Arizona republican., 1891-12-23
sTooDTHE TEXT BOOK TEST.
A Notable Piece of oratory by James G.
 Blaine.

Corres pOndence or HE REPUBLICAN
 NEW YORK. Dec. l5.-While was chat ting with a professor Of elocuuon ana rhetoric. who is a member of the faculty of New England college, a day or two since, he said that one evidence of the decay of oratory was the difficulty which teachers like himself had found in pro- curing extracts from contemporaneous speeches which would be suitable for the use of students of oratory. He said that perhaps the highest test of the perma- nent merit of speech, so far as its ora torical and rhetorical qualities were con cerned, was the use of it made by professors of rhetoric, and the insertion of extracts from it in the text books used for students of elocution and ora tory
 At one time MT. Beecher furnished a good many available extracts for the young students; few quotations from Edward Everett's, Charles Summers and William H. Stewards speeches are made use of. Lincoln had furnished three ex- tracts suitable for short orations, and they are to be found in all modern text books. These are quotations from his first and second inaugurals, and his Gettys- burg oration in full. Webster's speeches had richer material for these professors to make use of than the utterances of any other American orator
 Of recent addresses or orations, how ever, with a single exception, almost nothing worthy of the use of students had been discovered. The exception, the professor said, was an extract from an address of James c. Blaine. This is the peroration to Mir, Blaine's eulogy of General Garfield, delivered in the house of representatives on the 22d of Febru- ary, 1882 The professor said that the extract, which for some years passed al most unnoticed, just as Lincoln's Get tysburg oration did. has now become al- most as familiar as was the immortal Gettysburg address, and is sure to be handed down to posterity as a noble ex- ample of the use of the English lan- guage in thS spirit of true oratory.
 This extract IS perhaps the only quota ton from MT. Blaine's many speeches which will become something like a household word It will be carried down to posterity, just as Webster's famous address to the survivors of the battle of Bunker Hill, or his apostrophe to the Union in his Hayne speech will, through the frequency with which it is employed in schools and colleges by the young students of oratory. MT. Blaine's pero- ration is now found in every text book on oratory which has been issued within the last five years, and at all the oratori- cal displays in our colleges and schools for the past year or two this quotation had been heard as delivered by some one of the pupils,
 Yet at the time of it's delivery it ex- cited little more attention than did Mir Lincoln's address at Gettysburg. It was noble and solemn occasion. Perhaps no orator ever had more inspiring audience or more sympathetic and solemn theme than did Mir. Blaine upon that occasion. The president of the United States and his cabinet sat in the circle in front of the members desks and directly before MT. Blaine. sherman Sheridan, Hancock, Admiral Porter and all of the distinguished generals except ing Grant were there. The Supreme court in it's black robes were before him. distinguished senators and ex-senators were there, and in the galleries were the families of some of the most famous men in the country,
 MT Blaine read his address without any attempt whatever at elocutionary display, and when he finished it seemed to most of those who heard him that while the address was most noble trib- ute to the memory of Garfield, yet it lacked those rhetorical iourishes and that oratorical manner which many re. gard as essential to the perfect oration That sane criticism was made when Lincoln finished his Gettysburg address. Every one recognized the pathos of Mir Blaine's closing words, yet nobody spoke of them as a perfect example of sublim- ity of thought, purity of diction and as capable of sustaining the highest tests of eloauence'and oratorY. Rather slowly