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only occasion when the present writer ever addressed a typically Southern rural audience --at the Spartansburg, South Carolina, celebration, in 1881-it was impossible not to be struck with a certain eagerness in the whole body of hearers, a sort of greediness, it might almost be said, to reach all that was to be had from the speakers, beyond anything ordinarily to be found at the North or West.
It was an attitude and bearing hardly compatible with the general reading of a daily paper.
So far, indeed, it illustrated what Mr. Justice --had said; and yet it is doubtful, as has been already remarked, whether his opinion was quite correct.
The way in which the daily press operates as an obstacle to good public speaking is quite different from this.
When the art of verbatim reporting was first brought to perfection, the reports became so admirable as to be a great encouragement to the orator.
It was a perfect delight for him to see the thoughts which had perhaps never even been written out appear in type before his eyes.
It was a wonder, like the phonograph.
The same thing sometimes occurs now, but only rarely, and often by special arrangement.
The daily press now attempts so much, has such a vast variety of
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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