Yet I question much whether public speaking
tends to elevate the orator, intellectually or morally; the effort, of
course, being to say what is immediately received by the audience, and to
produce an effect on the instant. I don't quite see how an honest man
can be a good and successful orator; but I shall hardly undertake to
decide the question on my merely post-prandial experience.
The Mayor toasted his guests by their professions,--the merchants, for
instance, the bankers, the solicitors,--and while one of the number
responded, his brethren also stood up, each in his place, thus giving
their assent to what he said. I think the very worst orator was a major
of Artillery, who spoke in a meek, little, nervous voice, and seemed a
good deal more discomposed than probably he would have been in the face
of the enemy. The first toast was "The Ladies," to which an old bachelor
responded.
December 31st.--Thus far we have come through the winter, on this bleak
and blasty shore of the Irish Sea, where, perhaps, the drowned body of
Milton's friend Lycidas might have been washed ashore more than two
centuries ago. This would not be very likely, however, so wide a tract
of sands, never deeply covered by the tide, intervening betwixt us and
the sea. But it is an excessively windy place, especially here on the
Promenade; always a whistle and a howl,--always an eddying gust through
the corridors and chambers,--often a patter of hail or rain or snow
against the windows; and in the long evenings the sounds outside are very
much as if we were on shipboard in mid-ocean, with the waves dashing
against the vessel's sides.
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