came to his lips in a flood, and thus impeded each other, like water which one attempts to pour all at once out of a narrow-mouthed jug. Lord Macaulay, in a letter to his sister, says of himself: "Nothing but strong excitement and a great occasion overcomes a certain reserve and mauvaise honte which I have in public speaking; not a mauvaise honte which in the least confuses me or makes me hesitate for a word, but which keeps me from putting any fervor into my tone or my action." If ever a man spoke as if he never knew fear or modesty, it was the late Earl of Derby. Yet he said to Macaulay that he never rose without the greatest uneasiness. "My throat and lips," he said, "when I am going to speak, are as dry as those of a man who is going to be hanged." Tiernay, who was one of the most ready and fluent debaters ever known, made a confession similar to Stanley's. He never spoke, he said, without feeling his knees knock together when he rose. A junior counsel once congratulated Sir William Follett on his perfect composure in prospect of a great case. Sir William asked his friend merely to feel his hand, which was wet with anxiety. A famous parliamentary orator said that his speeches cost him two sleepless nights,-one in which he was thinking what to say, the other in which he was lamenting what he might have said better. Mirabeau, with all his fire, dragged a little (était un peu trainant) at the beginning of his speeches, and was sometimes incoherent; but, gaining momentum as he proceeded, he swept onward at last with resistless power. Like a huge ship which in a dead calm rolls and tosses on the heavy swell, but, as the wind fills its sails, dashes proudly onward, so the great orator rocked on the sea of thought, till, caught by the breath

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of passion, he moved onward with majestic might and motion.

William Pinkney was one of the haughtiest, most selfconfident, and most vehement of orators; yet, in one of his very latest efforts at the bar, when the occasion had drawn public expectation toward him, his lips were seen to part with their color, his cheeks to turn pale, and his knees to shake. He often said that he never addressed an audience without some painful and embarrassing emotions at the beginning. As he advanced with his speech, these boyish tremors disappeared, and he became bold, erect, and dictatorial. Gough is said to be still troubled with the stagefright which he can mimic so well in his lecture upon "Oratory," though he has faced audiences for more than thirty years. Rufus Choate would often, before beginning a jury address, look as restless, nervous, and wretched as a man on the scaffold, momentarily expecting the drop to fall under him. Many speakers who have no fears of a familiar audience, are yet nervous in a new position. We have seen the Governor of a great State, who was perfectly at home on the stump, quake like a school-boy when standing up before a body of college students whom he had reluctantly consented to address. Lord Eldon once said that he was always a little nervous in speaking at the Goldsmiths' dinner, though he could talk before Parliament with as much indifference as if it were so many cabbageplants.

Not only courage, but presence of mind, is necessary to him who aspires to address public assemblies. Not only is he liable to a sudden attack of nervousness, or to have his thunder checked in mid-volley" for want of a word or an illustration, but he may be interrupted by an opponent

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at the very moment when he is seen to be making his best point; "ugly," insinuating questions may be put to him, for the purpose of disconcerting him; or a concerted effort may be made, by those who dread the effect of his eloquence, to silence him, or, at least, to drown his voice by "oh! oh!"s, yawns, mock cheers, coughing, hisses, calls to order, or any of the other devices which disingenuous opponents know so well how to employ. Erskine was morbidly sensitive to such annoyances; and sometimes his suffering was so keen as absolutely to paralyze his great powers. Dr. Croly, in his "History of the Reign of George III," states that the smallest appearance of indifference in the great advocate's audience checked the flow of his impetuous oratory, and sometimes silenced his thunder "in mid-volley." Aware of this infirmity, a shrewd opposing attorney would plant a sleepy-headed man beneath the Judge, and directly opposite the place where Erskine was wont to address the jury. Exactly at the moment when the speaker was most impassioned, and, working up a thrilling climax. was making the deepest impression upon the twelve men before him, the sleepy hind would make a hideous grimace, and give way to the utmost expression of weariness. An effective pause would be broken in upon by a fearful yawn; and a splendid peroration would be interrupted. by a titter in the second row, and the cry of "silence" from the ushers at the too plain indications of a snore. This would cap the climax of the speaker's misery, and, unable to endure the torture, he would abruptly sit down.

Not only was Erskine thus sensitive touching a lack of attention by his audience, but he was equally distressed by an apparent lack of interest manifested by the coun

sel associated with him in a cause. Noticing on one occasion the absent or desponding look of Garrow, who had aided him in a cause, he whispered: "Who do you think can get on, with that wet blanket of a face of yours before him?" His first speech in the House of Lords was spoiled by the real or pretended indifference of Pitt, who, after listening a few minutes, and taking a note or two as if intending to reply, dashed pen and paper upon the floor with a contemptuous smile. Erskine, it is said, never recovered from this expression of disdain; "his voice faltered, he struggled through the remainder of his speech, and sank into his seat dispirited and shorn of his fame." On another occasion, Pitt rose after Erskine and began: "I rise to reply to the right honorable gentleman (Fox) who spoke last but one. As for the honorable and learned gentleman who spoke last, he did no more than regularly repeat what fell from the gentleman who preceded him, and as regularly weaken what he repeated." Addison tells an amusing anecdote of a counsellor whom he knew, in Westminster Hall, who never pleaded without a piece of pack thread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was speaking; the wags of the day called it "the thread of his discourse," because he could not utter a word without it. "One of his clients, who was more merry than wise, stole it from him one day in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest."

It is said that Daniel Webster once rose to speak by request at a poultry show, when a giant Shanghai got the floor, and burst forth in so defiant and ear-splitting a strain that the orator sat down. It is not every orator, even among the veteran practitioners of the art, who can

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preserve his self-command in such moments. Few speakers are as ready, when momentarily nonplused, as Curran was when he was struggling for an illustration of his client's innocence. "It is clear -as-" (at that moment the sun shone into the court) "clear as yonder sunbeam that now bursts upon us with its splendid coruscations." Not all men have the wit and wisdom of Father Taylor, the famous preacher to sailors in Boston. It is said that once getting involved in a sentence, where clause after clause had been added to each other, and one had branched off in this direction, and another in that, till he was hopelessly entangled, and the starting point was quite out of sight, he paused, and shook himself free of the perplexity, by saying: "Brethren, I don't exactly know where I went in, in beginning this sentence, and I don't in the least know where I'm coming out; but one thing I do know, I'M BOUND FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!" So he "took a new departure, and left the broken-backed centipede of a sentence lying where it might, in the track behind him." Even he, however, was nonplused once. He had vividly depicted an impenitent sinner, under the figure of a storm-tossed vessel, bowing under the hurricane, every bit of canvas torn from its spars, and driving madly toward the rock-bound coast of Cape Ann. "And how," he cried despairingly, at the climax of his skillfully-elaborated metaphor, "oh! how shall the poor sinner be saved?" At this moment an old salt in the gallery, who had hung spell-bound on the orator's lips, his whole soul absorbed in the scene, could restrain himself no longer, and, springing to his feet, he screamed,-"Let him put his helm hard down, and bear away for Squam!"

It is related of the witty Scotch advocate, Harry Erskine,