Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/14



HE present work, as its title implies, is devoted exclusively to Modern Eloquence. Its publishers have aimed to supply the reading public with the best After-Dinner Speeches, Lectures, and Occasional Addresses delivered in this country, or abroad, during the past century. In this respect the Library of Modern Eloquence may be said to cover a field peculiarly its own. The orations of Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, Webster and other noted orators may be found in every well-equipped public library, and there have been published, from time to time, oratorical anthologies containing gems of eloquence culled from the speeches of standard orators of all countries and of all ages; but this is the first attempt to preserve unabridged and in lasting form the best occasional oratory of recent times.

"Modern Eloquence" is in fact a cyclopædia of the choicest wit and wisdom embodied in the best speeches of the century. Speeches are given complete, and there is no collection of later oratory that surpasses this work either in scope or scholarship. Indeed, there is no other collection devoted exclusively to occasional oratory.

The Editors have adhered strictly to the plan of excluding all speeches that cannot properly be classed under the head of oratorical literature. For this reason they have discarded Parliamentary speeches, and all other speeches delivered in the heat of debate, as well as addresses that were found to be fragmentary or unsatisfactory. No address has been included that bears evidence of loose construction and confusion of ideas. The speeches selected possess in some degree what Carlyle termed "the white sunlight of potent words." They range from the humorous after-dinner speech to the eloquent oration and classic lecture. In the list of contents will be found masterpieces in every department of modern eloquence—model after-dinner speeches, by such