UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 3 1822022366330 
 
 Uj
 
 ORATORY 
 
 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 CONTAINING ALSO 
 THE 
 
 WHITE SUNLIGHT OF POTENT WORDS 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN S. MACINTOSH, D. D. 
 
 AND 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE IMAGINATION IN THE ART OF 
 EXPRESSION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 The Perm Publishing Company 
 1892
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAG 8 
 
 Oratory 7 
 
 The White Sunlight of Potent Words ... 51 
 The Place of the Imagination in the Art of 
 Expression 73
 
 3(15 
 
 ORATORY 
 
 AN ORATION 
 
 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THB 
 
 NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ELOCUTION AND ORATORY UPON THB OCCASION 
 OF ITS THIRD ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, HELB IN THB AMERI- 
 CAN ACADEMY OF Music, PHILADELPHIA, MAY 29, 1876
 
 ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 I congratulate myself, always, for the 
 privilege of appearing before a Philadel- 
 phia audience intelligent, sympathetic, 
 appreciative ; but never more than now, 
 when the audience is assembled both to 
 behold, and to bear witness to, one of the 
 noblest institutions that could be estab- 
 lished in your midst ; one of the most 
 needed ; and one which I have reason to 
 believe has been established under the in- 
 spiration of the highest motives, not only 
 of patriotism in education, but of religion 
 
 7
 
 8 
 
 itself. This city eminent in many re- 
 spects for its institutions, and for its 
 various collections which make civiliza- 
 tion so honorable I congratulate, that 
 now, at last, it has established a school of 
 oratory in this central position, equidis- 
 tant from the South, from the West, and 
 from the North, as a fitting centre from 
 which should go out influences that shall 
 exalt, if not regenerate, public sentiment 
 on the subject of oratory ; for, while 
 progress has been made, and is making, 
 in the training of men for public speak- 
 ing, I think I may say that, relative to 
 the exertions that are put forth in other 
 departments of education, this subject is 
 behind almost all others. Training in 
 this department is the great want of our 
 day ; for we are living in a land whose 
 genius, whose history, whose institutions, 
 whose people, eminently demand oratory.
 
 There is nothing that draws men more 
 quickly to any centre than the hope of 
 hearing important subjects wisely dis- 
 cussed with full fervor of manhood ; and 
 that is oratory truth bearing upon con- 
 duct, and character set home by the living 
 force of the full man. And nowhere, in 
 the field, in the forum, in the pulpit, or 
 in schools, is there found to be a living 
 voice that informs of beauty, traces rug- 
 ged truth, and gives force and energy to 
 its utterance, that people do not crowd 
 and throng there. 
 
 We have demonstrations enough, for- 
 tunately, to show that truth alone is not 
 sufficient ; for truth is the arrow, but 
 man is the bow that sends it home. 
 There be many men who are the light 
 of the pulpit, whose thought is profound, 
 whose learning is universal, but whose 
 offices are unspeakably dull. They do
 
 IO 
 
 make known the truth ; but without fer- 
 vor, without grace, without beauty, with- 
 out inspiration ; and discourse upon dis- 
 course would fitly be called the funeral 
 of important subjects ! 
 
 Nowhere else is there to be so large a 
 disclosure of what is possible from man 
 acting upon men, as in oratory. In 
 ancient times, and in other lands, cir- 
 cumstances more or less propitious devel- 
 oped the force of eloquence in special 
 instances, or among particular classes. 
 But consider the nature of our own in- 
 stitutions. Consider that nothing can 
 live in our midst until it has accepted 
 its mission of service to the whole people. 
 
 Now and then, men, mistaking good 
 sense, speak contemptuously of populariz- 
 ing learning, and of popularizing science; 
 but popular intelligence is that atmos- 
 phere in which all high scientific truth
 
 II 
 
 and research, and all learning, in its 
 amplest extent, are, by advance in civili- 
 zation, to find their nourishment and 
 stimulation ; and throughout our land 
 the people demand to know what are the 
 principles of government, what is the 
 procedure of courts, what is the best 
 thought in regard to national policy, 
 what are the ripening thoughts respecting 
 the reformations of the times, what is 
 social truth, what is civil truth, and what 
 is divine truth. These things are dis- 
 cussed in the cabin, in the field, in the 
 court-house, in the legislative hall, every- 
 where, throughout forty or fifty millions 
 of people. This is in accordance with 
 the nature of our institutions and our 
 customs ; and to the living voice more 
 largely than to any other source are we 
 indebted for the popularization of learn- 
 ing and knowledge, and for motive force,
 
 12 
 
 which the printed page can scarcely give 
 in any adequate measure. 
 
 Yet, though this is in accordance with 
 the necessity of our times, our institu- 
 tions and our customs, I think that 
 oratory, with the exception of here and 
 there an instance which is supposed to be 
 natural, is looked upon, if not with con- 
 tempt, at least with discredit, as a thing 
 artificial ; as a mere science of ornamen- 
 tation ; as a method fit for actors who are 
 not supposed to express their own senti- 
 ments, but unfit for a living man who 
 has earnestness and sincerity and pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Still, on the other hand, I hold that 
 oratory has this test and mark of divine 
 providence, in that God, when He makes 
 things perfect, signifies that He is done 
 by throwing over them the robe of beauty; 
 for beauty is the divine thought of excel-
 
 13 
 
 lence. All things, growing in their 
 earlier stages, are rude. All of them are 
 in vigorous strength, it may be ; but not 
 until the blossom conies, and the fruit 
 hangs pendant, has the vine evinced for 
 what it was made. God is a God of 
 beauty ; and beauty is everywhere the 
 final process. When things have come 
 to that, they have touched their limit. 
 
 Now, a living force that brings to itself 
 all the resources of imagination, all the 
 inspirations of feeling, all that is influen- 
 tial in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, 
 in posture, in the whole animated man, is 
 in strict analogy with the divine thought 
 and the divine arrangement ; and there is 
 no misconstruction more utterly untrue 
 and fatal than this : that oratory is an 
 artificial thing, which deals with baubles 
 and trifles, for the sake of making bubbles 
 of pleasure for transient effect on mer-
 
 curial audiences. So far from that, it is 
 the consecration of the whole man to the 
 noblest purposes to which one can address 
 himself the education and inspiration of 
 his fellow-men by all that there is in 
 learning, by all that there is in thought, 
 by all that there is in feeling, by all 
 that there is in all of them, sent home 
 through the channels of taste and of 
 beauty. And so regarded, oratory should 
 take its place among the highest depart- 
 ments of education. 
 
 I have said that it is disregarded 
 largely ; so it is ; and one of the fruits of 
 this disregard is that men fill all the 
 places of power how ? With force mis- 
 directed ; with energy not half so fruitful 
 as it might be ; with sincerity that knows 
 not how to spread its wings and fly. I 
 think that if you were to trace and to 
 analyze the methods which prevail in all
 
 the departments of society, you would 
 find in no other such contempt of culture, 
 and in no other such punishment of this 
 contempt. 
 
 May I speak of my own profession, 
 from a life-long acquaintance from now 
 forty years of public life and knowledge 
 and observation ? May I say, without 
 being supposed to arrogate anything to 
 my own profession, that I know of no 
 nobler body of men, of more various ac- 
 complishments, of more honesty, of more 
 self-sacrifice, and of more sincerity, than 
 the clergymen of America? And yet, 
 with exceptional cases, here and there, I 
 cannot say that the profession represents 
 eminence : I mean eminence, not in elo- 
 quence, but in oratory. I bear them wit- 
 . ness that they mean well ; I bear them 
 witness that in multitudes of cases they 
 are grotesque ; that in multitudes of other
 
 i6 
 
 cases they are awkward ; and that in 
 multitudes still greater they are dull. 
 They are living witnesses to show how 
 much can be done by men that are in 
 earnest without offices, and without the 
 adjuvants of imagination and of taste, by 
 training; and they are living witnesses 
 also, I think, of how much is left undone 
 to make truth palatable, and to make men 
 eager to hear it and eager to receive it, by 
 the lack of that very training which they 
 have despised or neglected, at any rate. 
 Or, shall I ask you to scrutinize the 
 manner and the methods that prevail in 
 our courts the everlasting monotone and 
 seesaw ? Shall I ask you to look at the 
 intensity that raises itself to the highest 
 pitch in the beginning, and that then, 
 running in a screaming monotone, 
 wearies, if it does not affright, all that 
 hear it ?
 
 17 
 
 Or, shall I ask you to consider the wild 
 way in which speaking takes place in our 
 political conflicts throughout the country 
 the bellowing of one, the shouting of 
 another, the grotesqueness of a third, and 
 the want of any given method, or any 
 emotion, in almost all of them. 
 
 How much squandering there is of the 
 voice ! How little is there of the advan- 
 tage that may come from conversational 
 tones ! How seldom does a man dare to 
 acquit himself with pathos and fervor ! 
 And the men are themselves mechanical 
 and methodical in the bad way, who are 
 most afraid of the artificial training that 
 is given in the schools, and who so often 
 show by the fruit of their labor that the 
 want of oratory is the want of education. 
 How remarkable is sweetness of voice 
 in the mother, in the father, in the house- 
 hold ! The music of no chorded instru-
 
 i8 
 
 ments brought together is, for sweetness, 
 like the music of familiar affection when 
 spoken by brother and sister, or by father 
 and mother. 
 
 Conversation itself belongs to oratory. 
 Where is there a wider, a more ample 
 field for the impartation of pleasure or 
 knowledge than at a festive dinner ? and 
 how often do we find that when men, 
 having well eaten and drunken, arise to 
 speak, they are well qualified to keep 
 silence and utterly disqualified to speak ! 
 How rare it is to find felicity of diction 
 on such occasions ! How seldom do we 
 see men who are educated to a fine sense 
 of what is fit and proper at gatherings of 
 this kind ! How many 111211 there are 
 who are weighty in argument, who have 
 abundant resources, and who are almost 
 boundless in their power at other times 
 and in other places, but %vho when in
 
 19 
 
 company among their kind are exceed- 
 ingly unapt in their methods. Having 
 none of the secret instruments by which 
 the elements of nature may be touched, 
 having no skill and no power in this 
 direction, they stand as machines before 
 living, sensitive men. A man may be as 
 a master before an instrument ; only the 
 instrument is dead ; and he has the living 
 hand ; and out of that dead instrument 
 what wondrous harmony springs forth at 
 his touch ! And if you can electrify an 
 audience by the power of a living man on 
 dead things, how much more should that 
 audience be electrified when the chords 
 are living and the man is alive, and he 
 knows how to touch them with divine 
 inspiration ! 
 
 I advocate, therefore, in its full extent, 
 and for every reason of humanity, of 
 patriotism, and of religion, a more
 
 20 
 
 thorough culture of oratory ; and I de- 
 fine oratory to be the art of influencing 
 conduct with the truth set home by all 
 the resources of the living man. Its aim 
 is not to please men, but to build them 
 up ; and the pleasure which it imparts is 
 one of the methods by which it seeks to 
 do this. It aims to get access to men by 
 allaying their prejudices. A person who, 
 with unwelcome truths, undertakes to 
 carry them to men who do not want 
 them, but who need them, undertakes a 
 task which is like drawing near to a 
 fortress. The times have gone by, but 
 you remember them, when, if I had 
 spoken here on certain themes belonging 
 to patriotism which now are our glory, I 
 should have stood before you as before so 
 many castles locked and barred. How 
 unwelcome was the truth ! But if one 
 had the art of making the truth beautiful ;
 
 21 
 
 if one had the art of coaxing the keeper 
 of the gate to turn the key and let the 
 interloping thought come in ; if one could 
 by persuasion control the cerberus of 
 hatred, of anger, of envy, of jealousy, 
 that sits at the gate of men's souls, and 
 watches against unwelcome truths ; if one 
 could by eloquence give sops to this 
 monster, and overcome him, would it not 
 be worth while to do it ? Are we to go 
 on still cudgeling, and cudgeling, and 
 cudgeling men's ears with coarse pro- 
 cesses ? Are we to consider it a special 
 providence when any good comes from 
 our preaching or our teaching ? Are we 
 never to study how skillfully to pick the 
 lock of curiosity, to unfasten the door of 
 fancy, to throw wide open the halls of 
 emotion, and to kindle the light of inspi- 
 ration in the souls of men ? Is there any 
 reality in oratory ? It is all real.
 
 22 
 
 First, in the orator is the man. Let 
 no man who is a sneak try to be an 
 orator. The method is not the substance 
 of oratory. A man who is to be an 
 orator must have something to say. He 
 must have something that in his very 
 soul he feels to be worth saying. He 
 must have in his nature that kindly 
 sympathy which connects him with his 
 fellow-men, and which so makes him a 
 part of the audience which he moves as 
 that his smile is their smile, that his tear 
 is their tear, and that the throb of his 
 heart becomes the throb of the hearts of 
 the whole assembly. A man that is 
 humane, a lover of his kind, full of all 
 earnest and sweet sympathy for their 
 welfare, has in him the original element, 
 the substance of oratory, which is truth ; 
 but in this world truth needs nursing and 
 helping ; it needs every advantage ; for
 
 tire underflow of life is animal, and the 
 channels of human society have been 
 taken possession of by lower influences 
 beforehand. The devil squatted on human 
 territory before the angel came to dispos- 
 sess him. Pride and intolerance, arro- 
 gance and its cruelty, selfishness and its 
 greed, all the lower appetites and pas- 
 sions, do swarm, and do hold in thrall 
 the under-man that each one of us yet 
 carries the man of flesh, on which the 
 spirit-man seeks to ride, and by which 
 too often he is thrown and trampled under 
 foot. The truth in its attempt to wean 
 the better from the worse needs every 
 auxiliary and every adjuvant. 
 
 Therefore, the man who goes forth to 
 speak the truth, whether men will hear 
 or whether they will forbear, and goes 
 with the determination that the}- shall 
 hear ; the man who carries victory in his
 
 24 
 
 hope ; the man who has irrefragible 
 courage it is not enough that he has in 
 his soul this element, which, though it be 
 despised, is the foundation element, and 
 which comes first by birth, thanks to your 
 father and mother, thanks to the provi- 
 dence that gave you such a father and 
 such a mother, and thanks to the God 
 who inspires it and sanctifies it. With 
 this predisposition and this substance of 
 truth which men need, and which is to re- 
 fashion human life in all its parts, the 
 question arises whether there is need of 
 anything more than gracious culture. 
 Well, so long as men are in the body they 
 need the body. There are some who 
 think they have well-nigh crucified the 
 body. If they have, why are they linger- 
 ing here below, where they are not useful, 
 and where they are not needed ? So long 
 as men touch the ground, and feel their
 
 25 
 
 own weight, so long they need the apti- 
 tudes and the instrumentalities of the 
 human body ; and one of the very first 
 steps in oratory is that which trains the 
 body to be the welcome and glad servant 
 of the soul which it is not always ; for 
 many and many a one who has acres of 
 thought has little bodily culture, and as 
 little grace of manners ; and many and 
 many a one who has sweetening inside 
 has cacophony when he speaks. Harsh, 
 rude, hard, bruising, are his words. 
 
 The first work, therefore, is to teach a 
 man's body to serve his soul ; and in this 
 work the education of the bodily presence 
 is the very first step. We had almost ex- 
 tinguished the power of the human body 
 by our pulpits, which, in early days, were 
 the sources and centres of popular elo- 
 quence such as there was ; for men fol- 
 lowed the Apocalyptic figure of the
 
 26 
 
 candlestick, the pulpit in the church rep- 
 resenting the candlestick, and the minister 
 being supposed to be the light in it. In 
 those days of symbolizatioii everything 
 had to be symbolized ; and when a church 
 was built they made a pulpit that was 
 like the socket of a candlestick, and put a 
 man into it ; and thus entubbed he looked 
 down afar upon his congregation to speak 
 unto them ! Now, what man could win a 
 coy and proud companion if he were 
 obliged to court at fifty feet distance 
 from her ? or, what man, pleading for his 
 life, would plead afar off, as through a 
 speaking trumpet, from the second story, 
 to one down below ? 
 
 Nay, men have been covered up. The 
 introduction of platforms has been 
 thought, on the whole, to be a somewhat 
 discourteous thing. I will tell you, if you 
 will indulge me, a little reminiscence of
 
 27 
 
 iny own experience. In the church 
 where I minister there v> r as 110 pulpit ; 
 there was only a platform ; and some of 
 the elect ladies, honorable and precious, 
 waited upon me to know if I would not 
 permit a silk screen to be drawn across 
 the front of my table, so that my legs and 
 feet need not be seen. My reply to them 
 was, U I will, on one condition that 
 whenever I make a pastoral call at your 
 houses you will have a green silk bag 
 into which I ma}- put my legs." 
 
 If the legs and feet are tolerable in a 
 saloon, or in a social room, why are they 
 not tolerable on a platform ? It takes the 
 whole man to make a man ; and at times 
 there are no gestures that are comparable 
 to the simple stature of the man himself. 
 So it behooves us to train men to use the 
 whole of themselves. Frequently the foot 
 is emphasis, and the posture is oftentimes
 
 28 
 
 power, after a word, or accompanying a 
 word ; and men learn to perceive the 
 thought coming afar off from the man 
 himself who foreshadows it by his action. 
 
 You shall no longer, when men are 
 obliged to stand disclosed before the whole 
 audience, see ministers bent over a desk, 
 like a weary horse crooked over a hitch- 
 ing block, and preaching first on one leg, 
 and then on the other. To be a gentle- 
 man in the presence of an audience is one 
 of the first lessons which oratory will 
 teach the young aspiring speaker. 
 
 But, beside that, what power there is 
 in posture, or in gesture ! By it, how 
 many discriminations are made ; how 
 many smooth things are rolled off ; how 
 many complex things men are made to 
 comprehend ! How many things the 
 body can tongue when the tongue itself 
 cannot well utter the thing desired ! The
 
 29 
 
 tongue and the person are to co-operate ; 
 and having been trained to work together, 
 the result is spontaneous, unthought of, 
 unarranged for. 
 
 Now, to the real natural man and the 
 natural man is the educated man; not the 
 thing from which he sprang how much 
 is to be added ! Many a man will hear 
 the truth for the pleasure of hearing it, 
 who would not hear it for the profit of 
 hearing it ; and so there must be some- 
 thing more than its plain statement. 
 Among other things, the voice perhaps 
 the most important of all, and the least 
 cultured should not be forgotten. How 
 many men are there that can speak from 
 day to day one hour, two hours, three 
 hours, without exhaustion, and without 
 hoarseness ? But it is in the power of the 
 vocal organs, and of the ordinary vocal 
 organs, to do this. What multitudes of
 
 30 
 
 men weary themselves out because they 
 put their voice on a hard run at the top of 
 its compass ! and there is no relief to 
 them, and none, unfortunately, to the 
 audience. But the voice is like an 
 orchestra. It ranges high up, and can 
 shriek betimes like the scream of an 
 eagle ; or it is low as a lion's tone ; and 
 at every intermediate point is some pecu- 
 liar quality. It has in it the mother's 
 whisper and the father's command. It 
 has in it warning and alarm. It has in it 
 sweetness. It is full of mirth and full of 
 gayety. It glitters, though it is not seen 
 with all its sparkling fancies. It ranges 
 high, intermediate, or low, in obedience to 
 the will, unconsciously to him who uses 
 it; and men listen through the long hour, 
 wondering that it is so short, and quite 
 unaware that they have been bewitched 
 out of their weariness by the charm of a
 
 3 1 
 
 voice, not artificial, not prearranged in the 
 man's thought, but by assiduous training 
 made to be his second nature. Such a 
 voice answers to the soul, and it is its 
 beating. 
 
 Now, against this training manifold 
 objections are made. It is said that it is 
 unworthy of manhood that men should be 
 so trained. The conception of a man is 
 that of blunt earnestness. It is said that 
 if a man knows what he wants to say, he 
 can say it ; that if he knows what he 
 wants to have men do, the way is for him 
 to pitch at them. That seems to be about 
 the idea which ordinarily prevails on this 
 subject. Shoot a man, as you would a 
 rocket in war ; throw him as you would a 
 hand-grenade ; and afterward, if you 
 please, look to see where he hits ; and 
 woe be to those who touch the fragments ! 
 Such appears to be the notion which
 
 32 
 
 many have on this subject. But where 
 else, in what other relation, does a man 
 so reason ? Here is the highest function 
 to which any man can address himself 
 the attempt to vitalize men ; to give 
 warmth to frigid natures ; to give aspi- 
 rations to the dull and low-flying ; to 
 give purpose to conduct, and to evolve 
 character from conduct ; to train every 
 part of one's self the thinking power ; 
 the perceptive power ; the intuitions ; the 
 imagination ; all the sweet and overflow- 
 ing emotions. The grace of the body ; 
 its emphasis ; its discriminations ; the 
 power of the eye and of the voice all 
 these belong to the blessedness of this 
 work. 
 
 " No," says the man of the school of 
 the beetle, " buzz, and fight, and hit 
 where you can." Thus men disdain 
 this culture as though it were something
 
 33 
 
 effeminate ; as though it were a science 
 of ornamentation ; as though it were a 
 means of stealing men's convictions, not 
 enforcing them ; and as though it lacked 
 calibre and dignity. 
 
 But why should not this reasoning be 
 applied to everything else ? The very 
 man who w r ill not train his own voice to 
 preach, to lecture, to discourse, whether 
 in the field or in the legislative hall, or in 
 the church, will pay large dues through 
 weary quarters to drill his daughter's 
 voice to sing hymns, and canzonets, and 
 other music. This is not counted to be 
 unworthy of the dignity of womanhood. 
 
 " But," it is said, " does not the voice 
 come by nature?" Yes ; but is there any- 
 thing that comes by nature which stays 
 as it comes if it is worthily handled? We 
 receive one talent that we may make it 
 five ; and we receive five talents that we 
 3
 
 may make them ten. There is no one 
 thing in man that he has in perfection till 
 he has it by culture. We know that in 
 respect to everything but the voice. Is 
 not the ear trained to acute hearing ? Is 
 not the eye trained in science ? Do men 
 not school the eye, and make it quick-see- 
 ing by patient use ? Is a man, because 
 he has learned a trade, and was not born 
 with it, thought to be less a man ? Be- 
 cause we have made discoveries of science 
 and adapted them to manufacture ; be- 
 cause we have developed knowledge by 
 training, are we thought to be unmanly ? 
 Shall we, because we have unfolded our 
 powers by the use of ourselves for that 
 noblest of purposes, the inspiration and 
 elevation of mankind, be less esteemed ? 
 Is the school of human training to be dis- 
 dained when by it we are rendered more 
 useful to our fellow-men ?
 
 35 
 
 But it is said that this culture is artifi- 
 cial ; that it is mere posturing ; that it is 
 simple ornamentation. Ah ! that is not 
 because there has been so much of it, but 
 because there has been so little of it. If 
 a man were to begin, as he should, early ; 
 or if, beginning late, he were to addict 
 himself assiduously to it, then the graces 
 of speech, the graces of oratory, would be 
 to him what all learning must be before 
 it is perfect, namely, spontaneous. If he 
 were to be trained earlier, then his train- 
 ing would not be called the science of os- 
 tentation or of acting. 
 
 Never is a man thoroughly taught until 
 he has forgotten how he learned. Do you 
 remember when you tottered from chair 
 to chair? Xow you walk without think- 
 ing that you learned to walk. Do you 
 remember when your inept hands wan- 
 dered through the air toward the candle,
 
 36 
 
 or toward the mother's bosom ? Now 
 how regulated, how true to your wish, 
 how quick, how sharp to the touch, are 
 those hands ! But it was by learning 
 that they became so far perfected. Their 
 perfection is the fruit of training. 
 
 Let one think of what he is doing, and 
 he does it ill. If you go into your parlor, 
 where your wife and children arc, you 
 always know what to do with yourself 
 or almost always ! You are not awkward 
 in your postures, nor are you awkward 
 with your hands ; but let it be understood 
 that there are a dozen strangers to be 
 present, and you begin to think how to 
 appear well before them ; and the result 
 of your thinking about it is that you 
 appear very ill. Where to put your 
 hands, and where to put yourself, you do 
 not know ; how to stand or how to sit 
 troubles you ; whether to hold up one
 
 37 
 
 hand or the other hand, or to hold both 
 down, or both up, is a matter of thought 
 with you. 
 
 Let me walk on the narrowest of these 
 boards upon which I stand, and I walk 
 with simplicity and perfect safety, because 
 I scarcely think of walking ; but lift that 
 board fifty feet above the ground, and let 
 me walk on it as far as across this build- 
 ing, and let me think of the consequences 
 that would result if I were to fall, and 
 how I would tremble and reel ! The mo- 
 ment a man's attention is directed to that 
 which he does, he does it ill. When the 
 thing which a man does is so completely 
 mastered as that there is an absence of 
 volition, and he does it without knowing 
 it, he does it easily ; but when the voli- 
 tion is not subdued, and when, therefore, 
 he does not act spontaneously, he is con- 
 scious of what he does, and the conscious-
 
 ness prevents his doing it easily. Uncon- 
 sciousness is indispensable to the doing a 
 thing easily and well. 
 
 Now, in regard to the training of the 
 orator, it should begin in boyhood, and 
 should be part and parcel of the lessons 
 of the school. Grace; posture; force of 
 manner ; the training of the eye, that it 
 may look at men, and pierce them, and 
 smile upon them, and bring summer to 
 them, and call down storms and winter 
 upon them ; the development of the hand, 
 that it may wield the sceptre, or beckon 
 with sweet persuasion these things do 
 not come artificially ; they belong to man. 
 Why, men think that Nature means that 
 which lies back of culture. Then you 
 ought never to have departed from baby- 
 hood ; for that is the only nature you had 
 to begin with. But is nature the acorn 
 forever ? Is not the oak nature ? Is not
 
 39 
 
 that which comes from the seed the best 
 representation of the divine conception of 
 the seed? And as men we are seeds. 
 Culture is but planting them and training 
 them according to their several natures; 
 and nowhere is training nobler than in 
 preparing the orator for the great work to 
 which he educates himself the elevation 
 of his kind, through truth, through 
 earnestness, through beauty, through 
 every divine influence. 
 
 But it is said that the times are chang- 
 ing, and that we ought not to attempt to 
 meddle with that which God has provided 
 for. Say men, " The truth is before you ; 
 there is your Bible ; go preach the Word 
 of God." Well, if you are not to meddle 
 with what God has provided for, why was 
 not the Bible sent instead of you ? You 
 were sent because the very object of a 
 preacher was to give the truth a living
 
 40 
 
 form, and not have it lie in the dead letter. 
 As to its simplicity and as to its beauty, 
 I confute you with your own doctrine ; 
 for, as I read the sacred text, it is, "Adorn 
 the doctrine of God our Saviour." We 
 are to make it beautiful. There are times 
 when we cannot do it. There are times 
 for the scalpel, there are times for the 
 sword, and there are times for the battle- 
 axe ; but these are exceptional. " Let 
 every one of us please his neighbor for 
 his good to edification " is a standing 
 command ; and we are to take the truth, 
 of every kind, and if possible bring it in 
 its summer guise to men. 
 
 But it is said, " Our greatest orators 
 have not been trained." How do you 
 know? It may be that Patrick Henry 
 went crying in the wilderness of poor 
 speakers, without any great training ; I 
 will admit that now and then there are
 
 gifts so eminent and so impetuous that 
 they break through ordinary necessities ; 
 but even Patrick Henry was eloquent only 
 under great pressure ; and there remain 
 the results of only one or two of his 
 efforts. Daniel Webster is supposed in 
 many respects to have been the greatest 
 American orator of his time ; but there 
 never lived a man who was so studious of 
 everything he did, even to the buttons on 
 his coat, as Daniel Webster. Henry Clay 
 was prominent as an orator, but though 
 he was not a man of the schools, he was 
 a man who schooled himself; and by his 
 own thought and taste and sense of that 
 which was fitting and beautiful, he be- 
 came, through culture, an accomplished 
 orator. 
 
 If you go from our land to other lands ; 
 if you go to the land which has been 
 irradiated by parliamentary eloquence ;
 
 42 
 
 if you go to the people of Great Britain ; 
 if you go to the great men in ancient 
 times who lived in the intellect ; if you 
 go to the illustrious names that every one 
 recalls Demosthenes and Cicero they 
 represent a life of work. 
 
 Not until Michael Angelo had been the 
 servant and the slave of matter did he 
 learn to control matter ; and not until he 
 had drilled and drilled and drilled himself 
 were his touches free and easy as the 
 breath of summer, and full of color as the 
 summer itself. Not until Raphael had 
 subdued himself by color was he the 
 crowning artist of beauty. You shall not 
 find one great sculptor, nor one great 
 architect, nor one great painter, nor one 
 eminent man in any department of art, 
 nor one great scholar, nor one great 
 statesman, nor one divine of universal 
 gifts, whose greatness, if you inquire, you
 
 43 
 
 will not find to be the fruit of study, and 
 of the evolution that comes from study. 
 
 It is said, furthermore, that oratory is 
 one of the lost arts. I have heard it said 
 that our struggles brought forth not one 
 prominent orator. This fact reveals a 
 law which has been overlooked namely, 
 that aristocracy diminishes the number of 
 great men, and makes the few so much 
 greater than the average that they stand 
 up like the pyramids in the deserts of 
 Egypt ; whereas, democracy distributes 
 the resources of society, and brings up 
 the whole mass of the people ; so that 
 under a democratic government great men 
 never stand so high above the average as 
 they do when society has a level far 
 below them. Let building go up on 
 building around about the tallest spire 
 in this city, and you dwarf the spire, 
 though it stand as high as heaven,
 
 44 
 
 because even-thing by which it is sur- 
 rounded has risen higher. 
 
 Now, throughout our whole land there 
 was more eloquence during our struggles 
 than there was previously ; but it was in 
 far more mouths. It was distributed. 
 There was in the mass of men a higher 
 method of speaking, a greater power in 
 addressing their fellow-men ; and though 
 single men were not so prominent as 
 they would have been under other circum- 
 stances, the reason is one for which we 
 should be grateful. There were more 
 men at a higher average, though there 
 were fewer men at ail extreme altitude. 
 
 Then it is said that books, and espe- 
 cially newspapers, are to take the place 
 of the living voice. Never ! never! The 
 miracle of modern times, in one respect, is 
 the Press ; to it is given a wide field and 
 a wonderful work ; and when it shall be
 
 45 
 
 clothed with all the moral inspirations, 
 with all the ineffable graces, that come 
 from simplicity and honesty and convic- 
 tion, it will have a work second almost to 
 none other in the land. Like the light, it 
 carries knowledge every day round the 
 globe. What is done at St. Paul's in the 
 morning is known, or ever half the day 
 has run around, in Wall Street, New 
 York. What is done in New York at the 
 rising of the sun, is, before the noontide 
 hour known in California. By the power 
 of the wire, and of the swift-following 
 engine, the papers spread at large vast 
 quantities of information before myriad 
 readers throughout the country ; but the 
 office of the papers is simply to convey in- 
 formation. They cannot plant it. They 
 cannot open the soil and put it into the 
 furrow. They cannot enforce it. It is 
 given only to the living man, standing
 
 4 6 
 
 before men with the seed of knowledge in 
 his hand, to open the furrows in the living 
 souls of men, and sow the seed, and cover 
 the furrows again. Not until human na- 
 ture is other than it is, will the function 
 of the 'living voice the greatest force on 
 earth among men cease. Not until then 
 will the orator be useless, who brings to 
 his aid all that is fervid in feeling ; who 
 incarnates in himself the truth ; who is 
 for the hour the living reason, as well as 
 the reasoner ; who is for the moment the 
 moral sense; who carries in himself the 
 importunity and the urgency of zeal ; who 
 brings his influence to bear upon men in 
 various ways ; who adapts himself contin- 
 ually to the changing conditions of the 
 men that are before him ; who plies them 
 by softness and by hardness, by light and 
 by darkness, by hope and by fear ; who 
 stimulates them or represses them at his
 
 47 
 
 will. Nor is there, let me say, on God's 
 footstool, anything so crowned and so 
 regal as the sensation of one who faces an 
 audience in a worthy cause, and with am- 
 plitude of means, and defies them, fights 
 them, controls them, conquers them. 
 
 Great is the advance of civilization ; 
 might} 7 are the engines of force, but man 
 is greater than that which he produces. 
 Vast is that machine which stands in the 
 dark unconsciously lifting, lifting the 
 only humane slave the iron slave the 
 Corliss engine ; but he that made the en- 
 gine is greater than the engine itself. 
 Wonderful is the skill by which that most 
 exquisite mechanism of modern life, the 
 watch, is constructed; but greater is the 
 man that made the watch than the watch 
 that is made. Great is the Press, great 
 are the hundred instrumentalities and in- 
 stitutions and customs of society ; but
 
 above them all is man. The living force 
 is greater than any of its creations 
 greater than society, greater than its laws. 
 k The Sabbath was made for man, and not 
 man for the Sabbath," saith the Lord. 
 Man is greater than his own institutions. 
 And this living force is worthy of all cul- 
 ture of all culture in the power of 
 beauty ; of all culture in the direction of 
 persuasion ; of all culture in the art of 
 reasoning. 
 
 To make men patriots, to make men 
 Christians, to make men the sons of God, 
 let all the doors of heaven be opened, and 
 let God drop down charmed gifts winged 
 imagination, all-perceiving reason, and 
 all-judging reason. Whatever there is 
 that can make men wiser and better let 
 it descend upon the head of him who has 
 consecrated himself to the work of man- 
 kind, and who has made himself an orator 
 for man's sake and for God's sake.
 
 THE WHITE SUNLIGHT 
 
 OF 
 
 P O T K N T WORDS 
 
 AN ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN S. MACINTOSH, D. D. 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ELOCUTION AND ORATORY UPON IHB OCCASION 
 OF ITS EIGHTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMRNT, HELD AT THE AMERI- 
 CAN ACAOEMV OF MUSIC, PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 14, l88l
 
 THE) 
 
 OF 
 
 OF the countless acts of kindness and 
 gratifying expressions of esteem that 
 have marked and sweetened my return 
 after long absence to my native city and 
 beloved land, among the very foremost 
 and most flattering must be ranked by 
 me the strongly-expressed invitation to 
 deliver this annual address before Phila- 
 delphia's critical sons and cultured 
 daughters. 
 
 From this honorable task I, not un- 
 naturally nor surprisingly, at first 
 shrank. Knowing on the one side so 
 well the distinguished and masterly
 
 52 
 
 speakers who, to your pleased profit and 
 to their owii enhanced fame, had pre- 
 ceded ma upon this stage of perfect 
 speech and purest song, and had made 
 this oration at once a high honor and a 
 toil-fraught duty, and knowing upon the 
 other side even better at once my native 
 inability to stand a peer of such famous 
 forerunners, and also the stern, distract- 
 ing pressure of clamant and incessant 
 work in this fresh field and amid a 
 thousand thought - troubling circum- 
 stances which made adequate preparation 
 for me an insuperable impossibility, I 
 had twice felt it my plain duty to put away 
 from me the delightful labor and the 
 tempting request. But the pleadings of 
 a lady whose worth and work demand 
 most sympathetic consideration, and the 
 persuasions of friends whose words of 
 request are stronger than the commands
 
 53 
 
 of a master, "have at last placed me where 
 I shall need all the gracious indulgence 
 which hard-wrought and overtasked men 
 so freely extend to an overstrained 
 brother, and the tender consideration 
 which thoughtful gentlewomen never 
 fail to show to the plain, blunt man who 
 simply tells the thoughts that inly move 
 him. 
 
 Yet not of constraint, but willingly, 
 am I here this night. For me it is a 
 pure, strong joy to face my bright and 
 stirring theme, to front this inspiriting 
 throng and forecast the toilsome but 
 triumphant days that shall summon out 
 the powers of these ardent students of 
 the art of speech : the place, the audience, 
 the object of our gathering, are cheering 
 and pleasant ; and I feel that around me 
 is playing a soft and kindly light as I 
 come to speak to you of " The White
 
 54 
 
 Sunlight of Potent Words," longing as 
 I do that soon in our glorious land all 
 our spokesmen shall be true-souled 
 prophets, whose utterances, light-born 
 and light-shedding, shall prove them 
 children of the light, whose luminous 
 words shall chase night and spread day 
 in a hundred fields of thought, and be, 
 therefore, words of power well chosen 
 and perfectly spoken. 
 
 This striking phrase, u The white sun- 
 light of potent words," occurs in one of 
 his books who was himself no mean sun 
 in the literary world, whose words were 
 truly forces : I mean that freshest and 
 most striking instance of Atavism which 
 our Knglish-speaking nation has ever 
 studied, Carlyle's worshipful portraiture 
 of his strong-souled, true-tongued, clean- 
 handed, God-fearing father. As the stern 
 son depicts so vividly his sterner sire, he
 
 55 
 
 presents him to us as one who loved the 
 white sunlight of exact truth and told 
 his own clear thoughts in potent words. 
 As I read them the terms engraved them- 
 selves upon my memory, and as I 
 searched for my subject they flashed back 
 with light and furnished me with the 
 theme desired one not, perchance, inap- 
 propriate to this occasion. These words 
 of Carlyle seemed to me to set forth with 
 sunny vividness and striking freshness 
 exactly what each lover of eloquence, 
 what all earnest, practical, successful 
 speakers, what you in this prosperous, 
 admirably - conducted and influential 
 school of oratory, seek to understand, 
 appreciate, and acquire the prophet's 
 secret, \\\z strength and beauty of thought- 
 ful, cultured, impressive, and implusive 
 speech. Of speech, I say, the might and 
 magic of the spoken soul ; not scripture,
 
 56 
 
 the written soul ; for scripture that is, 
 writing is at the best but the precious 
 and splendid artifice to embalm thought 
 and perpetuate some silent emblems of 
 the once-active spirit-life ; but speech, 
 hot, glowing, fresh-born, fire-kindling 
 speech, that indeed is more than kingly 
 power : " the tongue is the glory of man." 
 O precious, awful power wherewith we 
 may yield high glory to God and minis- 
 ter grace and good to men ! how shall I 
 make this sublime gift serve its destined 
 ends, change its grand possibility into 
 glorious potency ? how shall I perfect 
 into a true servant of my fellows and an 
 acceptable sacrifice to my Maker this 
 divine gift? how shall I find, fashion, 
 fling forth those winged words that prove 
 my heavenly origin those arrows of the 
 soul that, tipped with fire and swifter 
 than lightning, slay the monsters of
 
 57 
 
 wrong ; those spirit- waves, living and life- 
 giving, that break fresh out of the sea of 
 life and roll onward and upward till they 
 strike upon the footstool of niy listening 
 Lord? 
 
 How shall I attain to this the one true 
 ideal of a true spokesman ? By making 
 speech and only Ity making speech a 
 revelation of realities ; a revelation ex- 
 act, reliable, challenging tests the keen- 
 est, eyes the strongest. Such revelation 
 is light, for light is that which makes 
 manifest ; and the grace, the grandeur, 
 the glory of speech is the manifestation 
 of truth to the creatures of conscience. 
 Such manifestation of truth, clean, exact, 
 luminous, is light yes, white light ; 
 and that is the very life and essence of 
 the highest eloquence and the truest 
 oratory. 
 
 Days there are in autumn when the
 
 53 
 
 air seems to have been filtered through 
 some pure fleecy medium and made ab- 
 solutely dry ; when the light is wholly 
 colorless, with an all-penetrating, razor- 
 like keenness in it ; when the sun pours 
 down beams from which, like his Mas- 
 ter's sight, nothing is hidden ; then all 
 things stand out sharply cut, fully un- 
 folded, exactly known, in the white light. 
 Such light, such revelation, is the ideal 
 of eloquence ; with it we have the very 
 life and essence of this in many respects 
 highest of the fine arts. 
 
 There is, or ought to be, a soul in 
 speech. 
 
 As in ourselves we have three great 
 parts life, form, action, or, in other 
 words, essence, embodiment, exercise 
 so in oratory there is the essence, or the 
 substance, or the throbbing, thrilling, 
 informing life ; and then there is the
 
 59 
 
 expression, the embodiment, in the ap- 
 propriate harmonious forms of actual ut- 
 terance ; and then there is the exercise, 
 the action, of the whole man, wherein 
 lies the witchery, the spell, of speech. 
 
 I. THE ESSENCE OR SUBSTANCE OF 
 ELOQUENCE. 
 
 Here, as so often, a false start is ruin, 
 but well begun is half ended. Start 
 with the true substance, seek first the 
 strength of speech which is truth, 
 reality and you will in due time, be- 
 cause loving truth, add beauty, grace, 
 and sweetness. But foolishly reverse 
 the order start with, think first of, aim 
 chiefly after, beauty and you will never 
 reach the highest beaut}^ and utterly 
 miss strength. It is the voice, there- 
 fore, not only of a holy morality, but
 
 6o 
 
 also of high reflective art, of a really no- 
 ble, resistless eloquence, that falls upon 
 our ear as we catch, the old words, 
 clarion-like and commanding : Speak 
 ye every man truth with his neighbor. 
 
 Search the eloquence of the past for 
 the secret of its great strength, and you 
 will find truth truth which to this very 
 hour makes the manly yet skillful plead- 
 ings of Judah for the suspected Benja- 
 min before the disguised Joseph, the 
 swelling periods of Moses, the blunt, 
 soldier-like sentences of Joshua, the 
 lightning-flashes of Nathan's attack on 
 David, the scathing irony of Elijah, the 
 comforting words of Isaiah, the deep- 
 toned voice of Peter, the gleaming utter- 
 ances of Paul, and the seraphic teach- 
 ings of John thrill and charm and en- 
 chain us. 
 
 Search, ye that would know the secret
 
 6i 
 
 of eloquence, and ye shall find truth to 
 be the strength of the great classic 
 speakers truth, which Demosthenes, 
 master of orators, flung as well-wrought 
 gold into those still-resounding orations 
 which outring the delighted wonder of 
 the growing centuries and outlast the 
 keenest examination of pitiless criticism. 
 Search, and ye shall find truth, which 
 Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian declare to 
 be the very throbbing, informing life of 
 all abiding and impulsive eloquence ; 
 truth, which Theremin makes the very 
 virtue of eloquence ; which Shedd in his 
 scholarly, suggestive essays declares to 
 be the very glory of noble speech ; 
 which Coleridge and Marsh, with Bacon, 
 affirm to be the force and the fire of elo- 
 quence. Search, and you will find that 
 the secret of eloquence is truth truth, 
 which makes Demosthenes grander than
 
 62 
 
 ^Eschines, Cicero than Hortensius, Mas- 
 sillon than Bossuet, Burke than Fox, 
 Webster than Hayne, Gladstone than 
 Disraeli. Search, and you shall find 
 truth ; truth, which alone can fill the 
 good man, who only, according to Quin- 
 tilian, has in him the possibility of the 
 orator, with those heart-filling, com- 
 manding convictions that create the fiery 
 energy of a Chatham and the resistless 
 sweep of a Mirabeau ; truth, which 
 sneaking tricksters fear more than the 
 surging mobs of their furious dupes, and 
 tyrants hate more than the pointed steel 
 of resolute patriots ; truth, which free- 
 men love like a mother's voice, and 
 which heroic men crave after more than 
 after Hebe's nectar. 
 
 And still, ye students of eloquence, 
 that truth must be the very soul and 
 substance of speech, else there can be no
 
 63 
 
 harmony of intellect, imagination, emo- 
 tion, and will, by which alone is secured 
 the complex unity of high discourse; 
 still truth must be the life of speech, 
 else there can be no light-flooded reason, 
 hence no healthy throb of strongly-beat- 
 ing heart, and liencs no mighty surge of 
 will whose tremendous forces and resist- 
 less activities whelm and bury the bad 
 in darksome depths, and raise the good 
 with glorious uplift to rest on eternal 
 heights in victorious safety and reign 
 calm and unchallenged benefactors and 
 saviors of their kind. 
 
 How, you ask, shall we grow rich in 
 truth, this royalty of speech ? Pursue 
 the path just begun by you; walk for- 
 ward, earnest, toiling, appreciative stu- 
 dents, in the long-drawn and crowded 
 halls and galleries of our own teeming 
 English literature. Study all the writers
 
 6 4 
 
 you can, but see to it that ye live with, 
 that you love with pure hearts fervently, 
 only the truest of our English seers, 
 those most noble souls who occupy our 
 Olympic heights ; and if ye make the 
 truest your models, companions, and mas- 
 ters, you will see and grasp truth, the 
 truth will live within you ; then soon 
 the fire will burn and your tongue will 
 speak the gleaming, glowing words that 
 light and warm, that vivify and beautify. 
 
 II. THE EXPRESSION OF THE TRUTH. 
 
 When the heart loves truth, soon the 
 adequate and appropriate expression will 
 become at once a necessity and an anxi- 
 ety. Life is ever joined to organization 
 in man's world ; spirit is wedded to form ; 
 the idea must be embodied. That ex- 
 pression is the work and glory of the
 
 65 
 
 orator's art. The vision of beauty is 
 unveiled before the painter's imaginative 
 soul, the possible angel greets the mus- 
 ing sculptor from the huge rough marble 
 block, witching tones of spirit-voices 
 float around the delighted ears of the 
 rapt musician ; and Mitrillo and Ra- 
 phael, Angelo and Thorwaldsen, Handel 
 and Beethoven, embody in fitting artistic 
 forms the truth within them, and the 
 world gathers in moved delight and with 
 wondering souls. The eloquent orator is 
 brother in art to the painter, the sculp- 
 tor, the poet, and the musician ; and the 
 proof of his relationship lies in the 
 appropriateness, . vividness, exactness, 
 rhythm, and music of his cultured 
 speech, for these constitute the form of 
 beauty given by him to the truth that 
 he has felt or seen or heard. In that 
 clothing of the ethereal essence with the
 
 66 
 
 fair and fitting body lies the art and 
 skill the painful labor, but the' exhila- 
 rating joy of the true prophet. 
 
 Teachers of your fellows, yon have 
 caught in your lonely hours and rever- 
 ent thinking soul-ravishing views of 
 purity, righteousness, and charity ; or 
 you have heard the thousand varied 
 voices of sky and sea and earth caroling, 
 thundering, whispering their mystic 
 messages to your open hearts and 
 responsive spirit ; or, free-born, you 
 have looked upon an avaricious Ahab in 
 his tyrannous meanness, and have 
 watched the confronting Elijah in all 
 the glorious fearlessness of a God-fearing 
 man; or, sympathetic, you have joined 
 in jubilant youth's gleeful gladness, or 
 you have sat in silent sorrow beside the 
 desolate orphan's tear-drenched pillow ; 
 or, patriot-souled, 3-011 have beheld the
 
 6; 
 
 down-trodden country rise in revolu- 
 tionary wrath, and with her broken fet- 
 ters smite her despot dead, or you have 
 in mournfulness marked a once-noble 
 nation drifting through the mists of lies 
 and over the treacherous seas of luxury 
 to her eternal ruin ; and now there lives 
 within you some part of God's great 
 truth, some fragment of God's great 
 reality. You meditate upon this truth ; 
 it burns within you ; you must speak it 
 out ; and speak it out you will, for you 
 are now fitted to become preachers to 
 men. 
 
 What now must ye preachers do ? Seek 
 " out acceptable words," and, as ye seek 
 them, turn to our English stores. Seek- 
 ing to be rich in speech, 3^011 will find 
 that in the broad ocean of our English 
 literature there are pearls of great price, 
 our potent English words words that
 
 68 
 
 are wizards more mighty than the old 
 Scotch magician ; words that are pictures 
 bright and moving with all the coloring 
 and circumstance of life; words that go 
 down the century like battle-cries ; words 
 that sob like litanies, sing like larks, 
 sigh like zepl^rs, shout like seas. Seek 
 amid our exhaustless stores, and 3-011 
 will find words that flash like the stars 
 of the frosty sky, or are melting and 
 tender like Love's tear-filled eyes ; 
 words that are fresh and crisp like the 
 mountain-breeze in autumn, or are mel- 
 low and rich as an old painting ; words 
 that are sharp, unbending, and precise 
 like Alpine needle-points, or are heavy 
 and rugged like great nuggets of gold ; 
 words that are glittering and gay like 
 imperial gems, or are chaste and refined 
 like the face of a Muse. Search, and ye 
 shall find words that crush like the
 
 69 
 
 battle-axe of Richard or cut like the 
 scimitar of Solyman ; words that sting 
 like a serpent's fang or soothe like a 
 mother's kiss ; words that can unveil 
 the nether depths of hell or point out 
 the heavenly heights of purity and 
 peace ; words that can recall a Judas, 
 words that reveal the Christ. 
 
 How shall we find these pearls of Eng- 
 lish speech these words of potency that 
 are to truth what fairest body is to finest 
 soul ? 
 
 Dig for them as for hidden treasures. 
 The mines are near you, easily wrought, 
 inexhaustible ; and these mines more 
 precious to us than Ophir or Golconda 
 where -you find the rarest jewels of 
 truth set in the splendid forms of perfect 
 words, are the thought-packed treasures, 
 the moving life, the chaste beauty, the
 
 7 
 
 masterly strength, the reverent dignity, 
 of our unsurpassed English literature. 
 What a teeming, varied field of rich 
 terms, of glorious forms, of glowing 
 images, of melodious and majestic speech, 
 of living and palpitating expressions and 
 of exquisitely perfect style, opens to us in 
 that realm where the philosophic voices of 
 Bacon, Hooper, Howe, and Burke, where 
 the laughing, satirical, cutting tones of 
 Butler, Dryden, and Swift, where the 
 crackling wit of Goldsmith, Stern, and 
 Lamb, where the homely greetings of 
 old Father Chaucer, the sweet songs of 
 Spenser, the manly teachings of Bunyan, 
 the terse Saxon of South, the polished 
 periods of Pope and Addison, the alter- 
 nating pathos and humor of Steele, the 
 solemn musings of Wordsworth, all 
 harmoniously mingle, and where the
 
 seraph-soul ed Milton and myriad-minded 
 Shakespeare reign unchallenged as twin 
 kings ! 
 
 Here, then, you have to stir, enrich, 
 control, and cultivate your plastic minds 
 a literature that embodies in the most 
 perfect forms of Elizabethan \vords the 
 peerless gentleness of a Sydney, the 
 unquailing bravery of a Glanville, the 
 quiet majesty of a Cecil, the dashing 
 hardihood of a Raleigh and the sublime 
 dignity of a Howard. What a rich field 
 of supply is here ! Here is a literature 
 that is marked by terseness and clear- 
 ness, by soberness and majesty, by sweet- 
 ness and fullness of expression, never 
 surpassed, rarely equalled. Here you 
 have for your oriiidance and enrichment 
 
 J O 
 
 as speakers a field of literature marked 
 in one department by the pureness, 
 thoroughness, and calmness of the sage
 
 72 
 
 who loves rich, deep, but strongly-ruled 
 speech, and shuns with holy scorn all 
 strain after the startling or striking ; a 
 literature marked in another depart- 
 ment by the white glow of fiery zeal, the 
 rapid rush of the dauntless will, and by 
 the passionate, piercing cry of the deeply- 
 stirred but despairing seer ; a literature 
 marked in another department by short, 
 sharp sentences, by pointed antitheses, 
 striking outbursts, flashing images. This 
 is the literature that presents to you the 
 gathered wealth of the English tongue ; 
 and yet this vast and noble library into 
 which I would introduce you, far from 
 exhausting, only half reveals, the marvel- 
 ous riches of that language whose inex- 
 haustible stores and manifold resources 
 scarcely one amid a thousand speakers 
 ever more than touches. Before us 
 stands a grand instrument of countless
 
 73 
 
 strings, of myraid notes and keys, and 
 \ve are content with some few hundreds, 
 and these not the purest, richest, deep- 
 est, sweetest. If you would be strong 
 of speech, master more of these notes ; 
 let your vocabulary be rich, varied, pure, 
 and proportionate will be your power and 
 attractiveness as speakers. I would have 
 you deeply impressed by the force, full- 
 uess, and flexibility of our noble tongue, 
 where, if anywhere, the gigantic strength 
 of thought and truth is wedded to the 
 seraphic beauty of perfect utterance. I 
 would have you fling yourselves unhesi- 
 tatingly out into this great fresh sea, like 
 bold swimmers into the rolling waves of 
 ocean : it will make you health}-, vigorous, 
 supple, and equal to a hundred calls of 
 duty ; I would have you cherish sacredly 
 this goodly heritage, won by centuries of 
 English thought and countless lives of
 
 English toil ; I would have you jealous, 
 like the apostle over the Church, over 
 these pure wells of English undefiled. 
 Degrade not our sacred tongue by slang ; 
 defile not its crystal streams with the 
 foul waters of careless speech ; honor its 
 stern old parentage ; obey its simple yet 
 severe grammar; watch its perfect rhythm, 
 and never mix its blue blood the gift of 
 noblest sires with the base puddle of 
 any mongrel race. Never speak half 
 the language of Ashdod and half of 
 Canaan, but be }-e of a pure English 
 lip. 
 
 Ye who would be real prophets, join 
 the exactest thought to the most exqui- 
 site terms. See in the clearest light. 
 Hold with firmest grip exactly what that 
 light reveals, and then, like a Murillo 
 true to his Madonna-vision, and like an 
 Angello true to his ideal Moses, seek
 
 75 
 
 the one exact impression that will be for 
 your hearers the exhaustive embodiment 
 of that unveiled reality. 
 
 All this word-hunting, word-choosing, 
 style-marking and mending, means toil, 
 hard and unwearying ; but ^ye have 
 started with sacred truth as the sub- 
 stance of speech, and truth beloved ever 
 spurs forward in the race after excel- 
 lence in expression. As the image of 
 Minerva rising before the Greek, of Isis 
 rising before the Egyptian, of Wisdom 
 before the Hebrew, made each earnest in 
 the portrayal, so Truth rising up within 
 you will move to tireless labor that you 
 may find for her fitting forms ; and if 
 words be indeed the vestments of Truth, 
 we shall see that they are exquisitely 
 fitting and worthy of the goddess, for 
 Truth is too dear and sacred to be shown 
 in rags or soiled garments. Conscience
 
 7 6 
 
 in the seeking means conscience in the 
 speaking of the truth. 
 
 Yes, it means conscience, further, in 
 the showing forth of the truth ; and 
 here we reach, thirdly, the action that 
 makes the speech living and telling. 
 
 III. THE ELOCUTION. 
 
 The message is found, acceptable 
 words have clothed it, style and form of 
 expression have been carefully con- 
 sidered : what remains ? The elocution 
 that makes the message tell with all 
 possible power. You must now speak 
 out your message with an utterance and 
 an action perfectly befitting the truth 
 and its artistic form, and then you will 
 have made it a resistless potency. Let 
 the man act out Jiis theme. These words 
 of light thus spoken, will be conquerors.
 
 77 
 
 Potency links itself with personality 
 with the living, moving, sympatheti- 
 cally and harmoniously acting- man. 
 And if the uttered truth, if the cultured 
 speech, shall have its fullest possible 
 power and win its grandest victories, the 
 man himself yes, the whole man, tb rob- 
 bing with sympathy and palpitating 
 with life must be an additional expres- 
 sion, a veritable embodiment, of the 
 truth spoken. The whole man can be 
 made to speak ; eyes, face, hands, body, 
 limbs yes, the very color and breath 
 can speak ; and they shall, and must, be 
 made to speak if there is to be potent 
 speech and perfect oratory. I have 
 studied eager men in a street wrangle ; 
 I have watched playing children in their 
 dramatic imitations of their elders and 
 superiors; I have closely observed for 
 ninety-five minutes a "passion preacher"
 
 of the famous Dominicans ; and with the 
 keenest delight I have beheld what a 
 sympathetic, harmonious speech the 
 pliant and graceful body can make. 
 How expressive of various thought this 
 wondrous form can be ! Who does not 
 know the Frenchman's shrug, the mar- 
 velous pliancy of the Italian's fingers, 
 the humorous play of the Irishman's 
 face, the regal dignity of the Spaniard's 
 bow, the sturdy defiance of the Briton's 
 folded arms, the impudent independence 
 of " Young America's " akimbo, and the 
 careless swing of " Jack ashore " ? What 
 meaning in the tottering and feeble 
 steps of an outcast Lear, in the stealthy 
 footfall of a jealous Othello, in the reso- 
 lute stride of a defiant Macbeth, and in 
 the slow, hesitating motion of a broken- 
 hearted Ophelia ! How easily and 
 quickly the hands will reveal the sus-
 
 79 
 
 piciotis thoughts of Hamlet watching the 
 conscience-stricken King, show the wild 
 despair of the blood-stained Lady Mac- 
 beth, tell the pleading pathos of Milton's 
 Eve, the tender clasp of a mother's love 
 or the imperious repulse of righteous 
 wrath ! How quickly eyes and face will 
 tell either the scathing flash of hate or 
 pity's melting mood ! The whole man 
 can thus be made to speak with harmo- 
 nious appropriateness and graceful force. 
 But if so, this whole man must be 
 taught, trained, exercised, till, his native 
 faults removed, his native excellences 
 developed, the orator is unconsciously 
 artistic in his action and artistically un- 
 conscious of his action. Diligent teach- 
 ing and patient perseverance in study 
 and in practice are to this important end 
 absolutely indispensable. 
 
 Joined to this expressive play of fea-
 
 So 
 
 ture and of form must be the ^.yell- 
 developed, highly-exercised, carefully- 
 educated power of a trained and well- 
 ruled voice. Nothing to the speaker so 
 important as a flexible, well-modulated, 
 untiring, full-compassed voice ; and 
 nothing more than the voice repays care 
 and cultivation. No carelessness as to 
 articulation or accentuation should be 
 for one moment tolerated by the honest 
 student of this splendid art. In articu- 
 lation strive to unite strength and 
 beauty the strength of consonantal dis- 
 tinctness and accurate pronunciation 
 with the beauty of the vowel's round- 
 ness, fullness, and sweetness. Strive 
 that your speech bewray 3^011 not, but be 
 cosmopolitan in your pronunciation and 
 intonation. Seize the special strength 
 and the special beaut}'- of special lands 
 the potent gutturals and well-trilled
 
 Si 
 
 r's of Germany and Scotland, the deep 
 chest-voice and niaiily organ-notes of 
 burly England, the soft, wooing sweep 
 of the Italian's vowels, the clear, ear- 
 catching syllabification of the Spaniard, 
 the crisp notes of the Frenchman, and 
 the Norseman's consonantal power. Aim 
 at a cultured, varied speech which shall 
 combine and harmonize the billowy roll 
 of the cultivated and traveled Irishman, 
 the low cadences and lute-like softness 
 of the high-bred English girl, and the 
 clear, exact, sharp rhythmic tones of our 
 own educated countrywomen, and you 
 have gained an utterance that will sway 
 by its strength and woo and captivate by 
 its sweetness. I plead earnestly for the 
 careful and sacred conservation of the 
 old classic, round-toned speech of cul- 
 tured Philadelphians, which, with that 
 of Stamford, Inverness, and Boston,
 
 82 
 
 has ever seemed to me the perfection of 
 spoken English. 
 
 Would you know what is perfect in 
 action, study the finest statuary and the 
 truest painting ; and carefully mark how 
 a Milton or a Shakespeare depicts his 
 varied characters in varied moods. 
 Would you know what is perfect in tone, 
 study music ; train younown ear to the 
 nice discriminations ; hear and critically 
 watch the most finished speakers who 
 have made an honest study of this most 
 difficult but most delightful art. 
 
 All this excellence demands work con- 
 tinuous and conscientious. And why 
 not give yourselves hard work ? Whoso 
 takes up voluntarily the position of a 
 public teacher is summoned by the im- 
 perial voice of Duty to give his best 
 thoughts in their best form to that pub- 
 lic whom he asks to listen to him, and
 
 33 
 
 therefore he should toil to make his 
 speech forceful through truth like the 
 flooding sea, fresh and attractive in its 
 beauty of form like the early dew. 
 
 Make, then, ye ingenuous youth, ye 
 ardent students of this wondrous power 
 and high art of the eloquent orator 
 make, ye richly-blessed and deeply- 
 responsible children of our grand re- 
 public make truth your first aim both 
 as to matter and as to manner. Re- 
 member that speech of truth and truth 
 in speech is the very life-blood of repub- 
 lics. Search the histories of the 
 vanished democracies of classic or 
 mediaeval da3^s, and a thousand facts 
 will start up, large-bodied and clear- 
 voiced, to testify that in the breezy hours 
 when truth was dearly loved, boldly told 
 and treasured more than gleaming gems, 
 Freedom's house, rock-bound, defied
 
 8 4 
 
 every storm ; and crowding proofs, 
 shameful and sickening, declare that 
 riot, rottenness, and ruin came when the 
 truth was lost, and the lie, albeit fair- 
 faced, smooth-tongued, glittering in garb, 
 triumphed. Children of this grand 
 Commonwealth, remember that speech 
 without the salt of truth is a pestilent 
 poison, but that speech strong in reality, 
 grand through truth, is a tree of life 
 whose leaves are for the healing of the 
 nation. And we of all folks must have 
 such speech. Peoples there may be who, 
 to use Shakespeare's words, are content 
 to wallow among the lily-beds of sweet- 
 ness, but sons of Pym and Hampden, 
 of Grattan and Flood, of Knox and 
 Melville, of Luther and Zwingle, must 
 climb the steep mountain-side, and 
 stand in the clear mid-air, and bathe 
 in the pure white light, and rejoice in
 
 5 
 
 the full breeze yea, even stormy wind 
 of reality and truth. 
 
 Workers for a splendid republic, which 
 is if ever one on earth j ustified Hobbes's 
 definition of a republic an aristocracy 
 of orators, ye are passing out from your 
 studies to be leaders in this aristocracy 
 which has produced its kings like 
 Patrick Henry and Clay and Webster. 
 Remember, teachers of America's Anglo- 
 Saxon youth, pleaders before America's 
 Anglo-Saxon bench, poets for America's 
 Anglo-Saxon hearts, preachers to 
 America's Anglo-Saxon congregations, 
 leaders of America's Anglo-Saxon world 
 remember that truth, clothed in cul- 
 tured, graceful, well-spoken speech, will 
 alone master and mold, will alone 
 satisfy and charm, will alone uphold and 
 advance that splendid, willful, richly- 
 gifted, keenly-sensitive folk with whom
 
 86 
 
 ye have to do. Be it yours, then, to re- 
 solve, aim, labor, that with intellect 
 aflame, heart aglow, will astir, your 
 whole being alive and active, ye will 
 speak out sweetly, gracefully, strongly, 
 that truth God shall lend to you ; and 
 then ye shall be burning and shining 
 lights, symbols and servants of Him 
 who was the Light of the world and 
 spake as never did man.
 
 THE PLACE OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 IN 
 
 / T A T TTT' /\ "OT^ f~\~f^ IH V "V ~C3"K? tT 1 <il <2 T f~^\ TVT 
 
 InLJrL/ ^f-Vrv vJJr 1 l/^S^ir^-tX^vSC>l^>'rx 
 
 AN ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D. D. 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ELOCUTION AND ORATORY UPON THE OCCASION 
 
 OF ITS FOURTEENTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, HELD AT THE 
 
 AMERICAN ACADEMY OF Music, PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 7, 1887
 
 THE PLACE OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 IN 
 
 THE ART OF EXPRESSION 
 
 IT has not been an easy matter for me 
 to determine what niche the invited 
 speaker of this anniversary gathering is 
 expected to fill. There is to be a gradu- 
 ating class ; am I to give them words of 
 parting counsel, in the hope that if I 
 acquit myself creditably I may find 
 myself the fortunate recipient of a 
 diploma? There is to be a prize contest; 
 am I called here to grapple with these 
 athletes who have been under training 
 for months ? It occurs to me that you 
 can have a brilliant foreground only by 
 having a dull and heavy background, 
 and so you craftily ask us to come here 
 and pose as specimens of neglected
 
 9 o 
 
 training, that we may feel heartily 
 ashamed of ourselves, while you glory in 
 your superior attainments. 
 
 Now I must beg to decline in advance 
 entering the list of oratorical exhibition, 
 or occupying a professional attitude. If 
 you need anything more in the line of 
 teaching, I beg to refer you to a little 
 volume recently published, in one of 
 whose brief chapters the whole question 
 of oratory is discussed with great fresh- 
 ness and vigor. The book I speak of is 
 English as She is Taught ; and here are 
 some morsels of its wisdom : " Elocution 
 is opening the mouth wide open." " We 
 should always breathe with the muscles 
 of the diaphragm unless we have catarrh 
 or a cold in the head." " Vowel sounds 
 are made by keeping the mouth wide 
 open, and consonant sounds by keeping 
 it shut." " Force is more loudness
 
 sometimes than others." "Emphasis is 
 putting more distress on one word than 
 another." " Breathing is very good for 
 reading, for when } T OU are reading you 
 can't breathe at all, and so it is good to 
 breathe a good deal before." That will 
 do. I might as well try to paint a sun- 
 beam as to improve upon these sugges- 
 tions. Under existing circumstances I 
 have deemed discretion the better part of 
 valor, and I shall invite you to join me 
 in a little side-excursion, where the 
 professional lines will not cross our 
 path. 
 
 Language is not the only form in 
 which man expresses his thoughts. 
 Architecture, sculpture, painting, and 
 instrumental music must be added to the 
 catalogue. The tomb is a meditation. 
 The Gothic cathedral is a prayer in stone. 
 The glowing canvas is a sermon. The
 
 92 
 
 flute and harp and violin and organ move 
 us to tears and laughter. These are 
 forms of expression which the imagina- 
 tion creates and fills with meaning, and 
 whose message can be understood only 
 by a responsive fancy. Is language an 
 exception ? It has three forms the 
 written, crystallizing in literature, in 
 prose and poetry ; the spoken, illustrated 
 in conversation, reading, and oratory ; 
 and the acted, all that is included in 
 gesture, the muscular movements of the 
 head, hands, and feet. Are any of these 
 departments independent of the imagina- 
 tion, so that perfection can be attained in 
 them by attention purely to technique ? 
 Rules alone, every one admits, will not 
 make the architect, the sculptor, the 
 painter, the musician ; though genius 
 never ventures, in its boldest flights, to 
 ignore the sanctity of law. But this per-
 
 93 
 
 vasive dominion of law is only the en- 
 compassing atmosphere within which 
 fancy spreads its wings and soars aloft. 
 Its lines are the bauds and traces within 
 which genius does its work, not the secret 
 and source of its energy. Hence we call 
 architecture, sculpture, painting, music 
 fine arts, because the skill which is 
 chiefly concerned in them is that of the 
 imagination ; nor will any one doubt that 
 poetr}^ belongs to the same class. Here 
 the imagination lays claim to one depart- 
 ment of language, and it will be found 
 difficult to draw the line where its sov- 
 ereignty ends. The simple truth is that 
 language, whether written, spoken, or 
 acted, is forcible and effective only when 
 it is the instrument of a living and 
 fruitful fancy. 
 
 But I must hasten to state what I 
 mean by the Imagination, and to vindi-
 
 94 
 
 cate for it this high dignity. I under- 
 stand by it that energy which the mind 
 possesses in creating, from the materials 
 of its knowledge, ideal forms of beauty 
 and excellence. The primary form of 
 intellectual life is perceptive or cognitive, 
 either by means of the senses or by 
 introspection. The soul and the world, 
 with the basic reality underlying and 
 uniting both, provide for us all the ma- 
 terials of our knowledge. I have a 
 knowledge of myself, and I have a 
 knowledge of the world, and these are 
 the media through which the Living 
 God reveals Himself to my inquiring 
 spirit. 
 
 I do not stop with fleeting impressions, 
 chasing each other over the field of con- 
 sciousness as do the shadows of clouds 
 over mountain and vale ; The mind of 
 man has a registering and retentive
 
 95 
 
 power, which we call memory, but whose 
 philosophy baffles us. Neither the 
 physiologist nor the psychologist has 
 succeeded in showing where or how the 
 registry is kept, or by what means it is 
 preserved. No less marked and marvel- 
 ous is the power which the mind has of 
 availing itself of the contents of this 
 voluminous registry, making its treas- 
 ures subservient to its requirements, 
 recalling them at will or under the pres- 
 sure of some great emergency. 
 
 And this power of reproduction is itself 
 under the guidance of a higher energy, 
 which selects and combines, creating the 
 ideal types that dominate life no less than 
 art. The mind is something more than 
 a photographic apparatus, realistically 
 reproducing the ever-shifting panorama 
 of events. It is an artist, using these 
 crude materials of perception in the crea-
 
 9 6 
 
 tion of ideal forms ; it is an architect, 
 hewing the rough boulders into shapes 
 of beauty, and building them up into 
 massive and graceful structures. And 
 this artistic, architectoric power of the 
 mind, a faint reflex of the creative energy 
 of the Divine Mind, flinging the radiance 
 of an ideal world over the world of sense, 
 is the philosophic or poetic imagination. 
 Are there " tongues in trees, books 
 in the running brooks, sermons in stones, 
 and good in every thing "? The camera 
 of vision does not disclose them. Their 
 music does not fall upon mortal ears. 
 These are purely mental intuitions, a 
 poetic drapery which the mind weaves 
 upon its own looms. Is all this decep- 
 tive and vain ? Do we play with nature 
 and life, as children amuse themselves 
 with dolls, dressing up the naked, homely 
 facts in the rags and scraps and gaudy
 
 97 
 
 tinsel of our own fancy ? So some tell 
 us, and summon us to reduce all thought 
 to the level of a crude realism ; to be 
 content in science, literature, art, and 
 religion with simple description. The 
 ideal is a delusion ; the visible is the only 
 reality. Beauty, truth, and goodness are 
 only names, convenient for classification, 
 baseless in fact. All things are equally 
 fair ; there is nothing ugly. All things 
 are equally true ; there is nothing false. 
 All things are equally good ; there is no 
 sin. The things that we see are the only 
 measure of existence ; the only standard 
 of excellence. 
 
 Now, I need not stop to show at length 
 that such a view would rob civilization 
 of its choicest treasures, and reduce our 
 calling to the dignity of making mud- 
 pies. Poetry and fiction must become
 
 9 8 
 
 commonplace and grossly realistic. Zola 
 must supplant Milton and Walter Scott 
 and even George Eliot, for the power of 
 George Eliot is in her dominating, emo- 
 tional idealism. Art must leap from 
 heaven to earth, and henceforth deal only 
 with a faultless technique, an exact re- 
 production on canvas and in marble of 
 what the eyes reveal. There must be no 
 prudery, no intervention of false modesty; 
 the greatest artist is simply the most 
 accurate photographer. Conversation 
 must be content with the gossip of the 
 street, and employ its powers in the faith- 
 ful portraiture of domestic and social 
 scandal. Ethics and religion must be 
 relegated to the limbo of outgrown super- 
 stitions. The land of promise is certainly 
 not one that flows with milk and honey. 
 The prospect is dreary enough, and many
 
 99 
 
 will hesitate to take up the line of march 
 into this paradise, where all ideals are 
 ostracized and disinherited. 
 
 But the mind will not consent to be 
 robbed of its power and heritage. It will 
 continue to survey and people its ideal 
 universe. Not as if the ideal is hostile 
 to the real, or independent of it ; but 
 because the real is fully understood only 
 under the light of the ideal. The seen 
 and the unseen are not two spheres, 
 removed from each other by an infinite 
 distance, or touching each other only at 
 a single point; they are overlapping circles 
 with the same centre, whence the ideal 
 sweeps the wider and the universally in- 
 clusive circumference. The ideals which 
 the mind creates are not the product of 
 an empty fancy, but the emergent reve- 
 lation of eternal verities. There is truth 
 in Plato's notion that w r hat we see is only
 
 100 
 
 an imperfect copy of an eternal idea, pre- 
 existent and immortal ; and in the doctrine 
 of Malebranclie, that the mind sees all 
 things in God. Light streams down upon 
 the soul of man from above, as truly as 
 it impinges upon the membrane of the 
 retina. Sensation is not our only source 
 of knowledge. Kant settled the great 
 debate by showing that the notions of 
 space and time and cause have their birth 
 in the mind, and are not imported into 
 it from without. The mind has a truly 
 creative energy. It is not a white sheet 
 of paper, receiving only passive im- 
 pressions ; it sallies forth as an inter- 
 preter under the laws of thought that 
 are inherent in its own constitution. It 
 reads the visible in the light of the 
 invisible ; it discerns the ideal behind the 
 face of the real. 
 
 The imagination alone has made pure
 
 IOI 
 
 mathematics possible. Its lines and 
 curves are the ideal forms of empty 
 space. Nature has neither perfect lines 
 nor perfect angles nor perfect circles. 
 These are purely mental products, ideal 
 existences, to which nothing visible ex- 
 actly corresponds ; and, what is more, 
 man under the guidance of these ideal- 
 ized things can produce more perfect 
 specimens of each and of all than any 
 which nature exhibits. 
 
 Nor can science do its work without 
 the service of the imagination. It pro- 
 ceeds from observation to classification, 
 and in so doing at once introduces and 
 makes dominant a purely mental con- 
 cept. The individual plant or animal is 
 classed under the type to which it be- 
 longs ; and types are simply ideal forms. 
 There is no typical rose, no typical tree, 
 no typical horse. The type is a purely
 
 IO2 
 
 mental product, formed by analysis, 
 comparison, and combination. It is the 
 creature of the imagination, by reference 
 to which the individual is measured and 
 judged. 
 
 Science is no less imaginative than 
 art, poetry, and theology. It deals with 
 ideal forms. And therefore it is that the 
 mere copyist never satisfies the artistic 
 demand. The mind sees more than the 
 photograph, and therefore demands more. 
 We do not want the unreal, but we want 
 the real idealized. You never saw such 
 faces as those of Raphael's Madonnas ; 
 you never saw such forms as those which 
 Phidias and Michael Angelo carved into 
 marble ; you never saw such groups as 
 those of Correggio and Titian. These 
 are the ideals of beauty and strength, 
 and when art abandons the ideal it 
 offends and degrades the aesthetic taste.
 
 103 
 
 The cliarni and the power of literature 
 are in the ideals which it creates, as in 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, in Dante's In- 
 ferno, and in Bunyan's Pilgrim? s Pro- 
 gress. The true poet is always a phil- 
 osopher, who makes nature and life ra- 
 diant with the glow and the glory of an 
 invisible world. You never heard men 
 speak, you never saw them act, as they 
 do in Shakespeare's dramas. There is 
 real life and movement ; but the reality 
 is intensified, because idealized. The 
 figures are only the drapery of the 
 thought ; the good is shown at its best, 
 and the bad at its worst. The power of 
 such a book as Letters from Hell is in 
 the keen, calm, incisive, exhaustive anal- 
 ysis with which it probes the recesses of 
 a living and accusing conscience. 
 
 Love lives in the imagination. We 
 say it is blind because it sees " Helen's
 
 104 
 
 beauty ou the brow of Egypt." But 
 love sees more than the receding brow ; 
 its eyes are on the heart whose radiance 
 floods the dusky face. Every man's 
 mother is, or ought to be, the most beau- 
 tiful of all women to him, because no 
 other woman can ever be to him what 
 she was and is. All this is the work of 
 the imagination, but it is not, therefore, 
 imaginary. The ideal is there, discerned 
 by the mind, and that gives to every 
 physical defect a new and fair perspec- 
 tive. So that we can understand the an- 
 swer of the Irishman who was laughed 
 at because he loved a cross eyed damsel, 
 when he declared that Katie's eyes were 
 so beautiful that it was no wonder they 
 were " thrying to look into each other." 
 Such being the imperial rank and 
 scope of the imagination, the idealizing 
 power of the mind, it is entitled to care-
 
 I0 5 
 
 ful cultivation by all who would be mas- 
 ters of the art of expression. Language 
 is the most subtile and plastic of all in- 
 struments. Its mastery is the most dif- 
 ficult of all achievements. A faultless 
 pronunciation and a perfect syntax may 
 serve only to expose the poverty that 
 hides behind the purple. I do not un- 
 dervalue the physiological and the rhe- 
 torical training; but there must be some- 
 thing to say, else the saying it well only 
 makes the speaker ridiculous. And not 
 only must there be something to say, 
 but there must be a proper perspective 
 to which the sentences are adjusted. 
 Language is only a means to an end ; 
 and the aim of all expression is impres- 
 sion. You wish to describe a scene or 
 narrate an event or tell a story; your 
 end is gained only when 3*011 can make 
 your listener see what you have seen or
 
 io6 
 
 hear what you have heard. To do that 
 you must be a mental artist. The 
 salient features must be firmly grasped 
 in your own thought, and the lines must 
 be drawn with a steady, rapid hand. 
 There must be no needless digression. 
 You must know what to leave out, for 
 prolixity and wandering will produce in- 
 attention and restlessness. You all know 
 of people who act like wet blankets upon 
 a company when they begin to talk, for 
 you can never tell when they will stop 
 nor what they are aiming at. Conver- 
 sation is a high art, in which perfection 
 and grace can be attained only by those 
 who are intent upon giving it an ideal 
 form. 
 
 Do a faultless pronunciation, a studied 
 inflection, and a measured emphasis in- 
 sure good reading? The tone of the 
 voice is of far greater importance that
 
 io 7 
 
 subtile, indescribable, irresistible quality 
 which is born of true and deep emotion, 
 and which passes like an electric shock 
 from the reader to the hearer. The 
 poem, or the page of prose, must first be 
 mastered by the reader, all its hidden 
 recesses of suggestion explored, all its 
 depths sounded, its literary environments 
 reproduced in fancy ; and only when the 
 author has been thus idealized can he be 
 successfully interpreted. 
 
 Need I add that for the orator or 
 debater this imaging, or grouping power 
 of the mind, is of primary importance ? 
 I do not mean that he must think in 
 pictures and talk in similes, for some of 
 the most effective speakers have been 
 men of a simple and unadorned vocabu- 
 lary. But you can point to no success- 
 ful advocate or preacher or debater who 
 has not been clear in his analysis, sure
 
 loS 
 
 of his thought, definite in his aim, 
 marching toward it along the most direct 
 lines. 
 
 Of course, the imagination may be 
 turned to dishonest and dishonorable 
 uses. The tongue may be made to drop 
 manna, making " the worse appear the 
 better reason." At 110 point is there 
 greater need for the guidance and check 
 of an enlightened and sensitive con- 
 science. The higher the art, the more 
 powerful will be its ministry for good or 
 for evil. The imagination needs the 
 ethical restraints. Our mental pictures 
 must correspond to the truth of things, 
 and in their interpretation to others we 
 must guard against the temptation to 
 vanity. Speech is one of God's noblest 
 gifts to man, and it should be kept firmly 
 to its divine intention to make plain 
 and radiant the truth, the whole truth,
 
 and nothing but tne truth. For if we 
 must part with either beauty or truth, 
 we will hold fast to truth even in a beg- 
 gar's garb. But beauty and truth are 
 twin-born. He who made the world 
 strong has also made it fair ; and we only 
 follow His example when we fit speech 
 to thought, arranging with artistic skill 
 our apples of gold in finely chased 
 baskets of silver.
 
 Correspondence 
 
 Suggestions, Precepts, and Examples for the Construction 
 of Letters 
 
 By AGNES H. MORTON. B. O. 
 Cloth Binding, SO Cents 
 
 is the most intelligent and thoroughly literary 
 work on the subject ever offered to the public 
 It is from the pen of a skilled writer, who for 
 several years filled the chair of Literature and Criticism 
 in one of the leading educational institutions of the 
 country. The book exactly fulfills the promise of its 
 admirably chosen title. Its Suggestions are pointed 
 and practically helpful; its Precepts are correct, and 
 are clearly and attractively stated ; its gracefully com- 
 posed Examples are true to the character of the corre- 
 spondence which they severally illustrate, and are 
 accompanied with terse explanatory remarks. Its ob- 
 ject is to assist inexperienced writers to develop their 
 talent for correct and graceful correspondence ; and the 
 book is well calculated to accomplish that gratifying 
 result. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers, or mailed upon receipt of 
 price. 
 
 PE>{>i PrBI.lSHIJJO COMPANY 
 
 1020 Arclt Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 ORATORY 
 
 By HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 Cloth Binding, 5O Cents 
 
 HE attention of all persons interested in the Art of 
 ^ Expression is invited to thL new issue of Henry 
 Ward Beecher's unique and masterly exposition 
 of the fundamental principles of true oratory. 
 
 "Training in this department," said Beecher, "is 
 the great want of our day ; for we are living in a land 
 whose genius, whose history, whose institutions, whose 
 people, eminently demand oratory." 
 
 It must be conceded that few men ever enjoyed a 
 wider experience or achieved a higher reputation in 
 the realm of public oratory than Mr. Beecher. What 
 he had to say on this subject was born of experience, 
 and his own inimitable style was at once both state- 
 ment and illustrative of his theme. 
 
 From The School Journal, New York City: 
 " Richly freighted with the golden fruit of observation, 
 experience, sympathy, understanding, knowledge, and 
 reason." 
 
 THIS VOLUME CONTAINS ALSO 
 
 The White Sunlight of Potent Words 
 
 A scholarly and eloquent Oration on the Characteristics of effective Public 
 delivery, by Rev. JOHN S. MACINTOSH, D. D.,of Philadelphia, together with 
 
 The Place of the Imagination in the Art of Oratory 
 
 a most Interesting and Instructive Oration by Rev. J. F. BKHRENDS, D. D., 
 of Brooklyn. 
 
 THE PEBJIS IMCI.ISHi:s; COMPANY 
 1020 Arcti Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 PARLOR GAMES 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 Wise and Otherwise 
 
 Cloth Binding 50 Cents 
 
 THIS volume contains a splendid collection of 
 games for all kinds of amusement, entertain- 
 ment, and instruction. Some are familiar, 
 some translated from the French, others are of 
 local origin, appearing in print for the first time, 
 and all are bright, clear, fresh, and concise. 
 
 They are classified under the following headings : 
 Games with Pen and Pencil, Games of Thought 
 and Memory, Games of Action, Catch-Games, and 
 Forfeits. 
 
 "A convenient little volume that will prove a godsend on rainy 
 days and long winter evenings." Press, Philadelphia. 
 
 " It is the best collection of the kind yet published." Enqiiirer, 
 Cincinnati. 
 
 THE IK>i> ITHI,I.SHi:S<; CO>H'A>Y 
 Arch Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 PUNCTUATION 
 
 By PflULt 
 
 Cloth liindiHi/, 5O cents 
 
 -N this practical commercial age, with its directnes 
 of statement and simplicity of expression, the 
 matter of Punctuation would seem of less import- 
 ance than formerly. But, as a matter of fact, the 
 rapid rush of modern life is attended with such a care- 
 lessness of sentential structure that its study is rendered 
 all the more necessary and urgent. 
 
 This volume is the most practical, concise, and 
 comprehensive book on the subject. The rules are 
 clearly stated and copiously illustrated, thus furnishing 
 a complete exposition of this much neglected study. 
 The author has made what is usually a very uninterest- 
 ing subject so attractive that there is not a dry 
 or tedious page in the book. Its value appeals, not 
 alone to the author or correspondent, but to every in- 
 telligent person who has occasion to write even the 
 briefest social or business note, and it is, therefore, a 
 volume that should be in every writing desk or library. 
 
 THK PK>JHi PrBI.ISHING COMPANY 
 
 1020 Arch Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 [land-Boo^ of pponimcialnoq 
 
 And Phonetic Analysis 
 
 DESIGNED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES, AND FQ A 
 PERSONS WHO DESIRE TO CONFORM TO THE RECOG- 
 NIZED STANDARD IN PRONUNCIATION 
 
 By JOHN H. BECMXEL, 
 
 Cloth, 3O Cents 
 
 SOME books a.e made; others grow. This volume 
 is the result of fifteen years of practical experi- 
 ence in teaching Orthoepy. It contains over 
 five thousand carefully selected words, of difficult pro- 
 nunciation, alphabetically arranged. A close observa- 
 tion of the faults and peculiarities of pronunciation of 
 public readers, lecturers, clergymen, and all other 
 classes, has enabled the author to collate and present 
 such words as are most liable to be mispronounced. 
 
 Two forms of pronunciation are given. The first 
 emp'oys as few diacritical marks as possible, and is de- 
 signed for those to whom such marks are a stumbling 
 block instead of a help. The second is a close phonetic 
 analysis of the word, in which every vowel is marked, 
 every necessary sign employed, every silent letter 
 omitted, and every accent, primary and secondary, 
 carefully noted. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, or mailed 
 upon receipt of price. 
 
 XHE PE?*t PVBI.ISHINCi COMPANY 
 
 1020 Arch Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 Reading as a Pine 
 
 BIT ZEIRItTIEST 
 
 Of the Academic Frangaise 
 
 Translated from the Ninth Edition by ABBY LANG- 
 DON ALGER 
 
 Cloth Bindiiiy, - SO Cents. 
 
 THIS valuable little book is commended to the 
 attention of teachers and others interested in 
 the instruction of the pupils of our public 
 schools. It treats of the "First Steps in Reading," 
 " Learning to Read," " Should we Read as we Talk/' 
 " The Use and Management of the Voice," " The Art 
 of Breathing," "Pronunciation," "Stuttering," 
 "Punctuation," "Readers and Speakers," "Reading 
 as a Means of Criticism," " On Reading Poetry," etc., 
 and makes a strong claim as to the value of reading 
 aloud, as being the most wholesome of gymnastics, for 
 to strengthen the voice is to strengthen the whole 
 system and develop vocal power. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, or mailed 
 upon receipt of price. 
 
 TMl. IM,. II KI.IMIII X. COMPANY 
 1020 Arcb Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 ~3 THE 
 
 Art of Conversation 
 
 By J. P. MAHAFFY, 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin 
 
 Cloth Binding, - 5O Cents 
 
 OF all the accomplishments prized in modern 
 society, that of being agreeable in conversation 
 holds the first place. Many persons owe the 
 whole of a great success in life to skill in conversation. 
 
 Is there any method by which we can improve our 
 conversation ? Is there any theory which we can apply 
 to our own case, and that of others? Are there not, at 
 least, some practical rules which we ought to know, 
 and which will be of service to us in the performance of 
 this essential part of our social duties? 
 
 These, and a hundred other questions are fully and 
 affirmatively answered in this, the latest and best book 
 on the subject extant. The author has had access to 
 the highest social circles, and speaks from personal ob- 
 servation and experience, and the conclusions he draws, 
 and the many valuable hints and suggestions he gives 
 will commend themselves to every thoughtful reader. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, or mailed 
 upon receipt of price. 
 
 THE PETW rrBLISHISUG COMPANY 
 
 1020 Arch Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 Debater's Treasury 
 
 Comprising a list of 2OO Question, it-ith \ntfn nntt 
 Arguments 
 
 By WILLIAM PITTENGER 
 
 Author of " Extempore Speech." " How to Become a. Public 
 Speaker, 1 ' etc. 
 
 Cloth Binding. o< ) Cents 
 
 THE ability to debate a question skillfully and 
 forcibly is of the greatest value, and has often 
 been the passport to wealth and fame. In the 
 conflict of opinions prevailing in every department 01 
 life, it is most desirable to maintain our own position 
 in the face of all opposition. Whoever cannot do so 
 may possess brilliant ideas, may originate wise plans, 
 and may even be eloquent with pen and tongue, but 
 will always have difficulty in securing the co-operation 
 of others. 
 
 This valuable book contains directions for organizing 
 and conducting debating societies, most practical sug- 
 gestions for all who speak, or aspire to discuss questions 
 in public, and in addition gives a list of 200 questions 
 on all conceivable subjects for debate, with arguments, 
 both affirmative and negative. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers, or mailed upon receipt of 
 price. 
 
 THR PKItJi PUBLISHING CO>lPA>iV 
 
 1020 Arch Street 
 
 Philadelphia
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 SEP 161998
 
 .S.N REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000673195 4
 
 u