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Public Speaking

I >> Irvah Lester Winter >> Public Speaking




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 Cæsar"

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 Cæsar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love
to Cæsar was no less than his. If, then, that friend demand why Brutus
rose against Cæsar, this is my answer,--Not that I loved Cæsar less,
but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Cæsar were living, and die
all slaves, than that Cæsar were dead, to live all free men? As Cæsar
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 Cæsar 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

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