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Show CASTELAR'S ORATORY. There are few journalists, if any, on the Pacific Coast, who cut with a keener blade than J. D. Lynch, of the Los Angeles Herald; neither is there one who is more scintillating in descriptive powers. Under the above caption he writes: Castelar, Spain's greatest orator, is without doubt the greatest living orator. He is unsurpassed in his sublime eloquence, in his deep earnestness, his command of language, his infallible memory and his vivid and gorgeous imagery. He is a very nervous man, and throws himself soul and body into his speeches. Before speaking he is restless and cannot keep quiet an instant; he enters the chamber, leaves it, re-enters, goes out again, wanders through the corridors, goes into the library, and turns over the leaves of a book, rushes into the café to take a glass of water, seems to be seized with fever fancies that he will be laughed at or hissed, not a single lucid idea of his speech remains in his head; he has confused and forgotten everything. "How is your pulse?" his friends ask him smilingly. When the moment for speaking arrives he takes his place, with bowed head, as trembling and pallid as a man condemned to death, who is resigned to losing in a single day the glory acquired in so many years of fatigue. At that moment even his enemies feel pity for his condition. He rises, gives a glance around him, and says "Senors!" At once his courage returns, his mind grows clear, and his speech comes to him like a forgotten air. The President, the Contes, the tribunes disappear. He sees nothing but his gestures, hears nothing but his own voice, and feels naught but the irresistible flame which burns within in him and the mysterious force that upholds and sustains him. "I no longer see the walls of the room." he exclaims, "I behold distant people and countries I have never seen." He speaks by the hour, and not a deputy leaves the room, not a person moves in the tribunes not a voice interrupts him, not a gesture disturbs him, not even when he breaks the regulations has the President sufficient courage to interrupt him. Castelar is master of the assembly; he thunders, lightens, sings, rages and gleams like fireworks; makes his auditors smile, calls forth shouts of enthusiasm, ends amid a storm of applause and goes away with his head in a whirl. |