The Orator's Opportunity.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue VIII, 20 August 1904, Page 31

The Orator's Opportunity.

Every light for the Presidency brings forth the nation’s orators, says the American magazine, "The Saturday Evening Post.” Every new contest shows that our supply of eloquent speakers does not keep pace with the increase of population. Every canvass of the situation proves only too sadly that oratory is not one of our thriving industries. The high tariff does not help it, and our multiplying millions can foster it by no subsidy. It is largely because our orators must

live between their distant opportunities. From the great speech of to-day to the big occasion of four years hence is a long stretch of bread, butter and dessert. The modern Demosthenes cannot afford to spend his long hours mouthing pebbles on the isolated shore in order to impart smoothness and strength to his voice; he must keep office hours near the market places, and speak in whispers to the eminent gentlemen who desire the latest inventions in charters and mergers, or find for them some way of appeasing the appetite of a Congressional investigating com-

mittee. Fur it is to the law that we must look for our political oratory. Ever since Doctor Burchard rolled out his fatal *’R's” the campaign managers have been afraid of clerical enthusiasts, and the < loquence that is supplied by editors reads better than it sounds; but the law is still free, and good lawyers stick with impartial partiality to their causes. It is a tremendous pity that we have so few good speakers. The public has lost none of its love for the spoken word. Audiences are larger in number and greater in enthusiasm than they ever were; and in the future, when an orator rises to the occasion, we shall recall this fragment from a newspaper interview

with Speaker Cannon, given in reply to the question, **So you enjoy oratory?” “I wouldn’t give three whoops in Hades for any man whose heart would not beat faster, who would not breathe deeper, whose eyes would not take lire, whose spirit would not swell as if to strangle him. who would not be moved even to the shedding of tears —and that without shame—by the voices of birds aml children, by a mother’s smile, by a song that is sung greatly from the heart, by the face of a beautiful woman and the voice of her pleading, by noble oratory or the noble acting of actors on the stage, by any human art through which the spirit of lieauty in one speaks to the spirit of beaut v in a not her."