The American Orator's Own Book: A Manual of Extemporaneous Eloquence Including a Course of Discipline for the Faculties of Discrimination, Arrangement and Oral Discussion and Also Practical Exercises in Reading, Recitations and Declamatory Debate : Intended for the Use of Colleges, Schools, Students of Oratory, and All Public Speakers

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James Kay, jun. and Brother, 1840 - 279 pages

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Page 157 - Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again...
Page 101 - The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Page 183 - Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; And, with some sweet, oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart ? Doct.
Page 105 - When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!
Page 157 - Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own dashings, — yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep, — the dead reign there alone.
Page 111 - Publish it from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it there ; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon ; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.
Page 157 - Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.
Page 111 - to use all the means which God and Nature have put into our hands." I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed — to hear them avowed in this house or in this country...
Page 113 - I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world — it is the charity of its silence! Let no man write my epitaph: for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them.
Page 37 - Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war; In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.

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