Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded (and the silence came) Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breastThou, too, again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, To rise before me- Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth! Lesson talk. This selection demands great variety in expression-changes of pitch, force and inflection. It offers a particularly good exercise for breaking up monotony. Note the musical effect in many of the sound-combinations -as in "some sweet beguiling melody," "voice of sweet song," "soft and soul-like sounds," etc.-and try to bring this musical effect out in your voice. Not only picture the various thoughts, but try to realize them at the moment of expression. The rate is slow and measured, but animated in feeling. Be sure of the pronunciation of these: Sovereign, Arvé, Arveiron, ebon, dilating, ecstasy, countenance, perpetual, precipitous, jagged, invulnerable, avalanche, stupendous, mountain, suffused, hierarch. 3. What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging? Is it to appease the wrath, and to heal the wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he really be the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all groveling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches, and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them, and present it to that Senator of the majority whom he may select, as a proud trophy, to be transmitted to his descendants. And hereafter, when we shall lose the forms of our free institutions-all that now remain to us-some future American monarch, in gratitude to those by whose means he has been enabled, upon the ruins of civil liberty, to erect a throne, and to commemorate especially this expunging resolution, may institute a new order of knighthood, and confer on it the appropriate name of The Knight of the Black Lines. But why should I detain the Senate, or needlessly waste my breath in future exertions? The decree has gone forth. It is one of urgency, too. The deed is to be done that foul deed, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never wash out. Proceed, then, to the noble work which lies before you, and like other skilful executioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated it, go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors you have achieved for our common country. Tell them that you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burned at the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered in defense of the Constitution, and bravely spiked the cannon. Tell them that henceforth, no matter what daring or outrageous act any President may perform, you have forever hermetically sealed the mouth of the Senate. Tell them that he may fearlessly assume what power he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military detachment to enter the hall of the Capitol, overawe Congress, trample down the Constitution, and raze every bulwark of freedom; but that the Senate must stand mute, in silent submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice; that it must wait until a House of Representatives, humbled and subdued like itself, and a majority of it composed of the partizans of the President, shall prefer articles of impeachment. Tell them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; and if the people do not pour out their indignation and imprecation, I have yet to learn the character of American freemen. "The Expunging Resolution." HENRY CLAY. CHAPTER IV HOW TO BUILD A VOCABULARY A large and varied vocabulary is indispensable to the public speaker. With ten thousand words at his command he should be able to express himself with greater precision and effectiveness than with half that number. To increase his stock of words the speaker must cultivate an intense interest in them. He should form the habit of closely scrutinizing their meaning. He must know their intrinsic value as well as their outward effect. A peremptory challenge should be given to every word he does not thoroughly understand and its meaning studied in the dictionary. Thoughts and words are intimately related, one being merely the expression or symbol of the other. Some authorities maintain that all thought to be clearly defined in the mind must appear there in so many words. It is true that there are many persons who, while reading silently, must say over each word in the mind in order to thoroughly understand and enjoy what they are reading. It is difficult to overestimate the power of words. With them we command, we supplicate, we defy, we convince, we condemn, we conciliate. There are many dangerous and deadly "masked words" which everybody uses without understanding them, words colored by a man's own fancy, but which in turn mislead and poison him like so many "unjust stewards." To this class belong words of equivocation, exaggeration and sarcasm, The public speaker's business is to find out the human meanings in words. He will do well, therefore, to heed the advice of Ruskin when he says: "I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this) you must get into the habit of looking intently at words, assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter. For tho it is only by reason of the apposition of letters in the function of signs to sounds that the study of books is called 'literature,' and 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 letterthat 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." The study of words, if properly pursued, will prove a fascinating and beneficial exercise. There is an intrinsic pleasure in using the word that precisely expresses one's meaning. Such power and facility gives added self-confidence. It is told of Webster that once while addressing an audience he had difficulty in finding just the word he wanted. He discarded one after another until five or six had been disposed of, when suddenly he found the word he had been so earnestly seeking, and as he gave expression to it the audience, who had mentally followed his anxious search, burst out into spontaneous applause. The possibility and potency of words is described by |