OCCASIONS • EDITED BY ELLA A. KNAPP, PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN GOUCHER COLLEGE AND JOHN C. FRENCH, PH.D. ASSOCIATE IN ENGLISH IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 All rights reserved 8955 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1911. Reprinted 305443 AMR Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co. - -Berwick & Smith Co. PREFACE THIS Volume has been prepared primarily because the editors have felt in their own teaching the need of a convenient collection of such speeches as are here presented. Models of formal oratory and debate are abundant; but these are not enough. The old-fashioned college oration, the glory of contests and commencements, has survived a change of taste, and is becoming less useful as a college exercise. Debating, though valuable as discipline and attractive on account of its frank and direct competition, appeals after all to a limited number of students. Moreover, the masterpieces of eloquence to which the student is commonly directed for reading and study sprang from occasions which have no parallels in his experience. He may come to the end of his days without knowing in the smallest measure the feeling that inspired the memorable passages in Demosthenes, Cicero, Stafford, Chatham, Fox, Grattan, Patrick Henry, or Webster. But the birthday of an esteemed person, the centenary anniversary of the renowned dead, the departure or arrival of a friend, or hunger to meet one's fellows in the bonds of equality and friendship - these are the occasions that have called forth the greater part of public speech from Homer's day to ours. 305443 |