Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1883 — What Constitutes the True Orator. [ARTICLE]

What Constitutes the True Orator.

I shall never fofget my first trip away from home, remarked the late Alexander H. Stephens once, nor the impressions it made on me. I was quite a young man, and some business fell into my hands that carried me North. I had never been as far as Washington before, and of course I wanted to see what was there to be seen. I went into the Senate gallery and took my seat. I could easily pick out the prominent men by the pictures I had seen of them. Pretty soon a question came np, and the President of the Senate announced that Mr. Webster was entitled to the floor. Of course I was very much gratified that I was to hear him. He arose and began speaking in an ordinary conversational way. I think he took his snuff occasionally. He never made a gesture from the time he opened until he closed. I thought it all sound doctrine, but I was convinced that I knew a dozen college boys who could have beaten him speaking. The next morning I picked up a paper. There was his speech headed: “Mr. Webster’s Great Speech-on the Finances.” Pshaw, I thought, they don’t call that a great speech, do they ? I saw another paper. There it was again, headed Mr. Webster’s great speech on the finances. I went to Baltimore. There they had Mr. Webster’s great Speech on the finances. I reached Philadelphia arid ’everybody was talking about Mr. Webster’s great speech on the finances. I got to New York. There everything was -in a ferment over Mr. Webster’s great-speech on the finances. It was the same way in Boston. So I concluded that itmust indeed be a great ppeech. 14 put me to thinking, and I made up my mind that it was. not the way a man said anything, bufcwbat he said made him an orator. Evebywhebe endeavor to be useful, and everywhere you will be at home.