78 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1900. 



voice are directed to those in the outer circle, the people there 

 will feel that the address is aimed at them specially, and in no 

 other way can he hold the attention. 



Knowlton has said there are as good lawyers in Boston as 

 there were in the days of Choate and Webster. From that state- 

 ment I dissent entirely. I cannot say I know the lawyers of 

 Boston and of Massachusetts well, but I know that in the days 

 I have referred to we had, besides the men I have mentioned, 

 such men as Hillit, an author, Dana, the author, and many other 

 men of ability in other fields in addition to their law. I fail to 

 find in Boston or the State any such men today, not mentioning 

 the greater ones like Choate and Webster and Everett. I trust 

 the time is coming when there will be again men at the bar 

 who will match the great lights of the past. I attribute a good 

 deal of the lack of brilliant men today to the loss and sacrifices 

 we made in the civil war. Of the 400,000 men who went to 

 their death in that war are names emblazoned oh the walls of all 

 our colleges and elsewhere, who were just beginning to show 

 promise of great things and would now have been the leaders. 

 That is the reason why I for one am against the sacrifice of any 

 more young men in war. The country was impoverished more 

 by that loss of young men than in the expenditure of money. 



Rufus Choate, in the trial of Albert J. Tirrel for murder, de- 

 molished a Roxbury witness brought on after the case had been 

 closed for the people by an address in which he asked if the 

 witness had come from the far East or from Africa at that late 

 hour to testify, and answered his own question by saying, No, 

 he came from that undiscovered country from whose bourne so 

 few travellers return — Roxbury. 



I express the opinion that never was the field for the educated 

 man wider than it is today. Let no one be deterred by the 

 saying that oratory is dead. It may be true that America can- 

 not boast of a single great orator, that the public taste has 

 changed. But good speakers will always have a hearing. A 

 thought is never more powerful than when uttered through the 

 agency of the human voice. Oratory is the art of arts. Con- 

 sider the influence of the stage, which is only the mimicry of 



