When he sat down the friends of Lincoln regretted that this homely
countryman was to be asked to "say a few words," since they felt that
whatever he might say would be a decided anticlimax. The few words that
he did utter are the immortal "Gettysburg speech," by far the shortest
great oration on record. Edward Everett afterward remarked,
"I wish I could have produced in two hours the effect that Lincoln
produced in two minutes." The tremendous effect of that speech could
have been produced in no other way than by the power of simplicity,
which permits the compression of more thought into a few words than
any other style-form. All rhetoric is more or less windy.
The quality of a simple style is that in order to be anything at all it
must be solid metal all the way through.
The Bible, the greatest literary production in the world as atheists and
Christians alike admit, is our supreme example of the wonderful power
of simplicity, and it more than any other one book has served to mould
the style of great writers. To take a purely literary passage, what could
be more affecting, yet more simple, than these words from Ecclesiastes?
From "Ecclesiastes.
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