Representative college orations

Foreword

The " Specimen College Orations," contained in an appendix to the editor's "The Rhetoric of Oratory," suggested the publication, in a separate volume, of a larger collection of representative college orations. The sixty-three orations in the present volume will furnish a better opportunity for comparison and a far greater variety of illustrative matter than was possible in the volume first referred to.

Although collections of college orations representing certain sections or organizations have been published from time to time, the present volume is the first to cover the whole field of American college oratory. It would be impossible, of course, to include in a single volume orations from all the colleges, or even from all that are doing good work along oratorical lines; nevertheless, the orations herein contained are, it is believed, fairly representative of our colleges, both individually and collectively.

While this book is intended primarily to furnish selective material for critical analysis by students in the colleges and higher schools, as a companion volume to " The Rhetoric of Oratory," it will also be of interest to the general reader, as indicative of what college students of to-day are thinking and talking about. And, too, many of the orations represent such thoroughness in research and preparation as to give them the stamp of authority: they are therefore worth reading in and for themselves, aside from their use by students of oratorical composition.

I wish to take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to many teachers of oratory, who so kindly

VI FOREWORD

aided me in securing copies of the orations. Indeed, without such cooperation the material for this volume could

hardly have been collated.

E. D. S.

The University of Texas, September, 1909.