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The explanation of this phenomenon is not difficult. A moment's reflection will show us that the eloquentia umbratica, at which the writer aims, is an elaborate form of beauty which is unsuited to the strife of business, and the tumult of a public assembly. The language and style which are most impressive in the drawing-room, are utterly ineffective upon the platform. The fine tooling and delicate tracery of the cabinet artist are lost upon a building of colossal proportions. It is plain, therefore, that very different, even quite opposite, intellectual gifts are required to form a good writer and a good speaker. Abstraction of mind, seclusion from the din and tumult of public assemblies, unwearied patience in gathering the materials of composition, and exquisite taste, that will be satisfied only with the utmost nicety and finish of style, are demanded by the writer; while quickness of thought, boundless self-confidence, tact in seizing upon the most available, though not the most satisfactory, arguments, and a certain intellectual coarseness that is not offended by a slip or a blunder, are necessary to the orator. Again, a writer may spend an hour in choosing a word, and a day in polishing a sentence; he may watch for a simile. "as the idle boy watches for the lurking place of the adder "; but, as the author of Lacon has observed, eloquence, to produce its full effect, must start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, clad in full panoply. The fastidious writer may blot out words and substitute new ones by the hundred, and it is his own fault if the fact is known to his dearest friend; but if an orator chances to boggle once with his tongue, the detection is immediate, and the punishment certain. Great writers, too, having a reputation to support, often

suffer as speakers from a self-defeating over-anxiety to do well; like Sheridan, who was said to have been all his life afraid of the author of "The School for Scandal," they are frightened at the shadow of their own reputation.

Among the youthful orator's helps, there is no doubt that conversation may be made one of the most serviceable. Of course, there is a material difference between public speaking and private; yet the fact that one is monologue, and the other dialogue, does not prevent the latter from being a material aid toward the acquisition of ease and self-possession in public speech, especially in debate. Quickness of thought, skill in seizing upon the strong points of a subject, exactness of statement, adroitness in parry and thrust, facility of expression, and general mental activity, are all cultivated by conversation, and are at the same time the qualities most needed in public discussion. Instead of talking to five or ten persons in a public address, you are talking to hundreds or thousands, but "the one exercise has helped for the other, as singing in a parlor helps to sing in a choir, or as shooting with an air-gun, at ten paces, helps one to shoot straight with a rifle, at a hundred."

We cannot conclude this chapter without reminding the student of oratory that there is no calling in which faith in one's self, so necessary to all successful exertion, is more necessary than in that of the orator. After he has made all possible preparation for a public effort, he should, as far as possible, dismiss all anxiety about the result. If, instead of having this self-confidence, he distrusts his own powers, and becomes self-critical, acting continually as a spy upon himself, he will almost certainly be embarrassed and crippled in his speech, if he

-as

does not break down altogether. Suspicion here, as elsewhere, tends to beget the very evil that is deprecated. The mind is apt to avenge any distrust of its faithfulness. Time, practice, and patience only can give the perfect ease, coolness, and self-possession which are essential to perfect success,—that profound faith in one's abilities which acts as a charm upon all the powers of the mind, time only can bestow that practical instinct of skill which gives the intuitive law of success, and shows the only way to reach it. And here we may speak of a phenomenon noted by some speakers which is full of encouragement to tyros in oratory who are appalled by the Herculean labors and the difficulties which their shadows before" them, as they toil up the steeps of excellence. We allude to that law of the mind by which its muscles, like those of the body, becomes autonomic, a law unto themselves; by which, as an eloquent pulpit orator has said, "the intuition with which it works is a safer and surer guide than precepts, and better and surer sucis reached than the most laborious planning could have gained." Everybody who has read the physiological works of the day, is more or less familiar with what is

cess

called

66 cast

"unconscious cerebration," a state in which the

brain works unconsciously,-solving problems or answering questions at night, while the man is sleeping, which baffled all his powers in the daytime. this occur in the experience of accomplished and trained

speakers.

Phenomena like

A writer in "Harper's Magazine" speaks of a preacher unsurpassed by any living one in extempore power, alike of language, thought, and tone, who affirms that, sometimes, in his best hours, he loses all conscious hold upon

his mind and speech, and while perfectly sure that all is going on well in his attic, it seems to him that somebody else is talking up there; and he catches himself wondering who under the sun that fellow is who is driving on at such a rate. Examples of this unconscious action of the mind are seen in every calling. It is this instinct of skill, the result of years of practice, self-discipline, and observation, which enables the funambulist to travel without fear on a wire suspended over the dizzy chasm of Niagara; which enables the marksman to raise his rifle, and, apparently without aim, to bring down a pigeon on the wing; which enables the painter to give the most delicate touches to his picture while engaged in conversation; which gives to the pianist his almost miraculous touch, so that, as his fingers run swiftly over the keys, they seem to be instinct with thought and feeling oozing from their tips. This automatic action, it is evident, must be a great help to the orator, relieving him, as it does, of much care, anxiety, and toil, and carrying him oftentimes triumphantly through his work without solicitude or conscious effort. Like all other advantages, however, it has its compensations; and if a speaker be naturally indolent, there is danger lest, instead of laboriously preparing himself, he should rely upon this faculty altogether. The result of so doing will be, as seen in the melancholy case of those persons who are distinguished for the “gift of the gab," that he will speedily lose all true inspiration and force, and sink into a mere machine, like a barrelorgan, that plays over and over ad nauseam the same worn

out tones.

CHAPTER VII.

THE TESTS OF ELOQUENCE.

IT has been justly said that for the triumphs of eloquence, for the loftiest displays of the art, there

lation.

be something more than an eloquent man; there must be a reinforcing of man from events, so as to give the double force of reason and destiny. For the explosions and eruptions, "there must be some crisis in affairs; there must be accumulations of heat somewhere, beds of ignited anthracite at the centre. And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articuThen it rushes from him in short, abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning." Hence Goethe has somewhere said that to write is an abuse of words; that the impres sion of a solitary reading replaces but sadly the vivid energy of spoken language; that it is by his personality that man acts upon man, while such impressions are at the strongest and the purest. The immeasurable superiority of oratory spoken over oratory read, is known When the contending forces are drawn out face to face, there is the excitement of a battle, and every blow which tells against the enemy is welcomed with the same huzzas that soldiers raise when a well-aimed shot

once

to all.

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