interest and aid of many. The managing editor must express his appreciation and thanks to the distinguished gentlemen who make up the Advisory Board and especially to their Chairman, Professor Brander Matthews. His thanks are offered also to the large number of speakers who have taken an interest in the project and have kindly permitted the use of their own speeches and in many cases expressed their preference. Specific acknowledgments are offered in the proper places to authors and publishers and associations for the use of material, but special thanks are due to the kindness and generosity with which such permission has usually been given. To the secretaries of the dining clubs and other organizations the editor is indebted for many courtesies, notably to Mr. Charles Price of the Lotos Club, who gave him free access to the unpublished speeches made at the famous dinners of that society. The labor of selecting from many thousand speeches some seven hundred of widely varying length and character and arranging them in these twelve volumes has, indeed, been constantly lightened by the wide and generous interest which has been shown by almost everyone asked to aid in the undertaking. It is believed that the books at least contribute to what is one of the most generally shared interests of the human race as well as the glory of a few of its immortalsthe art of public speaking.

I wish to renew my gratitude offered to those who aided in the former edition and to extend my thanks to the many contributors, subscribers, and friends, who have helped in making the present edition a still more varied and comprehensive survey of modern eloquence.

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE.

INTRODUCTION

THE FOUR WAYS OF DELIVERING AN ADDRESS'

BRANDER MATTHEWS

THERE are those who hold that the invention of printing sounded the knell of the noble art of oratory, and that he is little better than foolish who seeks now to influence others by the human voice, the range of which cannot but be strictly limited, when he can have at his command a megaphone like the modern newspaper, the range of which is immense and indeterminate. There are others who maintain that mankind is more intelligent than it was, better trained in thinking, less freakish in feeling, and that nowadays an orator must needs be narrowly logical and that he is therefore debarred from those appeals to emotion such as still move us strangely in some of the great speeches of the past. Thus oratory is attacked on both sides, one storming-party seeking to explode it as an outworn anachronism, and the other insisting that if it be allowed to survive, it must renounce its old allegiance.

The arguments of both classes of these prophets of evil are specious. To the former group it may be suggested that the perfecting of the Krupp gun has not made the Colt revolver obsolete. Because a man can reach a million in a newspaper, there is no reason why he should not also reach a thousand with a speech. The printed word is widespread, no doubt, but indirect, impersonal, unimpressive, while the spoken word is direct, personal, almost hypnotic in its force. Furthermore, 'Reprinted with permission of author and publisher from "Notes on Speech Making," copyright, Longmans, Green & Co.

as it happens often, the very best way to arouse the reverberation of the press is to say what you have to say in a speech which the newspapers must needs report. To the latter group it suffices to say that while civilized man may be a little more intellectual than was his remote and probably arboreal ancestor, the time is not yet when he can resist assuredly every attack on his heart even when his head is unconvinced. It was a single perfervid address that brought to Mr. Bryan a nomination for president--and this a generation after the Lincoln-Douglas debates which tingle with feeling, it is true, but of which the core was serried argument always-and two generations after the Webster-Hayne debates, which were not without heat, indeed, but in which both combatants stood on solid fact and laid claim to severe logic. It may be admitted at once that the triumph of Mr. Bryan's improvisation was exceptional, and that emotionalism tends to disappear with the increasing wisdom of mankind and the strengthening of the human will. Even in the last century Burke's casting down of the dagger on the floor of the House of Commons was felt to be theatrical, and it failed of its effect. In a speech the simplicity of conversation is relished, as of one man talking calmly with another and quietly giving reasons for the faith that is in him. Flowers of rhetoric no longer flourish in rank luxuriance, even if figures of speech have not wholly given place to statistics.

Although the wings of the orator have been clipped, and he is no longer encouraged to soar into the blue empyrean, but must keep his footing on the earth, never were more occasions offered to him for the exercise of his art. The spread of representative government has led the foremost men of many nations to study the secrets of oral persuasion. Mr. Reed is reported to have thanked heaven that the House of Representatives was not a deliberative body, setting himself in opposition to Bagehot, who declared that the duty of Parliament was to talk rather than to act-to thresh out a problem until the chaff had blown away, when it would be easy to see the action that ought to be taken. Even those to whom a scientific training has given a distaste for oratory and a distrust of it as an inferior weapon now only doubtfully serviceable, are sometimes made to change opinion suddenly. Huxley, for instance, sprang

forward to Darwin's defense at the memorable meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860, and he left his Episcopal opponent sore bruised. He wrote to Darwin that this experience has changed his "opinion as to the practical value of public speaking," and that from that time forth he would "carefully cultivate it." "

1

Nor are congresses and parliaments and meetings of associations the sole opportunities offered to-day to the orator. There are also commencements and anniversaries and dedications of monuments, to say nothing of addresses before societies, lectures before clubs, and offhand speeches after dinner. No man is now safe from a request to make a few remarks or to improve the occasion. Even those who have no natural bent toward the art are forced to study the principles on which it is based; and among them there must be many who-like the present writer-failed to avail themselves of such opportunities for self-improvement in debate as were open to them in youth, and who therefore arrived at man's estate without any practice in public speaking.

It is for them that this little paper is written-by one of themselves, who is here setting down the simple results of his own efforts to escape open failure as a speaker. For one who is not a master of the craft to give advice may savor of impertinence, but his excuse must be that the needs of the mature novices whom he is addressing are neglected in most of the manuals of instruction. No one is ever likely to become a great orator who has to learn how to speak in public after he has reached the age of thirty, when the muscles have hardened and the mind is less malleable; but at least the ignominy of actual breakdown may be avoided by taking thought and by accepting advice.

II

PERHAPS the very first lesson that needs to be learned is that speaking is an art-an art like reading and writing; and that, like them, it does not come by nature. Some of the addresses we hear are so easy and seemingly so spontaneous that we sup'Huxley's letter will be found in the "Life of Darwin," prepared by his son.

pose them to have cost no labor. We envy the speaker his possession of so precious a having, and we little suspect the toil, the resolution, and the energy that lie behind his apparent facility. Whatever an orator's natural endowment, he can excel only when he has carefully cultivated his gift, perhaps by practice alone, perhaps by study of the masters, perhaps by both. If he is candid he will confess that true ease in speaking . comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learnt to dance.

But he prefers generally to keep his preparation concealed, and to let his hearers believe that he can rely on the spur of the moment to urge his Pegasus into the air.

There are two entirely different sets of circumstances wherein a man may be called upon to speak in public. The first is when he has something to say. The second is when he has to say something. The first is the more frequent, and it demands more consideration. The second is the more embarrassing, and it had best be discussed by itself.

When a man has something to say and when he has an opportunity to say it, there are four methods of making a speech for him to select from.

A. He may write out his address and read it from a manuscript boldly held in his hand.

B. He may write out his remarks and commit them to

memory.

C. He may write out his opening words, his closing sentences and such other salient passages as he wishes to make sure of, while extemporizing the rest.

D. He may extemporize the whole, appearing before the audience with no visible manuscript, and apparently talking out of the fulness of his heart.

Each of these methods has its advantages and its disadvantages. Each has points of superiority for certain occasions. Each requires about an equal expenditure of time and trouble. Whatever the method chosen, the speaker must make up his own mind, first of all, as to just what it is he wishes to get into the minds of his hearers. He must decide on the best means of achieving this end. He must pick out his point