Every community is cursed with a number of “orators”—men regarded as “eloquent”—“silver tongued” men—fellows who to the common American knack at brandishing the tongue add an exceptional felicity of platitude, a captivating mastery of dog’s-eared sentiment, a copious and obedient vocabulary of eulogium, an iron insensibility to the ridiculous and an infinite affinity to fools. These afflicting Chrysostoms are always lying in wait for an “occasion.” It matters not what it is: a “reception” to some great man from abroad, a popular ceremony like the laying of a corner-stone, the opening of a fair, the dedication of a public building, an anniversary banquet of an ancient and honorable order (they all belong to ancient and honorable orders) or a club dinner—they all belong to clubs and owe dues. But it is in a political convention that they come out particularly strong. By some imperious tradition having the force of unwritten law it is decreed that in these absurd bodies of our fellow citizens no word of sense shall be uttered from the platform; whatever is uttered in set speeches shall be addressed to the meanest capacity present. As a chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, so nothing said by the speakers at a political convention must be above the intellectual reach of the most pernicious idiot having a seat and a vote. I don’t know why it is so. It seems to be thought that if he is not suitably entertained he will not attend the next convention. Here are the opening sentences of the speech in which a man was recently nominated for governor: “Two years ago the Republican party in state and nation marched to imperial triumph. On every hilltop and mountain peak our beacons blazed and we awakened the echoes of every valley with songs of our rejoicings.” And so forth. Now, if I were asked to recast these sentences so that they should conform to the simple truth and be inoffensive to good taste I should say something like this: “Two years ago the Republican party won a general election.” If there is any thing in this inflated rigmarole that is not adequately expressed in my amended statement, what is it? As to eloquence, it will hardly be argued that nonsense, falsehood and metaphors which were old when Rome was young are essential to that. The first man (in early Greece) who spoke of awakening an echo did a felicitous thing. Was it felicitous in the second? Is it felicitous now? As to that military metaphor—the “marching” and so forth—its inventor was as great a fool as any one of the incalculable multitude of his plagiarists. In withdrawing his own name from before a convention, a Californian politician once made a purely military speech of which a single sample passage is all that I shall allow myself the happiness to quote: