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The tempest nearly always followed, and there were times when it threatened to become more than vocal; when, all order lost, nine-tenths of the men on the other side of the House were on their feet shouting jeers and denunciations, and the orator faced them, out-thundering them all, with his own cohorts, flushed and cheering, gathered round him.
He had often read of Meaux; was it not the Bishopric of Bossuet, the stately orator of Louis XIV? The interest he felt in the question helped to take the weight from his weary limbs. At last they crossed the bridge. Sappers had been at work on it for some time, and the preparations to blow it up after they had passed were almost complete.
The orator humbly confessed it was utterly out of his power, as he was unacquainted with the nature of its construction. "Nay, but," said Peter, "try your ingenuity, man; you see all the springs and wheels and how easily the clumsiest hand may stop it, and pull it to pieces, and why should it not be equally easy to regulate as to stop it?"
The same period does not produce its most popular poet, its most effective orator, and its most philosophic historian. Language changes with the progress of thought and the events of history, and style changes with it; and while in successive generations it passes through a series of separate excellences, the respective deficiencies of all are supplied alternately by each.
Whiston had already inaugurated the custom of attending political meetings, and occasionally putting a question to the stump orator no matter of which party; of sometimes, indeed, taking the stump herself, after the others had exhausted their wind.
In his old age, when his fine estate, through the misfortunes of his sons, was burdened with mortgages to the amount of thirty thousand dollars, and other large debts weighed heavily upon his soul, and he feared to be compelled to sell the home of fifty years and seek a strange abode, a few old friends secretly raised the needful sum, secretly paid the mortgages and discharged the debts, and then caused the aged orator to be informed of what had been done, but not of the names of the donors.
Douglas was the more finished orator. Lincoln spoke as he split rails. His conscience was his beetle. It drove his arguments deep into the souls of his hearers. The great thing about him was his conscience. Unless his theme were big enough to give it play in noble words he could be as commonplace as any one. He was built for a tool of God in tremendous moral issues.
Rough colliers, who had been a terror to their neighbourhood, wept until the tears made white gutters down their cheeks black as they came from the colliery and, what is still more to the purpose, changed their whole manner of life and became sober, God-fearing citizens in consequence of what they heard; sceptical philosophers listened respectfully, if not to much purpose, to one who hardly knew what philosophy meant; fine gentlemen came to hear one who, in the conventional sense of the term, had very little of the gentleman about him; shrewd statesmen, who had a very keen appreciation of the value of money, were induced by the orator to give first copper, then silver, then gold, and then to borrow from their friends when they had emptied their own pockets.
But as I am not seeking a pupil to instruct, but an Orator who is to be the model of his profession, he must have the preference who can always discern what is proper and becoming.
I prompted our medical orator with a neat speech from behind the curtain; and I never heard such applause, from such a comparatively small audience, before in my life. I felt the tribute I felt it deeply. And now here I am at the top of the tree. It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the music-seller on the spot.
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