Turner County Herald

Horace Greeley as an Orator.

Mr. Greeley was not an orator in any scholastic sense. He had a poor and somewhat squeaking voice, he knew nothing of gestures, and he could not take an orator's pose, which adds such emphasis sometimes to the matter and argument to be set forth. Not all his years of practice on the platform and on public occasions ever changed his habits and methods as a speaker, and he ended as poorly equipped in the respects named for the vocation as when he began.

But he had one prime quality, without which all the others are exploited in vain. He invariably had something to say, and he said it in such clear and wholesome English with such sincerity that he was an orator in spite of all the rules.

To state it briefly, of all the eminent speakers I have introduced and more than once-there was not one who gave better satisfaction, different and notable as they were, than Horace Greeley. As a consequence, he came to me oftenest and wore the best. We might or might not agree with some of his peculiar premises, as when he says, 'the moment a drop of alcohol is received into the human stomach that moment the stomach recognizes a deadly enemy,' but he set his audience thinking and illuminated his theme,--Joel Benton in Harper's Magazine.