Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 42

Before proceeding to the speech itself, I want to say a word or two in relation to its authorship. It will go without saying that the ex-senator who stands responsible for it is not its author. Those of us who chance to be acquainted with the dullness of his mind and the density of his ignorance know very well that his mind never conceived the speech; nor did he fashion the polished and falsely eloquent sentences devoted to so bad a cause. Those of us who served with him in the Constitutional convention of this state painfully remembering the very few occasions on which he sought to express himself upon the floor of that convention hall, can never believe for a moment that he is the author of the speech. Those who were present in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City on the occasion when the President of the United States honored that city and the state with his presence, and who saw this now ex-senator when he addressed that assembly, with hands thrust deep into his pockets, with stomach thrown forward, and head thrown back, and in nasal tones only becoming a retired pugilist—and heard him say in the opening sentence of his speech, "We Americans ain't born to nuthin', but we git there just the same" (Laughter); and who had no better taste than to make the visit of the chief executive of this nation to our state the occasion of a partisan harangue, know very well that he is not the author of this senate speech. He is only the author of this speech in the sense that he has adopted it. This speech is his only in the sense that he bought it. I shall not undertake to describe all the contempt I feel for a man who occupies the high station of a senator of the United States, and who consents to repeat, parrot-like, the bought phrases fashioned by another mind. Jewelry in a swine's snout is as nothing to this.