St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1891-05-14
81. ) bloomsbury, Thursday, May IA, 1s9
HARRISON'S SPEECHES.


Many of our readers have read the
past two weeks President Harrison's
speeches on his Southern and West
ern tour Few have read, however,
these opinions on them. Here is
what Senator Edmunds says:
"His remarkable speeches to the
Southern people have undoubtedly
produced a wonderful change in pub
lie sentiment in that section. He has
placed the republican party in an
elevated and aggressive attitude,
and has dem onstrated to the South
ern people that his administration
and the republican party are not
inimical to the great and absorbing
tendencies and realizations which
are engaging tile public mind in the
South, and will surely have the effect
of turning their attention in direc-
lions for their material advancement
and future great development, which
have been retarded by misrepresenta-
ton or misrepresentation of facts and
retrogressive politics"
And here is what Chauncey M.
Depew says after a journey through
the West:
1.-The speeches which President
Harrison has made in the South,
carried by the Associated Press all
over the country, and printed in re-
publican, democratic and independ-
ent newspapers, and universally
read, have astonished the people.
Everywhere in these twelve states
my universal acquaintance brought
me in contact with representative
men of all parties. Wherever we
stopped, even for a few moments,
there was universal expression of as
constituent and admiration. The
man whom the country has been in
structed to believe, and very largely
did believe, was small in person and
narrow minded, presents in his utter
ances breadth of view, an astonish
ing versatility and felicity of express
sion, which are accepted as exhibit
ing the highest qualities required for
a chief magistrate of the great ma
ton. When people are fooled they
get mad. They have been fooled on
the Mckinley bill and on Harrison.
From present indications the result
will be the strengthening of the pro-
tective principles and the re-nomina-
ton and reelection of General Har-
rison."
Editor George William Curtis of
Harper's Weekly shows in the follow
ing article that the age of oratory has
not passed and also pays the presi-
dent high compliment on his ora
torical ability:
Those who are disposed to class
oratory among the lost arts must
reconsider that conclusion in view
of the presidents tour. He has been
travelling across the continent to
the Pacific, and every day he has
made two or three clever speeches,
good-natured, varied, full of tact,
and expressing his views courteously,
and the whole country reads in sur
prise, and a great many worthy
people say that here is a great man
who has been somehow concealed
be henceforth estimated at his true
value, and undoubtedly renominated
and reelected to the presidency byacss
clamation of his party. If oratory
can so radically change the general
impression in regard to the president,
it is certainly not lost art. On the
contrary, it seems to confirm the wis
dom of the saying that in a country
of parliamentary government sue
cessful statesmen must be great
orators. 1t is, however, true that
none of the presidents except Lincoln
have been especially distinguished as
orators, while two of the greatest
American orators, Webster and Clay,
sought the prize in vain. President
Harrison's grandfather was prefer
red as a candidate to Henry Clay
One of President Harrison's best
speeches was at San Francisco and
here it is in full:
When the Queen of Sheba visited
the court of Solomon and saw its
splendOrs she was compelled to testi-
fy that half had not been told her.
Undoubtedly the emissaries of Solo
mons court, who had penetra ted to
her distant territory, found them
selves in a like situation to that
which attends Californians when
they travel East; they are afraid too
much to put to test the credulity of
their hearers, and, as a gentleman of
your state said to me, it has resulted
in prevailing indisposition among
CaIifornians to tell the truth out of
California, not at all because Cali
fornians are unfriendlv to the truth,
but solely out of compassion to their
hearers. They address themselves to
thecapacity of those who hear them;
and taking warning by the fate of
man who told the sovereign of the
Indies that he had seen the water so
solid that it could be walked upon,
they do not carry their best stories
away from home. 1t has been, much
as have heard of California, bril-
liant dISIlluSIOu TO me and to those