THE ORATOR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 4, 23 May 1890, Page 5

THE ORATOR.

Turning from the Press to the orator, the other great instrument in the overflow of words, it is to be observed that the amount of speechmaking on all sorts of occasions and all kinds of subjects has increased beyond the fashion of former times in nearly the same ratio as the outpouring of the Press. For this, indeed, the Press is largely responsible. The custom of reporting, after some fashion, speeches the most ordinary and commonplace, a weariness often to the hearers and of no inteiest to anybody else, has set thousands of tongues a-wagging for the glory of getting into print. They are reported, not beciuse they are of any importance, but because the daily necessity for material to fill up the newspapers is often urgent, and must be supplied from all available quarters, at whatever expense of dullness or inaccuracy, when more intere3ti >g news does not transpire. But the same influence that has so stimulated oratory and increased its volume has at the same time diminished its quality by destroying its best element. The newspaper Press has turned the orator into an essayist, and usually a dull essayist, at that. The essence of a good speech upon ordinary occasions is its adaptation to the tone and spirit of the surrounding atmosphere — its sympathetic touch with its hearers— the indescribable magnetism born of time, place, circumstance and personality — the charm of utterance— the inspiration of the hour. Fox's remark, that if a speech reada well it was not a good one, had great truth in the day when speeches were speeches, and not essays. The speaker nowadays cannot address himself to his audience ; he must harangue Christendom through the next morning's papera ; he is weighted all the time with the thought of how what he says will be made to read, and what will be said of it. The unhappy orator who, ignorant or forgetful of the presence of reporters, and relieved of the incubus of their anticipated butchery, takes his tone from the occasion, loses for the time the painful self-consciouanesa which ia the bane of public speaking, and speaks naturally, easily, and perhaps with feeling and earnestness the words that are given him, may make, ao far as hia immediate audience is concerned, a most successful and felicitous deliverance — quite the next beat thing to silence. But the blood will run cold at the travesty that will appear next day in print, when a reporter's misunderstanding of it has been condensed into reporters' English. Ita wit, its humour, its point, its effectiveness, its eloquence, if it chanced to iise ao high, have all disappeared, and in their place cornea a disjointed and incoherent jumble of platitudes, expressed in the worse possible language. So, to avoid being thus made ridiculous, he must write out and recite an article thut he can Rive a copy of to " the Prees." Nothing can be more unlike than an essay for publication and a speech, which, to meet the requirements of common occasions, should in a great measure be extemporaneous, at least in its language. The article may read fairly well ; as a speech it is prosy aud artificial, wearisome to the hearers, and without immediate effect. — Scribner's Magazine.

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Female Pooh Baha are not entirely among what "Jeemes Yollowplush " called the " 'lgber Buccles "of England. In a London weekly paper an unknown woman denounces a countess who advertises that she is willing to present Am ricans at court and to society generally during the coming London season, in consi Oration of the sum of 5000dola. paid in advance. The paper says this lady should be rechristened the Aristocratic Ji remy Diddler, and trusts that f«w English ladiea will consent to receive Am'-'icanß thus chaperoned. It i 8 denied that th** Countess is lady Str, diirke oi c of +he writers on the staff of ihe World, of which Edmund Yatea ia the proprietor, and the mother of the seconder of the Address lo the Throne in the House of Commons at the re-opening of Parliament,