New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1868-01-19

and cheering and powerful influence
rises up within the speaker, and is
met and quickened by the subject and
the occasion. The calmer he is, and
the less elevated and blown about by
passion, the more profoundly he is in
wardly moved. Thoughts and emo
lions come to him of themselves with
out painful seeking, and tho subject
opens itself to him as if it were a part
of his own brain and heart. Words
and sentences of unusual fitness and
beauty come 10 him of themselves, and
seem to speak of themselves without
fatigue of voice or exhaustion of brain
or nerve. A remarkable bond grows
up between speaker and hearers; the
| audience light up mild glow, and a
lambert brightness almost transfgures
each head in the speakers eye; while
the whole assembly seems to be in
formed with one life, and the thousand
souls are drawn together as one spirit
ual body.
have talked with a great many
distinguished extempore speakers, and
while they are almost universally re-
luctant to trust to any marvellous in
fuences, and disposed to insist upon
careful thought, and frequent, and
exact writing to guard against loose
ness and repetition, they allow that
there is something in their best ora
torical experience that passes their
understanding. Carpenter, the ply
siologist, speaks of what he calls ''un-
conscious cerebration," or states in
which the brain works without any
conscious effort to do it, and without
any consciousness of what it is doing
Of itself, as when man wakes in the
morning and finds his thinking much
in advance of where he left it when he
went to sleep, or even some hard prob
lem solved or knotty question ans
wered. The cause of these phen-
omena undoubtedly lies somewhere in
those organs that3 are allied to the
heart, and stomach, and lungs, and arc
moved by the sympathetic nerves, sc
as to be more automatic than volun-
tary, more powers of nature than o.
volitiou. How far this involuntary
action can be extended, and how far
carried mp into the higher plane of in
telligence and activity, we can mo-
say; but it is evident that whatever
partakes of the character of habit par
takes of this power, for habit, how
; ever painfully formed, becomes 1
second nature, and is automatic, o.
goes of itself.
This automatic action rids the ex
tempore speaker of much care
anxiety, and toll, and carries him for
ward through much of his work with
out solicitude or conscious effort; bu
it is full of dangers, and if he trust
wholly to it he loses his higher in
SEPARATION and force, and sinks dow
into IN automaton, Ike barrel organ
, that, when wound up, can only pla.
over all its old tunes. Some speaker
and hosts of takers are spoiled in thi
way, and they think themselves in
| spired because by practice they hav
: SO much of the gift of gab,' and the,
4 can run on without limit and withou
! fatigue, until all but themselves ar
! tired out. The good speaker ma
| cultivate and use this automatic power
I but he must never trust wholly to il
E nor even be satisfied, unless in every
E thing he does he is conscious of put
ting forth some fresh effort and earnes
thought, and rising higher than before
: instead of drifting away upon the cas-
! level, or floating down the still easie
, descending current.-Dr. OSgood.