The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-09-27
The After-Dinner Speeches Of Amerioans.

The After-Dnner Speeches Of Americans.
Ii has often been debated whether it
IS to climate, to race, to the influence
OF free Institutions, or to. some other
subtle cause, that men owe the Gift of
eloquence, and in little book called
DANIEL Webster and His Contempora-
rles II is stated that the prince of Am
erlcan orators was firm in his conviction
That, as a predisposing cause, climate
outweighed all the rest. Ii such be the
case, the climate of these islands is evil
IDENTIFY less calculated to create good
speakers than that of the North Ameri-
can Continent, as among us there is not
one man fluent of tongue against ten to
whom our kinsfolk in the United States
can point. Take, for instance, that rar-
est and, to Englishmen, most difficult
accomplishment of after-dinner oratory,
and who that has attended apublic din
ner in London and another in New
1ork can doubt upon which side the
Atlantic the superiority in this respect
lies? About quarter of a century since
Richard Golden, then at his apogee as
OhC Vi blV HIuSb p0IaudSlNt anu EJEdc-
teal speakers in the House of Commons,
CHANGED to pay visit to Chicago, in
order to look after an investment he had
made in the shares of the Illinois Cen
trail Railroad. There complimentary
dinner was given to him, at which some
forty guests were included Among
them was fairly representative sprink-
ling OF the bankers, merchants, lawyers,
spectators, and what not of that Won
derful young city; and, dinner being
over, speaking was freely INDUCED in,
the verdict of all present -Englishmen
and Americans-being that tie worst
speeches of the evening came from
Richard Cohden's lips. People were
wont, twenty years since, to regard
Charles Dickens as an after dinner
speaker almost without superior in
either hemisphere. The last visit of the
great novelist to the United States suf-
feed, however, to dissipate the illusion
under which his countrymen We're labor
ing. Finally, gentlemen" remarked
Charles Dickens. at the banquet given
to him in New York on April IS, 1868,
Il do not believe that. from every honest
mind, upon both sides of the Atlantic.
there cannot be absent the conviction
that it would be better for this globe,to
be riven by an earthquake, fired by a
comet, oyerrun by an iceberg, and
abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than
that it should present the spectacle OF
these two great nations, each of which
has in its own way done so much for
freedom, being ever again alrayed the
one against the other
Compare with the hyperbole of this
eXtravagant, or, to use an American
ism, "hifalutin' elocution. the easy
grace and quiet dignity of the speech
delivered, with admirable effect, by the
American Ambassador, Mr.. James Rus
sell Lowell, at the dinnerrecently given
by the Institution of Civil Engineers.
There were Englishmcn present at that
dinner who-again to employ an Ameri-
canisnl-were well calculated ''to hold
up their end of the plank The House
OF Peers was represented by Lord Der
by and Lord Kimberley; the House of
Commons by Mr. Bright, Sir Richard
CIooo anu MI ClllldeIS- NO OHc Vi or
binary culture who CHANGED to hear or
to read the speeches delivered by the
English Cabinet Minister'S would Ito use
a phrase of which Robert Southey was
very fond-have had his mind scratch
ed' by any one of them. Mr. Bright,
indeed, could not altogether get away
from party politics, even upon that con-
fessedly neutral ground. But when Mr..
Lowell rose, there was in the accents,
the delivery. the voice, the manner, and
still more in the words of the speaker,
that which irresistibly engaged the fancy
and riveted the attention of the hear
ers. From the London Telegraph.