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DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORATORY AND PROFESSOR OF ORATORY

IN THE OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY ROBERT IRVING FULTON

AND THOMAS CLARKSON TRUEBLOOD

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

912.8

The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY PRO-
PRIETORS BOSTON U.S.A.

8955
F974

PREFACE

This volume is the outgrowth of a clearly defined classroom demand for a critical study of the message and methods of the great English and American orators whose utterances have molded public opinion and guided the destinies of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations. Its object is to conserve the student's time by providing, in one book, that which he has heretofore secured by a somewhat erratic study of many volumes.

Our method is that of "precept and example," giving those salient points in the lives and experiences of the orators treated that may serve as a guide to the student of oratory, and furnishing as much of their selected speeches as may be profitably studied and assimilated within the time assigned to this subject in the curriculum. Our plan is to stimulate a study of the sources of oratorical power growing out of the personality, motives, and methods of the orators considered; to set forth the occasion, the circumstances, and the object of some of their most effective speeches; and to reprint such inspiring examples of eloquence as may enrich the mind of the student and strengthen his ideals of public speaking.

Our selection includes twenty-two of the most noted English-speaking orators of the past one hundred and fifty years. We have not undertaken a review of the oratory of a more remote past or a study of the many excellent present-day speakers whose careers have not yet closed. The desire for a consideration of other celebrated debaters and orators, even in the period chosen, may be felt by some of our readers as it is by

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