historic bay, beating forever with the muffled oars of Barton
and of Abraham Whipple; here, the humming city of the living;
there, the peaceful city of the dead;--not to these only or
chiefly do we return, but to ourselves as we once were. It is
not the smiling freshmen of the year, it is your own beardless
and unwrinkled faces, that are looking from the windows of
University Hall and of Hope College. Under the trees upon the
hill it is yourselves whom you see walking, full of hopes and
dreams, glowing with conscious power, and "nourishing a youth
sublime;" and in this familiar temple, which surely has never
echoed with eloquence so fervid and inspiring as that of your
commencement orations, it is not yonder youths in the galleries
who, as they fondly believe, are whispering to yonder maids; it
is your younger selves who, in the days that are no more, are
murmuring to the fairest mothers and grandmothers of those
maids.

Happy the worn and weary man and woman in the picture could they
have felt their older eyes still glistening with that earlier
light, and their hearts yet beating with undiminished sympathy
and aspiration. Happy we, brethren, whatever may have been
achieved, whatever left undone, if, returning to the home of our
earlier years, we bring with us the illimitable hope, the
unchilled resolution, the inextinguishable faith of youth.

--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Clip from any source ten anecdotes and state what truths they may be
used to illustrate.

2. Deliver five of these in your own language, without making any
application.

3. From the ten, deliver one so as to make the application before
telling the anecdote.

4. Deliver another so as to split the application.

5. Deliver another so as to make the application after the narration.

6. Deliver another in such a way as to make a specific application
needless.

7. Give three ways of introducing an anecdote, by saying where you heard
it, etc.

8. Deliver an illustration that is not strictly an anecdote, in the
style of Curtis's speech on page 259.

9. Deliver an address on any public character, using the forms
illustrated in this chapter.

10. Deliver an address on some historical event in the same manner.

11. Explain how the sympathies and viewpoint of the speaker will color
an anecdote, a biography, or a historical a