7f) WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1900. 



I pass over after-dinner speakers, for they are the substi- 

 tute for the king's jester. Of course I do not include in this 

 statement the addresses at gatherings for discussion of a set 

 topic. Pleadings at the bar are seldom written, Choate being 

 an exception. Orations and formal addresses are written, gen- 

 erally, though often delivered without reference to the notes. 

 Everett's address on Washington in the fifties, which brought in 

 the most money ever received at a lecture in this country, was 

 written out in advance. He laid the roll of manuscript on the 

 desk but did not turn to it during the speech. So tenacious was 

 Everett's memory that he was never betrayed by the loss of a 

 word. He spoke an hour and fifty-five minutes delivering the 

 famous Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge without a break, 

 this also being committed to memory. Everett might be the 

 most carefully trained orator of his day among the English 

 speaking people, but he was not the greatest, for he never 

 identified himself with any great cause or policy. His success 

 depended too much on appearance and his arts. I was invited 

 in 1851, along with Everett, to speak at an agricultural fair in 

 northern New Hampshire. We saw and spoke of the fog that 

 lay along the Connecticut valley as we rode and when he rose to 

 speak Everett gave a brilliant word picture of that magnificent 

 scene as the fog rolled away before the sun. It was some time 

 afterward before it was known that the description Everett gave 

 that day was written out and committed to memory long before 

 the event, at the fair, and used when an opportune occasion 

 presented itself. 



Phillips*' oration on the lost arts was an illustration of the 

 opposite kind, for it was not written out, but of intellectual 

 preparation. It was built up by an arrangement of the head 

 topics that had no logical relation, but were disconnected. Some 

 public speakers use head notes or catch words. Caleb Gushing 

 was a conspicuous example of this method of preparation. The 

 process in preparing and preserving such a speech is : first, 

 thorough preparation by reading up the subject ; then a judicial 

 analysis of the head topics ; then the notes of prime importance ; 

 having the speech taken in stenographic notes; delay until all 



