River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1884-10-02
Edward Everett's Oratory.

Edward Everett was perhaps the most fin
ished platform speaker ever heard IN the United
States He bestowed the greatest pains upon
his speeches, and tried to make them SO com
plete that not a word or n gesture should be
suggested by the inspiration of delivery. His
orations were planned with so much forethought
that no afterthought was allowed to change
even the curve of an attitude or the uplifting
of an eyebrow. No actor ever had more con-
fidence in his art than had this cousummate
rhetorician in his oratorical tactics.
1t was well known that he had certain tricks
of delivery. But so carefully were they re-
hearsed that only the initiated nearer could de-
tect them in the public performance ''The
art conceals the artin was said again and again
by the cultured persons who listened to him.
In his Grafton on Washington there is pas
sage of thrilling power IN which he apostroph-
ICES the patriots of the Revolution. Once, when
he was to deliver the Grafton there was an old
soldier of the Revolution among those who
had been invited to meet the orator in the YES
try and accompany him to the platform.
When the old soldier was introduced to Mr.
Everett, that gentleman took him aside and re-
quested him to rise and stand before the audi
ence when he should hear certain words that
he would address to him personally The
orator began his Grafton, and soon held his
audience in rapt attention When he reached
the point in which the old soldier was to take
part, he turned toward him with the exclama-
ton, "Rise, venerable mani"
The old man rose from his chair.
'Sit down, sir! sit down. 1t is US who
should stand in your presencel"
Rounds of applause greeted the act, and
even those who knew the orators tactics
thought that, for once, he had been betrayed
into an improvisation.
f'What strange man that Mr.. Everett isl"
said the old man to his neighbor, as he took
his seat fsHe asked me to rise, and now he
tells me to sit down. don't understand ii"
One of his favorite devices was to provide him
self with the physical object to which he in
tended to refer, and at the proper moment ex-
hibit it to the audience
In his Grafton on Webster, he spoke of him
as s'some mighty admiral dark and terrible;
his broad pennant streaming at the main, the
stars and stripes at the fore, the mizzen and
the peak.
AS he spoke these words, he caught up
from the table the flag of the Union and waved
it to and fro. Shouts of applause greeted the
apparently unconscious but studied gesture
In the days when the public were excited
about the laying of the first ocean telegraph,
he described in an eloquent speech the electric
wire which was destined to lie on the oceans
bed and connect two continents. In the midst
of the description, he took quickly from his
pocket a piece of the Atlantic cable, and held
It up before the wonderingeyes of the audience.
He spoke of it murmuring through
leagues of ocean the thought of America, and
as being greater wonder than the printed
page which murmured to us through the cen
turtles the thought of Homer AS he uttered
this, he held up small copy of the ''lliad"
and the Odyssey"
1t was a pleasure to listen to this brilliant
master of the rhetorician's art But pleased as
Every one admired the orator; few went away
mastered by his ideas. The secret of this des-
titution of power was that the rhetoric and not
the idea, had mastered the orator.