Word: speakers
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...efforts to avoid the spread-eagle know-little-and-talk-a-great-deal style of oratory in favor with our average American stump-speaker, we have touched the other extreme, and have laid ourselves open to a kind of censure which such articles as that on "The Repressive Influence of Harvard" may be supposed to represent. When one of our own professors publicly acknowledges that there is more than a grain of truth in the remark of an outsider to the effect that a Harvard graduate, however much he may know, can say but a few sentences on any subject...
...Cambridge needed rousing up to serious religious thought, or they would be in danger of lapsing into rationalism and infidelity. Living in a country in which man is allowed to embrace such views as his conscience approves, it appeared ill-judged and not a little surprising, that a public speaker, having a strongly marked religious bias of his own, should thus express himself in regard to students at Harvard, who, as individuals, possess diversified ideas of faith and doctrine, either adopted by themselves or received by parental transmission...
...doctrine of transubstantiation, which is known to be believed by a recent candidate for the bishopric, whose influence the same gentleman thought to be so very necessary for the infidel students at Harvard! The ingenuity of special pleading in defence of "wide and generous views" loses vitality when the speaker is felt to be narrow-minded, and is suspected of seeking to cloak his own real ideas in wordy, philanthropic expression as to the necessities of the times! The students at Harvard have had much to stand from those cavillers who have made aspersions as to their want of religious...
...There is deeply implanted in the human heart a feeling that to speak, to write, is a sign of weakness, of lack of self-reliance. It shows that one's own approbation is not sufficient unless that of others be superadded. And there is a dim belief that the speaker, as Socrates says, is moved by a certain divine inspiration and enthusiasm, or, to describe his condition in plain English, he is mad, and, although possessing a certain method in his madness, nevertheless he is destitute of true wisdom. His mind is not finely balanced, he is not sufficient unto...
...ready for every interruption and questioning, innuendo and repartee, and send back the quick and witty response : if he hesitates, he is conquered. The wise man often becomes disconcerted and loses his sagacity in consequence of a keen repartee which may even live longer than the speech itself. That speaker contends at great odds - if, indeed, he is not effectually silenced - whose voice is drowned by uproarious laughter. All undergraduates know that roughing creates the habit of giving a ready reply; in fact, I can think of no method by which it is more successfully cultivated. Upon this ground, then...