The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-10-22
AMERICANS GIFT OF oRAToRY.

AwRwardness of Englishmen as Speakers.
A Popularity of Our Own People.
Every American who has attended the
regular or occasional sitting of civic bodiesr
or participated in formal dinners i'll Great
Britain must have been struck with the diff
Guilty and awkwardness with which the speak
erS convey their ideas, or the absence thereof.
Through sympathy he must have felt at times
that he would gladly have allowed them to
stop, or have volunteered to help them out of
their dilemma.
How very different is all this over here!
When Americans come to argue or discuss
any question, or to be merely entertaining,
they as rule acquit themselves, well. It is
not necessary that they should be regu-
larly educated or trained; that they should
be professional men, or that they should have
had experience in thinking ON their feet, as it
is called. They may be occupied in business;
they may be unaccustomed to the sound of
their own voices in any sort of assembly; they
may be without suspicion of their lingual
talents; but the moment they are requested
to say something they rise, and, opening their
mouths, appropriate words flow thence. Hun
dreds of Americans are surprised every year
to find that they can speak without prepara-
ton or premonition. Speaking is unques-
honably natural to them; while with nearly
every other nation it is the result of culture.
All Europeans observe and comment on
this popularity of ours, and are at a loss to
account for it. 1t may be in @easure as
cribab1e to the richness of our mother tongue,
which enables US, if we wish, to talk an hour
without putting forward anything in par
ticular. Our great language is excellently
qualified for conveying glittering generalities,
and many of our politicians employ it for
that purpose. The character of our institu-
tions, the constant intercommunication be-
tween sections and states, the electric nature
Of the atmosphere, the variety Of climate,
causing high degree of nervousness and
cerebral sensibility, have doubtless their share
in making us think quickly and utter our
thoughts freely But these do not explain our
facility and pertinency of speech under all
circumstances, universally regarded as our
birthright. The special gift must be accepted
as one of the American traits, which belongs
to us like our quaint humor and our constitu-
tional love of liberty.
This gift is not restricted to the east or to
the social centers; it inheres in the people at
large, and is even more conspicuous and more
widely spread in the west and in the sparsely-
settled districts than i'll the big cities border
ing on the Atlantic seaboard. We see this i'll
the mining regions of Colorado, Montana,
Nevada, California and slsewhere-all along
the frontier, indeed, where men without the
regular restraints of law or the checks Of
organized society show, on the smallest provo
cation, native eloquence that is remarkable
and surprising. Rough-looking, half-educated
fellows, semi-savage from their habits, speak,
when moved, with force and fervor that per-
suades, melts and dominates. This is the voice
of nature coming through nature and address
ing nature; what should prevent its full effect!
These spontaneous outbursts are racy OF the
soil, whenever and however they are appar-
ent. Often they are not revealed, especially
in the older parts of the republic, in formal
declamatory manner, but rather in an easy,
lucid. pertinent fashion which seems COLO
quial, so simple and direct is it.-Cor. Chicago
Times