From the Easy Chair, vol 1 | Page 4

to make sure that all was as it seemed;
that these were words actually spoken, and that the orator was Edward
Everett.
The hour and a half were passed. The peroration was upon the speaker's
tongue, closing with an exhortation to old men and old women, young
men and maidens, each in his kind and degree, to come as the waves
come when navies are stranded--to come as the winds come when
forests are rended--to come with heart and hand, with purse and
knitting-needle, with sword and gun, and fight for the Union.
He bowed: the audience clapped for a moment, then rose and bustled
out.
--It was not fair; no, it was not fair. The Easy Chair did not find--how
could it find?--the charm which those of another day remembered. The

oration was an admirable and elaborate address, full of instruction and
truth and patriotism, the work of a remarkably accomplished man of
great public experience. It was written in the plainest language, and did
not contain an obscure word. It was delivered with perfect propriety,
with the confidence that comes from the habit of public speaking, and
with artistic skill of articulation and emphasis. As an illustration of
memory it was remarkable, for it was but the second time that the
address had been spoken. It occupied an hour and a half in the delivery,
and yet the manuscript lay unopened upon the table. Only three or four
times was there any hesitation which reminded the hearer that the
speaker was repeating what he had already written. His power in this
respect has been often mentioned. He is understood to have said that, if
he reads anything once, he can repeat it correctly; but if he has written
it out, he can repeat it exactly and always. This unusual facility secures
to all his addresses a completeness and finish which very few orators
command. He can say exactly what he means, and nothing more, being
never betrayed by confusion or sudden emotion to say, as so many
speakers say, more than they really think.
But, on the other hand, it is doubtful whether all that electric eloquence
by which the hearer is caught up as by a whirlwind and swept onward
at the will of the orator, is not now a tradition in the speeches of the
orator. The glow of feeling, the rush of rhetoric, the fiery burst of
passionate power--the overwhelming impulse which makes senates
adjourn and men spring to arms--were they in the orator or in the
fascinated youth of those who remember the sermon in Brattle Street,
the apostrophe to Lafayette?

AT THE OPERA IN 1864.
It was a strange chance that took the Easy Chair, the other evening, to
the opera in the midst of a terrible war. But there was the scene, exactly
as it used to be. There were the bright rows of pretty women and
smiling men; the white and fanciful opera-cloaks; the gay rich dresses;
the floating ribbons; the marvellous _chevelures_; the pearl-gray, the
dove, and "tan" gloves, holding the jewelled fans and the beautiful
bouquets--the smile, the sparkle, the grace, the superb and irresistible
dandyism that we all know so well in the days of golden youth--they
were all there, and the warm atmosphere was sweet with the thick odor

of heliotrope, the very scent of haute societe.
The house was full: the opera was "Faust," and by one of the exquisite
felicities of the stage, the hero, a mild, ineffective gentleman, sang his
ditties and passionate bursts in Italian, while the poor Gretchen vowed
and rouladed in the German tongue. Certainly nothing is more comical
than the careful gravity with which people of the highest civilization
look at the absurd incongruities of the stage. After the polyglot
love-making, Gretchen goes up steps and enters a house. Presently she
opens a window at which she evidently could not appear as she does
breast high, without having her feet in the cellar. The Italian Faust
rushes, ascends three steps leading to the window, which could not by
any possibility appropriately be found there, and reclines his head upon
the bosom of the fond maid. We all look on and applaud with
"sensation." But ought we not to insist, however, that ladies in the play
shall stand upon the floor, and that the floor in a stately mansion shall
not be two feet below the front door-sill? And ought we not to demand
that Faust shall woo Gretchen in their mother-tongue?
But we, the ludicrous public, who snarl at the carpenter and shoemaker
if the fitness of things be not observed; we, the shrewd critics, who
pillory the luckless painter who dresses a gentleman of the Restoration
in the ruff of James First's court, gaze calmly on the most ridiculous
anachronisms