When I look around and see our prosperity in everything—agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and our colleges—I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to—let us not too readily yield to this temptation—do so. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered, that their eyes would be opened, and that they would become as gods. They, in an evil hour, yielded. Instead of becoming gods, they only saw their nakedness.
—Alexander H. Stephens
The illustration commences with “Our first parents” and continues to the end. It is more effective in pointing out the danger besetting the South in listening to the temptation to sever the Union than is all the rest of the paragraph. The prophecy as to the effect of listening to the voice of the tempter is forcefully summed up in the sentence: “Instead of becoming gods, they only saw their nakedness.” By means of directing the thought to the dire consequences attending the fall of Adam and Eve through listening to temptation, the orator magnifies the effects that would follow a dissolution of the union of the states. The object in employing word-pictures is to convey an idea by means of suggestion, and, when so used, they become powerful weapons in the hands of a speaker. Here is another excellent illustration:
Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must—when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, “A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becomes fruitful.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pictures are powerful means of conveying thoughts, and often more can be expressed by deftly painting a word-picture than could be imparted by a lengthy narration. Here is a good example:
Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox, in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion; he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.
—Henry W. Grady
This certainly brings the whole scene before us in a moment. We see the hills of Virginia, dotted over with the graves of the dead soldiers; groups of grizzled veterans, the remnant of that wonderful fighting machine that had followed the ill-starred flag of the Confederacy under its beloved leader; the typical southern soldier wringing the hands of his comrades, and sorrowfully, but manfully, turning his face towards home. The picture, as presented by Henry W. Grady, is more eloquent than the narration of the story would have been.
Henry Watterson, a lover of oratory, and himself an orator of no mean ability, speaking at the unveiling of Lincoln’s statue at Frankfort, Kentucky, on November 8, 1911, spoke thus of the great American: