The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1881-07-21
A Speech ms is a Speech.
philadelphia Press.)

can afford to overlook so remarkable a
specimen of sublime eloquence rs that
which saluted the unimpressive Dem
ocratic Convention in Ohio. The
matchless orator presents rare COM
bination of talents and with his
dazzling gifts of speech unites the
most brilliant graces of the pen as
editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
He bears the romantic name of Mr..
James Edwin Speer, but he found his
inspiration i'll the exalted place of
Temporary Chairman-not to say in
the effervescent decoctions which are
commonly associated with the loftiest
Democratic principles. Tom Moore
answered the conundrum, "Why is
a pump like Lord Castlereagh ?" by
picturing him as one that could
Coolly spout and spout and spout away
In one week, washy, everlasting flood.
But though Mr.. James Edwin Speer
is evidently one of those inexhaustible
fountains that can spout and spout
away" the stream which poured from
his meilihuous lips on this occasion
was neither "weak nor "everlasting."
On the contrary, it had the great
merit of epigrammatic brevity. 1t
opened with the sententious declara-
ton that "the Democracy of Ohio are
once more gathered together to pay
their annual VOWS" Just what their
'annual vows are and precisely
whom they are to be paid to Mr.. James
Edwin Speer did not stop to elucidate,
and the Democracy of Ohio must
have been left in a painful state of
perplexity. ave are making another
Circle the orator proceeded, "in the
years of the oak" If he had said
hickory instead of oak, the mighty
Democracy might have supposed that
it was a subtle and recondite allusion
to the heroic Andrew jackson, and
their eXuberant enthusiasm would
have known no bounds. AS it was.
they must have been somewhat
lnystitied by u reference which to
most of them was doubtless as obscure
as it was beautiful. Sterne's solitary
prisoner notched the days of his cap
tivity on stick as the tally of his
misery; and if Mr.. james Edwin
Speer had remarked that the Denoc-
racy would make another notch in the
yearly record of their defeat his audi
! cnce might have understood him.
"We are met" he continued, "to add
( one more leaf to the perennial laurel.n
This sudden transition from making a
circle of oak to adding leaf of laurel
indicated the rare attainments of the
{ orator in the culture of trees, and we
only wonder that he did not suggest
the funeral cypress and the weeping
willow as more appropriate to the con-
dition of the Democracy.
But the chaste and elegant al
lusiOns and metaphors of Mr.. james
Edwin Specr were not yet by any
means exhausted. Every new sentence
brought new comparison. 1--WE are
assembled said the versatile genius
which ranged from arboriculture to
Scripture, ito thank God and take
courage, like Paul ut the Three
Taverns." His Democratic audience
| may not have comprehended who Paul
| was, but the suggestion of the prox-
unity of three taverns with all that
it implied must have filed their
thirsty souls with delight. The only
trouble is that put a Democratic Con-
vention anywhere near three taverns
and it will not take courage but some
thing with q stick in it. No sooner,
however, had the orator VIII cited their
appetites with this inspiring assurance
than he suddenly dashed all their
hopes. Though years in the wilder
ness" he proceeded, "the true Democ-
racy, like the children of Israel, find
water in the rocks and mama on the
ground" Imagine the effect upon
a Democratic Convention of being
summarily dropped from the cheering
promise of three taverns to the hard
necessity of travelling in the wilder
ness and being compelled to find
water i'm the rocks! If the highest art
of the orator is to play upon the feel
of his auditors, then indeed was this
consummate eloquence! And while
the saddened Convention was deplor
ing the melancholy transition from the
three taverns to the water in the
rocks it was treated to another and
still more dismal potation. when
Socrates, the sublime, bare-footed
Democrat" continued the orator,
proclaimed the doctrine that the
King was no greater than his subject,
Athens gave him hemlock, but the
doctrine lived" 1t was bad enough
to fall from three taverns to water in
the rocks; but how inmeasurably
worse to sink from water in the rocks
to cold pisen 1t is true that Socrates
didn't receive the hemlock for any
such doctrine, but little matter of
historical inaecuracy does not affect
the beauty of the oratory. The deli
cacy with which the connection be-
tween the bare foot of Socrates and
unwashed Democracy is suggested is
one of the finest touches of the mas
terly oratiou.
| We daanIy ree,rat that linitad Snace