Mexico weekly ledger., 1896-08-06

used the same sentence? What then?
Does DR.. Smith really believe, or is he
willing to have people believe that he
believes, hat nobody ever used that
particular sentence before Patrick
Henry, or that the great lyric orator
had a patent on it?
81 wonder if DR.. Smith would elect
to risk his reputation by declaring
that Jefferson originated the sonorous
phrase, When in the course of human
events or hal Moses evolved from
his inner consciousness the phrase,
In The beginning?' If such'a narrow
rule as that is to be applied, then we
are all plagiarists-even the learned
doctor himself; for the English IAN
guage has been in use several hundred
years by millions of people, and there
are only about 100, 900 words in our
vocabulary, and nearly every possible
collocation of words has been used by
our predecessors.
ADVICE TO DR.. SMITH.
CDR. Smith says, furthermore, that
because Bryan closed the particular
message which the iynx-eyed doctor
found in his copy of Patrick Henry's
speech, as written by William Writ,
with the sentence, And our calamity
came it was a wretehed anti climax,
and shows how American oratory has
declined in little more than a century.
| EINoD H. Co,stLJo ohAnk ar.ra
was so learned that it needed to be
translated into plain, everyday Amer
lean, but answering him in his own
lingo, | commend to him the ~forceful
ing, tNe sutor ultra crepidam'-let the
shoemaker stick to his last. He had
better stick to caIculus, astronomy,
Sanskrit and a few hundred other such
things, which he knows all about, and
not be talking of convention speeches,
concerning which his knowledge is nil.
I no man-not even DR.. Smith or
William j. Bryan-are all things pos
sible. Put Bryan in a class room to
teach Hebrew or Arabic, and he would
be a fiat failure. Put DIR. Smith up
before a national convention, and in
stead of being nominated for Presi-
dent he would be howled down uncer-
enormously. Yet in q class room-any
class room-he Is superb; perhaps
peerless. He would make a magnifi-
cent president of a university, just as
Bryan would make a magnificent
President of the Republic.
"But some other critic ome to DR..
Smiths aid by accusing Bryan of
tilching the Grown of thorns and
cross of gold.' Knowing Bryan as 1
do, | am certain he would scorn the
idea of originating that. No, he did
not. 1t is 1868 years old at least-how
much older l know not. He simply
gave it q new application. All the
force it had grew out of the fact that
it is old, familiar and full of meaning.
1t needed no diagram to explain it. 1t
went straight to the heart of every
man thSs heard it and everyone that
has read it. 1t was a magnificent close
to a magnificent speech.
GAS a matter of fact, considered in
the abstract, the Chicago speech was
not Bryan's greatest oratorical
achievement. In grandeur of concep-
ton, in breadth of philosophy, in mas
terful argument, in splendor of die
ton it is not equal to his famous tariff
anaaob in tho Eifty-saoopd Couoraco |
nor to his silver and anti bond
speeches in the Fifty-third. But, for
the twin purposes for which it was in
Notwithstanding the adoption of the
platform and winning the nomination
it was well nigh perfect. 1t did it's
double duty effectually. The time for
argument had passed; the~tims~for
call to arms had come; and Bryan's
bugIe voice rang out brave and clear
through the ranks of the silver hosts,
cheering them to victory.
"The truth is that until Bryan spoke,
the silver legions, Notwithstanding
their big majority, had been merci-
lessly thumped and pounded in the
mill. Bryan simply said
what two-thlrds of the convention
wanted to say, but did not know how
to say. That is the secret of the Won
success OF that speech. His
words were fifty spoken, and, accord
ing to Solomon, were like apples of
gold in pictures of silver.
g1Thn nborna of pIo osia r;an, Ia aaax, -
make. Edgar Allen Poe undertook to
show that L~ongfeliow stole most of
his poems. Any man reasonably ia
miliar with Bacon and Shakespeare can
prove by 5000 parallel passages that
one was always pilfering from the
other. Du Maurier gobbled Trilby
some obscure author, SO they
say. About every five years some
fellow rises up to say that Thomas
Jefferson stole the Declaration of In
from a lot of patriots
down at M~ecklenberg, North Caro-
lima, and so on to the end of the chap
ter. Bryan as a piagiarist ID in illus
trious company.
"Once a smart young man told a
president that it was easy
to write such stuff az SoIomon's Pro-
verbs. The grim old president CURLY
Write a few So to those
disparaging Bryan's famous speech /
say: Make a better one.'
"Southey once said: Il could write
10 well as Shakespeare Ill had a mind
Yes replied Charles Lamb, the mind
q all that's lacking"