The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11,
September, 1858, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858

Author: Various

Release Date: December 14, 2003 [eBook #10456]
[Date last updated: June 15, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 2, ISSUE
11, SEPTEMBER, 1858***

E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Keith M. Eckrich, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--SEPTEMBER, 1858.--NO. XI.

ELOQUENCE.

It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can
speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life.
Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or we boil at different
degrees. One man is brought to the boiling point by the excitement of
conversation in the parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep.
He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a pattypan ebullition. Another requires
the additional caloric of a multitude, and a public debate; a third
needs an antagonist, or a hot indignation; a fourth needs a
revolution; and a fifth, nothing less than the grandeur of absolute
ideas, the splendors and shades of Heaven and Hell.

But because every man is an orator, how long soever he may have been a
mute, an assembly of men is so much more susceptible. The eloquence of
one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking point, and all
others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and
they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased
loquacity on their return to the fireside.

The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better than that of those who
prematurely boil, and who impatiently break the silence before their
time. Our county conventions often exhibit a small-pot-soon-hot style
of eloquence. We are too much reminded of a medical experiment, where
a series of patients are taking nitrous-oxide gas. Each patient, in
turn, exhibits similar symptoms,--redness in the face, volubility,
violent gesticulation, delirious attitudes, occasional stamping