noted postprandial orators as Joseph H. Choate, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), Chauncey M. Depew, Charles Dickens, and Horace Porter;—model lectures, both humorous and profound, by such celebrities as Matthew Arnold, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William M. Thackeray, and Wendell Phillips;—model occasional addresses, of the most diversified order, by such eminent authors and orators as William Ellery Channing, Rufus Choate, George William Curtis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry van Dyke, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Ruskin, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Charles Sumner and Daniel Webster.
The three general departments are arranged in alphabetical order in accordance with the names of the speakers. The first three volumes are devoted exclusively to after-dinner speeches, and the list of speakers ranges from Charles Francis Adams to Wu Ting-Fang. The succeeding three volumes contain classic and popular lectures, the alphabetical list of lectures ranging from Matthew Arnold to Henry Watterson. The seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes cover the field of occasional addresses. This department includes literary, scientific, commencement, and commemorative addresses, in addition to eulogies and speeches which come under the general classification of occasional oratory. In alphabetical sequence the speakers in this section range from Lyman Abbott to Daniel Webster. The final volume is devoted chiefly to stories and famous passages compiled from thousands of after-dinner speeches, lectures, and occasional addresses which, owing to the exigencies of space, could not be given in the preceding volumes. The analytical index forms the latter portion of the final volume.
The compilation of "Modern Eloquence" has not been easy of accomplishment. It has required extensive research and a large corps of editors and editorial assistants. Many of the addresses included in this library have never before been published in any form whatever, and are printed here, for the first time, from the original manuscripts. These manuscripts have been secured by the publishers of the present work by special arrangement with the speakers and lecturers themselves, or with their legal representatives. They are published exclusively in this collection and are fully pro-
