Part 4 (2/2)

”Peter Piper picked six pecks of pickled peppers; If Peter piping picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

(With marked raising and lowering of the voice.)

It sounded like an old rooster in the barn in the morning. But being elocution, it was not oratory.

But the most ill.u.s.trative and most absurd speech I ever heard was by a visitor in that cla.s.s that day. He was sitting over near the aisle, and one of the students came and whispered to me: ”That young man has graduated from an Eastern school of elocution, and he is going to act the heavy parts in tragedy upon the stage. He is a great elocutionist, and won't you get him to recite something to the cla.s.s?” I fell into the trap, and went down to the young man, and said: ”I understand you are an elocutionist. Will you come up and recite something for the cla.s.s?”

As soon as he looked up at me I saw by his eyes there was something the matter with his head. I do not know just what, but things have happened since that make it no unkindness to refer to him the way I do. I said: ”Please come up and recite something,” and he replied: ”Shall I recite the same thing the young men have been reciting?” I said, ”You don't need to do that; take anything.” He left his gold-headed cane--the best part of him--on the floor, and then he came up to the platform and leaned on the table and said to me: ”Shall I recite the same thing the young men have been reciting?” I said: ”You can if you wish. You are perfectly free to take anything you choose. The professor is away, anyhow. When the cat is away the mice will play.”

Then he began to prepare himself for that recitation. I never saw such behavior in my life. He pulled up his sleeves, brushed back his hair, shook himself, moved the table away forward, and I slid far back by the door and left the platform open, for I didn't know what he was going to do next. Then he gave the selection:

”Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-rs; If Peter Piper, piping piper, picked a peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs, Where's the peck of pickled pepper-r-r-rs Peter Piper pickle-picker-r-r picked?”

He rolled in a flutter the letter ”r” in each line. That cla.s.s looked up with awe, and applauded until he repeated it. It was still elocution, but it was not oratory. He thought that oratory consisted of rolling the ”r's” and rolling himself. That is not oratory.

Where do they learn oratory? They learn it in the old-fas.h.i.+oned school-house, from that old hen at the kitchen door, in some back office, in some hall, or some church where young men or women get together and debate, saying naturally the things they mean, and then _take notice_ of the effects of what they debate upon, the conviction or after action of those who listen. That is the place to observe. You must _take notice_ if you are to be a great orator.

The greatest orator of the future will be a woman. It has not been two months since the management of a women's Chautauqua said, ”We could give $40,000 a year to any woman who will be a natural woman on the platform.” They would make money at $40,000 a year if they hired a woman who would be a real woman. The trouble is that when women get on the platform they try to sing ba.s.s or try to speak as a man speaks. And there is such a need for women orators now! I get provoked about it when I think. Why isn't there a great woman orator like Mrs. Livermore now when she is needed so much?

VI

WOMAN'S INFLUENCE

If women vote they will be of little account unless they are leaders. It is of no special advantage to the voter to ignorantly put a piece of paper in a box. But it is of great account to influence ten thousand votes. That is what women must do if they are going to exercise their right under suffrage--they must be the influence behind the throne, not merely a voter.

When I was a boy in the district school a subst.i.tute teacher came in, and we all loved that little woman. We would do anything she asked us to do. One day that subst.i.tute teacher, who could not get a first-cla.s.s certificate, copied a verse of a poem and asked me to read it:

If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet: Rocking on the mighty billows, Laughing at the storms you meet.

She asked me to read it once, and then she turned the paper over and said, ”Now, Russell, repeat it.” I said, ”I have not learned it by heart.” Said she: ”Don't learn it by heart. I will try again.” So she wrote the second verse:

If you are too weak to journey Up the mountain steep and high.

Then she said to me, ”Now, Russell, read it through once, and notice carefully each word, and don't look back at a word a second time.” I know not now why she demanded that; I have looked in many books of psychology and in many places to find out. I have no explanation of this, and I ask you to think for me, for this is the fact. I took the second verse and read it through as she told me to do. Then she turned it over and said, ”Please repeat it.” I said, ”I cannot repeat it; I have not learned it by heart.” She replied: ”Don't you say that again.

Just shut your eyes and make a mental effort to see those verses, and then read it.”

I shut my eyes and said, ”Oh, it is all dark.” Then she seemed very much disturbed and said: ”Now, Russell, don't say that. Won't you try to do what I ask you to do?”

I thought the little woman was going to cry, so I said, ”Yes, I will do the best I can.” She said, ”Shut your eyes again and make a determined effort, with your eyes shut, to see that poetry just as though it were right before you.” I shut my eyes and made that effort, and saw it as distinctly as though I had held it before my open eyes. So long as my eyes were shut I could see the two verses, and I read it all through, word for word, and I read it backward, word for word, to the beginning.

I thought I had seen a ghost. I went home and told my father what had happened, and he rushed down from the pasture to the school-house and said to the teacher:

”If you indulge again in your foolish superst.i.tions you will never teach in that school-house again.”

It must have been uncomfortable for her, and her secret went down to the grave with her, as far as I know. Yet what would I not give if I could place before the world now what that little girl knew. All our educational inst.i.tutions, for which I have labored all these years, would be as nothing compared with that one secret if I could give it to you--that secret of being able to look upon a scene and shut's one's eyes and bring it all back again, study it in detail.

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