open hand; and the gift of that franchise was the last act
required to make the success of Ireland in her final effort absolutely
sure. We have given Ireland a voice; we must all listen for a moment to
what she says. We must all listen, both sides, both parties--I mean as
they are divided on this question--divided, I am afraid, by an almost
immeasurable gap. We do not undervalue or despise the forces opposed to
us. I have described them as the forces of class and its dependents;
and that as a general description--as a slight and rude outline of a
description--is, I believe, perfectly true. You have power, you have
wealth, you have rank, you have station, you have organization. What
have we? We think that we have the people's heart; we believe and we
know we have the promise of the harvest of the future. As to the
people's heart, you may dispute it, and dispute it with perfect
sincerity. Let that matter make its own proof. As to the harvest of the
future, I doubt if you have so much confidence; and I believe that
there is in the breast of many a man who means to vote against us to-
night a profound misgiving, approaching even to a deep conviction, that
the end will be as we foresee, and not as you do--that the ebbing tide
is with you, and the flowing tide with us. Ireland stands at your bar,
expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth
and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that
oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. My right honorable
friend, the member for East Edinburgh, asks us tonight to abide by the
traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish
traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the
literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single
book--find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article,
unless the product of the day,--in which the conduct of England towards
Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter
condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to
stand? No; they are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They
are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history; and what we
want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in
all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our
relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our
country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland
for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon
for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much
mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honor, no less than a boon
to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, sir, is
her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not
for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject
this Bill.




THE LEGAL PLEA


THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

The case before the court is not of ordinary importance, nor of
everyday occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every
college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have
flourished hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and
useful to the community. They have all a common principle of existence,
the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most
dangerous experiment to hold these institutions subject to the rise and
fall of popular parties, and the fluctuations of political opinions. If
the franchise may be at any time taken away, or impaired, the property
also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no
certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will
be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such
institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and
halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theater for
the contentions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the
places consecrated to piety and learning.

When the court in North Carolina declared the law of the State, which
repealed a grant to its university, unconstitutional and void, the
legislature had the candor and the wisdom to repeal the law. This
example, so honorable to the State which exhibited it, is most fit to
be followed on this occasion. And there is good reason to hope that a
State which has hitherto been so much distinguished for temperate
counsels, cautious legislation, and regard to law, will not fail to
adopt a course which will accord with her highest and best interests,
and in no small degree elevate her reputation.

It was for many and obvious reasons most anxiously desired that the
question of the power of the legislature over this charter should have
been finally decided in the State court. An earnest hope was
entertained that the judges of the court might have reviewed the case
in a light favorable to the rights of the trustees. That hope has
failed. It is here that those rights are now to be maintained, or they
are prostrated forever.

This, sir, is my case. It is the case, not merely of that humble
institution, it is the case of every college in the land. It is more.
It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our
country--of all those great charities formed by the piety of our
ancestors, to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the
pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every
man among us who has property, of which he may be stripped, for the
question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to
take that which is not their own; to turn it from its original use, and
to apply it to such ends or purposes as they in their discretion shall
see fit?

Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your
hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of
our country. You may put it out. But, if you do so, you must carry
through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those
greater lights of science, which, for more than a century, have thrown
their radiance over our land!

It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those
who love it.

Sir, I know not how others may feel, but for myself, when I see my Alma
Mater surrounded, like Cęsar, in the senate house, by those who are
reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her
turn to me, and say, _et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou too, my son!_


IN DEFENSE OF THE KENNISTONS

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

Gentlemen of the Jury,--It is true that the offense charged in the
indictment in this case is not capital; but perhaps this can hardly be
considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and
without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of
transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it
is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by
that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer
capital, than what the guilty might gain by it. They have lost those
great privileges in their trial, which the law allows, in capital
cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation.
They have lost the right of being previously furnished with a copy of
the indictment, and a list of the government witnesses. They have lost
the right of peremptory challenge; and, notwithstanding the prejudices
which they know have been excited against them, they must show legal
cause of challenge, in each individual case, or else take the jury as
they find it. They have lost the benefit of assignment of counsel by
the court. They have lost the benefit of the Commonwealth's process to
bring in witnesses in their behalf. When to these circumstances it is
added that they are strangers, almost wholly without friends, and
without the means for preparing their defense, it is evident they must
take their trial under great disadvantages.

But without dwelling on these considerations, I proceed, Gentlemen of
the Jury, to ask your attention to those circumstances which cannot but
cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor.

The jury will naturally look to the appearances exhibited on the field
after the robbery. The portmanteau was there. The witnesses say that
the straps which fastened it to the saddle had been neither cut nor
broken. They were carefully unbuckled. This was very considerate for
robbers. It had been opened, and its contents were scattered about the
field. The pocket book, too, had been opened, and many papers it
contained found on the ground. Nothing valuable was lost but money. The
robbers did not think it well to go off at once with the portmanteau
and the pocket book. The place was so secure, so remote, so
unfrequented; they were so far from the highway, at least one full rod;
there were so few persons passing, probably not more than four or five
then in the road, within hearing of the pistols and the cries of
Goodridge; there being, too, not above five or six dwelling-houses,
full of people, within the hearing of the report of a pistol; these
circumstances were all so favorable to their safety, that the robbers
sat down to look over the prosecutor's papers, carefully examined the
contents of his pocket book and portmanteau, and took only the things
which they needed! There was money belonging to other persons. The
robbers did not take it. They found out it was not the prosecutor's,
and left it. It may be said to be favorable to the prosecutor's story,
that the money which did not belong to him, and the plunder of which
would seem to be the most probable inducement he could have to feign a
robbery, was not taken. But the jury will consider whether this
circumstance does not bear quite as strongly the other way, and whether
they can believe that robbers could have left this money, either from
accident or design.

II

The witnesses on the part of the prosecution have testified that the
defendants, when arrested, manifested great agitation and alarm;
paleness overspread their faces, and drops of sweat stood on their
temples. This satisfied the witnesses of the defendants' guilt, and
they now state the circumstances as being indubitable proof. This
argument manifests, in those who use it, an equal want of sense and
sensibility. It is precisely fitted to the feeling and the intellect of
a bum-bailiff. In a court of justice it deserves nothing but contempt.
Is there nothing that can agitate the frame or excite the blood but the
consciousness of guilt? If the defendants were innocent, would they not
feel indignation at this unjust accusation? If they saw an attempt to
produce false evidence against them, would they not be angry? And,
seeing the production of such evidence, might they not feel fear and
alarm? And have indignation, and anger, and terror no power to affect
the human countenance or the human frame?

Miserable, miserable, indeed, is the reasoning which would infer any
man's guilt from his agitation when he found himself accused of a
heinous offense; when he saw evidence which he might know to be false
and fraudulent brought against him; when his house was filled, from the
garret to the cellar, by those whom he might esteem as false witnesses;
and when he himself, instead of being at liberty to observe their
conduct and watch their motions, was a prisoner in close custody in his
own house, with the fists of a catchpoll clenched upon his throat.

From the time of the robbery to the arrest, five or six weeks, the
defendants were engaged in their usual occupations. They are not found
to have passed a dollar of money to anybody. They continued their
ordinary habits of labor. No man saw money about them, nor any
circumstance that might lead to a suspicion that they had money.
Nothing occurred tending in any degree to excite suspicion against
them. When arrested, and when all this array of evidence was brought
against them, and when they could hope in nothing but their innocence,
immunity was offered them again if they would confess. They were
pressed, and urged, and allured, by every motive which could be set
before them, to acknowledge their participation in the offense, and to
bring out their accomplices. They steadily protested that they could
confess nothing because they knew nothing. In defiance of all the
discoveries made in their house, they have trusted to their innocence.
On that, and on the candor and discernment of an enlightened jury, they
still rely.

If the jury are satisfied that there is the highest improbability that
these persons could have had any previous knowledge of Goodridge, or
been concerned in any previous concert to rob him; if their conduct
that evening and the next day was marked by no circumstance of
suspicion; if from that moment until their arrest nothing appeared
against them; if they neither passed money, nor are found to have had
money; if the manner of the search of their house, and the
circumstances attending it, excite strong suspicions of unfair and
fraudulent practices; if, in the hour of their utmost peril, no
promises of safety could draw from the defendants any confession
affecting themselves or others, it will be for the jury to say whether
they can pronounce them guilty.


IN DEFENCE OF JOHN E. COOK

Published in Depew's "Library of Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company,
New York, publishers.

BY D. W. VOORHEES

Who is John E. Cook?

He has the right himself to be heard before you; but I will answer for
him. Sprung from an ancestry of loyal attachment to the American
government, he inherits no blood of tainted impurity. His grandfather,
an officer of the Revolution, by which your liberty, as well as mine,
was achieved, and his gray-haired father, who lived to weep over him, a
soldier of the war of 1812, he brings no dishonored lineage into your
presence. Born of a parent stock occupying the middle walks of life,
and possessed of all those tender and domestic virtues which escape the
contamination of those vices that dwell on the frozen peaks, or in the
dark and deep caverns of society, he would not have been here had
precept and example been remembered in the prodigal wanderings of his
short and checkered life.

Poor deluded boy! wayward, misled child! An evil star presided over thy
natal hour and smote it with gloom.

In an evil hour--and may it be forever accursed!--John E. Cook met John
Brown on the prostituted plains of Kansas. On that field of fanaticism,
three years ago, this fair and gentle youth was thrown into contact
with the pirate and robber of civil warfare.

Now look at John Cook, the follower. He is in evidence before you.
Never did I plead for a face that I was more willing to show. If evil
is there, I have not seen it. If murder is there, I am to learn to mark
the lines of the murderer anew. If the assassin is in that young face,
then commend me to the look of an assassin. No, gentlemen, it is a face
for a mother to love, and a sister to idolize, and in which the natural
goodness of his heart pleads trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation
that estranged him from home and its principles.

John Brown was the despotic leader and John E. Cook was an ill-fated
follower of an enterprise whose horror be now realizes and deplores. I
defy the man, here or elsewhere, who has ever known John E. Cook, who
has ever looked once fully into his face, and learned anything of his
history, to lay his hand on his heart and say that he believes him
guilty of the origin or the results of the outbreak at Harper's Ferry.

Here, then, are the two characters whom you are thinking to punish
alike. Can it be that a jury of Christian men will find no
discrimination should be made between them? Are the tempter and the
tempted the same in your eyes? Is the beguiled youth to die the same as
the old offender who has pondered his crimes for thirty years? Are
there no grades in your estimations of guilt? Is each one, without
respect to age or circumstances, to be beaten with the same number of
stripes?

Such is not the law, human or divine. We are all to be rewarded
according to our works, whether in punishment for evil, or blessings
for good that we have done. You are here to do justice, and if justice
requires the same fate to befall Cook that befalls Brown, I know
nothing of her rules, and do not care to learn. They are as widely
asunder, in all that constitutes guilt, as the poles of the earth, and
should be dealt with accordingly. It is in your power to do so, and by
the principles by which you yourselves are willing to be judged
hereafter, I implore you to do it!


IN DEFENSE OF THE SOLDIERS

Published in "Depew's Library of Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company,
New York, publishers

BY JOSIAH QUINCY, JR.

May it please your honors, and you gentlemen of the jury,--We have at
length gone through the evidence in behalf of the prisoners. The
witnesses have now placed before you that state of facts from which
results our defense.

I stated to you, gentlemen, your duty in opening this cause--do not
forget the discharge of it. You are paying a debt you owe the community
for your own protection and safety: by the same mode of trial are your
own rights to receive a determination; and in your turn a time may come
when you will expect and claim a similar return from some other jury of
your fellow subjects.

How much need was there for my desire that you should suspend your
judgment till the witnesses were all examined? How different is the
complexion of the cause? Will not all this serve to show every honest
man the little truth to be attained in partial hearings? In the present
case, how great was the prepossession against us? And I appeal to you,
gentlemen, what cause there now is to alter our sentiments? Will any
sober, prudent man countenance the proceedings of the people in King
Street,--can any one justify their conduct,--is there any one man or
any body of men who are interested to espouse and support their
conduct?

Surely, no! But our inquiry must be confined to the legality of their
conduct, and here can be no difficulty. It was certainly illegal,
unless many witnesses are directly perjured: witnesses, who have no
apparent interest to falsify,--witnesses who have given their testimony
with candor and accuracy,--witnesses whose credibility stands
untouched,--whose credibility the counsel for the king do not pretend
to impeach or hint a suggestion to their disadvantage.

I say, gentlemen, by the standard of the law are we to judge the
actions of the people who were the assailants and those who were the
assailed and then on duty. And here, gentlemen, the rule we formerly
laid down takes place. To the facts, gentlemen, apply yourselves.
Consider them as testified; weigh the credibility of the witnesses--
balance their testimony--compare the several parts of it--see the
amount of it; and then, according to your oath, "make true deliverance
according to your evidence." That is, gentlemen, having settled the
facts, bring them truly to the standard of the law; the king's judges,
who are acquainted with it, who are presumed best to know it, will then
inspect this great standard of right and wrong, truth and justice; and
they are to determine the degree of guilt to which the fact rises.

II

May it please your honors, and you gentlemen of the jury,--After having
thus gone through the evidence and considered it as applicatory to all
and every one of the prisoners, let us take once more a brief and
cursory survey of matters supported by the evidence. And here let me
ask in sober reason, what language more opprobrious, what actions more
exasperating, than those used on this occasion? Words, I  am sensible,
are no justification of blows, but they serve as the grand clew to
discover the temper and the designs of the agents; they serve also to
give us light in discerning the apprehensions and thoughts of those who
are the objects of abuse.

"You lobsters!"--"You bloody-back!"--"You coward!"--"You dastard!" are
but some of the expressions proved. What words more galling? What more
cutting and provoking to a soldier? But accouple these words with the
succeeding actions,--"You dastard!"--"You coward!" A soldier and a
coward!

This was touching "the point of honor and the pride of virtue." But
while these are as yet fomenting the passions and swelling the bosom,
the attack is made; and probably the latter words were reiterated at
the onset; at least, were yet sounding in the ear. Gentlemen of the
jury, for Heaven's sake, let us put ourselves in the same situation!
Would you not spurn at that spiritless institution of society which
tells you to be a subject at the expense of your manhood?

But does the soldier step out of his ranks to seek his revenge? Not a
witness pretends it. Did not the people repeatedly come within the
points of their bayonets and strike on the muzzles of the guns? You
have heard the witnesses.

Does the law allow one member of the community to behave in this manner
towards his fellow citizen, and then bid the injured party be calm and
moderate? The expressions from one party were--"Stand off, stand
off!"--"I am upon my station."--"If they molest me upon my post, I will
fire."--"Keep off!"

These words were likely to produce reflection and procure peace. But
had the words on the other hand a similar tendency? Consider the temper
prevalent among all parties at this time. Consider the situation of the
soldiery; and come to the heat and pressure of the action. The
materials are laid, the spark is raised, the fire enkindles, all
prudence and true wisdom are utterly consumed. Does common sense, does
the law expect impossibilities?

Here, to expect equanimity of temper, would be as irrational as to
expect discretion in a madman. But was anything done on the part of the
assailants similar to the conduct, warnings, and declarations of the
prisoners? Answer for yourselves, gentlemen! The words reiterated all
around stabbed to the heart; the actions of the assailants tended to a
worse end,--to awaken every passion of which the human breast is
susceptible; fear, anger, pride, resentment, revenge, alternately take
possession of the whole man.

To expect, under these circumstances, that such words would assuage the
tempest, that such actions would allay the flames,--you might as
rationally expect the inundations of a torrent would suppress a deluge,
or rather that the flames of Aetna would extinguish a conflagration!

III

Gentlemen of the Jury,--This case has taken up much of your time, and
is likely to take up so much more that I must hasten to a close.
Indeed, I should not have troubled you, by being thus lengthy, but from
a sense of duty to the prisoners; they who in some sense may be said to
have put their lives in my hands; they whose situation was so peculiar
that we have necessarily taken up more time than ordinary cases
require. They, under all these circumstances, placed a confidence it
was my duty not to disappoint, and which I have aimed at discharging
with fidelity. I trust you, gentlemen, will do the like; that you will
examine and judge with a becoming temper of mind; remembering that they
who are under oath to declare the whole truth think and act very
differently from bystanders, who, being under no ties of this kind,
take a latitude which is by no means admissible in a court of law.

I cannot close this cause better than by desiring you to consider well
the genius and spirit of the law which will be laid down, and to govern
yourselves by this great standard of truth. To some purposes, you may
be said, gentlemen, to be ministers of justice; and "ministers," says a
learned judge, "appointed for the ends of public justice, should have
written on their hearts the solemn engagements of his Majesty, at his
coronation, to cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all his
judgments."

  "The quality of mercy is not strained;
  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven:...
    It is twice blessed;
  It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."

I leave you, gentlemen, hoping you will be directed in your inquiry and
judgment to a right discharge of your duty. We shall all of us,
gentlemen, have an hour of cool reflection when the feelings and
agitations of the day shall have subsided; when we shall view things
through a different and a much juster medium. It is then we all wish an
absolving conscience. May you, gentlemen, now act such a part as will
hereafter insure it; such a part as may occasion the prisoners to
rejoice. May the blessing of those who were in jeopardy of life come
upon you--may the blessing of Him who is "not faulty to die" descend
and rest upon you and your posterity.


IN DEFENSE OF LORD GEORGE GORDON

Before the Court of King's Bench, 1781

BY LORD THOMAS ERSKINE

Gentlemen,--You have now heard, upon the solemn oaths of honest,
disinterested men, a faithful history of the conduct of Lord George
Gordon, from the day that he became a member of the Protestant
Association to the day that he was committed a prisoner to the Tower.
And I have no doubt, from the attention with which I have been honored
from the beginning, that you have still kept in your minds the
principles to which I entreated you would apply it, and that you have
measured it by that standard. You have, therefore, only to look back to
the whole of it together; to reflect on all you have heard concerning
him; to trace him in your recollection through every part of the
transaction; and, considering it with one manly, liberal view, to ask
your own honest hearts, whether you can say that this noble and
unfortunate youth is a wicked and deliberate traitor, who deserves by
your verdict to suffer a shameful and ignominious death, which will
stain the ancient honors of his house forever.

The crime which the Crown would have fixed upon him is, that he
assembled the Protestant Association round the House of Commons, not
merely to influence and persuade Parliament by the earnestness of their
supplications, but actually to coerce it by hostile, rebellious force;
that, finding himself disappointed in the success of that coercion, he
afterward incited his followers to abolish the legal indulgences to
Papists, which the object of the petition was to repeal, by the burning
of their houses of worship, and the destruction of their property,
which ended, at last, in a general attack on the property of all orders
of men, religious and civil, on the public treasures of the nation, and
on the very being of the government.

To support a charge of so atrocious and unnatural a complexion, the
laws of the most arbitrary nations would require the most
incontrovertible proof. And what evidence, gentlemen of the jury, does
the Crown offer to you in compliance with these sound and sacred
doctrines of justice? A few broken, interrupted, disjointed words,
without context or connection--uttered by the speaker in agitation and
heat--heard, by those who relate them to you, in the midst of tumult
and confusion--and even those words, mutilated as they are, in direct
opposition to, and inconsistent with, repeated and earnest declarations
delivered at the very same time and on the very same occasion, related
to you by a much greater number of persons, and absolutely incompatible
with the whole tenor of his conduct. Which of us all, gentlemen, would
be safe, standing at the bar of God or man, if we were not to be judged
by the regular current of our lives and conversations, but by detached
and unguarded expressions, picked out by malice, and recorded, without
context or circumstances, against us? Yet such is the only evidence on
which the Crown asks you to dip your hands, and to stain your
consciences, in the innocent blood of the noble and unfortunate youth
who stands before you.

I am sure you cannot but see, notwithstanding my great inability,
increased by a perturbation of mind (arising, thank God! from no
dishonest cause), that there has been not only no evidence on the part
of the Crown to fix the guilt of the late commotions upon the prisoner,
but that, on the contrary, we have been able to resist the probability,
I might almost say the possibility of the charge, not only by living
witnesses, whom we only ceased to call because the trial would never
have ended, but by the evidence of all the blood that has paid the
forfeit of that guilt already; since, out of all the felons who were
let loose from prisons, and who assisted in the destruction of our
property, not a single wretch was to be found who could even attempt to
save his own life by the plausible promise of giving evidence to-day.

What can overturn such a proof as this? Surely a good man might,
without superstition, believe that such a union of events was something
more than natural, and that a Divine Providence was watchful for the
protection of innocence and truth.

I may now, therefore, relieve you from the pain of hearing me any
longer, and be myself relieved from speaking on a subject which
agitates and distresses me. Since Lord George Gordon stands clear of
every hostile act or purpose against the Legislature of his country, or
the properties of his fellow-subjects--since the whole tenor of conduct
repels the belief of the _traitorous intention_ charged by the
indictment--my task is finished. I shall make no address to your
passions. I will not remind you of the long and rigorous imprisonment
he has suffered; I will not speak to you of his great youth, of his
illustrious birth, and of his uniformly animated and generous zeal in
Parliament for the Constitution of his country. Such topics might be
useful in the balance; yet, even then, I should have trusted to the
honest hearts of Englishmen to have felt them without excitation. At
present, the plain and rigid rules of justice and truth are sufficient
to entitle me to your verdict.


PRONOUNCING SENTENCE FOR HIGH TREASON

BY SIR ALFRED WILLS

Arthur Alfred Lynch, otherwise Arthur Lynch, the jury have found you
guilty of the crime of high treason, a crime happily so rare that in
the present day a trial for treason seems to be almost an anachronism--
a thing of the past. The misdeeds which have been done in this case,
and which have brought you to the lamentable pass in which you stand,
must surely convince the most skeptical and apathetic of the gravity
and reality of the crime. What was your action in the darkest hour of
your country's fortunes, when she was engaged in the deadly struggle
from which she has just emerged? You joined the ranks of your country's
foes. Born in Australia, a land which has nobly shown its devotion to
its parent country, you have indeed taken a different course from that
which was adopted by her sons. You have fought against your country,
not with it. You have sought, as far as you could, to dethrone Great
Britain from her place among the nations, to make her name a byword and
a reproach, a synonym for weakness and irresolution. Nor can I forget
that you have shed the blood, or done your best to shed the blood, of
your countrymen who were fighting for their country. How many wives
have been made widows, how many children orphans, by what you and those
who acted under your command have done, Heaven only knows! You thought
it safe at that dark hour of the Empire's fate, when Ladysmith, when
Kimberley, when Mafeking, were in the very jaws of deadly peril--you
thought it safe, no doubt, to lift the parricidal hand against your
country. You thought she would shrink from the costly struggle wearied
out by her gigantic efforts, and that, at the worst, a general peace
would be made which would comprehend a general amnesty and cover up
such acts as yours and save you from personal peril. You misjudged your
country and failed to appreciate that, though slow to enter into a
quarrel, however slow to take up arms, it has yet been her wont that in
the quarrel she shall bear herself so that the opposer may beware of
her, and that she is seldom so dangerous to her enemies as when the
hour of national calamity has raised the dormant energies of her
people--knit together every nerve and fiber of the body politic, and
has made her sons determined to do all, to sacrifice all on behalf of
the country that gave them birth. And against what a Sovereign and what
a country did you lift your hand! A Sovereign the best beloved and most
deeply honored of all the long line of English Kings and Queens, and
whose lamented death was called back to my remembrance only yesterday
as a fresh sorrow to many an English household. Against a country which
has been the home of progress and freedom, and under whose beneficent
sway, whenever you have chosen to stay within her dominions, you have
enjoyed a liberty of person, a freedom of speech and action, such as
you can have in no other country in Europe, and it is not too much to
say in no other country in the world. The only--I will not say excuse,
but palliation that I can find for conduct like yours is that it has
been for some years past the fashion to treat lightly matters of this
kind, so that men have been perhaps encouraged to play with sedition
and to toy with treason, wrapt in a certain proud consciousness of
strength begotten of the deep-seated and well-founded conviction that
the loyalty of her people is supreme, and true authority in this
country has slumbered or has treated with contemptuous indifference
speeches and acts of sedition. It may be that you have been misled into
the notion that, no matter what you did, so long as your conduct could
be called a political crime, it was of no consequence. But it is one
thing to talk sedition and to do small seditious acts, it is quite
another thing to bear arms in the ranks of the foes of your country,
and against it. Between the two the difference is immeasurable. But had
you and those with whom you associated yourself succeeded, what fatal
mischief might have been done to the great inheritance which has been
bequeathed to us by our forefathers--that inheritance of power which it
must be our work to use nobly and for good things; an inheritance of
influence which will be of little effect even for good unless backed by
power, and of duty which cannot be effectually performed if our power
be shattered and our influence impaired. He who has attempted to do his
country such irreparable wrong must be prepared to submit to the
sentence which it is now my duty to pronounce upon you. The sentence of
this Court--and it is pronounced in regard to each count of the
indictment--is that you be taken hence to the place from which you
came, and from thence to a place of execution, there to be hanged by
the neck until you are dead.


THE IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON

From the Official Records of the Trial in the United States Senate,
1868

BY GEORGE S. BOUTWELL

Andrew Johnson has disregarded and violated the laws and Constitution
of his own country. Under his administration the government has not
been strengthened, but weakened. Its reputation and influence at home
and abroad have been injured and diminished. Ten States of this Union
are without law, without security, without safety; public order
everywhere violated, public justice nowhere respected; and all in
consequence of the evil purposes and machinations of the President.
Forty millions of people have been rendered anxious and uncertain as to
the preservation of public peace and the perpetuity of the institutions
of freedom in this country. All classes are oppressed by the private
and public calamities which he has brought upon them. They appeal to
you for relief. The nation waits in anxiety for the conclusion of these
proceedings. Forty millions of people, whose interest in public affairs
is in the wise and just administration of the laws, look to this
tribunal as a sure defense against the encroachments of a criminally
minded Chief Magistrate.

Will any one say that the heaviest judgment which you can render is any
adequate punishment for these crimes? Your office is not punishment,
but to secure the safety of the republic. But human tribunals are
inadequate to punish those criminals who, as rulers or magistrates, by
their example, conduct, policy, and crimes, become the scourge of
communities and nations. No picture, no power of the imagination, can
illustrate or conceive the suffering of the poor but loyal people of
the South. A patriotic, virtuous, law-abiding chief magistrate would
have healed the wounds of war, soothed private and public sorrows,
protected the weak, encouraged the strong, and lifted from the Southern
people the burdens which now are greater than they can bear.

Travelers and astronomers inform us that in the southern heavens, near
the southern cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated call the
hole in the sky, where the eye of man, with the aid of the powers of
the telescope, has been unable to discover nebulae, or asteroid, or
comet, or planet, or star, or sun. In that dreary, cold, dark region of
space, which is only known to be less than infinite by the evidences of
creation elsewhere, the Great Author of celestial mechanism has left
the chaos which was in the beginning. If this earth were capable of the
sentiments and emotions of justice and virtue, which in human mortal
beings are the evidences and the pledge of our Divine origin and
immortal destiny, it would heave and throw, with the energy of the
elemental forces of nature, and project this enemy of two races of men
into that vast region, there forever to exist in a solitude eternal as
life, or as the absence of life, emblematical of, if not really, that
"outer darkness" of which the Savior of man spoke in warning to those
who are the enemies of themselves, of their race, and of their God. But
it is yours to relieve, not to punish. This done and our country is
again advanced in the intelligent opinion of mankind. In other
governments an unfaithful ruler can be removed only by revolution,
violence, or force. The proceeding here is judicial, and according to
the forms of law. Your judgment will be enforced without the aid of a
policeman or a soldier. What other evidence will be needed of the value
of republican institutions? What other test of the strength and vigor
of our government? What other assurance that the virtue of the people
is equal to any emergency of national life?


BY WILLIAM M. EVARTS

Mr. Chief Justice and Senators,--If indeed we have arrived at a settled
conclusion that this is a court, that it is governed by the law, that
it is to confine its attention to the facts applicable to the law, and
regard the sole evidence of those facts to be embraced within the
testimony of witnesses or documents produced in court, we have made
great progress in separating, at least, from your further consideration
much that has been impressed upon your attention heretofore. It follows
from this that the President is to be tried upon the charges which are
produced here, and not upon common fame.

I may as conveniently at this point of the argument as at any other pay
some attention to the astronomical punishment which the learned and
honorable manager, Mr. Boutwell, thinks should be applied to this novel
case of impeachment of the President. Cicero I think it is who says
that a lawyer should know everything, for sooner or later there is no
fact in history, in science, or of human knowledge that will not come
into play in his arguments. Painfully sensible of my ignorance, being
devoted to a profession which "sharpens and does not enlarge the mind,"
I yet can admire without envy the superior knowledge evinced by the
honorable manager. Indeed, upon my soul, I believe he is aware of an
astronomical fact which many professors of that science are wholly
ignorant of. But nevertheless, while some of his honorable colleagues
were paying attention to an unoccupied and unappropriated island on the
surface of the seas, Mr. Manager Boutwell, more ambitious, had
discovered an untenanted and unappropriated region in the skies,
reserved, he would have us think, in the final councils of the
Almighty, as the place of punishment for convicted and deposed American
Presidents.

At first I thought that his mind had become so "enlarged" that it was
not "sharp" enough to discover the Constitution had limited the
punishment; but on reflection I saw that he was as legal and logical as
he was ambitious and astronomical, for the Constitution has said
"removal from office," and has put no limit to the distance of the
removal, so that it may be, without shedding a drop of his blood, or
taking a penny of his property, or confining his limbs, instant removal
from office and transportation to the skies. Truly, this is a great
undertaking; and if the learned manager can only get over the obstacles
of the laws of nature the Constitution will not stand in his way. He
can contrive no method but that of a convulsion of the earth that shall
project the deposed President to this infinitely distant space; but a
shock of nature of so vast an energy and for so great a result on him
might unsettle even the footing of the firm members of Congress. We
certainly need not resort to so perilous a method as that. How shall we
accomplish it? Why, in the first place, nobody knows where that space
is but the learned manager himself, and he is the necessary deputy to
execute the judgment of the court.

Let it then be provided that in case of your sentence of deposition and
removal from office the honorable and astronomical manager shall take
into his own hands the execution of the sentence. With the President
made fast to his broad and strong shoulders, and, having already
essayed the flight by imagination, better prepared than anybody else to
execute it in form, taking the advantage of ladders as far as ladders
will go to the top of this great Capitol, and spurning then with his
foot the crest of Liberty, let him set out upon his flight, while the
two houses of Congress and all the people of the United States shall
shout, "_Sic itur ad astra_."

II

But here a distressing doubt strikes me; how will the manager get back?
He will have got far beyond the reach of gravitation to restore him,
and so ambitious a wing as his could never stoop to a downward flight.
Indeed, as he passes through the constellations, that famous question
of Carlyle by which he derides the littleness of human affairs upon the
scale of the measure of the heavens, "What thinks Botes as he drives
his dogs up the zenith in their race of sidereal fire?" will force
itself on his notice. What, indeed, would Botes think of this new
constellation?

Besides, reaching this space, beyond the power of Congress even "to
send for persons and papers," how shall he return, and how decide in
the contest, there become personal and perpetual, the struggle of
strength between him and the President? In this new revolution, thus
established forever, who shall decide which is the sun and which is the
moon? Who determine the only scientific test which reflects the hardest
upon the other?

Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, we have come all at once to the great
experiences and trials of a full-grown nation, all of which we thought
we should escape--the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of
powerful war. We could summon from the people a million of men and
inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need.
Can we summon now resources enough of civil prudence and of restraint
of passion to carry us through this trial, so that whatever result may
follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Constitution has
received no wound! To this court, the last and best resort for this
determination, it is to be left. And oh, if you could only carry
yourselves back to the spirit and the purpose and the wisdom and the
courage of the framers of the government, how safe would it be in your
hands? How safe is it now in your hands, for you who have entered into
their labors will see to it that the structure of your work comports in
durability and excellence with theirs. Indeed, so familiar has the
course of the argument made us with the names of the men of the
convention and of the first Congress that I could sometimes seem to
think that the presence even of the Chief Justice was replaced by the
serene majesty of Washington, and that from Massachusetts we had Adams
and Ames, from Connecticut, Sherman and Ellsworth, from New Jersey,
Paterson and Boudinot, and from New York, Hamilton and Benson, and that
they were to determine this case for us. Act, then, as if under this
serene and majestic presence your deliberations were to be conducted to
their close, and the Constitution was to come out from the watchful
solicitude of these great guardians of it as if from their own judgment
in this court of impeachment.




THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH


AT A UNIVERSITY CLUB DINNER

Reprinted, with the author's permission, from a speech at a dinner of
The Harvard Club of New York City.

BY HENRY E. HOWLAND

There should be a proper amount of modesty in one called upon to
address such an intelligent audience of educated men as I see before
me, and I am conscious of it in the same sense as the patient who said
to his physician, "I suffer a great deal from nervous dyspepsia, and I
attribute it to the fact that I attend so many public dinners." "Ah, I
see," said the doctor, "you are often called upon to speak, and the
nervous apprehension upsets your digestion." "Not at all; my
apprehension is entirely on account of the other speakers; I never say
a thing;" and it is with some hesitation that I respond to your call.

Following out that line of thought, there is a great deal that is
attractive in a gathering of College men. They have such a winsome and
a winning way with them.

Richest in endowments, foremost in progress, honored by the renown of a
long line of distinguished sons, the university that claims you is
worthy of the homage and respect which it receives from the educated
men of America.

The study of the development of the human race by educational processes
which change by necessity under changing conditions and environment, is
one of the most interesting that we can engage in. The greatest men of
this country, or any other, have not always been made by the
university, however it may be with the average. You cannot always tell
by a man's degree what manner of man he is likely to be. But the value
of a technical or academic training is apparent as time goes on,
population increases, occupations multiply and compete, and the strife
of life becomes more fierce and strenuous.

Many in these days seem to prefer notoriety to fame, because it runs
along the line of least resistance. A man has to climb for fame, but he
can get notoriety by an easy tumble. And others forget the one
essential necessary to success, of personal effort, and, assuming there
is a royal road to learning, are content with the distinction of a
degree from a university, without caring for what it implies, and
answer as the son did to his father who asked him: "Why don't you work,
my son? If you only knew how much happiness work brings, you would
begin at once." "Father, I am trying to lead a life of self-denial in
which happiness cuts no figure; do not tempt me."

But notwithstanding all these tendencies, the level of mankind is
raised at these fountains of learning, the tone is higher, and the
standards are continually advanced. The discipline and the training
reaches and acts upon a willing and eager army of young recruits and
works its salutary effect, like that upon a man who listened with rapt
attention to a discourse from the pulpit and was congratulated upon his
devotion, and asked if he was not impressed. "Yes," he replied, "for it
is a mighty poor sermon that doesn't hit me somewhere."

However discouraging the action of our governing bodies through the
obstruction and perverse action of an ignorant or corrupt majority or
minority in them may be in the administration of great public affairs,
the time at last comes when the nation arouses from its lethargy,
shakes off its torpor, shows the strain of its blood, and follows its
trained and intelligent leaders, like the man who, in a time of sore
distress, after the ancient fashion, put ashes on his head, rent his
garments, tore off his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and his
undershirt, and at last came to himself. At such times, by the
universal voice of public opinion and amid hearty applause of the whole
people, we welcome to public office and the highest responsible
stations such men as our universities have given to the country. It
matters not to what family we belong--Harvard, Yale, Columbia, or
Princeton--we are all of us one in our welcome to them, for they
represent the university spirit and what it teaches--honor, high-
mindedness, intelligence, truthfulness, unselfishness, courage, and
patriotism.


THE EVACUATION OF NEW YORK

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--I came here to-night with some notes for
a speech in my pocket, but I have been sitting next to General Butler,
and in the course of the evening they have mysteriously disappeared.
The consequence is, gentlemen, that you may expect a very good speech
from him and a very poor one from me. When I read this toast which you
have just drunk in honor of Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of Great
Britain, and heard how you received the letter of the British Minister
that was read in response, and how heartily you joined in singing "God
Save the Queen," when I look up and down these tables and see among you
so many representatives of English capital and English trade, I have my
doubts whether the evacuation of New York by the British was quite as
thorough and lasting as history would fain have us believe. If George
III, who certainly did all he could to despoil us of our rights and
liberties and bring us to ruin--if he could rise from his grave and see
how his granddaughter is honored at your hands to-night, why, I think
he would return whence he came, thanking God that his efforts to
enslave us, in which for eight long years he drained the resources of
the British Empire, were not successful.

The truth is, the boasted triumph of New York in getting rid of the
British once and forever has proved, after all, to be but a dismal
failure. We drove them out in one century only to see them return in
the next to devour our substance and to carry off all the honors. We
have just seen the noble Chief Justice of England, the feasted favorite
of all America, making a triumphal tour across the Continent and
carrying all before him at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Night after
night at our very great cost we have been paying the richest tribute to
the reigning monarch of the British stage, and nowhere in the world are
English men and women of character and culture received with a more
hearty welcome, a more earnest hospitality, than in this very state of
New York. The truth is, that this event that we celebrate to-day, which
sealed the independence of America and seemed for a time to give a
staggering blow to the prestige and the power of England, has proved to
be no less a blessing to her own people than to ours. The latest and
best of the English historians has said that, however important the
independence of America might be in the history of England, it was of
overwhelming importance in the history of the world, and that though it
might have crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it
founded the supremacy of the English race. And in the same spirit we
welcome the fact that those social, political, and material barriers
that separated the two nations a century ago have now utterly vanished;
that year by year we are being drawn closer and closer together, and
that this day may be celebrated with equal fitness on both sides of the
Atlantic and by all who speak the English tongue.


TIES OF KINSHIP

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago,
publishers.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

When I was conversing recently with Lord Tennyson, he said to me: "It
is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that
means that it will always be changing, and so the time will come when
you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is
to-day." You remember what opinion your brilliant humorist, Artemus
Ward, let fall concerning that ancient singer. "Mr. Chaucer," he
observed casually, "is an admirable poet, but as a spellist, a very
decided failure."

To the treasure house of that noble tongue the United States has
splendidly contributed. It would be far poorer to-day without the
tender lines of Longfellow, the serene and philosophic pages of
Emerson, the convincing wit and clear criticism of my illustrious
departed friend, James Russell Lowell, the Catullus-like perfection of
the lyrics of Edgar Allan Poe, and the glorious, large-tempered
dithyrambs of Walt Whitman.

These stately and sacred laurel groves grow here in a garden forever
extending, ever carrying further forward, for the sake of humanity, the
irresistible flag of our Saxon supremacy, leading one to falter in an
attempt to eulogize America and the idea of her potency and her
promise. The most elaborate panegyric would seem but a weak
impertinence, which would remind you, perhaps too vividly, of Sydney
Smith, who, when he saw his grandchild pat the back of a large turtle,
asked her why she did so. The little maid replied: "Grandpa, I do it to
please the turtle." "My child," he answered, "you might as well stroke
the dome of St. Paul's to please the Dean and chapter"

I myself once heard, in our Zoological gardens in London, another
little girl ask her mamma whether it would hurt the elephant if she
offered him a chocolate drop. In that guarded and respectful spirit is
it that I venture to tell you here to-night how truly in England the
peace and prosperity of your republic is desired, and that nothing
except good will is felt by the mass of our people toward you, and
nothing but the greatest satisfaction in your wealth and progress.

Between these two majestic sisters of the Saxon blood the hatchet of
war is, please God, buried. No cause of quarrel, I think and hope, can
ever be otherwise than truly out of proportion to the vaster causes of
affection and accord. We have no longer to prove to each other, or to
the world, that Englishmen and Americans are high-spirited and
fearless; that Englishmen and Americans alike will do justice, and will
have justice, and will put up with nothing else from each other and
from the nations at large. Our proofs are made on both sides, and
indelibly written on the page of history. Not that I wish to speak
platitudes about war. It has been necessary to human progress; it has
bred and preserved noble virtues; it has been inevitable, and may be
again; but it belongs to a low civilization. Other countries have,
perhaps, not yet reached that point of intimate contact and rational
advance, but for us two, at least, the time seems to have come when
violent decisions, and even talk of them, should be as much abolished
between us as cannibalism.

I ventured, when in Washington, to propose to President Harrison that
we should some day, the sooner the better, choose five men of public
worth in the United States, and five in England; give them gold coats
if you please, and a handsome salary, and establish them as a standing
and supreme tribunal of arbitration, referring to them the little
family fallings-out of America and of England, whenever something goes
wrong between us about a sealskin in Behring Strait, a lobster pot, an
ambassador's letter, a border tariff, or an Irish vote. He showed
himself very well disposed toward my suggestion.

Mr. President, in the sacred hope that you take me to be a better poet
than orator, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your
reception to-night, and personally pray for the tranquility and
prosperity of this free and magnificent republic.


CANADA, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES

From an address in Brewer's "The World's Best Orations," Vol. VII, Ferd
P. Kaiser, St. Louis, Chicago, publishers.

BY SIR WILFRED LAURIER

Mr. Toastmaster, Mr. President, and Gentlemen,--I very fully and very
cordially appreciate the very kind feelings which have just now been
uttered by the toastmaster in terms so eloquent, and which you
gentlemen have accepted and received in so sympathetic a manner. Let me
say at once, in the name of my fellow-Canadians who are here with me
and also, I may say, in the name of the Canadian people, that these
feelings we shall at all times reciprocate; reciprocate, not only in
words evanescent, but in actual living deeds.

Because I must say that I feel that, though the relations between
Canada and the United States are good, though they are brotherly,
though they are satisfactory, in my judgment they are not as good, as
brotherly, as satisfactory as they ought to be. We are of the same
stock. We spring from the same races on one side of the line as on the
other. We speak the same language. We have the same literature, and for
more than a thousand years we have had a common history.

Let me recall to you the lines which, in the darkest days of the Civil
War, the Puritan poet of America issued to England:--

  "Oh, Englishmen! Oh, Englishmen!
    In hope and creed,
  In blood and tongue, are brothers,
    We all are heirs of Runnymede."

Brothers we are, in the language of your own poet. May I not say that
while our relations are not always as brotherly as they should have
been, may I not ask, Mr. President, on the part of Canada and on the
part of the United States, if we are sometimes too prone to stand by
the full conceptions of our rights, and exact all our rights to the
last pound of flesh? May I not ask if there have not been too often
between us petty quarrels, which happily do not wound the heart of the
nation?

There was a civil war in the last century. There was a civil war
between England, then, and her colonies. The union which then existed
between England and her colonies was severed. If it was severed,
American citizens, as you know it was, through no fault of your
fathers, the fault was altogether the fault of the British Government
of that day. If the British Government of that day had treated the
American colonies as the British Government for the last twenty or
fifty years has treated its colonies; if Great Britain had given you
then the same degree of liberty which it gives to Canada, my country;
if it had given you, as it has given us, legislative independence
absolute,--the result would have been different; the course of victory,
the course of history, would have been very different.

But what has been done cannot be undone. You cannot expect that the
union which was then severed shall ever be restored; but can we not
expect--can we not hope that the banners of England and the banners of
the United States shall never, never again meet in conflict, except
those conflicts provided by the arts of peace, such as we see to-day in
the harbor of New York in the contest between the _Shamrock_ and
the _Columbia_ for the supremacy of naval architecture and naval
prowess? Can we not hope that if ever the banners of England and the
banners of the United States are again to meet on the battlefield, they
shall meet entwined together in the defense of some holy cause, in the
defense of holy justice, for the defense of the oppressed, for the
enfranchisement of the downtrodden, and for the advancement of liberty,
progress, and civilization?


MONSIEUR AND MADAME

From a speech in "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and
Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY PAUL BLOUET (MAX O'RELL)

Now, the attitude of men towards women is very different, according to
the different nations to which they belong. You will find a good
illustration of that different attitude of men toward women in France,
in England, and in America, if you go to the dining-rooms of their
hotels. You go to the dining-room, and you take, if you can, a seat
near the entrance door, and you watch the arrival of the couples, and
also watch them as they cross the room and go to the table that is
assigned to them by the head waiter. Now, in Europe, you would find a
very polite head waiter, who invites you to go in, and asks you where
you will sit; but in America the head waiter is a most magnificent
potentate who lies in wait for you at the door, and bids you to follow
him sometimes in the following respectful manner, beckoning, "There."
And you have got to do it, too.

I traveled six times in America, and I never saw a man so daring as not
to sit there. In the tremendous hotels of the large cities, where you
have got to go to Number 992 or something of the sort, I generally got
a little entertainment out of the head waiter. He is so thoroughly
persuaded that it would never enter my head not to follow him, he will
never look round to see if I am there. Why, he knows I am there, but
I'm not. I wait my time, and when he has got to the end I am sitting
down waiting for a chance to be left alone. He says, "You cannot sit
here." I say: "Why not? What is the matter with this seat?" He says,
"You must not sit there." I say, "I don't want a constitutional walk;
don't bother, I'm all right." Once, indeed, after an article in the
_North American Review_--for your head waiter in America reads
reviews--a head waiter told me to sit where I pleased. I said, "Now,
wait a minute, give me time to realize that; do I understand that in
this hotel I am going to sit where I like?" He said, "Certainly!" He
was in earnest. I said, "I should like to sit over there at that table
near the window." He said, "All right, come with me." When I came out,
there were some newspaper people in the hotel waiting for me, and it
was reported in half a column in one of the papers, with one of those
charming headlines which are so characteristic of American journalism,
"Max sits where he likes!" Well, I said, you go to the dining-room, you
take your seat, and you watch the arrival of the couples, and you will
know the position of men. In France Monsieur and Madame come in
together abreast, as a rule arm in arm. They look pleasant, smile, and
talk to each other. They smile at each other, even though married.

In England, in the same class of hotel, John Bull comes in first. He
does not look happy. John Bull loves privacy. He does not like to be
obliged to eat in the presence of lots of people who have not been
introduced to him, and he thinks it very hard he should not have the
whole dining-room to himself. That man, though, mind you, in his own
house undoubtedly the most hospitable, the most kind, the most
considerate of hosts in the world, that man in the dining-room of a
hotel always comes in with a frown. He does not like it, he grumbles,
and mild and demure, with her hands hanging down, modestly follows Mrs.
John Bull. But in America, behold the arrival of Mrs. Jonathan! behold
her triumphant entry, pulling Jonathan behind! Well, I like my own
country, and I cannot help thinking that the proper and right way is
the French. Ladies, you know all our shortcomings. Our hearts are
exposed ever since the rib which covered them was taken off. Yet we ask
you kindly to allow us to go through life with you, like the French,
arm in arm, in good friendship and camaraderie.


THE TYPICAL AMERICAN

From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of
getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich
eloquence of your speakers--the fact that the Cavalier as well as the
Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and
able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find no
mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving
a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else. Let me remind you
that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent--
that Cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name, and was so
pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever
since--and that while Miles Standish was cutting off men's ears for
courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss
their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight,
and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier
colonies, the huts in the wilderness being full as the nests in the
woods.

But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little
books, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he always has
done with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his
merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survive as
such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the
inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both
Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution;
and the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either,
took possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and
fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government
and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.

My friend Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to
come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like
valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of
these colonist Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their
purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a
century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first
who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all
the majesty and grace, of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the
sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the
virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both
were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that
he was American, and in that in his homely form were first gathered the
vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government--charging it with
such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that
martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life
consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing
the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to
the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are
honored; and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and
to spare for your forefathers and for mine.


THE PILGRIM MOTHERS

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

I really don't know, at this late hour, Mr. Chairman, how you expect me
to treat this difficult and tender subject.

I might take up the subject etymologically, and try and explain how
woman ever acquired that remarkable name. But that has been done before
me by a poet with whose stanzas you are not familiar, but whom you will
recognize as deeply versed in this subject, for he says:--

  "When Eve brought woe to all mankind,
    Old Adam called her woe-man,
  But when she woo'd with love so kind,
    He then pronounced her woman.

  "But now, with folly and with pride,
    Their husbands' pockets trimming,
  The ladies are so full of whims
   That people call them w(h)imen."

Mr. Chairman, I believe you said I should say something about the
Pilgrim mothers. Well, sir, it is rather late in the evening to venture
upon that historic subject. But, for one, I pity them. The occupants of
the galleries will bear me witness that even these modern Pilgrims--
these Pilgrims with all the modern improvements--how hard it is to put
up with their weaknesses, their follies, their tyrannies, their
oppressions, their desire of dominion and rule. But when you go back to
the stern horrors of the Pilgrim rule, when you contemplate the rugged
character of the Pilgrim fathers, why, you give credence to what a
witty woman of Boston said--she had heard enough of the glories and
sufferings of the Pilgrim fathers; for her part, she had a world of
sympathy for the Pilgrim mothers, because they not only endured all
that the Pilgrim fathers had done, but they also had to endure the
Pilgrim fathers to boot. Well, sir, they were afraid of woman. They
thought she was almost too refined a luxury for them to indulge in.
Miles Standish spoke for them all, and I am sure that General Sherman,
who so much resembles Miles Standish, not only in his military renown
but in his rugged exterior and in his warm and tender heart, will echo
his words when he says:--

"I can march up to a fortress, and summon the place to surrender, But
march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I am not afraid
of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering
'No!' point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I'm afraid
of, nor am I ashamed to confess it."

Mr. President, did you ever see a more self-satisfied or contented set
of men than these that are gathered at these tables this evening? I
never come to the Pilgrim dinner and see these men, who have achieved
in the various departments of life such definite and satisfactory
success, but that I look back twenty or thirty or forty years, and see
the lantern-jawed boy who started out from the banks of the
Connecticut, or some more remote river of New England, with five
dollars in his pocket and his father's blessing on his head and his
mother's Bible in his carpetbag, to seek those fortunes which now they
have so gloriously made. And there is one woman whom each of these,
through all his progress and to the last expiring hour of his life,
bears in tender remembrance. It is the mother who sent him forth with
her blessing. A mother is a mother still--the holiest thing alive; and
if I could dismiss you with a benediction to-night, it would be by
invoking upon the heads of you all the blessing of the mothers that we
left behind us.


BRIGHT LAND TO WESTWARD

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. III, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago,
publishers.

BY E. O. WOLCOTT

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--It was with great diffidence that I
accepted the invitation of your President to respond to a toast to-
night. I realized my incapacity to do justice to the occasion, while at
the same time I recognized the high compliment conveyed. I felt
somewhat as the man did respecting the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy;
he said he didn't know whether Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works or
not, but if he didn't, he missed the greatest opportunity of his life.

We are a plain people, and live far away. We are provincial; we have no
distinctive literature and no great poets; our leading personage abroad
of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill"; and we use our
adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward
each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In
mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork,
and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of
manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city cousin;
about as New to Old England, only we don't feel half so badly about it,
and on the whole are rather pleased with ourselves. There is not in the
whole broad West a ranch so lonely or so remote that a public school is
not within reach of it. With generous help from the East, Western
colleges are elevating and directing Western thought, and men busy
making States yet find time to live manly lives and to lend a hand. All
this may not be aesthetic, but it is virile, and it leads up and not
down.

There are some things more important than the highest culture. The West
is the Almighty's reserve ground, and as the world is filling up, He is
turning even the old arid plains and deserts into fertile acres, and is
sending there the rain as well as the sunshine. A high and glorious
destiny awaits us; soon the balance of population will lie the other
side of the Mississippi, and the millions that are coming must find
waiting for them schools and churches, good government, and a happy
people:--

  "Who love the land because it is their own,
    And scorn to give aught other reason why;
  Would shake hands with a King upon his throne,
    And think it kindness to his Majesty."

In everything which pertains to progress in the West, the Yankee
reėnforcements step rapidly to the front. Every year she needs more of
them, and as the country grows the annual demand becomes greater.
Genuine New Englanders are to be had on tap only in six small States,
and remembering this we feel that we have the right to demand that in
the future, even more than in the past, the heads of the New England
households weary not in the good work.

In these days of "booms" and New Souths and Great Wests, when everybody
up North who fired a gun is made to feel that he ought to apologize for
it, and good fellowship everywhere abounds, there is a sort of tendency
to fuse; only big and conspicuous things are much considered; and New
England being small in area and most of her distinguished people being
dead, she is just now somewhat under an eclipse. But in her past she
has undying fame. You of New England and her borders live always in the
atmosphere of her glories; the scenes which tell of her achievements
are ever near at hand, and familiarity and contact may rob them of
their charms, and dim to your eyes their sacredness. The sons of New
England in the West revisit her as men who make pilgrimage to some holy
shrine, and her hills and valleys are still instinct with noble
traditions. In her glories and her history we claim a common heritage,
and we never wander so far away from her that, with each recurring
anniversary of this day, our hearts do not turn to her with renewed
love and devotion for our beloved New England; yet--

  "Not by Eastern windows only,
    When daylight comes, comes in the light;
  In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
    But Westward, look, the land is bright!"


WOMAN

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. Ill, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago,
publishers.

BY THEODORE TILTON

You must not forget, Mr. President, in eulogizing the early men of New
England, who are your clients to-night, that it was only through the
help of the early women of New England, who are mine, that your boasted
heroes could ever have earned their title of the Pilgrim Fathers. A
health, therefore, to the women in the cabin of the Mayflower! A
cluster of Mayflowers themselves, transplanted from summer in the old
world to winter in the new! Counting over those matrons and maidens,
they numbered, all told, just eighteen. Their names are now written
among the heroines of history! For as over the ashes of Cornelia stood
the epitaph "The Mother of the Gracchi," so over these women of the
Pilgrimage we write as proudly "The Mothers of the Republic." There was
good Mistress Bradford, whose feet were not allowed of God to kiss
Plymouth Rock, and who, like Moses, came only near enough to see but
not to enter the Promised Land. She was washed overboard from the
deck--and to this day the sea is her grave and Cape Cod her monument!
There was Mistress Carver, wife of the first governor, who, when her
husband fell under the stroke of sudden death, followed him first with
heroic grief to the grave, and then, a fortnight after, followed him with
heroic joy up into Heaven! There was Mistress White--the mother of the
first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent. And it
was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the
world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her
anchor and the landing of her passengers--a kind of amphibious prophecy
that the newborn nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the
sea and over the land. There also was Rose Standish, whose name is a
perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds.

Then, after the first vessel with these women, there came other women--
loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which
afterwards harden into golden chains. For instance, Governor Bradford,
a lonesome widower, went down to the seabeach, and, facing the waves,
tossed a love letter over the wide ocean into the lap of Alice
Southworth in old England, who caught it up, and read it, and said,
"Yes, I will go." And she went! And it is said that the governor, at
his second wedding, married his first love! Which, according to the New
Theology, furnishes the providential reason why the first Mrs. Bradford
fell overboard!

Now, gentlemen, as you sit to-night in this elegant hall, think of the
houses in which the _Mayflower_ men and women lived in that first
winter! Think of a cabin in the wilderness--where winds whistled--where
wolves howled--where Indians yelled! And yet, within that log house,
burning like a lamp, was the pure flame of Christian faith, love,
patience, fortitude, heroism! As the Star of the East rested over the
rude manger where Christ lay, so--speaking not irreverently--there
rested over the roofs of the Pilgrims a Star of the West--the Star of
Empire; and to-day that empire is the proudest in the world!

And now, to close, let me give you just a bit of good advice. The
cottages of our forefathers had few pictures on the walls, but many
families had a print of "King Charles's Twelve Good Rules," the
eleventh of which was, "Make no long meals." Now King Charles lost his
head, and you will have leave to make a long meal. But when, after your
long meal, you go home in the wee small hours, what do you expect to
find? You will find my toast--"Woman, a beautiful rod!" Now my advice
is, "Kiss the rod!"


ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY HORACE PORTER

The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than
reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than the story of
a plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes
in the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest
which attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that class which
he always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to
disdain them. He believed that the government was made for the people,
not the people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a
torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it
will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful
standard bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican
party. He might well have said to those who chanced to sneer at his
humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the ranks said to
the haughty nobles of Vienna boasting of their long line of descent,
when they refused to associate with him: "I am an ancestor; you are
only descendants!" He was never guilty of any posing for effect, any
attitudinizing in public, any mawkish sentimentality, any of that
puppyism so often bred by power, that dogmatism which Johnson said was
only puppyism grown to maturity. He made no claim to knowledge he did
not possess. He felt with Addison that pedantry and learning are like
hypocrisy in religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it.
He had nothing in common with those men of mental malformation who are
educated beyond their intellects.

The names of Washington and Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet
as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire
life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into
rails. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. And
Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites,
they were never too long, and never too broad.

But his heart was not always attuned to mirth; its chords were often
set to strains of sadness. Yet throughout all his trials he never lost
the courage of his convictions. When he was surrounded on all sides by
doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented Catilines,
his faith was strongest. As the Danes destroyed the hearing of their
war horses in order that they might not be affrighted by the din of
battle, so Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all that might have discouraged
him, and exhibited an unwavering faith in the justice of the cause and
the integrity of the Union.

It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylę
every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from
memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defense
of that pass. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if
every school child in America could contemplate each day the grand
character and utter the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln, who has
handed down unto a grateful people the richest legacy which man can
leave to man--the memory of a good name, the inheritance of a great
example!


TO ATHLETIC VICTORS

From a speech at a dinner of graduates of Yale University, in New York,
1889. By the kindness of the author.

BY HENRY E. HOWLAND

On Boston Common, under the shadow of the State House, and within the
atmosphere of Harvard University, there is an inscription on a column,
in honor of those who, on land and sea, maintained the cause of their
country during four years of civil war. The visitor approaches it with
respect and reverently uncovers as he reads.

With similar high emotions we, as citizens of the world of letters, and
acknowledging particular allegiance to the province thereof founded by
Elihu Yale, are assembled to pour libations, to partake of a
sacrificial feast, and to crown with honors and with bays those who, on
land and sea, with unparalleled courage and devotion, have borne their
flag to victory in desperate encounters.

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

On large fields of strife, the record of success like that which we are
called upon to commemorate would give the victors a high place in
history and liken their country to ancient Thebes,--

  "Which spread her conquest o'er a thousand states,
  And poured her heroes through a hundred gates."

There are many reasons why Yale men win. One is that which was stated
by Lord Beaconsfield, "The Secret of success is constancy of purpose."
That alone sufficiently accounts for it.

We are here present in no vain spirit of boasting, though if our right
to exalt ourselves were questioned, we might reply in the words of the
American girl who was shown some cannon at Woolwich Arsenal, the
sergeant in charge remarking, "You know we took them from you at Bunker
Hill." "Yes," she replied, "I see you've got the cannon, but I guess
we've got the hill."

We come rather in a spirit of true modesty to recognize the plaudits of
an admiring world, to tell you how they were won. It was said in the
days of Athenian pride and glory that it was easier to find a god in
Athens than a man. We must be careful in these days of admiration of
athletic effort that no such imputation is laid upon us, and that the
deification of the human form divine is not carried to extremes.

It is a curious coincidence that a love of the classics and proficiency
in intellectual pursuits should coexist with admiration for physical
perfection and with athletic superiority during all the centuries of
which the history is written. The youth who lisped in Attic numbers and
was brought up on the language we now so painfully and imperfectly
acquire, who was lulled to sleep by songs of Ęschylus and Sophocles,
who discussed philosophy in the porches of Plato, Aristotle, and
Epicurus, was a more accomplished classical scholar than the most
learned pundit of modern times, and was a model of manly beauty, yet he
would have died to win the wreath of parsley at the Olympian games,
which all esteemed an immortal prize. While, in our time, to be the
winning crew on the Isis, the Cam, the English or American Thames, is
equal in honor and influence to the position of senior wrangler,
valedictorian, or Deforest prize man.

The man who wins the world's honors to-day must not be overtrained
mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of
Virginia,--"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested,
convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in
muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as
the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on
insanity, and out of tune with nature.

No man can work in the world unless he knows it, struggles with it, and
becomes a part of it, and the statement of the English statesman that
the undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who had the best stomach, the
hardest muscles, and the greatest ambition would be the future Lord
Chancellor of England, had a solid basis of truth.

Gentlemen of the bat, the oar, the racquet, the cinder path, and the
leathern sphere, never were conquerors more welcome guests, in palace
or in hall, at the tables of their friends than you are here.

You come with your laurels fresh from the fields you have won, to
receive the praise which is your due and which we so gladly bestow.
Your self-denial, devotion, skill, and courage have brought honor to
your University, and for it we honor you.


THE BABIES

At a banquet in honor of General Grant, Chicago, 1877

BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain)

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--"The Babies." Now, that's something like.
We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been
generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the
babies, we stand on common ground--for we've all been babies. It is a
shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly
ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything! If you,
gentlemen, will stop and think a minute--if you will try to go back
fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate
your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to a good deal--and
even something over.

You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family
headquarters, you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire
command. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.
And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and
that was the double-quick. When he called for soothing syrup, did you
venture to throw out any remarks about certain services unbecoming to
an officer and a gentleman? No; you got up and got it! If he ordered
his pap bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back? Not you; you
went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial
office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see
if it was right!--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to
modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal
hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.

And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young
folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying, that when a baby
smiles in his sleep it is because the angels are whispering to him.
Very pretty, but "too thin"--simply wind on the stomach, my friends. I
like the idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is
just a house and a front yard full by itself; one baby can furnish more
business than you and your whole interior department can attend to; he
is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what
you please you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto
the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't ever
pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any
real difference between triplets and insurrections.

Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land there
are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if
we could know which ones they are. For in one of these cradles the
unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething; in
another the future great historian is lying, and doubtless he will
continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. And in still one
more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with
his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his
whole strategic mind at this moment, to trying to find out some way to
get his own big toe into his mouth, an achievement to which (meaning no
disrespect) the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his
attention some fifty-six years ago! And if the child is but the
prophecy of the man, there are mighty few will doubt that he succeeded.




THE OCCASIONAL POEM


CHARLES DICKENS

Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the Dickens
Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press.

BY WILLIAM WATSON

When Nature first designed
In her all-procreant mind
The man whom here tonight we are met to honor--
When first the idea of Dickens flashed upon her--
"Where, where" she said, "upon my populous earth
Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth?
Where shall we have his earliest wondering look
Into my magic book?
Shall he be born where life runs like a brook,
Pleasant and placid as of old it ran,
Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds,
Among soft English meads?
Or shall he first my pictured volume scan
Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow
For cooling night to fan?"
"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan
For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides
The ships of war step out with thundering prow
And shake their stormy sides--
In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall
Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call--
He shall be born amid the drums and guns,
He shall be born among my fighting sons,
Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."

II

So there, where from the forts and battle gear
And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name,
Into the world this later hero came--
He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear--
He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife
That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life.
He did not fight to rend the world apart;
He fought to make it one in mind and heart,
Building a broad and noble bridge to span
The icy chasm that sunders man from man.
Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep,
There did his fierce yet gay assault surprise
Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies;
There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep;
There charged he up the steep,
A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell,
Keen to the last to break a lance with Hell.
And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine;
On his bright sword no spot of rust appears,
And still across the years
His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face
Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base,
He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears,
Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine,
Immortal laughter and immortal tears.


THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL

Ye Mariners of England
That guard our native seas!
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe:
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirit of your fathers
Shall start from every wave,
For the deck it is our field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly heart shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow;
When the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor-flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger's troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.


CLASS POEM

Read in Sanders Theater at the Harvard Class Day Exercises, 1903.
Reprinted with permission.

BY LANGDON WARNER

Not unto every one of us shall come
  The bugle call that sounds for famous deeds;
Not far lands, but the pleasant paths of home,
  Not broad seas to traffic, but the meads
Of fruitful midland ways, where daily life
  Down trellised vistas, heavy in the Fall,
Seems but the decent way apart from strife;
  And love, and work, and laughter there seem all.

War, and the Orient Sun uprising,
  The East, the West, and Man's shrill clamorous strife,
Travail, disaster, flood, and far emprising,
  Man may not reach, yet take fast hold on life.
Let us now praise men who are not famous,
  Striving for good name rather than for great;
Hear we the quiet voice calling to claim us,
  Heed it no less than the trumpet-call of fate!

Profit we to-day by the men who've gone before us,
  Men who dared, and lived, and died, to speed us on our way.
Fair is their fame, who make that mighty chorus,
  And gentle is the heritance that comes to us to-day.

They pulled with the strength that was in them,
  But 'twas not for the pewter cup,
And not for the fame 'twould win them
  When the length of the race was up.
For the college stood by the river,
  And they heard, with cheeks that glowed,
The voice of the coxswain calling
  At the end of the course--"Well rowed!"

We have pulled at the sweep and run at the games,
We have striven to stand to our boyhood aims,
And we know the worth of our fathers' names;
  Shall we have less care for our own?
The praise of men they dared despise,
They set the game above the prize,
Must we fear to look in our fathers' eyes,
  Nor reap where they have sown?

Do we lose the zest we've known before?
The joy of running?--The kick of the oar
  When the ash sweeps buckle and bend?
  Is the goal too far?--Too hard to gain?
We know that the candle is not the play,
We know the reward is not to-day,
  And may not come at the end.

But we hear the voice of each bygone class
From the river's bank when our own crews pass,
  And the backs of the men are bowed,
With a steady lift and a squandering strength,
For the heave that shall drive us a nation's length,
  Till the coxswain calls--"Well rowed."

Now all to the tasks that may find us--
  To the saddle, the home, or the sea,
Still hearing the voices behind us
  The voices that set us free;
Free to be bound by our honor,
  Free to our birthright of toil,
The masters, and slaves, of the nation,
  The Serfs, and the Lords, of the soil!

Proudly we lift the burdens
  That humbled the ages past,
And pray to the God that gave them
  We may bear them on to the last;

That our sons and our younger brothers,
  When our gaps in the front they fill,
May know that the class has faltered not,
  And the line is even still.

Then out to the wind and weather!
  Down the course our fathers showed,
And finish well together,
  As the coxswain calls--"Well rowed!"


A TROOP OF THE GUARD

Harvard Class Poem, 1907, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers,
Reprinted with permission.

BY HERMANN HAGEDORN, JR.

There's a trampling of hoofs in the busy street,
  There's a clanking of sabers on floor and stair,
There's a sound of restless, hurrying feet,
Of voices that whisper, of lips that entreat,--
  Will they live, will they die, will they strive, will they dare?--
The houses are garlanded, flags flutter gay,
For a troop of the Guard rides forth to-day.

Oh, the troopers will ride and their hearts will leap,
  When it's shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend--
But it's some to the pinnacle, some to the deep,
And some in the glow of their strength to sleep,
  And for all it's a fight to the tale's far end,
And it's each to his goal, nor turn nor sway,
When the troop of the Guard rides forth to-day.

The dawn is upon us, the pale light speeds
  To the zenith with glamour and golden dart.
On, up! Boot and saddle! Give spurs to your steeds!
There's a city beleaguered that cries for men's deeds,
  With the pain of the world in its cavernous heart.

  Ours be the triumph! Humanity calls!
    Life's not a dream in the clover!
  On to the walls, on to the walls,
    On to the walls, and over!

The wine is spent, the tale is spun,
The revelry of youth is done.
The horses prance, the bridles clink,
While maidens fair in bright array
With us the last sweet goblet drink,
Then bid us, "Mount and away!"
Into the dawn, we ride, we ride,
Fellow and fellow, side by side;
Galloping over the field and hill,
Over the marshland, stalwart still,
Into the forest's shadowy hush,
Where specters walk in sunless day,
And in dark pool and branch and bush
The treacherous will-o'-the-wisp lights play.
Out of the wood 'neath the risen sun,
Weary we gallop, one and one,
To a richer hope and a stronger foe
And a hotter fight in the fields below--
Each man his own slave, each his lord,
For the golden spurs and the victor's sword!

An anxious generation sends us forth
On the far conquest of the thrones of might.
From west to east, from south to north,
Earth's children, weary-eyed from too much light,
Cry from their dream-forsaken vales of pain,
"Give us our gods, give us our gods again!"
A lofty and relentless century,
Gazing with Argus eyes,
Has pierced the very inmost halls of faith;
And left no shelter whither man may flee
From the cold storms of night and lovelessness and death.

Old gods have fallen and the new must rise!
Out of the dust of doubt and broken creeds,
The sons of those who cast men's idols low
Must build up for a hungry people's needs
New gods, new hopes, new strength to toil and grow;
Knowing that nought that ever lived can die,--
No act, no dream but spreads its sails, sublime,
Sweeping across the visible seas of time
Into the treasure-haven of eternity.
The portals are open, the white road leads
  Through thicket and garden, o'er stone and sod.
On, up! Boot and saddle! Give spurs to your steeds!
There's a city beleaguered that cries for men's deeds,
  For the faith that is strength and the love that is God!
  On, through the dawning! Humanity calls!
    Life's not a dream in the clover!
  On to the walls, on to the walls,
    On to the walls, and over!


THE BOYS

At a class reunion. By permission of, and by special arrangement with,
Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's works.

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise.
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!

We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?
He's tipsy, young jackanapes!--show him the door!
'Gray temples at twenty?'--Yes! _white_ if we please;
Where the snowflakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake!
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,--
And these are white roses in place of the red.

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,
Of talking (in public) as if we were old:--
That boy we call 'Doctor,' and this we call 'Judge';
It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge.

That fellow's the 'Speaker,'--the one on the right:
'Mr. Mayor,' my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our 'Member of Congress,' we say when we chaff;
There's the 'Reverend' What's his name?--don't make me laugh.

That boy with the grave mathematical look
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was _true_!
So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!

There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain,
That could harness a team with a logical chain;
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him 'The Justice,' but now he's 'The Squire.'

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,--
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,--
Just read on his medal, 'My country,' 'of thee!'

You hear that boy laughing?--You think he's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,--
And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the BOYS!




THE ANECDOTE


THE MOB CONQUERED

From "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. 1
Copyright 1893, by Harper and Brothers. Reprinted with permission.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

It is especially necessary for us to perceive the vital relation of
individual courage and character to the common welfare, because ours is
a government of public opinion, and public opinion is but the aggregate
of individual thought. We have the awful responsibility as a community
of doing what we choose; and it is of the last importance that we
choose to do what is wise and right. In the early days of the
antislavery agitation a meeting was called at Faneuil Hall, in Boston,
which a good-natured mob of sailors was hired to suppress. They took
possession of the floor and danced breakdowns and shouted choruses and
refused to hear any of the orators upon the platform. The most eloquent
pleaded with them in vain. They were urged by the memories of the
Cradle of Liberty, for the honor of Massachusetts, for their own honor
as Boston boys, to respect liberty of speech. But they still laughed
and sang and danced, and were proof against every appeal. At last a man
suddenly arose from among themselves, and began to speak. Struck by his
tone and quaint appearance, and with the thought that he might be one
of themselves, the mob became suddenly still, "Well, fellow-citizens,"
he said, "I wouldn't be quiet if I didn't want to." The words were
greeted with a roar of delight from the mob, which supposed it had
found its champion, and the applause was unceasing for five minutes,
during which the strange orator tranquilly awaited his chance to
continue. The wish to hear more hushed the tumult, and when the hall
was still he resumed: "No, I certainly wouldn't stop if I hadn't a mind
to; but then, if I were you, I _would_ have a mind to!" The oddity
of the remark and the earnestness of the tone, held the crowd silent,
and the speaker continued, "not because this is Faneuil Hall, nor for
the honor of Massachusetts, nor because you are Boston boys, but
because you are men, and because honorable and generous men always love
fair play." The mob was conquered. Free speech and fair play were
secured. Public opinion can do what it has a mind to in this country.
If it be debased and demoralized, it is the most odious of tyrants. It
is Nero and Caligula multiplied by millions. Can there then be a more
stringent public duty for every man--and the greater the intelligence
the greater the duty--than to take care, by all the influence he can
command, that the country, the majority, public opinion, shall have a
mind to do only what is just and pure and humane?


AN EXAMPLE OF FAITH

From "The New South." Reprinted with permission

BY HENRY W. GRADY

Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say
that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to
speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the
semblance, of original New England hospitality--and honors the
sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost,
and the compliment to my people made plain.

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not
troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife
sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the
top step, fell with such casual interruptions as the landings afforded
into the basement, and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of
hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?"

"No, I didn't," said John, "but I'll be dinged if I don't."

So, while those who call me from behind may inspire me with energy, if
not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you
will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to
judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told
some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The
boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next
morning he read on the bottom of one page, "When Noah was one hundred
and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was--" then
turning the page--"140 cubits long, 40 cubits wide, built of gopher
wood--and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled
at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said, "My friends,
this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this
as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully
made." If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed
cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of
consecration.


THE RAIL-SPLITTER

From "The Lincoln Story Book," with the permission of G. W. Dillingham
and Co., New York, publishers.

BY H. L. WILLIAMS

The Illinois Republican State Convention of 1860 met at Decatur, in a
wigwam built for the purpose, a type of that noted in the Lincoln
Annals as at Chicago. A special welcome was given to Abraham Lincoln as
a "distinguished citizen of Illinois, and one she will ever be
delighted to honor." The session was suddenly interrupted by the
chairman saying: "There is an old Democrat outside who has something to
present to the convention."

The present was two old fence rails, carried on the shoulder of an
elderly man, recognized by Lincoln as his cousin John Hanks, and by the
Sangamon folks as an old settler in the Bottoms. The rails were
explained by a banner reading:

"Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks, in the
Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830."

Thunderous cheers for "the rail-splitter" resounded, for this slur on
the statesman had recoiled on aspersers and was used as a title of
honor. The call for confirmation of the assertion led Lincoln to rise,
and blushing--so recorded--said:

"Gentlemen,--I suppose you want to know something about those things.
Well, the truth is, John and I did make rails in the Sangamon Bottom."
He eyed the wood with the knowingness of an authority on "stumpage,"
and added: "I don't know whether we made those rails or not; the fact
is, I don't think they are a credit to the makers!" It was John Hanks'
turn to blush. "But I do know this: I made rails then, and, I think, I
could make better ones now!"

Whereupon, by acclamation, Abraham Lincoln was declared to be "first
choice of the Republican party in Illinois for the Presidency."

Riding a man in on a rail became of different and honorable meaning
from that out.

This incident was a prepared theatrical effect. Governor Oglesby
arranged with Lincoln's stepbrother, John D. Johnston, to provide two
rails, and with Lincoln's mother's cousin, Dennis Hanks, for the latter
to bring in the rails at the telling juncture. Lincoln's guarded manner
about identifying the rails, and sly slap at his ability to make better
ones, show that he was in the scheme, though recognizing that the dodge
was of value politically.


O'CONNELL'S WIT

From a lecture on Daniel O'Connell in "Speeches and Lectures," with the
permission of Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

We used to say of Webster, "This is a great effort"; of Everett, "It is
a beautiful effort"; but you never used the word "effort" in speaking
of O'Connell. It provoked you that he would not make an effort. I heard
him perhaps a score of times, and I do not think more than three times
he ever lifted himself to the full sweep of his power.

And this wonderful power, it was not a thunderstorm: he flanked you
with his wit, he surprised you out of yourself; you were conquered
before you knew it.

He was once summoned to court out of the hunting field, when a young
friend of his of humble birth was on trial for his life. The evidence
gathered around a hat found next the body of the murdered man, which
was recognized as the hat of the prisoner. The lawyers tried to break
down the evidence, confuse the testimony, and get some relief from the
directness of the circumstances, but in vain, until at last they called
for O'Connell. He came in, flung his riding-whip and hat on the table,
was told the circumstances, and, taking up the hat, said to the
witness, "Whose hat is this?" "Well, Mr. O'Connell, that is Mike's
hat." "How do you know it?" "I will swear to it, sir." "And did you
really find it by the body of the murdered man?" "I did that, sir."
"But you're not ready to swear to that?" "I am, indeed, Mr. O'Connell."
"Pat, do you know what hangs on your word? A human soul. And with that
dread burden, are you ready to tell this jury that the hat, to your
certain knowledge, belongs to the prisoner?" "Y-yes, Mr. O'Connell;
yes, I am."

O'Connell takes the hat to the nearest window, and peers into it--"J-a-
m-e-s, James. Now, Pat, did you see that name in the hat?" "I did, Mr.
O'Connell." "You knew it was there?" "Yes, sir; I read it after I
picked it up."----"No name in the hat, your Honor."

So again in the House of Commons. When he took his seat in the House in
1830, the London _Times_ visited him with its constant indignation,
reported his speeches awry, turned them inside out, and made nonsense
of them; treated him as the New York _Herald_ use to treat us
Abolitionists twenty years ago. So one morning he rose and said,
"Mr. Speaker, you know I have never opened my lips in this House,
and I expended twenty years of hard work in getting the right to enter
it,--I have never lifted my voice in this House, but in behalf of the
saddest people the sun shines on. Is it fair play, Mr. Speaker, is it
what you call 'English fair play' that the press of this city will not
let my voice be heard?" The next day the _Times_ sent him word
that, as he found fault with their manner of reporting him, they never
would report him at all, they never would print his name in their
parliamentary columns. So the next day when prayers were ended
O'Connell rose. Those reporters of the _Times_ who were in the
gallery rose also, ostentatiously put away their pencils, folded their
arms, and made all the show they could, to let everybody know how it
was. Well, you know nobody has a right to be in the gallery during the
session, and if any member notices them, the mere notice clears the
gallery; only the reporters can stay after that notice. O'Connell rose.
One of the members said, "Before the member from Clare opens his
speech, let me call his attention to the gallery and the instance of
that 'passive resistance' which he is about to preach." "Thank you,"
said O'Connell. "Mr. Speaker, I observe the strangers in the gallery."
Of course they left; of course the next day, in the columns of the
London _Times_, there were no parliamentary debates. And for the
first time, except in Richard Cobden's case, the London _Times_
cried for quarter, and said to O'Connell, "If you give up the quarrel,
we will."


A RELIABLE TEAM

From "Hunting the Grizzly," with the permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons,
New York and London, Publishers.

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

In the cow country there is nothing more refreshing than the light-
hearted belief entertained by the average man to the effect that any
animal which by main force has been saddled and ridden, or harnessed
and driven a couple of times, is a "broke horse." My present foreman is
firmly wedded to this idea, as well as to its complement, the belief
that any animal with hoofs, before any vehicle with wheels, can be
driven across any country. One summer on reaching the ranch I was
entertained with the usual accounts of the adventures and misadventures
which had befallen my own men and my neighbors since I had been out
last. In the course of the conversation my foreman remarked: "We had a
great time out here about six weeks ago. There was a professor from Ann
Arbor came out with his wife to see the Bad Lands, and they asked if we
could rig them up a team, and we said we guessed we could, and Foley's
boy and I did; but it ran away with him and broke his leg! He was here
for a month. I guess he didn't mind it, though." Of this I was less
certain, forlorn little Medora being a "busted" cow town, concerning
which I once heard another of my men remark, in reply to an inquisitive
commercial traveler: "How many people lives here? Eleven--counting the
chickens--when they're all in town!"

My foreman continued: "By George, there was something that professor
said afterward that made me feel hot. I sent word up to him by Foley's
boy that seein' as how it had come out, we wouldn't charge him nothin'
for the rig; and that professor answered that he was glad we were
showing him some sign of consideration, for he'd begun to believe he'd
fallen into a den of sharks, and that we gave him a runaway team
apurpose. That made me hot, calling that a runaway team. Why, there was
one of them horses never _could_ have run away before; it hadn't
never been druv but twice! and the other horse maybe had run away a few
times, but there was lots of times he _hadn't_ run away. I esteemed
that team full as liable not to run away as it was to run away,"
concluded my foreman, evidently deeming this as good a warranty
of gentleness in a horse as the most exacting could possibly require.


MEG'S MARRIAGE

From a lecture entitled "Clear Grit," published in "Modern Eloquence,"
Vol. IV, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago.

BY ROBERT COLLYER

In what we call the good old times--say, three hundred years ago--a
family lived on the border between England and Scotland, with one
daughter of a marvelous homeliness. Her name was Meg. She was a capital
girl, as homely girls generally are. She knew she had no beauty, so she
made sure of quality and faculty. But the Scotch say that "while beauty
may not make the best kail, it looks best by the side of the kail-pot."
So Meg had no offer of a husband, and was likely to die in what we call
"single blessedness." Everybody on the border in those days used to
steal, and their best "holt," as we say, was cattle. If they wanted
meat and had no money, they would go out and steal as many beef cattle
as they could lay their hands on, from somebody on the other side of
the border. Well, they generally had no money, and they were always
wanting beef, and they could always be hung for stealing by the man
they stole from if he could catch them, and so they had what an
Irishman would call a fine time entirely. One day a young chief,
wanting some beef as usual, went out with part of his clan, came upon a
splendid herd on the lands of Meg's father, and went to work to drive
them across to his own. But the old fellow was on the lookout, mustered
his clan, bore down on the marauders, beat them, took the young chief
prisoner, and then went home to his peel very much delighted. Meg's
mother, of course, wanted to know all about it, and then she said,
"Noo, laird, what are you gaun to do with the prisoner?" "I am gaun to
hang him," the old man thundered, "just as soon as I have had my
dinner." "But I think ye're noo wise to do that," she said. "He has got
a braw place, ye ken, over the border, and he is a braw fellow. Noo
I'll tell ye what I would do. I would give him his chance to be hung or
marry oor Meg." It struck the old man as a good idea, and so he went
presently down into the dungeon, told the young fellow to get ready to
be hung in thirty minutes, but then got round to the alternative, and
offered to spare his life if he would marry Meg, and give him the beef
into the bargain. He had heard something about Meg's wonderful want of
beauty, and so, with a fine Scotch prudence, he said, "Ye will let me
see her, laird, before I mak' up my mind, because maybe I would rather
be hung." "Aye, mon, that's fair," the old chief answered, and went in
to bid the mother get Meg ready for the interview. The mother did her
best, you may be sure, to make Meg look winsome, but when the poor
fellow saw his unintentional intended he turned round to the chief and
said, "Laird, if ye have nae objection, I think I would rather be
hung." "And sae ye shall, me lad, and welcome," the old chief replied,
in a rage. So they led him out, got the rope around his neck; and then
the young man changed his mind, and shouted, "Laird, I'll tak' her." So
he was marched back into the castle, married before he had time to
change his mind, if that was possible, and the tradition is that there
never was a happier pair in Scotland, and never a better wife in the
world than Meg. But I have told the story because it touches this
point, of the way they hold their own over there when there are great
families of children. They tell me that the family flourishes famously
still; no sign of dying out or being lost about it. Meg's main feature
was a very large mouth, and now in the direct line in almost every
generation the neighbors and friends are delighted, as they say, to get
Meg back. "Here's Meg again," they cry when a child is born with that
wonderful mouth. Sir Walter Scott was one of the descendants of the
family. He had Meg's mouth, in a measure, and was very proud of it when
he would tell the story.


OUTDOING MRS. PARTINGTON

From a speech published in Brewer's "The World's Best Orations," Vol.
IX, Ferd. P. Kaiser, St. Louis, Chicago, publisher.

BY SIDNEY SMITH  I have spoken so often on this subject, that I am sure
both you and the gentlemen here present will be obliged to me for
saying but little, and that favor I am as willing to confer, as you can
be to receive it. I feel most deeply the event which has taken place,
because, by putting the two houses of Parliament in collision with each
other, it will impede the public business and diminish the public
prosperity. I feel it as a churchman, because I cannot but blush to see
so many dignitaries of the Church arrayed against the wishes and
happiness of the people. I feel it more than all, because I believe it
will sow the seeds of deadly hatred between the aristocracy and the
great mass of the people. The loss of the bill I do not feel, and for
the best of all possible reasons--because I have not the slightest idea
that it is lost. I have no more doubt, before the expiration of the
winter, that this bill will pass, than I have that the annual tax bills
will pass, and greater certainty than this no man can have, for
Franklin tells us there are but two things certain in this world--death
and taxes. As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing ere
long a reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most absurd notion
that ever entered into human imagination. I do not mean to be
disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of
reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of
the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the
winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town, the tide
rose to an incredible height, the waves rushed in upon the houses, and
everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this
sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach,
was seen at the top of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her
mop, squeezing out the water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic
Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I
need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat
Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she
should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease--be
quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington.


CIRCUMSTANCE NOT A CAUSE

From the same speech as the foregoing

BY SIDNEY SMITH

An honorable member of the honorable house, much connected with this
town, and once its representative, seems to be amazingly surprised, and
equally dissatisfied, at this combination of king, ministers, nobles,
and people, against his opinion,--like the gentleman who came home from
serving on a jury very much disconcerted, and complaining he had met
with eleven of the most obstinate people he had ever seen in his life,
whom he found it absolutely impossible by the strongest arguments to
bring over to his way of thinking.

They tell you, gentlemen, that you have grown rich and powerful with
these rotten boroughs, and that it would be madness to part with them,
or to alter a constitution which had produced such happy effects. There
happens, gentlemen, to live near my parsonage a laboring man of very
superior character and understanding to his fellow laborers, and who
has made such good use of that superiority that he has saved what is
(for his station in life) a very considerable sum of money, and if his
existence is extended to the common period he will die rich. It
happens, however, that he is (and long has been) troubled with violent
stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto obtained no relief, and
which really are the bane and torment of his life. Now, if my excellent
laborer were to send for a physician and to consult him respecting this
malady, would it not be very singular language if our doctor were to
say to him: "My good friend, you surely will not be so rash as to
attempt to get rid of these pains in your stomach. Have you not grown
rich with these pains in your stomach? have you not risen under them
from poverty to prosperity? has not your situation since you were first
attacked been improving every year? You surely will not be so foolish
and so indiscreet as to part with the pains in your stomach?" Why, what
would be the answer of the rustic to this nonsensical monition?
"Monster of rhubarb! (he would say) I am not rich in consequence of the
pains in my stomach, but in spite of the pains in my stomach; and I
should have been ten times richer, and fifty times happier, if I had
never had any pains in my stomach at all." Gentlemen, these rotten
boroughs are your pains in the stomach--and you would have been a much
richer and greater people if you had never had them at all. Your wealth
and your power have been owing not to the debased and corrupted parts
of the House of Commons, but to the many independent and honorable
members whom it has always contained within its walls. If there had
been a few more of these very valuable members for close boroughs we
should, I verily believe, have been by this time about as free as
Denmark, Sweden, or the Germanized States of Italy.

This is the greatest measure which has ever been before Parliament in
my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the country; and
though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could not reconcile
it to my conscience to be absent from this.

Every year for this half century, the question of reform has been
pressing upon us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and
awful combination; so that almost every city and every borough in
England are at this moment assembled for the same purpose, and are
doing the same thing we are doing.


MORE TERRIBLE THAN THE LIONS

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. X, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago,
publishers.

BY A. A. MCCORMICK

I do not want to be in the position of a man I once heard of who was a
lion tamer. He was a very brave man. There was no lion, no matter how
big, or strong, or vicious, that had not succumbed to this man's
fearlessness. This man had a wife, and she did not like him to stay out
late at night, and big as he was, and as brave, he had never dared to
disrespect his wife's wishes, until one evening, meeting some old
friends, he fell to talking over old times with them, their early
adventures and experiences. Finally, looking at his watch, to his
amazement he discovered it was midnight. What to do he knew not. He
didn't dare to go home. If he went to a hotel, his wife might discover
him before he discovered her. Finally, in desperation, he sped to the
menagerie, hurriedly passed through and went to the cage of lions.
Entering this he closed and locked the door, and gave a sigh of relief.
He quieted the dangerous brutes, and lay down with his head resting on
the mane of the largest and most dangerous of them all. His wife
waited. Her anger increased as the night wore on. At the first sign of
dawn she went in search of her recreant lord and master. Not finding
him in any of the haunts that he generally frequented, she went to the
menagerie. She also passed through and went to the cage of the lions.
Peering in she saw her husband, the fearless lion tamer, crouching at
the back of the cage. A look of chagrin came over her face, closely
followed by one of scorn and fine contempt, as she shook her finger and
hissed, "You coward!"


IRVING, THE ACTOR

From "In Lighter Vein," with the permission of Paul Elder and Company,
San Francisco, publishers.

BY JOHN DE MORGAN

Henry Irving, the actor, was always fond of playing practical jokes.
Clement Scott tells of one played by Irving and Harry Montague upon a
number of their associates. Irving and Montague, hitherto the best of
friends, began to quarrel on their way to a picnic, and their friends
feared some tragic consequences. After luncheon both of the men
disappeared. Business Manager Smale's face turned pale. He felt that
his worst fears had been realized. With one cry, "They're gone! What on
earth has become of them?" he made a dash down the Dargle, over the
rocks and bowlders, with the remainder of the picnickers at his heels.
At the bottom of a "dreadful hollow behind the little wood," a fearful
sight presented itself to the astonished friends. There, on a stone,
sat Henry Irving, in his shirtsleeves, his long hair matted over his
eyes, his thin hands and white face all smeared with blood, and
dangling an open clasp-knife. He was muttering to himself, in a savage
tone: "I've done it, I've done it! I said I would, I said I would!" Tom
Smale, in an agony of fear, rushed up to Irving. "For Heaven's sake,
man," he screamed, "tell us where he is!" Irving, scarcely moving a
muscle, pointed to a heap of dead leaves, and, in that sepulchral tone
of his, cried: "He's there! I've done for him! I've murdered him!"
Smale literally bounded to the heap, almost paralyzed with fear, and
began pulling the leaves away. Presently he found Montague lying face
downward and nearly convulsed with laughter. Never was better acting
seen on any stage.


WENDELL PHILLIPS'S TACT

From "Memories of the Lyceum," in "Modern Eloquence," Vol. VI, Geo. L.
Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY JAMES BURTON POND

Wendell Phillips was the most polished and graceful orator our country
ever produced. He spoke as quietly as if he were talking in his own
parlor and almost entirely without gestures, yet he had as great a
power over all kinds of audiences as any American of whom we have any
record. Often called before howling mobs, who had come to the lecture-
room to prevent him from being heard, and who would shout and sing to
drown his voice, he never failed to subdue them in a short time. One
illustration of his power and tact occurred in Boston. The majority of
the audience were hostile. They yelled and sang and completely drowned
his voice. The reporters were seated in a row just under the platform,
in the place where the orchestra plays in an ordinary theater. Phillips
made no attempt to address the noisy crowd, but bent over and seemed to
be speaking in a low tone to the reporters. By and by the curiosity of
the audience was excited; they ceased to clamor and tried to hear what
he was saying to the reporters. Phillips looked at them and said
quietly:--

"Go on, gentlemen, go on. I do not need your ears. Through these
pencils I speak to thirty millions of people."

Not a voice was raised again. The mob had found its master and stayed
whipped until he sat down.

Eloquent as he was as a lecturer, he was far more effective as a
debater. Debate was for him the flint and steel which brought out all
his fire. His memory was something wonderful, He would listen to an
elaborate speech for hours, and, without a single note of what had been
said, in writing, reply to every part of it as fully and completely as
if the speech were written out before him. Those who heard him only on
the platform, and when not confronted by an opponent, have a very
limited comprehension of his wonderful resources as a speaker. He never
hesitated for a word or failed to employ the word best fitted to
express his thought on the point under discussion.


BAKED BEANS AND CULTURE

From "Writings in Prose and Verse, by Eugene Field," with the
permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, publishers.

BY EUGENE FIELD

The members of the Boston Commercial Club are charming gentlemen. They
are now the guests of the Chicago Commercial Club, and are being shown
every attention that our market affords.

Last night five or six of these Boston merchants sat around the office
of the hotel and discussed matters and things. Pretty soon they got to
talking about beans; this was the subject which they dwelt on with
evident pleasure.

"Waal, sir," said Ephraim Taft, a wholesale dealer in maple sugar and
flavored lozenges, "you kin talk 'bout your new-fashioned dishes an'
high-falutin' vittles; but when you come right down to it, there ain't
no better eatin' than a dish o' baked pork 'n' beans."

"That's so, b'gosh!" chorused the others.

"The truth o' the matter is," continued Mr. Taft, "that beans is good
for everybody--'t don't make no difference whether he's well or sick.
Why, I've known a thousand folks--waal, mebbe not quite a thousand;
but--waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook,--you
remember Bill, don't ye?"

"Bill Holbrook?" said Mr. Ezra Eastman. "Why, of course I do. Used to
live down to Brimfield, next to Moses Howard farm."

"That's the man," resumed Mr. Taft. "Waal, Bill fell sick--kinder moped
'round, tired-like, for a week or two, an' then tuck to his bed. His
folks sent for Dock Smith--ol' Dock Smith that used to carry a pair o'
leather saddlebags. Gosh, they don't have no sech doctors nowadays!
Waal, the dock he come; an' he looked at Bill's tongue, an' felt uv his
pulse, an' said that Bill had typhus fever."

Ol' Dock Smith was a very careful, conserv'tive man, an' he never said
nothin' unless he knowed he was right.

"Bill began to git wuss, an' he kep' a-gittin' wuss every day. One
mornin' ol' Dock Smith sez, 'Look a-here, Bill, I guess you're a goner;
as I figger it, you can't hol' out till nightfall.'

"Bill's mother insisted on a con-sul-tation bein' held; so ol' Dock
Smith sent over for young Dock Brainerd. I calc'late that, next
_to_ ol' Dock Smith, young Dock Brainerd was the smartest doctor
that ever lived.

"Waal, pretty soon along come Dock Brainerd; an' he an' Dock Smith went
all over Bill, an' looked at his tongue, an' felt uv his pulse, an'
told him it was a gone case, an' that he had got to die. Then they went
on into the spare chamber to hold their con-sul-tation.

"Waal, Bill he lay there in the front room a-pantin' an' a-gaspin', an'
a wond'rin' whether it wuz true. As he wuz thinkin', up comes the girl
to git a clean tablecloth out of the clothespress, an' she left the
door ajar as she come in. Bill he gave a sniff, an' his eyes grew more
natural like; he gathered together all the strength he had, an' he
raised himself up on one elbow an' sniffed again.

"'Sary,' says he, 'wot's that a-cookin'?'

"'Beans,' says she; 'beans for dinner.'

"'Sary,' says the dyin' man, 'I must hev a plate uv them beans!'

"'Sakes alive, Mr. Holbrook!' says she; 'if you wuz to eat any o' them
beans it'd kill ye!'

"'If I've got to die,' says he, 'I'm goin' to die happy; fetch me a
plate uv them beans.'

"Waal, Sary she pikes off to the doctor's.

"'Look a-here,' says she; 'Mr. Holbrook smelt the beans cookin' an' he
says he's got to have some. Now, what shall I do about it?'

"'Waal, Doctor,' says Dock Smith, 'what do you think 'bout it?'

"'He's got to die anyhow,' says Dock Brainerd, 'an' I don't suppose the
beans 'll make any diff'rence.'

"'That's the way I figger it,' says Dock Smith; 'in all my practice I
never knew of beans hurtin' anybody.'

"So Sary went down to the kitchen an' brought up a plateful of hot
baked beans. Dock Smith raised Bill up in bed, an' Dock Brainerd put a
piller under the small of Bill's back. Then Sary sat down by the bed
an' fed them beans into Bill until Bill couldn't hold any more.

"'How air you feelin' now?' asked Dock Smith.

"Bill didn't say nuthin; he jest smiled sort uv peaceful-like and
closed his eyes.

"'The end hez come,'f said Dock Brainerd sof'ly; 'Bill is dyin'.'

"Then Bill murmured kind o' far-away like; 'I ain't dyin'; I'm dead an'
in heaven.'

"Next mornin' Bill got out uv bed an' done a big day's work on the
farm, an' he ain't bed a sick spell since. Them beans cured him!"


SECRETARY CHASE'S CHIN-FLY

From "Speeches and Addresses of Abraham Lincoln," Current Literature
Publishing Company, New York, publishers.

BY F. B. CARPENTER

"Within a month after Mr. Lincoln's first accession to office," says
the Hon. Mr. Raymond, "when the South was threatening civil war, and
armies of office seekers were besieging him in the Executive Mansion,
he said to a friend that he wished he could get time to attend to the
Southern question; he thought he knew what was wanted, and believed he
could do something towards quieting the rising discontent; but the
office seekers demanded all his time. 'I am,' said he, 'like a man so
busy in letting rooms in one end of his house that he can't stop to put
out the fire that is burning the other.' Two or three years later when
the people had made him a candidate for reflection, the same friend
spoke to him of a member of his Cabinet who was a candidate also. Mr.
Lincoln said that he did not concern himself much about that. It was
important to the country that the department over which his rival
presided should be administered with vigor and energy, and whatever
would stimulate the Secretary to such action would do good. 'R----,'
said he, 'you were brought up on a farm, were you not? Then you know
what a _chin-fly_ is. My brother and I,' he added, 'were once plowing
corn on a Kentucky farm, I driving the horse, and he holding the
plow. The horse was lazy; but on one occasion rushed across the
field so that I, with my long legs, could scarcely keep pace with him.
On reaching the end of the furrow, I found an enormous _chin-fly_
fastened upon him, and knocked him off. My brother asked me what I did
that for. I told him I didn't want the old horse bitten in that way.
"Why," said my brother, "_that's all that made him go!_" Now,' said
Mr. Lincoln, 'if Mr. ---- has a presidential _chin-fly_ biting him,
I'm not going to knock him off if it will only make his department
_go_.'"




REVIEW EXERCISES

EXERCISES


There exercises should be practiced in only a moderately
strong voice, at times perhaps in a very soft voice, and
always with a good degree of ease and naturalness. They
had better be memorized, and as the technique becomes
more sure, less thought may be given to that and more
to the true expression of the spirit of each passage--or
let the spirit from the first, if it will, help the technique.


TONE


For rounding and expanding the voice. To be given in an even
sustained tone, with rather open throat and easy low breathing.
Suspend the speech where pauses are marked, for a momentary
recovery of breath. Keep the breath easily firm. Don't drive the
breath through the tone.

1

Roll on, | thou deep and dark blue Ocean, | roll!
Ten thousand fleets | sweep over thee | in vain;
Man marks the earth | with ruin--his control |
Stops | with the shore.

2

O Tiber, | Father Tiber |
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, | a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge | this day |

3

O Rome! | my country! | city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart | must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! | and control
In their shut breasts | their petty misery.

4

Ring joyous chords!-- | ring out again!
A swifter still | and a wilder strain!
And bring fresh wreaths!-- | we will banish all
Save the free in heart | from our banquet hall.

5

O joy to the people | and joy to the throne,
Come to us, | love us | and make us your own:
For Saxon | or Dane | or Norman | we,
Teuton or Celt, | or what ever we be,
We are all of us Danes | in our welcome of thee, Alexandra!

6

Liberty! | Freedom! | Tyranny is dead!--
Run hence, | proclaim, | cry it about the streets.
Some to the common pulpits, | and cry out,
"Liberty, | freedom, | and enfranchisement!"


INFLECTION


Give these with a rather vigorous colloquial effect, with clear-cut
form, with point and spirit.

1

  Armed, say you?
                  Armed, my lord.
                                  From top to toe?
  My lord, from head to foot.
                              Then saw you not
  His face?
            Oh, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.
  What, looked he frowningly?
                              A countenance more
  In sorrow than in anger.
                           Pale or red?
  Nay, very pale.
                  And fixed his eyes upon you?
  Most constantly.

2

But, sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Aye, "the
murdered Coalition!" The gentleman asks if I were
led or frighted into this debate by the specter of the
Coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,"
he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts;
and which, like the ghost of Banquo, would never
down?" "The murdered Coalition."

3

Should he have asked Aguinaldo for an armistice? If
so, upon what basis should he have requested it? What
should he say to him? "Please stop this fighting?"
"What for?" Aguinaldo would say; "do you propose
to retire?" "No." "Do you propose to grant us independence?"
"No, not now." "Well, why then, an armistice?"

4

Alas, poor Yorick!--I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of
infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on
his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my
imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.--Where be your
gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table in a roar? Not
one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chop-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her
paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her
laugh at that.


ENUNCIATION


Keep first of all a good form to the vowels. Make consonants
definitely by sufficient action of jaw, tongue, and lips. Keep the
throat easy; avoid stiffening and strain. A particularly light, soft,
pure tone, with fine articulation, may generally be best for practice.

In these first passages, carry the tone well in the head, so as to
give a pure, soft, clear sound to the _m_'s, _n_'s, _ng_'s, and _l_'s.
If need be, these letters may be marked.

1

One cry of wonder,
Shrill as the loon's call,
Rang through the forest,
Startling the silence,
Startling the mourners
Chanting the death-song.

2

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan,)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

3

  These abominable principles, and this more abominable
avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation.

4

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Forward! let us do or die!

5

I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.


REVIEW EXERCISES


Give clearly the _k_ and the _g_ forms, making a slight percussion in
the back of the mouth. Finish clearly all main words.

1

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.

2

Where dwellest thou?
Under the canopy.
Under the canopy!
Ay!
Where's that?
I' the city of kites and crows.
I' the city of kites and crows!--
Then thou dwellest with daws, too?
No: I serve not thy master.

3

Strike | till the last armed foe | expires!
Strike | for your altars and your fires!
Strike | for the green graves of your sires!
God | and your native land!

For flexibility of the lips, form well the _o_'s and _w_'s.

1

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.

2

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, wonderful!
and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!

3

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

4

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

Have care for _t_'s, _d_'s, _s_'s, the _th_ and the _st_'s.

1

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

2

What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!

3

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Attend especially to _b_'s and in passage 2 to _p_'s. Give a very soft,
slightly echoing continuation to the _ing_ in "dying."

1

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

2

Hop, and Mop, and Drop so clear,
Pip, and Trip, and Skip that were
To Mab their sovereign dear,
  Her special maids of honor;
Fib, and Tib, and Pinck, and Pin,
Tit, and Nit, and Wap, and Win,
  The train that wait upon her.


EMPHASIS


Determine the exact sense and express it pointedly. The primary or
central emphasis takes an absolute fall from a pitch above the general
level; the secondary emphasis takes a circumflex inflection--a fall and
a slight rise. Primary, Hebrew  Letter Yod; secondary Gujarati
Vowel Sign li. In the question, the main part of the inflection is
usually rising instead of falling. The effect of suspense or of forward
look requires the slightly upward final turn to the inflection. Note
this in passages 4, 5, and 6.

1

In 1825 the gentleman told the world that the public lands "ought _not_
to be treated as a _treasure_." He now tells us that "they _must_ be
treated as _so much treasure_." What the deliberate opinion of the
gentleman on this subject may be, belongs not to me to determine.

2

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is _plain_ and _simple;_ the
other full of perplexed and intricate _mazes_. This is mild; that
_harsh_. This is found by experience _effectual for its purposes_; the
other is a _new project_. This is _universal_; the other calculated for
_certain colonies only._ This is _immediate in its conciliatory
operation_; the other _remote, contingent_, full of _hazard_.

3

As Cęsar _loved me_, I _weep_ for him; as he was _fortunate_, I
_rejoice_ at it; as he was _valiant_, I _honor_ him; but as he was
_ambitious_, I _slew_ him. There is _tears_ for his _love_; _joy_ for
his _fortune_; _honor_ for his _valor_; and _death_ for his _ambition_.

4

One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching
peacefully out before him; the next he lay wounded, bleeding,
_helpless_, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the
grave.

5

For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the
red hand of Murder he was thrust from the full tide of this world's
interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the
visible presence of death; and he _did not quail_.

6

There was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned to give a
cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the
upward hand--his eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last glance to
the flag--his lips parted--he fell _dead_, and at nightfall lay
with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis
over whom the goddess of beauty wept.

7

But the gentleman inquires why _he_ was made the object of such a
reply. Why was _he_ singled out? If an attack has been made on the
_East, he_, he assures us, did not _begin_ it; it was made by
the gentleman from _Missouri_. Sir, I answered the gentleman's
speech because I happened to _hear_ it; and because, also, I chose
to give an answer to that speech which, if _unanswered_, I thought
most likely to produce _injurious impressions_.


MELODY


Give musical tone and a fitting modulation, or tune, avoiding the so-
called singsong. Note the occasional closing cadence. Observe the
rhythmic movement, with beat and pause.

1

You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your
eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets
a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and
Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose
Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization,
and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday, then, dipping her pen in
the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of
the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture.

2

Have you read in the Talmud of old,
In the Legends the Rabbins have told
Of the limitless realms of the air,
Have you read it,--the marvelous story
Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory,
Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?

3

You remember King Charles' Twelve Good Rules, the eleventh of which
was, "Make no long meals." Now King Charles lost his head, and you will
have leave to make a long meal. But when, after your long meal, you go
home in the wee small hours, what do you expect to find? You will find
my toast--"Woman, a beautiful rod!" Now my advice is, "Kiss the rod!"

4

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the Boys!


FEELING


Have great care not to put any strain upon the throat. Breathe low. Be
moderate in force.

1

O mighty Cęsar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories,
triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.

2

Yes, I attack Louis Napoleon; I attack him openly, before all the
world. I attack him before God and man. I attack him boldly and
recklessly for love of the people and for love of France.

3

I am asked what I have to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced on me according to law. I am charged with being an emissary
of France! and for what end? No; I am no emissary.

4

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain,--shapely and fair,--the
married harmony of form and function,--and as I look, life lengthens,
joy deepens, love canopies the earth.


TONE COLOR


Use the imagination to see and hear. Suit the voice to the sound,
form or movement of your image, or to the mood of mind indicated.
Read with melody and pause. Take plenty of time.

1

There's a lurid light | in the clouds to-night,
In the wind | there's a desolate moan,
And the rage of the furious sea | is white,
Where it breaks | on the crags of stone.

2

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride | comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, | o'er the sea,
Off shot | the specter-bark.

3

Is this a time to be gloomy and sad;
When our mother Nature | laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens | look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

4

The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions | are blossoming near,
  That maize | has sprouted, that streams | are flowing,
That the river is bluer | than the sky,
That the robin | is plastering his nest | hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For other couriers | we should not lack;
  We could guess it all | by yon heifer's | lowing,--
And hark! how clear | bold chanticleer,
Warmed | by the new wine | of the year,
  Tells all | by his lusty | crowing!


VARIETY--IN PITCH, TIME, FORCE, COLOR, AND MODULATION


1

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

2

Good work is the most honorable and lasting thing in the
world.

3

O Thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my
fathers, whence are thy beams, O Sun, thy everlasting light!

4

I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away.

5

"Well, gentlemen, I am a Whig. If you break up the Whig party, where am
_I_ to go?" And, says Lowell, we all held our breath, thinking
where he _could_ go. But, says Lowell, if he had been five feet
three, we should have said, Who _cares_ where you go?


GESTURE


Have the action simple and unstudied, expressing the dominant purpose
rather than illustrating mere words or phrases. Avoid stiltedness and
elaboration. Try to judge where and how the gesture would be made.

I

Nor do not _saw the air_ too much with your _hand, thus_, but use all
gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the
whirlwind of passion, _you must acquire and beget a temperance_ that
may give it smoothness.

2

In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central
hills--a plain, white shaft. _Deep cut into its shining side is a
name_ dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple
man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New
England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I exchange the heritage
he left me in his soldier's death.

3

Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the
murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and
Adams, _I thought those pictured lips_ (pointing to the portraits
in the Hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant
American,--the slanderer of the dead.

4

Suppose I stood at the foot of Vesuvius, or Ętna, and, seeing a hamlet
or a homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that
hamlet, or in that homestead, "_You see that vapor which ascends from
the summit of the mountain._ That vapor may become a dense, black
smoke, that will obscure the sky. _You see the trickling of lava from
the crevices in the side of the mountain._ That trickling of lava
may become a river of fire. _You hear that muttering in the bowels of
the mountain._ That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the
voice of violent convulsion, that may shake half a continent."

5

And what have we to oppose them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have
been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer
upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light
of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to
entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have
not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive
ourselves longer.


CHARACTERIZATION


1

Learn from real life. Don't go by the spelling. Don't overdo the
dialect.

  'E carried me away
  To where a dooli lay,
  An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
  'E put me safe inside,
  An' just before 'e died:
  "I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.

2

Sergeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his
experience,--never, from the very first moment of his applying himself
to the study and practice of the law, had he approached a case with
such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon him.

3

I'm a walkin' pedestrian, a travelin' philosopher. Terry O'Mulligan's
me name. I'm from Dublin, where many philosophers before me was raised
and bred. Oh, philosophy is a foine study! I don't know anything about
it, but it's a foine study!

4

It is de ladies who do sweeten de cares of life. It is de ladies who
are de guiding stars of our existence. It is de ladies who do cheer but
not inebriate, and, derefore, vid all homage to de dear sex, de toast
dat I have to propose is, "De Ladies! God bless dem all!"

5

What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin' gray, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine--
A man's a man, for a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!

6

A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,--
I reckon he never knowed how.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,--
And he went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't agoing to be too hard
On a man that died for men.