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"You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did you not?" The speaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the local royal family. "I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, that I could not persuade her to dine with us to-morrow." "With Mme. de Champignelles?" exclaimed the dowager with something like astonishment in her manner.
They will find that their time and money have been wasted, so far as public speaking is concerned, unless, having at the start some native ability, they have secured, in addition, a kind of training that is fundamental. A man is wanted as a speaker primarily because he stands for something; because he has done some noteworthy work.
For an instant every one held his breath in terror of the coming outburst, but those whose angry or frightened eyes first ventured to glance toward the captain-general saw his face wreathed in smiles, and his wine cup raised toward the daring speaker.
The speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation. "'Tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there," said a woman behind. "'Ye are to declare it, was the parson's words," Fairway continued. "And then up stood a woman at my side a-touching of me.
And now I have much pleasure in calling on William Foster to address you." When Foster rose to speak there was a deep hush, a silence that might be felt. "If I had come to a gathering like this a year ago," began the speaker, "it would have been as a mocker or a spy. But how different are things with me to-day!
And another, still more considerate, advised that my wound should be bound up, or I might bleed to death. Thanking them for their good intentions, I produced a handkerchief, with which, the last speaker assisting me, I bound up my leg.
It seats nineteen hundred people, and the audience so surrounds the speaker that it does not impress one as being the vast auditorium which it is. Cooper Union has always been the home of free speech. Next to Faneuil Hall it is the most distinguished auditorium in America, from a historic standpoint.
Being surprised, I looked round, and found it was the clergyman, who had suddenly started up, and was saying grace. The solemnity, with which he spoke, occasioned his voice to differ so much from its ordinary tone, that I did not, till I had looked about me, discover who the speaker was. I think he might be engaged from three or four minutes in the delivery of this grace.
His father, no doubt, had been a man of much influence in the British House of Commons, a very weighty speaker, and, while in office, a first-rate administrator; but Englishmen know what a House of Commons reputation is, how fugitive, how little cosmopolitan; and that a German count should ever have heard of his father delighted but amazed him.
At the last words Maurice and Lucia saw the speaker emerge from behind the altar on the side furthest from where they stood. She was a tall woman, neither young nor pretty, but very fashionable distinguished, Lucia supposed she should be called; and but for the peculiarity of her voice, would have made a favourable rather than an unfavourable impression on a stranger.
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