Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1898 — SLAVERY MADE ORATORS. [ARTICLE]

SLAVERY MADE ORATORS.

Power of a Great Cause to Make All Men Eloquent. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, soldier, author and gentleman, contributes a charming autobiographical sketch to the Atlantic Monthly in an article entitled “On the Outskirts of Public Life." In this sketch he relates many incidents and experiences of his literary and public life. “Living in a university city,” he says, “I am occasionally asked by students how they can best train themselves for public speaking, and I always begin with one bit of counsel, based on half a century’s experience: ‘Enlist in • reform.’ Engage in something which you feel for the moment so unspeakably more important than yourself as wholly to dwarf you, and the rest will come. No matter what it is—tariff or free trade, gold standard or silver, even communism or imperialism—the result is the same as to oratory, if you are only sincere. Even the actor on the dramatic stage must fill himself with his part or he is nothing, and the public speaker on the platform must be more than a dramatic actor to produce the highest effects. There is an essential thing wanting to the eloquence of the men who act a part, but given a profound sincerity and there is something wonderful in the way it overcomes the obstacles of a hoarse voice, a stammering tongue or a feeble presence. “On the anti-slavery platform, where I was reared, I cannot remember a really poor speaker. As Emerson said: ‘Eloquence was dog cheap’ there. The cause was too real, too vital, too immediately pressing upon heart and conscience for the speaking to be otherwise than alive. It carried men away as with a flood."