Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/394

 Sergeant Smith Prentiss. With bloody hands he tore ornaments from their persons, and the shrines from their altars; he tortured them to discover hidden treasure; he slew them that he might search, even in their wretched throats, for concealed gold. Well might the miserable Indians imagine that a race of evil deities had come among them more bloody and relentless than those who presided over their own sanguinary rites. Now, gentle men, turn to the Pilgrims: tempted also by the glowing descriptions from Raleigh of his El Dorado. Well might his descriptions of the pleasant groves, the tame deer, the singing birds and natural riches in gems and gold have allured them to that smiling land beneath the equinoctial line. But they re sisted the tempting charms. Putting aside considerations of wealth and ease, they ad dressed themselves with high resolution to the accomplishment of vindicating their principles and demonstrating to the world the practicability of civil and religious liberty." I beg to offer these extracts as average specimens of the exuberant fancy and mas terly rhetorical contrasts that accentuated every oratorical effort of Prentiss which it was my happy privilege many times to hear. He, Rufus Choate and Wendell Phillips were the only orators who ever seemed to me to have been exemplars of Daniel Webster's memorable definitions and now historic descriptions of eloquence. "It does not consist in speech. It must exist in the man; in the subject; in the occasion. It comes like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting with spon taneous natural force of volcanic fire." Therein Webster described Prentiss. In beauty of diction, even in conversa tion, or in his simplest address upon the most ordinary motion at the bar, Prentiss remained unexcelled. Even the matchless music of his voice charmed away the logic or truisms of an opponent. His magnetic man ner was not to be described. In referring to

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Chatham did not Lord Chesterfield say, "His success turned more upon manner than matter; for success in oratory turns upon the pivot of manner"? The oratory of Prentiss reminded of the American eagle in full flight with sun-piercing eyes and storm-daring pinions. After I arrived in New Orleans, never was an occasion lost to me of listening to Pren tiss in court, no matter if he only arose to prefer a suggestion. In the winter of 1847 I heard him in fol lowing a speech by Henry Clay, temporar ily in New Orleans. They each addressed a great mass meeting called " in aid of Ire land, desolate with famine." The speech of the great American Commoner was intense ly pathetic, and an eloquent plea; yet it seemed to be forgotten after Prentiss's ad dress, which word-painted the horrors of famine. And the audience spontaneously and impulsively swayed toward the platform that he occupied when he had exclaimed : "You once nobly responded to oppressed Greece and struggling Poland; but within Erin's borders is an enemy more cruel than the Turk; more tyrannical than the Russian : Famine! The only weapon to conquer him is Bread. Load, then, ships with that glorious munition, and in the name of our common humanity wage war agamst the despot Famine." I wondered not that, after he had concluded, the merchants and wellto-do among the auditors again surged toward the platform to vie with each other in pressing cheques and bank-notes upon the treasurer of the Famine fund. What ever of avarice or greed, or of sordid econ omy may have been in the multitude when he began, his eloquent appeals had charmed those human foibles all away, and in their place awarded the Mercy which " blesseth him that gives " as well as " him that takes." A few months later I heard his address at the public reception of the volunteers re turning from General Taylor's Mexican army and passing through New Orleans to