File:Abraham Lincoln, his story (1918) (14597419080).jpg

Identifier: abrahamlincolnhi2674scov (find matches)
Title: Abraham Lincoln, his story
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Scoville, Samuel, b. 1872
Subjects: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Presidents
Publisher: Philadelphia : American Sunday-School Union
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library

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as a speaker. AtYale University the writer studied elocutionunder Prof. Mark Bailey, who had taught hisfather before him. Prof. Bailey first heardLincoln speak when he was stumping NewEngland for Fremont. He was so impressedwith Lincolns power that he followed him fromtown to town to hear him. Finally he succeeded in having a talk withhim and asked him to explain his success as aspeaker. Well, all I know, said Lincoln, isthat when neighbors would come to my fathershouse and talk to father in language I did notunderstand, I would become offended some-times and I would find myself going to bedthat night unable to sleep. I bounded it onthe north, south, east, and west until I hadcaught the idea, and then I said it to myselfand when I said it, I used the language I woulduse when talking to the boys on the street. That was one of the secrets of Lincolns ora-tory—the use of the small word. He neverused a big word when a little one would do. Hissentences were usually short and he spoke not
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Barnards Statue of Lincoln. THE SPEAKER 47 to be heard but to be understood. More thanfifty per cent, of the words used in his greatspeeches are words of one syllable. He wouldsay, I dug a ditch, instead of, I excavated achannel; I lost out by bad luck, instead of,I was defeated by a fortuitous combinationof circumstances. It is for this reason that heis quoted more than any other American exceptFranklin, another master of short sentences. In the Gettysburg Address, the greatestshort speech in the English language, he usedtwo hundred and seventy-one words. Of theseexactly two hundred are words of one syllable,or almost seventy-four per cent. There arewhole lines of short words, such as: Thatthese dead shall not have died in vain. Thisuse of the short word gives his sentences a forcelike the impact of a bullet. Again, Lincoln was a master in the use ofAnglo-Saxon. We are not a Latin race andthe speaker or the writer who can use languagefrom our Saxon and Viking forebears will al-ways m

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