T7NIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY y Winning Declamations AND HOW TO SPEAK THEM In Two Parts Part I — For Intermediate and Grammar Grades Part II — For High Schools and Colleges BY EDWIN Dubois shurter PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS LLOYD ADAMS NOBLE, Publisher 31 West 15th Street New York City •4^^ 4r\'^Q>c> Copyright, 191 7, LLOYD ADAMS NOBLE n .1 c n 3 5^ PREFACE This book contains declamations, from three to five minutes in length, which the editor, as a teacher of public speaking, has been collecting and testing for a number of years. Practically every selection in this volume has been tried out in class work and in public contests ; hence the major title of "Win- ning Declamations." Although some "old favorites" are included, a large proportion of the prose selec- tions, and several of the poems, have never before appeared in a work of this character. The declamations are intended for training the public speaker, and not the dramatic reader or mere entertainer. The element of interest, however, has been a controlling factor, hence declamations have been chosen that present vivid pictures, concrete situations, or advocate principles and policies that are of present moment. In other words, the selec- tions are of such a character that a pupil may adopt the words as his own and speak them with the pur- pose of convincing and persuading a present-day au- dience. The minor title of the book indicates a feature • •• ui iv Preface which differentiates this work from the ordinary Speaker in two particulars : First, there is an introductory treatise on delivery covering the essential matters pertaining to the technique of oral expression and public speaking. For teachers desiring a minimum of theory and maximum of practice, this book is well adapted for use, not alone as a reference book for selections, but also as a text-book for a beginners' class in speak- ing, or as an advanced reading-book for the seventh or eighth grades. Secondly, the declamations are edited with refer- ence to the interpretation and delivery. True, this sort of editing may easily be overdone, since there is danger of losing sight of the personal equation as different individuals react upon a given selection; but it was thought that some general suggestions as to interpretation and delivery by one who has made a special study of the selections would be helpful to and welcomed by teachers and pupils. In some cases, where the construction is simple and no special comment has seemed necessary, none is offered ; that is, no effort has been made to explain the obvious. The author desires gratefully to acknowledge his indebtedness to Professor Raymond G. Bressler, of the University of Texas Department of Extension, for his assistance in selecting and editing the selec- Preface r tions, and also in the preparation of the Introduc- tion; to Allyn & Bacon, publishers of Shurter's Public Speaking, for the use made of portions of that text in the Introduction to the present volume ; also to publishers of copyrighted material designated in subsequent pages. CONTENTS INDEXED BY AUTHORS Author Title Pate Alexander, Cecil Frances. .All Things Bright and Beauti- ful 1 19 Allison, Joy Which Loved Best? 122 Anonymous Aspirations 131 Anonymous A Southern Court Scene 97 Anonymous The Liberty Bell 137 Anonymous The Victor of Marengo 94 Bacheller, Irving Scientific Farming 91 The Little Old School of the Home 44 Bailey, Joseph W Texas — Undivided and In- divisible 255 Bain, George W Life Lessons 88 Beecher, Henry Ward Importance of Little Things. . . 52 Squandering the Voice 33 The National Flag 252 The Reign of the Common People 2/8 — " Bennett, Henry H The Flag Goes By 128 Bigelow, Herbert S The Apostle of a New Idea ... 241 Blaine, James G The Death of Garfield 259 Borah, William E The Haywood Trial; Plea for the Prosecution 239 Boynton, Nehemiah The Homeland 297 Braley, Berton The Thinker 175 Browning, Robert Pros pice 140 Bryan, William Jennings. .Against Militarism. . .' 2iq^ , vii viii Contents Author Title Page Bryan, Guy M The Child of the Alamo 72 Burkett, C. W The Modern Farmer 108 Burrill, David J Incentives to Patriotism 115 Casement, Roger To Liberate Ireland is not Treason to England 215 Caxton Magazine Nothing to do but Work 75 What's the Use 273 Chambers, Robert W France at the Opening of the Great War 208 Chapman, Arthur Where the West Begins 142 Chemnitzer, Ivan The Rich Man and the Poor Man 135 Clark, Esther M The Call of Kansas 146 Cross, L. M Have an Oil Can Always with You 41"^ The Curse of Selfishness 100 Curtis, George William. . . . Fair Play for Woman 224 The Eloquence of Wendell Phillips 235 The Minute Man of the Revo- lution 284 The Public Duty of Educated Men 280 Darrow, Clarence S The Haywood Trial; Plea for the Defence 237 Dunbar, Paul Laurence . . . Right's Security 179 Eytinge, Louis Victor Savannah's Apple of Courage 63 Finch, Francis M The Blue and the Cray 162 Finley John H The Thirtieth Man 270 Franklin, Benjamin The Way to Wealth 81 French, Virginia L The Palmetto and the Pine . . . 169 Frye, William P The Protection of American Citizens 217 Grady, Henry W A Plea for Prohibition 66 Love and Loyalty of the Negro. 77 The Home and the Republic. . . 39 Gregory, Thomas Watt . . . Southern Types 265 >f Contents ix Author Title Page Guerard, Albert Leon The Dead Hand of the Past in Europe 213 Harris, Virginia Fisher. . . . The Cross of Honor 184 Harrison, Jake H To the Man Behind the Plow . 129 Hemans, Felicia The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers 167 Hillis, Newell Dwight The Woe of Belgium 210 Holland, Josiah Gilbert . . . Gradatim 161 Horn, P. W The Different Kinds of Gossip 42 Hubbard, Elbert A Message to Garcia 250 The Masterpiece of God 293 Hunt, Leigh Abou Ben-Adhem 173 Ingersoll, Robert G A Plumed Knight 199 Ai the Tomb of Napoleon no Jerome, Jerome K Ambition 92 Kipling, Rudyard // 153 Recessional 156 Kleberg, M. E Houston's Crowning Glory. ... 56 Lane, Franklin K The American Spirit Incarnate 221 The Making of our Country's Flag 112 Lee, Fitzhugh The Flag of the Union Forever . 54 Leslie's Weekly War 205 Lieberman, Elias I am an American 50 Lindsey, Ben B The Boy and tfie Juveniie Court 106 Lippard, George The Liberty Bell 59 Lockhart, Will P A Texas Mockingbird 133 Long, L. G The Power of Ideas 287 Longfellow, Henry W The Day is Done 182 Thou, too, Sail Onl 188 Lowell, James Russell A Day in June 176 Mackay, Charles Song of Life 121 Mansfield, Richard The Eagle's Song 151 Malloch, Douglass The West 143 Martin, William Wesley. . .Apple Blossoms 159 Meek, Alexander Beauiort.Land of the South 144 X Contents Author TitU Page Miller, Joaquin Columbus i8o For Those Who Fail 134 The Defense of the Alamo .... 189 Mix, Melville W The Individual as a Power Plant 34 Moses, Bert Efficiency and Riches 291 O'Reilly, Jolin Boyle Little Brown Hands 126 Ousley, Clarence N .Life's Retrospect 302 Parker, Theodore The Children of the Poor 103 Peabody, Francis G Commercialism and Idealism. 276 Phillips, Wendell Revolutions 268 The Eloquence of Daniel O'Connell 232 Poe, Edgar Allan Annabel Lee 186 Powell, E. P Pumpkin Pie 70 Prentiss, S. S New England's Fairest Boast. 79 Progressive Farmer Love Your Farm • 68 Purinton, Edward Earle. . . The Efficient Optimist 247 Rands, W. B The Wonderful World 118 Roosevelt, Theodore America and International Peace 201 Root, Elihu A Pan-American Policy 203 Ross, Edward A What is a Good Man 274 Ross, Sam Walter The House by the Side of the Road 165 Scoville, D. C Truth and Victory 282 Shakespeare, William The Power of Music 158 Shaw, Leslie M Wealth and Aptitude 61 Sheppard, Morris Eulogy of Washington 226 Smith, William Hawley . . . The Other Fellow 49 Smith, Marion Couthouy. ./I Toast 171 Smith, T. F On the Death of David Crockett 174 Sprague, Leslie Willis The Still Undiscovered America 289 Springer, John W My Kingdom for a Horse .... 83 The Pioneers 263 Stafford, Wendell Phillips . Liberty under Law 245 Tennyson, Alfred Crossing the Bar 154 Contents XI Author Title Page Thomas, John M The Man and the Soil 261 Thurston, John Mellen. . . . Shall the Monroe Doctrine be Abandoned? 243 Twain, Mark The Coyote 86 Van Dyke, Henry Texas 148 Vest, George G Man's Best Friend — His Dog. 85 Vincent, John H The Girl in the Kitchen loi Waters, N. McGee A Young Man's Religion and His Father's Faith 295 Wescott, John W The Destiny of Democracy. . . . 197 Wheeler, Benjamin Ide. . . . Christianity and Life 229 Whipple, E. P Books 257 White, Emma Gertrude . . . Night-Fall 193 Whittier, John Greenleaf . .In School Days 123 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler Solitude 192 Williams, Wilson The Greatest Battle Ever Won. 47 Wilson, Woodrow Education and Trade 37 The Mission of A merica 300 ^' U INTRODUCTION HOW TO BECOME A SPEAKER The keynote of success in public speaking is everlastingly keeping at it. People may be born rich, good looking, healthy, but they are not born orators, although the Latin poet said they were. Just as you learn to walk by walking, to swim by swim- ming, so you learn to speak in public by speaking in public. The time when it is necessary to argue the importance of teaching public speaking in schools and colleges is past. The platitude that if you have something to say you will say it well, is losing its significance if it ever had any. Too many people have tried that plan and failed to make tenable any further belief in such a doctrine. Learning to speak in public is very much like learning to swim. You may become a past master of the science of swimming as given in books, but before you can swim you must get into the water. Similarly you may become thoroughly familiar with the science of public speaking, but before you can make a creditable speech you must speak in public. On the other hand, how many people have you heard of who learned to swim by being thrown into the water? A few, we will admit, but generally these few acquire hap-hazard strokes that are un- 2 Introduction natural and difficult to overcome in subsequent ef- forts to develop good form in swimming. Most of them thus treated, however, had to be fished out more dead than alive. When a man without any knowledge of the science of public speaking makes a speech, figuratively he is being thrown heels over head into the audience. Because of his ignorance of the elementary principles of public speaking he is likely to make such a complete dunce of himself that the audience both laughs at and pities him. Usually he flounders through his predicament and comes out so disgusted with himself that he rarely tries again. Some knowledge of technique and a vast amount of practice are absolutely essential to ultimate suc- cess as a public speaker. There is no better way to secure the preliminary training than by means of the declamation. A declamation is a set speech of a more or less serious nature intended for delivery from memory in public. Usage has virtually made the word declama- tion to connote a cutting from an oration written and spoken originally by some person other than the one who is declaiming the selection. It is impossible to mark the exact dividing lines between an oration, a declamation, and a reading. You cannot place your finger on a geometric line and say, "This marks . the end of declamation and the beginning of read- ing and beyond this point is oration." Many selec- tions lie in that twilight zone where characteristic marks are imaginary. Whether a selection is a reading or a declamation, then, depends on th/e Introduction 3 manner of the delivery and the spirit of the piece. Selections that are chosen for purposes of mere en- tertainment, "funny" pieces, dramatic readings, dialogue, impersonations, etc., are not considered declamations. Keep in mind that a declamation should be prevailingly serious in tone and delivered for the purpose of convincing or persuading an audience of certain ideas or truths. HINTS ON MEMORIZING There is no royal road to speedy memorizing. Some people can commit pages of printed matter in a very short while ; others must labor untiringly for an indefinite length of time and still not suc- ceed in getting the selection as well in hand as their more fortunate friends. The explanations for this difference are manifold. It may be a question of method of attack. If it should be, this can be remedied. It may be a question of undeveloped memorizing ability. If it is, the quicker you take the exercise necessary to strengthen the faculty of memory the better off you will be. It may be a question of being born with a poor memory. All that we can say for this is "hard luck." Psychologists teach us that our memories are birthrights and that they cannot be improved. Be this as it may, we know that the ability of the faculty of memory to* receive, and give expression to impressions, ideas, or whatever you choose to call them, can be im- proved. For all practical purposes, this is an im- provement of memory, and will be so considered in 4 Introduction the discussion that follows concerning the faculty of memory. Yon Must Concentrate on Your Subject Everyone knows that concentration on work to be done is absolutely necessary to accomplishment. It is the fundamental secret of memorizing. The bald statement saying that we must concentrate on our task is the personification of truth. But, like many another general statement, it is almost wholly worthless. Like the education of some men, it is so broad that it is shallow. The information that is most needed is hozv to concentrate. Avoid desultory reading. Loose, skimming, rambling reading is most pernicious in its effect on ability to concentrate. It is as injurious in its in- fluence on the mind as a steady diet of pastries is to the body. True, a great many selections are worth no more than a desultory reading, but for the sake of your own memory, do not make this sort of reading your three-meals-a-day. You must have more intensive reading and less extensive. Slow, careful, understanding reading of the selection to be memorized is essential. The selection must be of interest to the declaimer. In order to concentrate on a thing with a minimum of time, you must be interested in your selection. You yourself are the judge of what you like, al- though other people can give valuable suggestions. The things in which you are interested have a direct appeal and when heard or seen make an impression Introduction 5 which can be reproduced easily. Those of only casual interest make no impression. They go in one ear and out the other. "The New South" may appeal to one boy, "At the Tomb of Napoleon" to another, "The Message to Garcia" to a third. De- cidedly it would be unwise for these various in- dividuals to exchange selections. Each one, of course, could commit the other boy's selection, but it would require more effort and more time. Choose the selection that makes a direct appeal to you and then abandon yourself to its enjoyment. Your interest will be intensified thereby and you will cut in two the time for memorizing a given number of words. Good health is necessary. Concentration on your work cannot be most effective when the body is in poor physical condition. It takes a will of unusual power to conceive of a warm July day on a zero December morn. It takes a will of great power to forget about a cramp in the stomach. No will is strong enough to concentrate on two things at once. An attempt to do so results in weakened concen- trative ability. When a person with a physical pain tries to memorize, he is dividing his time between his body and his mind. He may accomplish his task but it will be only with increased effort on his part. Better attack the problem when in good phys- ical condition. Environment. Another element that is closely allied to the physical consideration of memorizing is environment. Unless you have learned to work oblivious of your surroundings you had better seek 6 Introduction a quiet place. Out under the big trees of the forest, say some writers. If you do go out into nature, be sure that you won't be influenced by the singing birds, the glorious sunshine or the beautiful starlight. Individuals differ greatly as to the en- vironment that best suits their peculiarities. For some people it is best to get on a hard-seated, straight-backed chair with a desk in front of them to lean on. It makes little difference then whether there be noise or not. Any unusual noise, of course, like the cry of "Fire," might detract. The essential thing is to have your environment conducive to your most effective work. Use of the will. After the last word has been said in the matter of concentration, the fact remains that the only way to concentrate is to concentrate. You must will to do it and do it. Keep your mind everlastingly on the thing to be done. Every time you find your mind wandering off on a tangent, stop and bring yourself back to your task with a jerk. If you are reading your selection and sud- denly wake up to the realization that you are ''dreaming," go back to the beginning and reread the whole thing. This extra work that you are giving your mind will soon wake it up. It is a little like giving a boy a piece of work to do and if he doesn't do it as you want it done, making hit:n do it over. Your subject may become rebellious at first. Soon stern fate will stare you in the face and the task will be done as specified. It is even so with your mind. Often it must be coerced, but after a time it will become subservient to your xvill. Introduction 7 Your Most Effective Imagery One of the first things to learn in our effort to memorize rapidly is the sense which affords the most efficient medium through which to grasp ideas. Because of our pernicious system of study in the public schools, which demands of the student that he study silently, the ear is little developed. In numerous instances the sense of hearing may be the very one that should be used. If you find that you can get a thing better by hearing it, have some one read the selection to you. Possibly it is best to read it aloud yourself. In this case you will be getting the information through three sources, the mus- cular, the visual, and the auditory, and the chances for quick work will be strengthened thereby. Some teachers insist that pupils get their memorized selections so thoroughly that they can see the exact position of the words on the page. It is never ad- visable to insist on this, although when a piece is memorized in this manner, there is little possibility of forgetting. The act of declaiming then merely becomes an act of reading without the book. It is possible that the easiest way for some to memorize may be by movement. The prevailing sense may be muscular. In this case writing the selection, or the mere act of pronouncing the words will be the best medium. A great many people are never certain that they know a thing thoroughly un- til they reproduce it on paper. The act of writing the memorized words seems to clinch the whole thing. That there is no imagery that is equally good for 8 Introduction all people is very evident. Whatever sense seems best for you is the one for you to utilize and to do your repeating in. For most people this will be the sense of sight. After the selection is mastered, necessarily it must then be spoken aloud and re- peated until you are fully capable of reproducing it orally. Keep in View the Selection as a Whole Commit by ideas, sections and selections and not by words, lines and sentences. Strange as it seems, very few people do this without being told. The natural tendency, even after the thought of the whole selection has been mastered, is to memorize by sentences. This is bad and there is only one other method of memorizing that is more inefficient, namely, to commit mere words, — as if to be able to repeat the words in the selection were memoriz- ing it. The most economical use of time is made when you memorize in large sections. Memorize by thoughts first, not words. After the ideas are your own, the words will come rapidly. In many in- stances the selections in this book can be committed in their entirety. A wise farmer is he who learns not to drive the whole way either to or from the field with an empty wagon. It is a wise plowman who learns the econ- omy of labor and time that results in plowing large fields. There is always economy of time in doing work in large sections. Piddling is a squanderer of time; but that is just what you are doing when Introduction 9 you memorize by lines or sentences. The least that ever should be considered is the paragraph or stanza. Suppose Tennyson's "Song of the Brook" were to be memorized. The average person will read the first stanza several times and then close his book to see if he knows it. If he can repeat the words he goes to the second stanza and gets these words. Then he repeats the first and second and proceeds to the third. He has no trouble with this stanza. In the interval, though, what has become of the other two stanzas? Gone! He will have to look in his book to see what they are. Then he couples all three, adds the fourth, and attempts to give all four; fails, looks in his book, adds the fifth, goes back to the beginning and tries to give all again. By this time the first stanza and perhaps the second, by sheer reason of repetition, can be repeated ver- batim. This process of going back to the beginning after each stanza is learned, and repeating every- thing up to that point, just to see if you know it, is continued up to the end of the poem. Pieces may be memorized by this method, but the waste of time and energy is appalling. It is as if you should be plowing a new piece of land and began your work each morning, not where you quit the previous night, but where you first started. The soil in that part of the field would become as friable as soil that had been tilled for decades. But there would be a gradual gradation from this thoroughly pulverized soil to a soil that was very unfriable. Surely this is not a desirable condition to have in any field. lo Introduction The memorizing of a selection by this nibble-and- repeat method puts your impression of it in the same condition as the new land. The first part is so familiar that you can say it in your sleep; the last part can barely be recalled. Intervening are all sorts of snags that turn up in the process of delivery. One of the fundamental causes of pupils forgetting their selections at the public celebration is this faulty process of committing. Repetition After the selection has been memorized there must be much repetition. No one should attempt to give in public a selection that he had not repeated many times in private. It is only through constant repetition that the words finally become yours. The ideas, if you are wise, are mastered long before you attempt to get the exact words. Always keep in mind that it is the ideas, and not the mere words, which you are to impress first upon your own mind, and finally upon the minds of your hearers. But words are the medium for expressing the ideas, and in your efiforts to get the exact words of the authors, there is nothing more important than repetition, ENUNCIATION Although words, as we have just seen, are only signs of ideas, yet the words as such must be pro- nounced correctly and clearly. Otherwise you will not be understood. In preparing a selection for Introduction II delivery, therefore, attention must be given to cor- rectness and clearness in utterance. Enunciation includes (i) pronunciation, or correctness as to vowel sounds and accent, and (2) articulation, or distinctness in bringing out the consonants and in separating the words. As to pronunciation, be sure that you know the correct sound for each word in your speech. In case of the slightest doubt, consult the dictionary. Don't guess at pronunciations, or be content to repeat wrong sounds that you have heard others give. Remember that pronunciation is simply the practice of the best speakers of our language, and you should not be content with anything short of the best. The need of a clear-cut articulation is apparent, yet in actual practice indistinctness is a very com- mon fault. For the purpose of making yourself heard, distinctness is far more important than mere loudness. And the speaker should remember this: that some slight indistinctness in ordinary conver- sation becomes absolutely inaudible to an audience. That is, the public speaker must exaggerate the articulation of his words in order to have the dis- tinct sounds reach his hearers. So do not mumble or "mouth" your words, or run them in together, but enunciate correctly and clearly the diflferent sounds in each word and separate the words dis- tinctly. As we have said, this is a fundamental requirement. Having mastered the art of enuncia- tion, you are then ready to apply other elements of effective speaking. 12 Introduction DOMINANT KEY IN SPEAKING Key is the predominating pitch or tone in which one speaks. This might be differentiated from other tones that he can use by calhng this one his major key and the others his minor keys. If a piece of music, in which minor chords predominate, be played before an average audience, most people will say that it is good, they suppose, but that it is too deep for them. Some few who are more daring than the rest will intimate that the instru- ment is out of tune. But if the piece that is being played be written B flat major, a minor chord is struck and held for a measure, behold the crowd then. Note the applause at the conclusion of the piece! A selection that was being calmly enjoyed by all suddenly became the C major of the whole performance. Why? Because that one minor chord came at the psychological moment, when the whole audience was being soothed and lulled by tones musical to the untrained ear. It was like the sound of a siren on Broadway. But what was the effect when minor chords were pre- dominant? You already have the answer. What will be the outcome of a declamation that is de- livered in a man's minor key? The answer is self-evident. One thing is certain: you will not take first place in the contest. You can't use minors and expect major results. The average key. The compass of the voice is the range between its highest and lowest limits. Introduction 1 3 The range of the average man's voice is a little more than an octave. Somewhere about the middle of this range is found the dominant or average key. It must not be thought that the habitual tone of the voice is the natural tone. Indeed, many people speak either too high or too low. Both are bad and must be remedied if much public speaking is done. Ease, variety, and strength depend on using the average pitch of the voice. You then have tones above and below, which you can sound when nec- essary. Do not assume that you ought to speak in a bass voice because some orator that you may have heard' used heavy low tones. Physiological conditions may have determined that your key is to be found on the tenor clef. If you use low tones then, your voice will be strained and lack power. Most of the world's great orators have had baritone voices, voices that are neither high nor low. They represent the average or middle register of the human gamut and are the tones that are most pleasing in the human voice. The average key must not be considered as literally the exact mean between the two extremes. This is a mono- tone and its continued use will damn your speak- ing. It means this tone, and the easy flexible vari- ations, though slight, that accompany it in speaking. No instrument, least of all the voice, can be played in a single key. There must be variety. Variation is restful to both speaker and hearer. It is pleasure-giving. Those whom you would influence you must first please, and those whom you would 14 Introduction please you must not madden with a monotonous delivery. Adaptation of the voice to the room. Every room has a key of its own ; that is, has power of augmenting some sounds and confusing others, dependent upon the size of the room and its acoustic properties generally. The experienced speaker learns to detect and to adopt his key to the particular auditorium in which he speaks. He has plenty of time to do this too, for his speech is generally an hour long and the first five minutes may be taken to get his correct bearings. For the declaimer who has only five or ten minutes, the problem is altogether different. If possible, he should rehearse his selection, at least once, in the room in which it is to be given. When this can- not be done, he will have to gauge his key and volume by his experience in other rooms and then listen and look for the effect. If you see people in the back of the room turning one ear to you and wrinkling their faces, speak louder; if you hear your words strike glancing blows on the walls of the room, speak more slowly and with less volume; if you hear your voice growing thinner as it goes out over the audience, and notice some people raise their eyebrows, use a lower tone. Especially avoid, when speaking to a large crowd, the high con- strained pitch. This soon becomes painful to the hearers and the speaker. Be sure to start on your natural key; even a lower key is not objectionable. It is much easier to go up than to come down. Besides, it takes five or ten minutes to discover Introduction 15 that you are speaking too high and by that time your declamation will have been finished. EMPHASIS Emphasis is closely interwoven with the other essentials of public speaking. It is the 'art of giving to each word its due importance, and con- sists of any means that the speaker may employ whereby particular attention is called to words of special significance. This may be done by speak- ing the words louder or softer, higher or lower, pausing before or after, or both, lengthening the sound, increasing or decreasing the movement, changing the quality of the voice, in short any variation of any kind that will attract attention. The fundamental, the basic idea underlying all emphasis is variatioo. It must be different from the ordinary, the common run. A white woman walking up the street with a white man causes only a casual glance from the passers-by. But a white woman walking up the street with -i black man attracts attention. It is exceptional. It is variation. It is to the work-a-day world just what emphasis is to the common delivery of a declama- tion. Basis of good emphasis. Like all other elements of expression, this matter of emphasis is the double work of mind and voice. You cannot em- phasize a word unless the mind first perceives its importance for the purpose of the thought-expres- sion. The primary requisite, then, is a vivid, vigor- 1 6 Introduction ous mental concept; the rest is to have the voice give expression to that concept. Stress. The most common method of emphasiz- ing a word is by a relatively strong accent or stress. The Century dictionary defines "emphasis" as "a special stress of the voice given to the ut- terance of a word." If this were all there is to emphasis, the person who thunders out all-im- portant words would be a good speaker. Em- phasis is more than mere accent. It is uncovering the idea most effectively. If by stress you accom- plish this, then you emphasize well. But stress and stress alone will not suffice. "That voice all modes of passion can express Which marks the proper word with proper stress ; But none emphatic can that speaker call Who lays an equal emphasis on all." Very often the most effective way to emphasize is to speak an important idea in a greatly reduced tone, particularly after you have been emphasizing by the stress. The contrast will get results. Vari- ation, the bed-rock principle of emphasis, will have been introduced. Pitch. Pitch is the relative position of a vocal tone. It is here used as synonymous with inflec- tion. The general rule is, that when the thought is incomplete at a given pause, the voice should rise; and when the thought is complete, the voice should fall in pitch. But aside from this general rule, the inflections of the voice, in natural and effective speaking, are infinite. It is natural in conversation and in public speaking to change the Introduction 17 pitch of successive syllables, words, or word groups. Listen to the voice of a child as it talks. The tones run up and down the range of the voice in perfect harmony with the change of thought. Then listen to the same child reading its lesson. What do you hear? The dull, lifeless, monotonous repetition of the artificial sounds that he acquired from the one who first taught him to read. The change of pitch which becomes a stumbling block for the child reader is the same offender in giving declamations. When you converse in the family circle, you speak pleasantly; when you converse in an auditorium you speak wretchedly. Pause. One of the most forceful and efifective methods of bringing out the idea is by the use of the pause. In conversation one naturally makes a pause before saying something important, and then waits for it to "to soak in." The same principle must be carried into your declamation work. Without practice the declaimer is prone to forget all about the natural way a person might emphasize the ideas of the selection. Notice how effectively the pause is used in the following sentences : (a) A thing of beauty — is a joy forever. (b) Man — dies; the nation — lives. (c) The one rule for attaining perfection in any art is — practice. (d) In tliis — God's world — dost thou think there is no justice? (e) To speak distinctly — is to speak well. i8 Introduction ({) The days of pompous eloquence — are gone by. Time. To take approximately the same time in speaking each word, whether important or unim- portant, is to show an utter lack of discrimination. More time should be taken to utter the words that carry the principal idea ; expand — dwell upon — the important words. Read Lincoln's Gettys- burg Speech and note how the element of time enters into the proper development of the ideas. Movement. The rate of speed with which a series of words or sentences is uttered is move- ment; while time is the relative prolongation of a single word. The rate of movement of a selec- tion depends upon the sentiment to be expressed. If lively, excited, joyous, or impulsive, it should be rapid; if sad, solemn, important or ponderous, it should be slow ; if natural poise or state of mind be undisturbed, a moderate rate of movement will be appropriate. The larger the auditorium the slower the movement, of course. The numer- ous handicaps that one finds in a large room must be taken into account. Quality of the voice. The character or quality of the tones, the purity or impurity of the voice, cannot be overestimated. "A good voice has a charm in speech as in song; oftentimes of itself enchains attention." A clear, resonant, musical voice is surely an enviable possession. If you hare not such a voice, it behooves you to take steps to- ward making it such. Will to have a stronger, more Introduction 19 manageable and pleasing voice, and you will have gone a long way toward acquiring such a voice. Then supplement your act of the zt'ill by systematic practice of some simple directions that are given in standard texts on public speaking for overcom- ing faults of voice. The quality of tone used indicates the condition of mind and body. In all declamation work the spirit of the selection should engulf you completely. Then there should be little difficulty in getting the proper quality of voice. Rules of emphasis. The paramount rule to be observed in emphasis is: Read or speak as you would talk. Unfortunately, this rule is only occa- sionally observed. The following rules may be helpful in correcting common faults : 1. The key-word of a sentence should be dis- covered and emphasized. 2. Subordinate the modifying or qualifying words, phrases or clauses. 3. Ideas compared or contrasted should be em- phasized. 4. Words once emphasized should not be em- phasized again unless repeated for the purpose of emphasis. 5. In a repetition of words, phrases, or clauses, in similar construction, seek variety in emphasis. 6. Distinguish between emphasis of a single word and that which should be distributed to the whole of a phrase or clause. That is, avoid the sing-song or "orational" style. 20 Introduction PHYSICAL EXPRESSION Thus far we have been treating of the voice as a medium of expression, but one also speaks with the body. If this were not so, a speaker might just as well address his audience from behind a screen. In describing O'Connell's eloquence the poet says that "his pure and eloquent blood spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought that one might almost say his body thought." Every declaimer, every speaker, must always re- member that he is speaking from the time he rises from his seat until he has again returned to it. His approach to the audience, his position before the audience, his attitude toward the audience, his fa- cial expression, his gestures, his physical earnest- ness, all have a very important bearing on his effectiveness as a speaker. Approach to Audience When a boy is introduced by the presiding officer, he should rise promptly, address the chairman, walk firmly toward the ■ front of the stage, ad- dress his audience, and begin his selection. All the time that is required should be taken, but not more than is required. A hurried, quick, jerky beginning indicates nervousness. A slow, loose- jointed, slouchy beginning indicates laziness and uncertainty, and has a most unfortunate effect on the crowd. Walk as if you were not afraid; but do not walk as if you were cock-sure of yourself, Introduction 21 daring the whole crowd to meet you. A swagger- ing, undignified, spiritless carriage shows that the boy has not keyed himself up to the business in hand. Above all, keep your mind on what you are doing, not on what you are going to do, and do not let any side attraction carry your thoughts away. Position before Audience There is no position before the audience that can be assumed with military precision. In train- ing a company of soldiers, it is very easy for the captain to say to his men, "Heels together, heads up, eyes front," and have every man take the posi- tion com.manded. If in your declamation work you affect what is considered by the great public speakers a correct position, you are more than likely to have a stiff, awkward, mechanical pose. No suggestions concerning the proper pose of a speaker should be interpreted literally. Season the directions that follow with your own discretion and they will serve you well. In general your posititDn should be such that your weight will rest slightly on one foot, with the other foot a little in front. The distance apart your feet should be, depends directly on your size. If you are of the "Slim Jim" type, then a wide base will be altogether ridiculous. If you have a Falstaffian figure, a wide base is neces- sary. Use your own common sense, and try to stand in an easy, natural poise. Face the audience 22 Introduction squarely. Don't move too much, and don't hold the same position too long. Let your stage walk- ing occur when nothing very important is being said, or between paragraphs of your declamation. !Move about gracefully, never stealthily. Work your way toward the front of the stage diagonally, rarely straightforward. Do not rise on your toes or heels. Do not hold your arms stiff or bent, or your elbows akimbo. Generally you should begin your declamation with your arms hanging easily by the side of your body. Never put your hands in your pockets or clench your fists or make your fingers rigid. These things indicate nervousness and lack of mental and physical control. You must not think of your arms and legs. All that think- ing should have been done long before you ever get to the final contest. It is too late then to think seriously about your physical appearance. By that time, if you have not solved the problem of your physical bearing, you are in a "parlous state" in- deed. Attitude toward Audience A boy's attitude toward the audience determines very often the decision of the judges. If he be flippant, indifferent, undignified or funny, most judges will be antagonized. They will say to them- selves that if he has no more respect than that for his audience, he does not deserve to win. If he wants to make the best impression, he must be sym- pathetic, keep his audience in view, and speak to the whole crowd. A boy who is spiritless or elocution- Introduction 23 ary, or who flirts with individuals in the audience, will lose control of his auditors. Affectation, surli- ness, indifference, lack of dignity, all are cardinal sins of the public speaker. Facial Expression "The eyes reveal the soul, the mouth the flesh, the chin stands for purpose, the nose means will. But over and behind all is the fleeting something we call 'expression.' This something is not set or fixed ; it is fluid as the ether, changeful as the clouds that move in mysterious majesty across the surface of a summer sky, subtle as the sob of rustling leaves, — too faint at times for human ears, — elusive as the ripples that play hide and seek over the bosom of the olacid lake." It is that "fleeting Something we call 'expres- sion' " in its final analysis which lies at the bottom of all public speaking. Your passion, your feelings, your emotions, are pictured on your countenance. If there are no pictures there, the audience will have a slim chance of listening to a reputable decla- mation from you. No audience will respond to a passive, lifeless, "skim-milk" expression. Put life into your eyes, but do not let them play hide and seek with your eyebrows. Do not gaze at the floor, or the ceiling, or the walls. Look the audience squarely in the face. Don't make faces or twist your mouth in fifty different shapes and ways. Many a man has been flattered to believe that what he said causp<^ the crowd to laugh, when it was just the 24 Introduction ugly face that he made that caused the laughter. Don't bob your head up and down like a jumping- jack ; neither should you hold it too stiff nor in one position all the time. In passing, don't do any- thing with your face or head that will attract undue attention. If you want to see what your face looks like while you are declaiming, practise before a mirror. Gestures Reference is now made to gesture In its nar- rower sense, the use of the arms and the hands as an aid in emphasizing or suggesting the thought. More nonsense has been written about gesture in manuals of elocution than about any other one thing connected with delivery, and yet the problem remains. Used sparingly and effectively, gestures are a powerful aid to public speaking. Any live speaker feels an impulse at times to use his arms and hands and the problem is to see that these movements work themselves out along graceful and effective lines. The first effort of the student usually needs to be directed towards limbering up his arms and body, avoiding all rigidity, and cultivating the passive and elastic state. In general, gestures should be made from the chest as a center. The impulse should go from the speaker out through the upper arm, forearm, wrist, and hand to the audience. The arm itself in al- most any gesture is slightly curved, more so of course in suggestive gestures than in strongly em- Introduction 25 phatic ones. Gestures being a sign language, it should precede vocal description. Since the em- phatic gesture simply supplements the vocal em- phasis, it is given simultaneously with vocal utter- ance. For the purpose of the public speaker, as distinguished from the actor or the dramatic reader, the direct emphatic gesture should chiefly be used. Avoid gesturing at the beginning or at the very close of a speech. Do not gesture to yourself or towards yourself, that is, strike attitudes with your hands clasped, or hand on heart, etc. Avoid see- .saw gestures, that is, beginning a gesture with one hand and then bringing in the other or z'ice versa. Don't use too many gestures. This is worse than none at all. In fact, certain selections require very few or no gestures. But whether gesturing or not, don't stick your thumbs and fingers out as if they were sticks. Neither should you close them as if they were glued to your palms. Finally, do not gesture without an impulse to gesture. After all, this is the conclusion of the whole matter. At- tempting to put on gesture from the outside has lost many more declamatory contests than it ever won. Taboo the gesture that you cannot feel. If you feel like making a gesture, make it. Then criticise yourself and get other people to criticise you. But don't let gesture be thrust upon you. Remember that artificial, mechanical gestures are far worse than none at all. 26 Introduction Physical Earnestness By physical earnestness is meant having the body awake. It is the quality referred to by Webster when he speaks of "the high purpose, the firm re- solve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object." To be thus urged onward, the whole man wide awake, is an element, or an accompaniment, of eilfective speaking. Mental and emotional states, we know, react upon the physical, and vice versa. It is a contradiction in nature for one to be mentally and emotionally awake and physically asleep, yet with speakers such is often the case. Remember that you must not only be in earnest, but that your earnestness must be apparent to your audience. STAGE-FRIGHT It is quite impossible to diagnose that common malady known as stage- fright. Usually it afHicts the speaker during the first few seconds, or first few minutes, of his speech. Most speakers have it, in varying degrees. Preachers tell us, for exam- ple, that even after long experience, they never begin their weekly sermons without the most intense nervousness. Daniel Webster was so nervous in his first effort at speaking that he had to take his seat without finishing. Gladstone said that he was often troubled with self -consciousness in the begin- ning of an address. Introduction 27 An amusing feature of this matter is, that young speakers are apt to think that they are the only ones that become seriously embarrassed. And right here is the lesson : trained speakers learn to control their embarrassment. It should be remem- bered that a nervous tension, if brought under con- trol, may prove a help rather than a hindrance to the speaker, for it puts a nerve-force into his delivery that might otherwise be wanting. How attain that control? There is no way but through practice in speaking to audiences. Continued prac- tice, if it does not eliminate all embarrassment, gradually does reduce the earlier terrors. The practice should, of course, be directed along right lines. Nervousness may be aided much by a feel- ing of mental and physical preparedness. Have the speech thoroughly in hand long enough beforehand to give both mind and body a rest. Students often make the mistake of worrying over a speech up to the very moment of its delivery. This method is suicidal. Even speakers of experience sometimes fail to realize how much the success or failure of a speech depends upon physical conditions. To undergo the severe nervous strain of public speak- ing, mind and body should be fresh. The day pre- ceding an athletic event the trained contestant either rests or exercises very moderately. So, if a speech is to be given at night, say, the speaker should wholly lay it aside during the afternoon and go for a walk or go to sleep — do anything but exhaust faculties that will be needed in the evening. Control is also effected through the communica- 28 Introduction tive, conversational attitude, as one rises to speak, and by an exercise of the will. Again, self-confi- dence should be cultivated. Self-fear is quite as often a cause of stage- fright as is a fear of the audi- ence. Encourage a feeling that you and your audience are getting on well together. Self-confi- dence is not undue conceit, or "brag, brass, and bluster"; it is having the courage of one's convic- tions. It is that self-reliance which enables one to rise to the occasion. It is that confidence which leads the speaker to say to himself, "I know what I want to say, and I am able to say it." STYLE OF DELIVERY As to manner of delivery, the one capital rule is : Be natural. That is, speak to your audience as you would talk to an individual. Of course, in public speaking the voice must be given more force and carrying power than in ordinary conversation, in order to make itself heard and felt by an audience. But fundamentally the best style of delivery is earnest, heightened conversation; it is "the con- versational raised to its highest power"; it is that manner of delivery wherein the speaker's in- dividuality speaks along with his words. Never imitate another's style of delivery. This may be an excellent style for another, but never for you. In short, "Be natural," and make your delivery simply direct, strong talk. Finally, as was said at the outset, success in public speaking comes from "everlastingly keep- I tit ro due Hon 29 ing at it." Practice is the main thinr. So practice faithfully on the elements of delivery we have been considering. Drill in declamation is the best way to begin, since this will naturally lead to the higher forms of delivery wherein you use your own words in extemporaneous speaking and debating. Speak to an imaginary audience. Henry Clay used stumps and trees to practice on. Do not be afraid of drill- ing too much. Students sometimes talk of getting "stale" when they do not even enunciate clearly. To form better habits of speech is your object, and new habits are formed only by conscious attention and continued practice. "Trifles make perfection," said Michael Angelo of his art, "and perfection is no trifle." Then after faithful practice, when the occasion for public delivery arrives, put your tech- nique in the background, remembering that "the highest art is to conceal art." Your previous prac- tice in technique will unconsciously repeat itself ; and in the final effort put in the foreground mental and moral earnestness, and send your message home to the minds and hearts of your hearers "with all the resources of the living man." Then you will really speak. PART I PROSE AND POETICAL SELECTIONS For Intermediate and Grammar Grades Squandering the Voice Henry Ward Beecher Thit telection is from Beecher's celebrated lecture on Oratory. Try to illustrate the thought expressed by voicing the ideas in live, clear, musical tones. Be sure to bring out in round, full tones the climax contained in the last sentence. No gestures are needed in this declamation: let the voice alone do the work of expression. How much squandering there is of the voice ! How little there is of the advantage 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 the sweetness of voice in the mother, in the father, in the household ! The music of no chorded instruments 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. How many men 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 who, when in company among their kind, are exceedingly unapt in their methods. Having none of the secret instruments by which the 33 34 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them elements of nature may be touched, having no skill and no power in this direction, they stand as machines before Hving, sensitive men, A man may be a master before an instrument; only the in- strument is dead ; and he has the living hand ; and out of that dead instrument what wondrous har- mony 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 audi- ence be electrified when the chords are living and the man is alive, and he knows how to touch them with divine inspiration ! The Individual as a Power Plant Melville W. Mix This is an up-to-date, straight-from-the-shoulder business talk. Tell the illustrative story in a perfectly natural manner; then, in the application contained in the last paragraph, make your delivery simply direct, strong talk. Once during the argument in a lawsuit, in which Lincoln represented one party, the lawyer on the other side was a glib talker but not reckoned as deeply profound or much of a thinker. He would say anything to a jury which happened to enter his head. Lincoln, in his address to the jury, re- ferring to this, said: "My friend on the other side is all right, or would be all right, were it not for the peculiarity I am about to chronicle. His habit — of which you have witnessed a very painful specimen in his argument to you in this case — of reckless assertion and statements without grounds, need not be imputed to him as a moral fault, or as Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 35 telling of a moral blemish. He can't help it. For reasons which, gentlemen of the jury, you and I have not the time to study here, as deplorable as they are surprising, the oratory of the gentleman completely suspends all action of his mind. The moment he begins to talk, his mental operations cease. I never knew of but one thing which com- pared with my friend in this particular. That was a small steamboat. Back in the days when I per- formed my part as a keel-boatman, I made the acquaintance of a trifling little steamboat which used to bustle and pufif and wheeze about the Sangamon River. It had a five-foot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, and every time it whistled it stopped." There must always be some balance in a steam plant ; for the blowing of the whistle all the time, however much pressure there may be behind it, won't get anywhere. And so it is with this won- derfully contrived power plant made up of the various parts of the human body. If the boiler isn't big enough to do the useful work relative between our steaming and whistling ability, we are sure to fail. If we get physically knocked out, we are not on the job at the required time, we don't produce the business we should, and we may cause a loss to some one else through personal deficiency and incapacity that we could control if we would realize to what extent we have that power within ourselves. You often meet men who give you the impression of a runaway power plant — bustling, storming around like an engine without 36 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them a governor, blowing away at every joint, making noise like one hundred miles an hour and going about ten. Sometimes you wonder if they are not running backwards. Remember this: You are the engineer of your own steam plant; you must direct the forces there generated ; you must look out for the losses, for the direction thereof into channels and through media that produce motion, power, and thus per- form good work. As you fail, the boiler inspector may appear on the job and condemn you for the purpose employed and put you on the slide to the junk dealer. Do you want that to happen? Is it not strange that in youth, especially, we do not give more careful and consistent attention to the con- dition of our own power plant? Think about it. Don't feed the engine poor fuel. Tighten up oc- casionally the loose screws and bolts. Keep the machine well oiled. Don't wear it out in "joy rides," but give it proper rest as well as proper action. In short, let us give due attention to keep- ing ourselves physically fit. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 37 Education and Trade Woodrow Wilson This is taken from a speech delivered at a banquet of the National League of Commission Merchants, New York, January, 1912. Get on good terms with your audience by bringing out the humor con- tained in the opening of this speech. Do not fail to make a rather long but natural pause after giving the limerick. The paragraph next to the last is largely argumentative, — an appeal to the intellect, — and should be spoken accordingly. The last paragraph is an ap- peal to the emotions, and should be delivered in moderate to slow rate, with a round, full — "orotund" — tone. In facing this audience, there are two reasons why I am embarrassed : one is, that there is so much to attract the eye, and the other is that it distracts the thought. I am reminded by contrast of a limerick which runs as follows : For beauty I am not a star, There are others more handsome by far, But my face, I don't mind it, For I am behind it. It's the people in front that I jar. However, I venture to offer some suggestions on the subject assigned me, "Business and Politics." Do you realize what business life in America means? It means the constant readjustment to new conditions. And in order to keep our civiliza- tion in repair, in order to keep our trade good and to keep our industries vigorous, we have got to change them every month of our lives. Every- thing depends upon some nice process for which you have to employ experts, and you must look to the scientific schools of the country to enable you fllGG 38 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them to advance a single inch. Yoii have got to hire training; you have got to employ knowledge; you have got to give salaries to science in order to accomplish anything in America ; and now you are finding, those of you w^ho are manufacturers, that you did not even know how to keep your cost sheets; that you can not tell what a particular division of your business costs you, and whether it pays its own expenses or not; that you have not yet studied those niceties of readjustment, those niceties of management, which mean the difference between big or little profits or no profits at all, and that from this time on you have to employ those brains which devote themselves to the nice- ties of detail. Do you know who are the leaders of mankind? The leaders of mankind are those who lift their vision from the dusty road under their feet and look forward, and though they are determined to keep a firm footing upon the road they neverthe- less gladden their eyes with the illuminated distance, to those regions which seem to rise and rise, level by level, promising happier days for mankind, easier lives, more sympathy, more co-operation, more perfect mutual understanding, more common trust, more enthusiasm, more partisanship of what is good, more hatred of what is not good, more contempt for shams, more confidence in realities* They will redeem us from our errors and our mis- takes, will show us that to open our eyes is to enlarge our trust, and will convince us that to lead men upon a great process of change is to keep Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 39 open the love in their hearts in order to travel the road of perfection which comes only with applying ourselves to the things that are better ; or, better, giving over to forgetfulness the things that are wrong. The Home and the Republic Henry W. Grady This selection, like several others from Grady's speeches, has long been a favorite for declaiming. Vivid imagination and sustained emotion are necessary for effective delivery. Pause and change at the beginning of each paragraph. The scenes and incidents that make up the composite picture of the Capitol, on the one hand, and the country home, on the other, might be suggested by gestures here and there, but for the most part the eyes will be the best medium for gesture. See the pictures you are describing, and then your hearers will be quite sure to see them also. Not long since I made a trip to Washington, and as I stood on Capitol Hill my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies, and the Treasury, and the courts, and Congress and the President, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down upon a better sight than that majestic home of the Republic that had taught the world its best lessons in liberty. Two days afterwards I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man,, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with great big trees, encircled in meadow and fields rich with the promise of harvest. The 40 Whining Declamations-How to Speak Them fragrance of pink and hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the aroma of the orchard and the garden, and resonant with the cluck of poultry and the hum of bees. Inside was quiet, cleanli- ness, thrift and comfort. Outside there stood my friend — master of his land and master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man, happy in the heart and home of his son. And as they started to their home the hands of the old man went down on the young man's shoulders, laying there the unspeakable blessing of an hon- ored and grateful father, and ennobling it with the Knighthood of the Fifth commandment. And I saw the night come down on that home, falling gently as from the wings of an unseen dove, and the old man, while a startled bird called from the forest, and the trees shrilled with the cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky, got the family around him and, taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, while he closed the record of that simple day by calling down God's blessing on that family and that home. And while I gazed, the vision of the marble Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I said: "O, surely, here in the hearts of the people are lodged at last the strength and responsibilities of this government, the hope and promise of this Republic." Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 41 Have an Oil Can Always with You L. M. Cross A purely conversational style is best suited to this selection. Give the quoted conversations naturally and in the way each char- acter spoke. Be sure to pause long enough at the end of the first paragraph to let the audience get the point. The other day, so the newspapers reported, an express train was speeding along almost as though on lightning's wing when all of a sudden the train, acting as if it were writhing in a sudden violent pain, and with much wrenching and a terrific jar, came to a rather violent stop. "What's the trouble?" every passenger involuntarily asked. "A collision? Run over anybody?" A number of people, with the brakeman and conductor in the lead, hurried to an exit, and found it was a hot box. ''What is the cause?" we inquired of the conductor. "Too much friction and not enough oil," he replied. In the passing journey of life, when everything seems to be running along smootlily, some thought- less word is uttered and it is angrily replied to, and there is a sudden, violent stop of that peace- ful journey. What is the cause? Too much friction. A little oil poured at the proper moment would have pre- vented the trouble. Dr. Parkhurst tells of a workman who was in a trolley car one day. As the door opened and shut, it squeaked. The workman quickly rose from his seat, and taking a little can from his pocket 42 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them dropped some oil upon the offending spot, saying as he sat down : "I always carry an oil can in my pocket, for there are so many squeaky things in this world where a little oil will help," Dr. Parkhurst, commenting, says that love is an anti- irritant, and that we can soften many attacks and prevent unpleasant and jarring frictions if we will only speak the kindly word at the right time. Let us all carry little oil cans with us everywhere and be quick to apply the remedy to squeaking, jarring situations whenever they may arise. The Different Kinds of Gossip P. W. Horn This selection is just a plain, direct, strong talk, and should be spoken accordingly. Be sure to place the emphasis so you bring out the thought, and do not fail to pause and change at the beginning of each paragraph, so that each new topic is properly introduced. There are several different kinds of gossip, and each one may b'e typified by some member of the animal creation. First take the goose. The goose gabbles and hisses, not because she is malicious, but because she has nothing better to do ; and because she is a goose. Next comes the mosquito. The mosquito buzzes and bites not because he is vindictive, but because he is too small to do anything else. It is for the mosquito type of intellect that the newspapers of a certain type print gossipy articles about the actress >)r the divorcee, telling the color of the shoes and / Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 43 stockings she wears, the way she has her eggs fried for breakfast, or the kind of poodle she prefers. Then comes the old hen type of gossip. The hen ruffles up her feathers and pecks at anything that may come about, not on account of any innate bloodthirstiness, but merely because she feels cross, and on general principles. Next we have the buzzard. He circles around any place in which he hopes or imagines there may be something rotten, merely because his taste leads him to love things that are rotten. Last comes the snake. He coils himself out of sight in the grass and lies in wait that he may sud- denly strike some passer-by and fill his system with the poison that is natural in a snake's fang. Of course, if one deliberately choose, he has a perfect right to act the goose, or to be a mosquito, an old hen, a buzzard or a snake. There is no way in the world to prevent the goose from gabbling, the mosquito from buzzing, or the rest of the ani- mals from acting out their nature. Still, there are drawbacks. The goose must not complain if she is considered a goose. The mos- quito must expect to be slapped at, and finally to be swatted. The old hen will not find a welcome in polite society. The buzzard can never hope to rank as a gentleman. The snake must not be surprised if sometimes a heel is placed upon his head. The next time, when in the course of a gossipy conversation, you have gone so far as to say an unkind thing about some brother man or some sister woman, stop for a moment and classify your 44 IP'inning Declamations-How to Speak Them remark. Was it the gabble of the goose, the buzz of the mosquito, the pecking of an old hen, the belching of a buzzard, or the striking of the snake in the grass? One of these, it is bound to have been. Perhaps if you can decide which one, it may help you to be more considerate next time. The Little Old School of the Home Irving Bacheller This is an extract from a speech at the annual banquet of the New England Society, 1913. The sly humor running through the first half of this declamation should be appreciated and expressed. Next to the last paragraph begins the application of the story. Pause at this point and express the greater seriousness as you begin "to point a moral," and the seriousness should be sustained to the end. When I was eight years old I became a candi- date for President of the United States. The nomination was a genuine surprise, for I had made no effort to secure it. As a matter of fact there were many things that looked better to me ; I would have preferred the position of bass drum- mer in the band at the county fair, but there were those who thought they knew what I wanted better than I did. We lived in the land of Silas Wright, who spent more time declining honors than did other statesmen in trying to get them. His party wanted him to run for President, but he wouldn't. My father said that all I had to do was to be as good and as great as Silas Wright and my elec- tion was sure. Governor Wright had been dead for twenty years. I soon learned that he was the Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 45 greatest man that ever died — there is no distinction like that. I had no sooner got command of the theory and technique of one of his virtues than he assumed another. When I had acquired his gift of working all day and studying a part of the night, they told me that he always spent an hour in the garden, pulling weeds before breakfast. I began to understand why he was dead and also why he was so talented. Everybody was watching me and nobody was watching Silas. By and by I discovered that there were other candidates for President in the neighborhood. The Silas game had also been tried on them. We candidates got together one day over in Howard's grove and dis- cussed the issues. We were sick of the campaign — too many weeds in it. We all withdrew and ran away from school and spent a joyful after- noon at the old swimmin' hole. Next morning I came downstairs at breakfast time and found that the teacher had been there. I observed a general air of depression in the family. My father said in a kindly tone: "I thought that you intended to be President." I told him that I had withdrawn. Then he said: "Will you please come with me?" I went. It was a beautiful summer morning, as calm as he. A song sparrow tried to hold up my heart. A squirrel looked down at me from a tree-top as if he had a hole to recommend. I followed in silence through the garden walk and out under the orchard boughs. Not a word was spoken. My father stopped and cut a sprout from 46 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them one of the trees and then another and trimmed them as he walked. He stopped and whittled, looking down thoughtfully. I stood near him. After a moment of silence he said: "I suppose you know the object of this meeting." I admitted that I did. Suddenly I heard a boy yelling down in the valley. It was the voice of an ex-candidate. In a minute he knew that I was with him. After all, what did this striving to be angels and Presidents amount to? Not one of us was ever elected. Such was the little repubhc of the home when I was a boy. It had its chief magistrate, its small legislature, its department of justice. It had a little school of its own in which men were made. Two things were taught in it — loyalty and faith. Loyalty to the home and its ideals; faith in one's self. , We've no more use for that little school. Too small ! too much trouble ! we are so busy mak- ing money and spending it we can't bother with making men. We educate our children by the thousand and no longer by the one. It's cheaper. Our learning, like our living, is syndicated. There are six men who have done all the big things accomplished in America since 1850. They are : Commodore Vanderbilt, who gave us the railroad system ; Abraham Lincoln, our greatest statesman ; Thomas A. Edison, our greatest in- ventor; Horace Greeley, our greatest journalist; Samuel L. Clemens, our most original novelist; Walt Whitman, our greatest poet. Every one of them born in a cabin and mother made — educated Winning D eclamations-H ow to Speak Them 47 in the little school of the home and only there — never went to college ! I mention this not in dis- paragement of the college, but only that the little old school of the home shall have its proper credit. The Greatest Battle Ever Won Wilson Williams The combined sentiment and rhythm of poetry are pleasing to the ear. Orators are therefore wont to close their speeches with an appropriate poetic quotation. Notice how the stanzas quoted at the close of this selection re-enforce the theme — self-mastery — and form a climax of the whole. Special effort should be made to deliver the lines in rather slow rate and strong, round, full tones, at the same time not failing to place the emphasis so as to bring out the thought. It was not on the bloody fields of Austerlitz or Waterloo, where Napoleon won and was van- quished; it was not at Gettysburg where the great- est struggle of modern warfare was witnessed ; it was in none of the titanic battles in which the Russians were overthrown by the Japanese ; it was not at Verdun or Lemberg: no, it is not on the fields of carnage and strife that the greatest battles of human history are fought and won, but it is in the depths of the human spirit itself that this victory is wrought, for the wisest of men has. truly affirmed, "Greater is he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." The noblest standard ever erected had em- blazoned on it these stirring words, "I conquer myself !" Self-mastery is the greatest as well as the rarest of virtues. Alexander the Great, whonj his enemies could not check in his renowned con- quest of the world, was he not overthrown and 48 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them conquered by his own appetites and passions, the enchantment of the wine cup? Was it not the quenchless ambition of Napoleon's spirit that drove him to leave Elba's shores and again take up arms against a combined Europe? Did it not lead to his final overthrow and complete defeat? How many more less eminent but truly as human as the two great masters of warfare just named, have been lured and engulfed forever in their own pas- sionate desires and selfish hates? What are riches and honors to men who are the slaves of their own passions? What the grandeur of a throne to him who is dethroned by ambition and lust? How long or how well we live "not years but actions tell." He lives best and wisest who, while ruling his own spirit, overcomes every obstacle in the pathway to a noble and worthy success, and wins a place in the hearts of his fellows not by the conquest of the sword, but by the sweet min- istries of love and tender regard. Let the motive- power be not mere brute force, not the military spirit, but rather the spirit breathed in these lines by the poet Henley: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell touch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. — Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 49 Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate. How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate : I am the captain of my soul. The Other Fellow William Hawley Smith Go rather slowly through the first paragraph, dwelling upon— emphasizing — such words as "yourself" and "the Other Fellow," so that your hearers will get the point of this talk at the outset. Then try to speak what the Other Fellow says just as you imagine he would say it in each case. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that in every one of us there are two persons. First, there is yourself, and then there is the Other Fel- low ! Now one of these is all the time doing things, and the other sits inside and tells what he thinks about the performance. Thus, I do so-and- so, act so-and-so, seem to the world so-and-so; but the Other Fellow sits in judgment on me all the time. I may tell a lie, and do it so cleverly that the people may think that I have done or said a great or good thing; and they may shout my praises far and wide. But the Other Fellow sits inside, and says, "You lie! you He! you're a sneak, and you know it !" I tell him to shut up, to hear what the people say about me; but he only continues to re- 50 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them peat over and over again, "You lie ! you lie ! you're a sneak, and you know it!" Or, again, I may do a really noble deed, but perhaps be misunderstood by the public, who may persecute me and say all manner of evil against me, falsely ; but the Other Fellow will sit inside and say, "Never mind, old boy! It's all right! Stand by !" And I would rather hear the "well done" of the Other Fellow than the shouts of praise of the whole world; while I would a thousand times rather that the people should shout and hiss them- selves hoarse with rage and envy, than that the Other Fellow should sit inside and say, "You lie! you lie! you're a sneak, and you know it!" "I am an American" Elias Liebermann This is adapted from a poem in Everybody's Magazine for July, 1916. Since this selection requires strong feeling and force through- out, especial care should be used in pausing and changing the delivery — dropping for a moment to the conversational style — at the transitional paragraphs when each boy is introduced. The Great War in Europe has made a strong call for the exercise of American patriotism. And why should not Americans be patriotic? If the Russian, under a despotic government, thinks that the Czar is in very truth divine; if the German believes that his Fatherland is of more value than life itself; if the Englishman thrills at the thought X)f the British Empire; if the Irishman knows no Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 51 country as dear as the Emerald Isle; if the China- man pities everybody born outside the Flowery Kingdom, and the Japanese give their oole devo- tion to the Land of the Rising Sun — shall not we, in this land of glorious liberty, have some thought and love of country? At a meeting of school children in Madison Square Garden, New York City, to celebrate the Fourth of July, one boy, a descendant of native Americans, spoke as follows : "I am an American. My father belongs to the Sons of the Revolution ; my mother, to the Colonial Dames. One of my ancestors pitched tea over- board in Boston Harbor ; another stood his ground with Warren ; another hungered with Washington at Valley Forge. My forefathers were American in the making : they spoke in her council halls ; they died on her battle-fields ; they commanded her ships ; they cleared her forests. Dawns reddened and paled. Stanch hearts of mine beat fast at each new star in the nation's flag. Keen eyes of mine foresaw her greater glory ; the sweep of her seas, the plenty of her plains, the man-hives in her billion-wired cities. Every drop of blood in me holds a heritage of patriotism. I am proud of my past. I am an American." Then a foreign-born boy arose and said : "I am an American. My father was an atom of dust, my mother was a straw in the wind, to His Serene Majesty. One of my ancestors died in the mines of Siberia ; another was crippled for life by twenty blows of the knut; another was killed 52 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them defending his home during the massacres. The history of my ancestors is a trail of blood to the palace-gate of the Great White Czar. But then the dream came — the dream of America. In the light of the Liberty torch the atom of dust became a man and the straw in the wind became a woman for the first time. 'See,' said my father, pointing to the flag that fluttered near, 'that flag of stars and stripes is yours; it is the emblem of the prom- ised land. It means, my son, the hope of humanity. Live for it ... , die for it !' Under the open sky of my new country I swore to do so; and every drop of blood in me will keep that vow, I am proud of my future. I am an American." Importance of Little Things Henry Ward Beecher For pupils in the third, fourth, or fifth grades this selection is an "old favorite." Aim to place the emphasis so as to explain the thought, and to speak with moderate rate so that the hearers will get the thought as you speak. Say it all in a perfectly natural, con- versational manner. Little things may be important by what they draw after them. I can imagine, in the visions of the night, as the old miller sleeps, that a crawfish comes to him and threatens him. You know what a crawfish is. It is a homely little fresh-water lobster that loves water and mud. He threatens the miller with disaster, except upon some condi- tion granted. The surly old miller laughs to scorn the threat of the crawfish. The crawfish departs. » Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 53 The miller by and by wakes up and starts his mill, and away goes the wheel, making music to his ear. The crawfish goes to the dam above. He is not much. The river is a thousand times mightier than he; and so is the massive dam. But he com- mences to bore into the clay. He keeps boring, and boring, and boring, till by and by he has made a tunnel clear through to the other side of the bank. And first one drop comes through; and then another ; and then another ; and each drop takes a little dirt with it. Gradually, the hole grows larger and larger. This goes on all day and all night ; and at length the channel is so worn that a considerable stream runs through it. And at last that stream becomes a freshet, and gains a force and impetus such that it carries everything with it. And away go the abutments and timbers of the dam ; and away goes the miller's mill ; and away goes his house upon the bank; and the trees and all things are whelmed in the flood. Now% which is the stronger, the crawfish or the miller and his dam? The crawfish is a little thing; it was a small hole that he made; but ah! it was what it led to that determines its importance. It will never do to call things little till you see what they can do. 54 Winning Dcclaniations-How to Speak Them The Flag of the Union Forever Fitshugh Lee It is a great art to tell well an illustrative story such as is con- tained in the first paragraph of this speech. Tell it naturally and in a colloquial, off-hand way, not failing to bring out the point at the close by dwelling upon the word "lye." Then, after a fairly long pause, there is a marked change in the delivery as the second para- graph is reached. More seriousness is required, and this should be maintained with gradually increasing force to the end. You have all heard of "George Washington and his little hatchet." The other day I heard a story that was a little variation upon the original, and I am going to take up your time for a minute by repeating it to you. It was to this effect: Mr. and Mrs. Washington, the parents of George, found on one occasion that their supply of soap for the use of the family at Westmoreland had been exhausted, and so they decided to make some family soap. They made the necessary arrange- ments and gave the requisite instructions to the family servant. After an hour or so the servant returned and reported to them that he could not make that soap. "Why not," he was asked; "haven't you all the materials?" "Yes," he re- plied ; "but there is something wrong." The old folks proceeded to investigate, and they found they had actually got the ashes of the little cherry tree that George had cut down with his hatchet, and there was no lye in it ! Now, I assure you, there is no "lie" in what I say to you to-day, and that is, that I thank God for the sun of the Union which, once obscured. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 55 is now again in the full stage of its glory. We have had our differences. I do not see, upon read- ing history, how they could well have been avoided. The sword, at any rate, settled the controversy. But that is behind us. We have now a great and glorious future in front of us, and it is Virginia's duty to do all that she can to promote the honor and glory of this country. We fought to the best of our ability for four years; and it would be a great mistake to assume that you could bring men from their cabins, from their plows, from their houses, and from their families to make them fight as they fought in that contest unless they were fighting for a belief. Those men believed that they had the right construction of the Constitution, and that a state that voluntarily entered the Union could voluntarily withdraw from it. They did not fight for Confederate money. It was not worth ten cents a yard. They did not fight for Confed- erate rations — you would have had to curtail the demands of your appetite to make it correspond with the size and quality of those rations. They fought for what they thought was a proper con- struction of the Constitution. They were defeated. They acknowledged their defeat. They came back to their father's house, and there they are going to stay. But if we are to continue prosperous, if this country, stretching from the Gulf to the Lakes and from ocean to ocean, is to be mindful of its own best interests, in the future we will have to make concessions and compliances, we will have to bear with each other and respect each other's 56 Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them opinions. Then we will find that that harmony- will be secured which is as necessary for the wel- fare of states as it is for the welfare of individuals. If all the people prior to our Civil War had been known to each other, or had been thrown together in business or social communication, the fact would have been recognized at the outset, as it is to- day, that there are just as good men in Texas as there are in Maine. Human nature is everywhere the same; and when intestine strifes occur we will doubtless always be able by a conservative, pacific course to pass smoothly over the rugged, rocky edges, and the old Ship of State will be brought into a safe, commodious, Constitutional harbor with the flag of the Union flying over her, and there it shall remain. Houston's Crowning Glory M. E. Kleberg The story of Sam Houston and the decisive battle of San Jacinto is of never-failing interest to students of American history. In study- ing the following selection for delivery, note the strong climax at the close of the second paragraph. The third paragraph continues the narrative, another strong climax being reached when the "command" to charge is given. At this point rapid and strong force are re- quired, continuing through the sentence ending with "flight." Pause at this point and employ slower rate, but with no abatement of force. The fate of the Alamo and Goliad hung like a deepening shadow over the whole land, and filled the heart of every true Texan with inex- pressible grief. But it also ripened in his mind the unalterable resolution to avenge his murdered countrymen and forever rescue his home from Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 57 Mexican despotism. All eyes were turned to Gen- eral Houston, and in him and his little army centered the last hope of the Texans. At the time of the massacre of the Alamo and Goliad, General Houston, with an army of about 350 men, was at or near Gonzales, and immediately began his fa- mous retreat toward the east. As the retreat continued, the country behind was abandoned to the merciless foe and the torch of the more savage Indian. Their husbands and fathers in the army, no one remained at home to care for the defenseless women and children, and they were forced to desert hearth and home, and seek refuge in flight for personal safety. Women and their little children, with no other conveyance than the backs of Spanish ponies, no roads to travel save the paths of the wilderness, and no roofs to shelter them at night save the canopy of heaven, were the vanguard of the retreating army. But privations and perils before which the stoutest heart would quail served only to unfold the sub- lime courage of true womanhood, and whether finding the unknown paths of the wilderness or as sentinels over their children in the lonely watches of the night, these heroic daughters of Texas bore, with unflinching fortitude, the dangers and hardships of war, and by their noble example rallied those that grew faint-hearted or hopeless amid the distress of the hour. The retreat continued until the Texas army, in- creased to 750 men, reached San Jacinto, closely followed by a ]\Iexican force under Santa Anna, 58 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 1600 strong. The great day contemplated by the military plans of General Houston had dawned. Clear and bright rises the sun on the morning of the memorable 21st of April, 1836. In his course he has reached his western decline and his beams fall upon the Texas army in full battle array. Upon the fortunes of this day hang the destinies of an empire, and free government and human liberty tremble in the balance. The army of the invader rests in confidence behind breastworks, heedless of impending fate and unconscious of the splendid strategy of the Texan commander, and the dauntless courage of his soldiers. Down the lines runs the command of General Houston, and forward rush his intrepid columns, the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo ! Remember Goliad 1" ring- ing in the air. Amid the boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry the enemy's breastworks are stormed, and men lock shields in the fearful throes of battle. Within twenty minutes the great Mexi- can army of operations is annihilated — dead, wounded, captured or scattered in flight. The meteor of conquest that lured the ambitious dic- tator into the border of our land has forever van- ished. In its place, at high meridian, blazes and sparkles in unrivaled splendor the Lone Star of the Republic of Texas, and from hilltop to moun- tain summit there rings the gladsome tidings, "Liberty and Independence — Texas is free." Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 59 The Liberty Bell George Lippard Aim particularly to bring out the many and sometimes quick changes — or transitions — that occur in this declam;ition. Each part of the story must be plainly indicated as it is reached. Be sure to express the climax as the boy shouts "Ring." The paragraph following this requires rapid rate and very strong force, and the sub- sequent paragraph requires slower rate, but sustained force and greater volume. It is a cloudless summer day; a clear blue sky arches and expands above a quaint edifice, rising among the giant trees in the center of a wide city. The edifice is built of plain red brick, with heavy window frames, and a massive hall door. Such is the State House of Philadelphia, in the year of our Lord 1776. In yonder wooden steeple, which crowns the sum- mit of that red brick State House, stands an old man with snow-white hair and sunburnt face. He is clad in humble attire, yet his eye gleams, as it is fixed on the ponderous outline of the bell suspended in the steeple there. By his side, gazing into his sunburnt face in wonder, stands a flaxen-haired boy with laughing eyes of summer blue. The old man ponders for a moment upon the strange words written upon the bell, then, gathering the boy in his arms, he speaks : "Look here, my child. Will you do this old man a kindness ? Then hasten down the stairs, and wait in the hall below till a man gives you a message for me; when he gives you that word, run out into the street and shout it up to me. Do you mind?" The boy 6o Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them sprang from the old man's arms, and threaded his way down the dark stairs. Many minutes passed. The old bell keeper was alone. "Ah," groaned the old man, "he has for- gotten me." As the word was upon his lips a merry ringing laugh was upon his ear. And there, among the crowd on the pavement, stood the blue- eyed boy, clapping his tiny hands while the breeze blew his flaxen hair all about his face, and, swell- ing his little chest, he raised himself on tiptoe, and shouted the single word, "Ring!" Do you see that old man's eye afire? Do you see that arm so suddenly bared to the shoulder? Do you see that withered hand grasping the iron tongue of the bell? That old man is young again. His veins are filling with a new life. Backward and forward, with sturdy strokes, he swings the tongue. The bell peals out; the crowds in the street hear it, and burst forth in one long shout. Old Delaware hears it, and gives it back on the cheers of her thousand sailors. The city hears it, and starts up, from desk and workshop, as if an earthquake had spoken. Yes, as the old man swung that iron tongue, the bell spoke to all the world. That sound crossed the Atlantic — pierced the dungeons of Europe — the workshops of England — the vassal-fields of France. That echo spoke to the slave — bade him look up from his toil, and know himself a man. That echo startled the kings upon their crumbling thrones. That echo was the knell of all crafts born of the darkness of ages, and baptized in seas Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 6i of blood. For under that very bell pealing out noonday, in that old hall, fifty-six traders, farm- ers, and mechanics had assembled to strike off the shackles of the world. And that bell that now voices the Declaration of Independence still speaks out to the world : Proclaim Liberty to all the Land and all the Inhabitants thereof. God has given the American continent to the free. Wealth and Aptitude Leslie M. Shaw This selection, taken from a commencement address delivered by a former U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, is just a plain interesting, serious talk, lightened by a flavor of humor. Note how the concrete illustrations add interest to the reasoning. If the talk is of interest to you, speak it so it will also be interesting to your audience. Admittedly, the American people are the best fed, the best clothed, the best housed, the best edu- cated, enjoy more of the comforts and luxuries of life and suffer less hardships and privations, than any other people on the earth ; but it is an even guess if they are not also more restless, discon- tented, and unhappy. I am disposed to think this regrettable state of mind arises not so much from a want of appreciation of our individual blessings and opportunities as from the trend of modern teaching. Not only the stump speaker, the lec- turer, and the magazine writer, but a good per- cent of college professors and Protestant preachers, teach, by inference at least, and some openly, that wjioever gets or has gotten more than his pro- 62 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them rata proportion of the wealth of the world has done so dishonestly and at the expense of his fellows. In every field of human endeavor, except the acquisition of wealth, we make due allowance for aptitude. Since the world was, a good many thou- sands have tried to write poetry. Some claim that out of all who have tried two have succeeded. Some increase that number. All we know is that there are none living now, though I heard of a man who said he could write as good poetry as Shakespeare did, if he had a mind to. His friends said he had discovered his handicap. Confiden- tially I am going to say to you young people that I might have made as much money as John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie, if I had had a mind to. I have had the opportunity, and I will also have to admit that I have had the desire. If I did not fully understand my handicap, I might be angry with these gentlemen who had the mind to. But there are other elements which enter into the equation as much as aptitude. During the political campaign in 1896, when all audiences con- tained a goodly number of Populists, generally discernible by the way they wore their hair and beard, a man was speaking at Seattle. After hav- ing been interrupted several times by one of these woolly fellows, his tormentor again arose and squealed out : "How do you account for the un- equal distribution of wealth?" The speaker an- swered : "How do you account for the unequal distribution of whiskers?" Winning D eclamations-H oiv to Speak Them 63 Lest you shall think this a mere figure, let me give an illustration that has come under my own observation. I once knew a man who could claim no pride of ancestry. He was not over-fortunate in his physique, and his environment had been very ordinary. At nineteen years of age he was a com- mon day laborer, as honorable as anything, but perhaps less desirable than some. By the pre- mature discharge of a cannon one Fourth of July morning he lost his right hand at the wrist and his left hand one-half inch in front of the thumb. While awaiting recovery he became painfully con- scious that he had his life on his hands. He started to get an education. He once told me that he had threaded his own needle and had sewed on his own buttons with a naked thumb of a left hand. They called him judge when I knew him. He died president of a bank with many millions on deposit. God grant, my friends, that it may not be necessary to maim or cripple you that you may wake up to the possibilities that are yours. Savannah's Apple of Courage Louis Victor Ey tinge No "flights of oratory" would be suited to the delivery of this declamation. It is just a plain, earnest story of a young man who made good. Make your delivery direct, earnest, strong talk, with few or no gestures. John J. Apple graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in June, 1907, a first honor elec- trical engineer. He was big, broad, happy and 64 Winning Declamations-How to Speak The^n handsome, and faced the future with the blithe bravery of youth. Two days afterward he was sporting in the surf at Savannah — made a dive and broke his neck. Friends carried the crumpled cripple to the hos- pital, where it was found that he was completely paralyzed from his neck down. After a time, the family took him to New York, and a group of ten great medical men shook their heads and gave him less than a year to live. Jack smiled when he heard their verdict and lustily flashed back, "So you can't do anything for me, eh? I'm going to try my best to outlive the most of you." That was his defiance to fate, and he is winning his fight, for five of those Ten Wise Men of Gotham sleep in Greenwood this day. And Jack — why do you suppose that kind of a chap would content himself with invalidism? His brain was too active to permit of idleness — som.e niche would have to be created for him, even if dug from the hardest of flint. He wanted to be self -supporting, to be independent, to serve society by giving his quota of what he had to the world's activities. He used what he had to get what he wanted, and so he became a salesman ; not one who might from his invalid couch direct the selling of some mail-order novelty, but a real up-and-down street life insurance solicitor. One advantage was his during the time he was studying for his future work, in that his father had been a general agent for the company Jack joined. Even this prop was soon removed, for Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 65 the father passed on a month after Jack started — grief at his son's condition had broken the father's health. Still Jack stuck to the line he had mapped out — and this is how he went about it. A low wagonette was so built that the invalid chair could be lifted in and yet have room to spare. Every day a darky driver brings the vehicle to Jack's door and tender hands trundle him out. A bright youth whom Jack has trained acts as secretary, errand boy and general helper. Sometimes the prospective customer is hailed from the wagon as he walks the sidewalk, more often the young secretary runs up to Mr. Busy Man's office, brings him down and seats him in the chair beside Jack's bed. Day after day, for more than four years has this pro- gram been followed and no one has ever heard a whine or a whimper out of John J. Apple. He is unusually bright, unqualifiedly a success, wholly good-natured, and mighty opulent in his optimism. He shames the rest of the selling world when he gives as his formula for success, "Gaining knowledge and coupling it up with concentration and persistence." He lives up to the line I found in one of his letters, "These three words mean more to me than a whole dictionary of others: Make friends — smile." His home life is as happy as his business work. There's a littling printing press set up in one of his rooms and the. secretary prints Jack's messages on business, good will and human helpfulness. If you were to see his proud mother kiss her boy good-night, you'd have the secret of it all ex- 66 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them plained. He is simply a good mother's splendid son— and his mission in life is to make us all take heart. Has the story helped you a little bit? Then pass it along to the others who need it. A Plea for Prohibition Henry W. Grady Like most of Grady's speeches, this selection is charged through- out with strong feeling. It is therefore all the more necessary that every place where any change or variety is possible should be utilized to break up a general monotony in delivery. The liquor traffic, my friends, is most powerful, aggressive, and universal in its attacks. To-night it enters a humble home to strike the roses from a woman's cheeks, and to-morrow it challenges this Republic in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a crust from the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow levies tribute from the government itself. There is no cottage in this city humble enough to escape it — no palace strong enough to shut it out. It defies the law when it cannot coerce suffrage. It is flexible to cajole, but merciless in victory. It is the mortal enemy of peace and order. The despoiler of men, the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face of children, the demon that has dug more graves and set more souls unshrived to judgment than all the pestilence that have wasted life since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars that have been fought since Joshua stood beyond Jericho. Oh, my coun- trymen, loving God and humanity, do not bring Winning D eclamations-H ow to Speak Them 67 this grand old city again under the dominion of that power. It can profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, revive no interest, remedy no wrong. You know that it cannot. It comes to destroy, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons or mine. It comes to mislead human souls and to crush human hearts under its rumbling wheels. It comes to change the wife's love into despair, and her pride into shame. It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little children. It comes to stifle all the music of the home and fill it with silence and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and mind, to wreck your home, and it knows it must measure its prosperity by the swift- ness and certainty with which it wrecks this work. If you are in doubt about what you should do, give us the benefit of the doubt. Give the doubt to the churches of this city that stand unbroken in this cause. Give the doubt to the prayers that ascend nightly for this cause from the women and children — prayers uttered so silently that you can- not catch their whispered utterance, but so sin- cerely that they speed their soft entreaty through the singing hosts of heaven into the heart of the living God. If you are in doubt as to what your duty is, turn for this once to your old mother, whose gray hairs shall plead with you as nothing else should — remember how she has loved you all her life and how her heart yearns for you now. Take her old hand in yours, look into her eyes fearlessly as you did when you were a barefoot boy, and say, 'T have run my politics all my life. 68 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them and to-day I am going to give one vote for you. How shall I cast it?" Watch the tears start from her shining eyes, feel that lump rising in your throat, and tell me if that is not better than your so-called "personal liberty." Love Your Farm This selection is adapted from an editorial in The Progressive Farmer, and since used as a declamation in numerous schools. If a speaker can eulogize a man or country of which he has only second- hand knowledge, the boy reared on the farm can surely speak a eulogy on what he knows and loves through direct contact. Sus- tained earnestness and enthusiasm will cause your hearers to ap- preciate and feel the thoughts and sentiments contained in this splendid eulogy of the Farm. Every farmer should love his Mrork even as the artist loves his v^ork, and every farmer should love his farm itself as he would love a favorite horse or dog. He should know every rod of the ground, should know just what each acre is best adapted to, should feel a joy and pride in having every hill and valley look its best, and should be as much ashamed to have a field scarred with gullies as he would be to have a beautiful colt marked with lashes; as much ashamed to have a piece of ground worn out from ill-treatment as to have a horse gaunt and bony from neglect; as much hurt at seeing his acres sick from wretched management as he would be at seeing his cows half starving from the same cause. Love your ground — that piece of God's creation which you hold in fee simple. Fatten its poorer parts as carefully as you would nurture an ailing Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 69 collie. Heal the washed, torn places in the hillside as you would the barb-scars on your pony. Feed with legumes and soiling crops and fertilizers the galled and barren patch that needs special atten- tion; nurse it back to life and beauty and fruitful- ness. Make a meadow of the bottom that is in- clined to wash; watch it and care for it until the kindly root-masses heal every gaping wound, and in one unbroken surface the "tides of grass break into foam of flowers" upon the outer edges. Don't forget even the forest lands. See that every acre of woodland has trees enough on it to make it profitable: "a good stand" of the timber crop as well as of every other crop. Have an eye to the beautiful in laying off the cleared fields — a tree here and there, but no wretched beggar's coat min- gling of little patches and little rents : rather broad fields fully tended and of as nearly uniform fertility as possible, making of your growing crops, as it were, each a beautiful garment, whole and unbroken, to clothe the fruitful acres which God has given you to keep and tend even as He gave the First Garden into the keeping of our first parents. Love your farm. If you cannot be proud of it now, begin to-day to make it a thing you can be proud of. Much dignity has come to you in that you are owner and care-keeper for a part of God's footstool: show yourself worthy of that dig- nity. Watch earnestly over every acre. Let no day go by that you do not add something of come- liness and potential fertility to its fields. And 70 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them finally, leave some spot beneath the shade of some giant tree where at last, "like as a shock of corn Cometh in his season," you can lay down your weary body, leaving the world a little better for your having lived in it, and earning the approval from the Great Father (who made the care of fields and gardens the first task given man) : "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter into the joy of thy Lord." Pumpkin Pie This is an extract from an article in the Independent, December 4, 1914. A eulogy on pumpkin pie! One might think this no fit subject for a eulog^y, but if you speak this naturally — 'talk it — and at the same time with earnestness and enthusiasm, you will find a responsive chord in almost any audience. There are some things in Nature just right, if in the right spot; and one of these is pumpkin pie. You should know all about the pumpkin just as much as you should be well acquainted with Indian corn. They have grown together so long that one of them alone seems lonesome; but when the corn is all cut, and the stocks are crispy in the wind, and farmer boys are sitting around them to strip the golden ears, what would one do without pumpkins to sit on ? It is the pie, however, that we are after, and how in the world can such a delicious affair be made out of a gourd ? — for the pumpkin is nothing in the world but a gourd — glorified. Every sort of plant has a special fitness above all others. It is so with folks also ; and as for companionship, what could be finer than this of our two gifts from the Indians ? Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 71 But you must find the right woman to mix and cook it — that is, the pie. It is like ginger cookies; not too much ginger ; not too little ! and the same with the sugar; and after that if you stir the mix- ture just once too many times you spoil the cookies. Nobody can tell why, only it is so. But the pump- kin pie must have a bracing charge of ginger, and sugar enough to be really sweet in the raw ; and as for milk ! our word for it, don't try condensed milk; and one more thing, don't try making just one pie. We have never known stinginess to work well with pumpkins. After the pies are baked, set them in a row, always on the second shelf in the pantry, and let them ripen. Nothing is perfect when green, least of all a pumpkin pie. They are best on the second day, and not much different on the third, and are still good on the fourth; only let one pie, as soon as out of the oven, be set on a big, broad shelf by the window, and on it a suggestive knife, of silver, and ask no questions. If it is not there on the morrow, why those on the second shelf remain ; and is not gratitude from a whole family as good as a pumpkin pie, any time? We have heard a good deal of growling about the world, from time to time, and from folk who ought to know better; yet it is no wonder when all the domestic arts are lost arts, and when there is no Wendell Phillips left to rehearse their golden days. But all this is nonsense, when one may easily have a big cornfield, with the corn all husked and in the bin, and yet the field covered with two "^2 Wxnmng Declamations-How to Speak Them thousand pumpkins, the color of red gold, and every one of them crying out Take me, take me! Enough? Yes, it is one of the few things of which Nature creates a surplus ; enough to use up four quarts of Jersey milk, although it is the pumpkin itself that has made the Jersey milk so golden; enough also for boys to make jack-o-lanterns on Halloween ; enough more for seats when the husk- ing bees gather the farmers ; and then enough for pies for every day as long as the snow quilts lie on th»e meadows, and enough for the uncles and aunts in town. The Child of the Alamo Guy M. Bryan Note that the first paragraph is merely introductory. Give this in a conversational manner, so your hearers will know what you are talking about. Beginning the second paragraph the rate should be slower, with lower key and increased force, which should be main- tained to the end. In the session of the Texas Legislature of 1852 a bill was introduced for an appropriation of money to care for and educate the child of Lieutenant Dickinson, who fell in the Alamo. Several mem- bers spoke in opposition to the bill, claiming that as Texas was deep in debt no public money should be appropriated to private parties. There was a rule of the House that when the ayes and noes were called a member, before voting, could give reasons for his vote. When the name of Hon. Guy M. Bryan was called, he spoke as follows: "I intended, Mr. Speaker, to remain silent on Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 73 this occasion, but silence now would be a reproach, when to speak is a duty. No one has raised a voice in behalf of this orphan child — several have spoken against her claim. I rise, sir, an advocate of no common cause. Liberty was its foundation — heroism and martyrdom have consecrated it. I speak for the Orphan Child of the Alamo ! No orphan children of fallen patriots can send a simi- lar petition to this House — none other can say, I am the Child of the Alamo! "Well do I remember the consternation that spread throughout the land when the sad tidings reached our ears that the Alamo had fallen ! It was here tTiat a gallant few, 'the bravest of the brave,' threw themselves between the enemy and the settlements, determined 'never to surrender nor retreat.' They redeemed their pledge to Texas with the forfeit of their lives — they fell, the chosen sacrifice to Texas freedom. Texas, unapprised of the approach of the invader, was sleeping in fan- cied security, when the Attila of the South was near. Infuriated by the resistance of Travis and his noble band, he halted his whole army beneath the wall and rolled wave after wave of his numer- ous host against those stern battlements of free- dom. In vain he strove: the flag of Liberty, the flag of 1824, still streamed out upon the breeze, and floated proudly from the outer wall; maddened, he pitched his tents and reared his batteries, and finally stormed and took a black and ruined mass — the blood-stained walls of the Alamo — the noble, the martyred spirits of every one of its defenders 74 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them had already taken their flight to another fortress not made with hands. "This detention of the enemy enabled Texas to recuperate her energies, to prepare for that struggle in which freedom was the prize, and slavery the forfeit. It enabled her to assemble upon the Col- orado that gallant band which eventually tri- umphed upon the plains of San Jacinto, and rolled back the tide of war upon the ruthless invader. "But for this stand at the Alamo, Texas would have been desolated to the banks of the Sabine. Then, sir, in view of these facts, I ask of this House to vote the pittance prayed for. To whom? To the only living Texas witness (save her mother) of the awful tragedy — 'the bloodiest picture in the book of time,' and the bravest act that ever swelled the annals of any country. "Grant this boon ! She claims it as a christened child of the Alamo, baptized in the blood of a Travis, a Bowie, a Crockett, and a Bonham ! "It would be a shame to Texas to turn her away. Give her what she asks, in order that she may be educated and become a worthy child of the State, and take that position in society to which she is entitled by the illustrious name of her martyred father — made illustrious because he fell in the Alamo." Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 75 Nothing to do but Work The Caxton Magacine Here is another straightfrom-the-shoulder talk, in modern style. Speak it accordingly. Let the style of delivery be simply direct, •arnest, strong talk. There are times when it seems as though Hfe was just one prosaic thing after another. Nothing appears to be worth while, and we don't just see what more we can do to hasten things along. At such times we chant with Ben King: "Nothing to do but work, nothing — ," et cetera. When we have allowed ourselves to drift into this state of mind, we shirk the work at hand, and thus make things even more disagreeable both for ourselves and others. Man must work — that is inevitable. If he goes at it with the spirit of "Nothing to do but work," he will never be able to choose his task. He may work grudgingly or he may work gratefully ; but work he must. When we are in doubt, the best solution is to push harder than ever. No proposi- tion can succeed without the concentrated push that knows no let up. The steady driving along one line, at one goal, cannot help but break down all obstacles. What most of us lack is the patience to pull us through the lull and lag. Many a man loses years of momentum by a change at a time when things looked doubtful to him. There is no work so prosaic that we cannot get some pleasure out of it, if we will only find out the best way of doing it. The man who pities him- '](> Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them self because he has to work, and shirks from grap- pHng the waiting task, is in for a hard time in accompHshing anything or becoming anybody worth while. Some men are ground down on the grind- stone of life, while others get polished up. Every man does one thing or the other, he either takes on a polish or he wears away — it all depends on the stuff he is made of. In his "Sum of Life," Ben King ends with: "Nothing to strike but a gait — Everything moves that goes ; Nothing at all but common sense Can ever withstand our vv^oes." If there is one man who can be proud of him- self, it is he who applied for a "job" with the company, who without introduction or influence, without "pull" or favor has worked his way to a position of responsibility. If there is one man who should keep his pride in his pocket, it is he who holds his position because his uncle, or his cousin or his aunt has a "drag" with the controlling in- terests. Winning Dcdamations-How to Speak Them yy Love and Loyalty of the Negro Henry W. Grady This eulogy of the negro of slavery times requires a sympathetic appreciation of that period in American history. This declamation is strongly emotional, and should be studied with a view of ap- preciating and expressing the peculiar emotion that dominates the different paragraphs. The second paragraph, for example, requires a slower rate and a different tone from that required for the first part of the third paragraph. That is, aim to use the appropriate "tone-color" for each picture presented. The love the people of the South feel to the negro race cannot be comprehended nor measured by the people of the North. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless ; and through the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as in years agone when she held me in her black arms and led me smiling in to sleep. The scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and ap- prehensions, and in a big, homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands — now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man — as they lay a mother's blessing there ; while at her knees — the truest altar I yet have found — I thank God that she is in her sanctuary safe because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her chamber 78 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them door, put a black man's loyalty between her and danger. I catch another vision. The crisis of battle — a soldier, struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of hurtling death, bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, — so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that God will lift his master up until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of that life has closed, turn away and with downcast eye and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice saying, "Follow him ! Put your arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine !" And out into this new world — strange to me as it is to him, dazzling, bewildering — I follow. And may God forget my people when they forget these! Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 79 New England's Fairest Boast S. S. Prentiss To "enter into the spirit" of this speech, have and keep in mind some country or village school which you know of personally; for what is true of a New England school is also true of any public school, and the plan suggested will make a concrete application of and "visualize" the thought for the more effective expression. Behold yon simple building near the crossing of the village road. It is small and of rude construc- tion, but it stands in a pleasant and quiet spot. A magnificent old elm spreads its broad arms above, and seems to lean towards it as a strong man bends to shelter and protect a child. A brook runs through the meadow near, and hard by there is an orchard; but the trees have suffered much, for there is no fruit except upon the highest and most inaccessible branches. From within its walls comes a busy hum, such as you may hear in a disturbed beehive. Now peep through yonder windows and you will see a hundred children with rosy cheeks, mischievous eyes and demure faces, all engaged, or pretending to be so, in their little lessons. It is the public school, the free, the common school, provided by law, open to all, claimed from the community as a right, not accepted as a bounty. Here the children of the rich and poor, high and low, meet upon perfect equality, and commence, under the same auspices, the race of life. Here the sustenance of the mind is served to all alike, as the Spartans served their food upon the public table. Here young Ambition climbs his little lad- der, and boyish Genius plumes his half-fledged So Winning Declarnations-Hoiv to Speak Tlicm wings. From among these laughing children will go forth the men who are to control the destinies of their age and country; the statesman, whose wisdom is to guide the senate ; the poet, who will take captive the hearts of the people and bind them together with immortal song; the philosopher, who boldly seizing upon the elements themselves, will compel them to his wishes, and through new com- binations of their primal laws, by some great dis- covery, revolutionize both art and science. The common village school is New England's fairest boast, the brightest jewel that adorns her brow. The principle, that society is bound to pro- vide for its members' education, so that none may be ignorant except from choice, is the most im- portant that belongs to modern philosophy. It is essential to a republican government. Universal education is not only the best and the surest, but the only sure foundation for free institutions. True Liberty is the child of Knowledge, she pines away and dies in the arms of Ignorance. Honor, then, to the early fathers of New England, from whom came the spirit which has built a school- house by every sparkling fountain, and bids all come as freely to the one as the other! Winning D eclamations-H oiv to Speak Them 8i The Way to Wealth Benjamin Franklin The talking or colloquial style is the most fitting for the delivery of this selection. It is valuable for memorizing because it will fix in mind the famous proverbs and sayings of "Poor Richard." I STOPPED my horse, lately, where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks : "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not tliese heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to do?" > Father Abraham stood up and replied: "If you would have my advice, I will give it to you in short; for 'a word to the wise is enough,' as poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and, gathering around him, he proceeded as follows : "Friends," said h^, "the taxes are indeed very heavy; and, if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them ; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. "We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly ; and of these taxes the com- missioners can not ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good 82 Winning D eclamations-H our to Speak Them advice, and something may be done for us. 'Heaven helps them that help themselves,' as poor Richard says. "It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more ; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, con- sumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep ! forgetting that 'the sleeping fox catches no poultry,' and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave. " 'Lost time is never found again ; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.' Let us, then, be up and doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less per- plexity. 'Drive thy business, and let not that drive thee' ; and 'early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,' as' Poor Richard says. "So, what signifies wishing and hoping for better times? We may make these times better if we be- stir ourselves. 'Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting.' 'There are no gains without pains ; then help hands, for I have no lands.' 'He that hath a trade, hath an estate; and he that hath a calling, hath an office, hath an office of profit and honor' ; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. Work while it is called to-day, for you Winning D eclamations-H ow to Speak Them 83 know not how much you may be hindered to-mor- row. 'One to-day is worth two to-morrows,' as Poor Richard says; and further, 'Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day.' " "My Kingdom for a Horse" John W. Springer Make the introduction to the speech really introductory. In beginning the speech proper, the conversational style on opening should change to the more formal, with somewhat slower rate and more force, both rate and force changing with the changing thoughts and emotions. When Cresceus, the famous trotter, was making his tour of the United States, Mr. Springer was invited to "introduce" the horse to ten thousand people who had assembled at the Overland Park grounds. He did it as follows : Ladies and Gentlemen : It is a very great pleasure to present to you the king of American trotters, the matchless Cresceus. He is owned, was bred and is driven by a gentleman from the Buckeye State, Mr. George H. Ketcham. The twentieth century American loves to see the best, to own the best of everything. We all pay our devotions at the shrine of the noblest animal bestowed upon man — the horse. He is typical to- day of our advanced civilization. He has kept pace with progressive individuality in the equine world. He fills his sphere so completely that all the bi- cycles, all the automobiles, and all the street cars will never drive him into exile. Where men, 84 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them women and children dwell, there will this noble creature ever abide. He will journey with us from the cradle to the grave. He will caper along with the young folks, and bring up at the church door, where wedding bells tell of happy hearts and new-made homes. He will trot along with carriage loads of happy little folks, whose life is a song and whose presence is a joy forever. He will set the pace for the hounds who are away at the sound of the hunter's horn, over hill and vale, over field and meadow, always the most enthusiastic of the throng of sportsmen. He loves to hear the crack of the whip and go bounding away with the coach and four, and the jolly crowd whose chief pleasure is in coaching parties and outings in the moun- tains, and along the rivers. He is with us in prosperity and adversity, and that man or woman is an attenuated specimen of humanity who does not love this matchless animal. No wonder King Richard HI exclaimed : "A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse!" So it is my friends, the horse is always a part of our pleasure, and at last, when the long shadows have fallen over us, and our eyes are heavy with the last sleep, the horse carefully draws our remains to the silent city and all is over. In behalf of the management of the Overland Racing Association and of the members of the Driving and Riding Club of Denver, and on be- half of the thousands of enthusiastic citizens of Colorado, I bid the king of trotters — the great Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 85 Cresceus — welcome, thrice welcome, to the track of this association. One and all, we wish you "good speed." Man's Best Friend — His Dog George G. Vest Following; is one of the most famous speeches ever made by the late Senator Vest, of Missouri. It was delivered as part of a plea to the jury in the trial of a man who had unwantonly shot a dog belonging to a neighbor. Note that the last sentence of the first paragraph of this speech is a climax, and that the last word is the climax of the sentence. After a pause and change upon beginning the second paragraph, the remainder of the speech is uniformly strong in sentiment and feeling. The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our hap- piness and our good name, may become traitors to our faith. The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacri- ficed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall to their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and In poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep 86 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Th^m on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as con- stant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death. The Coyote Mark Twain The pupil who has become acquainted with the coyote — and none other should try to speak this selection — will see how true to life the picture is drawn. The sly humor in the piece should not be missed either by the speaker or his audience. Study especially the closing paragraph to see how much more effective the delivery can be made if you observe proper pauses and changes both in rate and in tone. The coyote of the western prairies and deserts is a long, sHm, sick and sorry-looking skeleton with a Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 87 gray wolf -skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing ex- pression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry, always poor, out of luck, and friendless. He is so spiritless and cowardly that, even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sagebrush, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you. But, if you start a swift- footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much — especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think that he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging gently oflf on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoul- der that will fill that dog entirely full of encour- agement and worldly ambition. All this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the coyote, and, to save the life of him, he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer, and he begins to get aggravated. 88 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them And next the dog notices that he is getting fagged, and that the coyote actually has to slacken speed a little, to keep from running away from him. And then that town dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain, and weep, and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the coyote with concentrated and desperate energy. This spurt finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the coyote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say : "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, — ^business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day." And forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere; and behold, that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude ! Life Lessons George W. Bain The happy mixture of the serious and the humorous in this speech can be employed both to entertain and to persuade an audience. The style speaks, and if you keep in mind the points you wish to enforce, not neglecting the humorous illustrations, without any- strained effort on your part the declamation will speak itself. Among the first of moral qualities a young per- son needs, is industry. "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" has in it more sweet bread than all your luck. On this ancient law the great- Winning D eclamations-H oiv to Speak Them 89 est successes of the world have been based. On this, Abraham Lincoln stood splitting rails, and wedged himself to the highest office in the gift of the Republic; on this, Shakespeare stood weaving wool, and wove for himself a fame immortal ; on this James A. Garfield tramped a tow-path with no company but an honest mule, but that tow-path led on to the White House in Washington. Do not be lazy. I saw a man once who really looked so lazy it seemed to rest me to look at him. But the man or woman who lives in this age of the world and lives in idleness should have been born in some other age. Carlyle says: "The race of life has become intense : the runners are treading on each other's heels. Woe be to the man who stoops to tie his shoe strings." Take care of your principles, and to do this start right and keep right. I heard of a traveler who said to a wayside farmer, "How far do you call it to Philadelphia?" The farmer replied, "About twenty-five thousand miles, the way you are going; if you turn and go the other way, it is fourteen miles." There is a wonderful difference in the ways of life. If you start right and keep right, no matter where you start from, you will end right. Go find me the poorest boy in this city ; let him lay his hand on his heart and pledge me he will be industrious, honest, economical and sober, and in twenty years hence you will find him honored and "well to do" in life. Boys, are any of you poor? Never mind poverty. The rich men of to-day were poor boys thirty years ago. 90 Winning Declamations-How to Speak The^^ The great men come out of cabins as a rule. Columbus was a weaver, Hally was a soap-maker, Homer was a beggar, and Franklin, whose name will live while lightning blazes on a cloud, came from a printer's desk. Not long since, I rode horseback through Hardin and La Rue Counties, Kentucky. We call that the land of ticks and lizards. The soil is very poor, so poor that it will not raise black-eye peas unless you take them with- out the eyes. Riding along that day I came upon a spot of rank weeds where the soil had been made rich by the decay of an old cabin that once stood there. Out of that cabin years ago came a lean, lank, white-headed boy. If ever a boy came from abject poverty that one did. When only seven years of age, he would walk to Hodgenville with a basket of eggs to sell. The boys laughed at him. They said his clothes were like Joseph's because so many colors. But he was industrious, honest and sober. After a while he was old enough to leave home, so he went down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on a flatboat. Then he re- turned and crossing over into Indiana — he there split rails a while ; then on to Illinois, where he practiced law ; then on to the presidential chair, and in his death he bore the shackles of four mil- lion slaves and linked his name with that of Liberty. I thank God we live in a land where a boy can go from a tow-path, a tanyard, or a rail-cut to the presidency of a Republic. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 91 Scientific Farming Irving Bacheller This is an extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the New England Society of New York City, 1909. Note and express the flavor of humor it contains. Bring out the climax in the last paragraph with feeling and force. There are some who say that the "higher educa- tion" has gone too far, but I want to tell you that the up-to-date American farmer is a far-seeing man. He has observed the hordes of human oxen pouring in from Europe, men who can sleep in a pigsty and dine on an onion and a chunk of bread, and he has been unwilling to enter his sons in that sort of competition ; and so he has sent them to college. Scientific farming has begun to pay. I know a farmer whose income would excite the envy of high finance. He said to me: "Don't be afraid of education ; the land will soak up all we can get and yell for more." My friends, if I knew half the secrets in ten acres of land I believe I could make my fortune off them in five years. We have sent the smart boys to the city, and we have kept the fools on the farm. We have put everything on the farms but brains. Anybody can learn Blackstone and Green- leaf, but the book of law that is writ in the soil is only for keen eyes. We want our young men to know that it is more dignified to search for the secrets of God in the land than to grope for the secrets of Satan in a law-suit. One hundred thou- sand young men will be leaving college within a 92 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them year from now. If the smartest of them would go to work on the land with gangs of these human oxen we could make the old earth lop-sided with the fruitfulness of America. Ladies and gentlemen, the "hayseed" is no more. I propose the health of the coming farmer, who is to be a gentleman, a scholar, a laird, a baron. I propose the health of the many who have taught and shall teach him "To sow the seed of truth and hope and peace And take the root of error from the sod, To be of those who make the sure increase Forever growing in the lands of God." Ambition Jerome K. Jerome This is an extract from the author's "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow." The conversational style is best fitted for the delivery of this selection, for the most part. The last paragraph affords an opportunity for a change to a more elevated tone, expressive of the enthusiasm which comes from the zest of the game. Is it, forsooth, wrong to be ambitious? Are the men wrong who with bent back and sweating brow cut the smooth road over which humanity marches forward, who use the talents their Master has in- trusted to them for toiling, while others play? Of course, they are seeking their own reward. Man is not given that Godlike unselfishness that thinks only of others' good. But in working for themselves they are working for us all. We are so bound together that no man can labor for him- self alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 93 helps to mould the universe. The stream in strug- gling onward turns the mill wheel ; the coral insect fashioning its tiny cells joins continents ; and the ambitious man building a pedestal for himself leaves a monument of posterity. Alexander and Caesar fought for their own ends, but in doing so they put a belt of civilization half around the earth. Stephenson, to win a fortune, invented the steam engine, and Shakespeare wrote his plays to keep a comfortable home for Mrs. Shakespeare and the children. Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful back- ground for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable audience for the active spirits to play before. I have not a word to say against them* so long as they keep quiet. But they should not go strutting about, crying out that they are the true model for the whole species. If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't, you won't get anything. In this world it is necessary to adopt the principle pursued by the plaintifif in an action for damages and to de- mand ten times more than you are ready to accept. If you can feel satisfied with a hundred, begin by insisting on a thousand; if you start by suggesting a hundred you will only get ten. What a terribly dull affair, too, life must be for contented people. They never know the excite- ment of expectation nor the stern delight of ac- 94 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Thcni complished effort, such as stir the pulse of the man who has objects and hopes and plans. To the ambitious man life is a brilliant game — a game that calls forth all his tact and energy and nerve — a game to be won, in the long run, by the quick eye and the steady hand, and yet having sufficient chance about its working out to give it all the zest of uncertainty. He exults in it, as the strong swimmer in the heavy billows, as the athlete in the wrestle, as the soldier in battle. And if he be de- feated he wins the grim joy of fighting; if he loses the race he at least has had a run. Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away. The Victor of Marengo Anonymous Here is another "old favorite" which has had a record-breaking run in declamation service. It is full of dramatic interest and quick changes. These two matters demand special attention in delivery: (i)* Vary the delivery to indicate, smoothly but plainly, the many and ofttimes quick changes that occur, and (2) "Mind the pauses" between such changes. Carry on the dialogues naturally, making each character speak in his proper manner. In denoting conversa- tion to an audience, the speaker turns and looks to the right and to the left, or vice zersa, as each character talks. Remember that the gamin was some distance from Napoleon and Desaix. Some sug- gestive and descriptive gestures go naturally with this declamation, but avoid an over-literal interpretation of figurative language, in gesture-expression. And don't try to represent every scene or incident by gesture. See the pictures vividly, and very often a glance of the eyes in the proper direction is the most effective gesture. It is unnecessary to add that parts of this piece, such as the reply of the gamin to Napoleon's command, should be given with all the fire and force you can muster. Napoleon was sitting in his tent. Before him lay the map of Italy. He took four pins, stuck Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 95 them up, measured, moved the pins, and measured again. "Now," said he, "that is right. I will capture him there." "Who, sire?" said an officer. "Melas, the old fox of Austria. He will return from Genoa, pass through Turin, and fall back on Alexandria. I will cross the Po, meet him on the plains of La Servia, and conquer him there." And the finger of the child of destiny pointed to Marengo. Two months later, the memorable campaign of 1800 began. The 20th of May saw Napoleon on the heights of St. Bernard ; the 22nd, Lannes, with the army of Genoa, held Ivrae. So far all had gone well with Napoleon. He had compelled the Austrians to take the position he desired, had re- duced their army from 120,000 to 40,000 men, dispatched Desaix to the right, and on June 14th, moved forward to consummate his masterly plan. But God thwarted his schemes. In the gorges of the Alps a few drops of rain had fallen, and the Po could not be crossed in time. Melas, pushed to the wall by Lannes, rested to cut his way out; and Napoleon reached the field to see Lannes beaten, Champeaux dead and Kellerman still charging. Old Melas poured his Austrian phalanx on Marengo till the Consular Guard gave way, and the well-planned victory of Napoleon became a terrible defeat. Just as the day was lost, Desaix, the boy general, came sweeping across the field at the head of his cavalry and halted near the eminence where stood Napoleon. In the corps was a drummer boy, a 96 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them gamin, whom Desaix had picked up in the streets of Paris, and who had followed the victorious eagles of France in the campaign of Egypt and Austria. As the column halted Napoleon shouted to him: "Beat a retreat." The boy did not stir. "Gamin, beat a retreat!" The boy grasped his drumsticks, stepped forward and said: "Oh, sire, I don't know how. Desaix never taught me that. But I can beat a charge. Oh ! I can beat a charge that would make the dead fall in line. I beat that charge at the pyramids once, and I beat it at Mount Tabor, and I beat it again at the Bridge of Lodi. May I beat it here ?" Napoleon turned to Desaix: "We are beaten; what shall we do?" "Do? Beat them! It is only three o'clock ; there is time to win a victory yet. Up gamin, the charge ! Beat the old charge of Mount Tabor and Lodi !" A moment later the corps, following the sword gleam of Desaix and keeping step to the furious roll of the gamin's drum, swept down on the hosts of Austria. They drove the first line back on the second, the second back on the third, and there they died. Desaix fell ?it the first volley, but the line never faltered. As the smoke cleared away, in the front of the line was seen the gamin, still beating the furious charge, as over the dead and wounded, over the breastworks and ditches, over the cannon and rear guard, he led the way to victory! And the fifteen days in Italy were ended. To-day men point to Marengo with wonderment. They laud the power and foresight that so skill- Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 97 fully planned the battle; but they forget that Napoleon failed, they forget that he was defeated; they forget that a general only thirty years old made a victory of the Great Conqueror's defeat, and that a gamin of Paris put to shame the Child of Destiny, A Southern Court Scene Anonymous This declamation, like the preceding, demands frequent changes, with natural pauses. Use plenty of force where required — and many places require it — but vary your force to correspond with the thought. In the matter of gesture, remember that you are not the defendant nor his attorney, but you are to suggest what they did. Don't, for example, go through the movements of the defendant when "he bent and lifted a form from the ground," as we have seen speakers do, and don't tear open the prisoner's shirt, when you reach that incident. Simply looking or pointing at the imaginary prisoner is a far more effective gesture. A NEGRO trial was in progress in the little village of Jefifersonville. The defendant's counsel had introduced no testimony. A man had been stabbed, had fallen dead, his hand clasped over the wound and from that hand a knife had dropped, which the defendant's wife seized and concealed. The prisoner declared emphatically that the deceased had assaulted him knife in hand and that he had killed him in self-defense. As he began his story, a tall thick-set gentleman entered the room and stood silent. The court- house was crowded to the door, the anxious multi- tude catching every word as it fell from the prisoner's lips. When he had ceased, the new- comer pushed his way down the crowded aisle, 98 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them entered the rail, shook hands with the Court and attorneys and sat down. In view of the strong circumstantial evidence the prisoner's story had little effect, and this was easily swept away by a few cold words from the District Attorney. The case was passed to the jury and the Judge was preparing to deliver the charge, when the old gentleman arose. "If your Honor, please," he said, "the prisoner is entitled to the closing argument, and in the ab- sence of other counsel, I beg that you mark my name for the defense." "Mr. Clerk," said the Court, "mark General Robert Thomas for the defense." The silence was absolute. With eyes intent the jurymen sat motionless. Only this old man, grim, gray, and defiant, stood between the negro yonder and the grave. The past seemed to speak out of the silence to every man on that bench. Suddenly his lips opened, and he said with quick but quiet energy : "The knife found by the dead man's side was his own. He had drawn it before he was stabbed. The prisoner is a brave man, a strong man, and he would not have used a weapon upon one un- armed. "Why do I say he was brave? Every man on this jury shouldered his musket during the late war. Some, perhaps, were at Gettysburg. I well remember that fight. The enemy stood brave and determined, and met our charges with a grit and endurance that could not be shaken. Line after Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 99 line melted away, until at last came Pickett's charge. When that magnificent command went in, a negro stood behind it, watching and waiting. You know the result. Out of that vortex of flame, that storm of lead and iron, a handful drifted back. From one to another the negro ran, then turned and followed in the track of the charge. On — on, he went; on through the smoke and flame, up to the very cannon themselves. There he bent and lifted a form from the ground. Together they rose and fell until, meeting them half way, I took the burden from the hero and bore it on to safety. "That burden was the senseless form of my brother and the man who bore him out ; who brought him to me in his arms as a mother would carry a sick child ; that man, my friends, sits here under my hand. See — if I speak not the truth." He tore open the prisoner's shirt and lay bare his breast. A great ragged seam marked it from right to left. "Look," he said, "that scar was won by a slave in an hour that tried the souls of freemen, and put to its highest test the best manhood in the South. No man who wins such wounds can thrust a knife into an unarmed foe." It may have been contrary to the evidence, but the jury without leaving their seats gave a verdict of "Not guilty," and the Prosecuting Attorney, who bore a scar on his own cheek, cheered as he re- ceived it. lOO Witining Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them The Curse of Selfishness L. M. Cross Simply talk this out clearly, directly, and naturally. Take special pains to say naturally the dialect-dialogue between the boy and hit father, and pause at the end to let the point "soak in." Selfish people live in a very narrow, small world. They see very little, they accomplish less, and they get absolutely nothing out of life. Their attempt to absorb all makes them lose the very things that count most in life. They keep their very feet planted on what they think they have or can get. They remind us of a boy of whom we have heard, who was being punished unmercifully by another boy. "Vy don't you hit the poy back," urged the father of the boy who was getting licked. "Fadder, I can't hit 'im back, I'm standing on a ten-cent piece," re- plied the boy. Get away from your little attempts to cover everything that your feet may fall upon, and go into the battle of life, for the very action will bring you exercise and a stronger manhood. The little grain of wheat does not really live until it is buried in the ground and dies, and then afterwards it reproduces itself a thousand times, and a man has to burst his little selfish soul if he wants to live a larger, more useful and really suc- cessful life. Suppose the Almighty didn't deal with us with a lavish hand ! There is no Hmit to His boundless atmosphere and the earth's fruitful and generous Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them loi soil. The earth yields abundantly of fruit, vege- tables and grain. If Nature were selfish, the tree would grow alone, the potato plant would produce just one solitary potato, and rain would fall in a single drop if at all, instead of coming down in beneficent, copious showers. A selfish man makes no friends, for he is so wrapped in his own selfish self that he hasn't time to get acquainted with people. He know's nothing of the joy of giving, because he never gives. He is like a sponge on a rock, absorbing all the moisture within his reach, and giving out not a single drop. ' When a selfish man dies, he goes to his grave accompanied by as mournful, gloomy a lot of people as you could find attending and enjoying a minstrel show! The Girl in the Kitchen John H. Vincent Bear down on the thought in the first paragraph, and inake that speak. This paragraph is a general introduction to your subject, and its close should be marked by a natural pause and change as the second paragraph is begun. There are many fields of service in life. We call them trades, pursuits, professions, callings. These demand a variety of gifts and talents — and of processes preparatory. Some require head- work, others dexterity, tact, genius. At the root of all attempt and achievement is manual labor — the house ^^^ b<^ built, the ground cultivated, imple- 102 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them ments manufactured, food provided ; and then come merchandizing, banking, civil and political devis- ings, and for all — education. It is a busy world. The measure of value is not alone in time spent nor physical energy expended. Much depends on faculty and quality of energy required, natural endowment, tact, ability, as when an artist paints a picture worth one thousand or ten thousand dol- lars, the canvas is not expensive, nor the pigments; the value is in the soul of the artist. Much also depends on the ruling motive which is really the measure of merit. One artist paints a picture that, by the money he gains for it, he may live in luxu- rious ease and sensual gratification. Here a servant girl earns money by hard toil to help her brother through college. One of our most important modern contributors to civilization is the "girl in the kitchen." She may be a drudge or she may be a queen — all de- pends upon her own keynote^— her motive, her ideal, her ruling purpose. The girl in the kitchen should be the domestic artist of the house, — a queen of domestic science, respecting herself because she follows a profession that contributes to the highest social conditions, to physical life, to the gratification of appetite, and really to the fine arts as well. She should be a lady in the highest sense of that title as applied to an honorable, sensible, genuine ambitious woman who is not ashamed to earn her own living in an honorable way. She should represent not a "so- cial class," but a "profession," and take her social Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 103 position according to the quality of her personaHty and not according to the effete distinctions of a social order — an order we ought by this time to have outgrown. Let us train our girls and boys to love home, to honor industry, to put a true estimate on neat- ness and taste, on economy and common sense, to respect everybody who believes in self-support, to treat servants with courtesy and kindness, to honor a lady, whether dressed in satin or linsey- woolsey; whether seated at the table or serving those who are seated at it ; and who remember the real measure of individual worth as God estimates it and as the common sense of society judges it. Let our new civilization take a step forward, and value at her real worth the girl in the kitchen. The Children of the Poor Theodore Parker Pathos is the emotion that runs all through this selection, and for effective delivery, it must be felt as one speaks. The touch of irony along with the pathos in the last paragraph, should also be noted and expressed. If you would know the life of one of those poor boys in our State prisons you would wonder and weep. Let me take one of them at random out of the mass. He was born, unwelcome, amid wretchedness and want. His coming increased both. Miserably he struggles through his infancy, less tended than the lion's whelp. He becomes a boy. He is covered with rags only, and those '104 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them squalid with long-accumulated filth. He wanders about your streets, too low even to seek employ- ment, now snatching from a gutter half-rotten fruit, which the owner flings away. He is ignorant ; he has never entered a school house; to him even the alphabet is a mystery. He is young in years, yet old in misery. There is no hope in his face. He herds with others like himself, low, ragged, hungry and idle. If misery loves company he finds that satisfaction. Follow him to his home at night; he herds in a cellar; in the same sty with father, mother, brothers, sisters, and perhaps yet other families of like degree. What served him for dress by day is his only bed by night. Well, this boy steals some trifle, a biscuit, a bit of rope, or a knife from a shop window. He is seized and carried to jail. The day comes for trial. He is marched through the streets in hand- cuffs, the companion of drunkards and thieves, thus deadening the little self-respect which nature left even in an outcast's bosom. He sits there chained like a 'beast ; a boy in irons ! the sport and mockery of men vulgar as the common sewer. His trial comes. Of course he is convicted. The show of his countenance is witness against him. His rags and dirt, his ignorance, his vagrant habits, his idleness, all testify against him. That face so young, and yet so impudent, so sly, so writ all over with embryo villainy, is evidence enough. The jury are soon convinced, for they see his temptations in his look, and surely know that in such a condition men will steal; yes, they Winning Declamations— How to Speak Them 105 themselves would steal. The judge represents the law, and that practically regards it a crime for a boy to be weak and poor. I have been told a story, and I wish it might be falsely told, of a boy, in one of our cities, of six- teen, sent to the house of correction for five years because he stole a bunch of keys, and coming out of jail at twenty-one, unable to write, or read, or calculate, and with no trade but that of picking oakum. Yet he had been five years the child of the State, and in that college for the poor! Who would employ such a youth ; with such a reputa- tion; with the smell of the jail in his very breath? Not your shrewd men of business — they know the risk; not your respectable men, members of churches and all that ; not they ! Why, it would hurt a men's reputation for piety to do good in that way. Besides, the risk is great, and it argues a great deal more Christianity than it is popular to have, for a respectable man to employ such a youth. He is forced back into crime again. I say forced, for honest men will not employ him when the State shoves him out of jail. Soon you will have him in the court again, to be punished more severely. Then he goes to the State prison, and then again, and again, till death mercifully ends his career ! io6 Winning D eclamations-H ozv to Speak Them The Boy and the Juvenile Court Ben B. Lindsey Judge Lindsey has been doing a great work for wayward boys in Denver because he sympathizes with them— takes their point of view. You must also take a sympathetic attitude in order to speak this declamation effectively. Bring out the dialogue naturally, es- pecially the street dialect of Micky. Boys have feelings. They Hke to have friends. There isn't much use to try to arouse pride unless there be some one whom they want to please, and, in pleasing, will in turn be pleased. If they have no friends, the first thing to do is to supply the friend, and the pride, in most cases, will come out. If they have the wrong kind of friends, it is a good thing to quietly supply the right kind. Take the case of Micky. Before Micky got in the juvenile court one of the Denver papers had published his picture with a graphic account under the double-leaded headline, "The Worst Kid in Town." Micky had feelings. He made the paper so much trouble that they finally gave him a job. One unlucky day, however, as he himself explains it, he got "canned." After he was placed on proba- tion, he was arrested on a false suspicion, as he stated to me, "simply because the bull had to pinch somebody and he pinched me because he had been reading the Post" (the offending newspaper). The result was a second article entitled, "The Misfor- tunes of Micky," in which it was announced that he had been sent to the Reform School. Micky was simply the victim of a newspaper exaggera- tion, as other distinguished people have been before. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 107 He came to me in a great state of perturbation the next day, with the offending paper in his hand. He said, "Judge, just look at dat." I read rather surprisedly that I had committed Micky to the Industrial School. "Well," I said, "Micky, this is very distressing." "Yes," he said, "I knowed it was a lie when I seed it, but," he said, the tears welling in his eyes, "dat ain't de worst of it. Deys done gone and put it on the sporting page, and all my friends will see it." Now, Micky's friends were among the sporting fraternity. If there was a prize-fight on, before Micky got in the juvenile court — and the police would have you believe, even after — Micky was there if he had to go in through the roof. He is now a special probation officer in the juvenile court and very proud of his job. He can "keep tab" on more bad kids than the entire police force. He says himself that he has "done reformed long ago," and I am inclined to credit the statement. The best way to reform a boy waywardly dis- posed is first to understand him. You have got to get inside of him and see things through his eyes, understand his motives, have sympathy and pa- tience with his faults, just as far as you can, re- membering that more can be accomplished through love than by any other method. io8 Winning Declamations-H ozu to Speak Them The Modern Farmer C. W. Burkett The farmer enters into his own at the very moment he ^eahzes that he ought to be educated; when he uses his powers of thought to till his land and to grow his crops ; when he uses his muscles less and his brain more; when he spares his physical body and crowds the tool or machine he has created. The effect of the elimination of hand labor and the use of muscle-saving machinery on the physical and mental man is soon apparent. Before the coming of machinery this was true, as Edward Markham has said: Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox, He stands and leans on his hoe and gazes on the ground; The emptiness of the ages on his face, And on his back the burdens of the world. While now, as he rides and directs every sort of machine that is made to do his will, he fittingly represents his highest and loftiest mission. He stands now as Henry Jerome Stockard sees him: Imperial man's co-worker with the wind And rain and light and heat and cold, and all The agencies of God to feed and clothe And render beautiful and glad the world! Foremost among the causes that has occasioned this change in physical and mental man, in adding ease, comfort, and length of life, in making pes- Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 109 sible the nation's wealth and greatness, is the application of machinery to agriculture. Consider for a moment the ancient man with his sickle in one of our Western wheat fields along- side a modern combined header and thresher, which takes twenty feet at a "through" and drops the grain off in sacks, imagine, if you can, how many of these fellows with the sickle it would take to harvest our immense crops of 60,000,000 acres of wheat. Put your ancient farmer with his crooked stick for a plow in one of these wheat fields and count up, if you can, at some idle hour how many like him it would take to do the work of the man who to-day drives the modern steam gang-plow at the rate of ten miles an hour, taking twenty-four one-foot furrows at a "through." If we to-day used the old hand methods and produced our present food supply, fifty millions of people more would need to be added to our popula- tion, and all of us would be required in our agri- cultural fields. Even then we should need to eat sparingly and to fast often, else the day of little harvest might come and we perish altogether. Let your farm be a factory, where most of the crops raised shall be consumed as feed for live stock, that finished products may be made and sold as such, rather than as raw materials in which form they were raised. Such a system of farming will lead to permanent improvement of the soil ; it will secure from it the highest efificiency. These things it means : there shall be diversity of crops ; more live stock shall be bred and fed on the no Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them factory-farm; the entire plant shall be managed as a business enterprise of the largest magnitude. At the Tomb of Napoleon Robert G. Ingersoll This has long been a favorite for declamation, and naturally so, for it is in IngersoU's best style. A vivid imagination, that will enable you to see, at the moment of speaking, the things described, is essential for effective delivery. Bring out naturally the changes. Note that each one of the incidents of Napoleon's career requires a different emotion. Don't ruin this part of the declamation, as is often done, by excessive gesturing. If you see the pictures vividly, your audience will also see them without constant gestures. The rate in the last paragraph should be much slower than the one pre- ceding, where action is portrayed. To show how military glory fails to bring happi- ness, Robert G. Ingersoll once said : A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon. It is a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity. I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare Egyptian marble in which rests at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned upon the balustrade and thought of the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him quelling the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the Bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them m cavalry of the wild blasts scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves, I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets, clutched like a wild beast, banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king, and I saw him a prisoner on the rock at St. Helena, wilh his arms calmly folded behind his back, gaz- ing steadfastly out upon the sad and solemn sea. And I thought of all the widows and orphans he had made; of all the tears that had been shed for his glory; of the only woman who had ever loved him torn from his heart by the ruthless hand of ambition. And I said, I would rather have been a poor French peasant and worn wooden shoes, I would rather have lived in a hut with the vines growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun; yes, I would rather have been that poor peasant and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great. 112 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them The Making of Our Country's Flag Franklin K. Lane This selection has an interesting history. It was delivered by Mr. Lane, U. S. Secretary of the Interior, before an audience composed of government employees at Washington. Bring out the dialogue naturally, denoting the changes as each character speaks. The last paragraph is a strong climax, and requires sustained feeling and force. This morning, as I passed into the Land Office, the flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling folds I heard it say : "Good morn- ing, Mr. Flag-maker." "I beg your pardon, Old Glory," I said, "you are mistaken. I am not the President of the United States, nor the Vice-President, nor a member of Congress, nor even a General in the Army. I am only a Government clerk." "I greet you again, Mr. Flag-maker," replied the gay voice. "I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter of yesterday straight- ening out the tangle of that farmer's homestead in Idaho." "No, I am not," I was forced to confess. "Well, perhaps you are the one who discovered the mistake in that Indian contract in Oklahoma?" "No, wrong again," I said. "Well, you helped to clear that patent for the hopeful inventor in New York, or pushed the open- ing of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No matter, whichever Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 113 one of these beneficent individuals you may happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag-maker." I was about to pass on, feeling that I was being mocked, when the flag stopped me with these words : "You know, the world knows, that yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico, but that act looms no larger on the flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia is making to win the corn-club prize this summer. Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska, but a mother in Michigan worked from sunrise until far into the night to give her boy an education. She, too, is making the flag. Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics ; yesterday, no doubt a school-teacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. We are all mak- ing the flag." "But," I said, impatiently, "these people were only working." Then came the great shout from the flag. "Let me tell you who I am. The work that we do is the making of the real flag. I am not the flag, at all, I am but its shadow. I am whatever you make me, nothing more. I am your belief in your- self, your dream of what a people may become. I live a changing life, a life of moods and pas- sions, of heartbreaks and tired muscles. Some- times I am strong with pride, when men do an honest work, fitting the rails together truly. Some- times I droop, for then purpose has gone from 114 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them me, and cynically I play the coward. Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that blasts judgment. But always I am all that you hope to be and have the courage to try for. I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling hope. I am the day's work of the weakest man and the largest dream of the most daring. I am the Con- stitution and the courts, statutes and statute- makers, soldier and dreadnought, drayman and street-sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. I am the battle of yesterday and the mistake of to-morrow. I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. I am the clutch of an idea and the reasoned purpose of resolution. I am no more than what you believe me to be, and I am all that you believe I can be. I am what you make me, nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My stars and my stripes are your dreams and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, be- cause you have made them so out of your hearts, for you are the makers of the flag, and it is well that you glory in the making." Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 115 Incentives to Patriotism David J. Burrill The closing of a speech delivered in New York City in April, 1910. This declamation is also full of changes. A great variety of emotions are expressed, and these should be denoted by proper transitions and voiced in appropriate tones. Speak the poetic quotations as you would prose, and the rhythm will take care of itself: don't spoil the effect by the use of a sing-song delivery. The two best preachers on Manhattan Island to-day are two men who stand in bronze by the roadside; one of them on the west side drive, in the Park — a man in his regimentals, who was placed there to commemorate the valor of the Seventh Regiment. On the pedestal of the monu- ment is inscribed his sermon on patriotism. It reads: "For the Glory of my Country!" The other is down at the other end of the Island ■ — Nathan Hale! Standing on the busiest street in all the world; at the very heart of the motion of this great metropolis — the young school-master and patriot, with his hands bound behind him; ready to go out to Rutgers orchard to be hung! And there in the presence of the passing millions, he is preaching as no clergyman or politician can preach with living lips, those last words of his, "I regret in dying that I have but one life to offer for my country." I tell you, young men, back of all the good advice that will be given you to-night, there is nothing like this : Love the Republic ! Believe in the prin- ciples that underlie it ! Get centered there and you Ii6 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them will never be bothered about your duty as a citizen. I have heard the Scotch people sing "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled" ; I have heard the Germans sing "Die Wacht am Rhein," in their country ; and I have myself sung with the Irish: I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand, He said, "How is old Ireland and how does she stand?" "She's the most distressful country that ever you have seen, They're hanging men and women for the wearin' of the green." I have heard the English in Hyde Park sing "God Save the King !" But in all the music that I have ever heard in the glory of national life, I have never heard an anthem that stirs my blood like: My country, 'tis of thee! Sweet land of Liberty, Of thee I sing! Long may our land be bright With Freedom's holy light; Protect us by thy might, Great God, our Kinc! And the symbol of such protection is: Your flag and my flag, and, oh, how much it holds I Your land and my land, secure within its folds; Your heart and my heart beat quicker at the the sight. Sun kissed and wind tossed, the red and blue and white ; The one flag— the great flag— the flag for me and you, Glorifies all else beside, the red and white and blue! POETICAL SELECTIONS PREFATORY NOTE The poems that follow were selected as a result of the following tests: (i) Is the poem of real literary merit? Is it worth memorizing? (2) In case of an extract, is it a unit in thought? (3) Is it otherwise suited to the purposes of reciting be- fore an audience? Further, poems requiring im- personation and those written in dialect have been omitted. The oral interpretation of literature is now hap- pily being restored in our schools. The old-time practice of reciting poetry has been sadly neglected in modern times, for most poems can hardly be appreciated without being heard. Memoriter de- livery conduces to a keener appreciation, and is a means of mental enrichment which no "modern" method of teaching literature can equal. The oral expression should, of course, reveal a sympathetic interpretation and a sincere, natural manner. The capital fault in reciting poetry is the "sing-song" tone, with its regularly recurring emphasis, a pause at the end of each line, and the falling inflection about every other line, regardless of the thought to be expressed. The best general rule is, to read poetry as you would prose, and 117 ii8 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them the rhythm will take care of itself. Another com- mon fault is over-dramatic and excessive gesture. The traditional elocutionist is wont to think that in the oral rendering every emotion in a poem must be pictured in some way by bodily movements. The voicing of genuine emotion is rarely accompanied by physical contortions. For the most effective oral expression, most of the poems in this book re- quire few or no gestures. Some specific suggestions as to interpretation and delivery are contained in comments preceding a number of the following poems. The Wonderful World IV. B. Rands This poem and those immediately following are good selections for the younger children, — in the second, third, or fourth grades. In speaking this poem, think of the world and the things it contains, aa you speak. Be sure to place the proper emphasis in the last two lines of the last stanza. I Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world, With the wonderful water round you curled. And the wonderful grass upon your breast, — World, you are beautifully drest. 2 The wonderful air is over me. And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree. It walks on the water, and whirls the mills. And talks to itself on the tops of the hills. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 1 19 3 You friendly Earth ! how far do you go With the wheatfields that nod and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs, and isles And people upon you for thousands of miles? 4 Ah, you are so great, and I am so small, I tremble to think of you, World, at all; And yet, when I said my prayers, to-day, A whisper inside me seemed to say, "You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot ; You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!" All Things Bright and Beautiful Cecil Frances Alexander Beware of a sing-song in speaking this poem. Use the rising in. flection at the end of each line except at the close of each stanza; and the last lines of stanzas 4 and 6 should also be passed with th» rising inflection. I All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful, — The Lord God made them all. 2 Each little flower that opens. Each little bird that sings, — He made their glowing colors, He made their tiny wings. 120 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 3 The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly. And order'd their estate. 4 The purple-headed mountain, The river running by, The morning, and the sunset That lighteth up the sky. 5 The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden, — He made them every one. 6 The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows where we play, The rushes by the water We gather every day ; — 7 He gaves us eyes to see them. And lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who hath made all things well. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 121 Song of Life Charles MacKay N'ote that this poem, up to near the close, illustrates and leads up to the thought contained in the last four lines, and these lines should be given with proper emphasis and strong force. No gestures are needed. I A TRAVELER on a dusty road Strewed acorns on the lea ; And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade at evening-time, To breathe its early vows ; And Age was pleased, in heights of noon, To bask beneath its boughs. The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore — It stood a glory in its place, A blessing evermore. 2 A little spring had lost its way Amid the grass and fern ; A passing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn. He walled it in, and hung with care A ladle on the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that Toil might drink. He passed again, and lo ! the well, By summer never dried. Had cooled ten thousand parched tongues. And saved a life beside. 122 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 3 A nameless man, amid the crowd That thronged the daily mart, Let fall a word of hope and love Unstudied from the heart, A whisper on the tumult thrown, A transitory breath. It raised a brother from the dust, It saved a soul from death. O germ ! O fount ! O word of love ! O thought at random cast! Ye were but little at the first, But mighty at the last. * Which Loved Best? Joy Allison Take special pains to give the quotations naturally and to place the emphasis so that the character of each child is fittingly portrayed. I "I LOVE you, mother," said little John. Then forgetting his work, his cap went on, And he was off to the garden swing, Leaving his mother the wood to bring. "I love you, mother," said little Nell, "I love you better than tongue can tell." Then she teased and pouted half the day. Till mother rejoiced when she went to play. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 123 3 "I love you, mother," said little Fan. "To-day I'll help you all I can." To the cradle then she did softly creep, And rocked the baby till it fell asleep. 4 Then stepping softly, she took the broom, And swept the floor and dusted the room; Busy and happy all day was she, Helpful and cheerful as child could be. 5 "I love you, mother," again they said — Three little children, going to bed. How do you think that mother guessed Which of them really loved her best? In School Days John- Greenleaf Whittier You will find several lines in this poem which should be passed without pausing at the end. Thus you will avoid any tendency to a sing-song delivery. Aim to give naturally the quotation in stanza 9, and be sure to employ a rather long pause between stanzas 9 and 10. I Still sits the schoolhouse by the road, A ragged beggar sunning ; Around it still the sumachs grow. And blackberry vines are running. 124 IV inning DeclamcMions-How to Speak Them 2 Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep-scarred by raps official ; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial. 3 The charcoal frescos on its wall ; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school. Went storming out to playing! 4 Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting. 5 It touched the tangled golden curls. And brown eyes full of grieving. Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. 6 For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled; His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 125 7 Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered ; — As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. 8 He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing: 9 "I'm sorry that I spelt the word : I hate to go above you, Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — "Because, you see, I love you !" 10 Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child- face is showing, Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing! II He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her, — because they love him. 126 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Little Brown Hands John Boyle O'Reilly This poem is reputed to have been written by a girl fifteen years old, and it is pronounced by the author to be the finest he ever read. He published these lines four times, declaring that he liked them better every time he read them. A moderate rate should be used in delivery, dwelling upon the words that chiefly present the pictures. Strong force should be used in the last two stanzas, making the closing words of the last stanza the climax of the whole. I They drive up the cows from the pasture, Up through the long shady lane, Where the quail whistles loud in the wheatfield That is yellow with ripening grain. 2 They find in the thick waving grasses Where the scarlet-lipped strawberry grows; They gather the earliest snowdrops And the first crimson bud of the rose. 3 They toss the hay in the meadow They gather the elder-bloom white, They find where the dusky grapes purple In the soft-tinted October light. 4 They know where the apples hang ripest And are sweeter than Italy's wines; They know where the fruit hangs thickest On the long, thorny blackberry vines. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 127 5 They gather the delicate seaweeds, And built tiny castles of sand; They pick up the beautiful seashells Fairy barks that have drifted to land. 6 They wave from the tall, rock treetops. Where the oriole's hammock-nest swings. And at nighttime are foiled in slumber By a song that a fond mother sings. 7 Those who toil bravely are strongest. The humble and poor become great ; And from those brown-handed children Shall grow mighty rulers of state. 8 The pen of the author and statesman, The noble and wise of the land — The sword and chisel and palette, Shall be held in the little brown hand. 128 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them The Flag Goes By Henry H. Bennett Although "Hats off" should be given in the quick, ringing tones of a command, avoid saying hat-soff. Note that the marked transi- tions in this poem come between stanzas 2 and 3, and 5 and 6. Stanzas i and 2 describe the flag as it passes by. Stanzas 3, 4, and 5 tell of what the flag stands for, and these should be given in slow rate, full orotund tones, and with strong force. Stanza 6 is simply a refrain — an echo of stanza i — and thus makes a pleasing and ef- fectiye close. I Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky: Hats off ! The flag is passing by ! 2 Blue and crimson and white it shines. Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. Hatsofif! The colors before us fly; But more than the flag is passing by. 3 Sea fights and land fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on dying lips; Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 129 4 Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right and law, Stately honor and reverend awe; 5 Sign of a nation, great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong: Pride and glory and honor, — all Live in the colors to stand or falL 6 Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums ; And loyal hearts are beating high: Hats off! The flag is passing by! To the Man Behind the Plow Jake H. Harrison Note that matiy of the lines in this poem should be passed without pausing at the end. In the first stanza, for example, no pause should occur after "furrow" and "nature." Note also that the first three stanzas are descriptive and praiseful of the man behind the plow, and require moderate rate in delivery. Stanza 4 begins an ex- hortation, or appeal, and from this point on increased rate and force are required. I When the ground is nice and mellow And the air is crisp and fine, And you cut the turning furrow Like the laying of a line; 130 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them While aroma pulses upward Making glad the vagrant air, There is something sweet in nature That is comforting and rare. 2 There is something in the furrow As you walk behind the plow, Giving strength to healthy labor And your muscles feel it now; There is pleasure in the turning Of the fertile, mellow soil, There is glory in the doing Of a useful, honest toil. 3 There is honor in the gaining Of a peaceful livelihood, There is motive in your actions That will do your country good; While you help to feed the millions And relieve the hunger stress, You perform a sacred labor That the Lord will surely bless. 4 Bear the banner proudly forward, You are working to the van, Cut the furrow straight, remember, Though a toiler, be a man; You must feed — then rule the nations Though you are a country wight, Do it with an honest purpose And the brawny arm of Right. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 131 5 Cease to be like driven cattle, Turn the tables — take command, Curb the bloody lords of battle, Soothe and pacify the land; Grow no longer "cannon fodder" For the use of warring kings, But produce the blessed product That from justice ever springs. 6 Bid the warring Nations "Stop it !" You possess the strength — then move, Stop this devastating conflict. And your right to govern prove ; Sound the tocsin "Peace and Plenty," Wind your trumpet now, and blow! Starve the war lords to submission, Say "You Must!" and make it so. Aspirations Anonymous ^ Think of explaining to and impressing upon your hearers the thought of this poem. Render it in a conversational tone, avoiding the sing-song style. Make a special effort to place the emphasis so as to bring out the thought. I Our aims are all too high; we try To gain the summit at a bound. When we should reach it step by step, And climb the ladder round by round. 132 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them He who would climb the heights sublime, Or breathe the purer air of life, Must not expect to rest in ease, But brace himself for toil or strife. 2 We should not in our blindness seek To grasp alone for grand and great. Disdaining every smaller good, — For trifles make the aggregate. And if a cloud should hover o'er Our weary path-way like a pall, Remember God permits it there. And His good purpose reigns o'er all. 3 Life should be full of earnest work. Our hearts undashed by fortune's frown; Let perseverance conquer fate, And merit seize the victor's crown. The battle is not to the strong, The race not always to the fleet ; And he who seeks to pluck the stars. Will lose the jewels at his feet. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 133 A Texas Mockingbird Will P. Lockhart See and hear the mockingbird as you speak. The rate should be moderate to slow. Note that each odd-numbered line in stanza i requires no pause at the end. Bring out the contrast expressed in the first and last four lines of stanza 3, not failing to emphasize "mine." I When the hush of night has fallen Over all the countryside, And the harvest moon's refulgence Is a glorious silvery tide, When the balmy Southern breezes In tlie murmurous trees are heard. Then begins the wondrous carol Of the Texas mockingbird. 2 Strains so pure, so full of beauty, Not a discord mars his note; Like a tide of liquid silver Pours his medley from his throat. As designed by his creator. Nature's king of song is he. And a bird of various nature — All his tribe's epitome. 3 Let the painted prima donna Ply the utmost of her art. To the roar of fulsome plaudits That are empty as her heart; 134 Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them Mine the stage of moonlit verdure. By the perfumed zephyrs stirred; Mine the songs of God's designing, By a Texas mockingbird. For Those Who Fail Joaquin Miller Study on the proper placing of emphasis to bring out the thought. If you think of some one you have known who has failed and yet deserves praise, it will help you to give this poem with appreciation and feeling. I "All honor to him who shall win the prize," The world has cried for a thousand years, But to him who tries, and who fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears. 2 Give glory and honor and pitiful tears To all who fail in their deeds sublime. Their ghosts are many in the van of years, They were born with time in advance of time. 3 Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time. Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame And lets God finish the thought sublime. 4 And great is the man with a sword undrawn, And good is the man who refrains from wine, But the man who fails and yet still fights on, Lo! he is the twin-born brother of mine. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 135 The Rich Man and the Poor Man Ivan Chemnitzer You will need to read this poem over carefully two or three times in order to grasp the thought and to express it naturally. A conversa- tional style is best adapted to the delivery. Do not fail to bring out the many changes that occur, or to express the irony contained in stanza 4. The matter of emphasis should be thoughtfully studied. If, for example, you fail to emphasize "poor" at the begin- ning of stanza 5, one might think you were still speaking of the rich man described in stanza 4. I So goes the world; — if wealthy, you may call This friend, that brother ; — friends and brothers all ; Though you are worthless — witless — never mind it; You may have been a stable-boy — what then? 'Tis wealth, good sir, makes honorable men. You seek respect, no doubt, and you will find it. 2 But if you are poor, Heaven help you! though your sire Had royal blood within him, and though you Possess the intellect of angels, too, 'Tis all in vain ; — the world will ne'er inquire On such a score: Why should it take the pains? 'Tis easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains, 3 I once saw a poor fellow, keen and clever, Witty and wise: — he paid a man a visit, And no one noticed him, and no one ever Gave him a welcome. "Stranger!" cried I, "whence is it?" 136 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them He walked on this side, then on that, He tried to introduce a social chat; Now here, now there, in vain he tried; Some formally and freezingly replied, And some Said by their silence — "Better stay at home.'* 4 A rich man burst the door; As Croesus rich, I'm sure He could not pride himself upon his wit, And as for wisdom, he had none of it; He had what's better; he had wealth. What a confusion ! — all stand up erect — These crowd around to ask him of his health; These bow in honest duty and respect; And these arrange a sofa or a chair. And these conduct him there. "Allow me, sir, the honor" ; — then a bow Down to the earth. — Is't possible to show Meet gratitude for such kind condescension? 5 The poor man hung his head. And to himself he said, "This is indeed beyond my comprehension"; Then looking round. One friendly face he found. And said, "Pray tell me why is wealth preferred To wisdom?" — "That's a silly question, friend!" Replied the other — "have you never heard, Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 137 A man may lend his store Of gold or silver ore, But wisdom none can borrow, none can lend?" The Liberty Bell Anonymous This poem has long been a favorite for recitation, though it is sometimes ruined in delivery by too frequent and over-dramatic gestures. The selection is full of changes, and can hardly be spoken in a lifeless, monotonous way if you appreciate at all the scenes described. Think of the old Independence Hall at Philadelphia as you tell the stofy, and see this now and again by glancing at it through a window in the auditorium where you are speaking. The action described in stanzas i and 2 requires a rather rapid move- ment and ringing tones. Give the quotations in stanza 3 just as you imagine each of the different persons spoke. The only gesture expression required here is to turn to different parts of the audience as each character is quoted. Stanza 5 marks a transition and should be preceded by a pause. At stanza 6 the rate is much faster, con- tinuiMg until the boy's "joyous cry" is uttered. Then another transi- tion, or change, occurs, the rate being rapid till the end of stanza 8. Here again a change occurs, and stanza 9 should be given with slow rate, round, full tones, and strong force. I There was tumult in the city, In the quaint old Quaker town, And the streets were rife with people Pacing restless up and down; People gathering at corners, Where they whispered each to each, And the sweat stood on their temples, With the earnestness of speech. 2 As the bleak Atlantic currents Lash the wild Newfoundland shore, 138 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them So they beat against the State House, So they surged against the door; And the mingling of their voices Made a harmony profound, Till the quiet street of Chestnut, Was all turbulent with sound. 3 "Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?" "Who is speaking?" "What's the news?" "What of Adams?" "What of Sherman?" "Oh, God grant they won't refuse!" "Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!" "I am stifling!" "Stifle then; When a nation's life's at hazard. We've no time to think of men!" 4 So they beat against the portal, — Man and woman, maid and child; And the July sun in heaven On the scene looked down and smiled; The same sun that saw the Spartan Shed his patriot blood in vain, Now beheld the soul of freedom All unconquered rise again, 5 Aloft in that high steeple Sat the bellman, old and gray; He was weary of the tyrant And his iron-sceptred sway; Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 139 So he sat with one hand ready On the clapper of the bell, When his eye should catch the signal, Of the glorious news to tell. 6 See ! see ! the dense crowd quivers Through all its lengthy line. As the boy beside the portal Looks forth to give the sign ! With his small hands upward lifted, Breezes dallying with his hair, Hark ! with deep, clear intonation, Breaks his young voice on the air. 7 Hushed the people's swelling murmur. List the boy's strong joyous cry! "Ring!" he shouts aloud; "Ring! Grandpa! Ring! Oh, Ring for LIBERTY!" And straightway, at the signal. The old bellman lifts his hand. And sends the good news, making Iron music through the land. 8 How they shouted ! What rejoicing ! How the old bell shook the air. Till the clang of freedom ruffled The calm gliding Delaware! How the bonfires and the torches Shone uoon the night's repose, 140 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them And from the flames, like Phoenix, Fair Liberty arose! 9 That old bell now is silent, And hushed its iron tongue, But the spirit it awakened Still lives — forever young. And while we greet the sunlight On the Fourth of each July, We'll ne'er forget the bellman, Who, 'twixt the earth and sky. Rung out Our Independence, Which, please God, shall never die! Prospice Robert Browning "Prospiee" is the Latin for "outlook," or literally, "Look forward." The poet here contemplates the end of life. It requires a mature mind to grasp the thought, and a pupil below the sixth or seventh grades should hardly attempt orally to interpret this poem. The poet would face death open-eyed and fighting. Note the play of the deepest and strongest emotions as the "Arch Fear" is first faced, then conquered, and blended, into a "peace out of pain," then the climax is reached in the expressed faith, trust, and adoration borne by the three closing lines. I Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face. When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm. The post of the foe; Winning Declamations-How to Speak Theffi 141 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man iiiust go ; For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall. Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, The best and the last ! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore. And bade me creep past. 2 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old. Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave. Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! 142 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Where the West Begins Arthur Chapman This and the four other selections immediately following are laudatory of sections and States. The choosing of any of them for recitation will of course depend upon the speaker's sympathies. The poem that follows requires special study to determine the proper em- phasis. In the first place, the word or words that chiefly present each picture should be emphasized. And then, in the six repetitions of the line, "that's where the West begins," seek variety in emphasis. Thus, when this line is first reached, the obvious stress is on "that's" and "West"; the next time, say, on "West" only; then on "that's" only, ending the line with the rising inflection; and at the close distribute the emphasis so that no single word is specially stressed. The suggested variation is suggestive only, but the point is that in a repetition of words, phrases, or clauses, one should seek variety in emphasis. I Out where the hand clasp's a little stronger, Out where a smile dwells a little longer, That's where the West begins. Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter — That's where the West begins. 2 Out where the skies are a trifle bluer. Out where friendship's a little truer. That's where the West begins. Out where a fresher breeze is blowing. Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing, Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing — That's where the West begins. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 143 3 Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts with despair are aching — That's where the West begins. Where there's more of singing and less of sighing, Where there's more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes friends without half trying — That's where the West begins. \ The West Douglass Malloch The suggestions made regarding the preceding poem largely apply also to this one. Especial care should be exercised in emphasizing the words that express-the contrasts, such as "East," "West," etc. I Men look to the East for the dawning things, for the light of a rising sun, But they look to the West, to the crimson West, for the things that are done, are done. The eastward sun is a new-made hope from the dark of the night distilled; But the westward sun is a sunset sun, is the sun of a hope fulfilled ! 2 So out of the East they have always come, the cradle that saw the birth Of all of the heart-warm hopes of man and all of the hopes of earth — For out of the East arose a Christ and out of the East has gleamed The dearest dream and the clearest dream that ever a prophet dreamed. 144 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 3 And into the waiting West they go with the dream- child of th» East, And find the hopes that they hoped of old are a hundred-fold increased. For here in the East we dream our dreams of the things we hope to do, And here in the West, the crimson West, the dreams of the East come true! Land of the South Alexander Beaufort Meek The emotion of tender compassion which runs through this poem should be appreciated and expressed in musical tones charged with deep feeling. Note the slight change in emotion that appears in the last stanza, the climax at the close requiring strong, ringing tones. I Land of the South ! — imperial land ! — How proud thy mountains rise ! — How sweet thy scenes on every hand! How fair thy covering skies ! But not for this, — oh, not for these, I love thy fields to roam, — Thou hast a dearer spell to me, — Thou art my native home ! 2 The rivers roll their liquid wealth, Unequaled to the sea, — Thy hills and valleys bloom with health, And green with verdure be! / Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 145 But, not for thy proud ocean streams, Not for thine azure dome, — Sweet, sunny South ! — I cUng to thee,— t- Thou art my native home ! 3 I've stood beneath ItaHa's clime, Beloved of tale and song, — On Helvyn's hills, proud and sublime. Where nature's wonders throng; By Tempe's classic sunlit streams, Where gods, of old, did roam, — But ne'er have found so fair a land As thou — my native home ! 4 And thou hast prouder glories, too, Than nature ever gave, — Peace sheds o'er thee her genial dew, And Freedom's pinions wave, — Fair Science flings her pearls around. Religion lifts her dome, — These, these endear thee to my heart, — My own, loved native home ! 5 And "heaven's best gift to man" is thine, — God bless thy rosy girls ! — Like sylvan flowers, they sweetly shine, — Their hearts are pure as pearls ! And grace and goodness circle them. Where'er their footsteps roam — How can I then, whilst loving them, Not love my native home! 146 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 6 Land of the South — imperial land! — Then here's a health to thee, — Long as thy mountain barriers stand, May'st thou be blest and free ! — May dark dissension's banner ne'er Wave o'er thy fertile loam, — But should it come, there's one will die, To save his native home! The Call of Kansas Esther M. Clark In speaking; this selection, almost any Western State could be sub- stituted for Kansas, if desired, for the poem might properly be entitled, "The Call of the Prairie." Notice that the author writes from a Southern seaport. This selection, with its home sentiment and appeal to the imagination, requires for delivery a moderate to slow rate and sustained sympathy and feeling. I Surfeited here with beauty, and the sensuous- sweet perfume Borne in from a thousand gardens and orchards of orange bloom ; Awed by the silent mountains, stunned by the breakers' roar — The restless ocean pounding and tugging away at the shore — I lie on the warm sand beach and hear, above the cry of the sea. The voice of the prairie, calling, calling me. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 147 2 Sweeter to me than the salt sea spray, the fragrance of summer rains ; Nearer my heart than these mighty hills are the windswept Kansas plains; Dearer the sight of a shy, wild rose by the road- side's dusty way Than all the splendor of poppy-fields, ablaze in the sun of May. Gay as the bold poinsettia is, and the burden of pepper trees, The sunflower, tawny and gold and brown, is richer, to me, than these. And rising ever above the song of the hoarse, insistent sea, The voice of the prairie, calling, calling me. 3 Kansas, beloved Mother, to-day in an alien land, Yours is the name I have idly traced with a bit of wood in the sand. The name that, sprung from a scornful lip, will make the warm blood start; The name that is graven, hard and deep, on the core of my loyal heart. O higher, clearer and stronger yet, than the boom of the savage sea, The voice of the prairie, calling, calling me. 148 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Texas Henry Van Dyke In this poem, which was read at the dedication of Rice Institute, at Houston, Texas, October 12, 1912, Mr. Van Dyke has made use of an Indian legend to the effect that when the Indian hears the bees in the forest he knows that he must move on, for the whites are near. The blank verse, after the style of "Hiawatha," requires special care in so placing the emphasis and inflections as to avoid a sing-song. I All along the Brazos River, All along the Colorado, In the valleys and the lowlands Where the trees were tall and stately. In the rich and rolling meadows Where the grass was full of wildflowers. Came a humming and a buzzing, Came the murmur of a going To and fro among the treetops, Far and wide across the meadows. And the red men in their tepees Smoked their pipes of clay and listened. "What is this ?" they asked in wonder ; "Who can give the sound a meaning? Who can understand the language Of a going in the treetops?" 2 Then the wisest of the Tejas Laid his pipe aside and answered : "O, my brothers, these are people. Very little, winged people. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 149 Countless, busy, banded people, Coming humming through the timber 1 These are tribes of bees united By a single aim and purpose, To possess the Tejas' country, Gather harvest from the prairies, Store their wealth among the timber. These are hive and honeymakers, Sent by Manito to warn us That the white men now are coming. With their women and their children! Not the fiery filibusters Passing wildly in a moment, Like a flame across the prairies, Like a whirlwind through the forest. Leaving empty lands behind them ! • Not the Mexicans and Spaniards, Indolent and proud hidalgos. Dwelling in their haciendas, Dreaming, talking of to-morrow. While their cattle graze around them, And their fickle revolutions Change the rulers, not the people! Other folks are these who follow Where the wild bees come to warn us; These are hive and honeymakers, These are busy, banded people, Roaming far to swarm and settle, Working every day for harvest, Fighting hard for peace and order, Worshiping as queens, their women, 150 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Making homes and building cities, Full of riches and of trouble. All our hunting grounds must vanish, All our lodges fall before them, All our happy life of freedom, Fade away like smoke before them. Come, my brothers, strike your tepees, Call your women, load your ponies ! Let us take the trail to westward, Where the plains are wide and open. Where the bison herds are gathered Waiting for our feathered arrows. We will live as lived our fathers. Gleaners of the gifts of nature. Hunters of the unkept cattle. Men whose women run to serve them. If the toiling bees pursue us, If the white men seek to tame us, We will fight them off and flee them. Break their hives and take their honey, Moving westward, ever westward. There to live as lived our fathers." 3 So the red men drove their ponies, With the tent poles trailing after, Out along the path to sunset, While along the river valleys Swarmed the wild bees, the forerunners. And the white men, close behind them. Men of mark from old Missouri, Men of daring from Kentucky, Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 151 Tennessee, Louisiana, Men of many States and races, Bringing wives and children with them, Followed up the wooded valleys, Spread across" the rolling prairies. Raising homes and reaping harvests. Rude the toil that tried their patience. Fierce the fights that proved their courage. Rough the stone and tough the timber Out of which they built their order! Yet they never failed nor faltered. And the instinct of their swarming Made them one and kept them working. Till their toil was crowned with triumph, And the country of the Tejas Was the fertile land of Texas. The Eagle's Song Richard Mansfield The sweep of the thought in this poem, embracing our Revolu- tionary and Civil Wars, can hardly be followed by a pupil short of the upper grades. Note that each of the last three stanzas denotes a marked transition, to be indicated by proper pauses in each case. I The lioness whelped, and the sturdy cub Was seized by an eagle and carried up, And homed for a while in an eagle's nest. And slept for a while on an eagle's breast; And the eagle taught it the eagle's song: "To be staunch, and valiant, and free, and strong !" 152 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 2 The lion whelp sprang from the eyrie nest, From the lofty crag where the queen birds rest; He fought the king on the spreading plain, And drove him back o'er the foaming main. He held the land as a thrifty chief. And reared his cattle, and reaped his sheaf, Nor sought the help of a foreign hand. Yet welcomed all to his own free land! 3 Two were the sons that the country bore To the Northern lakes and the Southern shore; And Chivalry dwelt with the Southern son, And Industry lived with the Northern one. Tears for the time when they broke and fought! Tears was the price of the union wrought I And the land was red in a sea of blood, Where brother for brother had swelled the flood! 4 And now that the two are one again. Behold on their shield the word "Refrain 1" And the lion cubs twain sing the eagle's song: "To be staunch, and valiant, and free, and strong !" For the eagle's beak, and the lion's paw. And the lion's fangs, and the eagle's claw. And the eagle's swoop, and the lion's might. And the lion's leap, and the eagle's sight. Shall guard the flag with the word "Refrain!" Now that the two are one again! Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 153 If Rudyard Kipling The thought of this poem is on-looking throughout to the conclu- sion reached in the last two lines of the last stanza. Until these two lines are reached, therefore, the rising inflection should be maintained, including the last lines of all stanzas but the last. I If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you; But make allowance for their doubting, too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being bed about, don't deal in Hes; . Or, being hated, don't give way to hating. And yet don't look too good nor talk too wise; 2 If you can dream and not make dreams your master ; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ; Or, watch the things you gave your life to broken And stoop and build them up with Worn-out tools ; 3 If you can make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss. 154 Winn'mg Declamations-How to Speak Them And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them, "Hold on"; 4 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue; Or walk with kings, nor lose your common touch ; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son. Copyright, 1910, by Rudyard Kipling. Crossing the Bar Alfred Tennyson The inspiration of this poem came to Tennyson one evening while he was being rowed to shore in a harbor on the coast of England. Being contemplative, the rate should be slow. Note that the thought is incomplete at the end of stanza i, hence the rising inflection is required. The same remark might be applied to the close of stanza 3. A note of faith and trust runs through the whole poem, the climax being reached in the last stanza, which has frequently been quoted. I Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, Winning Dedaniations-Hozv to Speak Them 155 2 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. 3 Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. 156 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Recessional Rudyard Kipling The occasion of this poem was the celebration in England of the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's reign, known as the "Queen's Jubilee." Representatives from all parts of the British Empire assembled at London in 1897 to do honor to the occasion. David Starr Jordan calls this poem "the noblest hymn of the century." As a general rule — exceptions being found in stanzas 2 and 3 — the rising inflection should be maintained in each stanza until the prayer, or direct invocation, is reached in the last two lines. The falling inflection should be used on "yet" (for the purpose of emphasis), also on "forget" in each instance. Try the effect of placing very strong emphasis on the first "forget," then make the clause that follows an echo of the first, with less pronounced emphasis on any one word. Note that special emphasis is required on "Thee," in stanzas 4 and 5. The "reeking tube and iron shard" (line 2, stanza 5) refer to cannon and battleships, the latter being much in evidence upon the occasion which inspired this poem. I God of our fathers, known of old — Lord of our far-flung battle-line — Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget! 2 The tumult and the shouting dies — The captains and the kings depart — Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget! Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them 157 3 Far-called our navies melt away — On dune and headland sinks the fire — Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 4 If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe — Such boasting as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget 1 5 For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard All valiant dust that builds on dust. And guarding calls not Thee to guard — For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! 158 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them The Power of Music William Shakespeare The following is an excerpt from the love scene between Lorenzo and Jessica, in The Merchant of Venice. The scene must be recalled as one recites the lines: the lovers talking in the moonlight, while from a nearby house is heard sweet music. Musical tones are of course required to echo the thought and sentiment. The rate is generally slow, but note how it should be varied in stanza 2, follow- ing a marked transition. Note also what a fine opportunity for ex- pressing a climax is offered in the three lines (stanza 3) ending with "spoils." Begin in a low key, then rise slightly in key at each succeeding line, with a corresponding increase in force until the climax is reached. I How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim : Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. . . . 2 For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts. Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood; Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 159 If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music. 3 Therefore, the poet, Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods ; Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage. But music for the time doth change his nature; The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Apple Blossoms William Wesley Martin Have you seen an apple orchard in the spring? Then you can appreciate the beauty and charm of this rare poem. In order to avoid a sing-song in delivery, vary the emphasis and inflection as you repeat "in the spring," and don't pause before the last lines of stanzas i, 3, and 5. For the same purpose, as well as to bring out the thought, study carefully for the proper placing of emphasis. Thus in stanza 1, emphasize "apple orchard" and "English"; in stanza 2, "plucked"; in stanza 3, "walked"; in stanza 4, "bridal" and "everywhere"; in stanza 5, "not" and "know." If these words be noted for primary emphasis, other words will naturally receive due secondary emphasis. I Have you seen an apple orchard in the spring? In the spring? i6o Jl'innhig D eclamations-H ow to Speak Them An English apple orchard in the spring? When the spreading trees are hoary With their wealth of promised glory, And the mavis pipes his story In the spring! 2 Have you plucked the apple blossoms in the spring? In the spring? And caught their subtle odors in the spring? Pink buds bursting at the light, Crumpled petals baby-white. Just to touch them a delight! In the spring! 3 Have you walked beneath the blossoms in the spring? In the spring? Beneath the apple blossoms in the spring? When the pink cascades were falling, And the silver brooklets brawling. And the cuckoo bird is calling In the spring! 4 Have you ever seen a merry bridal in the spring? In the spring? In an English apple country in the spring? When the bride and maidens wear Apple blossoms in their hair; Apple blossoms everywhere, In the spring! Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them i6i 5 If you have not then you know not, in the spring, In the spring, Half the color, beauty, wonder of the spring. No sight can I remember, Half so precious, half so tender, As the apple blossoms render In the spring! Gradatim Josiah Gilbert Holland Clear, ringing tones and moderate rate are best suited to the delivery of this poem. Aim so to place the emphasis as to bring out the thought, and note that several lines in this poem should be passed without pausing. Heaven is not reached by a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit, round by round. I count this thing to be grandly true, That a noble deed is a step toward God, Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a fairer view. We rise by the things that are under our feet, By what we have mastered of good or gain; By the pride deposed, or the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust. When the morning calls to life and light; But our hearts grow weary, and ere the night Our lives are trailing the sordid dust. i62 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray; And we think that we mount the air on wings Beyond the recall of earthly things, While our feet still cling to the heavy clay. Wings are for angels, but feet for men! We may borrow the wings to find the way; We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray, But our feet must rise or we fall again. Only in dreams is a ladder thrown From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; But the dreams depart and the ladder falls. And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone. Heaven is not reached at a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies. And we mount to its summit round by round. The Blue and the Gray Francis M. Finch As early as 1867, following our Civil War, the women of Columbus, Miss., on Decoration Day placed flowers impartially upon the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers. This incident inspired the following poem. The author was a resident of Ithaca, N. Y., and for a long time was judge in the highest court of his native state. An appreciation of the meaning of this poem, and of the beauty of its sentiment and its expression, will result in sympathetic, musical tones, with due emphatic pauses and moderate rate. By the flow of the inland river. Whence the fleets of iron have fled, Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 163 Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver. Asleep are the ranks of the dead — Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the one, the Blue; Under the other, the Gray. These, in the robings of glory; Those, in the gloom of defeat; All, with the battle-blood gory, In the dusk of eternity meet — Under the sod and the dew. Waiting the judgment day; Under the laurel the Blue; Under the willow, the Gray. From the silence of sorrowful hours, The desolute mourners go. Lovingly laden with flowers. Alike for the friend and the foe. — Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the roses, the Blue; Under the lilies, the Gray. So, with an equal splendor. The morning sun-rays fall, With a touch impartially tender, On the blossoms blooming for all. — Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Broidered with gold, the Blue; I^Iellowed with gold, the Gray. 164 IVinning Declamations-How to Speak Them So, when the summer calleth, On forest and field of grain With an equal murmur falleth The cooling drip of the rain: Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Wet with the rain, the Blue, Wet with the rain, the Gray. Sadly, but not with upbraiding, The generous deed was done; In the storm of the years that are fading No braver battle was won. — Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the blossoms, the Blue; Under the garlands, the Gray. No more shall the war cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red ; They banish our anger forever. When they laurel the graves of our dead: Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day ; Love and tears, for the Blue, Tears and love, for the Gray. Winning Declamations-Hozu to Speak Them 165 The House by the Side of the Road Sam Walter Ross Aside from the standard requirement of thought-grasp and earnest- ness, these two suggestions will suffice as to the delivery of this oft-quoted poem: (i) pass the lines without pausing that do not re- quire a pause; (2) vary the emphasis on the phrases repeated in the last two lines of the stanzas. I There are hermit souls that Hve withdrawn In the peace of their self -content ; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart. In a fellowless firmament ; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran ; But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. 2 Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by. The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat. Or hurl the cynic's ban ; Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. 3 I see from my house by the side of the road. By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. i66 Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, Both parts of an infinite plan; Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. 4 I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And mountains of wearisome height; That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice, And weep with strangers that moan, Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone. 5 Let me live in my house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by; They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish — so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 167 The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers Felicia Hemans Full, round, ringing tones, with a generally low key and moderate rate are required in rendering this well-known poem. Note also several lines which require no pause at the end. I The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods, against a stormy sky, Their giant branches tossed; 2 And the heavy night hung dark The liills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. 3 Not as the conqueror comes. They, the true-hearted, came: Not with the roll of the stirring drums. And the trumpet that sings of fame; 4 Not as the flying come. In silence and in fear, — They shook the depths of the desert's gloorri With their hymns of lofty cheer. 5 Amidst the storm they sang, And the stars heard, and the sea ; i68 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free ! 6 The ocean-eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam, And the rocking pines of the forest roared; This was their welcome home ! 7 There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim-band ; Why had they come to wither there, Away from their childhood's land? 8 There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow, serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. 9 What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? — They sought a faith's pure shrine ! lO Aye, call it holy ground. The soil where first they trod ! They have left unstained what there they found — Freedom to worship God! Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 169 The Palmetto and the Pine Virginia L. French Generally speaking, the words of this poem should be delivered with the impact and force of a bullet from a gun. Dynamic, ringing tones — with the "glottis stroke" — are required throughout. I They planted them together — our gallant sires of old— Though one was crowned with crystal snow and one with solar gold. They planted them together, — on the world's majestic height ; At Saratoga's deathless charge ; at Eutah's stubborn fight; At midnight on the dark redoubt, 'mid plunging shot and shell ; At noontide, gasping in the crush of battle's bloody swell. With gory hands and reeking brows, amid the mighty fray Which surged and swelled around them on that memorable day When they planted Independence as a symbol and a sign. They struck deep soil, and planted the palmetto and the pine. 2 They planted them together, — by the river of the years, — Watered with our fathers' hearts' blood, watered with our mothers' tears; I/O Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them In the strong, rich soil of freedom, with a bounteous benison From their prophet, priest and pioneer — our father, Washington ! Above them floated echoes of the ruin and the wreck, Like "drums that beat at Louisburg and thundered at Quebec" ; But the old lights sank in darkness as the new stars rose to shine O'er those emblems of the sections, the palmetto and the pine. 3 And we'll plant them still together — for 'tis yet the self-same soil Our fathers' valor won for us by victory and toil; On Florida's fair everglades, by bold Ontario's flood, — And through them send electric life, as leaps the kindred blood ! For thus it is they taught us who for freedom lived and died, — The Eternal's law of justice must and shall be justified, That God has joined together, by a fiat all divine, The destinies of dwellers 'neath the palm-tree and the pine. 4 God plant them still together! Let them flourish side by side. In the halls of our Centennial, mailed in more than marble pride ! Winning Declamations-Hoiv to Speak Them 171 With kindly deeds and noble names we'll grave them o'er and o'er With brave historic legends of the glorious days of yore; While the clear, exultant chorus, rising from united bands, The echo of our triumph peals to earth's remotest lands; While "faith, fraternity, and love" shall joyfully entwine Around our chosen emblems, the palmetto and the pine. A Toast Marion Coiithony Smith "All's well with the world" is the theme of this poem, and it this sentiment is present during the delivery, you will have an animated facial expression, beaming with good cheer, and the thought and sentiment will be voiced in ringing, joyous tones. Here's to the old Earth, and here's to all that's in her, To the soil of her, and the toil of her, and the valiant souls that win her; To the hope she holds, and the gift she grants, her hazards and her prizes, To the face of her, and the grace of her, and all her swift surprises. Here's to her mighty dawns, with rose and golden splendor ; To the heights of her, and the nights of her, her springs and their surrender; 172 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Her storms and her frozen seas, and the mystic stars above her, The fear of her, and the cheer of her, and all the brave that love her. Here's to her valleys warm, with their little homes to cherish ; The gleam of her, and the dream of her, and the loves that flower and perish ; To her cities rich and gray, with their stern life- chorus ringing, The noise of her, and the joys of her, and the sighs beneath the singing. Here's to her endless youth, her deaths and her reviving ; The soul of her, and the goal of her, that keeps her ever striving; Her little smiling flowers, and her comforting grass and clover. And the rest of her on the breast of her when striving days are over. Here's to the old Earth, with all her countless chances ; The heart of her, and the art of her, her frowns and tender glances; With all her dear familiar ways that held us from the starting; Long might to her ! And good night to her, when the hour is struck for parting. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 173 Abou Ben Adhem Leigh Hunt This well-known poem increases in popularity with the ever steady advancement of tho "Brotherhood of Man" sentiment. The rate of delivery should be slow, the transitions indicated by due pauses and changes (particulacly where the angel appears and converses with Ben Adhem), and the climax at the close should be brought out in full, round tones and strong force. Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonhght of his room, Making it rich and Hke a Hly in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou ?" The vision raised its head. And with a look made all of sweet accord Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low. But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then. Write me as one who loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night It came again with a great wakening light And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 174 Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them On the Death of David Crockett T. F. Smith Review the history of David Crockett's career, especially the part he played in the defense of the Alamo, and you can then the better enter into the spirit of this poem. Although there is a transition beginning at stanza 3, requiring a pause and change, the whole poem requires elevated, intense feeling and strong force. I Heard ye that sigh, that melancholy wail Borne sadly on by evening's fitful gale, Like some lone whisper from the silent tomb, Shrouding a nation with its saddening gloom? It comes from Texas, like a dying knell, Where gloriously the immortal Crockett fell. 2 Like some tall giant on the field of blood, Undaunted 'midst the gallant slain he stood, He knew no fear — in danger's darkful storm He boldly, proudly, reared his warrior form. His cause — the cause of freedom and the free. His glorious watchword — Death or Liberty. 3 Sleep, mighty warrior, in thy tombless bed, The bravest hero of the vaHant dead! Thy name is cherished in a nation's pride, Whose tears for their sad fate can ne'er be dried Some sculptured marble yet shall rise and tell How Crockett with his brave companions fell. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 175 4 Freedom shall light her torch above thy tomb, And freemen write the story of thy doom, Tyrants shall tremble at thy honored name. And blush to read the record of thy fame ; While millions at their annual jubilee, Shall boast a Crockett lost — a nation free! The Thinker Berton Braley This is relatively more an appeal to the intellect than to the emotions, and the proper placing of emphasis is most essential to an c'flfective rendition. Accompanied by moderate rate and due pausing, stress particularly the words that bear the burden of the thought, — such as "Thought," "Thinker," "Knows," "Mind," "Brain," "Schemer," "Dreamer." I Back of the beating hammer By which the steel is wrought, Back of the workshop's clamor The seeker may find the Thought, The Thought that is ever master Of iron and steam and steel, That rises above disaster And tramples it under heel! 2 The drudge may fret and tinker Or labor with lus!y blows, But back of him stands the Thinker, The clear-eyed man who Knows; For into each plow or saber, Each piece and part and whole, 1/6 JVinnmg Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them Must go the Brains of Labor, Which gives the work a soul ! 3 Back of the motors humming, Back of the beUs that sing, Back of the hammers drumming, Back of the cranes that swing. There is the eye which scans them Watching through stress and strain, There is the Mind which plans them — - Back of the brawn, the Brain! 4 Might of the roaring boiler, Force of the engine's thrust. Strength of the sweating toiler, Greatly in these we trust. But back of them stands the Schemer, The Thinker who drives things through ; Back of the Job — the Dreamer Who's making the dream come true! A Day in June James Russell Lowell The "effusive" tone, resulting from a sustained enthusiasm, is best suited to the rendition of this poem, which has long been a favorite for recitation. Transitions of wide intervals, accompanied by a change in the meter, occur at the beginning of each stanza. These should be denoted in each instance by a long pause and some change in the style of delivery. I What is so rare as a day in June? Then if ever come perfect days; Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 177 Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look or whether we listen, We hear life murmur or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers And, grasping blindly above it for light. Climbs to a soul in grass and in flowers; The fiush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice. And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace ; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives ; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings. And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — In the nice ear of Nature, which song is the best? 2 Now is the high-tide of the year. And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer. Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it. We are happy now because God so wills it ; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; 178 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near. That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing. That the river is bluer than the sky. That the robin is plastering his house hard by, And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer. Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! 3 Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; Everything is happy now. Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true, As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 'Tis the natural way of living; Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heavens they leave no wake. And the eyes forget the tears they have shed. The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; The soul partakes of the season's youth. And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth. Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 179 Right's Security Paul Laurence Dunbar Earnestness, strength, and directness should distinguish the ren- dition of this poem. Note the climactic construction of the whole: the last stanza is the strongest of all, and the last line the strongest one in that stanza. I What if the wind do howl without, And turn the creaking weather-vane; What if the arrows of the rain Do beat against the window-pane? Art thou not armored strong and fast Against the saUies of the blast? Art thou not sheltered safe and well Against the flood's insistent swell ? 2 What boots it, that thou stand'st alone, And laughest in the battle's face When all the weak have fled the place And let their feet and fears keep pace? Thou wavest still thine ensign high, And shoutest thy loud battle-cry; Higher than e'er the tempest roared. It cleaves the silence like a sword. 3 Right arms and armors, too, that man Who will not compromise with wrong; Though single, he must front the throng And wage the battle hard and long. i8o Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Minorities, since time began, Have shown the better side of man; And often in the lists of time One man has made a cause sublime! Coluoibua Joaquin Miller This is properly considered one of the great distinctively American poems. Note the determination and faith of the "Brave Adm'r'l" as shown in "Sail on I" etc., and emphasize it by contrasting it with the fear and doubt in the words of the "stout mate." Use clear, ringing tores on "Sail on!" Note especially the climax in the last stanza, which should be given with larg« volume and strong foroe. I Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray. For lo ! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" "Why, say : 'Sail on ! gail on ! sail on !' " 2 "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say at break of day: 'Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on 1' " Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them i8i 3 They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, and say — " He said: "Sail on! and on!" 4 They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night He curls his lip, he lies in wait With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word : W^hat shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leapt like a leaping sword : "Sail on 1 sail on ! sail on ! and on !" 5 Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck — - A light ! a light ! a light ! a light ! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled ! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world ; he gave that world Its grandeet lesson : "On ! sail on !" l82 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them The Day is Done Henry W. Longfelloiv The mood of this poem must first be appreciated before adequate oral interpretation will be possible. Note that the first three Btanzas are description tinged with "a feeling of sadness and long- ing." Stanzas 4 to 8, inclusive, call for a poem to be read, with a description of the kind desired. And the last three stanzas give the effect of such a poem. At the places noted, slight transitions occur, but there are no marked changes or climaxes. The tone is quiet and pensive throughout, and the rendition most needs a sym- pathetic quality of voice, the tones colored by the appropriate emotion, so that you "lend to the rhyme of the poem the beauty of thy voice." I The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. 2 I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist. And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist: 3 A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain. And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. 4 Come, read to me some poem. Some simple and heartfelt lay. Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them 183 That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. 5 Not from the grand old masters. Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time, 6 For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor, — And to-tiight I long for rest. 7 Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart. As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start. 8 Who through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease. Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. 9 9 Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. iS4 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them lO Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. II And the night shall be filled with music. And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. The Cross of Honor Virginia Fisher Harris The "Cross of Honor" is a small bronze medal worn by ex-Con- federate soldiers, and corresponding to the round bronze button worn by ex-Union soldiers. This poem is a eulogy of Confederate veterans and their deeds. The prevailing emotion is mingled praise and pathos, which should be sustained throughout, with a sHght change at the opening of each paragraph. Note that several lines in this poem should be passed without pausing. I No crown of laurel, wreath of bay, On conquering brow to proudly lay, Had vanquished South her sons to give. Their diadems are deeds that live. Time soothed the grief but not the pride For those who had so nobly died. Loving remembrance of gain and loss Are crusted deep in "Honor's Cross, Though only a bit of bronze. Winning Declamations-Haw to Speak Them 185 2 Now daisies dot the emerald plains That once were red with bloody stains, Crumbled to dust the flags that waved O'er fearless hearts that danger braved. Q)rroding rust the keen blade dims, Silent the stirring battle hymns. In trenched graves or grass-grown mounds. Or yet in life with scars and wounds, This gray-garbed mighty Southern host That dauntless stood at Honor's post Holds living shrines in Southern kearts. And name and fame that ruthless darts Can tarnish never. 3 Cross of Honor, by Valor won — By deeds heroic nobly done, — On veterans' breasts proudly lay. Mute story of forgetless day. Bit of bronze, — no jeweled light Flashes from its surface bright, But oh, the story that it tells, And how the heart exultant swells. Thy gems are those of deathless fame. That burn and glow with steady flame. Honor, Courage, Chivalric Truth, A stainless name above reproof. These are thy gems, O Southern son, 'By steadfast courage bravely won. Proudly wear it, stainless bear it. This Cross of Honor. i86 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them V Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe Ringing, musical tones, in many instances interblending, are best for rendering this selection. The ideas to be emphasized often come in pairs; for instance, "to love and be loved"; "/ was a child and she was a child," "chilling and killing," "older — wiser," "in heaven above nor the demons down under." Be sure to note the slight difference in most of the repetitions. It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she hved with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love — I and my Annabel Lee ; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea. Winning Declamations-Hoiv to Speak Them 187 The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me ; Yes, — that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night. Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, — Of many far wiser than we ; — And neither the angels in heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darhng, my darling, my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea. In her tomb by the sounding sea. i88 Winning Declamations— How to Speak Them Thou, Too, Sail On! Henry IV. Longfellow Well-rounded, orotund tones, especially for the third stanza, should be used in rendering this selection. Remember it is the Ship of State about which you are speaking. Develop the climax in stanza 3 with combined volume and force, and notioe especially the arrange- ment of the words in the last four lines; the last "are all with thee" is anticlimactjc, — an echo of the preceding. I Sail forth into the sea, O ship ! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. 2 Sail forth Into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be ! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still suvives ! 3 Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State I Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! Humanity with all its fears. With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate I We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 189 Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock ; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale ! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! The Defense of the Alamo Joaquin Miller In order to give this poem with keener appreciation, review this in- cident in Texas history by supplementary reading. Strong, ringing tones are required throughout, and in many places the words should be uttered in the quick, dynamic, staccato style known as "explosive" tones. I Santa Anna came storming, as a storm might come; There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade ; There was cavalry, infantry, bugle, and drum, — Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade, The chivalry, flower of Mexico; And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo ! 190 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 2 And thirty lay sick, and some were shot through; For the siege had been bitter, and bloody, and long. "Surrender, or die!" — "Men, what will you do?" And Travis, great Travis, drew sword, quick and strong; Drew a line at his feet . . . "Will you come? Will you go? I die with my wounded, in the Alamo." 3 Then Bowie gasped, "Lead me over that line!" Then Crockett, one hand to the sick, one hand to his gun. Crossed with him; then never a word or a sign Till all, sick or well, all, all save but one. One man. Then a woman stepped, praying, and slow Across; to die at her post in the Alamo. 4 Then that one coward fled, in the night, in that night When all men silently prayed and thought Of home; of to-morrow; of God and the right, Till dawn : and with dawn came Travis's cannon shot, In answer to insolent Mexico, From the old bell-tower of the Alamo. Winning Declamations-Hozv to Speak Them 191 5 Then came Santa Anna ; a crescent of flame ! Then the red "escalade" ; then the fight hand to hand; Such an unequal fight as never had name Since the Persian hordes butchered that doomed Spartan band. All day, — all day and all night, and the morning? so slow Through the battle smoke mantling the Alamo. 6 Now silence ! Such silence ! Two thousand lay dead In a crescent outside ! And within ? Not a breath Save the gasp of a woman, with gory gashed head, All alone, all alone there, waiting for death ; And she but a nurse. Yet when shall we know Another like this of the Alamo? 7 ■ Shout "Victory, victory, victory ho!" I say 'tis not always to the hosts that win; I say that the victory, high or low, Is given the hero who grapples with sin, Or legion or single ; just asking to know When duty fronts death in his Alamo. 192 JJ'i)iiii]i(j Declamations-How to Speak Them Solitude Ella Wheeler Wilcox The emphasis by contrasts should be noted and expressed in ren- dering this poem, which has long been a favorite for recitation. Note that the fifth and seventh lines of stanza 3 should be passed without pausing. I Laugh, and the world laughs with you ; Weep, and you weep alone, For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer ; Sigh, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. 2 Rejoice, and men will seek you ; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. 3 Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no man can help you die. Winning D eclamations-Hoiv to Speak Them 193 There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain. Nightfall Emma Gertrude White Loud, rasping tones would of course be unfitted to voice the sensuous beauty of this poem. Note that many of the lines require no pause at the end. "Katy" (first line of stanza 3) refers, of course, to the katydid mentioned in the first line of stanza i. I In the maple, chants the katydid A measure shrill and thin. In the dusty grass, a cricket scrapes His cheerful violin. Across the street, my neighbor To her baby, softly sings. And the sound is wafted to me Where my sea-grass hammock swings. 2 And the sky, a gray blue curtain, Stretches coldly overhead ; From the hill, a distant street-lamp Sends a gleam of dusky red. While the stars shine forth but dimly (Still the gentle mother sings) ; And their radiance soft is falling Where my sea-gras? hammock swings. 194 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 3 More insistent waxes Katy, High above the cricket's trill ; Brighter grow the stars far shining And the sky grows bluer still. "Hush my dear, lie still and slumber," Softer still the mother sings ; Night has fallen and enfolds me, Where my sea-grass hammock swings. PART II PROSE SELECTIONS For High Schools and Colleges The Destiny of Democracy John W. Westcott This selection and the one following are given as types of nominat- ing speeches at Democratic and Republican national conventions. The extract belew is taken from the speech by Judge Westcott, of New Jersey, in nominating President Wilson for a second term, at the National Democratic Convention, St. Louis, 1916. The speech is highly figurative and oratorical in construction, appealing to a wide range of emotions. Ringing tones and strong force are required for effective delivery. The commanding fact of the modern age is the spread of intelligence. The schoolhouse has con- quered ignorance. The printing press has trans- formed the purposes and capacities of man. Educa- tion has qualified him for a better existence. The. Bible has made him a moralist. Men know that the world is big enough to support the human family in peace and comfort. Men know that the great problem of peace and comfort is not yet solved. They know that it cannot be solved by the savagery of war. They know that its solution is obtainable only in conditions of peace, reason, and a practical morality. The state of knowledge is the crowning achievement of progress. The American experiment of self-government has stood the test. The achievements of the American system are known of all men and felt throughout the world. The United States is the world's asylum. Here all races, all conditions, all creeds are assimi- lated, helped, elevated, and men are made into self- 197 198 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them governing men. In America justice has made its greatest progress, because it is progress in which all men have a part. That form of government which afifords the fullest opportunity for happiness and comfort is destined to be the universal form. Such is the resistless syllogism of progress. War cannot stop its inevitable march. The opinion of all men is more potential than the opinion of one man. The best opinion of the best men, by the force of example and mutuality of interest, becomes the opinion of all men. American opinion is em- bodied in a man of peace. American opinion is marching through the world. Sons of America, keep unsullied the sacred shrine of peace, through whose portals will yet pass arm in arm the crowned head and the humble peasant in silent worship of God. Out of the ruins and sufferings of the present conflict will arise a temple of justice whose dome will be the blue vault of heaven; its illuminants the eternal stars; its pillars the everlasting hills; its ornaments the woods and bountiful fields ; its music the rippling rills, the song of birds, the laughter of happy childhood ; its diapason the roar of mills and the hum of industry; its votaries the peoples of the earth ; its creed, on which hangs all the law and the prophets, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Above its altars in inefifaceable color will live eternally the vision of its artificer. Therefore, my fellow-countrymen, not I, but his deeds and achievements; not I, but the spirit and purpose of America ; not I, but the prayers of just Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 199 men; not I, but civilization itself nominates to succeed himself to the presidency of the United States, to the presidency of a hundred million free people, bound in impregnable union, the scholar, the statesman, the financier, the emancipator, the pacificator, the moral leader of democracy, Wood- row Wilson. "A Plumed Knight" Robert G. Ingersoll I This well-known speech, delivered in the Republican National Con- vention of 1876, has long been a favorite for declaiming. It is given here as a companion selection to the preceding both because of its intrinsic merit and also for the purpose of furnishing students an opportunity to compare the style of the vo speeches. After Ingersoll delivered this speech, the term "Plumed Knight" clung to Blaine during the remainder of his political career. In delivery this declamation demands all the fire and force you can muster: dynamic, ringing tones, shot forth like bullets from a gun. Following the climax at the end of the second paragraph, there is a transition re- quiring slower rate and a change in tone, resulting from the change in emotional appeal, but aside from such momentary changes, the delivery throughout should be with strong force and "explosive" tones. The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in this great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well- known and approved political opinions. They de- mand a statesman. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest, and best sense, a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come, must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields ; hand in hand by the whirling spindles ao© Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them and the turning wheels ; hand in hand past the open furnace doors ; hand in hand by the flaming forges ; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire, greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil. The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this government should pro- tect every citizen at home and abroad ; who knows that any government that will not defend its de- fenders and protect its protectors is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of church and school. They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless. Crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its first century, this nation asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of the future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who has the grandest combination of heart, conscience, and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine. This is a grand year — a year filled with the recollections of the Revolution, filled with the proud and tender memories of the past, with the sacred legends of liberty — a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountain of enthusiasm — a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field — for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and chal- lenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 201 Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the de- famers of his country and the maligner of her honor. For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their leader upon the field of battle. Gentlemen of the Convention : In the name of this great Republic, in the name of all her defenders and of all her supporters ; in the name of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle; and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose suiiferings she so vividly remembers, Illinois — Illinois nominates for the President of this country that prince of parlia- mentarians, that leader of leaders — James G. Blaine. America and International Peace Theodore Roosevelt Mr. Roosevelt is not an orator. Long, sonorous, oratorical periods do not fit his nature and methods. He strikes out straight from the shoulder with a definite aim, and the style of his speeches is direct, forceful talk, with an occasional emphatic gesture. This is the proper interpretation of this daclamation for delivery. No sensible man will advocate our plunging rashly into a course of international knight-errantry ; none will advocate our setting deliberately to work to build up a great colonial empire. But neither will any brave and patriotic man bid us shrink from doing our duty merely because this duty in- 202 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them volves the certainty of strenuous effort and the possibility of danger. We should not lightly court danger and diffi- culty, but neither should we shirk from facing them, when in some way or other they must be met. We are a great nation and we are compelled, whether we will or not, to face the responsibilities that must be faced by all great nations. It is not in our power to avoid meeting them. All that we can decide is whether we shall meet them well or ill. There are social reformers who tell us that in the far distant future the necessity for fighting will be done away with, just as there are social re- formers who tell us that in that long distant time the necessity for work — or, at least, for painful, laborious work — will be done away with. But, just as at present, the nation, like the individual, which is going to do anything in the world must face the fact that in order to do it it must work and may have to fight. And it is only thus that great deeds can be done, and the highest and purest form of happiness acquired. Remember that peace itself, that peace after which all men crave, is merely the realization in the present of what has been bought by strenuous effort in the past. Peace represents stored-up effort of our fathers or of ourselves in the past. It is not a means — it is an end. You do not get peace by peace ; you get peace as the result of effort. If you strive to get it by peace, you will lose it, that is all. If we ever grow to regard peace as a permanent condition; if we ever grow to feel that we can afford to let the keen, fearless, Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 203 virile qualities of heart and mind and body be lost, then we will prepare the way for inevitable and shameful disaster in the future. Peace is of true value only as we use it in part to make ready to face with untroubled heart, with fearless front, whatever the future may have in store for us. The peace which breeds timidity and sloth is a curse and not a blessing. The law of worthy national life, like the law of worthy in- dividual life, is, after all, fundamentally, the law of strife. It may be strife military, it may be strife civic; but certain it is that only through strife, through labor, and painful effort, by grim energy and by resolute courage, we move on to better things. A Pan-American Policy Elihu Root This is an extract from a speech at the Pan-American Conference held at Rio Janeiro, South America, Mr. Root being at that time Secretary of State. It was an epoch-making speech, since it was the first noteworthy official utterance of the attitude of the United States toward the South American republics. No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation's growth is a part of the de- velopment of the race. There may be leaders and there may be laggards, but no nation can long con- tinue very far in advance of the general progress of mankind, and no nation that is not doomed to extinction can remain very far behind. It is with nations as it is with individual men ; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by the influence of others' judgment, broadening of views by the 204 IVinning Declamations-How to Speak Them experience and thought of equals, acceptance of the moral standards of a community the desire for whose good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right conduct, — these are the conditions of growth in civilization. A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and the achieve- ments of humanity struggling the world over for liberty and justice, must be left behind by civiliza- tion in its steady and beneficent advance. These beneficent results the Government and the people of the United States of America greatly desire. We wish for no victories but those of peace ; for no territory except our own ; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of na- tions entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights, or privileges, or powers that we do not freely concede to every American re- public. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit, but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, -but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together. Let us help each other to show that for all the races of men the Liberty for which we have fought Winning Declamations^How to Speak Them 205 and labored is the twin sister of Justice and Peace. Let us unite in creating and maintaining and mak- ing effective an all-American public opinion, whose power shall influence international conduct and pre- vent international wrong, and narrow the causes of war, and forever preserve our free lands from the burden of such armaments as are massed behind the frontiers of Europe, and bring us ever nearer to the perfection of ordered liberty. So shall come security and prosperity, production and trade, wealth, learning, the arts, and happiness for us all. Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be done. You labor more for the future than for the present ; but if the right impulse is given, if the right tendency be established, the work you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American continents long after your final adjournment, long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all our beloved countries, which may it please God to continue free and in- dependent and happy for ages to come. War Editorial from Leslie's Weekly This selection, and several others immediately following, deal with phases of the general subject of International Peace. The following declamation is a vivid portrayal of the horrors and folly of war. The resulting emotions, with a proper ^distribution of force, should readily find expression in the delivery. The last of the savage instincts is war. The cave man's club made law and procured food. Might decreed right. Warriors were saviours. 2o6 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them In Nazareth a carpenter laid down the saw and preached the brotherhood of man. Twelve cen- turies afterwards his followers marched to the Holy Land to destroy all who differed with them in the worship of the God of Love. Triumphantly they wrote, "In Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses." History is an appalling tale of war. In the seventeenth century Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain warred for thirty years. At Madgeburg 30,000 out of 36,000 were killed regardless of sex or age. In Germany schools were closed a third of a century, homes burned, women outraged, towns demolished, and the untilled land became a wilderness. Two-thirds of Germany's property was destroyed and 18,000,000 of her citizens were killed, because men quarrelled about the way to glorify "The Prince of Peace." Marching through rain and snow, sleeping on the ground, eating stale food or starving, contracting diseases and facing guns that fire six hundred times a minute, for fifty cents a day — this is the soldier's life. At the window sits the widowed mother crying. Little children with tearful faces pressed against the pane watch and wait. Their means of liveli- hood, their home, their happiness is gone. Father- less children, broken-hearted women, sick, disabled and dead men — this is the wage of war. We spend more money preparing men to kill each other than we do in teaching them to live. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 207 We spend more money building one battleship than in the annual maintenance of all our state uni- versities. The financial loss resulting from destroy- ing one another's homes in the civil war would have built 15,000,000 houses, each costing $2,000. We pray for love but prepare for hate. We preach peace but equip for war. Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and court Given to redeem this world from error. There would be no need of arsenal and fort. War only defers a question. No issue will ever really be settled until it is settled rightly. Like rival "gun gangs" in a back alley, the nations of the world, through the bloody ages, have fought over their differences. Denver cannot fight Chicago and Iowa cannot fight Ohio. Why should Germany be permitted to fight France, or Bulgaria fight Turkey? When mankind rises above creeds, colors and countries, when we are citizens, not of a nation, but of the world, the armies and navies of the earth will constitute an international police force to pre- serve the peace and the dove will take the eagle's place. Our dififerences will be settled by an inter- national court with the power to enforce its man- dates. In times of peace prepare for peace. The wages of war are the wages of sin, and the "wages of sin is death." 2o8 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them France at the Opening of the Great War Robert W. Chambers This declamation is adapted from a story appearing in the Cos- mopolitan for June, 191 6. For a keener appreciation of its meaning, review the his-tory of the Franco-Prussian War and of the part France played in the recent Great War. In delivery, special effort should be made to present smoothly the many shifting scenes of the war drama, the while voicing the suspense felt in France and the win- some appeal of "the far cry from beyond the Vosges." On August 5th, 1914, in the little town of Ausone, in eastern France, there were few signs of war visible except the exodus of the young men and the crowds before the bulletins. On one of the bulletin boards was nailed the order for general mobilization; on the other, a terse paragraph an- nounced that on Sunday, August 2nd, German soldiers had entered the city of Luxemburg, crossed the grand duchy, and were already skirmishing" with Belgian cavalry around Liege and with French troops before Longwy. In other terms, the Teu- tonic invasion had begun; German troops were already on French soil, for Longwy is the most northern of the republic's fortifications. Another paragraph reported that King Albert of Belgium had appealed to England, and that Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, had prepared his country for an immediate ultimatum to Germany. And Germany had not yet declared war on either France or Belgium, nor had England declared war on Germajiy, nor had Austria, as yet, formally de- clared war on Russia. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 209 But there seemed to be no doubt, no confusion, in the minds of the inhabitants of Ausone concern- ing what was happening, and what fate still con- cealed behind a veil already growing transparent enough to see through — already lighted by the in- fernal flashes of German rifle-fire before Longwy. Everybody in Ausone knew, everybody in France understood. A great stillness settled over the re- public, as though the entire land had paused to kneel a moment before the long day of work began. Amid the vast silence, as the nation rose serenely from its knees, millions of flashing eyes were turned toward Alsace and Lorraine — eyes dimmed for an instant, then instantly clear again — clear and steady as the sound and logical minds con- trolling them. In London, a king, a prime minister, and a first lord of the admiralty were listening to a sirdar who was laying down the law by wireless to a president and his premier. In St. Petersburg, an emperor was whispering to a priest. Meanwhile, the spinning world swung on around its orbit; tides rose and ebbed; the twin sentinels of the skies relieved each other as usual, and a few billion stars waited patiently for eternity. Ausone was waiting, too, amid its still trees and ripening fields. In the summer world around, no hint of impending change disturbed the calm serenity of that August afternoon — no sense of waiting, no prophecy of gathering storms. But in men's hearts reigned the breathless stillness which heralds tempests. 210 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Silently as a kestrel's shadow gliding over the grass, an ominous shade sped over sunny France, darkening the light in millions of smiling eyes, subduing speech, stilling all pulses, cautioning a nation's ardent heart and conjuring its ears to listen and its lips to silence. And as France sat silent, listening, hand lightly resting on her hilt, came the far cry from beyond Vosges — the voice of her lost children, the long- mourned Alsace and Lorraine. Now she had risen to her feet, loosening the blade in its scabbard. But she had not yet drawn it; she still stood listening to the distant shots from Longwy in the north, to the noise of the western wind blowing across the Channel ; and al- ways she heard, from the east, the lost voices of her best beloved, calling, calling her from beyond the Vosges. »*, " The Woe of Belgium Newell D wight Hillis This is an extract from a lecture delivered in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, shortly after the German drive through Belgium at the opening of the recent Great War. Pathos is, of course, the dominant emotion. This gives way momentarily to other emotions in parts of the first two paragraphs, but the pathos of the whole is to be strongly felt and expressed. Out of a glorious past comes the woe of Belgium. Desolation has come like the whirlwind, and de- struction like a tornado. But a short time ago and Belgium was a hive of industry, and in the Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 211 fields were heard the harvest songs. Suddenly, Germany struck Belgium. The whole world has but one voice, "Belgium has innocent hands." She was led like a lamb to the slaughter. When the lover of Germany is asked to explain Germany's breaking of her solemn treaty upon the neutrality of Belgium, the German stands dumb and speechless. Merchants honor their written obligations. True citizens consider their word as good as their bond ; Germany gave a treaty, and in the presence of God and the civilized world, entered into a solemn convenant with Belgium. To the end of time, the German must expect this taunt, "as worthless as a German treaty." Scarcely less black are the two or three known examples of cruelty wrought upon nonresisting Belgians. In Brooklyn lives a Bel- gian woman. She planned to return home in late July to visit a father who had suffered paralysis, an aged mother, and a sister who nursed both. When the Germans decided to burn that village in Eastern Belgium, they did not wish to burn alive this old and helpless man, so they bayonetted to death the old man and woman, and the daughter that nursed them. Let us judge not, that we be not judged. This is the one example of atrocity that you and I might be able personally to prove. But every loyal Ger- man in the country can make answer : "These sol- diers were drunk with wine and blood. Such an atrocity misrepresents Germany and her soldiers. The breaking of Germany's treaty with Belgium \ represents the dishonor of a military ring, and not 212 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them the perfidy of 68,000,000 of people. We ask that judgment be postponed until all the facts are in." But meanwhile the heart bleeds for Belgium. For Brussels, the third most beautiful city in Europe ! For Louvain, once rich with its libraries, cathedrals, statues, paintings, missals, manuscripts — ^now a ruin. Alas ! for the ruined harvests and the smoking villages ! Alas ! for the Cathedral that is a heap, and the library that is a ruin. Where the angel of happiness was, there stalk Famine and Death. Gone, the Land of Grotius ! Perished the paintings of Rubens ! Ruined is Louvain. Where the wheat waved, now the hillsides are billowy with graves. But let us believe that God reigns. The spirit of evil caused this war, but the Spirit of God may bring good out of it, just as the summer can repair the ravages of winter. Perchance Belgium is slain like the Saviour, that militarism may die like Satan. Without shedding of innocent blood there is no remission of sins through tyranny and greed. There is no wine without the crushing of the grapes from the tree of life. Soon Liberty, God's dear child, will stand within the scene and comfort the desolate. Falling upon the great world's altar stairs, in this hour when wisdom is ignorance, and the strongest man clutches at dust and straw, let us believe, with faith victorious over tears, that some time God will gather broken-hearted little Belgium into His arms and comfort her as a Father comforteth his well- beloved child. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 213 The Dead Hand of the Past in Europe Albert Leon Guerard This is an extract from a commencement address delivered in June, 1916. The speaker is an immigrant to America, and now Professor of History in Rice Institute. He is therefore well qualified to speak authoritatively on his theme. The reason for America's sanity as a nation, the unique power which enables her to welcome men from all parts of the world and to turn them into loyal citizens, is that America is a country that looks forward instead of backward — in other terms, a country whose ideals are principles instead of traditions. Europe is suffering from an overdose of the historical spirit ; Europe lacks the healthy radicalism, the youthfulness, I had almost said the boyishness, of the American mind. When you travel in dear old Europe, you are delighted wath the quaint villages, the churches and castles hoary with centuries, the bright costumes of the peasant women, the narrow, crooked lanes of medieval cities, the pomp of court functions and military pageants. History is beautiful for the poet, the artist, and even for the casual traveller. But Europe is choked up with history. The German imagina- tion is so filled wdth thoughts of the middle ages that, with them, history amounts to an obsession, to a mental disease. For a long time the French would hark back to ancient Gaul, with the Rhine as its Northeastern boundary. The French and the Germans are still fighting out the consequences of the treaty of Verdun in 843. Traditions, customs, 214 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them institutions, dynasties, have cast their potent spells over the minds of our European friends. They are haunted with the memories of the gorgeous and tragic past, and in the shadowy world in which they live they have lost the sense of actual values. The nationalistic, traditionalist education of Europe fosters exclusiveness, diffidence, hatred. Hence the strange paradox that the best educated of all European nations is also the most bigoted in its pride and selfishness; that the hateful prejudices which caused the Great War were engendered, not by the common people, but by poets, politicians and University professors. All of us, when we come to America, are wel- come to preserve our sentimental and artistic tradi- tions, but we are expected to leave behind all the' hereditary jealousies which are the warp and woof of European history. What Europe needs is a similar experience, a great unlearning, a mighty revolution against the dead hand of the past that still oppresses her. The past is past! Let us cherish the fine old stories of our fathers' heroic deeds. But let us settle all present and future differences as men of the twentieth century. If we could but conjure away that incubus of historical traditions, peace would be at hand. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 215 To Liberate Ireland is not Treason to England Roger Casement A pathetic incident connected with the Great European War was the effort of a small band of Irishmen, under the leadership of Sir Roger Casement, to liberate Ireland from English rule. The upris- ing was soon quelled, and several of the active participants were executed. Casement was tried for high treason, and sentenced to death. The following selection is taken from his speech in court at the close of his trial, June 29, 1916. Students of oratory will be reminded of the speech by Robert Emmet delivered in his own defease under similar circumstances. The trial of Casement at- tracted world-wide attention. "The whole scene," wrote the cor- respondent for the New Y3rk Times, "with Casement a somber figure in black standing in the dark shadow of the dock, with a filtering; ray of sunlight shining upon the three Justices before whom he stood, was one that riveted the spectators to the end." A vivid imagery of the whole setting of this speech, and strong sustained feeling through- out, are necessary for effective delivery. It is charged here that my efforts to liberate Ireland were the more highly treasonable because England was battling for her life. But why, for- sooth, should Ireland battle for England? More- over, when I saw Englishmen themselves refusing to enter the army, I saw no reason why Irishmen should be slain for Englishmen's gain. If a small subjugated nation like Belgium is entitled to any consideration, I saw no reason why Ireland should shed any blood for any people but her own. If that be treason, I am not ashamed to avow it here. I am prouder to stand here, in a traitor's dock, than to fill the place of my accusers. This court, this jury, the public opinion of this country, England, cannot but be prejudiced in vary- ing degrees against me, most of all in time of war. I did not land in England; I landed in Ireland. 2i6 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them But for the Attorney General of England there is no Ireland, there is only England ; there is no right of Ireland, only the law of England. Yet for me, the Irish outlaw, there is a land of Ireland, a right of Ireland, a charter for all Irishmen to appeal to in the last resort, a charter that even the very statutes of England cannot deprive me of, a charter that Englishmen themselves assert as a fundamental bond of law that connects the two kingdoms, — the right to trial by my peers. That is the condemnation of English rule in Ireland, of English-made law, that it dare not rest on the will of the Irish people, but exists in de- fiance of their will, that it is a rule derived, not from right, but from conquest. Conquest gives no title ; it can exert no empire over men's reason and judgment and affections. It is from this law of conquest, without title to the reason, judgment, and affections of my own countrymen, that I appeal. I am being tried, in truth, not by my peers of the living present but by fears of the dead past; not by the civilization of the twentieth century, but by the brutality of the fourteenth ; not even by a statute framed in the language of the land that tries me, but emitted in the language of an enemy- land ; so antiquated is the law that must be sought to-day to slay an Irishman whose offense is that he puts Ireland first. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 217 The Protection of American Citizens William P. Frye This is an extract from a speech delivered in the U. S. Senate, Mr. Frye for a number of terms having represented the State of Maine in that body. It will be interesting to compare the sentiment of this speech with the one immediately following. The argument and sentiment of this declamation revolves about the illustrative story. This should be vividly presented. See the picture: the stretch of swamps and morass, the frowning dungeon on the moun- tain heights, the battle and the rescue. Some suggestive gestures will naturally be used, but make them suggestive only, and not imitative. Don't, for example, go through the movements of reach- ing down in the dungeon and lifting out the prisoner. We hear a great deal of the duty the citizen owes the government, and too Httle of the duty the government owes the citizen. American citizens should be protected in their life and liberty where- ever they may be and at any cost. I think one of the grandest things in the history of Great Britain is that she does protect her citizens everywhere and anywhere, under all circumstances. Her mighty power is put forth for their relief and protection, and it is admirable. I do not wonder that a British citizen loves his country. About twenty years ago the king of Abyssinia took a British citizen by the name of Campbell, car- ried him to the heights of a lofty mountain, to the fortress of Magdala, and put him into a dungeon without cause. It took Great Britain six months to learn of that, and then she demanded his immediate release. The king of Abyssinia refused to release him. In less than ten days after that refusal 3000 British soldiers and 5000 Sepoys were on board 2i8 Winning Declamatiotis-How to Speak Them ships of war, sailing for the Abyssinian coast. When they arrived they were disembarked, were marched seven hundred miles over swamps and morass, under a burning sun, then up the mountain to its very heights, in front of the frowning dun- geon, and then they gave battle. They battered down the iron gates, they overturned the stone walls. Then they reached down into that dungeon with an English hand, lifted out from it that one British citizen, took him to the coast and sped him away on the white-winged ships to his home in safety. That expedition cost Great Britain $25,000,000. Now, sir, a country that has an eye that can see across an ocean, away across the many miles of land, up into the mountain heights, down into the dark- some dungeon, one, just one of her 38,000,000 peo- ple, and then has an arm strong enough and long enough to reach across the same ocean, across the same swamps and marshes, up the same mountain heights, down into the same dungeon, and take him out and carry him home to his own country, a free man — where will you find a man who will not live and die for a country that will do that ? All that I ask of this republic of ours is that it shall model itself after Great Britain in this one thing — that wherever the American citizen may be, whether in Great Britain, Cuba, Turkey, China or Mexico, he shall be perfectly assured of the fullest protection of the American government. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 219 Against Militarism William J. Bryan This is the concluding portion of a lecture delivered many times during the years 1915 and 1916. Mr. Bryan is generally recognized as one of the leading representatives of the pacifists, or peace party. It will be seen that the following selection is an answer, in a way, to the one preceding. Tlie first paragraph deals for the most part with argument. This should be delivered with directness, earnestness, and force. The last three paragraphs are largely appeal, and require yet more force with strong feeling. Every American citizen has duties as well as rights. Do you say that it is the duty of this govern- ment to take its army and follow an American citizen around the world and protect his rights? That is only one side of the proposition. The ob- ligations of citizenship are reciprocal. It is the duty of the citizen to consider his country's safety and the welfare of his fellowmen. In time of war the government can take the son from his widowed mother and compel him to give his life to help his country out of war. If, in time of war, the govern- ment can compel its citizens to die in order to bring the war to an end, the government can, in time of peace, say to its citizens that they shall not, by tak- ing unnecessary risks, drag their country into war. Some nation must lift the world out of the black night of war into the light of that day when an en- during peace can be built on love and brotherhood, and I crave that honor for this nation. More glori- ous than any page of history that has yet been writ- ten will be the page that records our claim to the promise made to the peacemakers. 220 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them This is the day for which the ages have been waiting. For nineteen hundred years the gospel of the Prince of Peace has been making its majestic march around the world, and during these centuries the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount has be- come more and more the rule of daily life. It only remains to lift that code of morals from the level of the individual and make it real in the law of nations, and ours is the nation best prepared to set the example. We are less hampered by precedent than other nations and therefore more free to act. I appreciate the value of precedent — what higher tribute can I pay it than to say that it is as universal as the law of gravitation and as necessary to stabil- ity? And yet the law of gravitation controls only inanimate nature — everything that lives is in con- stant combat with the law of gravitation. The tiniest insect that creeps upon the ground wins a victory over It every time it moves ; even the slender blade of grass sings a song of triumph over the universal law as it lifts itself up toward the sun. So every step in human progress breaks the law of precedent. Precedent lives in the past — it relies on memory; because a thing never was, precedent declares that it can never be. Progress walks by faith and dares to try the things that ought to be. This, too, is the leading Christian nation. We give more money every year to carry the gospel to those who live under other flags than any other nation now living or that has lived. The two rea- sons combine to fix the eyes of the world upon us as the one nation which is at liberty to lead the way Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 221 from the blood-stained methods of the past out into the larger and better day. We must not disappoint the hopes which our ideals and achievements have excited. If I know the heart of the American peo- ple they are not willing that this supreme opportu- nity shall pass by unimproved. No, the metropolitan press is not the voice of the nation ; you can no more measure the sentiment of the peace-loving masses by the froth of the jingo press than you can measure the ocean's depths by the foam upon its waves. The American Spirit Incarnate Franklin K. Lane This is taken from an address delivered at the commencement exercises at Brown University, June, igi6. This is a strong, direct talk on a subject of live interest. The concrete illustration in the introduction offers a fine opening for driving home the theme that is at once developed. And the appeal embodied in the picture of the Belgians before the American flag, together with the brief closing comment, if delivered with strong emotion and in sympathetic tones, can be made to move any audience. There are two monuments in Paris which face each other that are symbols to me of the two con- flicting spirits which make up the struggle of life. One is the tomb of Napoleon. And further down the boulevard Falguire's statue of Pasteur. Na- poleon's tomb all see. Pasteur's statue few visit. It is a sitting figure upon a pedestal. And on the sides of this pedestal are figures in relief illustrating Pasteur's services to the world. On the front is the great group. A girl is seen just rising from a sick- bed. She leans against her mother, who in turn looks up with ineflfable gratitude into the face of 222 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Pasteur, while a figure of Death, beaten and baffled, slinks away around the opposite side of the pedestal. National spirit and martial spirit are not the same. There was a time when war was all of romance and of gallantry and of opportunity that the world offered. That time has gone. War now at its best is but one expression of the human pas- sion for adventure and achievement. The spirit of America is against war not because we have grown cowardly and fear death, nor because we have grown flabby and love softness ; no, not even be- cause we have become conscious converts to the Prince of Peace. But we in America have some- thing larger to do. We are discovering our coun- try. Every tree is a challenge to us, and every pool of water and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies ; we must pierce them and make them serve. The willful rivers we must curb; and out of the seas and air renew the life of the earth itself. We have no time for war. We are doing something so much more important. We are at work. That is the greatest of all adventures. When war comes to a Democracy it comes because we are not allowed peacefully to work. What would we fight for ? For what Roger Williams fought for, to be let alone, to have the opportunity to show what man can do for man. My friends, if the American spirit gives any evi- dence of being in a state of decline or decadence in the East, come with me to my Western country, — "Out where the west begins." A spirit is intangible. It can only be made com- Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 223 prehensible by acts. So let me illustrate my idea of the spirit of America by citing the case of Her- bert Hoover, a mining engineer from Stanford University and head of the Belgian Relief Com- mittee. That young man comes to this country un- noticed and leaves unnoticed. But his adminis- trative mind made possible the feeding of a nation. He organized the financial system for Belgium. Through him the heart of the world spoke to those suffering people. Through him England gave five million dollars a month and France four-and-a-half million dollars a month for the support of this un- fortunate people, and the United States has given seven million, in all. But we made it possible for any of it to reach those people. If anyone now maintains that the American flag Is not respected abroad, let him go to Brussels and stand in front of the United States legation and see the passing Belgians salute the Stars and Stripes, which never have been hauled down in Belgium since the first German drive into that desolated country, and from sunrise in the morning until sun- set at night the Belgian peasants and Belgian artisans pass that house, and as each passes takes his hat off to that flag. And this comes in large measure as the result of the work of Herbert Hoover, the incarnation of the spirit of American desire to help the world. Let us stand beside the Belgian peasant before that flag over in Brussels and take heart. 224 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Fair Play for Woman George William Curtis The striking contrasts in the first paragraph should be noted and expressed. Each of the succeeding paragraphs denote a marked transition, to be indicated by a pause and change in each case. In the last paragraph, note the artful application of the incident related in the paragraph preceding. Vary the emphasis in the repetitions of "So are we." And bring out the conclusion in round, full tones, with slow rate and strong force. The woman's rights movement in this country is the simple claim that the same opportunity and privilege that man has in society be extended to the woman who stands by his side ; that she must prove her power as he proves his. Now, when Rosa Bonheur paints a vigorous and admirable picture of Normandy horses, she proves that she has a hundredfold more right to do it than scores of botchers and bunglers in color, who wear coats and trousers, and whose right, therefore, nobody ques- tions. When the Misses Blackwell, or Miss Hunt, or Miss Preston, or Miss Avery, accomplishing themselves in medicine with a firm hand and clear brain, carry the balm of life to suffering humanity, it is as much their right, as much their duty, as it is that of any long-haired, sallow, dissipated boy, who hisses them as they go upon their holy mission. And so when Joan of Arc follows God and leads the army, when the Maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon, when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through pitiless waves, save fel- low-creatures from drowning, do you ask me if these are not exceptional women? And I answer Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 225 that they are. But Florence Nightingale, demand- ing supplies for sick soldiers in the Crimea, and when they are delayed by red tape ordering a file of soldiers to break down the doors and bring them, seems to me quite as womanly as the loveliest girl in the land, dancing at the gayest ball, in a dress of which the embroidery is the pinched lines of starva- tion in another girl's face, and whose pearls are the tears of despair in her eyes. Jenny Lind enchanting the heart of the world, Anna Dickinson pleading for equal liberty of her sex, are doing what God, by his great gifts of eloquence and song, appointed them to do. This movement may encounter sneers; but what reform has not? Even Mr. Webster derided the anti-slavery movement as "'a drum-beat agitation." But it was a drum-beat that echoed over every mountain, penetrated every valley, and roused the hearts of the nation to throb in unison. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains. General Thomas was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible ; and the General, even he, "the rock of Chicamauga," suddenly exclaimed : "They can't do it ; they will never reach the top." His chief of staff, watching the battle with equal earnestness, placing his hand on his commander's arm, said, softly: "Time, time. General ; give them time ;" and presently the moist eyes of the brave leader saw his troops victorious upon the summit. They were American soldiers. So are we. They 226 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them were fighting an American battle. So are we. They were cHmbing up a mountain. So are we. The great heart of their leader gave them time, and they conquered. The great heart of our country will give us time, and we shall triumph. One by one the States are falling into line. With the extension in modern times of the functions of government to deal with social problems, the extension of the suffrage to women on equal terms with men is de- manded on grounds both of expediency and justice, and all the forces of conservatism and prejudice shall not prevail against it, Eulogy of Washington Morris Sheppard Although Washington is a frequent — and proper — subject for eulogy, the following selection is somewhat outside of the usual. It is the concluding part of a speech delivered in the House of Rep- resentatives, February 22, 1911. The sympathetic tones resulting from strong feeling should be maintained throughout. The last two paragraphs particularly require the emotional quality of tenderness combined with admiration. The life of Washington is gratifying and refresh- ing not only to every American, but to the friends of liberty in every portion of the globe. Without ex- perience in directing warlike operations on an ex- tended scale, without adequate equipment for his troops, without a supporting government or treas- ury of even moderate strength, he was summoned from the farm to the red arena of the battle. Through incredible difficulties, with a patience and a courage that bordered on the superhuman, he led a Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 227 small and undisciplined body of men taken suddenly from the ordinary callings of life to final victory against one of the foremost nations of the world. In triumph and in disaster he was alike immovable and serene ; in official conduct and in private inter- course his every act was free from the slightest taint of intemperance;, immorality, or corruption. No massacre of helpless foes, no deeds of cruelty defiled his fame. He claimed and received no re- ward for his services beyond the gratitude of his country. The idol of the Army and the people, he might easily have become a king. Thus he taught that the pursuits of peace are more sublime than those of war, the functions of private hfe more noble than those of public station, the attractions of the farm more permanent and uplifting than those of noisy cities. And who will deny that the hand that wielded the sword of righteous revolution, that forced the tyrant from our shores, that signed the American Constitution and guided the mightiest Republic of all history into secure and glorious being, was ever greater than when it trained the roses in the gardens of Mount Vernon? There is a wonderful signifi- ance in the fact that Washington perished prac- tically at the close of the eighteenth century. That century marked the permanent advent of liberty in human institutions; it witnessed the birth and rise of Washington, without whom this advent might have been delayed indefinitely. Thus an ideal cen- tury and an ideal man died almost together. As sculpture finds its most beautiful exoression in the 228 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them marble of Phidias, painting its 1( ftiest era in the frescoes of Raphael, dramatic poetry its superbest notes in the plays of Shakespeare, philosophy its profoundest embodiment in the inductions of Aristotle, music its most perfect utterance in the oratorios of Handel, the operas of Mozart, the sonatas of Beethoven, so human conduct finds its brightest mirror in the, life and deeds of Wash- ington. Of such world import is his name that it looms larger through the gathering years. To-day, more than a century after his death, the interest and the love of earth's increasing millions are centered in his memory. Let me refer here to the modest cere- mony of his burial, an episode that has not received the attention it deserves. His funeral was in keep- ing with the quiet and simple majesty that had marked his whole existence. Under the stately portico of his home on one of the loveliest eminences of the Potomac rested his coffined form on a cloud- less December afternoon nearly one hundred and twelve years ago. The peace of an indulgent God was on his brow; the afifection of a liberated people at his feet. The profound impression of serenity and repose his motionless frame imparted gave evidence that in death he had but added another victory to the long list of his renowned achievements. No pomp, no decoration, no pride and circumstance of state em- blazoned these final hours. From the countryside and from neighboring Alexandria poured his friends and fellow citizens in informal array. A few com- Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 229 panions of artillery and cavalry with a single band of music gave the only martial touch to the proceed- ings. The firing of solemn minute guns from a little vessel in the Potomac; the sad procession across the wooded lawns and slopes to the family vault upon the river's edge; the dirge that quavered in the December winds and sobbed upon the waters ; the chanting of the Episcopal orders of the dead ; the death service of the Masonic ritual, with the weird response, "So mote it be," from the brotherhood he loved and honored ; the commanding figures of the pallbearers, all colonels of the Revolution, his com- rades in war, his friends in peace ; the unusual luster of the declining sun with which his soul went down that evening to rise again upon the shores of endless morning, comprise a picture that will never vanish from the lengthening galleries of immortality. And so they laid him down to sleep in the loving arms of old Mount Vernon, where the poplar and the aspen whisper peace unto his ashes and glory to his soul ; where the Potomac bears every day the message of a people's love and veneration. Christianity and Life Benjamin Ide Wheeler The speaker is not only President of the University of California, but also an occasional preacher. The following is taken from a ser- mon delivered in Oakland, Cal. The sentences have "punch" in them, and the style of delivery should be direct, earnest, strong talk. Note the change in rate and general delivery required for the paragraph next to the last. It is the fundamental teaching of Christianity and the indubitable teaching of experience that the only 230 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them way of making men and the world better is on the basis of the Word made flesh and dwelhng among us. If you are to influence men, you must dwell among them. Character must be put at work. Exer- cise affords its only sound way of manifesting it- self. It will do no good to set it on a cold stone pedestal to be viewed from outside an iron railing. We want men, and men who will enter into the full current of the world's activities ; who will shun the dinner tables neither of Levi the publican nor of the straight-laced Pharisee, who will walk the dusty ways of common life, who can enter into the spirit of the synagogue service, of the popular festival, of the wedding, who knows the fisherman, the farmer, and the doctor of theology, can sympathize with the point of view of each, and talk with the fisherman in terms of fishing, with the peasant in terms of sowing, with the scholar in terms of his texts. It is sympathy, appreciation, that men want more than bread. It is only through sympathy that men are really reached and moved. The barriers which hold men and classes of men apart are not so much differences in dress, wealth, station, and birth, as the consciousness of different points of view, — absence of sympathy. The religious life will find its sound health only in freest exercise. Exercise is its hygiene. To shut it up from the real life of the world is to cultivate the self-deception of the ostrich which buries its head in the sand. You may hear men say, "Politics is dirty business, you had better keep out of it." No Christian man who is a United States citizen has Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 231 ever a moral right to announce himself as "out of politics." Every time a Christian citizen absents himself from the caucus or t^e polls he wrongs the Christ ideal. Our religion is something that will find its fullest development as it finds its most active exercise in the intensest activities of human life. The places to learn it and live it fullest and best are such as the mart, the athletic field, the editorial room, the legislative chamber. We are not called to asceticism or exclusiveness or quietism, but the very meaning and purpose of the incarnation is that we should have life and have it in abundance, have and possess the world, by liv- ing in harmony with the inner spirit of the universe, and in accord with the nature of things, become leaders and masters of life by conforming to that law of service which makes him master of all who serves all most and best. The life of isolation is the life of selfishness and leads to death. The life that is separated from the life of God, and is out of touch with the nature of things and refuses to serve the purpose of the whole, and lives for itself alone, this surely is the life that is not worth living. A straggling soldier on the battlefield, fugitive from the ranks, seeking safety in selfishness, weary, lonely, hopeless, forlorn, you hear over the uplands the call of the bugle like a voice crying in the wilder- ness. Along the highway the hoofbeat of a hurry- ing steed. A sight of the great leader returning to the command. The tones of his summoning voice. A glimpse of the flag through the rifts of the smoke. And again you are in the ranks. Again you feel 232 IV inning Declamations-How to Speak Them the touch of shoulders. The weary foot springs to the throb of martial music. You are moving on with the great army, on into victory. Through service you have found your life again, through following the leader your life has found its purpose and regained its birthright, "for all things are yours, whether the world, or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." Eloquence of Daniel O'Connell Wendell Phillips The following extract from Phillips' lecture on O'Connell has been a great favorite in declamation contests. This is due (i) to the wide range of emotions that the speech touches, (2) to the charm of expression (3) to the many changes, allowing great variety in the delivery. For example, the quotation from Webster should be given with exaggerated volume, a deep orotund tone, and simulated force; then the voice drops, in quoting the remark of Lowell, into the purely colloquial, off-hand style. Again, in delivering the quotation from O'Connell in the last paragraph, don't yell, nor try literally to send your voice "across the Atlantic," but it should roll out in chest tones — just as big a voice as you have — in large volume and with all the force you can command. Then again change to the colloquial as you remark on the effect of O'Connell's speech. Now note the quick change from humor to pathos, and "no effort" at the close — simply let the words speak themselves. It is a fine selection for individual coaching or class drill. I DO not think I exaggerate when I say that never since God made Demosthenes has He made a man better flitted for a great work than He did Daniel O'Connell. You may say that I am partial to my hero ; but John Randolph of Roanoke, who hated an T-ishman almost as much as he did a Yankee, when he got Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 233 to London and heard O'Connell, the old slaveholder threw up his hands and exclaimed: "This is the man, those are the lips, the most eloquent that speak English in my day," and I think he was right. Webster could address a bench of judges ; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a senate ; and Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand, but no one of these men could do more than this one thing. The wonder about O'Connell was that he could out-talk Corwin, he could charm a college better than Everett, and leave Clay himself far behind in mag- netizing a senate. Emerson says, "There is no true eloquence, unless there is a man behind the speech." Daniel O'Con- nell was listened to because all England and Ireland knew that there was a man behind the speech, — one who could be neither bought, bullied, nor cheated. These physical advantages are half the battle. You remember the story James Russell Lowell tells of Webster when, a year or two before his death, the Whig party thought of dissolution. Webster came home from Washington and went down to Faneuil Hall to protest, and 4000 of his fellow Whigs went out to meet him. Drawing himself up to his loftiest proportions, his brow charged with thunder, before that sea of human faces, he said: "Gentlemen, I am a Whig, a iSIassachusetts Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig, a revolutionary Whig, a con- stitutional Whig; and if you break up the Whig party, sir, where am I to go?" "And," says Lowell, *'we held our breath thinking where he could go. 234 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them If he had been five feet three, we should have said: 'Who cares where you go ?' " So it was with O'Connell. There was something majestic in his presence before he spoke, and he added to it what Webster had not, and what Clay- had, — the magnetism and grace that melts a million souls into his. When I saw him he was sixty-five, — lithe as a boy, his every attitude a picture, his every gesture grace — he was still all nature ; nothing but nature seemed to be speaking all over him. It would have been delicious to have watched him if he had not spoken a word, and all you thought of was a greyhound. Then he had a voice that covered the gamut. I heard him once in Exeter Hall say, "I send my voice across the Atlantic, careering like the thunderstorm against the breeze, to tell the slave-holder of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the bondman that the dawn of his redemp- tion is already breaking." You seemed to hear his voice reverberating and re-echoing back to London from the Rocky Mountains. And then, with the slightest possible Irish brogue, he would tell a story that would make all Exeter Hall laugh, and the next moment tears in his voice, like an old song, and five thousand men wept. And all the while no ef- fort — he seemed only breathing. "As effortless as woodland nooks Send violets up, and paint them blue." Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 235 The Eloquence of Wendell Phillips George IVflliaui Curtis Wendell Phillips was the first noteworthy exponent of the quiet, conversational style in oratory, as distinguished from the pompous, barnstorming style. Try to represent this style as you describe it at the opening of the third paragraph. Then note the play of emotions throughout the remainder of this paragraph, requiring quick tone- changes and offering a fine opportunity for word-coloring. The last paragraph is a vety strong appeal, requiring slower rate, lower key, and combined volume and force. Wendell PiiiLLirs was distinctively the orator, as others were the statesmen, of the anti-slavery cause. The tremendous controversy inspired uni- versal eloquence, but supreme over all was the eloquence of Phillips, as over the harmonious tumult of a vast orchestra one clear voice, like a lark high-poised in heaven, steadily carries the melody. His position was unique. He was not a Whig or a Democrat, nor the graceful paneg>'rist of an undisputed situation. Both parties denounced him ; he must recruit a new party. Public opinion con- demned him ; he must win public opinion to achieve his purpose. Yet he did not pander to the passion of the mob. The crowd did not follow him with huzzas. If it tried to drown his voice, he turned to the reporters, and over the raging multitude calmly said : "Howl on ; I speak to thirty millions here." He faced his audience with a tranquil mien, and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet 236 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial or feigned emo- tion. It was simply colloqin^ — a gentleman con- versing. And this wonderful power, — it was not a thunderstorm ; yet somehow and surely the ear and heart were charmed. How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael? The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstasy, of the sunset's glory, — that is the secret of genius and eloquence. What was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with richness of illustration with apt illusion, and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play aVound the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possessed him, and his "Pure and eloquent blood Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought That one might almost say his body thought." Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Was it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips ? It was an American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American in- humanity. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 237 The Haywood Trial: Plea for the Defense Clarence S. Darrow Governor Frank Steunenberg, of Idaho, was killed on the night of December 30, 1905, by a bomb which was adjusted to explode as he opened the yard-gate to his home. One Harry Orchard turned State's evidence and confessed to having placed the bomb at the instigation of William D. Haywood, President of the Mine Workers' Union. The mvirder grew out of labor troubles in the Idaho mining region. Haywood was indicted for murder, and his trial attracted the atten- tion of the whole country. Eminent counsel were engaged for both sides. Following is an extract of the plea to the jury on behalf of the defendant, who was eventually acquitted. The speech is naturally strongly emotional. In the first paragraph Harry Orchard is de- nounced, and the rest of the speech is a general plea for the laboring interests which Haywood, the defendant, represented. Gentlemen, when you are through with this trial and have gone back to your homes and think of it, pictures will come to you of the figures in this case, and Amongst the rest, Harry Orchard. Everybody will picture him according to how they see him. You have seen him here. You have heard his story. You have seen him, sleek and fat and well fed, facing this jury day by day, ask- ing for this man's blood. Do you ever want to see him again ? Is there any man that can ever think of Harry Orchard except in loathing and disgust? And yet, gentlemen, upon the testimony of this brute you are asked to get rid of Bill Hay- wood. You are asked to take his life because down in Colorado and up in Coeur d'Alenes he had been against the Mine Owner's Association, and because he has been organizing the weak, the poor, the toilers. Gentlemen, it is not for William Haywood alone 238 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them that I speak. I speak for the poor, for the weak, for the weary, for that long Hnc of men who, in darkness and despair, have borne the labors of the human race. The eyes of the world are upon you — upon you twelve men of Idaho to-night. Wherever the English language is spoken or wherever any tongue makes known the thoughts of men in any portion of the civilized world, men are talking and wondering and dreaming about the verdict of these twelve men that I see before me now. If you kill him your act will be applauded by many. If you should decree Bill Haywood's death, in the railroad offices of our great cities men will applaud your names. If you decree his death, amongst the spiders of Wall Street will go up paeans of praise for these twelve good men and true. In every bank in the world, where men hate Haywood because he fights for the poor and against that accursed system upon which the favored live and grow rich and fat — from all those you will receive blessings and un- stinted praise. But if your verdict should be "not guilty" in this case, there are still those who will reverently bow their heads and thank these twelve men for the life and reputation you have saved. Out on our broad prairies where men toil with their hands, out on the wide ocean where men are tossed and buffeted on the waves, through our mills and factories, and down deep under the earth, thousands of men, and of women and children — men who labor, men who suffer, women and children weary with care and toil — these men and these women and these chil- Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 239 dren will kneel to-night and ask their God to guide your hearts — these men and these women and these little children, the' poor, the weak, and the suffering of the world, are stretching out their helpless hands to this jury in mute appeal for Will Haywood's life. The Haywood Trial: Plea for the Prosecution William E. Borah This is an extract from a jury address in behalf of the prosecution of William D. Haywood, charged with conspiracy to murder as stated in the head-note to the preceding selection. The changing emotions and strong climaxes in this speech offer a fine opportunity for effective declamation. No doubt that many times during this trial you have been moved by the eloquence of counsel for the defense. They are men of wondrous powers. They have been brought here because so rarely gifted in power to sway the minds of men. But as I listened to the music of their voices and felt for a moment the compelling touch of their hyp- notic influence, there came back to me all the more vividly, when released from the spell, another scene — there came to me in more moving tones other voices. I remembered again the awful night of December 30, 1905, a night which added ten years to the life of some who arc in this court- room now. I felt again its cold and merciless chill, faced the drifting snow and peered at last into the darkness for the sacred spot where last lay my dead friend. I saw men and women stand- ing about in the storm and darkness, silent in the 240 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them presence of the dreadful mystery, and Idaho dis- graced and dishonored — I saw murder — no, not murder — a thousand times worse than murder, I saw anarchy displaying its first bloody triumph to Idaho. I saw government by assassination pointing to the mangled form of Frank Steunenberg, and saying to all — "Look, look, and take notice ! Here is the fate of all who do their duty to their state and the Government." Counsel for the defense have tried to make you believe that we would have professional distinction at the cost of human liberty or life. There has been something in this cause to make a man forget all professional pride. I only want what you want — human life made safe — assassination put out of business. I only want what you want — the gate which leads to our homes, the yard-gate whose inward swing tells of the returning husband and father, shielded and guarded by the courage and manhood of Idaho judges. He who takes life in the malice of the heart forfeits his right to live — for the sake of society, for the sake of all men who love their fellowmen and want to live with them in peace — he forfeits his right to live. If this be true where individual man slays but another, ten thousand times more true should it be where men in hatred and malice, in stealth and in secrecy, combine, confederate, and agree to carry on and commit indiscriminate murder, where men defy law, denounce society, trample upon all rights, human and divine, and thirst for the blood of all who chance to thwart or oppose their criminal Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 241 purposes. Anarchy, pale, bloodless, restless, hungry demon from the crypts of hell — lighting for a foot- hold in Idaho ! What shall we do ? This is the question. Shall we crush it, shall we make it un- safe for the disciples of this creed to do business here, or shall we palter and trim and compromise and invite to choose other victims? These are the questions to be settled by you and you alone. In the court of your own conscience the verdict must be worked out, and I must leave it all with you. The Apostle of a New Idea Herbert S. Bigelow This is an extract from an address on "Calf Paths," being one of numerous addresses published by the People's Church and Town Meeting Society, of Cincinnati, Ohio. This declamation is climactic in construction: the first two paragraphs contain an illustrative story; the point of the story is expounded in the third paragraph; and the last paragraph drives the point home in a strong appeal. At Ephesus, a certain man, named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen ; whom he gathered together, with the workingmen of like occupation, and said: "Sirs, ye know that by this business we have ouT- wealth. And ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away such people, saying that they are no gods that are made with hands." And w^hen they heard this they were filled with wrath and cried out saying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians !" And they rushed with on accord into 242 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them the theater; and some cried one thing and some another; for the assembly was in confusion; and the greater part knew not wherefore they were come together. The history of the world can be boiled down to this story of Paul and Demetrius and the silver- smiths and mob at Ephesus. We have always the same contending forces — Paul, the apostle of a new idea; Demetrius and the silversmiths, whose busi- ness is threatened by that idea ; and the mob that joins in the hue and cry against the apostle without knowing why. Progress is the resultant of these three forces — special interest and ignorance on the one side, and, on the other, the power of truth. This is the necessary formula for the right under- standing of our own or any other age. Men tell us of our natural resources and the need of their conservation, of the power that is wasted every day, of the wealth that is lost in fire and flood, in raging rivers and plunging falls and arid plains. But greater than all these resources combined is the untapped reservoir of truth, the infinite possibility, the incomprehensible power that is yet to spring from the unfettered brain of man. They who loosen the grip of the past, they Ivho wear away the obstruction of custom and tradition, they who inspire man with faith in himself, teach him the courage to think and to do, they who help to break the chains of prejudice and superstition, of fear and unbelief, — they are the greatest con- servators of all, and the wealth of mind which they open up is the inexhaustible resource of man. Winning D eclamations-H ow to Speak Them 243 Shall the Monroe Doctrine be Abandoned? John Mellen Thurston This is an extract from a speech delivered in the United States Senate, January 28, 1896, and was occasioned by the Venezuela Boundary Dispute, President Cleveland having sent the British government a message espousing the claims of Venezuela, — a message that was tantamount to war had not Great Britain yielded. The last three paragraphs of this declamation are markedly "jingoistic," and require the very strongest force, with ringing, explosive tones. Mr. President, it is gravely argued that our country has outgrown the necessity for any further enforcement of the Monroe doctrine. It is urged that the United States has waxed strong and pow- erful ; that we no longer need fear any foreign interference in our affairs ; and that we cannot be affected or disturbed by South American controver- sies. It is, therefore, insisted that we can now afford to let the other American Republics look out for themselves, and that we should stand supinely by while foreign powers overawe and outrage our weak and defenseless neighbors. I am not unmindful of the seriousness and gravity of the present situation. We are calling a halt upon that settled policy of aggression and dominion which has characterized the extension of the British Empire from the hour in which her first adventur- ous prow turned to unknown seas. The history of the English people is an almost unbroken series of mihtary achievements. Her navies are upon every sea, her armies in every clime. No nation can aft'ord lightly to challenge her purposes or arouse her stubborn pride. But does this furnish 244 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them any reason why Americans should abandon any settled policy of the United States, or retire from any position which the honor of this Republic and the welfare of America require that we should assume? Standing upon the floor of the American Senate and knowing whereof I speak, I say to the people of Great Britain that the grave issues which have been settled by brave men upon American battle- fields can never be reopened. Sir, there is no divi- sion of sentiment in the United States. Let but a single drumbeat be heard upon our coast, announc- ing the approach of a foreign foe, and there will spring to arms in North and South the grandest army the world has ever known, animated by a deathless loyalty to their country's flag and march- ing on to the mingled and inspiring strains of "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle." Sir, believing that the honor of my country is involved, that the hour calls for the highest ex- pression of loyalty and patriotism, calmly confident of the verdict of posterity, reverently calling God to witness the sincerity of my purpose, I shall vote for the resolution reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs. I shall vote for it not as an affront to any other nation, but to uphold the dignity of my own. I shall vote for it in this time of pro- found tranquility, convinced that peace with honor can be preserved. But, sir, I would vote for it just as surely were we already standing in the awful shadow of declared war. I would vote for it were the navies of all Europe thundering at our harbors. Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 245 I would vote for it were the shells of British battleships bursting above the dome of the nation's Capitol. I would vote for it and would maintain it at all hazards and at any cost, with the last dollar, with the last man ; yea though it might presage the coming of a mighty conflict that would call forth all the resources of our country and all the latent patriotism of our people. Liberty Under Law Wendell Phillips Stafford This selection is taken from a speech delivered at the annual ban- quet of the New England Society of New York City, December, 1913. The first paragraph contains illustrative references, to be delivered in a conversational style. The next paragraph makes the application. Each of the .succeeding paragraphs develops a new topic. The con- cluding paragraph is particularly strong both in thought and phrasing, and requires moderate rate and sincere, forcible expression. I SUPPOSE you have all read that most delightful of romances, "Lorna Doone." If you have you will remember the satisfaction you felt when spunky little Ruth Huckaback overturned the doctor's bleeding-basin, and sent the doctor himself about his business before he had quite bled the great John Ridd to death. Very few physicians of the present day but would admit that their profession did need the correction of common sense at that period of its progress. Even theolog>^ once needed it. I remember the glee with which the famous Liberal minister, Cyrus Bartol, would quote the reply of the Yankee unregenerate : "If God had made him to be damned, he guessed He had made him so he could stand it." 246 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them Now the law is no exception to this rule. On the contrary, no profession so needs to be corrected by the common sense of daily life, for its very province is to deal with the affairs of life. The questions that engage it are questions that cannot be settled in the closet ; the decision must commend itself to ordinary minds. The best judges instruct juries in their own language, the language of the farm, the shop, and the street. It is really neces- sary to do so to secure the best results. And this necessity for stating the law in plain and simple fashion is a powerful factor in keeping the law itself what it ought to be, plain and simple and just in its application. Above all things else, the people need to look, upon the law as their law, and to resent any dis- obedience of its mandates as a defiance of their will. Ideas have ruled the world and men are only puppets in comparison. Nothing could be better for the people of this land to-day than to be taken possession of by the idea that law, the ex- pression of their own united personality, is a thing noble and inviolable, worthy of every service and of any sacrifice, and that it must and shall be obeyed. There never was a great nation that did not rever- ence the law. There can be no great nation without cohesion ; there can be no cohesion without law. Liberty under law — that is the noblest motto "ever molded by the lips of man." The world has garnered all its labors, all its triumphs, all its sacrifices in that simple phrase. It holds all memo- ries. There is not a tear that has been shed bv winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 247 agonized martyrs, there is not a drop of blood that has flowed from the sides of dying heroes, that is not treasured in it. It holds all hopes. There is not a dream of social happiness that hovers on the horizon of the human mind to-day but was born of its inspiration and will be realized only through its workings. The liberty of the one — that is mon- archy. The liberty of the few — that is aristocracy. The lawless liberty of each — that is anarchy and ends in the despotism of the strongest hand. But the liberty we worship is the liberty of each, bounded always, and bounded only, by the liberty of all. It is liberty under law. It is the freedom of the race. That idea by itself, once let it take firm hold upon the masses, would be enough to make us a mighty nation, yes, an unconquerable people. Without the unifying force of that conception, though we pile our wealth in mountains, we shall be but a rope of sand. The Efficient Optimist Edzvard Earle Pitrinton This is an extract from an article in the Independmt, N'ovember 22, 1915. It has been said that effective public speaking is "thinking aloiid," and this truth applies with peculiar force to this declamation. Tlie conversational style should be used in delivery, but "the con- versational raised to its highest power." Many people have a notion that an optimist is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky sort of person, empty of cares, burdens or problems, smooth and sleek and »vell fed, favored of gods and men. Believe it not ! 248 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them All the real optimists I know have been through battles, worries, woes, privation, that would tear the heart out of an ordinary man a hundred times over. Not the man who always smiles is the op- timist, but the man who can always turn frowns and tears into smiles ! The consciousness that everything must finally come right is not born in a moment ; we must first consciously do the thing we know to be right, thousands of times, and must watch ourselves gain a step of ground each time, before we can form the habit of trusting the right- ness of the cosmic plan. The days of blind faith are over, the days of intelligent action are here. An efficient optimist hopes entirely without reason, but works entirely with it. How does optimism aid efficiency? By renewing, refreshing, sustaining and strengthening our bodily physique, mental constitution, moral character and psychic reserve. The path to any great success is lined with many small failures ; and the assurance of ultimate success lies in the perception to see and the power to use the lessons from these failures and to go higher because of them. This perception and this power come only to the optimist. The world was against Newton when he pro- claimed the law of gravitation; against Harvey Vvhen he discovered the circulation of the blood; against Wagner when he wrote his epics of har- mony ; against Franklin when he searched the skies for the secret of electricity; against Darwin when he announced the law of evolution ; against Bell when he made the first telephone; against the Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 249 Wrights when they labored on the airship ; against Burbank when he dared to invent new species of plants and flowers ; against Froebel when he taught how to understand children better. These men ail had to create in themselves an optimism strong enough to carry them through and beyond the world's ignorance, blindness, inertness, fear, hate, opposition. And the law still holds. The greater your work and the finer your message, the more you will be antagonized. Your only safeguard is in scientific optimism. What does scientific optimism do for the human machine? It promotes good digestion and a corre- sponding sense of buoyancy and cheer; it straightens the backbone, physical and moral ; it assures deep breathing and the liberation of more energy; it favors sound sleep and repose at all times ; it lends force, clearness and alertness to the brain because of a purer blood stream and a surer life purpose ; it empowers the will by enlargement and establish- ment of one's faith; it steadies the nerves for a calm, firm handling of the crises, problems and duties of everyday life; it provides the key to a storehouse of moral dynamics, available only when we see, think, believe and hope for the best ; it expands our influence and makes hosts of friends ; it opens communications with higher, spiritual avenues of original conception and power, by means of which the ordinary man becomes great, and every man a conscious master of himself, his work, and his destiny. 250 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them A Message to Garcia Elbert Hubbard The author of this selection, who went down on the ill-fated Lusitania, was discussing the incident related below, so the story goes, at the supper table one night with his family. He was so im- pressed with the incident and its lesson that he at once retired to his study and wrote the article from which the following is an ex- tract. It was first published in the Philistine for March, 1899. The theme of the article, re-enforced by the "punch" of the author's English, struck a responsive chord on the part of the public. Mil- lions of copies of the article were later printed and distributed, and it was translated into several foreign languages. It has also had a record-breaking run as a declamation, being a favorite in prize contests. The delivery, though forceful on the whole, is relieved by many changes; there is opportunity for great variety, especially in the first five paragraphs. The first three are introductory and should be given in a conversational style, the quotation in even a colloquial style. Bear in mind that the theme is the thing to be emphasized throughout; that is: honor to the man who arrives, who does things, and who acts on his own initiative. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communi- cate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba — no one knew where. No mail nor tele- graph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do ? Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil- skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them 251 boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, — are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia ; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal ! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and that statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, not instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concen- trate their energies: do the thing — "Carry a mes- sage to Garcia !" General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecil- ity of the average man — the inability or unwilling- ness to concentrate on a thing and do it. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupid- ity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all ? My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking 252 Winning Declamations-How to Speak Them any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chuci 938 u "So-^ JAW 2 5 T03j> OCT 10 Form L-9-35»(-8,'28 1^1 o 1 REC'D ip-URC OCT2J|f^6? 10 9^7 UL oijU[Mt H'j Ht mIm'^Al I ibKAhi fAtiLiTf AA 000 408 056 o