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Show THE ART OF STUMP-SPEAKIJiG. Not Lost, Not Valueless Face to Face with the People Oratory. I see in some newspapers that the art of stump-speaking is numbered nearly j among t he lost arts ; that there were great times when Webster and Clay spoke, and also that oratory is no longer a subject about which a young person should take thought. If any of you suppose that I have not been serious, I must now be consiaerea in sucn mooa. i wisn to say that the art of stump-speaking ia not a lost art, it is not a valueless art and in a country like this it is a very great power, and an art which those who intend to take part in public affairs should wisely cultivate. In the first place, you can never know the public sentiment of the community unless you are endowed with some sort of clairvoyant power, unless you meet the people and in these great assemblies, when you look into the faces of men and women and lay down your propositions and proceed to make" your arguments, you get, by some mysterious process, an impression as to what they think. No discreet public speaker, in making speeches every thirty or forty miles, will in fact make the same speech with which he began. He will lose the speech with which he began, and construct a new one under the dictation of the audiences before be-fore him. v He is under the influence of the' people and comes to realize what they believe, and he knows what opinions and arguments argu-ments will produce effect, and what considerations con-siderations are valueless. In that respect the stump-speaker has an immense ad- j vantage over the writer in the closet or the editor of a newspaper. Now the newspaper men will please pardon me for . saying that, while for every three years and nine months in the quadrennial they appear to rule, during the three months preceding a presidential election, when the men who take part in public affairs present themselves before the people and present the issues and arguments argu-ments on one side and the other, the press, omnipotent as it is, bows itself to the men who canvass the country, and merely reproduce the opinions and arguments argu-ments which the stump orators set forth. It ' is difficult to state what the art of oratory is. Great men, from Quintillian all along, have endeavored to explain what it is, but it is still a mystery. But we know that there are some men, under some circumstances, who, by the voice, by the manner and gesture, produce not only temporary, but lasting impressions on the mind. Men who possess these gifts in any country or civilization of the world will have power. Secretary Bout-well. |