Daily capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1896-1899, 1896-11-12
uNcoLMs GETTYSBURG SPEECH.
Sublime and Immortal, Though Matthew
AruDl,f lqaI Ncvar Heard Of IL


Sublime and Immortal, Though Matthew
Arucjd keI Never Hesrd Of IT
stood elise by and heard that speech
delivered. It came upon us after the
! pondorous and elaborate rhetoric of Ed
ward Everett like blaze Of real fire
after a matchless picture Of fire. 1t
sprang, like the strophes of old, out of
b ohastened heart almost broken with
the weight of conquest but still daunt-
less in its American faith, and the mau
who spoke the words was, for the mo-
ment, transfgured for us, and his fur
| rowed face and gaunt form took on
I fhe light that never was on land or
rea, so that he became the archetype Of
the people themselves, uttering better
than he knew the great prayer of that
| finer and better humanity that our fa'
thers and VIC believed was to come with
liberty and equality out of storm and
stress and an mistaken confidence in
man.
But / don't think any of us then
knew how mastorful is the speech of
the human heart when it comes through
the furnace to these great occasions and
plants its sad sincerity by the side Of
mere scholarship and the grooved thun-
der of rhetoric.
We had to live on for a quater Of a
century and see that brief speech burn
ing with unquenchablo fame in our
schoolboolis and standing out with mod
est majesty on our page of recorded
history to comprehend how God ran
touch with living coal the lips of q
rail splitter just as he touched the lips
of tentmaker of Tarsus and lifted the
untutored heart Of the shoemaker, Bun
yan, into communion with the immor.
tails
Turn it every way you can, the Get
tysburg speech stands unique as brief
literary and patriotic composition. 1t is
the noblest condensation into the fittest
words of all the emotions, aspirations
and sentiments that millions of mute
people wanted at that moment to utter.
So inwrought is that speech with the
heart of the occasion, and so majestic.
ally docs it sweep over into the time to
come, that should think all men every.
where would discern its intrinsic quail
ty But that is not the case.
remember talking with Matthew
Arnold when he was in this country
about Abraham Lincoln-you will re.
member that he sGid of Lincoln that he
had no "distiactiUu and | called his
attention to tho gettysburg speech. l
shall never forget the imperturbable
Saturday Review stare with which he
asked. "Ah, what is the Gettysburg
specch?"
He had never heard of it. | believe
when he went back he asked Professor
Bryce what it was about, and when il
was hunted up in an American school
book and shown to him he read it hasti.
ly and put it away with oommiserating
reticence.
Suppose you ask M. Bourget, who is
looking into the American heart by the
way of the American bodice and on
space rates, if he has read the Cettys-
burg speech. | happen to know of my
own knowledge that Robert Louis
Stevenson had not hcprd, II when he
was exploring cur continent and Sir
all idea that it was newspaper fake.
Tho current number Of Tho Saturday
Review lies open before ME, and this is
what my eye falls on:
1.-The common American delusion
that there have been q number of great
American poets, that there is indeed
such a thing rs American literature
disports itself with unusual pomposity.
1t is impossible for these literary
prigs of special cult to understand
that there may be stimulaut con0i-
tions of national life that wake into
tumultuous activity all the higher and
better functions of the soul prior to the
chartered formulation of them into an
art, and that it is i'll these periods Of
awakening and not in the after repose
of an elaborate @stheticism tho most
precious heartbeats of the race have
made themselves heard and felt, some
times in half articulate tones, but often.
er in organ blasts which have set the
key of liberty and fixed the vocabulary
OF hope and victory
Before eloquence or poetry was an art
it was burning soul and fetched its
style from the agonies and mysteries of
an untutored nature.
Let us by all means confer distino
tion ON a deathless utterance by mold
ing it in bronze. If we add metal enough
and surround it with the arabesque of
Oxford, future Matthew Arnolds may
join the pilgrims and throw the English
tribute of a we'll turned phrase upon
the tablet, which, after all, is but a
weak hieroglyph Of the record in TO-
900, 900 hearts. Andrew G. Wheeler
IN New York Sun
Prosperous Times For Him.
you may complain Of the times, said
q Wall street man to friend, "but they
are prosperous days to fellow | know