Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/134

 Greek word you will not get anything simpler, truer, more poetical; and many others, also, which now look so ram-slang-like and colloquial when printed, another generation will cherish and affect as genuine American and standard. Read some western stump-speech, and though it be untoward and rude enough, there will not fail to be some traits of genuine eloquence, and some original and forcible statement, which will remind you of the great orators of antiquity. I am inclined to read the stump-speeches of the West already rather than the Beauties of our Atlantic orators.

Here is an extract from the speech of a man named Strong, whom the reporter "understood to live somewhere over near the Mississippi, in the mining country. He had a pitcher of whiskey brought into the court room and set on the table before him, from which he drank long and frequently." It was a speech in defence of a member of the Legislative Council of the Territory (Wisconsin), who had shot a fellow-member in a dispute in the Council Chamber. This is a part of his address to the jury: [86]