The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-14

speech. When the earnest mood Is
although he may keep on talking
rs earnest men sometimes feel obliged TO
do. but so long as the speaker is full OF
sincere, unhagging, deep earnestness of
decent thought he will hold the eye and
the ear of his audience; when he begins to
lag the interest of his audience begins to
flag. Eloquence is not always earnest nor
unseltsh and the people soon learn the
trick and listen as listlessly to its music as
busy man does to the bawling of street
charlatan or fakir, or the professional ex-
aggeration of an interchangeable auctioneer.
Whenever reform takes a legitimate,
long, permanent forward stride; when
ever the smouldering fire breaks into flame,
you will find somewhere behind it a sane,
coherent man terribly in earnest. You
may find high order of eloquence, too,
but you are sure to find under all and
above all the white heat of intense moral
earnestness that rises clear beyond the
tinkling brass of melodramatic talk to
the level of tragic dignity of passion and
feeling. Eloquence without earnestness IS
like brilliant military pageant that with
waving banners and crashing music sweeps
proudly by. 1t is not perilous to play
music at dress parade; to plant standard
at militia muster, where the mere
pomp and superficial circumstance OF
war calls out the cheer of the crowd, but 1t
is not this peacock pageant of peace; this
sham fight for the flag OF nutterlng
feminine OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES that wins
real battles. So it is with eloquence when
there is not earnestness behind 1t; its
music soon stops; its gaudy banner is soon
furled; it lives on noisy applause rather
than profound attention, and without
cheers it soon grows mute and skips away.
Eloauence can do comparatively little
without earnestness, but earnestness can
do wonders without radiant eloquence.
And it is Just this quality of simple, unat-
fected earnestness of patriotic feeling; this
capacity to put himself in close sympathy
with the best mood of the most people,
that has enabled President Harrison, with
out eloquence, TO yet succeed admirably as
public speaker all over this broad land.
President Harrison's words were not the
mere perfunctory praise and cheap compli-
ment lavished by servile guest upon an
opulent host who had hidden him to a
sumptuous feast; they were instinct with
just, sound, patriotic thought earnestly ex-
pressed; great character. achieved through
the sef-respect that follows self-restraint
and self-conquest rather than great wealth
is the aim of all great peoples, was
the moral of his talk to New England, and
he does not hesitate to repeat this admoni-
ton under circumstances and to commu-
mites when its utterances must have
sounded like reproof to the prevailing
spirit and philosophy of the leaders of the
people. Whatever may be President Har-
rison's faults of manner and temper he
has certainly always practiced what he
preached when he warned the keen, hard,
trading, commercial people of New Eng
land not to forget that while its great
founders had an honorable dread of pow
erty, they sought justice before wealth;
nobleness before happiness; holding that
slow aim, not failure, is a crime"
The contrast between the broad, patri-
otto nationalism; the profound moral
earnestness of President Harrison's
speeches and the platitudinous ponderosity
of President Cleveland's utterances is
about as violent as the difference between
a musician who can play a fine cornet
solo and stolid savage beating tom
tom, chanting death song, or picking the
strings of a Chinese lutte. Cleveland s
speech is grave always, and yet it is al
ways stupid when it is not shallow; in
fact his style might be fairly termed the
shallow-grave method of expression, and
it always moves with a tagging foot for the
want of something that neither education
can evolve nor culture lift into life in a
man who naturally lacks it, and this is
simple, unaffected, unseltish, intense moral
earnestness.