570 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River of Mr. Davis was very admirable. There was humor, there was sarcasm, there was exquisite irony, there were flashes of wit, there was an outburst of corosive scorn and indignation, that were wonderfully artistic and effective. At times a felicity of illustration would arrest your attention, and a great outburst of high and ennobling eloquence would thrill you with the most pleasurable emotions. ‘The taste was exceedingly fine, and, from beginning to end, the working of a highly cultivated, refined, graceful, and elegant mind was manifest. There were passages delivered with high dramatic art that would have electrified any audience on earth. If that speech had been delivered before an Athenian audience in the days of Pericles, in Rome in the day when Cicero thundered forth his burning and sonorous eloquence, or in Westminster Hall, with Burke and Fox and Sheridan among the auditors, the speaker would have received their loudest acclaims, and his fame would have gone down the ages as one of those rarely gifted men who know well how to use their native speech and to play with the touch of a master on that grand instrument, the human heart. “We could refer at length, if opportunity allowed, to the scheme of his argument, to his magnificent peroration, in which passion and imagination swept the audience and led them cap- tive at the will of the magician; to the exquisitely apposite illustrations, now quaint and humorous, and then delicate and pathetic, drawn with admirable art from history and poetry and the Sacred Truth—to these and other points we might refer. But how can words, empty words, reproduce the glowing elo- quence and entrancing power of the human voice when that voice is one while soft as Apollo’s lute, then resonant as the blast of a bugle under the influence of deep passion How can human language bring back a forgotten strain or convey an exact impression made by the tongue of fire when burdened with a majestic eloquence ?” From time to time Mr. Davis delivered other addresses on literary, historical, and political subjects. Especially notable were those on the death of General Lee and of President Davis. In the third volume of Southern Literature, Dr. Alphonso Smith, a competent and severe critic, attributes to Mr. Davis the rare power of the “Choice word and measured phrase above the reach Of ordinary men.” “He brought,” says Dr. Smith, “an interpretative imagina- Peace Restored 571 “aeine esha epee that he discussed ; he visualized ized the events he sought t had that rarest of gifts—the feeling a re g for the right in t — = There was no strained after-effect, a his sie a : — flexible. He could be dignified without being aan , - playful without being light.” According him great — ; . an orator, Dr. Smith adds: “His power over an audi- 1d not rest merely on oratorical gifts, but rather upon the high moral ial ee gS : in his daily life.” and civic ideals which he exemplified fered him by Governor Vance in Januar a to the office of Chief Justice, his RE isle Brn, a te ages Court when, on the 19th of October, 1915, it — “es : _ of him. The occasion of the presentation "eet e, an Capt. S. A. Ashe delivered an eloquent and