Public Speaking: Principles and Practice

by Irvah Lester Winter

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

Mr. President and Gentlemen,—I came here to-night with some notes for a speech in my pocket, but I have been sitting next to General Butler, and in the course of the evening they have mysteriously disappeared. The consequence is, gentlemen, that you may expect a very good speech from him and a very poor one from me. When I read this toast which you have just drunk in honor of Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain, and heard how you received the letter of the British Minister that was read in response, and how heartily you joined in singing "God Save the Queen," when I look up and down these tables and see among you so many representatives of English capital and English trade, I have my doubts whether the evacuation of New York by the British was quite as thorough and lasting as history would fain have us believe. If George III, who certainly did all he could to despoil us of our rights and liberties and bring us to ruin—if he could rise from his grave and see how his granddaughter is honored at your hands to-night, why, I think he would return whence he came, thanking God that his efforts to enslave us, in which for eight long years he drained the resources of the British Empire, were not successful.

The truth is, the boasted triumph of New York in getting rid of the British once and forever has proved, after all, to be but a dismal failure. We drove them out in one century only to see them return in the next to devour our substance and to carry off all the honors. We have just seen the noble Chief Justice of England, the feasted favorite of all America, making a triumphal tour across the Continent and carrying all before him at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Night after night at our very great cost we have been paying the richest tribute to the reigning monarch of the British stage, and nowhere in the world are English men and women of character and culture received with a more hearty welcome, a more earnest hospitality, than in this very state of New York. The truth is, that this event that we celebrate to-day, which sealed the independence of America and seemed for a time to give a staggering blow to the prestige and the power of England, has proved to be no less a blessing to her own people than to ours. The latest and best of the English historians has said that, however important the independence of America might be in the history of England, it was of overwhelming importance in the history of the world, and that though it might have crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. And in the same spirit we welcome the fact that those social, political, and material barriers that separated the two nations a century ago have now utterly vanished; that year by year we are being drawn closer and closer together, and that this day may be celebrated with equal fitness on both sides of the Atlantic and by all who speak the English tongue.

TIES OF KINSHIP

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

When I was conversing recently with Lord Tennyson, he said to me: "It is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will always be changing, and so the time will come when you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is to-day." You remember what opinion your brilliant humorist, Artemus Ward, let fall concerning that ancient singer. "Mr. Chaucer," he observed casually, "is an admirable poet, but as a spellist, a very decided failure."

To the treasure house of that noble tongue the United States has splendidly contributed. It would be far poorer to-day without the tender lines of Longfellow, the serene and philosophic pages of Emerson, the convincing wit and clear criticism of my illustrious departed friend, James Russell Lowell, the Catullus-like perfection of the lyrics of Edgar Allan Poe, and the glorious, large-tempered dithyrambs of Walt Whitman.

These stately and sacred laurel groves grow here in a garden forever extending, ever carrying further forward, for the sake of humanity, the irresistible flag of our Saxon supremacy, leading one to falter in an attempt to eulogize America and the idea of her potency and her promise. The most elaborate panegyric would seem but a weak impertinence, which would remind you, perhaps too vividly, of Sydney Smith, who, when he saw his grandchild pat the back of a large turtle, asked her why she did so. The little maid replied: "Grandpa, I do it to please the turtle." "My child," he answered, "you might as well stroke the dome of St. Paul's to please the Dean and chapter"

I myself once heard, in our Zoological gardens in London, another little girl ask her mamma whether it would hurt the elephant if she offered him a chocolate drop. In that guarded and respectful spirit is it that I venture to tell you here to-night how truly in England the peace and prosperity of your republic is desired, and that nothing except good will is felt by the mass of our people toward you, and nothing but the greatest satisfaction in your wealth and progress.