y my conviction.
(Hear, hear.) There is very great necessity indeed of getting a little
more silent than we are. It seems to me the finest nations of the
world--the English and the American--are going all away into wind
and tongue. (Applause and laughter.) But it will appear sufficiently
tragical by-and-bye, long after I am away out of it. Silence is the
eternal duty of a man. He wont get to any real understanding of
what is complex, and, what is more than any other, pertinent to his
interests, without maintaining silence. "Watch the tongue," is a very
old precept, and a most true one. I do not want to discourage any
of you from your Demosthenes, and your studies of the niceties of
language, and all that. Believe me, I value that as much as any of
you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a proper thing, for
every human creature to know what the implement which he uses in
communicating his thoughts is, and how to make the very utmost of it.
I want you to study Demosthenes, and know all his excellencies. At the
same time, I must say that speech does not seem to me, on the whole,
to have turned to any good account.

Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker if it is not the truth that
he is speaking? Phocion, who did not speak at all, was a great deal
nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter.) He used to tell
the Athenians--"You can't fight Philip. You have not the slightest
chance with him. He is a man who holds his tongue; he has great
disciplined armies; he can brag anybody you like in your cities here;
and he is going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object:
and he will infallibly beat any kind of men such as you, going
on raging from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense."
Demosthenes said to him one day--"The Athenians will get mad some day
and kill you." "Yes," Phocion says, "when they are mad; and you as
soon as they get sane again." (Laughter.)

It is also told about him going to Messina on some deputation that
the Athenians wanted on some kind of matter of an intricate and
contentious nature, that Phocion went with some story in his mouth to
speak about. He was a man of few words--no unveracity; and after he
had gone on telling the story a certain time there was one burst of
interruption. One man interrupted with something he tried to answer,
and then another; and, finally, the people began bragging and bawling,
and no end of debate, till it ended in the want of power in the