McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 19

Oh, that thou wouldest conceal me In the realm of departed souls!

Hide me in secret, till thy wrath be past; Appoint me then a new term, And remember me again.

But alas! if a man die Shall he live again?

So long, then, as my toil endureth, Will I wait till a change come to me.

Thou wilt call me, and I shall answer; Thou wilt pity the work of thy hands.

Though now thou numberest my steps, Thou shalt then not watch for my sin.

My transgression will be sealed in a bag, Thou wilt bind up and remove my iniquity.

Yet alas! the mountain falleth and is swallowed up, The rock is removed out of its place, The waters hollow out the stones, The floods overflow the dust of the earth, And thus, thou destroyest the hope of man.

Thou contendest with him, till he faileth, Thou changest his countenance, and sendeth him away.

Though his sons become great and happy, Yet he knoweth it not; If they come to shame and dishonor, He perceiveth it not.

Note.--Compare with the translation of the same as given in the ordinary version of the Bible. Job xiv.

XV. A POLITICAL PAUSE. (102)

Charles James Fox, 1749-1806, a famous English orator and statesman, was the son of Hon. Henry Fox, afterward Lord Holland; he was also a lineal descendant of Charles II. of England and of Henry IV, of France. He received his education at Westminster, Eton, and Oxford, but left the University without graduating. He was first elected to Parliament before he was twenty years old. During the American Revolution, he favored the colonies; later, he was a friend and fellow-partisan both with Burke and Wilberforce. Burke said of him, "He is the most brilliant and successful debater the world ever saw." In his later years, Mr. Fox was as remarkable for carelessness in dress and personal appearance, as he had been for the opposite in his youth. He possessed many pleasing traits of character, but his morals were not commendable; he was a gambler and a spendthrift. Yet he exercised a powerful influence on the politics of his times. This extract is from a speech delivered during a truce in the long war between England and France.

"But we must pause," says the honorable gentleman. What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out, her best blood spilt, her treasures wasted, that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves--Oh! that you would put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors you excite. In former wars, a man might at least have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance in his mind the impressions which a scene of carnage and death must inflict.

But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting--"Fighting!", would be the answer; "they are not fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?" The answer must be, "You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself,--they are not fighting,--do not disturb them,--they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony,--that man is not dead,--he is only pausing! Bless you, sir, they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see is nothing like fighting,--there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it; it is nothing more than a political pause. It is merely to try an experiment--to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and, in the meantime, we have agreed to a pause, in pure friends.h.i.+p!"

And is this the way that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world, to destroy order, to trample on religion, to stifle in the heart not merely the generosity of n.o.ble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and in the prosecution of this system, you spread terror and devastation all around you.

Note.--In this lesson, the influence of a negative in determining the rising inflection, is noticeable. See Rule V, p. 24.

XVI. MY EXPERIENCE IN ELOCUTION. (104)

John Neal. 1793-1876, a brilliant but eccentric American writer, was born in Portland, Maine. He went into business, when quite young, in company with John Pierpont, the well-known poet. They soon failed, and Mr. Neal then turned his attention to the study of law. He practiced his profession somewhat, but devoted most of his time to literature. For a time he resided in England, where he wrote for "Blackwood's Magazine" and other periodicals. His writings were produced with great rapidity, and with a purposed disregard of what is known as "cla.s.sical English."

In the academy I attended, elocution was taught in a way I shall never forget--never! We had a yearly exhibition, and the favorites of the preceptor were allowed to speak a piece; and a pretty time they had of it.

Somehow I was never a favorite with any of my teachers after the first two or three days; and, as I went barefooted, I dare say it was thought unseemly, or perhaps cruel, to expose me upon the platform. And then, as I had no particular apt.i.tude for public speaking, and no relish for what was called oratory, it was never my luck to be called up.

Among my schoolmates, however, was one--a very amiable, shy boy--to whom was a.s.signed, at the first exhibition I attended, that pa.s.sage in Pope's Homer beginning with,

"Aurora, now, fair daughter of the dawn!"

This the poor boy gave with so much emphasis and discretion, that, to me, it sounded like "O roarer!" and I was wicked enough, out of sheer envy, I dare say, to call him "O roarer!"--a nickname which clung to him for a long while, though no human being ever deserved it less; for in speech and action both, he was quiet, reserved, and sensitive.

My next experience in elocution was still more disheartening, so that I never had a chance of showing what I was capable of in that way till I set up for myself. Master Moody, my next instructor, was thought to have uncommon qualifications for teaching oratory. He was a large, handsome, heavy man, over six feet high; and having understood that the first, second, and third prerequisite in oratory was action, the boys he put in training were encouraged to most vehement and obstreperous manifestations.

Let me give an example, and one that weighed heavily on my conscience for many years after the poor man pa.s.sed away.

Among his pupils were two boys, brothers, who were thought highly gifted in elocution. The master, who was evidently of that opinion, had a habit of parading them on all occasions before visitors and strangers; though one bad lost his upper front teeth and lisped badly, and the other had the voice of a penny trumpet. Week after week these boys went through the quarrel of Brutus and Ca.s.sius, for the benefit of myself and others, to see if their example would not provoke us to a generous compet.i.tion for all the honors.

How it operated on the other boys in after life I can not say; but the effect on me was decidedly unwholesome--discouraging, indeed,--until I was old enough to judge for myself, and to carry into operation a system of my own.

On coming to the pa.s.sage,--

"Be ready, G.o.ds, with all your thunderbolts; Dash him to pieces!"--

the elder of the boys gave it after the following fas.h.i.+on: "Be ready, G.o.dths, with all your thunderbolths,--dath him in pietheth!"--bringing his right fist down into his left palm with all his strength, and his lifted foot upon the platform, which was built like a sounding-board, so that the master himself, who had suggested the action and obliged the poor boy to rehea.r.s.e it over and over again, appeared to be utterly carried away by the magnificent demonstration; while to me--so deficient was I in rhetorical taste--it sounded like a crash of broken crockery, intermingled with chicken peeps.

I never got over it; and to this day can not endure stamping, nor even tapping of the foot, nor clapping the hands together, nor thumping the table for ill.u.s.tration; having an idea that such noises are not oratory, and that untranslatable sounds are not language.

My next essay was of a somewhat different kind. I took the field in person, being in my nineteenth year, well proportioned, and already beginning to have a sincere relish for poetry, if not for declamation. I had always been a great reader; and in the course of my foraging depredations I had met with "The Mariner's Dream" and "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," both of which I had committed to memory before I knew it.

And one day, happening to be alone with my sister, and newly rigged out in a student's gown, such as the lads at Brunswick sported when they came to show off among their old companions, I proposed to astonish her by rehearsing these two poems in appropriate costume. Being very proud of her brother, and very obliging, she consented at once,--upon condition that our dear mother, who had never seen anything of the sort, should be invited to make one of the audience.

On the whole, I rather think that I succeeded in astonis.h.i.+ng both. I well remember their looks of amazement--for they had never seen anything better or worse in all their lives, and were no judges of acting--as I swept to and fro in that magnificent robe, with outstretched arms and uplifted eyes, when I came to pa.s.sages like the following, where an apostrophe was called for:

"And near him the she wolf stirred the brake, And the copper snake breathed in his ear, Till he, starting, cried, from his dream awake, 'Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake, And the white canoe of my dear'!'"

Or like this:

"On beds of green sea flowers thy limbs shall be laid; Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow, Of thy fair yellow locks, threads of amber be made, And every part suit to thy mansion below;"--

throwing up my arms, and throwing them out in every possible direction as the spirit moved me, or the sentiment prompted; for I always encouraged my limbs and features to think for themselves, and to act for themselves, and never predetermined, never forethought, a gesture nor an intonation in my life; and should as soon think of counterfeiting another's look or step or voice, or of modulating my own by a pitch pipe (as the ancient orators did, with whom oratory was acting elocution, a branch of the dramatic art), as of adopting or imitating the gestures and tones of the most celebrated rhetorician I ever saw.

The result was rather encouraging. My mother and sister were both satisfied. At any rate, they said nothing to the contrary. Being only in my nineteenth year, what might I not be able to accomplish after a little more experience!

How little did I think, while rehearsing before my mother and sister, that anything serious would ever come of it, or that I was laying the foundations of character for life, or that I was beginning what I should not be able to finish within the next forty or fifty years following. Yet so it was. I had broken the ice without knowing it. These things were but the foreshadowing of what happened long afterward.

Notes.--Brunswick, Maine, is the seat of Bowdoin College.

"The Mariner's Dream" is a poem by 'William Dimond.

"The Lake of the Dismal Swamp" is by Thomas Moore.

XVII. ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. (108)

Thomas Gray, 1716-1771, is often spoken of as "the author of the Elegy,"--this simple yet highly finished and beautiful poem being by far the best known of an his writings. It was finished in 1749,--seven years from the time it was commenced. Probably no short poem in the language ever deserved or received more praise. Gray was born in London; his father possessed property, but was indolent and selfish; his mother was a successful woman of business, and supported her son in college from her own earnings. The poet was educated at Eton and Cambridge; at the latter place, he resided for several years after his return from a continental tour, begun in 1739. He was small and delicate in person, refined and precise in dress and manners, and shy and retiring in disposition. He was an accomplished scholar in many fields of learning, but left comparatively little finished work in any department. He declined the honor of poet laureate; but, in 1769, was appointed Professor of History at Cambridge.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.