constitution for a debating society, or believe that the rules of any organization with which you are connected need modification or amendment, write a speech urging the measures you would like to have adopted. The language in all of these cases will be largely argumentative, of course, and the appeal will be to both personal and social duty.

The following sentence from an editorial in the Christian Union will suggest one way of handling the third subject in the list given above :

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A clever Frenchman once said that the old aristocrats distributed public wealth upon the principle, "To each according to his breed ”; the plutocrats on the principle, " To each according to his greed "; the communists on the principle, " To each according to his need"; the socialists on the principle, "To each according to his deed." In Oklahoma the principle is, "To each according to his speed,” and it is certainly the most irrational of all.

The following outline of the second subject is offered as a model:

FOREIGN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BE CHECKED.

I. Introduction.

a. When immigration is beneficial.

b. When should it be checked in the United States?

II. Immigrants in general.

a. Past conditions under which they began life in our

country.

b. Present conditions under which they begin life here. c. Their disappointment and its effect.

III. Paupers.

a. Their character and condition.

b. Their effect upon our laboring class.

c. Concrete examples from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New England, and Michigan.

IV. Anarchists.

a. Their ideas of government and religion.
b. Their power.

c. Their ignorance, and stand regarding education.
d. Their moral condition.

e. Why especially dangerous in the United States.

V. Chinese.

a. Differ from Americans in race, religion, and civilization.

b. Object in coming to America.

c. Results:

1. They carry away our gold.

2. Lower standards of life.

3. Hinder the development of the country.

4. Help monopolies.

5. Corrupt the youth.

VI. Immigrants in general.
a. Their great numbers.

b. Tendency to colonize.

c. Impossibility of Americanizing such vast numbers. d. Influence of clergy over certain classes.

e. Their opposition to public schools.

f. Their alarmingly bad moral influence in our cities.

VII. Conclusion.

a. Immigration should be checked in the United States because the conditions for such a course are now realized.

b. Self-preservation the first law of nature.

c. How to protect our nation and secure its permanency.

The following paragraphs are from a speech before the House of Representatives by the Hon. R. R. Hitt, on the bill to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes relating to lotteries:

MR. SPEAKER: The lottery is the most pernicious and widespread form of gambling vice, because it uses for its instrument the Post-Office Department; that is, the Government. The

ordinary gambling-hell is confined to one house and its frequenters. A lottery spreads through the whole nation; it reaches everywhere, and it does it by the aid of the Government. It was not for this that we built up our magnificent postal system, which is supported at such vast expense annually. Yet that postal system is the instrument to-day and might almost be called the partner or accessory of this great swindling scheme.

...

Without the aid of the Government through the Post-Office Department, the whole business would be cut down to a mere local gambling establishment answerable to the police powers of the local government. That is what I trust this bill will do. It broadens the present law so that a lottery letter can be followed after it is mailed at New Orleans or Washington, which are the centers of the lottery business, and the offenders punished wherever the letter goes, not alone in Louisiana, where juries can be readily affected by the tremendous power of the lottery company. It will close the mails to newspapers advertising lotteries, which will be a long step toward destroying their means of reaching and deluding the victim by alluring advertisements and promises which appeal to the cupidity of the ignorant and unthinking who hasten to be rich without labor. Nor does it in the least interfere with the inviolability of the seal upon letters, which will be as sacred hereafter as they have been and always should be. It authorizes the Postmaster-General, upon satisfactory evidence, which will soon be obtained by the agents of the Department, in regard to the character of lottery letters, to stop their transmission through the mails and institute proceedings to punish those sending. We know that the Postmaster-General will faithfully and zealously perform his part if we do ours and pass this bill. Let us do it, and do it now.

The orator's success depends in no small degree upon his skill in adapting his style to his audience. A stump speaker in the backwoods will naturally adopt a very different tone from that of a legislator on the floor of Congress, even though he may be speaking on the same subject. An ignorant demagogue will hardly succeed in moving a cultivated audience, while, on the other hand, an address that is "over the heads" of the hearers is equally futile. Either extreme is to be avoided that of descending below or of rising too far above the intellectual level of those addressed. It may be occasionally that an orator's end is best subserved by assuming to place his auditors on a higher plane, thus flattering their self-esteem. But if they are allowed to suspect that this is done purposely they will naturally feel insulted and withhold their sympathy. Again, it may seem best to endeavor to strike their own level, to talk to them just as they might be expected to talk themselves. The danger here is that they may realize they are being "talked down to" and feel that their intelligence is being underrated. The story is told of Patrick Henry that in certain of his speeches in Virginia he went so far as to imitate the very dialect of the backwoodsmen. But the effect was not what he calculated upon. His hearers knew that this was only an imitation and therefore an artifice. They would have listened more respectfully and more willingly had he kept to his natural style.

Taking all these things into consideration it would seem that in general the best tone to adopt is one somewhat above the level of the audience, provided, of course, that this is natural to the speaker and not beyond

his own powers. An audience naturally assumes that a speaker has more knowledge or power than they of the kind he purposes to exhibit or they would not come to hear him. And even if he does go beyond their intelligence now and then they will hardly resent it, for it is rather gratifying than otherwise to the average man to have it assumed that he knows somewhat more than he actually does. Only, the speaker must guard against excursions and flights in which his audience will wholly fail to follow him. The intricacies of politics and theology, the technicalities of science, and the abstractions of philosophy, would clearly be out of place before a mixed assemblage.

This may be said further: In general, the higher the intelligence of the auditors the more averse will they be to rant and bombast, the more quickly will they resent any attempt to influence their judgment by emotional appeals, the more will they care for simple facts and dispassionate reason. Not that they are necessarily less emotional, or take less pleasure in giving play to their emotional natures, only they realize that action should be governed by wisdom and judgment rather than by mere impulse. If they wish to satisfy the cravings of this emotional nature they know they have other resources, the drama, for instance, and poetry, where there is little or no persuasion to positive and immediate action.

Pulpit oratory is peculiarly apt to be of the emotional type. If religion is a matter of sentiment, of the feelings purely, there certainly can be no objection to this. But people are beginning to demand a reason for everything they do, and to suspect any religious movement,