Morning journal and courier., 1891-11-24
CONKLING AS ORATOR.
Even His Enemies Admit His Power
 on the Stump.

on the Stump.
 From the New York Sum-
 Even the enemies of Roscoe Conkling admit his power as a stump orator. Men whom he reviled with pitiless sarcasm confess even in their hate to their sense of his capacity. Conkling was one of the stump orators who set the pace for his party. He was the man called upon to open campaigns, and he did it magnif- gently. He was a commentator and not an originator. He could set forth the ideals of his own party, and could riddle with the fire of sarcasm or the Lombard ment of denunciation the armies of his
 political sdversaries.
 HIS brilliant, strange, melodramatic and
 pathetic career is due mainly to his power
 upon the stump. With the equities or
 moralities of Conkling's career this wri-
 ting has nothing to do; but the secret of his power as 8 stump orator it is proper to probe and to expose it as the writer has learned it from snecdote, illustration and
 recollections of those who knew him inti-
 mately. In it those young men who pur- pose political career may find some les sons. MT. Conkling may have been born orator, but he was certainly a made ora tor. When he was some sixteen years of age he attended school in this city, and
 was student under Professor Hawley.
 Hawley had heard O'Connell and some of
 the English orators, and he gave young Conkling instructions, with illustrations taken from the methods of these masters. Conkling lived with his brother, Colonel Fred Conkling, who recently died, and they used to practice speaking together. There was text book written in the last century "On the Art of Speaking" and this young Conkling mastered. He also devoted several hours a day to the reading of Macaulay and to the study of the Eng fish poets, committing many passages to memory. He used to say in after life that, if he had any such command of English as Judge Thurman and Charles Francis Adams and Charles Elliott Norton assert ed was his gift, he owed it entirely to his | intercourse with these masters of the Eng | fish tongue Early in life he began prsc- ticing speaking while dressing. He would repeat poems or extracts from Professor Goodrich's work on British eloquencs, be- | ing specially careful of his elocution, and studying the effect of various intonations | exactly as an actor would. He also prsc- | ticed gestures. This habit he kept up un- | til he took up the practice of law in New York city. With such a training as this | Conkling, when he was twenty-one, was | well equipped for the career which he had | marked out. He saw that he who would ! advance in politics must use the stump to secure such honors, and in 1S4S, when he was twenty years of age, he made a stump | speech for the Whig party. His first i'm | portant stump speech, however, was made
 in 1852 for General Scott. It has all of the Conkling esrmarks, although it does not compare in power and wit with some | of his latter addresses. He was then 8 | rather awkward and even hesitating | speaker He had not accustomed himself | to a natural use of his hands and arms, | but his speeches brought him into promi- | hence, and in 1856 resulted in his going to congress before he was thirty years of age. I During his career in congress Conkling
 maintained and increased his reputation
 as speaker only by the most srduous toll. He acquired after the utmost discipline | the art of uttering his speeches so that l while they were prepared and committed | to memory they seemed to be the inspira- | tion of the moment His little tricks, de- | signed to increase this impression, were
 master pieces of acting. He had also by | fatiguing drill so learned to control his voice that it became an impressive and | beautiful instrument to aid him. He would sometime work for hours that he
 might coin an epigram or add to his ro-
 cabulary of sarcasm, and he relied upon
 his recollections of the poets for aid in
 this regard.