"Watch the tongue," is a very
old precept, and a most true one. I do not want to discourage any
of you from your Demosthenes, and your studies of the niceties of
language, and all that. Believe me, I value that as much as any of
you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a proper thing, for
every human creature to know what the implement which he uses in
communicating his thoughts is, and how to make the very utmost of it.
I want you to study Demosthenes, and know all his excellencies. At the
same time, I must say that speech does not seem to me, on the whole,
to have turned to any good account.
Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker if it is not the truth that
he is speaking? Phocion, who did not speak at all, was a great deal
nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter.) He used to tell
the Athenians--"You can't fight Philip. You have not the slightest
chance with him. He is a man who holds his tongue; he has great
disciplined armies; he can brag anybody you like in your cities here;
and he is going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object:
and he will infallibly beat any kind of men such as you, going
on raging from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense.
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