Semi=weekly graphic., 1896-09-19
ANe1ENT AND MODERN
ORATORlr
Memphis commercial.Appeol.l

listening to the speech of Hon.
 John R. Fellows last night at the
 Auditorium will be slow to admit
 that oratory is likely soon to be
 numbered among the lost arts, or
 that it is in any present danger of
 being consigned to the limbo of for
 gotton things. Apart and aside
 from the cause which he represented
 and the principles which he advo-
 cated, his speech was a rare orator.
 ieal exhibition, 8 treat seldom en-
 joyed, an effort seldom equalled.
 From the moment he uttered his
 first sentence, until, with cherubie
 grace and poetic dignity, he bowed
 himself to an appIauding audience,
 every one present realized the power
 of the man, the potentiality of the
 orator, the irresistible influence of
 eloquence. Col. Fellows was in
 wretched voice. He was husky-al-
 most hoarse. Once or twice he
 struck Q series of clear notes where
 the wonderful sympathy and liques-
 cent melody Of his voice had full
 sway and the effect was marvellous.
 Col. Fellows has rot been under
 stood by Memphians. He has been
 represented as a student of Dem
 etrius Phalereus, feeble, aorid and
 fowery; that he followed the style
 set by the sophists and rhetoricians
 who flourished after the downfall of
 Greece, that he was word-painter,
 an entertainer who could not in-
 struct, an amusing speaker who
 could not eovnince. All this is
 wrong. Col. Fellows style is mod
 eled after Demosthenes, the last and greatest of the Athenian orators.
 He is intense, manly, vehement, clever in construction, a master of antithetical illustration, persuasive, convincing, truly eloquent. He
 was confronted last night by an audience that was largely hostile to his mission, firmly set against his doctrine, deaf to ordinary argu- ment, intolerant of contention, but he won his way to the hearts of his hearers. He may have changed no mans opinion, but he did change many a mans temper. Those who him most energetieally and who still oppose him, were proud of him--proud to claim him as fellow citizen, proud to feel themselves charmed by the grace of his move ments, ihe beauty of his imagery, the opulence of his resources, the of his argument, the force of his logic. He was the ideal American; to many, an err,ng brother, but grand in his mistakes, splendid in his obliquities, charming in in his peryersities, irresistible in the rapturous majesty of his accom- plishments. His easy flow of l language soon mitigated the rigors of intense opposition, eonciliated the animosities and irritabilities of dissidence and caused those who his doctrine to applaud | the method and manner of it's pre- sentation. Col. Fellows was con in one thing at least and | that is that oratory is not q lost art. | It has survived the strange muta- tions, the crumblings and decay of things mundane. It is effective to- lay and as well represented as when Paul appeared before Agrippa, as when Demosthenes thundered against Phillip of Maeedon, as when Cicero electrified the Roman forum, IS when Sheridan revealed the majesty of his mind and the music # his voice to the British nation, as when Burke robbed the Centuries md laid the intellectual wealth of
 he ages at the feet of his country. $ when Webster, and Patrick Henry, and William Wirt, and Cal loun, and Clay, and Prentiss
 waved multitudes. Col. Fellows demonstrated, in spite of his mod sty, that the eloquence of Athens
 nd the classic graces of the dead anguages have not passed forever rom earth, nor have they been i'm. aired by the commercial spirit of he times or the inflexible rugged
 ess of the English tongue. They emain in nndiminished splendor nd unfaded beauty, triumphant mid the corrosive tendencies and he destructive activities of the lodern metamorphosis. There are aw men who can scale the loftier eghts of oratory with the same ase and cotidence and the same