Los Angeles herald., 1892-10-09
CAMPAIGN SPEAKERS
HOW MANY PROMINENT ORATORS
PREPARE THEIR ADDRESSES.
Ingersou and Blaine Practice Similar
Methods-C Conlxllng and George Will
liam Curtis Prepared Their Speeches
with Great Deliberation.

Notwithstanding and George will
liam Curtis Prepared Their Speeches
with Great Deliberation.
Especial Correspondence
NEW York, Sept. 26-Colonel Bob In
gersoll was once asked how long it took
him to write the speech which he made at
Cincinnati putting Mr.. Blaine in nomina-
tion for the presidency, and also how long
he was engaged in the composition OF his
famous Declaration Day address. The
colonel replied that it took him about ten
minutes to write each of those speeches
and about fifteen years to prepare them
He meant by that that he had turned over
and over again in his mind the ideas which
when the opportunity came were easily
put uron paper. Thus he said all great
composition is performed. There is no
such thing in his opini0n as a successful
extern poraneous speech. If an address is
delivered entirely without preparation,
then it is bound to be something neither
worth preserving nor listening to.
In this time, when the political platform
orator is busiy engaged, it is of some in
terest To know how the greatest of them
make ready for the stump. Mr.. Depew,
for ineance, is esteemed an able stump
speaker. In the sense in which Colonel
Ingersoll spoke Depew occupies no time at
all in writing his addresses, and yet he
may have been engaged for several years in
the preparation of these political speeches.
AS he walks to and froE, his office an
idea occurs to him. He turns it over in
his mind, puts it into words mentally and
tucks it away in his memory. So, too,
when he is reading newspaper or is in
| 4. ...ls g.. 10,
to him which he knows will be of value
when he comes to make political speech.
That he also memories without having
put it on paper Thus he stores his mind
so that on the day preceding the evening
on which he is to speak he spends an hour
or so going to this mental storehouse, ar
ranging with some symmetry the line of
his address, and he is then prepared for
the political occasion. Mr.. Depew has a
poor verbal memory. He would never
dare write out speech and commit it to
memory If the occasion demands a
formal and labored effort the speech that is
prepared to meet such demand is always
read by Depew
Conkling, who at one time was regarded
as the most brilliant and impressive orator
in the Republican party, always prepared
his speeches with infinite pains. He had
what Depew has not-a splendid verbal
memory. In this respect he was like Will
liam HI. Seward and Grover Cleveland
The writing out of a speech and the read
ing of it once over in manuscript fixed it
indelibly in memory. Sometimes Conk-
ling devoted week to a campaign speech.
His line of argument came to him by in
spiration, but the literary charm of his adj
dresses and the rhetorical expression of
them were the work sometimes of many
days and nights He prepared only one
speech for the campaign, and that was
usually the first one which he delivered.
His other speeches were always based upon
this first one, but with sufficient change in
diction and arrangement to enable him to
escape the charge of being single speech
maker.
Carl Schurz, whom many have regarded
as one of the most fascinating orators of
the stump, is a single speech maker Mr.
| Schurz never dares trust himself to speak
without preparation
| Mr. Blaine has adopted different meth
cd in preparing his addresses for the stump.
| He relies very largely upon the inspiration
of the moment for his diction and his rhet-
oric He prepares very thoroughly his
! line of argument, and carries with him to
| the platform abundant material in the
way of statistics or other illustrations. But
| he rarely writes out speech. He has
| often said that were he to do this he would
| feel cramped, self conscious and embar-
rassed upon the platform. His manner of
preparation is something like that of Mr..
Depew, and it is the mans personality
| rather than his rhetoric that has been the
highest charm in his political addresses.
| When George William Curtis used to go
upon the stump for the party with which
! he was identified his speeches were splen-
did essays which had been prepared with
utmost care. He trusted to no momentary
inspiration, and yet the finest speech that
he ever delivered was the result of as sud
| den an emergency as was the first speech
of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil hall, which
not only gave Phillips fame as an orator,
but which determined his career, making
him an agitator rather than lawyer
Perhaps the two most prominent men of
their party in the house of representatives
two years ago were Major Mckinley and
Speaker Reed. Each of these men has
such popularity that the demand for their
services as stump speakers during the
present campaign has been greater than
that the national committee has received
for any other men. Yet their methods of
preparation are entirely different.
To prepare a stump speech as Conkling
and Schurz prepared theirs would be intol-
cradle to Reed. He is perhaps the nearest
to a purely extemporaneous stump speaker
of any man in his party. Some of his
| witty utterances and most effective sar-
casms are not the inspiration of the mo-
ment. He had thought of them before
and put them away in his memory just as
Depew and Ingersoll do. But in the ordi-
nary sense there is no preparation, and that
gives great variety to Mr.. Reeds speeches
| when they are read one after another during
a campaign.
Mckinley on the other hand is in Ger
tain sense a single speech maker, not as
Schurz is, but rather as Conkling was.
The speech with which he begins canvass
is practically the one with which he ends
it. Different speeches vary in arrange
ment in illustration, but the argument and
the main line of thought are the same.
Mr. Bourke Cochran and Colonel John
r. Fellows are perhaps the most conspicu-
GUS of campaign speakers on the Atlantic
coast, and they are in the highest degree
extemporaneous speakers. The famous
speech which Cochran made at the Chi
cago convention was prepared only in the
sense that he expressed sentiments which
he had been in private expressing for
some days. He has taken the stump with
no other idea of what he is to say than the
general line of argument, and if he should
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