SPEECH-MAKING IN CONGRESS.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1713, 30 June 1874, Page 3

SPEECH-MAKING IN CONGRESS.

The'style of much of the speakuig shows that the prayer-meeting and tho play-house hayo been its nurseries. Those who have taken play-actors models, are inflated, emphatic, and painfully slow. Such members say : " Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to introduce a bill," as if the utterance were a startling truth that had never burst upon the world before. They have the theatrical gags and vulgarities, and say chey eld for child, me for my, with much basso profundo, ■welling and posing. Such pretension promises much, and always falls short. Those who have taken the cWleader and the preacher as their models are also unpleasant speakers. There is, and has been, a tendency in certain of the priesthood to run into a nasal sniffing tone in the exercise of spiritual Actions, under the mistaken notwn that it adds solemnity to the words. Xhis influence is very perceptible in Congressional speaking, and sometimes becomes so marked that we expect a speaker to reach the climax, raise himself on his toes with a tremulous shake and pronounce the "Yea, ver-i-ly" of the Praise God Barebone of Puritan memory. In speaking of Congress, it is worthy of remark that a great body and prominent stomach lend a certain weight to tbe words pronounced. The dapper man with an insignificant voice is thus at a disadvantage, for let him speak as he will, his words do not have the importance of the man who delivers his over a great abdomen—supposing them to be of something like equal talents. This was illustrated in the presentation of a gold snuttbox to Lord Jeffreys, a man of great mental stature but small in the flesh. ±le who presented the box was large—compared to the diminutive nobleman—and of dignified manners ; after Pronouncing the usual compliments, he handed the box to the nobleman with a grand bow ; the theatrical ease of word and manner took away the little man's faculty of speech, he thrust the box into his pocket and sat down without saying a word. In the same way, the big m .n in Congress occasionally bear down upon the small lean ones, and if they cannot take away their speech, they do sometimes disconcert them with their ponderous ways and utterances.—Albert Rhodes ; Scnber s for January.