STUDY OF MODEL SPEECHES 3

MODEL SPEECHES, WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR STUDY


_Edward Everett_

The following extract from "The Foundation of National Character," by
Edward Everett, is a fine example of patriotic appeal. Read it aloud,
and note how the orator speaks with deep feeling and stirs the same
feeling in you. This impression is largely due to the simple, sincere,
right-onward style of the speaker,--qualities of his own well-known
character.

It will amply repay you to read this extract aloud at least once a day
for a week or more, so that its superior elements of thought and style
may be deeply imprest on your mind.

"How is the spirit of a free people to be formed, and animated, and
cheered, but out of the storehouse of its historic recollections? Are we
to be eternally ringing the changes upon Marathon and Thermopyl・ and
going back to read in obscure texts of Greek and Latin, of the exemplars
of patriotic virtue?

"I thank God that we can find them nearer home, in our own soil; that
strains of the noblest sentiment that ever swelled in the breast of man,
are breathing to us out of every page of our country's history, in the
native eloquence of our mother-tongue,--that the colonial and
provincial councils of America exhibit to us models of the spirits and
character which gave Greece and Rome their name and their praise among
nations.

"Here we ought to go for our instruction;--the lesson is plain, it is
clear, it is applicable. When we go to ancient history, we are
bewildered with the difference of manners and institutions. We are
willing to pay our tribute of applause to the memory of Leonidas, who
fell nobly for his country in the face of his foe.

"But when we trace him to his home, we are confounded at the reflection,
that the same Spartan heroism, to which he sacrificed himself at
Thermopyl・ would have led him to tear his own child, if it had happened
to be a sickly babe,--the very object for which all that is kind and
good in man rises up to plead,--from the bosom of his mother, and carry
it out to be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus.

"We feel a glow of admiration at the heroism displayed at Marathon by
the ten thousand champions of invaded Greece; but we can not forget that
the tenth part of the number were slaves, unchained from the workshops
and doorposts of their masters, to go and fight the battles of freedom.

"I do not mean that these examples are to destroy the interest with
which we read the history of ancient times; they possibly increase that
interest by the very contrast they exhibit. But they warn us, if we need
the warning, to seek our great practical lessons of patriotism at home;
out of the exploits and sacrifices of which our own country is the
theater; out of the characters of our own fathers.

"Them we know,--the high-souled, natural, unaffected, the citizen
heroes. We know what happy firesides they left for the cheerless camp.
We know with what pacific habits they dared the perils of the field.
There is no mystery, no romance, no madness, under the name of chivalry
about them. It is all resolute, manly resistance for conscience and
liberty's sake not merely of an overwhelming power, but of all the force
of long-rooted habits and native love of order and peace.

"Above all, their blood calls to us from the soil which we tread; it
beats in our veins; it cries to us not merely in the thrilling words of
one of the first victims in this cause--'My sons, scorn to be
slaves!'--but it cries with a still more moving eloquence--'My sons,
forget not your fathers!'"


_John Quincy Adams_

John Quincy Adams, in his speech on "The Life and Character of
Lafayette," gives us a fine example of elevated and serious-minded
utterance. The following extract from this speech can be studied with
profit. Particularly note the use of sustained sentences, and the happy
collocation of words. The concluding paragraph should be closely
examined as a study in impressive climax.

"Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not
done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to
stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the
men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all
ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon, from the
creation of the world to this day, the mighty dead of every age and
every clime,--and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one
be found who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take
precedence of Lafayette?

"There have doubtless been in all ages men whose discoveries or
inventions in the world of matter, or of mind, have opened new avenues
to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his
means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer
approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his
hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.

"Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He
invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws
of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility,
under the most absolute monarchy of Europe; in possession of an
affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at
the moment of attaining manhood the principle of republican justice and
of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by
inspiration from above.

"He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his
towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of Liberty. He
came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most
effective champions of our independence; but, that once achieved, he
returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the
controversies which have divided us.

"In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we
have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom,
Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add
nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead
of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he
took a practical existing model in actual operation here, and never
attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country.

"It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land; but he saw it
from the summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the
consummation of his wishes in the establishment of a Republic and the
extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in
advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived.... The prejudices
and passions of the people of France rejected the principle of inherited
power in every station of public trust, excepting the first and highest
of them all; but there they clung to it, as did the Israelites of old
to the savory deities of Egypt.

"When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all
the institutions of France; when government shall no longer be
considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust
committed for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it
came; as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be
abused;--then will be the time for contemplating the character of
Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full
development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations,
of the labors, and perils, and sacrifices of his long and eventful
career upon earth; and thenceforward till the hour when the trumpet of
the Archangel shall sound to announce that time shall be no more, the
name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race high
on the list of pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind."

I have selected these extracts for your convenient use, as embodying
both thought and style worthy of your careful study. Read them aloud at
every opportunity, and you will be gratified at the steady improvement
such practise will make in your own speaking power.

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