Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1892 — ELOCUTION IN THE PARK. [ARTICLE]

ELOCUTION IN THE PARK.

A Zealous Theological Student F»Us Into the Hands of the Police. The life of a park policeman is so destitute of incident that It was natural that one of them should start in surprise, one morning recently in Central Park, when he heard a series of unearthly sounds come from a secluded thicket in a little-frequented section of the great pleasure grounds. The sounds were of a kind which, if heard in a house at night, would have at once stamped it as haunted. The voice, or voices, were now raised in anger, now dropped in love. At one time the accents told of an overmastering hatred, at another they seemed to speak of victory and joy; sarcasm was now the keynote, then bitter invective or gentle pleading. The policeman warily approached the fastnesses whence the noises came, fully convinced that he had a dangerous duty to perform. He felt of his revolver to make sure that it was all right, and stole forward until he saw whence the voice came.

In a little opening in the forest stood a tall young man, in a long, blaek frock coat. His black hair was long and tossed in disorder. The man had taken off his hat and .overcoat and had thrown them on the ground. He was all alone, but was declaiming away, gesturing with his long arms as if addressing a large multitude. The policeman could at first make neither head nor tail out of the spectacle, but when he heard what the lanky young man was saying, he became convinced that he was an escaped lunatic. This was what the orator repeated over and over again: “O, thou, that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy O Sun, thine everlasting light?” The man ran through the whole gamut of human passions and moods with the sentence, varying his expression each time to correspond with hate, longing, hope, love, envy, pathos, or the other feeling which he wished to represent. The size of the speaker, the vehemence which he put into his words, and above all, the*energy with which he swung his long arms in emphasizing his question, gave the policeman such a wholesome idea of his physical prowess that he quietly withdrew for assistance. With two brother policemen he came back to capture the supposed lunatic. The young man had put on jris hat and overcoat and was leaving the secluded spot, when the policemen came up to him and made him a prisoner. To their great surprise he submitted calmly, and asked what he had done. When they told him their suspicions* he did not know whether to be angry, mortified or amused. He soon explained to them that he was a student at the Union Theological Seminary, and had been advised by his instructor in elocution to go over j the lines of Ossian, out of doors, putting in them the various emphasis and intonations. He knew of no better place to practice in than Central Park, so he had gone there. The ridiculousness of the whole thing finally struck all four of them, and they burst out laughing. The prisoner was released, but hereafter when he goes to Central Park to practice elocution, he will take an audience of one with him.—Hew York Tribune.