It is a remarkable thing that there is neither wit nor humor in any of the immortal speeches that have fallen from the lips of man.  To find a joke in Webster would be an offense.  The only things which Ingersoll wrote that will live are his oration at his brother’s grave and his famous “The Past Rises before Me like a Dream.”  But in neither of these productions of this genius of jesters is there a single trace of wit.

There is not a funny sally in all Burke’s speeches.  Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, his first and second inaugurals, his speech beginning the Douglas campaign, and his Cooper Union address in New York, are perhaps the only utterances of his that will endure.

Yet this greatest of story-tellers since AEsop did not deface one of these great deliverances with story or any form of humor.

The reason for this is found in the whole tendency of human thought and feeling—­in the whole melancholy history of the race—­where tears and grief, the hard seriousness of life and the terrible and speedy certainty of our common fate of suffering and of death, make somber the master-cord of existence.  And the great orator must reflect the deeper soul of his hearers.

So all the immortal things are serious, even sad.

It is so with speech—­I mean the speech that affects the convictions and understanding of men.  I am excluding now that form of speech which belongs to the same class, though not of so high an order, as the theatrical exhibition.

Excepting only Lincoln, the Middle West has produced no greater man than Oliver P. Morton; and few men in our history have had greater power upon an audience both in the immediate and permanent effect of his speeches than did Indiana’s great Senator.  It is related of him that while a very young man he made a speech so rich in humor and scintillant of wit that it attracted the attention of the whole commonwealth.

Morton, however, was not pleased or flattered.  He was alarmed.  He feared that what he knew to be his weighty abilities would be held lightly by his fellow citizens.  From that time on this Cromwell of the forum never “told a story” or attempted to amuse his hearers in any way.

Of course, if your mental armory is naturally heavily stocked with the various forms of fun, you are not to be blamed for employing the weapons with which Nature has equipped you and which Nature has peculiarly fitted you to use—­although Morton deliberately let them rust.  But, generally speaking, it is a distinct descent from the high plane of your address to excite the laughter of your audience.  When you do so, you confess that you are not able to hold the attention of your hearers by the sustained and unbroken strength of your argument.  You admit that you are either so dull in your thought or indifferent in your convictions that you know you are wearying your auditors and must rest them by some mental diversion.

Where there is an earnestness of thought (and earnestness is only another name for seriousness) there will always be the same quality in manner—­an impressiveness in bearing and delivery.  This is inconsistent with merriment of delivery, which robs speech of a certain weight and intrinsic worth.  It is also inconsistent with the voice of storm and the hurricane manner.