66 the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness- he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those far from fame," who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandseled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare. I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action. ARGUMENTATION Argumentation means the stating of points or facts, the logical presentation of them, and the drawing of conclusions from a consideration of the premises. Its objects are to convince and persuade the reader or listener. Argumentation that stops with conviction is incomplete- it must persuade as well as convince in order to be effective. A speaker accomplishes practically nothing if he convinces an audience but does not persuade it to do the thing he desires. Arguments may be direct or indirect. They are direct when aimed at a stated conclusion, and they are indirect when they are employed to disprove what is opposed to the speaker's contention. The most effective form of argument is where the two forms, direct and indirect, are employed, thus not only demolishing one contention but clearly establishing the other. It is comparable to the contrast in oratory where the statement is made that a certain thing is not only not of a certain class but specifically belongs to another one. This is "clinching" the argument, and it leaves not a loophole for the escape of the opponent. Here is an excellent piece of argumentative oratory, taken from an address of William H. Seward in the celebrated Freeman case. "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 in civil life, save those of selfdefense, 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 fellowman, 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 apprehensions 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 fellowman 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." 66 NARRATION 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 shows 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 prayers 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 Description is the 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 Iclank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer'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 shone 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 |