Hearing such men sends to the
winds all the books, and formulas, and polish'd speaking, and rules of
oratory.
Talking of oratory, why is it that the unsophisticated practices often
strike deeper than the train'd ones? Why do our experiences perhaps
of some local country exhorter--or often in the West or South at
political meetings--bring the most definite results? In my time I have
heard Webster, Clay, Edward Everett, Phillips, and such _celebres_
yet I recall the minor but life-eloquence of men like John P. Hale,
Cassius Clay, and one or two of the old abolition "fanatics" ahead of
all those stereotyped fames. Is not--I sometimes question--the first,
last, and most important quality of all, in training for a "finish'd
speaker," generally unsought, unreck'd of, both by teacher and pupil?
Though may-be it cannot be taught, anyhow. At any rate, we need to
clearly understand the distinction between oratory and elocution.
Under the latter art, including some of high order, there is indeed no
scarcity in the United States, preachers, lawyers, actors, lecturers,
&c. With all, there seem to be few real orators--almost none.
I repeat, and would dwell upon it (more as suggestion than mere
fact)--among all the brilliant lights of bar or stage I have heard in
my time (for years in New York and other cities I haunted the courts
to witness notable trials, and have heard all the famous actors and
actresses that have been in America the past fifty years) though I
recall marvellous effects from one or other of them, I never had
anything in the way of vocal utterance to shake me through and
through, and become fix'd, with its accompaniments, in my memory, like
those prayers and sermons--like Father Taylor's personal electricity
and the whole scene there--the prone ship in the gale, and dashing
wave and foam for background--in the little old sea-church in Boston,
those summer Sundays just before the secession war broke out.
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