The great column of his argument should be unbroken. He can adorn it with vines and flowers, but they should not be in such profusion as to hide the column. He should give variety of episode by illustrations, but they should be used only for the purpose of adding strength to the argument. The man who wishes to become an orator should study language. He should know the deeper meaning of words. He should understand the vigor and velocity of verbs and the color of adjectives. He should know how to sketch a scene, to paint a picture, to give life and action. He should be a poet and a dramatist, a painter and an actor. He should cultivate his imagination. He should become familiar with the great poetry and fiction, with splendid and heroic deeds. He should be a student of Shakespeare. He should read and devour the great plays. From Shakespeare he could learn the art of expression, of compression, and all the secrets of the head and heart.
The great orator is full of variety—of surprises. Like a juggler, he keeps the colored balls in the air. He expresses himself in pictures. His speech is a panorama. By continued change he holds the attention. The interest does not flag. He does not allow himself to be anticipated. A picture is shown but once. So, an orator should avoid the commonplace. There should be no stuffing, no filling. He should put no cotton with his silk, no common metals with his gold. He should remember that "gilded dust is not as good as dusted gold." The great orator is honest, sincere. He does not pretend. His brain and heart go together. Every drop of his blood is convinced. Nothing is forced. He knows exactly what he wishes to do—knows when he has finished it, and stops.
Only a great orator knows when and how to close. Most speakers go on after they are through. They are satisfied only with a "lame and impotent conclusion." Most speakers lack variety. They travel a straight and dusty road. The great orator is full of episode. He convinces and charms by indirection. He leaves the road, visits the fields, wanders in the woods, listens to the murmurs of springs, the songs of birds. He gathers flowers, scales the crags and comes back to the highway refreshed, invigorated. He does not move in a straight line. He wanders and winds like a stream.
Of course, no one can tell a man what to do to become an orator. The great orator has that wonderful thing called presence. He has that strange something known as magnetism. He must have a flexible, musical voice, capable of expressing the pathetic, the humorous, the heroic. His body must move in unison with his thought. He must be a reasoner, a logician. He must have a keen sense of humor —of the laughable. He must have wit, sharp and quick. He must have sympathy. His smiles should be the neighbors of his tears. He must have imagination. He should give eagles to the air, and painted moths should flutter in the sunlight.
While I cannot tell a man what to do to become an orator, I can tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works the form begins to appear. When the statue is finished the workman stops. Nothing is more difficult than a perfect close. Few poems, few pieces of music, few novels end well. A good story, a great speech, a perfect poem should end just at the proper point. The bud, the blossom, the fruit. No delay. A great speech is a crystallization in its logic, an efflorescence in its poetry.
I have not heard many speeches. Most of the great speakers in our country were before my time. I heard Beecher, and he was an orator. He had imagination, humor and intensity. His brain was as fertile as the valleys of the tropics. He was too broad, too philosophic, too poetic for the pulpit. Now and then, he broke the fetters of his creed, escaped from his orthodox prison, and became sublime.
Theodore Parker was an orator. He preached great sermons. His sermons on "Old Age" and "Webster," and his address on "Liberty" were filled with great thoughts, marvelously expressed. When he dealt with human events, with realities, with things he knew, he was superb. When he spoke of freedom, of duty, of living to the ideal, of mental integrity, he seemed inspired.
Webster I never heard. He had great qualities; force, dignity, clearness, grandeur; but, after all, he worshiped the past. He kept his back to the sunrise. There was no dawn in his brain. He was not creative. He had no spirit of prophecy. He lighted no torch. He was not true to his ideal. He talked sometimes as though his head was among the stars, but he stood in the gutter. In the name of religion he tried to break the will of Stephen Girard—to destroy the greatest charity in all the world; and in the name of the same religion he defended the Fugitive Slave Law. His purpose was the same in both cases. He wanted office. Yet he uttered a few very great paragraphs, rich with thought, perfectly expressed.
Clay I never heard, but he must have had a commanding presence, a chivalric bearing, an heroic voice. He cared little for the past. He was a natural leader, a wonderful talker—forcible, persuasive, convincing. He was not a poet, not a master of metaphor, but he was practical. He kept in view the end to be accomplished. He was the opposite of Webster. Clay was the morning, Webster the evening. Clay had large views, a wide horizon. He was ample, vigorous, and a little tyrannical.
Benton was thoroughly commonplace. He never uttered an inspired word. He was an intense egoist. No subject was great enough to make him forget himself. Calhoun was a political Calvinist—narrow, logical, dogmatic. He was not an orator. He delivered essays, not orations. I think it was in 1851 that Kossuth visited this country. He was an orator. There was no man, at that time, under our flag, who could speak English as well as he. In the first speech I read of Kossuth's was this line: "Russia is the rock against which the sigh for freedom breaks." In this you see the poet, the painter, the orator.