Excerpt from Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence, Representing the Advance of Civilization, Vol. 9: As Collected in the World's Best Orations From the Earliest Period to the Present Time Roman orators were trained. Although there always have been numbers of itinerant elocutionists, giving readings and pick ing up pupils on the highways and byways, - and though most of our colleges have Chairs of rhetoric, more or less worthily filled, yet these instructors have been of little service to oratory, save, perhaps, in the matter of voice production; for American orators are anything but academic or theatrical. They have arisen to satisfy a local need, and have been trained by local conditions. As at Athens the budding oratorical genius was inspired by the great orations delivered before the Citizens assembled in the Pnyx, so the young American orator has his pulses stirred and his ambi tion roused by the stump speeches Of political meetings and barbe cues and as the Greek youth Obtained his first practice in the heated discussions of the Agora, so the Yankee boy receives his first training in the Debating Society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.