APPENDIX B

MODEL ORATIONS

MOST of the following orations have been prefaced with brief analyses, for the purpose of indicating the general structure of the thought. In no case, however, is the outline so full as to make more minute analysis unprofitable. Indeed, no two students are likely to analyze an oration in just the same way. Several of the discourses have been presented entirely free of suggestive outline.

I

THE AMERICAN IDEA

BY DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852)

[The following selected passages are from a commemorative oration delivered June 17, 1825, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill. Upon this occasion the cornerstone of the monument was laid. So much of the oration as can here be given may be thus outlined: (1) The remarkable nature of the American Revolution. (2) The advanced civilization under which the orator and his hearers live. (3) Direct eulogy of the patriots who fought in the battle of Bunker Hill. (4) Great changes noted when the present occasion is compared with fifty years ago.]

The great event in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate, - that prodigy

of modern times, at once the wonder and blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together in this place by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal service and patriotic devotion.

...

We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important that they might crowd and distinguish centuries, are in our times compressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775? Our own Revolution, which under other circumstances might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, has been achieved; twenty-four sovereign and independent states erected; and a general government established over them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not far the greater wonder that it should have been established at all.

We now stand here to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition and to look abroad to the brightened prospects of the world, while we still hold among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here, from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, I had almost said overwhelming, this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism.

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously length

ened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon; you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defense. All is peace: and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and He has allowed us, your sons

and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!

II

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

BY THEODORE PARKER (1810-1860)

[This descriptive excerpt was delivered as part of a public lecture in Boston. It contains three parts: (1) A description of the poor waifs. (2) An appeal for sympathy. (3) An argument for prison reform.]

If you could know the life of one of those poor lepers of Boston, you would wonder and weep. one of them at random out of the mass.

Let me take He was born,

His coming

unwelcome, amid wretchedness and want. increased both. Miserably he struggles through his infancy, less tended than the lion's whelp. He becomes a boy. He is covered only with rags, and those squalid with long-accumulated filth. He wanders about your streets, too low even to seek employment, now snatching from a gutter half-rotten fruit which the owner flings away. He is ignorant; he has never entered a schoolhouse; to him even the alphabet is a mystery. He is young in years, yet old in misery. There is no hope in his face. He herds with others like himself, low, ragged, hungry, and idle. If misery loves company, he finds that satisfaction. Follow him to his home at night; he herds in a cellar; in the same sty with father, mother, brothers, sisters, and perhaps yet other families of like

degree. What served him for dress by day is his only bed by night.

Well, this boy steals some trifle, a biscuit, a bit of rope, or a knife from a shop window. He is seized and carried to jail. The day comes for trial. He is marched through the streets in handcuffs, the companion of drunkards and thieves, thus deadening the little self-respect which Nature left even in an outcast's bosom. He sits there chained like a beast; a boy in irons! the sport and mockery of men vulgar as the common sewer. His trial comes. Of course he is convicted. The show of his countenance is witness against him. His rags and dirt, his ignorance, his vagrant habits, his idleness, all testify against him. That face so young, and yet so impudent, so sly, so writ all over with embryo villainy, is evidence enough. The jury are soon convinced, for they see his temptations in his look, and surely know that in such a condition men will steal: yes, they themselves would steal. The judge represents the law, and that practically regards it a crime for a boy to be weak and poor. Much of our common law, it seems to me, is based on might, not right. So he is hurried off to jail at a tender age, and made legally the companion of felons. Now the State has him wholly in her power; by that rough adoption has made him her own child, and sealed the indenture with the jailer's key. His handcuffs are the symbol of his sonship to the State. She shuts him in her college for the little. What does that teach him; science, letters; even morals and religion? Little enough of this, even in Boston, and in most counties of Massachusetts, I think, nothing