rds,
undistinguished speakers before student audiences. It ceased to exist in
1912, but only after the broadening interests of the University began to
attract to Ann Arbor many prominent visitors whose addresses have been
usually given free of charge, while at the same time the multiplication
of other forms of entertainment lessened the attractions of the
traditional lecture course. But an association which, in its day,
brought to Ann Arbor such men as Emerson, Bayard Taylor, Horace Mann,
Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Henry Ward Beecher, Winston Spencer
Churchill, Henry M. Stanley, Wu Ting Fang, and Presidents Harrison,
McKinley, Cleveland, and Wilson, played no minor role in University
life. That the privilege of hearing some of these speakers was not
always properly appreciated is shown by the comments of the editor of
one of the local papers on a lecture by Emerson.

The subject of the lecture was "Human Beauty," rather a singular
subject, it strikes us, from so homely a man as Mr. Emerson. Mr.
Emerson is not a pleasing speaker--in fact, is an awkward speaker,
and yet he demands the utmost attention of every hearer.

With the gradual organization of the Department of Oratory, public
speaking soon came to have a recognized place among student interests,
and eventually inter-collegiate debates and contests were organized to
stimulate student interest. These were first inaugurated by the
Oratorical Association, which, soon after its establishment in 1889,
issued an invitation to neighboring universities to form an Oratorical
Union. This resulted in the Northern Oratorical League, which has long
maintained an annual series of inter-collegiate contests and debates.
The representatives of the University are selected only after several
contests and preliminary debates in the various societies, with an
average of at least fifty candidates participating. Michigan has always
maintained a leading position in this form of undergraduate activity and
of the twenty-nine inter-collegiate contests in which she has taken part
she has won nine first honors and four second honors. The University has
also participated in some sixty-four inter-collegiate debates, of which
she has won forty-two; her nearest rival being Northwestern, with nine
victories. Eleven of these debates were won in succession, and
twenty-four by the unanimous decision of the judges.

This form of inter-collegiate rivalry has been greatly s