I think oratory is something that cannot be taught. Undoubtedly a man can learn to be a fair talker. He can by practice learn to present his ideas consecutively, clearly and in what you may call "form," but there is as much difference between this and an oration as there is between a skeleton and a living human being clad in sensitive, throbbing flesh. There are millions of skeleton makers, millions of people who can express what may be called "the bones" of a discourse, but not one in a million who can clothe these bones. You can no more teach a man to be an orator than you can teach him to be an artist or a poet of the first class. When you teach him, there is the same difference between the man who is taught, and the man who is what he is by virtue of a natural aptitude, that there is between a pump and a spring--between a canal and a river--between April rain and water-works. It is a question of capacity and feeling--not of education. There are some things that you can tell an orator not to do. For instance, he should never drink water while talking, because the interest is broken, and for the moment he loses control of his audience. He should never look at his watch for the same reason. He should never talk about himself. He should never deal in personalities. He should never tell long stories, and if he tells any story he should never say that it is a true story, and that he knew the parties. This makes it a question of veracity instead of a question of art. He should never clog his discourse with details. He should never dwell upon particulars--he should touch universals, because the great truths are for all time. If he wants to know something, if he wishes to feel something, let him read Shakespeare. Let him listen to the music of Wagner, of Beethoven, or Schubert. If he wishes to express himself in the highest and most perfect form, let him become familiar with the great paintings of the world--with the great statues--all these will lend grace, will give movement and passion and rhythm to his words. A great orator puts into his speech the perfume, the feelings, the intensity of all the great and beautiful and marvelous things that he has seen and heard and felt. An orator must be a poet, a metaphysician, a logician--and above all, must have sympathy with all. SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. IT was thought at one time by many that science would do away with poetry--that it was the enemy of the imagination. We know now that is not true. We know that science goes hand in hand with imagination. We know that it is in the highest degree poetic and that the old ideas once considered so beautiful are flat and stale. Compare Kepler's laws with the old Greek idea that the planets were boosted or pushed by angels. The more we know, the more beauty, the more poetry we find. Ignorance is not the mother of the poetic or artistic.