better one. That sentence is slovenly,--that image is imperfect and
confused. I believe, my young friend, that you have a remarkable power
of reporting what I say; but, if I said that, and that, and that, it
must have been owing to the fact that I caught, in the hurry of the
moment, such expressions as I could command at the moment; and you see
they do not accurately represent the idea that was in my mind." And
thus, Mr. Raymond said, the orator's criticism upon his own speech would
go on,--correction following correction,--until the reporter feared he
would not have it ready for the morning edition of his journal.

Webster had so much confidence in Raymond's power of reporting him
accurately, that, when he intended to make an important speech in the
Senate, he would send a note to him, asking him to come to Washington as
a personal favor; for he knew that the accomplished editor had a rare
power of apprehending a long train of reasoning, and of so reporting it
that the separate thoughts would not only be exactly stated, but the
relations of the thoughts to each other--a much more difficult
task--would be preserved throughout, and that the argument would be
presented in the symmetrical form in which it existed in the speaker's
mind. Then would follow, as of old, the severe scrutiny of the
phraseology of the speech; and Webster would give, as of old, a new
lesson in rhetoric to the accomplished reporter who was so capable of
following the processes of his mind.

The great difficulty with speakers who may be sufficiently clear in
statement and cogent in argument is that turn in their discourse when
their language labors to become figurative. Imagery makes palpable to
the bodily eye the abstract thought seen only by the eye of the mind;
and all orators aim at giving vividness to their thinking by thus making
their thoughts _visible_. The investigation of the process of