as if

table at frequent intervals; another uses his hands" he had claws, pawing with them"; another cannot utter a sentence without sawing himself backward and forward, like the mast of a yacht at anchor; another folds his arms over his chest, à la Pitt; another has a trick of rising often on tiptoe, as if he had been accustomed to addressing his audience over a high wall; another paces the platform to and fro, like a wild beast in a cage; and another, despairing, after many attempts, of suiting the action to the word, thrusts the means of action, his hands, into his breeches pockets. It has been observed that young speakers are especially apt to overdo in gesture, reminding one, by the constant motion of their arms, of the flapping of a pair of wings. At one of the Intercollegiate Contests in the Academy of Music, in New York city, it was noticed. that some of the students had scarcely advanced to the front of the stage, before they went "flying all abroad."

Expression of countenance is essential to energy. Not only the hands, but the eyes, the lips, even the nostrils. should speak, for this is the universal language of nature, which needs no dictionary or interpreter. There is a tradition that the famous conspiracy of the Sicilian vespers was organized wholly by facial signs, not even the hands, the loquacissimae manus, linguosi digiti, as Cassiodorus calls them,- being employed. The eye is so expressive that it is said that gamblers rely upon the study of it, to discover the state of an opponent's game, more than upon any other means. No rules can be laid down upon this subject; it is enough to say that the facial expressions should correspond to the sentiments uttered, and this, where there is deep feeling, may safely be left to nature.

Energy depends much upon the choice and number of words. Cicero, who loved a copious style, tells us that he never heard of a Lacedaemonian orator; and it is certain that a succession of epigrammatic sayings, or aphorisms, would be a very poor speech. When an orator is full of his subject, and his mind is swelling with the thoughts, and his soul with the feelings which his theme inspires, until there is a fountain-head of ideas pressing at his lips for utterance, he will not express himself in a series of curt sentences, however pithy or pointed. If there is a tide in his soul, there will be a flow in his eloquence, and he will not dam it up in pools by too frequent periods. Nevertheless, it is a rule, as Southey says, that it is with words as with sunbeams; the more they are condensed the deeper they burn. Sir Joshua Reynolds says that Titian knew how to place upon the canvas the image and character of any object he attempted, by a few strokes of the pencil, and that he thus produced a truer representation than any of his predecessors who finished every hair. So the great orators, Henry, Chatham, Erskine, wrought. They grouped instead of analyzing, and produced, by a few master-touches, effects which pre-Raphaelite minuteness and laborious finish would have marred. This suggestive speaking, which, instead of exhausting subjects and explaining everything to death, leaves much to the imagination, is demanded now even more imperiously than in the days of Chatham. Men think and act quickly, with all their faculties on the alert; and the long-winded speeches and discourses, with endless divisions and subdivisions, to which men listened patiently two centuries ago, would now be regarded as utterly intolerable. Let the young speaker, then, prune away all redundant

words, all parasitical epithets, using only those that double and triple the force of the substantive. Be chary of words and phrases; economize them as a miser does his eagles. "The people," says a French writer, "affect those thoughts that are formulated in a single word. They like such expressions as the following,-vive! . . . à bas! . . . mort! ... vengeance! . . . liberté! . . . justice! The harangues of Napoleon lasted only a few minutes, yet they electrified whole armies. The speech at Bordeaux did not exceed a quarter of an hour, and yet it resounded throughout the world."

An eloquent preacher* has remarked that energy should be accrescent. Nothing seizes the attention of an audience better than a gentle beginning. Of course, a speaker should be in earnest from the very start, his looks, action, bearing, and tones of voice all indicating that he has something important to communicate, and that he is anxious to communicate it. Still, “his energy should gradually rise in thought, language and manner. His hearers are not prepared to sympathize with him at once; and, then, his vehemence appears impertinent. It is far better to win their attention by a gentler method; nay, even to lull them, husbanding all our resources of power until their attention is fairly enchained, and then to sweep them on with us, never suffering their interest to flag. Some have the talent

it is very difficult to

of taking an audience by storm, but keep up the excitement, and, in a failure to do so, the thoughts that follow are made to seem weaker than they really are, by the contrast. There should be a continual ascent to the close, that close being the most impressive of all. . . . Be sure that the final sentence leaves every

* George W. Bethune, D.D.

1

soul vibrating like a swept harp." The famous passage on Universal Emancipation in Curran's defense of Rowan is a fine specimen of climacteric energy. As sentence follows after sentence, each heightens and deepens the effect, till the passage closes with the magnificent climax at the end, like the swell and crash of an orchestra. Erskine was peculiarly happy in thus aggravating and intensifying the force of his appeals. As we read his jury addresses, we see that he never for a moment dissipates or scatters his force, but compels rill after rill, stream after stream, of fact and argument, to flow together, "each small, perhaps, in itself, but all contributing to swell the mighty flood that bursts upon us in the cataract of his conclusion." It is said of an eloquent and successful Boston preacher, that as he was about to close his discourse, there was no such visible gathering up of his forces as pointed to a climax, but the result of all he had said was rolled and hammered into a few short sentences, shot with the crack and directness of a rifle, and the sermon was ended. So cleverly was the work done, that the hearer went away with hardly a thought of the preacher or his performance, but with a divine thought lodged in his mind, which he would carry with him to his grave.

CHAPTER IV.

QUALIFICATIONS OF THE ORATOR (continued).

AMON

MONG the faculties demanded by the orator, few are more essential to high success than a lively IMAGINATION. He needs this not only that he may be able to fix his plan well in his mind and retain it there, but in order that he may have clear, distinct, and vivid conceptions of that which he wishes to say, and may be able to put both his premeditated thought and any new thought that occurs to him instantly into language at the first stroke. It must not be supposed that the tropes and illustrations which the imagination supplies are purely ornamental. The difference between languid speaking and vivid oratory depends largely upon the quality of the speaker's imagination. The plumage of the eagle supports it in its flight. It is not by naked, bold statements of fact, but by pictures that make them see the facts, that assemblies are moved. Put an argument into concrete shape, into a lively image, or into "some. hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which men can see and handle and carry home,"—and your cause is half won. Rufus Choate used to say that no train of thought is too deep, too subtle, or too grand, for a popular audience, if the thought is rightly presented to them. It should be conveyed, he said, in anecdote, or sparkling truism, or telling illustration, or stinging epithet,― never in a logical, abstract shape.