The Project Gutenberg eBook of How to Master the Spoken Word, by Edwin Gordon Lawrence

“Thou shalt not kill,” is a commandment addressed, not to him alone, but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. There are no exceptions from that commandment, at least not in civil life, save those of self-defense, and capital punishment for crimes in the due and just administration of the law. There is not only a question, then, whether the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow-man, but the question whether we shall unlawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of murder if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an insane man and failed to say, or failed to do in his behalf, all that my ability allowed. I think it has been proved of the prisoner at the bar, that during all this long and tedious trial, he has had no sleepless nights, and that even in the daytime, when he retires from the halls to his lonely cell, he sinks to rest like a wearied child, on the stone floor, and quietly slumbers till roused by the constable with his staff, to appear again before the jury. His counsel enjoy no such repose. Their thoughts by day and their dreams by night are filled with oppressive apprehension that, through their inability or neglect, he may be condemned.

I am arraigned before you for undue manifestations of zeal and excitement. My answer to all such charges shall be brief. When this cause shall have been committed to you, I shall be happy indeed if it shall appear that my only error has been that I have felt too much, thought too intensely, or acted too faithfully.

If my error would thus be criminal, how great would yours be if you should render an unjust verdict? Only four months have elapsed since an outraged people, distrustful of judicial redress, doomed the prisoner to immediate death. Some of you have confessed that you approved that lawless sentence. All men now rejoice that the prisoner was saved for this solemn trial. But this trial would be as criminal as that precipitate sentence, if, through any wilful fault or prejudice of yours, it should prove but a mockery of justice. If any prejudice of witnesses, or the imagination of counsel, or any ill-timed jest, shall, at any time, have diverted your attention; or if any prejudgment which you have brought into the jury box, or any cowardly fear of popular opinion shall have operated to cause you to deny to the prisoner that dispassionate consideration of his case which the laws of God and man exact of you, and if, owing to such an error, this wretched man fall from among the living, what will be your crime? You have violated the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” It is not the form or letter of the trial by jury that authorizes you to send your fellow-man to his dread account, but it is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution; and if, through pride, passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota of all the defense to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder.”

Narration is recounting the particulars of events, or enumerating facts; telling of occurrences or things in regular order. Specifically, it is that part of explanation that allows the subject in its relations to the movement of time. In simple words, it is a continuous telling.

The narrative form of composition is beautifully employed by Daniel Webster in his first Bunker Hill Monument address, the following being an extract from that admirable speech:

The society whose organ I am was formed for the purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory of the early friends of American independence. They have thought that for this object no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that monument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayer to Almighty God for His blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it.

Description is showing of things by means of language-pictures; telling the attributes that make up the whole. Word-pictures are created by means of explaining the individual parts of a theme or view as they affect the entire thing.

As a piece of word-picturing the following description of the breaking of day, by Edward Everett, is certainly magnificent:

Much as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and, for this purpose, rose at two o’clock in the morning. Every thing around was wrapped in darkness, and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed, at that hour, the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, mid-summer’s night; the sky was without a cloud; the winds were hushed. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen; and the stars shown with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day: the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east: Lyra sparkled near the zenith: Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south: the steady Pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign.

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible. The intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the blue hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the Lord of Day, arrayed in glories too severe for gaze of man, began his course.

The Conspiracy to Murder. A conspiracy to kill and murder does not owe its criminality to the length of time it may occupy in its progress, from its first conception to its ultimate adoption—a conspiracy may be formed the very instant before the step is taken to put it into effect. If a number of people meet accidentally in the street, and conspire together to kill and murder at the moment, it is as essentially the crime of conspiracy as if it had been intended for a year before, and hatched from that year to the moment of its accomplishment.

—John P. Curran, Trial of John Costly for conspiracy
to murder, Dublin, Feb. 23, 1804

Circumstantial Evidence of Guilt. I need not pause to remind you how much caution, how much candor, and how much intelligence are requisite in appreciating circumstantial evidence in any case. That kind of evidence may clearly prove guilt. That many times, however, it has also shed innocent blood, and many times it has stained a fair name, I need not pause for a moment to illustrate or remind you. Instead of doing that, I think I shall be better occupied, under the direction of his honor, in reminding you of the two great rules by which circumstantial evidence is to be weighed, appreciated, and applied by the jury. Those rules, gentlemen, are these:

In the first place, that the jury shall be satisfied that they conduct, as a necessary result and conclusion, to the inference of guilt. It is a rule that may be called a golden rule in the examination and application of this kind of evidence which we call circumstantial, that should it so turn out that every fact and circumstance alleged and proved to exist is consistent, on the one hand with the hypothesis of guilt and on the other hand consistent, reasonably and fairly, with the hypothesis of innocence, then those circumstances prove nothing at all. Unless they go so far as to establish as a necessary conclusion this guilt which they are offered with a view to establish, they are utterly worthless and ineffectual for the investigation of truth. I had the honor to read to the court this morning, and possibly in your hearing, an authority in which that familiar and elementary doctrine was laid down, a doctrine every day applied, everywhere recognized as primary in the appreciation of this kind of evidence. It is not enough that the circumstances relied upon are plainly and certainly proved. It is not enough to show that they are consistent with the hypothesis of guilt. They must also render the hypothesis of innocence inadmissible and impossible, unreasonable and absurd, or they have proved nothing at all.

Stare Decisis. The people, in forming the organic law of the government of this state, very wisely foresaw that, in its action and progress, questions of interpretation of the settlement of legal principles, and of their application, would frequently arise; and thence the necessity of constituting some tribunal with general appellate and supervisory powers, whose decisions should be final and conclusively settle and declare the law. This was supposed to have been accomplished in the organization of this court. Heretofore this court, under the Constitution, has been looked to by the people as the tribunal of the last resort in the state; and it has hitherto been supposed that when this court has decided a case upon its merits such decision not only determined the right of the parties litigant in that particular case, but that it also settled the principles involved in it as permanent rules of law, universally applicable in all future cases embracing similar facts, and involving the same or analogous principles. These decisions thus became at once public law, measures of private right, and landmarks of property. They determined the right of persons and of things. Parties entered into contracts with each other with reference to them, as to the declared and established law; law equally binding upon the courts and the people. But the doctrine recently put forth would at once overturn this whole body of law founded upon the adjudications of this court, built up as it has been by the long continued and arduous labors, grown venerable with years, and interwoven as it has become with the interests, and habits, and the opinions of the people. Under this new doctrine all would again be unsettled—nothing established. Like the ever returning but never ending labors of the fabled Sisyphus, this court, in disregard to the maxim of “stare decisis,” would, in each recurring case, have to enter upon its examination and decision as if all were new, without any aid from the experience of the past, or the benefit of any established principle or settled law. Each case with decision being thus limited as law to itself alone would in turn pass away and be forgotten, leaving behind it no record of principle established, or light to guide, or rule to govern the future.

—Luther Bradish. Opinion given as Presiding Judge
of Court of Errors, in Hanford v. Archer,
Dec., 1842, at Albany, N. Y.

The Obligation of Contract. We contend that the obligation of a contract—that is, the duty of performing it—is not created by the law of the particular place where it is made, and dependent on that law for its existence; but that it may subsist, and does subsist, without the law, and independent of it. The obligation is in the contract itself, in the assent of the parties, and in the sanction of universal law. This is the doctrine of Grotius, Vattel, Burlamaqui, Pothier, and Rutherford. The contract, doubtless, is necessarily to be enforced by the municipal law of the place where performance is demanded. The municipal law acts on the contract after it is made, to compel its execution, or give damages for its violation. But this is a very different thing from the same law being the original or fountain of the contract.

Let us illustrate this matter by an example. Two persons contract together in New York for the delivery, by one to the other, of a domestic animal, a utensil of husbandry, or a weapon of war. This is a lawful contract, and, while the parties remain in New York it is to be enforced by the laws of that state. But, if they remove with the article to Pennsylvania or Maryland, there a new law comes to act upon the contract, and to apply other remedies if it be broken. Thus far the remedies are furnished by the laws of society. But suppose the same parties to go together to a savage wilderness, or a desert island beyond the reach of the laws of any society. The obligation of the contract still subsists, and is as perfect as ever, and is now to be enforced by another law, that is the law of nature; and the party to whom the promise was made has a right to take by force the animal, the utensil, or the weapon that was promised him. The right is as perfect here as it was in Pennsylvania, or even in New York.

Parent and Child. The next greatest tie is that of parent and child. If in God’s providence a man has not only watched over the cradle of his child, but over the grave of his offspring, and has witnessed earth committed to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, he knows that the love of a parent for his child is stronger than death. The bitter lamentation, “Would to God I had died for thee,” has been wrung from many a parent’s heart. But when the adulterer’s shadow comes between the parent and child, it casts over both a gloom darker than the grave. What agony is equal to his who knows not whether the children gathered around his board are his own offspring or an adulterous brood, hatched in his bed. To the child it is still more disastrous. Nature designs that children shall have the care of both parents; the mother’s care is the chief blessing to her child—a mother’s honor its priceless inheritance. But when the adulterer enters a family, the child is deprived of the care of one parent, perhaps of both. When death, in God’s providence, strikes a mother from the family, the deepest grief that preys upon a husband’s heart is the loss of her nurture and example to his orphan child; and the sweetest conversation between parent and child is when they talk of the beloved mother who is gone. But how can a daughter hear that mother’s name without a blush? Death is merciful to the pitiless cruelty of him whose lust has stained the fair brow of innocent childhood by corrupting the heart of the mother, whose example must stain the daughter’s life.

Distrust of Witnesses. Are they witnesses to be trusted with report of evidence by words? Are they witnesses to remember words where everything may depend upon the exact expression, upon the order of the language, upon dropping an epithet here and inserting an epithet there, by which the guilt of adultery is confessed? Is this a body of witnesses that are to be trusted to report words, that are the issues of life, with certainty and accuracy? I submit that, on the outside of it, the whole case of confession to be listened to by this jury is a conclusive and rational distrust which would leave my client in no fear at all of the result. Here is a man that cannot be trusted to carry ten bushels of yellow, flat corn across the city for fear that he would steal half of it; who cannot be trusted to take a hat full of uncounted bills to New York. A man who has not honesty enough, or fairness enough, to weight the hind quarter of an ox—shall he be trusted to weigh out gold dust and dimes, and count the pulses of life? A man not honest enough, a combination not honest enough, to carry a letter without mutilating it into a falsehood, to prove words in which honesty, intelligence, and fairness may be entirely omitted. We come, then, to this examination of confession exactly in this state of the case: It is probability, amounting almost to a miracle, that a confession should be made under any circumstances at all. Confessions themselves are never to be acted upon by the jury unless they know, upon their oaths, that they have the very words spoken in the sense in which they came. They never can have that assurance if they have not a clear and undoubting confidence in the speaker that reports them. And their case opens, I say, with this: that a moral miracle is to be established on the testimony of confessions, by the evidence of witnesses, as a body, manifestly and apparently undeserving a moment’s confidence.

The History of Trial by Jury. I might begin with Tacitus, and show how the contest arose in the forest of Germany more than two thousand years ago; how the rough virtues and sound common sense of that people established the right of trial by jury, and thus started on a career which has made their posterity the foremost race that ever lived in all the tide of time. The Saxons carried it to England, and were ever ready to defend it with their blood. It was crushed out by the Danish invasion; and all that they suffered of tyranny and oppression during the period of their subjugation resulted from the want of trial by jury. If that had been conceded to them the reaction would not have taken place which drove back the Danes to their frozen homes in the north. But those ruffian sea-kings could not understand that, and the reaction came. Alfred, the greatest of revolutionary heroes and the wisest monarch that ever sat on a throne, made the first use of his power, after the Saxons restored it, to reëstablish their ancient laws. He had promised them that he would, and he was true to them because they had been true to him. But it was not easily done; the courts were opposed to it, for it limited their power—a kind of power that everybody covets—the power to punish without regard to law. He was obliged to hang forty-four judges in one year for refusing to give his subjects a trial by jury. When the historian says he hung them, it is not meant that he put them to death without a trial. He had them impeached before the grand council of the nation, the Witenagemot, the parliament of that time. During the subsequent period of Saxon domination no man on English soil was powerful enough to refuse a legal trial to the meanest peasant. If any minister or any king, in war or in peace, had dared to punish a freeman by tribunal of his own appointment, he would have roused the wrath of the whole population; all orders of society would have resisted it; lord and vassal, knight and squire, priest and penitent, bocman and socman, master and thrall, copyholder and villein, would have risen in one mass and burnt the offender to death in his castle, or followed him in his flight and torn him to atoms. It was again trampled down by the Norman conquerors; but the evils resulting from the want of it united all classes in the effort which compelled King John to restore it by the Great Charter. Everybody is familiar with the struggles which the English people, during many generations, made for their rights with the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, and which ended finally in the revolution of 1688, when the liberties of England were placed upon an impregnable basis by the Bill of Rights. Many times the attempt was made to stretch the royal authority far enough to justify military trials; but it never had more than temporary success.

—Judge Jeremiah S. Black, in the Milligan
case, U. S. Supreme Court,
Washington, D. C., Dec., 1866

Testimony. I will go through the case fairly and discuss it fully. I will nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice. I will base my argument upon the testimony, not as I would have it, but as it is. I will speak not to the world, but to you, who can correct and hold me in judgment, if I fail to redeem the promises of fairness and candor which I make. Heaven can witness for me that I desire no fame at the expense of these unfortunate men. I will use no bitter words, I will affect no bitter loathing; I will assail neither man, woman, nor child, except under the urgent pressure of duty and necessity. I wish I could be spared the painful task of doing so at all.

Conscience. Lady Macbeth must needs walk by night in her sleep and rub her hands as if to wash them, and cry out: “Out, damned spot, out I say!” But all Neptune’s ocean will not wash the stain away; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the murderer’s hand. Conscience, the greatest gift of God, the child itself of God, working and acting obedient to the same law by which your system and mine, by their nature, will attempt to throw off disease, that which is imperfect and that which is poison, I say by that same law conscience seeks to throw off its load of guilt.

—State’s Attorney Frank M. Nye, in People v.
Hayward, Minneapolis, Minn., Dec., 1895

Consent Under Protest. Sir, the consent of Maine to part with her soil and her sovereignty was given with a bleeding heart; it was like the consent of him who bares his own right arm to the surgeon’s knife when advised that his life can only be preserved by its amputation; she consented as one consents to commit to kindred dust the children of his body; she consented as the red man consents to be driven from his happy hunting grounds, the graves of his fathers and the banks of the streams where he sported in childhood; she consented, as was said by another, as “the victim consents to execution because he walks and is not dragged to the scaffold which has been erected to receive him.”

—Daniel S. Dickinson, Speech in reply to
Webster on the Northwestern Boundary
question, U. S. Senate, April 9, 1846

Duties of Juries. Gentlemen of the jury, I have about concluded my duties in this case. Yours will follow. I ask from you nothing in the world but the intelligent judgment of twelve intelligent men on the evidence before you. I have only one little picture more to offer. It is Burns’s picture of the Scottish farmer in the seclusion of his family. His day’s work done, he draws his little family about him. He has laid aside his cap and has taken the old family Bible from its shelf. He calls Jane and James and the old mother and reads to them from God’s promises. Then all bow their heads in prayer. “In scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur lies.” Some of you here are wont to keep that sacred tryst. Into that tryst you would never admit this paper.

CHAPTER V

PARAPHRASING

Paraphrasing is the reproduction of the sense of a passage, a composition or a speech, in other than the terms used by the original writer or speaker. It is the holding on to the original structure and thought, but a clothing of them in entirely new language. It is an amplification of an idea, a redressing of it; the use of new terms or different language for the presentation of an old thought; as,

What would have been the consequences, sir, if we had been conquered? Were we not fighting against that majesty? Would the justice of our opposition have been considered? The most horrid forfeitures, confiscations, and attainders would have been pronounced against us.

In paraphrasing this extract from a speech by Patrick Henry we should keep in mind his thought only and pay no attention to the language he used in expressing the thought. We should borrow his idea, but we should clothe it in language of our own; as,

Let me ask you, sir, what would have resulted from our having been conquered by Great Britain? It was the exercise of power by that nation that we combated. Would she, had our struggle for liberty failed, have considered that we fought for what we believed to be right? No, sir, history would have but repeated itself. Our patriots would have died on the gallows, their children would have been deprived of their inheritance, and no cruelty would have been too great for the conquering nation to have inflicted upon her rebellious colonies.

It trains the mind through the exercising of the power of mental concentration that is necessary in order to hold on to the thought; it helps to form the habit of constructing a framework; it aids in making a speaker arrange his thoughts consecutively; it improves the speaker’s style, and it enlarges his vocabulary.

On a first attempt it will seem almost impossible for many to paraphrase. They are apt to think the original matter so well constructed, and the thought so perfectly expressed, as to render any other arrangement of it ridiculous and practically out of the question. They cannot bring to mind words common to themselves with which to clothe the ideas of another. In trying to remember the words of the original writer or speaker they lose the thought and are unable to proceed. To all such, the author says: continue in the work; cease to think of words at all, keep the framework in mind, lay hold of the thought, and words to convey the thought will leap forward to do the work. They may not, at first, be the best possible words, but words that will answer the purpose of carrying the thought to the mind of the listener will flow freely, and with study and practice the vocabulary will become larger and more effective.

Paraphrasing helps to develop the imaginative quality by cultivating the power of producing mental images, seeing with the mind’s eye, as it were. If a speaker will hold on to his picture or his theme, he will have no trouble in drawing the one or developing the other. In presenting a picture, the speaker must keep the entire scene in his mind when describing it in detail; and when developing a theme, it must be in the speaker’s mental vision in its entirety while he develops it step by step, point by point; as,

God called man in dreams into the vestibule of heaven, saying, “Come up higher, and I will show thee the glory of My house”; and to His angels who stood about His throne, He said, “take him, strip him of his robes of flesh; cleanse his affections; put a new breath into his nostrils; but touch not his human heart—the heart that fears, and hopes, and trembles.” A moment, and it was done, and the man stood ready for his unknown voyage. Under the guidance of a mighty angel, with sounds of flying pinions, they sped away from the battlements of heaven. Some time, on the mighty angel’s wings, they fled through Saharas of darkness, wildernesses of death. At length, from a distance not counted, save in the arithmetic of heaven, light beamed upon them—a sleepy flame, as seen through a hazy cloud. They sped on, in their terrible speed, to meet the light; the light with lesser speed came to meet them. In a moment the blazing of suns around them—a moment, the wheeling of planets; then came long eternities of twilight; then again, on the right hand and the left, appeared more constellations. At last, the man sank down, crying, “Angel, I can go no further; let me lie down in the grave, and hide myself from the infinitude of the universe, for end there is none.” “End is there none?” demanded the angel. And, from the glittering stars that shown around, there came a choral shout, “End there is none!” “End is there none?” demanded the angel again, “And it is this that awes thy soul?” I answer, “End there is none to the universe of God! Lo, also, there is no beginning!”

This is a story taken from the German and used by O. M. Mitchell in his address “The Immensity of the Creation,” and it made a striking illustration. It will be an easy matter to paraphrase this vivid portraiture if the student will keep in mind the idea of the angel and the man flying through space as the scene shifts. There is a continuous change in the surroundings as the angel and man continue to fly through space, but the mind of the speaker should accompany them and see all the changes that occur without losing sight of the angel and the man, as they are the picture, the surroundings being merely the accessories or details, and while these are being described the angel and the man must still be in view. The angel and the man must be seen standing at the portals of heaven, they must be seen speeding from the battlements of that glorious place. The scene now shifts to a desert of darkness, but still the angel and the man are within the mental vision of the speaker. Now a ray of light, breaking through a misty cloud, showers its brightness upon them. The scene has again changed, but the picture of the angel and the man remains. The light grows in brightness and immensity, other details enter into the picture—the suns, the planets, and the twilight—but still the angel and the man are there. Again the scenery is shifted, the man sinks down in weariness, the chorus of angel voices is heard as the multitude of stars open their portals to let out the heavenly shout, “End there is none,” but still the picture is there—the picture of the angel and the man.

In developing a theme, the same principle prevails. It is for this reason that it is wise to have in a speech but one proposition to expound, one subject to discuss, one object to accomplish. By dragging in many points, instead of developing the one, the speaker is apt to ramble, the listener to become confused, and the speech to fail. By this it is meant that there must be one grand central idea or point around which all others must revolve. This principal idea, proposition, or point must be like the hub of a wheel—it may have any number of spokes, but they must all radiate from the hub. It is like the picture of the angel and the man flying through space—the scene changes, but the angel and the man are always present to the imaginative eye of the speaker—and it is for this reason he is able to describe so vividly his picture or develop his theme to make them apparent even to the mind of the unimaginative listener.

Let us consider the developing of a theme in place of the drawing of a picture. For this purpose we will take an extract from a speech of that clear reasoned and eminent theologian, William Ellery Channing:

The grand idea of humanity, of the importance of man as man, is spreading silently, but surely. Even the most abject portions of society are visited by some dreams of a better condition for which they were designed. The grand doctrine, that every human being should have the means of self-culture, of progress in knowledge and virtue, of health, comfort, and happiness, of exercising the powers and affections of a man—this is slowly taking its place as the highest social truth. That the world was made for all, and not for a few; that society is to care for all, that no human being shall perish but through his own fault; that the great end of government is to spread a shield over the rights of all—these propositions are growing into axioms, and the spirit of them is coming forth in all the departments of life.

How beautifully Dr. Channing holds on to his theme through the entire passage. He starts by telling us what the grand idea of humanity is, and then he proceeds to expound it. The first laying down of the proposition is, that “the importance of man as man” (this is the grand idea of humanity) is becoming universal. He then amplifies the idea by stating that even the lowest specimens of humanity are awakening to a realization of it. He then develops what this idea consists of—the right of all men to education, proper housing, and sufficient food, in short, the right to live as human beings—and asserts that it has become the most important of the social truths. He then enumerates what at one time were considered debatable opinions but are now recognized as undeniable facts. Notice how, while he brings in many statements, they all radiate from the one proposition that “the importance of man as man is spreading silently, but surely,” and never once does he permit you to lose sight of the theme, because he continuously has it before his mental eye. No matter what he says, “the importance of man as man” is uppermost, just as was the picture of the angel and the man, and if the student in paraphrasing the passage will keep that one point in mind, he should have no serious difficulty in presenting it in a new garb clearly to the minds of others. A carrying out of this principle will enable an extempore speaker to form his matter with perfect ease, and this is one reason why paraphrasing is beneficial to the student of public speaking. It is a valuable stepping stone that should be used by all in attempting to attain proficiency in the art of expressing thought by means of the spoken word.

Any material that comes to hand may be used for the purpose of paraphrasing provided it be properly constructed and expressed in good language. These are two important points to remember in choosing selections for paraphrasing, as students are sure to be influenced by the construction and diction of the matter they employ for this purpose.

From her earliest history, the policy of this country has been to develop the minds of all her people, and to imbue them with the principles of duty. To do this work most effectually, she has begun with the young. If she would continue to mount higher and higher toward the summit of prosperity, she must continue the means by which her present elevation has been gained. In doing this, she will not only exercise the noblest prerogative of government, but will coöperate with the Almighty in one of His sublimest works.

The Greek rhetorician, Longinus, quotes from the Mosaic account of the creation what he calls the sublimest passage ever uttered: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light!” From the centre of black immensity effulgence burst forth. Above, beneath, on every side, its radiance streamed out, silent, yet making each spot in the vast concave brighter than the line which the lightning pencils upon the midnight cloud. Darkness fled as the swift beams spread onward and outward, in an unending circumfusion of splendor. Onward and outward still they move to this day, glorifying, through wider and wider regions of space, the infinite Author from whose power and beneficence they sprang. But not only in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, did he say, “Let there be light!” Whenever a human soul is born into the world, its Creator stands over it, and again pronounces the same sublime words, “Let there be light.”

Magnificent, indeed, was the material creation, when, suddenly blazing forth in mid-space, the new-born sun dispelled the darkness of the ancient night. But infinitely more magnificent is it when the human soul rays forth its subtler and swifter beams; when the light of the senses irradiates all outward things, revealing the beauty of their colors and the exquisite symmetry of their proportions and forms; when the light of reason penetrates to their invisible properties and laws, and displays all those hidden relations that make up all the sciences; when the light of conscience illuminates the moral world, separating truth from error, and virtue from vice. The light of the newly kindled sun, indeed, was glorious. It struck upon all the planets, and waked into existence their myriad capacities of life and joy. As it rebounded from them, and showed their vast orbs all wheeling, circle beyond circle in their stupendous courses, the sons of God shouted for joy. The light sped onward, beyond Sirius, beyond the pole-star, beyond Orion and the Pleiades, and is still spreading onward into the abysses of space. But the light of the human soul flies swifter than the light of the sun, and outshines its meridian blaze. It can embrace not only the sun of our system, but all suns and galaxies of suns; ay! the soul is capable of knowing and enjoying Him who created the suns themselves; and when these starry lusters that now glorify the firmament shall wax dim, and fade away like a wasted taper, the light of the soul shall still remain, nor time, nor cloud, nor any power but its own perversity, shall ever quench its brightness. Again I would say, that whenever a human soul is born into the world, God stands over it and pronounces the same sublime fiat, “Let there be light!” and may the time soon come, when all human governments shall coöperate with the Divine government in carrying this benediction and baptism into fulfilment!

When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, “Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself—and my sleeves well up to the elbows, and my breath good, and my temper?” And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at the cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author’s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author’s meaning without those tools and that fire. Often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing before you can gather one grain of the metal.

And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter. For, though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters in the function of signs to sounds that the study of books is called “literature”, that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of letters, instead of a man of books or of words, you may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real fact—that you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly illiterate, uneducated person; but that if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, that is to say, with real accuracy, you are forevermore in some measure an educated person. The entire difference between education and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages, may not be able to speak any but his own, may have read very few books; but whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly. Above all, he is learned in the peerage of words, knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their inter-marriages, distant relationship, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held among the national noblesse of words at any time and in any country. But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any—not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person. So also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing forever.

It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who shall tell us that all study of the past is barren except in so far as it enables us to determine the laws by which the evolution of human societies is governed. How far such an investigation has been up to the present time fruitful in results I will not inquire. That it will ever enable us to trace with accuracy the course which states and nations are destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the past, I do not indeed believe.

We are borne along like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough by experience or theory of the laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influences to which it may be subject. More than this we cannot know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in relation to any laws which we are ever likely to discover, may properly be called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift among fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.

But leaving on one side ambitious sociological speculations, and even those more modest but hitherto more successful investigations into the causes which have in particular cases been principally operative in producing great political changes, there are still two modes in which we can derive what I may call “spectacular” enjoyment from the study of history.

There is first the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of some great historic drama, or some broad and well-marked phase of social development. The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of creeds, of parties and of statesmen. The imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by the contrasted permanence of the abiding stars. The ceaseless conflicts, the strange echoes of long forgotten controversies, the confusion of purpose, the successes which lay deep the seeds of future evils, the failures that ultimately divert the otherwise inevitable danger, the heroism which struggles to the last for a cause foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness which sides with right, and the wisdom which huzzahs at the triumph of folly—fate, meanwhile, through all this turmoil and perplexity, working silently toward the predestined end—all these form together a subject the contemplation of which need surely never weary.

But there is yet another and very different species of enjoyment to be derived from the records of the past, which requires a somewhat different method of study in order that it may be fully tasted. Instead of contemplating, as it were, from a distance, the larger aspects of the human drama, we may elect to move in familiar fellowship amid the scenes and actors of special periods.

We may add to the interest we derive from the contemplation of contemporary politics a similar interest derived from a not less minute and probably more accurate knowledge of some comparatively brief passage in the political history of the past. We may extend the social circle in which we move—a circle perhaps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our control—by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long departed, but which, when we have once learnt the trick of it, it rests with us to revive.

It is this kind of historical reading which is usually branded as frivolous and useless, and persons who indulge in it often delude themselves into thinking that the real motive of their investigation into bygone scenes and ancient scandals is philosophic interest in an important historical episode, whereas in truth it is not the philosophy which glorifies the details, but the details which make tolerable the philosophy.

Consider, for example, the use of the French Revolution. The period from the taking of the Bastille to the fall of Robespierre is of about the same length as very commonly intervenes between two of our general elections. On these comparatively few months libraries have been written. The incidents of every week are matters of familiar knowledge. The character and the biography of every actor in the drama has been made the subject of minute study; and by common admission there is no more fascinating page in the history of the world.

But the interest is not what is commonly called philosophic, it is personal. Because the Revolution is the dominant fact in modern history, therefore people suppose that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, tossed into temporary eminence and eternal infamy by some freak of the revolutionary wave, or the atrocities committed by this or that mob, half-drunk with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent importance.

In truth, their interest is great, but their importance is small. What we are concerned to know as students of the philosophy of history is, not the character of each turn and eddy in the great social cataract, but the manner in which the currents of the upper stream drew surely in toward the final plunge, and slowly collected themselves after the catastrophe, again to pursue, at a different level, their renewed and comparatively tranquil course.

Now, if so much of the interest of the French Revolution depends on our minute knowledge of each passing incident, how much more necessary is such knowledge when we are dealing with the quiet nooks and corners of history—when we are seeking an introduction, let us say, into the literary society of Johnson or the fashionable society of Walpole! Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no intimacy without interest in trifles.

If we would feel at our ease in any company, if we wish to find humour in its jokes and point in its repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and prejudices of its various members—their loves and their hates, their hopes and their fears, their maladies, their marriages, and their flirtations. If these things are beneath our notice, we shall not be the less qualified to serve our queen and country, but need make no attempt to extract pleasure out of one of the most delightful departments of literature.