Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1858-11-27
WHEEL
THE INTEILIGENCER.
The Isesurrection Of yyords-q,he 1,oyver- OF
Words wei Spoken.


The following is an extract from an ably writ
ten criticism on popular readings" by the
Chicago Journal.
Good reading is delicate piece of work.
Compared with it the great clock at Strasbure
is very simple thing. When we used 10 stride
through 'no-man-may-put ht-law-of-God,
with the grace of a par of dividers opened at
twenty-five and half, over a sheet of paper, we
learned that tongue, teeth, lips and larynx con
stltnted the organs OF speech, and so arrived at
conclusion quite pardonable in those years of
innocence and ignorance, that eloquent uftter-
ance is something like cherry-hardly
mouthful.
Since that time, we have wondered at many
people for dying without discovering their his
take.
Eloquence is the art fIetting the soul out, and
many are the lips that when parted, give exit to
no such article, and for the most melancholy
reason in the world; there is no soulto be Ics
out The clothing of thOughtin English ward
robe, is grander than the painters art; and next
in dignity and beauty to this expression of
thought, is the rendering thereofin the vocal Ut
terance; the rocking of the charmed air into ar
ticuate pillows, that shall break in the sweetest
of cadences at the feet of the Daughters of mu-
sic, and murmur over the threshold into the
palce ofthe soul.' Nothing lends such force to
true thought or such beauty to poetic utterance,
and nothing brings the soul so fully into sight,
like risen star.
To stand where the Author stood; 10 feel as
the Author fell; to take the dead words from the
white sheet whercon the printer has laid them:
to lift them into life, warm them with ones own
breath; inform them with ones wnsonl; bright
en- them like clouds at dawn, with the morning
of the eye; float them thus from heart TO heart
in music-such is the Readers work. Does he
read Ewes lament in Paradise? For the moment
he could write what Milton wrote. Written
words, like dead language, are neutral ground
Whcre0n all menmAy meet but few are they who
have the power to summon those words TO that
resurrection Of the living voice, we call reading
10 see the lips of youth and beauay open only
to play cannibal to thought; to fuse expression
into nuggets; to dislocate the rhythm and ring
the bells of rhyme, makes US feel that the good
Polynesians who count upon roasted missioua-
ries, are Grahamites 10 the husk.
And to think that same youth and beauty's
fingers have teetered over the unstable
floor of piano keys in quest Of tune, long
enough to have taught her lips to part in music
like Memnon's at touch of morning sun, makes
one marvel thai hands so fair should have rob-
bed her of the richest of her graces-a soft,
sweet, clear utterance that most excellent thing
in woman'
And all those people that are forever reading
and speaking before fol1s'-do you suppose
some of them know what terrific work they are
making? There is the spasmodic reader, whose
words boltinto the audible world like shot from
a repeating musket; and there is one that 'sighs
like a furnace aud another who puts down his
utterances like heavy feet, that he does not intend
to take mp till next week, to day being Monday
in the morning.
And how some very good people read hymns,
that have been reading hymns since this old
church was new What work they make with
the sweetest of praise! How they go
!F:om eealau6's 'cv mOun.a;ns,
To lnuIGs coral SEA