STUMP ORATIONS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 1453, 17 October 1881, Page 2

STUMP ORATIONS

I [To the Editor of the Hkrald.] , Sir, — I wu horrilied to an intensity, fur which I have no command of language to describe, when I found my name Advertised in the columns of the Hkrald on Saturday evening announcing mo to deliver a " Stump Oration" in the Hall of Fine Art Exhibition. Cold beads of perspiration broke out all over me, which for the time completely paralysed the finer fe«ltngs of an innately gonerous nature. A Stump Oration has always been associated in my mind with the niggnr business a* witnessed in music halls and other like places. Fancy me, Sir, a man approaching seventeen stone, who has turned his three score I

of years with a family of virtuous daughters strongly indoctrinated with piety, appearing befoie a select audience with a blackened face, the result of burnt cork and stale beer ! If I could be guilty of such a thinsj what might be looked for in the Bishop of London ! N<> Sir, T am not a candidate for Parliamentary honours ; m>r «in I Sir George Grey ; nor a people's Champion. Let these do stump orations as they have done before and receive the prolonaed clieers of the multitude. I know I must have been looked upon in a strange light by a gentleman who entered my humble establishment, immediately nfter I had read the appalling announcement, which appeared in your columns. He a«ketl for a small packet <>f cigarettes, when I handed him a fonr-bladed pearlhandled pen-knifo, telling him it was a book of absorbing interest, which would well repay perusal. Sir, I made no such promise as the delivery of a stump oration. I did say, in answer to a request of one of the Committee, that I was willing to deliver a moral essay on the loveliness of virtue, and a protest to young ladies who were giving indications of a desire to return to the use of crinoline, as announced in I An latest fashionable intelligence— but a " Stump Oration " Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us such a vision never appeared to me even as a dream. I am, Ac , Jambs "Snydbr" Bbownb,