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THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 A MANUAL FOR COURSE I IN PUBLIC SPEAKING 
 
 BY 
 
 RAY KEESLAR IMMEL 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING 
 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 
 
 GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 
 
 Ann Arbor, Michigan 
 
 192 i 
 
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 Copyright, 1921 
 GEORGE WAHR 
 
 OCT 24 M 
 
 THE ANN ARBOR PRESS 
 ANN ARBOR 
 
 §)C!.A624942 
 
To the countless generations of beginners in the art 
 of Public Speaking, past, present and future, and es- 
 pecially to those with whom it has been my happy 
 privilege to work in the friendly relation of teacher 
 and pupil, this book is dedicated 
 
 The Author. 
 
FOREWORD — TO THE TEACHER 
 
 Why does the average student elect Course I in 
 Public Speaking? What should Course I do for the 
 student? The answer to these two questions will be., 
 an answer to the much discussed question of the con- 
 tent of Course I. 
 
 An extended inquiry among students of Course I 
 during a period of over ten years has convinced me 
 that what the average thinking student wants and 
 expects of Course I is just about what he ought to 
 have, and that consequently the two questions may 
 be answered as one. The average student evidently 
 wishes to be able to stand up before a group of peo- 
 ple and speak, with reasonable assurance that what he 
 is doing is being done in the right way, and without 
 the fear that he may be making himself ridiculous. He 
 wishes to learn to speak clearly and persuasively. He 
 is not interested primarily, or even secondarily, in 
 theories of speech as such. He simply wants to learn 
 to express himself before others with reasonable ef- 
 fectiveness and with confidence. This is the whole 
 of it. 
 
 A small minority of the class will be interested in 
 the theory because they expect to teach the subject, 
 but this group is too small to warrant organizing the 
 course to suit their peculiar interests. Moreover, ad- 
 vanced courses can be organized for such students 
 
6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 when they have acquired a reasonable degree of skill 
 in actual platform work, without which skill no stu- 
 dent should be encouraged to specialize as a teacher 
 of the subject. A large proportion of students never 
 take courses beyond the first or second. A great ma- 
 jority want the work for purely practical reasons. Is 
 it not reasonable that the material of Course I should 
 be adapted to the needs of this great majority of the 
 class ? 
 
 But, it may be objected, does it necessarily follow 
 that what the student wants is what he ought to have ? 
 Not necessarily, as a general principle. But, in this 
 particular case, I believe that the average student has 
 stated his needs correctly. He wants to learn to 
 speak well. Why should he not be taught to do so? 
 Why load him up with a lot of theory? It is surely a 
 full sized job for one or two courses simply to teach 
 him to speak well. It is surely a task worthy of being 
 undertaken. There are plenty of other courses in 
 every university, college or high school, where he may 
 pursue pure science, knowledge for its own sake. If 
 his peculiar aims in seeking a college education make 
 necessary a knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology, 
 there are departments where these may be studied. If 
 it is Psychology that he needs, there are courses where 
 this is taught by specialists. He can study the physics 
 of sound in the Physics department. But there is 
 only one place where he can learn to speak under spe- 
 cialized instruction and criticism, and that is in the 
 Public Speaking department. 
 
FOREWORD 7 
 
 A teacher of Public Speaking should by all means 
 know something of the anatomy and physiology and 
 physics of the vocal mechanism. He should be ac- 
 quainted with the psychology of the speech process. 
 This knowledge is an aid to intelligent teaching and 
 criticism. But this knowledge is not, to any great 
 extent, necessary to the practical work of the speaker. 
 It takes up time that might much better be spent in 
 practice and in criticism, and hence, since there are 
 only a certain number of days for a given course, its 
 presentation and elaboration not only divide the at- 
 tention and interest of the student but keep him away 
 from the primary and essential business of the course, 
 namely, platform practice. 
 
 We teachers sometimes lose our sense of perspec- 
 tive. We get to thinking that ours is the only subject 
 in the curriculum. We get an over-exalted notion of 
 our work. We must remember that most of our stu- 
 dents do not study Public Speaking as an end in it- 
 self but as an aid in their chosen work. I do not be- 
 lieve that we Public Speaking people are any worse 
 offenders in this than teachers in other departments. 
 But I do believe that if every teacher would try to 
 remember that his particular subject is not the only 
 one taught, and that the greater number of his stu- 
 dents do not intend to become specialists in his par- 
 ticular line, but only wish to get what that line has to 
 contribute to their general culture and preparation for 
 life, — I say if each teacher would remember this, I 
 believe that many a student would find it easier to get 
 something of definite value out of a given course. 
 
8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 On the other hand, I would not give courses in 
 Public Speaking without any theory at all. The prac- 
 tice work of a course needs a guide. But there is a 
 difference between giving a theory of delivery as a 
 basis for practice and setting out to give a complete 
 theory of speech. The purpose of this book is to in- 
 dicate what I believe to be the proper theory for 
 Course I and to furnish a set of practice assignments 
 for a class of 24 students meeting three times a week 
 for one semester. 
 
 The book has grown out of something over ten 
 years of experience in Course I, most of it at the Uni- 
 versity of Michigan. It is, of course, a statement of 
 the work of Course I as we conduct it here. It does 
 not pretend to be the last word on the subject; it is 
 written from the point of view of our department and 
 its methods. Others will have other standards and 
 other methods. This is offered to any who may find 
 it useful. 
 
 To the best of my belief, there is nothing new in 
 this book. If it has any merit, that merit consists in 
 what is left out, and not in any new contribution to 
 the field. It is an attempt to simplify the work of 
 Course I for the student and for the teacher. A few 
 words of explanation are offered : 
 
 (1) With us, Course I is purely a course in de- 
 livery. We believe that the problems involved in de- 
 livery are sufficient to take up the whole time of such 
 a course, and that if a student takes only one course 
 it should be a course in delivery. A student needs 
 
FOREWORD 9 
 
 special supervision and criticism in delivery. Plence, 
 if only one course is to be taken it should cover the 
 ground that is least easily covered without a teacher. 
 (2) The practice is based on memorized selections. 
 We at Michigan are convinced that the problems of 
 delivery are far more easily and successfully met with 
 the aid of committed practice speeches than with ex- 
 temporaneous ones. A really extemporaneous speech 
 can never be given twice alike; a committed speech 
 can be. In calling attention to faults of delivery it 
 is an advantage to be able to have the speech, or a sec- 
 tion of it, given over again, and thus to have the fault 
 repeated and made plain. The fault can thus be seen, 
 heard and known, and the remedy can be applied. 
 Then, too, the student, freed from the necessity of or- 
 dering his own ideas under particularly difficult con- 
 ditions, can give his whole attention to the problems of 
 delivery. But since the extemporaneous speech is the 
 most practical type for the average person, an at- 
 tempt is made to supplement these committed assign- 
 ments with extemporaneous assignments, to the end 
 that the principles learned and practiced in the com- 
 mitted work may be used as far as possible in the more 
 practical type of extemporaneous speaking. 
 
 In regard to the choice of selections for practice, we 
 have tried everything from Demosthenes to Wilson, 
 and have found that the types represented here are 
 the most satisfactory. The great orations are often 
 too formal and too ponderous for students whose 
 speaking relations will for the most part always be on 
 
io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 a commonplace level. Then, too, they are usually 
 on subjects that have little or no relation to the stu- 
 dent's interests and that are often absolutely unknown 
 to him. The speeches here given have a universal ap- 
 peal, have a goodly amount of humor, are, for the 
 most part, conversational and easy in style, and make 
 an appeal to student interest. The student can get 
 into the spirit of them easily. Given in toto, as they 
 are, he can grasp the whole thought and know ex- 
 actly what his assignment means in relation to the 
 whole speech. This is not always true of "selec- 
 tions". The writer believes that any suspicion of 
 "propaganda", especially religious, will be dispelled 
 by noting that Ingersoll and Bryan stand side by side. 
 
 (3) Lastly, there is an attempt to stress what the 
 writer believes are the things of fundamental impor- 
 tance to the student of Course I: (a) sense of com- 
 munication, (b) physical vitality, (c) enthusiasm, 
 (d) earnestness, (e) platform appearance, (f) ges- 
 ture, (g) modulations of quality, force and pitch, (h) 
 accurate and distinct pronunciation, (i) rate and 
 grouping, and (j) emphasis. All of these have been 
 simplified in their treatment, and the discussion limited 
 to the most practical considerations. 
 
 Course I must have a teacher. Consequently, pre- 
 supposing a teacher, exercises have been omitted. No 
 two teachers use the same ones anyway. There are 
 so many books that contain good exercises that it 
 seems unnecessary to add exercises here. This is a 
 guide, a manual for Course I, not an exhaustive text 
 
FOREWORD j i 
 
 book of theory. Short lists of books for collateral 
 reading are given after chapters on theory, and the 
 teacher can use these as freely as he desires. Good 
 exercises are to be found in almost any standard text. 
 I have thought it sufficient here to stress the things 
 upon which exercise is to be given. If the teacher be- 
 lieves that a more elaborate statement of the four ele- 
 ments, quality, force, pitch and time, is desirable, I 
 believe that Fulton and Trueblood's "Practical Elo- 
 cution" contains the best complete statement of these 
 subjects in print. In the twenty-eight years that this 
 book has been in the hands of students it has not 
 been improved upon as a text on elocution, and many 
 of the books in this particular field have been based up- 
 on it, sometimes more freely than the authors have in- 
 dicated. We use this book at Michigan, with this 
 present manual as a guide. Professor C. H. Wool- 
 bert's recent book "Fundamentals of Speech", pub- 
 lished by Harpers, contains the most recent and best 
 treatment of the subject from the psychological point 
 of view. A large portion of Professor Winans' "Pub- 
 lic Speaking", published by The Century Co., deals 
 with delivery, and is one of the best books in the field. 
 If this manual helps to clear the air somewhat and 
 offers a solution of the question of what to teach in 
 Course I, if the practice speeches appended to the 
 chapters on theory prove of value to other teachers as 
 they have to us at Michigan, if anything has been 
 added to the effectiveness of instruction in the elemen- 
 tary course and any contribution made to the joys of 
 
ia THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 the student in mastering one of the most interesting 
 and fascinating activities in the world, then this mod- 
 est book will have served its purpose. 
 
 I wish to express here my especial appreciation of 
 the many helps and hints I have had from Professor 
 Thomas C. Trueblood in whose department I have for 
 ten years taught Course I, and to whose book, "Prac- 
 tical Elocution", I am deeply indebted for my first and 
 best knowledge of the Elements of Vocal Expression; 
 to Professor R. D. T. Hollister under whom I first 
 pursued Course I and to whose inspiration I owe a 
 large part of my interest in this subject; to my col- 
 leagues, Professor Louis Eich, Mr. George Wilner, 
 Mr. John H. Hathaway and Mr. Carl Brandt, who 
 have contributed much to the formation of my ideas 
 on this subject through many friendly and interest- 
 ingly frank discussions ; and lastly to Mr. G. Arthur 
 Andrews, now Principal of Grand Rapids High 
 School and President of Grand Rapids Junior Col- 
 lege, in collaboration with whom I first worked out a 
 formulation of the content of Course I. 
 
 Ray K. Immsi,, 
 Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
 
 July, 1921. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword — To the Teacher 5 
 
 Chapter I. The Nature of a Good Speech 15 
 
 Chapter II. Fundamental Qualities of Delivery. 23 
 
 Chapter III. Formal Qualities of Delivery — 
 
 Action 34 
 
 Chapter IV. Formal Qualities of Delivery — 
 
 Voice 49 
 
 Standard for the Course 66 
 
 Schedule of Speeches for the Semester 68 
 
 Suggestions for Memorizing 71 
 
 "Acres of Diamonds" 73 
 
 — Russeu, H. Conweu, 
 
 "The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child" 109 
 
 — Robert G. Ingersoix 
 
 "A Tribute to Ebon C. Ingersoll" 162 
 
 — Robert G. Ingersoix 
 
 "The Prince of Peace" 165 
 
 — Wileiam Jennings Bryan 
 
 "Sour Grapes". . 196 
 
 — ■ Edward A. Ott 
 
 "The Race Problem in the South" 238 
 
 — Henry W. Grady 
 
 "The New South" 263 
 
 — Henry W. Grady 
 
 "The Rise and Fall of the Mustache" 273 
 
 — Robert J. Burdette 
 
THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE NATURE OF A GOOD SPEECH 
 
 Public Speaking a Useful Art. We frequently 
 hear people say, "Public speaking is a fine art." Of 
 course what most of them mean is that public speak- 
 ing is a very difficult and intricate art, requiring a 
 high degree of skill. They usually mean, too, that the 
 orator, like the poet, is "born, not made". But allow- 
 ing for those w T ho thus use the term "fine art" in a 
 loose sense, there are still many who regard public 
 speaking as an end in itself, as an adornment of life, 
 as a thing which is its own excuse for being. They 
 think of it in connection with music, poetry, paint- 
 ing and sculpture, and they think of studying it as 
 one studies these fine arts. 
 
 Now public speaking, as distinguished from public 
 reading, is not a fine art at all. It is a useful art. It 
 is not an end in itself, nor its own excuse for being. It 
 does not exist primarily to adorn life nor to give aes- 
 thetic pleasure. It has a very useful function, and is 
 to be studied as one studies the arts of carpentering, 
 brick laying, book making and the other thousand use- 
 ful arts. It is to be practiced just as they are prac- 
 ticed. Consequently, a fair degree of skill is possi- 
 ble to anyone of normal intelligence. Plain public 
 
16 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 speaking, such as we are to study here, does not re- 
 quire inherited "genius". 
 
 A Purpose Implied. Public speaking implies a pur- 
 pose. It has an end to which it itself is but the means. 
 One does not properly say, "Go to now, I will make 
 a speech," unless it be at a banquet or some similar 
 function where people are gathered to while away an 
 hour and to escape from the serious business of life. 
 What he properly says is : "I wish to raise five hun- 
 dred dollars for the Y. M. C. A." or "I wish to help 
 elect John Jones", or "I wish to explain the Nebular 
 Hypothesis", or "I wish to make these people believe 
 in a League of Nations". Then he makes a speech to 
 reach the desired end. 
 
 The musician, the poet, the painter or the sculptor 
 practices quite a different activity. He has some- 
 thing within that seeks expression, and he creates a 
 beautiful song, poem, picture or statue to express this 
 inner idea of perfection. As a rule he creates his 
 work of art with no idea of its usefulness. He does 
 not raise the question, "Of what use will this be?" 
 Such a question is beside the point. If his work is 
 beautiful, if it gives aesthetic pleasure, he is, and has 
 a right to be, satisfied. It is not a part of his busi- 
 ness to work out practical solutions of the world's 
 problems. It is not a part of his business to conduct 
 human affairs. His task is the expression of the 
 beautiful. His work is, in a very real sense, the high- 
 est adornment of life. It is its own excuse for being. 
 It has no more connection with practical utility than 
 a violet has. 
 
 The public speaker, on the other hand, is concerned 
 
NATURE OF A SPEECH 17 
 
 with practical solutions of problems; he is concerned 
 with the conduct of human affairs. Consequently 
 his art falls into the class of all arts that concern 
 themselves with the problems of living, with the so- 
 called practical problems. And if we liken the cre- 
 ated beauty of the fine arts to the natural beauty of 
 the violet, we may without apology liken the utili- 
 tarian value of public speaking to the utilitarian value 
 of the potato. And the potato is judged, not by the 
 beauty of its foliage, but by the weight and quality of 
 the food it produces. 
 
 A young lady once wrote to the author, stating that 
 she wished to give up her work as a stenographer and 
 become an "orator" and asking what her prospects 
 would be. When asked what ideas she wished to con- 
 tribute to the world's betterment, she replied that she 
 didn't have anything definite in mind but "just thought 
 she would like to become an orator". The case is 
 typical of many. Of course each prospective speaker 
 must, as Mr. Russell Conwell points out, "speak his 
 piece as a boy if he would become an orator as a 
 man", but he who has no more definite purpose in 
 view than "to become an orator" can never be one. He 
 must have something to say. He must have a desire 
 to accomplish specific things, to achieve definite re- 
 sults. Then he uses the art of speech making to reach 
 his goal, just as a carpenter uses his art to build a 
 house. 
 
 This distinction between fine and useful arts is a 
 highly important one. It is necessary to understand, 
 right at the outset, the nature of the study and prac- 
 tice upon which we are entering. Otherwise we may 
 
1 8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 go in the wrong direction, do much unnecessary and 
 even undesirable work, set up false standards and in 
 the end only find ourselves far on a road that leads 
 nowhere. 
 
 The Purpose of Public Speaking. What, then, 
 is the purpose of public speaking, if it must have a 
 utilitarian purpose ? It is simply this : to arouse 
 in the audience ideas and thoughts, points of 
 view, aims, aspirations and definite desires. The pur- 
 pose may be simply to make something plain, as when 
 a teacher demonstrates a problem in Physics; it may 
 be to convince people of the truth of a proposition, as 
 when one addresses an audience on the thesis that the 
 Kaiser and his associates deliberately and wilfully 
 planned and started the Great War; it may be to per- 
 suade them to do something as when one speaks to 
 raise money for the Red Cross ; but always, aside from 
 banquet speeches and certain humorous lectures such 
 as Burdettes' "Rise and Fall of the Mustache" whose 
 end is entertainment, the purpose is to convey ideas, 
 convictions or desires clearly and convincingly. If it 
 is too much to hope that the audience will be con- 
 verted, at least they will be favorably impressed and 
 will go away thinking about what has been said. 
 
 Methods and Rides. Keeping in mind the pur- 
 pose what of the methods to be employed by the 
 speaker? Clearly the method is less important than 
 the result. One might almost say that the method 
 may be anything so long as the proper result is at- 
 tained. Who cares whether the cabinet maker uses 
 the saw with his left hand or with his right so long 
 
NATURE OF A SPEECH 19 
 
 as the bookcase is a good one and nicely put together ? 
 Methods of speaking may and do vary greatly with 
 different speakers with uniformly good results. No 
 hard and fast method or set of rules can be laid down. 
 For one no sooner ties up to an arbitrary method and 
 says "thus you must do to be successful" than a 
 speaker comes along who violates all the rules, takes 
 the audience by storm, achieves his purpose glori- 
 ously and leaves the rule maker wondering how he 
 does it. 
 
 The Only Safe Principle. There is just one safe 
 principle: Use any methods or means that will help 
 convey your message, and, so far as is humanly pos- 
 sible, do nothing that calls attention away from the 
 tli on ght. Any position, gesture, voice, or style of 
 speech that aids in attaining the end is good ; and any 
 one of these that calls attention to itself, and conse- 
 quently away from the end of the speech, is bad. The 
 reason is obvious ; the speech is not an end in itself, 
 and so should not call attention to itself. It is a 
 means to an end, and the attention of the listener 
 should be directed to that end, first, last and all the 
 time. Just so far as the attention of the audience is 
 diverted to the odd gesture, peculiar attitude, or "dif- 
 ferent" voice of the speaker, just that far the audi- 
 ence cannot be attending to the business of the hour, 
 the point that the speaker is trying to make. 
 
 Methods, then, must be judged by their results, 
 never by themselves. An effective method for one 
 speaker may not be effective for another. What we 
 want is results, let the method be what it may. In 
 
2o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 succeeding chapters general principles that experience 
 has shown are best adapted to achieve results will be 
 discussed. It is necessary to say here only that the 
 best method hides itself completely behind the content 
 of the speech. 
 
 Standards of Judgment. Finally, what are the 
 standards by which we may judge the success of a de- 
 livered speech? From what has gone before it must 
 be plain that a speech can be judged only by its re- 
 sults. It follows that some common standards do not 
 properly apply. It is not proper to ask, for example, 
 "Were the gestures graceful?" Graceful or not, the 
 only pertinent question is this : "Did the gestures aid 
 in driving home the message of the speech?" It is 
 not proper to ask "Was the speaker's voice musical ?" 
 That question might properly be asked concerning the 
 singer. The only question here is "Did his voice reach 
 everyone, and did it have that sympathetic and per- 
 suasive quality that makes it easy for the audience to 
 listen to the point presented ?" 
 
 There is such a thing as too much gracefulness, too 
 musical a quality, too artistic pose. These things may 
 call attention to themselves. Many a person may be 
 heard to remark, on the way home from a lecture, 
 "What an impressive presence he had !" "What a won- 
 derful voice !" "What graceful gestures !" Now these 
 remarks are serious reflections on the speaker. He 
 was not there to show his manly presence, his wonder- 
 ful voice, his graceful gestures. This was no con- 
 cert or opera. It was a speech. It had a definite 
 purpose. If it had been successful the audience would 
 
NATURE OF A SPEECH 21 
 
 never have remarked upon these tools of the trade. 
 The carpenter does not leave his saw sticking in the 
 staircase, however fine the saw. The audience should 
 be talking of the speaker's ideas, not of his way of 
 presenting them. 
 
 There is probably no better way of judging a 
 speech than to listen to the remarks made by the audi- 
 ence after it is over. If they go away talking of the 
 speaker's method, however complimentary their re- 
 marks are intended to be, there is something wrong 
 with the delivery of the speech. For a good speech 
 conceals both method and speaker behind the mes- 
 sage. If, on the other hand, some are convinced, 
 others are driven to defend their old ideas, and all 
 are discussing the points raised by the speaker, it was 
 a good speech. It did what it was intended to do ; it 
 conveyed ideas from speaker to audience clearly and 
 effectively. It served its purpose as a useful art. 
 
 Summary 
 
 Public Speaking Is a Useful Art. It is distin- 
 guished from the fine arts by the fact that it is defi- 
 nitely accepted as a means to ends quite outside itself. 
 Fine arts give us aesthetic pleasure and so are ends 
 in themselves. They are their own excuse for be- 
 ing. 
 
 As a useful art, public speaking has in view a use- 
 ful end. That end is to convey ideas, aspirations and 
 desires from speaker to audience- 
 There are no cut-and-dried rules and methods for 
 the practice of the art of public speaking. There are 
 
22 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 underlying principles, to be discussed later, and there 
 is one general principle which is a guide to the for- 
 mulation of methods and rules that each must make for 
 himself. "Use any method or means that will help 
 convey your message, and, so jar as is humanly pos- 
 sible, do nothing that calls attention away from the 
 thought. 
 
 Lastly, a speech must be judged, not by any or all 
 of its formal qualities of delivery, such as voice, ges- 
 ture, position, etc., but by the results achieved. If 
 two speeches are made to the same audience under the 
 same conditions, both for the purpose of raising money 
 for the Red Cross, and if one speech nets one hun- 
 dred dollars and the other nets two hundred, the 
 second is twice as good a speech as the first, regard- 
 less of any formal qualities of the two speeches. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES OF DELIVERY 
 
 While the methods of delivery may vary greatly 
 with different speakers, there are certain underlying 
 fundamental qualities of address on which all good 
 speaking is, and must be, based. Certain characteris- 
 tics every speech must have ; without them no method 
 can make a speech successful; with them, almost any 
 method will succeed reasonably. These fundamental 
 qualities have been characteristic of all the great ora- 
 tors from Demosthenes to Bryan; they were found in 
 successful four-minute speeches for Liberty Loans; 
 they are the universal necessities of successful speak- 
 ing in all ages. 
 
 Sense of Communication. The very first of these 
 is what Professor Winans calls a "sense of commu- 
 nication". It is a factor in what has long been known 
 as conversational directness. The purpose of a speech, 
 once more, is to communicate ideas. It is of the great- 
 est importance that the speaker, at the very outset, 
 get the idea firmly in mind that he is talking to peo- 
 ple. This would seem to be too simple to dwell upon, 
 but a little observation will make clear that the one 
 thing that the student finds hardest is to get this atti- 
 tude. He should rid himself of the idea, so false in 
 its usual connotation, that he is "making a speech". 
 He is not "making a speech", he is not repeating sen- 
 tences before people, he is not talking at people. He is 
 
24 THE DBIIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 talking to people. He is communicating his ideas to 
 them. It is a one sided conversation. 
 
 This highly dominant note is struck in the very first 
 sentence of Russell Conwell's "Acres of Diamonds". 
 Mr. Conwell begins, "The title of this lecture origin- 
 ated away back in 1869. I was going down the Tigris 
 River — ". He is telling us something. The fact can 
 be best understood by those who have heard Mr. Con- 
 well. A very human sort of man, he begins to talk in 
 a very human sort of way. At once we feel easy. We 
 are listening to a man who is just relating some of 
 his own experiences. He is not "orating", he is not 
 "making a speech", he is just talking to us, much as 
 as a favorite uncle might talk to us in the parlor upon 
 his return from a long travel. He smiles, his eye 
 kindles, his whole personality reaches out and takes us 
 by the hand and establishes at once a close friendship. 
 From the very start Mr. Conwell gets into communi- 
 cation with us. And this is what people want and 
 like. It is one of the reasons why Mr. Conwell has 
 been able to give this lecture more than six thousand 
 times and to make more than a million dollars with 
 it. People do not willingly pay a million dollars for 
 something they do not like. 
 
 Of all places in the world, the platform is the last 
 place for the impersonal attitude, the fishy eye, the 
 colorless voice. Of all forms of conversation, that 
 known as public speaking most demands the personal 
 touch, the lively sense of mental contact with peo- 
 ple. If the listless, colorless, dead-to-the-world person 
 is a bore in the parlor, he is impossible on the plat- 
 form. Personal contact, interest in the listeners, and 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 25 
 
 a very strong sense of talking to them just as though 
 they could talk back — these are the first essentials of 
 a successful speech. 
 
 When people go into a hall and sit down with oth- 
 ers to hear a speech, they do not change their natures 
 materially. An audience is only an aggregation of in- 
 dividuals. It is true that there is a psychology of a 
 crowd that is somewhat different from the psychology 
 of the different individuals that make up the crowd, 
 but in the main nothing may be said of the likes and 
 dislikes of a crowd of people that may not be said of 
 the individuals present. What the persons like the 
 crowd likes also. If individually they like direct, 
 staightforward, colorful conversation, they will like 
 the same thing on the platform. It is necessary to re- 
 member that the audience is made up of human be- 
 ings, just common, everyday people, and when this is 
 kept in mind the speaker is apt to be conversationally 
 direct and to get and keep his sense of communication 
 with them. For public speaking is nothing in the 
 world but exalted conversation. 
 
 In order to acquire this sense of communication, 
 certain things must be kept in mind in practice as 
 well as in the delivery of the speech. The speaker 
 must think the thought as he goes along. It is not 
 sufficient merely to say the words. The speaker's at- 
 tention must be strongly focused on the ideas to be 
 conveyed. If you find yourself mechanically repeat- 
 ing words, stop and concentrate on the idea before 
 going on. Never allow the mind to wander. If the 
 thought is not vivid to the speaker it will not be vivid 
 to the audience. To them, too, it will be just "words, 
 
26 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 words, words''. Do your very best with each sentence 
 to renew the meaning to yourself. If Mr. Conwell can 
 make his thought live again after six thousand repe- 
 titions, surely the student can make it vital for the few 
 times that he will speak it. And one of the most 
 impressive things about Mr. Conwell's style is that he 
 thinks every thought vividly, and gives it all the life 
 and energy of a new idea. 
 
 In order to do this, speak slowly. Do not hurry. 
 Give yourself and your audience plenty of time to un- 
 derstand and to appreciate the weight of each idea as 
 it comes along. Group the words so as to bring out 
 the meaning most clearly. Pause between these groups 
 of words and think, and as the idea becomes vivid in 
 the mind, make every effort to make it vivid in the 
 spoken words. 
 
 Feel the idea as well as think it. Get enthusiastic 
 about it. Have it so much at heart that the desire 
 arises to communicate it to others. Understanding, 
 feeling and the desire to communicate are very essen- 
 tial factors in common conversation. Of how much 
 more importance are they in the exalted conversation 
 of the platform. 
 
 After thinking the idea clearly and feeling it 
 strongly and after getting the desire to communicate 
 it to others, make a conscious effort to adapt yourself 
 to the audience. Try now to make them understand 
 and feel the idea. Get forward toward them. Reach 
 out after them. Project the voice to them. Avoid the 
 subjective and the impersonal attitude, look and tone. 
 Focus the eyes on the people in the audience and talk 
 to them. Give them your idea as though you really 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 27 
 
 wanted them to get it. Watch their faces and adapt 
 yourself to them as in animated conversation. If they 
 are not all listening, it is because you are not interest- 
 ing enough. Use every art of conversation to 
 reach them and to hold their attention and interest. It 
 is only by thus taking a lively interest in conveying 
 your idea that you can reach people effectively. 
 
 Physical Vitality. After the sense of communica- 
 tion, one of the most important qualities of a speaker 
 is life, vigor, physical vitality and animation. People 
 do not like a "dead one". To be a good speaker, one 
 must first of all be a good animal. Strong and posi- 
 tive tone and speech, forceful enunciation, strong po- 
 sition and vigorous gesture count for much. Not all 
 of us can be physical giants, and fortunately it is not 
 necessary. There are "little giants". Successful 
 speaking is hard physical work, and one who cannot 
 generate enough vitality to work a little would do 
 well to lay aside the idea of making speeches. 
 
 Most students have the necessary health and 
 strength to speak well. What most of them lack is a 
 realization of the importance of using some of this 
 strength. Common conversation requires little mus- 
 cular exertion because the listener is close by and eas- 
 ily reached. But when the audience is large and when 
 many of them are seated at a distance the problem is 
 different. Again, the platform speech deals presum- 
 ably with important subjects. It is vital that the mes- 
 sage "get across". If common conversation lan- 
 guishes in interest, it is a simple matter to terminate 
 it. It is not so simple in a speech. Here the interest 
 
28 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 
 
 must not lag. Furthermore, in common conversation 
 ordinary politeness compels the listener to pay re- 
 spectful attention even though the talk is lifeless. In 
 the case of a speech there is not so much stress laid 
 on politeness, and many a dull and lifeless speaker can 
 testify that the great American public is apt to exer- 
 cise its "rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness" and leave the room if the speech does not 
 measure up. And this is not a pleasant experience for 
 the speaker. His is a kind of game, and he must learn 
 to bring to it the same physical vitality, alertness and 
 energy that he would bring to a good game of tennis. 
 
 Walk to your place as one who is alive. Let the 
 step be firm and purposeful. Let the face show life 
 and interest. Beware the "mud face", the "fish eye". 
 Many great speakers have not hesitated to check 
 themselves up by the use of a mirror. And it cannot 
 be too strongly urged upon the beginner that he take 
 occasion often to thus "see himself as others see 
 him". Practice until you can walk up to a mirror 
 with a bearing and a face that expresses life and vi- 
 tality. 
 
 In beginning the speech, make every word clear 
 and strong. Nine students out of ten talk only for 
 those in the front row, and for those only half heart- 
 edly. Remember that those in the "peanut row" have 
 paid their money as well as those in the "bald-headed 
 row". Remember that they wish just as much to 
 hear, and that if they do not hear they will cause far 
 more disturbance. 
 
 In a word, dominate the whole situation from the 
 start, by sheer force of physical vitality. People re- 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 29 
 
 spect the strong and the purposeful. They ignore the 
 weak and timid. Vitality characterized Theodore 
 Roosevelt, and, as much as anything else, made him 
 the great leader and speaker that he was. 
 
 Enthusiasm. Closely allied to vitality is the third 
 great quality, enthusiasm. One must bubble over. 
 Get interested in the subject. The river never rises 
 higher than its source, and the people in the audience 
 are not going to get more enthusiastic over the sub- 
 ject than the speaker himself. This should be remem- 
 bered in practice. Always practice as to an audience 
 and try to generate the same enthusiasm as for the 
 final speech. As seen by the audience, this results in 
 a kindling of the eye, a ring in the voice, life in the 
 gesture and in the spoken words. The speeches of 
 Jane Addams and Graham Taylor are good examples 
 of what may be accomplished by enthusiasm. Newel 
 Dwight Hillis is another example. In fact, to call the 
 roll of successful speakers would be to give a list of 
 enthusiasts. Extended discussion of this quality is 
 hardly necessary because the value of enthusiasm is 
 so well recognized in every activity of life. 
 
 To physical vitality and enthusiasm one must of 
 course add poise and control. This at first seems to 
 run counter to the very nature of the qualities of which 
 we have been thinking. But this is not so in real- 
 ity. To acquire poise does not necessitate putting a 
 damper on one's spirit or throwing a wet blanket over 
 the fire of one's enthusiasm. It simply means that, 
 with all one's force and enthusiasm, he must keep him- 
 self always in hand. He must not "fry off the han- 
 
30 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 die". He must be master of himself. This implies 
 holding power in reserve, so that however strongly he 
 speaks the audience feels that he could speak much 
 more strongly if he chose. A pug dog may have phys- 
 ical vitality and enthusiasm, but he cannot make peo- 
 ple take him seriously. He has no poise. He yaps. 
 But a mastiff adds poise to his other virtues and com- 
 mands respect. He barks to a purpose. It is neces- 
 sary for the speaker to have himself in hand at all 
 times. While he must glow with physical force, while 
 he must bubble over with enthusiasm, he must also 
 command respect by his poise and self-command. Mr. 
 Bryan's dignified, yet forceful and enthusiastic ad- 
 dress contrast pleasantly with the unpoised platform 
 antics and run-away style of certain well-known evan- 
 gelists in this country. 
 
 Genuineness and Earnestness. Finally, in addi- 
 tion to a sense of communication, vitality and well 
 poised enthusiasm, the successful speaker must be 
 genuine and earnest. He must believe what he says. 
 The note that sounded so clearly in President Wil- 
 son's War Speech before Congress was this note of 
 genuineness and seriousness. And that speech will 
 take its place among the greatest state utterances of 
 all time. Confidence in one's self, belief and perfect 
 faith in the truth as it is given one to see the truth, 
 these are among the important qualities of a good 
 speaker. Too often the speaker has been criticized as 
 a time server, shallow, insincere and unworthy. But 
 of such were not the ones who have been eminently 
 successful and whose names have came down in his- 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 31 
 
 tory as great orators. From Demosthenes down to our 
 time the really great speakers have been sincere. Often 
 they have been mistaken, as subsequent history has 
 shown, but they stood for the right as they understood 
 it. Webster's genuine and sincere belief in the con- 
 stitution was a watchword. O'Connell's love for Ire- 
 land was a passion. Hundreds of illustrations could be 
 given. Many people think Mr. Bryan to have been 
 in the wrong in his advocacy of free silver, but none 
 who reads his "Cross of Gold" speech can doubt his 
 sincerity. Shallow and insincere speakers there have 
 been, but their names are not writ large in history. 
 
 Now we cannot all attain to a senatorial defense of 
 the Union, to a solemn declaration of war before 
 Congress, to a nomination to the presidency, but the 
 same qualities of earnestness and sincerity that have 
 characterized these great history-making speeches are 
 within reach of all, and they are as necessary in a 
 speech to the school board as is one to Congress, as 
 desirable in an address before the young people's so- 
 ciety as before a meeting of thousands. We all ad- 
 mire and love the genuine and the sincere person in 
 conversation. We all abominate the twister, the per- 
 son without convictions. And if sincerity and earn- 
 estness are attractive and winning in common conver- 
 sation, of how much greater import are they when 
 the audience is increased to a hundred, to a thousand, 
 to five thousand ! We approve when our speaker con- 
 fesses that he has changed his mind after sufficient 
 evidence has been given him, but we want him to stand 
 sincerely for what he believes to be right until he is 
 convinced of his error. St. Paul is a man for us. But 
 
32 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 as Saul, persecuting Christians, he was still admir- 
 able. He acted according to this belief at all times. 
 But genuineness and earnestness do not mean so- 
 lemnity. It is not necessary to be funereal and long 
 faced to be earnest. We all feel somewhat with In- 
 gersoll that >4 'solemnity is a mask worn by hypoe- 
 ricy". Or if we do not suspect the solemn person, at 
 least he makes us uncomfortable. Many a pulpit ut- 
 terance would improve a hundred percent by ridding 
 itself of solemnity. {A sense of humor is one of the 
 greatest assets to the speaker, and it is evidenced as 
 much by the speaker's manner as by his words. A 
 sense of humor is never inconsistent with serious- 
 ness. A sense of humor is essentially a mark of men- 
 tal balance, for it is in reality an appreciation of rel- 
 ative values. That is perhaps why we suspect the 
 solemn person. We suspect him of being without dis- 
 crimination and a sense of the relative importance of 
 things. And we wish our speaker to be highly sane. 
 
 Summary 
 
 To summarize, the fundamental qualities of a suc- 
 cessful speech, without which no speech can succeed 
 however formally good it may be in tone, pronuncia- 
 tion, position and gesture, are : ( I ) a lively sense of 
 communication, (2) physical vitality and vigor, (3) 
 well poised enthusiasm, and (4) genuineness and earn- 
 estness free from solemnity. With these qualities a 
 speech will be reasonably successful even though the 
 speaker may have a poor voice, awkward gestures and 
 indifferent command of language. But it should al- 
 ways be remembered that a speech, if successful, sue- 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 33 
 
 ceeds by these qualities, not because of defects of 
 voice, gesture and English. Students sometimes copy 
 the mannerisms of successful speakers, under the mis- 
 taken notion that these are the secret of their suc- 
 cess. A man may occasionally get drunk, he may 
 shave too infrequently, he may wear a dirty collar, 
 and he may still be a reasonably successful man in 
 business, but nobody is foolish enough to attribute his 
 success to these unfortunate aspects of his life and 
 conduct. He succeeds in spite of them, not because 
 of them, and he succeeds because he has other and 
 better qualities that outweigh his bad ones. So with 
 the speaker. He may succeed with poor voice, poor 
 gesture and poor English, but these are not the ele- 
 ments of his success, and he would make a much 
 greater success if he would eliminate the objectionable 
 features of his delivery. It is to some of these de- 
 fects and their eradication that we turn in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 Collateral Reading 
 
 Exercises and Illustrations 
 
 Houghton: Essentials of Public Speaking — 
 
 Chapter II. 
 Winans : Public Speaking — Chapter II. 
 Woolbert : The Fundamentals of Speech — 
 
 Chapters II and III. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FORMAL, QUALITIES OF DELIVERY — 
 ACTION 
 
 The fundamental qualities discussed in Chapter II 
 are the essentials of a successful delivery. But a re- 
 view of speeches that you have heard will reveal the 
 fact that crudities of style often mar an otherwise 
 splendid speech. For instance, an awkward appear- 
 ance or a rasping voice, while they may not com- 
 pletely spoil the effect of the speech, stand in the way 
 of the greatest possible success. They may indeed go 
 so far as completely to offset the sense of commu- 
 nication, the vitality, the enthusiasm and the earnest- 
 ness of the speaker. Of what avail are these funda- 
 mental things if the audience cannot hear or cannot 
 understand the speaker? Hence it is desirable that 
 every speaker learn to recognize and cultivate the for- 
 mal qualities of delivery, to the end that he may attain 
 the highest degree of success of which he is capable. 
 
 It has been insisted upon that no cut-and-dried 
 rules are possible. It is not the purpose of the next 
 two chapters to attempt to lay down such rules; the 
 purpose is to indicate the more common faults of ac- 
 tion and voice that interfere with success and to sug- 
 gest ways of avoiding them, and to state a norm for 
 delivery, from which individual variations may be 
 made. In short, Chapters II and III are a develop- 
 ment of the general principle laid down in Chapter I. 
 
FORMAL DBLIVBRY— ACTION 35 
 
 And that principle is : Use any method or means that 
 will help convey your message, and, so far as is hu- 
 manly possible, do nothing that calls attention away 
 from the thought. 
 
 In applying this general principle, we may conven- 
 iently consider the subject under two heads, action and 
 voice. This division is based on the fact that all im- 
 pressions that make or mar the delivery of the speech 
 must come to us through one or both of two senses, 
 sight and hearing. The first group of impressions, 
 those that come to us through the sense of sight, we 
 may discuss under the head of action. The second, 
 those that come through the sense of hearing, we 
 may consider under the head of voice. The present 
 chapter is concerned with action. 
 
 Four general sets of impressions come to us as we 
 look at a speaker: standing position and general ap- 
 pearance, facial expression, platform movements and 
 gestures. If all these are good then the speaker's ac- 
 tion is good, and there will be nothing in what the 
 audience sees to detract from the success of the 
 speech. 
 
 Standing Position. What kind of a standing po- 
 sition best furthers the end of the speech and least 
 calls attention to itself ? Certain types of position will 
 at once suggest themselves as bad; a slouchy posi- 
 tion, a purposeless position, a stiff position, an awk- 
 ward position. And by contrast one sees that there 
 are certain qualities that a good position should pos- 
 sess. 
 
 A good position should have stability. Stability is 
 
36 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 largely a matter of the position of the feet. If the 
 feet are placed tight together, the "base of the statue" 
 is narrow and the speaker resembles a flag pole sway- 
 ing in the wind. The feet should be separated enough 
 to give what may be called lateral stability. So placed, 
 the body may move somewhat from side to side and 
 still not appear to "wabble" or to "reel". Of course 
 there is a limit to the width of the position. If the 
 feet are separated too far the body resembles a der- 
 rick and attention is at once called to it. A little prac- 
 tice before a mirror will give the desired result. The 
 distance of separation cannot be measured in inches 
 but the common sense and judgment of the speaker 
 will easily decide the correct distance. But the body 
 needs also forward-and-back stability. Hence one foot 
 should be placed ahead of the other, so that the body 
 may be moved toward and away from the audience 
 without changing the position of the feet and without 
 the appearance of staggering. It perhaps goes without 
 saying that the toes should point outward somewhat. 
 Both the parallel and the pigeon-toed position of the 
 feet call attention to themselves. The precise angle 
 cannot be measured as it may very properly vary con- 
 siderably with different individuals, but again the mir- 
 ror is helpful in judging what looks well. The weight 
 of the body should be about equally distributed on both 
 feet and about equally on heels and toes. If too much 
 weight falls on the back foot, the chances are you are 
 leaning back too far. If too much falls on the front 
 foot, throw the hips back and equalize the weight. 
 Now we have the foundation of a firm, businesslike, 
 direct position, one that has stability and strength and 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 37 
 
 consequently furthers the end of the speech by in- 
 spiring confidence, by impressing the audience with a 
 businesslike purpose. The listeners will now expect 
 something worth while. 
 
 A good position should also have symmetry and bal- 
 ance. A line dropped vertically from a point midway 
 between the eyes should divide the body equally all 
 the way to the floor. In other words, the speaker 
 should stand straight. He should not lean or lop to 
 one side or the other. The hips should not be pushed 
 out to left or right. The shoulders should be of the 
 same height, not one up and the other sagging. The 
 head should be poised in an upright position, not al- 
 lowed to fall to one side. 
 
 The position should have directness. By this is 
 meant that the speaker should bend forward slightly 
 toward the audience. This bending should be from 
 the hips. Do not lean forward. By doing so the weight 
 is all thrown on the front foot and on the ball of the 
 foot, and still directness is not attained. But throw 
 the hips back and incline the upper part of the body 
 forward as one does in earnest conversation. The 
 amount of this bending depends first upon the height 
 of the platform, a high platform requiring more 
 bending than a low one, and second on the relation of 
 speaker to audience, moments of greater intimacy with 
 the audience requiring more of the bending position. 
 Face directly the part of the audience being addressed 
 and keep the whole body that way as long as you are 
 talking in that direction. When you address another 
 part of the house, turn the whole body, not merely 
 
3 8 THE DEUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 the eyes or the head, toward the people you are talk- 
 ing to. 
 
 Lastly, the position should have ease and poise. 
 Avoid stiffness, rigidity and artificiality. The requi- 
 site ease can come only through long and patient 
 practice. One who has never faced audiences cannot 
 expect to acquire easiness and at-homeness in a day 
 or a week. This is especially true if he has been ac- 
 customed to stand poorly in everyday conversation. 
 He will of course feel awkawrd and stiff in a good 
 position. But by assuming a good position and by 
 practicing every day he will in time acquire a feeling 
 and an appearance of ease before people. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest difficulty for the beginner is in 
 knowing what to do with the hands. They appear to 
 be always in the way and to be as prominent as 
 bunches of bananas. For his encouragement it may 
 be truthfully said that his hands feel much more awk- 
 ward and prominent to him than they look to the audi- 
 ence. Practice letting them hang naturally at the 
 sides. They really look well there, though they may 
 seem to the speaker to be very much in evidence. 
 Practice will overcome this feeling. The hands may, 
 by way of variety, be held behind the back but this 
 position should not be held all the time. They may 
 be held in front part of the time, one held loosely in 
 the other, but in this position they should not be 
 pressed tightly to the body as though the speaker has 
 an attack of acute indigestion. In the case of men the 
 hands may, not too often or for too long a time, be in 
 the pockets. But care should be taken not to pull or 
 derange the clothing. This is almost sure to happen 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 39 
 
 when the hands are in the coat pockets. Perhaps the 
 easiest way to manage is to hook the thumb lightly in 
 the trousers pocket, leaving the rest of the hand hang- 
 ing on the outside. In general, any position that is 
 easy and does not call attention to itself unduly is 
 proper. Free use of gesture, as outlined farther on, 
 does much to solve the problem. 
 
 It is impossible to insist too often or too strongly 
 on practice before a mirror. Only by this practice 
 can the proper position be cultivated and the crude 
 positions be eliminated. A full length mirror is best, 
 but in the absence of one an ordinary dresser mirror, 
 tilted up or down as needful, will do very nicely. 
 
 To repeat, then, a good position is one that has sta- 
 bility, symmetry and balance, directness and easy 
 poise. Such a position inspires people with confidence 
 in the speaker and tends to inspire the speaker with 
 confidence in himself. It is the first thing noticed by 
 the audience, and, as first impressions are notoriously 
 lasting, it is desirable that the position assumed will 
 prejudice people in favor of, and not against, the 
 speaker and his speech. 
 
 Facial Expression. Acquiring good facial ex- 
 pression is more a matter of acquiring freedom and 
 at-homeness on the platform than anything else. The 
 two requisites are friendliness and expressiveness. 
 
 A smile, or at least a pleasant look, is always wel- 
 come, on the platform or off. One should meet the 
 audience pleasantly and in a friendly spirit. When one 
 is introduced to people in the parlor, he does not 
 look sour or glum or impersonal. He recognizes the 
 
4 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 fact that this kind of facial expression does not make 
 for a good impression. One tries to show life and 
 interest. On the platform this is even more impor- 
 tant than in conversation, for more depends upon the 
 impression made. Hence it is highly important that 
 the facial expression be such as to win people, not 
 antagonize them. This does not mean that one should 
 cultivate an artificial smile or smirk. Here, more than 
 anywhere else, one must 'be genuine. One must culti- 
 vate a genuine interest in people and a genuine friend- 
 liness for people. And the process of learning to ex- 
 press these qualities in the face is largely a matter of 
 removing the natural inhibitions to their expression. 
 We must practice to get rid of these inhibitions, fear 
 and self-consciousness, and with their passing will 
 pass also the mask that obscures our real feelings of 
 friendliness and good will. Certain things can be 
 done to help in the process however. The eyes should 
 be directed at the audience from the very first. If we 
 cannot at first look as pleasant as we would wish, we 
 can at least look at the audience. The eyes should not 
 only be turned toward the audience, but they should 
 be focused on people in the audience. The "far away 
 look" comes into the eyes when they do not converge 
 on some definite point in the audience but are directed 
 in lines parallel to each other. This gives the face 
 an unseeing expression, a subjective look, as though the 
 speaker were not thinking of the people before him 
 but of something a thousand miles away. Now the 
 first element of friendliness and interest is to be think- 
 ing of the audience and looking at them. Meet squarely 
 the eyes of all the people present. Care should be 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 41 
 
 taken not to shift the eyes too rapidly, as this 'breaks 
 up the directness, but as the speech begins the speaker 
 should talk to a part of the audience and look di- 
 rectly at that part until a thought is completed. Then 
 he may turn to another part, and so in turn he will ad- 
 dress everybody at some time or other. Thus every- 
 one gets the impression that the speaker is interested 
 in him personally. 
 
 But the face must also be' expressive of the speak- 
 er's feeling for the things he is saying. Watch people 
 in animated conversation. Their eyes kindle and spar- 
 kle, their whole faces express the shades of emotion 
 and feeling that color their reflections on the thought. 
 And we like faces that are thus responsive. So far as 
 speaking is concerned, faces are made to reveal 
 thought, not to conceal it. The "poker face" may 
 have its uses, but it is not for the platform. Nothing 
 looks more incongrous than a face devoid of expres- 
 sion in conversation. Again the thing that is neces- 
 sary is to acquire freedom of expression. Little can 
 be done in a positive way. Much of the artificiality 
 of the old "elocution" was due to an attempt to "put 
 on" a facial expression and a tone of voice to fit a 
 stated emotion. If one feels the thought strongly and 
 tries hard to free himself as fast as possible from the 
 restraints of the platform, he will come gradually to 
 lose the "mud face" and to let the features play their 
 natural and important part in expression. 
 
 Movement. Little need be said about platform 
 movements, except perhaps to utter a warning or two. 
 People like variety, and it is therefore well to avoid 
 
42 - THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 standing in any one position too long. Break up the 
 position and take a new one occasionally. Do this as 
 the thought changes. Rarely is it necessary or desir- 
 able to walk directly across the platform. This takes 
 the speaker away from direct contact with his audi- 
 ence, and he should at all times be direct. But a speaker 
 may move forward and back at will, coming forward 
 to emphasize a thought and retreating a step or two 
 as he begins a new thought. He may move from one 
 side of a table or desk to the other side, standing di- 
 rectly behind it part of the time. In short, he may 
 make almost any movement that has some significance 
 and does not call attention to itself. He should avoid 
 side-stepping, "cutting over-toe" and "gum-shoeing" 
 or "pussy-footing". If he would change positions, let 
 him do it deliberately and freely, walking on heel and 
 toe as usual. 
 
 Gestures. Gestures are of two kinds, head and 
 hand. If you will observe people in animated conver- 
 sation you will discover that they all use head gestures 
 continually. They nod and shake the head to empha- 
 size the thought, and the more vigorous the thought 
 the more frequent and vigorous the head gesture. If 
 you would see how universal and necessary this is, 
 get someone to repeat a few stirring lines of prose or 
 poetry in a vigorous voice but with the head held per- 
 fectly still. The effect is almost uncanny. Yet it is a 
 very common thing to see beginners on the platform 
 hold the head as though it were clamped in one po- 
 sition. Get free from this unnatural rigidity by get- 
 ting interested in the thought and by cultivating a de- 
 
FORMAL DBLIVBRY— ACTION 43 
 
 sire to be understood and believed. There is no more 
 natural means of emphasis than a nod of the head on 
 the emphatic word or words. 
 
 Turning to animated conversation again, it will also 
 be found that most people use hand gestures. A lit- 
 tle study of these gestures will reveal the fact that 
 they are of three general types, index, open hand and 
 fist. When trying to make a point more plain and un- 
 derstandable, the one finger, or index gesture, is fre- 
 quently used. In trying to get people to believe 
 something or do something, the open hand gesture 
 is oftenest employed. And in driving home a point 
 with very strong conviction, or when uttering an 
 extremely forceful statement, or in heated argument, 
 the fist gesture is sometimes used. These hand move- 
 ments are a very natural and spontaneous means of 
 expression. They are a universal language. They 
 help in making clear our meaning and in making im- 
 pressive our thought and feeling. But they do some- 
 thing more than this: they react on the speaker per- 
 sonally and help him to clearer and more forceful ex- 
 pression than he is capable of without them. One 
 does not need to accept without reservation the well- 
 known James-Lange theory of the emotions to admit 
 that this latter contention is true. One has but to re- 
 peat an emphatic phrase without and then with a 
 strong gesture to be convinced that the gesture reacts 
 in such a way as to make the vocal emphasis stronger 
 and the feeling of the speaker keener. 
 
 Students frequently ask if they positively must ges- 
 ture with the hands. The answer is that of course it is 
 not positively necessary, but if gestures help to make 
 
44 THB DBUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 
 
 common conversation more effective it is certainly 
 fair to assume that they will be a great asset in the 
 more vigorous and important conversation of the plat- 
 form. It is a mistake for any speaker to deny him- 
 self any legitimate means v of effectiveness. Try see- 
 ing if you can get through a day without using ges- 
 tures in animated conversation, and then answer the 
 question according to experience. 
 
 Taking the three types of gestures as the natural 
 hand language, what changes are necessary to fit them 
 for platform use? When one remembers that the- 
 platform speech is somewhat more finished and formal 
 than ordinary conversation, he will readily under- 
 stand why some gestures that are never noticed in 
 common talk call attention to themselves on the plat- 
 form. They are too informal. The only change nec- 
 essary to fit them for public speech is to formalize 
 them sufficiently so that they may be appropriate to 
 the occasion. Just as we use more dignified and bet- 
 ter language on the platform, just as we wear better 
 and more formal clothes, just so we try to use better 
 gestures than in common speech. These better ges- 
 tures are not different in kind, they differ only in dig- 
 nity and formality, just as our clothes are not differ- 
 ent in kind but only in quality and formal cut. 
 
 To be most effective most gestures should be made 
 within an angle of 90 degrees of the speaker. A few 
 gestures may be made at the side, but too many call 
 attention to themselves and detract from the direct- 
 ness of the speech. They should also, for the most 
 part, be made well below the line of vision — that is, 
 below a line drawn from the speaker's eye to the eyes 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 45 
 
 of those to whom he is talking. The reason for this 
 is that when a gesture crosses the line of vision it is 
 very apt to attract the listener's attention. Of course 
 the gestures should not be made too low. In general 
 they should be directly between the speaker and the 
 part of the audience he is addressing. This is espe- 
 cially true of the index gesture. 
 
 The index gesture is best made by drawing all the 
 fingers, except the first, into the palm of the hand and 
 binding them in loosely with the thumb. The hand 
 should be held with the index finger on top, not 
 turned to one side or the other. The finger is held in 
 the direction of the people addressed, but it should be 
 tilted up so as to avoid the appearance of pointing at 
 them. And it should be made almost directly under 
 the line of vision, so that the speaker faces, talks and 
 gestures to a single place. 
 
 The open hand gesture is to be made as naturally 
 as possible. Bring up the hand from the side, palm 
 up, in its original position. The fingers are now 
 curled somewhat, the little finger the most and the 
 others less as you approach the index finger which is 
 nearest straight. The thumb is above the level of the 
 hand. Now open the hand out, keeping the fingers in 
 the same relative position, until the index finger is 
 almost if not quite straight, the others bent more and 
 more as you approach the little finger, but none of 
 them curled. The thumb is still above the level of the 
 hand. Now bend the wrist backward until the audi- 
 ence can see into the palm of the hand. The fingers 
 should be separated slightly. This gesture may be 
 "supine" (back of the hand down), "prone" (palm 
 
4 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 down). When only one hand is used it should gen- 
 erally be placed directly between speaker and audi- 
 ence, though it may sometimes be at one side. When 
 both hands are used in this gesture they should be bal- 
 anced as to height and distance from center. 
 
 The first gesture can be made from the open hand 
 supine by simply drawing in all the fingers and bind- 
 ing them in tightly with the thumb. The fist should 
 look businesslike — it should be a fighting fist. As 
 a rule, girls and women find it hard if not impossi- 
 ble to use this gesture effectively. 
 
 A variation of the open hand is sometimes used. 
 One hand is held palm up and the other is brought 
 down on it palm down. This gesture is usually made 
 fairly close to the body and directly in front. The 
 speaker thus talks directly over it. 
 
 In making any gesture the hand should be brought 
 up directly from the side, not in a roundabout course 
 with elaborate curves. Do it just as simply and di- 
 rectly as possible. Then make the "stroke" of the 
 gesture on the word to be emphasized, letting the hand 
 fall exactly on the accented syllable. Several words 
 may be emphasized in succession, with short strokes 
 of the forearm and hand, before the gesture is drop- 
 ped. The stroke should terminate with a slight "whip" 
 at the wrist, to avoid angularity and stiffness. Finally 
 let the gesture fall directly to the side when through 
 with it. 
 
 Never watch the gesture yourself. This calls oth- 
 ers' attention to it. Keep the eye on the audience, and 
 they will not be conscious of the gesture. Practice be- 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 47 
 
 fore a mirror is essential in acquiring gestures that 
 will be effective and not noticable. 
 
 Do not gesture too much or emphasize too many- 
 words. Keep the gesture to* bring out the most im- 
 portant ideas in the speech. One who is always us- 
 ing a fist gesture, for instance, soon loses all the force 
 of the gesture by its too frequent repetition. 
 
 ''Follow that impulse" is a fairly safe guide to ges- 
 turing. If you get into the spirit of the speech suffi- 
 ciently and have a genuine desire to communicate ef- 
 fectively, you are almost certain to feel the impulse 
 to gesture many times. Make gestures at such points 
 and then practice them over and over again before a 
 mirror, saying the phrase and emphasizing with the 
 gesture until it becomes easy. The time will come 
 when the gestures will be made as spontaneously as 
 in common conversation and when the speaker will no 
 longer need to be conscious of them. But the perfect 
 fulfillment of this promise comes only after many days 
 of faithful and persistent practice. 
 
 Summary 
 
 Under the general principle that the speaker should 
 use any method or means that will help convey your 
 message and, so far as is humanly possible, do noth- 
 ing that calls attention away from the thought, there 
 are two sets of impressions that need to be watched, 
 and we are studying the first of these in this chapter 
 under the head of Action. The next chapter will deal 
 with the other division, Voice. 
 
 Under the head of Action we have considered posi- 
 tion, facial expression, movement and gestures. 
 
48 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 A good position is one that has stability, symmetry, 
 directness and ease. It does not call attention to it- 
 self. 
 
 Good facial expression should display friendliness 
 and expressiveness as regards the ideas spoken. The 
 eyes should 'be direct. 
 
 Movements should have variety and purposiveness. 
 They should not be such as call attention to them- 
 selves. 
 
 Gestures are made with the head and with the 
 hands. Head gestures are absolutely essential to ef- 
 fective speech. They appear spontaneously when the 
 speaker becomes interested in his ideas and in "get- 
 ting them across" and when he gets over the first 
 stages of self consciousness. Hand gestures are a 
 universal language and add much to the»general ef- 
 fect, both in their effect on the audience and in their 
 reaction on the speaker. The index, open hand and 
 fist gestures should be practiced until they come spon- 
 taneously in formal fashion as they do in informal 
 fashion in ordinary conversation. 
 
 Collateral Reading 
 Examples and Illustrations 
 
 Fulton and Trueblood : Practical Elocution, or 
 Essentials of Public Speaking, Part III. 
 
 Woolbert : The Fundamentals of Speech, Chap- 
 ters IV and V. 
 
 Winans: Public Speaking, Chapters XV and 
 XVI. 
 
 Houghton : Essentials of Public Speaking, Chap- 
 ters III and IV. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FORMAL QUALITIES OF DELIVERY— VOICE 
 
 From a consideration of the subject of Action in 
 the last chapter we now turn to a study of the set of 
 impressions that come through the sense of hearing, 
 and these we may consider under the general heading 
 of Voice. It is not the purpose of this chapter to en- 
 ter into a scientific study of the elements of voice and 
 speech production. It is a highly complex subject and 
 involves the most intimate study of anatomy, physi- 
 ology and psychology. Many books have been writ- 
 ten on the general subject and on special phases of it. 
 Much elaborate research is now going on in labora- 
 tories all over the country to find the facts involved. 
 The purpose of the present chapter is to indicate the 
 common faults of tone and speech and the way to 
 avoid them; to explain in non-technical terms the 
 most elementary factors in this complicated field and 
 to fit the average student who wishes to cultivate good 
 clear style with the most common tools of speech. 
 
 We may, for convenience of study and practice, 
 make two divisions of the subject, tone and speech, 
 corresponding to the two classes of voice defects that 
 interfere with success in speaking. If one cannot be 
 heard, it is a fault of tone; if he can be heard but 
 cannot be understood, it is a fault of speech. There 
 are many common defects in each division, of which 
 those cited are examples. 
 
5 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 Tone. A little review of the subject of Physics 
 will recall to mind that every tone has three charac- 
 teristics: intensity, quality and pitch. Consequently 
 any defects that interfere with good delivery, so far 
 as tone is concerned, will fall under one or another 
 of these heads. Let us consider them separately. 
 
 The intensity of a tone, commonly referred to as 
 its force, depends upon the amount of force used and 
 the way in which that force is exerted. Everything 
 else being equal, the amount of force used deter- 
 mines the loudness of the tone; the way it is exerted 
 determines the abruptness of the tone. And the faults 
 of intensity are really faults of loudness and abrupt- 
 ness. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the voice 
 should be strong enough to carry to the farthest per- 
 son in the audience, so that he may hear easily. The 
 difficulty is that the average student, accustomed to 
 the tones of his voice as used in ordinary conversa- 
 tion, thinks he is talking loudly enough when he is 
 reaching only those nearest to him. The speaker can- 
 not be his own judge at first. He must accept the 
 word of someone in the back of the room, either 
 teacher or friend, or happily both, to tell him when he 
 is being heard, and when not. In speaking in a good 
 sized room, it is necessary to "turn on both lungs". 
 Girls and women, particularly, are apt to fall into the 
 habit of speaking with too little force. The sound of 
 their own voices scares them, makes them think that 
 they are "making too much noise", that they are be- 
 ing "unladylike". It is necessary to get over this fear 
 at the outset. A tone that might cause one to be ar- 
 rested in common conversation may not be any too 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 51 
 
 strong on the platform. One must be governed by cir- 
 cumstances, by the size of the room and of the audi- 
 ence, and by the presence of other conflicting sounds, 
 such as electric fans, sputtering lighting systems, pass- 
 ing street cars and automobiles. In fine, one must be 
 heard, whatever the loudness necessary. And of course 
 there is such a thing as being too loud. To bawl and 
 shout, as some speakers do, is not conducive to the 
 best results. It is necessary to use enough force to 
 make oneself clearly and easily heard. But the more 
 common fault among students is too little loudness 
 rather than too much. 
 
 But there is something else. The force may be suffi- 
 cient and not too strong, but it may not be exerted in 
 the right way. This is a matter of abruptness. Some 
 speakers speak too abruptly, but most do not speak 
 abruptly enough. Those who speak too abruptly bark 
 out the words. They literally hurl them at us. Ordi- 
 narily we do not like this. It gives the impression of 
 dogmatism, of arbitrariness, of trying to drive the audi- 
 ence. But people do not want to be driven. They want 
 to be reasoned with, to be led. Consequently those 
 who bark in delivery lose favor. Care should be taken 
 not to explode the words too violently, but to send 
 them forth with just the right amount of "punch". 
 But the more common fault is too little abruptness. 
 Students tend to run the words together and enunci- 
 ate them too evenly. There is much to be said for a 
 fairly abrupt style. Certain it is, more abruptness is 
 needed in a platform speech than in common conver- 
 sation. The audience is farther away and the words 
 must be sent to them with much more vigor than when 
 
52 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 they are only a few feet distant. Again, someone be- 
 side the speaker must judge. A teacher trained to 
 notice these things, or someone else whose attention 
 is especially drawn to it, can put the speaker right in 
 this matter and insure sufficient, but not too much, 
 abruptness. 
 
 A second characteristic of all tone is quality. By 
 this is meant the timbre of the tone, that which distin- 
 guishes it from every other tone of the same pitch and 
 force. It is what distinguishes a violin from a cor- 
 net when both play the same note with equal force. 
 Voices vary considerably in this matter, and very 
 properly. It is not desirable that all have the same 
 kind of tone. What is more pleasant than to distin- 
 guish the voice of a friend among other voices? It 
 is partly by quality that personality impresses itself. 
 
 But there are some qualities that are unpleasant in 
 any voice, and these are the ones to avoid in all speech. 
 We call them "impure qualities". There are four of 
 these. First there is the breathy voice. This comes 
 from allowing too much air to escape as we speak. 
 Every bit of air should be utilized in the making of a 
 tone. A little practice will enable the speaker to de- 
 tect this breathiness and to see how it interferes with 
 effectiveness by covering up the tone, and by making 
 the voice "fuzzy" and thus lessening its carrying 
 power. Then there is the nasal voice. This is a mat- 
 ter of placing the tone. Its effect is nearly always 
 unpleasant. As soon as the ear can detect its presence 
 the speaker should analyze his speech to see what 
 sounds are most given to nasality. Now try enunci- 
 ating words clearly, forming the sounds as near the 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 53 
 
 front of the mouth as possible. Most people, who 
 have nasal tones do not open the mouth enough in 
 speaking. The jaw is apt to be held rigid and the 
 words formed back in the head. The aid of another 
 person is usually necessary in getting rid of the nasal 
 quality, as the speaker cannot always sense the dif- 
 ficulty. The third impurity is the throaty voice. In 
 this the sounds are formed back in -the throat and are 
 guttural and rough and harsh. Again an effort should 
 be made to get the tone forward in the mouth. "Speak 
 the speech — trippingly, on the tongue", as Hamlet ad- 
 vises. This throaty, guttural quality has ruined many 
 a good voice. It is a frequent cause of "speakers' 
 sore throat". It often results from the effort to throw 
 the voice to a distance in speaking. Be careful, in 
 strong speaking, not to growl or let the tone be rasp- 
 ing, for this quality not only ruins the voice but it is 
 very unpleasant. The fourth impure quality is the 
 hollow voice. This is a sepulchral tone, sometimes 
 acquired in the effort to secure volume. It is "spooky". 
 It is not open and free. It is frequently low in pitch. 
 It is sometimes called the "false orotund", and by this 
 is meant that it is frequently used where the orotund, 
 or voluminous voice, is desired. The remedy is to 
 speak in a natural pitch and in a free and easy, not 
 a solemn tone. Breathiness, nasality, throatiness and 
 hollowness, these are the common impurities in the 
 speaking voice. Technically they are called the as- 
 pirate, nasal, guttural and pectoral qualities. They 
 are to be studiously avoided for the most part. 
 
 The voice to be cultivated in their place may be 
 called the normal Orotund. It is just like the voice 
 
54 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 of ordinary conversation except that it is larger, more 
 space-filling, more voluminous. It is open and free. 
 It is a pure tone. It is simply the ordinary pure voice 
 made large. The good speaking voice fills up the aud- 
 itorium, no matter how large. It is louder than the 
 ordinary voice, but this is not all. It is larger as well 
 as louder. A reed organ may sound well in the par- 
 lor, but it takes a pipe organ to fill a vast church. And 
 the difference between the two is not merely a mat- 
 ter of loudness, it is a matter of richness and fullness 
 of tone. Deep breathing is an essential of a big full 
 voice. The normal orotund voice is the whole speaker 
 made vocal. It is the voice that carries and fills com- 
 fortably the hall. 
 
 A good quality for the speaker, then, is one free 
 from breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollow- 
 ness, and one that has a big, vibrant, space-filling 
 power, which is yet free and easy. 
 
 The third and last characteristic of tone is pitch. 
 And here many faults may be found. They are of 
 two kinds, those of degree and those of inflection. By 
 degree is meant the general position on the musical 
 scale, high or low. Perhaps the most common fault 
 is that of too high pitch. It is natural for the pitch 
 to run up in moments of excitement. And the bare 
 excitement of making a speech is sufficient to send 
 many voices up to an unpleasant degree. Care must 
 be taken, when increasing the force of speech, not to 
 raise the pitch unduly. Otherwise the voice runs to- 
 ward a "screetch". It may even "break" with the 
 strain of the high pitch. The pitch should be kept 
 very near to the normal pitch of conversation; the 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 55 
 
 added force and volume will get the desired result. 
 Some few speak too low in pitch. The voice does not 
 carry well and often rumbles and is not easy to hear. 
 No definite statement of what constitutes a good pitch 
 can be made, since voices differ so much. But every- 
 one knows when a voice gets "keyed-up" unpleas- 
 antly or when it "rumbles". No great effort should 
 be made to change radically the natural pitch of a 
 speaker. A deep voice is somewhat better than a high 
 one, but one who has a tenor voice should not try to 
 imitate a bass, and a soprano should not try to speak 
 like a contralto. Much better results will come of 
 speaking in the voice that nature has given. This 
 does not mean that one who "naturally" speaks in a 
 high, strained, "keyed-up" voice should not try to get 
 a better and more controlled tone. It simply means 
 that the normal range of pitch should not be tampered 
 with too much. Nervousness is often the cause of the 
 "keyed-up" voice, and of course every effort should be 
 made for the self control and poise that will bring the 
 voice down to a normal degree of pitch. 
 
 An Inflection is the sweep of the voice up or down 
 in uttering a word or syllable. The only fundamen- 
 tal difference between speech and song lies here. In 
 song we hold one note, or degree of pitch, for a time, 
 then we go to another and hold that. In speech we do 
 not hold any one note but the voice rises and falls on 
 every word. This rise or fall of voice is called an 
 inflection. And this will suggest the first common 
 fault in speech. It is the tendency to hold the voice 
 on one note as in song. This gives rise to the "song 
 notes" once so common in speaking. The speaker 
 
5 6 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 should never forget that he is speaking, not singing, 
 and that every word should have its inflection as in 
 regular conversation. There is no more reason for 
 singing a speech than there is for singing a conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 The second, and perhaps greatest fault of inflec- 
 tions, is monotony. There must be plenty of variety 
 in the width of the inflections. In conversation some 
 inflections are narrow and some are wide. We mix 
 them up, giving to the emphatic words the wider in- 
 flections. In platform speaking too often we fail to 
 realize the importance of this and give to every sylla- 
 ble about the same range. This makes for monotony. 
 
 The third fault is in making the emphatic inflections 
 too short. Practice may be had by picking out on a 
 piano an easy range, as from middle C to the G above 
 it, then singing the two notes, one after the other with 
 a slur between. Repeat, making the notes shorter 
 and keeping the slur. Shorten the notes until the 
 change of pitch becomes a speech inflection. It will 
 be an interval of a "fifth". Now speak several words 
 with this interval. Repeat, going down instead of up. 
 Now make the interval an octave, from middle C to 
 the C above it, and carry out the exercise the same 
 way as before. This will give some idea of the de- 
 gree covered by a good full emphatic inflection. The 
 unemphatic words of course take narrower inflec- 
 tions. The importance of wide inflections can hardly 
 be overestimated. This is perhaps the most common 
 of all the means of emphasis, and emphasis is the 
 means by which we convey thought. 
 
 A fourth common fault is in using a rising or a fall- 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 57 
 
 ing inflection when the opposite would convey the 
 meaning better. It should be remembered that the ris- 
 ing inflection expresses incompletion, hesitation, doubt, 
 indecision, lack of finality, whereas the falling ex- 
 presses completion, certainty, decision, finality. In a 
 group of several terms, we commonly raise the voice 
 on all but the last, showing that the series is incom- 
 plete until the last is reached. One who speaks as 
 though uncertain of his ground is apt to use the rising 
 inflection. Of course a falling inflection is stronger 
 than a rising, and consequently we use the falling in- 
 flection when strong emphasis is desired, even though 
 the incompleted thought would seem to require a ris- 
 ing. Perhaps the best guide as to which inflection is 
 best is our common sense. We use the proper in- 
 flections in conversation for the most part, and if we 
 stop and ask ourselves how we would say the phrase 
 in question in earnest conversation, we shall not often 
 go astray. Very few reliable rules can be given, and 
 it is usually best to consider each case separately, but 
 care should be taken to apply the test of common 
 sense whenever there is doubt. One common fault 
 of older days, now happily less common but still met 
 with sometimes, is the "preacher's cadence". This is 
 an upward inflection at the end of every sentence or 
 clause. If the rule of common conversation is ap- 
 plied, few mistakes will result. In fact it is well in 
 practice to stop every once in a while and sit down, 
 face a chair with an imaginary auditor in it and give 
 the sentence as to someone in common conversation. 
 When the conversational style has been found, sim- 
 ply enlarge it somewhat for the speech, but be sure to 
 
58 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 keep the same inflections as before. Conversational 
 directness consists more in keeping the natural inflec- 
 tions than in almost anything else. 
 
 Good tone production, then, is a matter of using 
 the right amount of force with the right degree of 
 abruptness, of getting a good, pure, full quality of 
 tone, and of adjusting the pitch to a conversational 
 level, taking care to use the requisite variety and 
 width of speech inflections to bring out the thought 
 and feeling. 
 
 Speech, Having attained to a satisfactory tone, we 
 must next look to the formation of our speech. The 
 essentials of good speech are correct pronunciation^ 
 proper timing and good emphasis. 
 
 Good pronunciation consists of three things : cor- 
 rect vowel quality, sharp articulation and proper ac- 
 cent. The first and last of these are given for every 
 word in any standard dictionary. Therefore we shall 
 not here concern ourselves with them. It need only 
 be said that every student of public speaking should 
 get the dictionary habit and stick to it. There is no 
 excuse for the mispronunciation of any English word 
 in a platform speech. It takes but a moment to look 
 it up, and failure to do so when in doubt puts the 
 stigma of simple laziness on the speaker. If he does 
 not know it already, the student should at once famil- 
 iarize himself with the use of the Webster system of 
 diacritical marks, which is the most common one in 
 use, and which is used not only in the Webster but 
 in the Standard dictionary also. These two are the 
 best known popular reference works in the matter of 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY-VOICE 
 
 59 
 
 pronunciation and definition of words. The writer pre- 
 fers the Standard as being the more liberal of the two, 
 and the one that seems to give greater weight to usage 
 in the middle west. 
 
 A word regarding articulation is perhaps desirable. 
 He who would be understood with ease must prac- 
 tice in the use of the consonants. Articulation has to 
 do with the consonants, and it is here that speech most 
 often becomes mumbling and indistinct. Mere cor- 
 rectness in the use of the consonants is not enough. 
 Each consonant must be brought out with much 
 greater distinctness on the platform than in common 
 conversation. When the speaker is within three or 
 four feet of his hearer, the hearer can get much of 
 the speech by lip reading. As a matter of fact we 
 "listen with the eyes" a great deal in conversation. 
 This is seen when you consider how much easier it is 
 to understand when you and the speaker are face to 
 face than it is when the speaker or yourself turns 
 around. In a public speech, the audience is much 
 farther away. Lip reading is increasingly difficult, 
 and the attention to articulation must be much greater. 
 It is not necessary to practice ''tongue twisters" of the 
 "Peter Piper and his pickled peppers" variety. What 
 is necessary is that we practice the common combi- 
 nations so thoroughly that they will be perfectly dis- 
 tinct. There are few things more annoying than to 
 attend a speech and not be able to understand the 
 words because of imperfect, slipshod articulation. 
 Practice holding the consonants harder and releasing 
 them more quickly. Find the sounds that give you the 
 most trouble and practice on them separately. Make 
 
60 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 combinations containing a difficult sound, placing it 
 now first, now last, now in the middle of words. Prac- 
 tice until the "b", "d", "t" and "p" sounds are per- 
 fectly distinct, so that one could not possibly be mis- 
 taken for another. Do this with other sets of simi- 
 lar sounds. Perhaps one of the best exercises is whis- 
 pering. See how far you can make yourself under- 
 stood in a whisper. Two can work together well on 
 this, backing away from each other and whispering 
 alternately, each checking up on the other. E. H. 
 Sothern can send a stage whisper to the back of the 
 gallery and be perfectly understood. 
 
 In trying to cultivate a clear and distinct articula- 
 tion care should be taken not to make the speech 
 stilted. It is possible to overdo the matter. This us- 
 ually happens when words are unduly separated. In 
 ordinary talk we run words together, we do not cut 
 them absolutely apart. This should be done in platform 
 speaking also. But running words together and mum- 
 bling them are two very different things. One does not 
 need to say "The — title — of — this — lecture — originated 
 — away — back — in — eighteen — sixty — nine". Say the 
 words as in common conversation and avoid the stilted 
 style. But say them more clearly and distinctly than 
 in common conversation and be plain. Don't say "The 
 tita love thi slecture originate dway backin 1869". 
 There is a happy medium between the stilted and the 
 slipshod styles. 
 
 Time. In considering the subject of timing as re- 
 lated to speech, we may consider it under the heads 
 of rate and grouping. Rate has to do with the rapidity 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 61 
 
 with which the syllables and words are spoken. There 
 are two extremes to be guarded against, too fast and 
 too slow rate, and of these the former is by far the 
 more common. There is a strong tendency with be- 
 ginners to hurry. The words come tumbling out so 
 fast that the audience can get no time to think of what 
 is being said, and sometimes they cannot even follow 
 the speaker. There are two ways of correcting this. 
 In the first place, the syllables and words can be 
 spoken more slowly. In rapid rate the words are 
 snapped out, jerked out, spit out — any way to get 
 them out in a hurry. Practice saying the words more 
 slowly. Isolate a sentence or a phrase and say it over 
 and over again, more and more slowly until each 
 word has its appropriate time. Have someone lis- 
 ten and judge as to the proper time. In the second 
 place, more time can be spent in pauses between words 
 and groups. Not one speaker in a hundred pauses 
 often enough or long enough. It takes time for an 
 idea to sink in. Give the audience time to digest a 
 thought before going on to the next one. Remember, 
 it is not the speaker who says the most words in a 
 minute that makes the greatest success. It is the one 
 that makes the audience think the most that gets re- 
 sults. A thought is not "put over" until the audience 
 has digested it, run it through the process of their 
 own minds, made it their own. And they cannot do 
 this if the speaker is firing away at them all the time, 
 giving them no rest. It does not take very long to 
 digest a thought if the attention is active, but it does 
 take some time, a quite perceptible time, and this time 
 is given them during the pauses. No one can say 
 
62 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 what is a proper rate, because some speakers speak 
 much faster than others, but if you are going more 
 than about 125 words a minute the chances are you 
 are going too fast. Time a paragraph and determine 
 the rate. Then slow it down until you are sure it is 
 slow enough, taking more time to say the words and 
 pausing long enough to convey the meaning. A 
 strong sense of communication helps very materially, 
 because when you think of getting the ideas over to 
 people you naturally pause more to let them sink in. 
 And this is of the utmost importance in speaking. 
 
 Grouping has to do with the arrangement of words 
 in groups for the purpose of bringing out the mean- 
 ing more clearly. The groups are separated by 
 pauses longer than those within the group. Words 
 that belong together should be grouped together. The 
 most important means of securing good grouping is, 
 again, to think the thought vividly and try hard to 
 make it clear to others. Bad grouping is usually the 
 result of bad or weak thinking. Punctuation is not 
 a safe guide to grouping. The only guide is the sense 
 of the sentence. Try it this way and that way to bring 
 out its full and exact meaning, always remembering 
 that the thought is new to the audience, even though 
 it may be familiar to you, and remembering that your 
 chief business as a speaker is to make the thought 
 clear and impressive to others. It is a mistake to view 
 either rate or grouping as ends in themselves or as 
 problems to be settled without reference to the mean- 
 ing involved and without regard to the necessity of 
 getting the ideas clear for the audience. 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 63 
 
 Emphasis. Lastly we come to the subject of em- 
 phasis, in many respects the most important thing in 
 public speaking. Emphasis is the process of making 
 certain words or groups of words more prominent 
 than the rest, in order to bring out the meaning. It 
 is a common fact of psychology that attention cannot 
 be held steadily on anything for any great length of 
 time. Bearing this fact in mind, remembering that at- 
 tention jumps from one thing to another, it is im- 
 portant that certain words that bear the weight of the 
 meaning should stand out in such a way that they will 
 catch the attention of the audience. By emphasis the 
 speaker says to the audience in effect, "You cannot 
 get every word I shall say; your attention will not 
 allow you to ; but if you will get these few words that 
 I am making more prominent than the rest, you will 
 get the meaning of my sentence." So he emphasizes 
 the most important things, making them stronger as 
 they are more important. The importance of a good 
 emphasis cannot be overstated. How may it be ob- 
 tained ? 
 
 In the first place, again, one must think clearly and 
 vividly. If a real serious effort is made to bring out 
 the meaning, the greatest step has been taken. It is 
 necessary to keep before the mind every moment the 
 importance of making the meaning clear to others. 
 
 There are many mechanical means of emphasis, 
 some of which have already been mentioned. There 
 is the head gesture, the nod on the emphatic word. 
 There is the hand gesture, calling attention to an im- 
 portant idea. There is the emphasis of force, whereby 
 a word is made louder or much less loud than its 
 
64 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 neighbors. Sometimes to whisper a word makes it 
 very emphatic. There is the emphasis gained by pro- 
 nouncing a word very abruptly. There is an emphasis 
 attained by pitch, and perhaps this is the most common 
 and most subtle. By making a word higher or lower 
 than the rest, it hecomes emphatic. By giving it a 
 strong falling inflection it becomes emphatic, and the 
 wider the inflection the stronger the emphasis. There 
 is an emphasis of time, gained by speaking a word 
 faster or slower than other words. Emphasis is put 
 on a word by pausing just before it or just after it, 
 or both before and after. In a word, any action that 
 makes a word different from its neighbors makes it 
 emphatic. 
 
 It is a good exercise in emphasis to go through a 
 sentence and pick out the words which, if pronounced 
 alone, the other words left out, will give the sense of 
 the sentence. These will be the emphatic words in 
 speaking. But in applying any given physical means 
 of emphasis, it must not be forgotten that the indis- 
 pensable thing is to think the thought and to try to im- 
 part it to others. This is, after all, the secret of gain- 
 ing good emphasis. 
 
 Summary 
 
 The formal qualities of vocal delivery reside in tone 
 and speech. A good tone must be loud enough to be 
 heard easily. It must be free from the impurities of 
 breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollowness, and 
 it must have fullness and volume. It must be good 
 conversational tone made large. It must have the 
 conversational degree of pitch, neither so high as to 
 
FORMAL DELIVERY- VOICE 65 
 
 be "keyed-up" nor so low as to rumble. It must have 
 speech inflections that are varied and not monoton- 
 ous, and that have sufficient width for good emphasis. 
 It must, in a word, be pleasant, forceful and varied. 
 Good speech consists in accurate and clear pronun- 
 ciation, which implies correct vowel quality, sharp 
 articulation and proper accent; in good timing, which 
 implies a rate that is slow enough that the audience 
 can follow every thought presented, and a manner of 
 grouping that brings out the relationships of the 
 words; and in strong and forceful emphasis which 
 holds the attention on the most important ideas pre- 
 sented. 
 
 Collateral Reading 
 
 Exercises and Illustrations 
 
 Fulton and Trueblood : Practical Elocution or 
 Essentials of Public Speaking. Chapters on 
 Quality, Force, Pitch and Time. 
 
 Houghton : Essentials of Public Speaking, Chap- 
 ters V to XII inclusive. 
 
 Winans: Public Speaking, Chapters XIII and 
 XVII. 
 
 Woolbertr The Fundamentals of Speech, Chap- 
 ters VI to X inclusive. 
 
A STANDARD FOR THE COURSE 
 
 i. Have you acquired a "sense of communication" ? 
 
 2. Do you put into your delivery sufficient physical 
 vitality ? 
 
 3. As you speak, do you interest people by your own 
 enthusiasm? 
 
 4. Are you, in your speaking, genuine and earnest? 
 
 5. Have you acquired poise and self control? 
 
 6. Have you freed yourself from solemnity? 
 
 7. Is your position stable and strong, symmetrical, 
 direct, well poised and easy? Does it contribute 
 to the success of your speech by not calling at- 
 tention to itself ? 
 
 8. Is your facial expression friendly and expressive 
 of your thought and feeling? 
 
 9. Are your platform movements purposeful and 
 free? 
 
 10. Do you use head gestures as freely as in con- 
 versation? Do you use the three types of hand- 
 gesture spontaneously as in common conversa- 
 tion, yet formally enough not to call attention to 
 them? 
 
 11. Is your tone loud enough to be heard easily? Is 
 it of good full normal orotund quality, free from 
 breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollowness? 
 It is of conversational pitch, not too high nor too 
 low, and are your inflections free from song 
 
A STANDARD FOR THE COURSE 67 
 
 notes, are they varied, strong and emphatic? Do 
 you use the rising and falling inflections as in 
 conversation? 
 
 12. Do you use, in speaking, correct pronunciation, 
 with correct vowel qualities, consonant qualities 
 and accent according to the best usage? Is your 
 articulation sharp enough so that you can be per- 
 fectly understood all over a large hall, and yet not 
 stilted? Do you speak slowly enough so all can 
 follow you and think with you? Do you group 
 your words so as to bring out the meaning most 
 clearly? Is your emphasis strong and forceful 
 enough not only to make your meaning clear but 
 to make your speech impressive? 
 
 It is to be noted that in the above standard the em- 
 phasis is put, not primarily on what you know but on 
 what you can do. It is, of course, necessary to under- 
 stand all these things, but the test comes in the do- 
 ing. When the above questions can all be answered 
 "yes", when you have acquired the ability to speak in 
 accordance with the above standard, not only in com- 
 mitted selections but also in your extemporaneous ef- 
 forts, the fundamental work in public speaking has 
 been accomplished. Attention may now. be turned to 
 the other technical things of speech construction, gath- 
 ering material, briefing, and the other elements that 
 enter into a good speech from the point of view of 
 effectiveness. These things are the concern of suc- 
 ceeding courses. The work of the elementary course 
 is the work of attaining to the above standard of de- 
 livery. 
 
SCHEDULE OF SPEECHES FOR THE COURSE 
 
 The succeeding pages contain speeches for class 
 practice. The lectures are divided into class assign- 
 ments which are numbered in paragraph indenta- 
 tions. These numbers correspond to class numbers of 
 students. Hence, as soon as class numbers are given 
 out, the speeches that are to be memorized for the se- 
 mester's work may be known. The following speech 
 schedule gives alternate committed and extemporan- 
 eous speech assignments. The object is to use the 
 committed speeches to work out the more formal 
 principles of delivery, and then to apply these prin- 
 ciples in the extemporaneous speeches. Care should 
 be taken to use every principle learned in every 
 speech. Do not "let down" when making an extem- 
 poraneous speech, but use gestures and all other means 
 of effectiveness. Dates on which the assignments are 
 due will be given out each semester as soon as the 
 class is fully organized. 
 
 i. Committed. "Acres of Diamonds". 
 
 2. Extemporaneous. Give in your own words, as 
 directly and as interestingly as you can, an ex- 
 ample of the idea underlying Mr. ConwelPs lec- 
 ture. Tell how somebody whom you have known 
 or of whom you have heard has made a success 
 by taking the opportunity that lay at home. Make 
 the example like Mr. Conwell's examples in nar- 
 rative style and interestingness. Two Minutes. 
 
SCHEDULE OF SPEECHES 69 
 
 3. Committed. "The Liberty of Man, Woman and 
 Child". 
 
 4. Extemporaneous. Give your own personal opin- 
 ion of any of the ideas in Mr. Ingersoll's lec- 
 ture. Be perfectly free to say just what you 
 think, whether it be favorable or unfavorable to 
 the lecture. Put physical vitality, enthusiasm and 
 seriousness into your talk. Try hard to con- 
 vince the class of the truth of your position. Not 
 over three minutes. 
 
 5. Committed. "The Prince of Peace". 
 
 6. Give your own ideas on the subject of Evolution 
 and its relation to religion. Or tell us what you 
 think the office of religion is. What do you 
 think of the modern church and its mission? 
 Strive to convince the class. Three Minutes. 
 
 7. Committed. "Sour Grapes". 
 
 8. Extemporaneous. Give an example, without 
 names if the example is from your own personal 
 observation, using names if some historic per- 
 son is used, of the influence of heredity. Or cite 
 illustrations that seem to show that environment 
 is stronger than heredity in achieving success. 
 Three minutes. 
 
 9. Committed. "The Race Problem in the South" 
 and "The New South". 
 
 10. Give your own ideas as to the solution of the 
 race problem in the United States. Three Min- 
 utes. 
 
?o TMM DHLIVHRY OP A SPBBCH 
 
 ii. Committed. "The Rise and Fall of the Mus- 
 tache". 
 
 12. Make a five minute speech suitable for a banquet 
 program, the object of which will be to entertain 
 the audience. Use humorous stories if you like. 
 Or tell of something that you have seen or heard 
 that would interest people. Give it a humorous 
 turn preferably. See how well you can entertain 
 the class. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEMORIZING- > 
 
 i. Read the entire class assignment first. Thus you 
 will understand the whole lecture of which yours is 
 a part and can make your contribution intelligently. 
 
 2. Begin memorizing at once and spread the work 
 over as long a time as possible. Delay in starting the 
 memorizing is fatal. 
 
 3. Memorize your speech as a whole, never sentence 
 by sentence. Memory is a matter of association, and 
 the last word of every sentence should suggest the 
 first word of the next sentence. If you repeat one 
 sentence over and over again, an association will be 
 formed between the last word of the sentence and first 
 word of the same sentence, and you tend to repeat in 
 speaking. Hence read your speech straight through 
 before stopping, every time. 
 
 4. Read or repeat the speech out loud. Auditory 
 and kinesthetic sensations are more valuable than vis- 
 ual in memorizing speeches. 
 
 5. Read or repeat it thoughtfully. Think every 
 thought intensely. Make it live again as you say it. 
 If you find your mind wandering, start again and hold 
 your attention to the speech. 
 
 6. Try to feel the speech from the start. Get en- 
 thusiastic about it and give it as though it were your 
 own. 
 
72 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 7. Always read or repeat as to an audience. Imag- 
 ine yourself before the class or some other audience 
 and try to interest them. 
 
 8. Have the book in a convenient place and read 
 the speech at several convenient times during the day. 
 Do not spend more than a few minutes on it at a 
 time. But do it several times. Read it the last thing 
 before you go to bed. 
 
 9. As the speech becomes familiar repeat as much as 
 possible without looking at the book. Get free from 
 the book as soon as possible. Then practice vigor- 
 ously, using gestures and all other means of effective- 
 ness. Finally, if a few places "stick", work intensively 
 on them until they are "ironed out" and the speech 
 comes freely. 
 
 10. But at all costs, have the speech word perfect. 
 This is of the very first importance. The value of the 
 class exercise will depend on this. Failure to mem- 
 orize thoroughly is the one unpardonable sin. Don't 
 get the notion that it is hard for you to memorize, or 
 that your memory is different from others'. Memories 
 do differ in the rapidity of their action, but any per- 
 son of normal intelligence can memorize these 
 speeches perfectly if time and effort is spent freely 
 enough. Speeches must be perfectly memorized and 
 ready on time. No excuse whatever is accepted. 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 
 
 By RusstEXi, H. Conweix 
 
 Russell H. Conwell was born February 15, 1843, in the 
 Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. After a year at 
 Yale College he enlisted in the Northern armies and fought 
 in the civil war. He was wounded and left for dead in the 
 battle of Kenesaw Mountain, but recovered after a long ill- 
 ness. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1865. 
 He then engaged in journalistic work for several years, in 
 which he met many of the prominent men and women of 
 the world. During this time he was gradually working up 
 a good law practice and real estate business. Finally his 
 interest in the ministry drew him away from his chosen pro- 
 fession, and he entered upon what has proved to be his real 
 life work. From Boston he moved to Philadelphia. Here 
 he allied himself with a struggling congregation, so deeply 
 in debt for its church that the situation looked hopeless. 
 From this unpromising beginning he has built the Baptist 
 Temple, the auditorium of which seats between three and 
 four, thousand people. It is a fully equipped, modern church, 
 taking care of the physical, social, and spiritual needs of 
 thousands. In connection with this church has grown up 
 Temple University, of which Dr. Conwell is president. Nearly 
 100,000 students have attended it since its founding. 
 
 "Acres of Diamonds" has been the most successful of Dr. 
 Conwell's lectures. It has been delivered all over the world. 
 At present it numbers over 6,000 repetitions. It has been 
 estimated that Dr. Conwell has spoken to more than ten 
 million people in the course of his life-long career of lec- 
 turing. The income from this lecture, aggregating more than 
 a million dollars, has all been used to give a college education 
 to poor but deserving young men. About 10,000 men have 
 been helped by Dr. Conwell in this way. 
 
74 THE DHUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 
 
 For directness, force and clearness of style, for concrete- 
 ness and aptness of example, this lecture has never been sur- 
 passed in the history of popular lectures. 
 
 For a full account of Dr. Conwell's life and work, the 
 reader is referred to the book, "Russell Conwell and His 
 Work," by Agnes Rush Burr, published by the John C. Win- 
 ston Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Conwell has 
 very graciously given his permission to reprint the lecture 
 that follows. 
 
 I. Ladies and Gentx#m£n : — The title of this 
 lecture originated away back in 1869. I was going 
 down the Tigris River, and we had hired a guide from 
 Bagdad to show us down to the Arabian Gulf. That 
 guide whom we employed resembled the barbers we 
 find in America. That is, he resembled them in cer- 
 tain mental characteristics. He thought it not only 
 his duty to guide us down the river, but also to en- 
 tertain us with stories; curious and wierd, ancient 
 and modern, strange and familiar; many of them I 
 have forgotten, and I am glad I have. But there was 
 one which I recall tonight. The guide grew irritable 
 over my lack of appreciation, and as he led my camel 
 by the halter, he introduced his story by saying : "This 
 is a tale I reserve for my particular friends." So I then 
 gave him my close attention. He told me that there 
 once lived near the shore of the River Indus, toward 
 which we were then travelling, an ancient Persian by 
 the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned 
 a farm, with orchards, grain fields and gardens, that 
 he had money at interest, had a beautiful wife and 
 lovely children, and was a contented and happy man. 
 Contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy be- 
 cause he was contented. 
 
ACRES OP DIAMONDS 75 
 
 One day there visited this old Persian farmer one of 
 those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of 
 the East, who sat down by Al Hafed's fireside and 
 told the old farmer how this world was made. He 
 told him that the world was once a great bank of 
 fog, and the Almighty thrust his finger into this 
 bank of fog, and began slowly to move his finger 
 around, and then increased the speed of his finger un- 
 til he whirled this bank of fog into a solid bank of 
 fire; and as it went rolling through the Universe 
 burning its way through other banks of fog, it con- 
 densed the moisture until it fell in floods of rain on 
 the heated surface of the world, and cooled the out- 
 ward crust. Then the internal fires, bursting the cool- 
 ing crust, threw up the mountains and the hills, and 
 the valleys of this wonderful world of ours. 
 
 "And," said the old priest, "if this internal melted 
 mass burst forth and cooled very quickly it became 
 granite; if it cooled more slowly it became copper, 
 if it cooled less quickly, silver, less quickly, gold, and 
 after gold, diamonds were made." Said the old 
 priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." 
 That statement is literally true. 
 
 2. And the old priest said another very curious 
 thing. He said that a diamond was the last and the 
 highest of God's mineral creations, as a woman is the 
 last and highest of God's animal creations. That is 
 the reason, I suppose, why the two have such a lik- 
 ing for each other. 
 
 The old priest told Al Hafed if he had a diamond 
 the size of his thumb he could purchase a dozen farms 
 like his. "And," said the priest, "if you had a handful 
 
76 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 of diamonds you could purchase the county, and if 
 you had a mine of diamonds you could purchase king- 
 doms and place your children upon thrones through 
 the influence of your great wealth." 
 
 Al Hafed heard all about diamonds that night and 
 went to bed a poor man. He wanted a whole mine 
 of diamonds. Early in the morning he sought the 
 priest and awoke him. Al Hafed said, "Will you tell 
 me where I can find diamonds?" 
 
 The priest said "Diamonds, what do you want of 
 diamonds ?" 
 
 Said Al Hafed, "I want to be immensely rich." 
 
 "Well," said the priest, "if you want diamonds, all 
 you have to do is to go and find them, and then you 
 will have them." 
 
 "But," said Al Hafed, "I don't know where to go." 
 
 "If you will find a river that runs over white sands 
 between high mountains, in those white sands you will 
 always find diamonds," said the priest. 
 
 "But," asked Al Hafed, "Do you believe there is 
 such a river?" 
 
 "Plenty of them; all you have to do is just go where 
 they are." 
 
 "Well," said Al Hafed, "I will go." 
 
 So he sold his farm, collected his money that was at 
 interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and 
 away he went in search of diamonds. He began his 
 search very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains 
 of the Moon. Afterwards he came around into Pal- 
 estine, and then wandered on into Europe. At last 
 when his money was all gone and he was in rags, pov- 
 erty and wretchedness, he stood at the shore in Barce- 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 77 
 
 lona in Spain, when a great tidal wave swept through 
 the Pillars of Hercules. And the poor, starving, af- 
 flicted stranger could not resist the temptation to cast 
 himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath 
 its foaming crest never to rise again in this life. 
 
 3. The man who purchased Al Hafed's farm led 
 his camel out into the garden to drink, and as the 
 animal put his nose into the shallow waters of the gar- 
 den brook Al Hafed's successor noted a curious flash 
 of light from the white sands of the stream. Reach- 
 ing in, he pulled out a large black stone containing a 
 strange eye of light. He took it into the house as a 
 curious pebble and putting it on the mantle that cov- 
 ered the central fire went his way and forgot all about 
 it. But not long after, that same old priest came to 
 visit Al Hafed's successor. The moment he opened 
 the door he noticed the flash of light. He rushed to 
 the mantle and said: 
 
 "Here is a diamond !" Here is a diamond ! Has Al 
 Hafed returned?" 
 
 "O no, Al Hafed has not returned, and we have 
 not heard from him since he went away, and that is 
 not a diamond. It is nothing but a stone we found 
 out in our garden." 
 
 "But," said the priest, "I know a diamond when I 
 see it, and I tell you that is a diamond." Then to- 
 gether they rushed out into the garden. They stirred 
 up the white sands with their fingers, and there came 
 up other more beautiful, more valuable gems than the 
 •first. 
 
 "Thus," said the guide, and, friends, it is histori- 
 cally true, "were discovered the diamond mines of Gol- 
 
78 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 conda, the most valuable diamond mines in the his- 
 tory of the ancient world." 
 
 "Well, when the guide had added the second chap- 
 ter to his story, he took off his Turkish red cap and 
 swung it in the air to call my special attention to the 
 moral ; those Arab guides always have morals to their 
 stories, though the stories are not always moral. He 
 said to me: 
 
 "Had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his 
 own cellar or underneath his own wheat field, instead 
 of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a 
 strange land, he would have had acres of diamonds. 
 
 ACRES OF DIAMONDS ! For every acre of the 
 old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterwards revealed the 
 gems that have since decorated the crowns of mon- 
 archs. 
 
 When the old guide had added the moral to this 
 story I saw why he reserved it for his particular 
 friends. But I didn't tell him that I could see it. It 
 was that mean old Arab's way of going around a 
 thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did- 
 n't dare say directly, that in his private opinion there 
 was a certain young man travelling down the Tigris 
 River who might better be at home in America. 
 
 4. Professor Agassiz, the great geologist of Har- 
 vard University, that magnificent scholar, told at the 
 Summer School of Mineralogy that there once lived 
 in Pennsylvania a man who owned a farm. And he 
 did with his farm just what I should do if I owned 
 a farm in Pennsylvania: he sold it. But before he 
 sold it he decided to secure employment collecting coal 
 oil. He wrote to his cousin in Canada that he would 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 79 
 
 like to go into that business. His cousin wrote back 
 to him : "I cannot engage you because you do not un- 
 derstand the oil business." "Then," said he, "I will 
 understand it." And with commendable zeal he set 
 himself at the study of the whole theory of the coal 
 oil subject. He began away back at the second day 
 of God's creation. He found that there was once an- 
 other sun that shone on this world, and that then 
 there were immense forests of vegetation. He found 
 that the other sun was put out, and this world after 
 a time fell into the wake of the present sun. It was 
 then locked in blocks of ice. Then there rose mighty 
 iceburgs that human imagination cannot grasp. And 
 as those mountains of ice did ride those stormy seas 
 they beat down the original vegetation, they planed 
 down the hills, toppled over the mountains, and every- 
 where buried this original vegetation which has since 
 been turned, by chemical action, to the primitive beds 
 of coal, in connection with which only is found coal 
 oil in paying quantities. 
 
 So he found out where oil originated, he studied it 
 until he knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, 
 how to refine it, and where to sell it. 
 
 "Now," said he to his cousin in a letter, "I know 
 all about the oil business." His cousin replied to him 
 to come on. So he sold his farm in Pennsylvania for 
 $833 — even money, no cents. 
 
 After he had gone from the farm, the farmer who 
 had purchased his place went out to arrange for wa- 
 tering the cattle. And he found that the previous 
 owner had already arranged for that matter. There 
 was a stream running down the hillside back of the 
 
80 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 barn; and across that stream, from bank to bank, the 
 previous owner had put in a plank edgewise at a 
 slight angle for the purpose of throwing over to one 
 side of the brook a dreadful looking scum through 
 which the cattle would not put their noses, although 
 they would drink on this side below the plank. Thus 
 that man who had gone to Canada and who had studied 
 all about the oil business had been himself damming 
 back for twenty-three years a flood of coal oil which 
 the state Geologist said, in 1870, was worth to our 
 state a hundred millions of dollars. A hundred mil- 
 lions ! The city of Titusville stands bodily on that 
 farm now. And yet, though he knew all about the 
 theory, he sold the farm for $833. Again I say, no 
 sense! 
 
 5. I need another illustration. I find it in Massa- 
 chusetts. A young man went down to Yale College 
 to study mines and mining. He became such an adept 
 in mineralogy that during his senior year they paid 
 him as a tutor fifteen dollars a week for the spare 
 time in which he taught. When he graduated they 
 raised his pay to forty-five dollars a week and offered 
 him a professorship. As soon as they did that he went 
 home to his mother. If they had raised his salary to 
 fifteen dollars and sixty cents then he would have 
 stayed. But when they made it forty-five dollars a 
 week he said : "I won't work for forty-five dollars a 
 week; the idea of a man with a brain like mine work- 
 ing for forty-five dollars a week ! Let us go out to 
 California and stake out gold and silver and copper 
 claims and be rich." 
 
ACRES OP DIAMONDS 81 
 
 Said his mother: "Now, Charlie, it is just as well 
 to be happy as to be rich." 
 
 "Yes," said he, "but it is just as well to be rich and 
 happy, too." 
 
 They were both right about it, and as he was the 
 only son and she was a widow, of course he had his 
 way. They always do. So they sold out in Massa- 
 chusetts and went, not to California, but to Wiscon- 
 sin. And there he entered the employ of the Supe- 
 rior Copper Mining Co. at fifteen dollars a week 
 again, but with the proviso that he should have an 
 interest in any mines he should discover for the com- 
 pany. I don't believe he ever discovered a mine there. 
 But I do know that he had scarcely gone from Massa- 
 chusetts before the farmer who had purchased his 
 farm was bringing a large basket of potatoes in 
 through the gateway. You know in Massachusetts 
 our farms are almost entirely stone walls, and the 
 farmers have to be very economical with their gate- 
 ways in order to have some place to put the stones. 
 Hence the basket hugged very close in the gate, and 
 he dragged it on one side and then on the other; and 
 as he was pulling that basket through the gateway the 
 farmer noticed in the upper and outer corner of that 
 stone wall next to the gate a block of native silver 
 eight inches square. And this professor of mines and 
 mining and mineralogy who would not work for for- 
 ty-five dollars a week because he knew so much about 
 the subject, when he sold that homestead sat on that 
 very stone to make the bargain. He was born on 
 that very farm, and they told me that he had gone by 
 
82 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 that piece of silver and rubbed it with his sleeve until it 
 reflected his countenance and seemed to say to him : 
 "Here, take me ! Here is a hundred thousand dollars 
 right down here in the rocks just for the taking!" But 
 he wouldn't take it. This was in Newburyport, Mass. 
 He wouldn't believe in silver at home. He said: 
 "There is no silver in Newburyport; it is all away 
 off — well, I don't know where." And he didn't ! But 
 somewhere else. And he was a Professor of Min- 
 eralogy. I don't know anything I would better enjoy 
 than taking the whole time telling of blunders like this 
 which I have heard professors have made. 
 
 6. Yet nearly every person here will say: "I never 
 had any acres of diamonds, or any gold mines or 
 any silver mines." But I say to you that you did have 
 silver mines and gold mines and acres of diamonds, 
 and you have them now. You had an opportunity to 
 be rich ; and to some of you it has been a hardship to 
 purchase a ticket for this lecture. Yet you have no 
 right to be poor. It is all wrong. You have no right 
 to be poor. It is your duty to be rich. 
 
 "Oh," you will say, "Mr. Conwell, can you, as a 
 Christian teacher, tell young people to spend their 
 lives making money?" 
 
 Yes, I do. You ought to make money. Money is 
 power, and it ought to be in the hands of good men. 
 
 One of my Theological students came to me once to 
 labor with me over my heresy that money is power. 
 He said: "Mr. Conwell, does not the Scripture say 
 that money 'is the root of all evil'?" 
 
 I asked him : "Have you been spending your time 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 83 
 
 making a new Bible when you should have been study- 
 ing theology?" 
 
 He said, "that is in the old Bible." 
 
 I said, "I would like to have you find it for me; I 
 have never seen it." 
 
 He triumphantly brought a Bible and with all the 
 bigoted pride of a narrow sectarian who founds his 
 creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture threw it 
 down before me and said, "There it is; you can read 
 it for yourself." 
 
 I said to him: "Young man, you will learn before 
 you get much older that you can't trust another de- 
 nomination to read the Bible for you. Please read it 
 yourself and remember that "Emphasis is exegesis." 
 
 So he read, "The love of money is the root of all 
 evil." 
 
 Indeed it is. The love of money is the root of all 
 evil. The love of the money rather than the love of 
 the good it secures is a dangerous evil in the commu- 
 nity. The desire to get hold of money and to hold 
 onto it, hugging the dollar until the eagle squeals, is 
 the root of all evil. But it is a grand ambition for men 
 to have the desire to gain money that they may use it 
 for the benefit of their fellow men. 
 
 7. Young man, you may never have the opportunity 
 to charge at the head of your nation's troops on some 
 Santiago's heights ; young woman, you may never be 
 ;called on to go out on the seas like Grace Darling 
 to save suffering humanity. But every one of you 
 can earn money honestly, and with that money you 
 can fight the battles of peace; and the victories of 
 peace are always grander than those of war. 
 
84 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 I say to you, that you ought to be rich. 
 
 "Well," you say, "I would like to he rich but I 
 have never had an opportunity. I never had any dia- 
 monds about me !" 
 
 My friends, you did have an opportunity. And let 
 us see where your mistake was. What business have 
 you been in? 
 
 "Oh," some man or woman will say, "I keep a store 
 up on one of these side streets, and I am so far from 
 a great commercial center that I cannot make money." 
 
 "Are you poor? How long have you kept that 
 store?" 
 
 "Twenty years." 
 
 "Twenty years, and not worth five hundred thou- 
 sand dollars now? There is something the matter — 
 not with the side street, but with you." 
 
 "Oh now," you will say, "any person knows you 
 must be in the center of trade if you are going to make 
 money." 
 
 The man of common sense will not admit that this 
 is necessarily true at all. If you are keeping that 
 store and you are not making money, it would have 
 bee/i better for the community if they had kicked you 
 out of that store nineteen years ago. 
 
 It is a crime to go into business and lose money, be- 
 cause it is a curse to the community. No man has a 
 moral right to transact business without profit to him- 
 self and others. Unless he lives and lets live, he is 
 not an honest man in business. There are no excep- 
 tions to this great rule. 
 
 8. When I was young my father kept a country 
 store, and once in a while he left me in charge of that 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 85 
 
 store. Fortunately for him it was not often. One 
 day while I had it in charge, a man came into the 
 door and said: "Do you keep jack-knives?" 
 
 "No, we don't keep jack-knives." Then I went off" 
 and whistled a tune, and what did I care for that man ! 
 Then another came in the same door and said: "Do 
 you keep jack-knives?" 
 
 "No, we don't keep jack-knives." And I went off 
 and whistled another tune, and what did I care for 
 that man ! 
 
 After a few days another man came in that same 
 door and said: "Do you keep jack-knives?" 
 
 "No, we don't keep jack-knives. Do you suppose 
 we are keeping this store just for the purpose of sup- 
 plying the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?" 
 
 Do you carry on your business like that? Do you 
 ask what was the difficulty with it ? The difficulty was 
 that I had not learned that the foundation principles 
 of business success and of Christianity itself are the 
 same. It is the whole of every man's life to be doing 
 for his fellow men. And he who can do the most for 
 his fellow men is entitled to the greatest reward him- 
 self. Not only so saith God's Holy Book, but so 
 saith every man's business common sense. If I had 
 been carrying on my father's store on a Christian 
 plan I would have had a jack-knife for the third man 
 that asked for it. 
 
 But you say, "I don't carry on my store like that." 
 If you have not made money you are carrying on your 
 store like that. I come to you tomorrow morning and 
 inquire, "Do you know Mr. A?" 
 
86 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 "Oh yes. He lives up in the next 'block. He trades 
 here." 
 
 "Well, where did he come from when he came 
 here?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Does he own his own house?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "What business is he in?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Do his children go to school?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "What ticket dees he vote? What church does he 
 go to?" 
 
 "I don't know, and I don't care." 
 
 Do you answer me like that tomorrow morning? 
 Then you are carrying on your business just as I car- 
 ried on my father's business. You don't know where 
 neighbor A came from and you don't care. You don't 
 know what church he goes to and you don't care. If 
 you had cared, you would have been a rich man to- 
 day. 
 
 9. Young man, remember if you are going to in- 
 vest your life or talent or money you must look around 
 and see what people need, and then invest your life or 
 talent or money in that which they need most. Then 
 will your fortune be made, for they must take care of 
 you. It is a difficult lesson to learn. 
 
 One young man will say, "I cannot go into' the mer- 
 cantile business because I have no capital." 
 
 Capital ! Capital ! Capital ! is the cry of a dudish 
 generation that cannot see over its own collar. Who 
 are the rich men now? The poor boys of fifty years 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 87 
 
 ago. You know it. If they hadn't been poor then 
 they wouldn't be rich now. The statistics of Massa- 
 chusetts say, and I presume it holds good in your 
 state, that not one rich man's son in seventeen ever 
 dies rich. T pity the rich man's son. He is not to be 
 praised for his magnificent, palatial home, not to be 
 congratulated on having plenty of money or yachts 
 or carriages or diamonds. Oh no, he is rather to be 
 commiserated. It is often a misfortune to be born 
 the son of a rich man. There are many things a rich 
 man's son cannot know because he is not passing 
 through the school of actual experience. 
 
 A young man once asked me, "What is the happiest 
 hour in the history of a man's life?" The answer I 
 gave him was this : The happiest hour of a man's life 
 is when he takes his bride for the first time over the 
 threshold of his own door, into a house which he has 
 earned by his own hands ; and as he enters he says to 
 her, "Wife, I earned this house myself." Oh, that is 
 the grandest moment a man can know! He says to 
 her with eloquence of feeling no words of mine can 
 ever touch : "Wife, I earned this home ; it is all 
 mine, and I divide it with thee." It is a magnificent 
 moment. 
 
 But the rich man's son can never know that mo- 
 ment. He may go into a house that is more beauti- 
 ful, but as he takes his wife into his mansion he will 
 go all through it and say to her: "My mother gave 
 me that ! My mother gave me that ! My mother gave 
 me that !" until his wife wishes she had married his 
 mother ! I pity such a man as that. 
 
 10. It is said that the elder Vanderbilt, when a boy, 
 
88 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 went to his father and said, "Father, did you earn all 
 your money?" and the old Commodore said, "I did, I 
 earned every penny of it." 
 
 And he did. It is cruel to slander the rich because 
 they have been successful. It is a shame to "look 
 down" on the rich the way we do. They are not scoun- 
 drels because they have gotten money. They have 
 blessed the world. They have gone into great enter- 
 prises that have enriched the nation, and the nation has 
 enriched them. It is all wrong for us to accuse a 
 rich man of dishonesty simply because he secured 
 money. Go through this city, and your very best peo- 
 ple are among your richest people. Owners of prop- 
 erty are always the best citizens. 
 
 The elder Vanderbilt went to his father and said, 
 "Did you earn all your money?" And when the Com- 
 modore replied that he did the boy said, "Then I will 
 earn mine." 
 
 And he insisted on going to work for three dollars 
 a week. If the rich man's son will go to work like 
 that he will be able to take care of his father's money 
 when the father is gone. If he has the bravery to 
 fight the battle of poverty like the poor boy, then of 
 course he has a double advantage. But as a rule the 
 rich father won't allow his son to work; and as for 
 the mother! Oh, she would think it a social disgrace 
 for her poor weak little lilyfingered sissy sort of a 
 boy to earn his living with honest toil. And so I say 
 it is not capital you want. It is not copper cents, but 
 common sense. 
 
 Let me illustrate again. A. T. Stewart had a dollar 
 and fifty cents to begin life on. That was, of course, 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 89 
 
 before he was a school teacher. He lost eighty-seven 
 cents on his first venture. How did he come to lose it? 
 He lost it because he purchased some needles, thread 
 and buttons to sell which people didn't want. And 
 he said, "I will never do that again". Then he went 
 around first to the doors of the houses and asked the 
 people what they did want. Then when he found 
 out what they wanted he invested his sixty-three 
 cents and supplied a known demand. 
 
 Why does one merchant go beyond another? Why 
 does one manufacturer outsell another? It is sim- 
 ply because that one has found out what people want, 
 and does not waste his money buying things they do 
 not need. That is the whole of it. And A. T. Stewart 
 said: "I am not going to buy things people do not 
 want. I will take an interest in people and study 
 their needs." And he pursued that until he was worth 
 forty millions of dollars. 
 
 11. But a better illustration was John Jacob Astor, 
 the elder. They say that he had a mortgage on a 
 millinery store. I never reach this point without 
 thinking that the ladies will say: "Fools rush in 
 where angels fear to tread." But John Jacob Astor had 
 a mortgage on a millinery store, and foreclosed the 
 mortgage and went into business with the people who 
 had failed on his hands. After he entered into part- 
 nership he went out and sat down on a bench in the 
 park. What was the successful merchant doing out 
 there, in partnership with the people who had just 
 failed on his hands ? Ah, my friends, he had the most 
 important, and, to my mind, the pleasantest part of 
 that partnership. He was out there watching the la- 
 
9 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 dies as they went by, — and where is the man who 
 would not get rich at that business! As he sat upon 
 the bench, if a lady passed with her shoulders thrown 
 back and her head up, and looking straight to the 
 front, as though she didn't care if all the world did 
 gaze upon her, then John Jacob Astor studied the bon- 
 net she wore ; and before it was out of sight, he knew 
 the shape of the frame, the curl of the lace, the crimp 
 of the feathers, and lots of intricate things that go in- 
 to a bonnet which I cannot describe. Then he went 
 to his millinery store and said: "Now put into the 
 show window just such a bonnet as I describe to you, 
 for I have just seen a real lady who likes just such a 
 bonnet." Then he went out and sat down again. An- 
 other lady, with another form and complexion came, 
 and of course she wore another style of bonnet. He 
 then went back and described that and had that put 
 into the window. He didn't fill his show window full 
 of hats to drive people away, and then sit down in the 
 back of the store and bawl because people went some- 
 where else to trade. He didn't have a hat or a bon- 
 net that some lady didn't like. That has since been 
 the wealthiest millinery firm on the face of the earth. 
 There has been taken out of the business seventeen 
 million dollars and over, by partners who have re- 
 tired. Yet not a dollar of capital have they ever put 
 into that business except what they turned in from 
 their profits to use as capital. Now John Jacob As- 
 tor made the fortune of that millinery firm, not by 
 lending them money, but by finding out what the la- 
 dies liked for bonnets before they wasted any ma- 
 terial in making them up. Now if a man can foresee 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 91 
 
 the millinery business, he can foresee anything under 
 heaven. 
 
 12. I want to illustrate again. There was a man in 
 Hingham, Massachusetts, who was a carpenter and 
 out of work. He sat around the stove until his wife 
 told him to go out doors, and he did — what every 
 man in Massachusetts is compelled to do by law — 
 he obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on the 
 shore of the bay and he whittled out an oak shingle 
 into a wooden chain. His children, that evening, 
 quarreled over it, so he whittled another to keep 
 peace in the family. While he was whittling the 
 second toy a neighbor came in and said to him : "Why 
 don't you whittle toys and sell them? You can make 
 money." The carpenter said: "I could not whittle 
 toys, and if I could do it I would not know what to 
 make." There is the whole thing. It is to know what 
 to make. It is the secret of life everywhere. You may 
 take it in the ministry; you may take it in law; yoix 
 may take it in mechanics or labor ; you may take it in 
 professional life or anywhere on earth; the whole 
 thing is what to make of yourself for other people. 
 W'hat to make is the great difficulty. 
 
 He said he would not know what to make. His 
 neighbor said to him with good New England common 
 sense: "Why don't you ask your own children what 
 to make?" 
 
 "Oh," said he, "my children are different from 
 other people's children." 
 
 I used to see people like that when I taught school. 
 But he consulted his children later and whittled toys 
 to please them, and found that other people's children 
 
92 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 wanted the same thing. He called his children right 
 around his feet and whittled out of fire wood the 
 Hingham tops, the wooden shovels, the wooden buckets 
 and such things. And when his children were espe- 
 cially pleased he then made copies to sell. He began 
 to get a little capital of his own earning, and secured 
 a foot lathe, and then secured a room, then hired a 
 factory, and then hired power, and so he went on. The 
 last law case I ever tried in my life was in the U. S. 
 Court Room at Boston, and this very Hingham man 
 who had whittled those toys stood upon the stand. He 
 was the last man I ever cross-examined. Then I left 
 the law and went into the ministry : left practicing en- 
 tirely and went to preaching exclusively. But I said 
 to this man as he stood upon the stand: "When did 
 you begin to whittle those toys?" 
 
 He said "in 1870". 
 
 Said I, "In these seven years, how much have those 
 toys become worth?" 
 
 He answered, "Do you mean the taxable value, or 
 the estimated value?" 
 
 I said, "Tell his Honor the taxable value, that there 
 may be no question about it." 
 
 He answered from the witness stand, under oath, 
 "Seventy-eight thousand dollars." 
 
 13. But our wealth is too near. I was speaking 
 in New Britain, Conn., on this very subject; there 
 sat five or six rows from me a lady. I noticed the 
 lady at the time from the color of her bonnet. I said 
 to them what I say to you now, "Your wealth is too 
 near to you, you are looking right over it." She went 
 home after the lecture and tried to take off her col- 
 
ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 93 
 
 lar. The button stuck in the button-hole ; she twisted 
 and tugged and pulled, and finally broke it out of the 
 button-hole and threw it away. She said, "I wonder 
 why they don't make decent collar buttons." 
 
 Her husband said to her, "After what Conwell said 
 tonight, why don't you get up a collar-button your- 
 self ? Did he not say that if you need anything other 
 people need it? So if you need a collar button there 
 are millions of people needing it. Get up a collar 
 button and get rich. Wherever there is a need there is 
 a fortune!' 
 
 Then she made up her mind to do it, and when a 
 woman makes up her mind and doesn't say anything 
 about it, she does it. And she invented this snap 
 button, a kind of button that snaps together from two 
 pieces through the button-hole. That very woman 
 can now go over the sea every summer in her own 
 yacht and take her husband with her; and if he were 
 dead she would have enough money left to buy a 
 foreign count, or duke, or some such thing. 
 
 What is my lesson in it? I said to her what I say 
 to you. Your fortune is too near to you, so near that 
 you are looking over it. She had to look over it. It 
 was right under her chin, and it is just as near to you. 
 
 14. In East Brookfield, Mass., there was a shoe- 
 maker out of work. His wife drove him out of doors 
 with a mop stick, because she wanted to mop around 
 the stove. He went out and sat down on an ash bar- 
 rel in the back yard. Close by that ash barrel ran a 
 little mountain stream. I have sometimes wondered 
 if, as he sat there on that ash barrel, he thought of 
 Tennyson's beautiful poem: 
 
94 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 "Chatter, chatter as I flow, to join the brimming river, 
 Men may come, and men may go, but I go on for- 
 
 I don't believe he thought of it because it was not a 
 poetical situation, on an ash barrel in the back yard. 
 But as he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into 
 the stream. And he saw a trout go flashing up the 
 stream and hiding under the bank. He leaped down 
 and caught up the fish in his hands and took him into 
 the house. His wife sent it to a friend in Worcester. 
 The friend wrote back that they would give five dol- 
 lars for another such trout, and the shoemaker and 
 his wife immediately started out to find one. They 
 went up and down the stream, but not another trout 
 was to be found. Then they went to the preacher. But 
 that is not half as foolish as some other things young 
 people go to a preacher for. That preacher could not 
 explain why they could not find another trout, but he 
 was true to his profession, he pointed the way. He 
 said, "Secure Seth Green's book on the culture of 
 trout and it will give you the information you need. 
 They got the book and found that if they started with 
 a pair of trout a trout would lay 3,600 eggs every 
 year and that every trout would grow an ounce the 
 first year and a quarter of a pound every succeeding 
 year. So that in four years a man could secure from 
 two trout four tons per annum to sell. They said, 
 "Oh, we don't believe such a great story as that, but 
 if we could raise a few and sell them for five dollars 
 apiece we might make money. So. they purchased two 
 little trout and put them in the stream, with a coal 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 95 
 
 sifter down stream and a window screen up stream 
 to keep the trout in. Afterwards they moved to the 
 banks of the Connecticut River, and afterwards to the 
 Hudson, and one of them has 'been on the U. S. Fish 
 Commission and had a large share in the preparation 
 for the World's Fair in 1900 at Paris. But he sat 
 that day on that ash barrel in the back yard right by 
 his acres of diamonds. But he didn't see them. He 
 had not seen his fortune, although he had lived there 
 for twenty-three years, until his wife drove him out 
 there with a mop stick. It may be that you will not 
 find your wealth until your wife assumes the scepter 
 of power, but nevertheless your wealth is there. 
 
 15. But the people who make the greatest mistakes 
 are the farmers. When I could not keep my father's 
 store he set me to work on the farm, knowing that as 
 the ground was nearly all rock I could not do much 
 harm there. 
 
 I know by experience that a very ordinary man 
 can be a lawyer. I also know that it does not take a 
 man with a gigantic intellect to be a preacher. It 
 takes a greater man than either to make a success- 
 ful farmer today. The farmer will be more success- 
 ful when he gives more attention to what people 
 want, and not so much to what will grow, though he 
 needs to watch both. But now the whole time of most 
 of our farmers is taken up with what will grow. 
 
 I was going up through Iowa a while ago, and saw 
 the wheat decaying in the mud, and I said to a farmer : 
 "Why is it that all this grain here is decaying instead 
 of being marketed ?" 
 
 He answered that it was because of the awful mon- 
 
9 6 THE DBUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 
 
 opoly of the railroads. He didn't use the word "aw- 
 ful", but he used one that he thought was more em- 
 phatic. I got into the train and sympathized with 
 the poor down-trodden farmer. 
 
 The conductor came along pretty soon, and I asked 
 him, "How much dividend does this railroad pay on its 
 stock?" 
 
 He looked at me and said, "It has not paid any for 
 nine years and it has been in the hands of the re- 
 ceiver most of the time." 
 
 Then I changed my mind. If that farmer had 
 raised what the people wanted, not only would he have 
 been rich, but the railroad would have paid interest 
 on its stock. 
 
 I was at Evansville, Indiana, and a man drove up 
 in his beautiful carriage and told me, "Eighteen years 
 ago I borrowed two hundred dollars and went into 
 farming. I began the first year to raise wheat, rye 
 and hogs, but the second year I decided to' raise what 
 the people wanted, so I plowed the ground over and 
 put in small fruits. Now I own this farm and a great 
 deal more." They told me at the hotel that he owned 
 two-thirds of the stock in the bank of which he was 
 president. He had made his money all because he 
 had planted what people wanted. 
 
 1 6. I asked a class in Minnesota once who were the 
 great inventors, and a girl hopped up and said "Co- 
 lumbus". Columbus was a great inventor. He mar- 
 ried a wife who owned a farm, and he carried it on 
 just as I carried on my father's farm. We took the 
 hoe and went out and sat down on a rock. But as 
 Columbus sat on that rock on the island of Porto 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 97 
 
 Santo, Spain, he was thinking. I was not. That was 
 a great difference. Columbus, as he sat on that rock, 
 held in his hand a hoe-handle. He looked out on the 
 ocean and saw the departing ships apparently sink into 
 the sea, and the tops of the masts go down out of 
 sight. Said Columbus, "This world is like a hoe 
 handle : the farther off, the farther down, the farther 
 off, the farther down, just like a hoe handle; I can 
 sail around to the East Indies." How clear it all was ! 
 Yet how simple the mind! It is the simplest minds 
 that observe the very simplest things, which accom- 
 plish the greatest marvels. 
 
 I went up into New Hampshire to lecture, and when 
 I came back I said I would never go up into New 
 Hampshire again. And I said to a relative of mine 
 who was a professor at Harvard : "It was cold all the 
 time I was there, and I shivered so that my teeth 
 shook." 
 
 Said he, "Why did you shiver?" 
 
 "Because it was cold." 
 
 "No, that is not the reason you shivered." 
 
 "Well, I shivered because I did not have bed 
 clothes enough." 
 
 "No, that is not the reason you shivered." 
 
 "Well," said I, "Professor, you are a scientific man 
 and I am not, I would like to have an expert, scientific 
 opinion, now, why I shivered." 
 
 He arose in his facetious way and said, "Young 
 man, you shivered because you did not know any bet- 
 ter! Didn't you have in your pocket a two-cent pa- 
 per?" 
 
 "Yes, I had a Herald and a Journal." 
 
9 8 TUB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 "That is it: you had them in your pocket. If you 
 had spread one newspaper over your sheet when you 
 went to bed you would have been as warm lying there 
 as the richest man in America under his silk covers. 
 But you shivered because you did not know enough to 
 put a two-cent paper over your bed, and you had the 
 paper in your pocket." 
 
 17. It is the power to appreciate the little things 
 that bring success. How many women want divorces, 
 and ought to have them, too. But how many divorces 
 originate like this: a man will hurry home from the 
 factory, and his wife rushes in from the kitchen with 
 the potatoes that have been taken out before they 
 seem to be done, and she puts them on the table for 
 her husband to eat. He chops them up and eats them 
 in a hurry. They go down in hard lumps, he doesn't 
 feel good, he is all full of crankiness. He frets and 
 scolds, and perhaps swears, and there is a row in that 
 family right away. And these two hearts that were 
 almost divinely united will separate in Satanic hatred. 
 What is the difficulty? The difficulty is that that lady 
 doesn't know what all these ladies do know, that if 
 with potatoes raised in lime soil she had put in a pinch 
 of salt when she put them in the kettle, she could 
 have brought them forth at the right time ready to 
 laugh themselves to pieces with edible joy. He would 
 have digested them readily, and there would have 
 been love in that family, just for a little pinch of salt. 
 
 Now I say, it is the appreciation of the little things 
 that makes the great inventors of the world. I read 
 in a newspaper the other day that a woman never in- 
 vented anything. Of course this didn't refer to gos- 
 
ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 99 
 
 sip, but to machines and improvements. If it had 
 referred to gossip, it would have applied to that news- 
 paper better than to women. Who invented the Jac- 
 quard Loom? Mrs. Jacquard. Who invented the 
 printer's roller? A woman. Who invented the cot- 
 ton gin? Mrs. Green, although the patent was taken 
 out on an improvement in Mr. Whitney's name. Who 
 invented the sewing machine? A woman, Mrs. Howe, 
 the wife of Elias Howe. If a woman can invent a 
 sewing machine, if a woman can invent a printing 
 roller, if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, we men 
 can invent anything under heaven! I say that to en- 
 courage the men. Anyhow our civilization would 
 roll back if we should cross out the great inventions 
 of women, though the patents were often taken out in 
 the names of men. 
 
 18. Let me illustrate only once more. Suppose I 
 were to go through this house and shake hands with 
 each of you and say : ''Please introduce me to the 
 great men and women in this hall tonight." 
 
 You would say, "Great men ! We don't have any 
 here. There are none in this audience. For if you 
 want to find great men you must go to some other 
 part of the world. Great men always come from 
 somewhere else." 
 
 How many of your men with vast power to help 
 your city, how many with great genius or great so- 
 cial power, who might enrich and elevate and beau- 
 tify their own city, are now taking their money and 
 talents and spending them in foreign places instead of 
 benefiting their own people here ? Yet here is the place 
 for them to be great. There are as great men here as 
 
ioo THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 in any place of its size. But it is so natural for us to 
 say that great men come from afar. They come from 
 London, from Rome and from San Francisco, from 
 New York or Manayunk or anywhere else. But there 
 are just as great men hearing me speak tonight as 
 there are elsewhere, yet who, because of their 
 simplicity, are not appreciated. "The world knows 
 nothing of its great men," says the philosopher; and 
 it is true. Your neighbor is a great man, and it is 
 time you appreciated it, and if you do not appreciate 
 it now you never will. The only way to be a true 
 patriot is to be a true patriot at home. A man who 
 cannot benefit his own city should never be sent to 
 Washington. Towns and cities are cursed because 
 their own people talk them down. The man who can- 
 not bless his own community, the place where he lives, 
 should never be called a patriot anywhere else. To 
 these young men I want to utter this cry with all my 
 force. This is the place for you to be great, and 
 here are your great men. 
 
 19. But we teach our young people to believe that 
 all the great people are away off. I heard a professor 
 in an Illinois college say, "Nearly all the great men 
 are dead/' We don't want him in Philadelphia. They 
 don't want him anywhere. The greatest men are liv- 
 ing now, and will only be exceeded by the generations 
 to come and he who appreciates this fact will look 
 around him and respect his neighbor. I say tonight 
 that the great men of the world are those who appre- 
 ciate what is next to them, and the danger to our na- 
 tion now is that we belittle everything that is at home. 
 
 Have you heard the campaign speeches this year? 
 
ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 101 
 
 I heard a man at the Academy of Music say that our 
 nation is going to ruin, that the Ship of State is drift- 
 ing on the rocks and will soon be shattered into ten 
 thousand fragments, and this republic will be no 
 more ; that there will be founded an empire, and upon 
 the empire, we will put a throne, and upon the throne 
 will be placed a tyrant, and he with his iron heel will 
 grind the people to dust. It is a lie ! Never in the his- 
 tory of God's government of mankind was there a 
 nation stepping upward more certainly, toward all 
 that is grand and beautiful and true, than the Ameri- 
 can Nation today. Let the politicians say what they 
 will for personal greed, let them declaim with all 
 their powers and try to burden the people, you and I 
 know that whichever way the elections go the nation 
 will not be destroyed. The American people are not 
 dead; it is a living body, this mighty republic, it can- 
 not be killed by a single election. And they that will 
 belittle our nation are not patriots. L,et the land be 
 filled with hope. Some will say, "Oh well, the na- 
 tion is having a hard time." But it is not. The Bible 
 says, "It was good for me that I was afflicted." We 
 are getting down to where we can take stock. In the 
 next five years you will see the most flourishing in- 
 stitutions; all through this land there will be a pros- 
 perity such as this land never knew before. What- 
 ever the result of the election, don't belittle your own 
 nation. 
 
 20. A young man says, "There is going to be a great 
 man here when there comes a war. When we get 
 into another conflict with Spain over Cuba, with Eng- 
 land over the Monroe Doctrine, or over the Russian 
 
102 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 boundary, or with New Jersey or some other distant 
 country of the world, then I will sweep up among the 
 glittering bayonets, then I will tear down their flag 
 from the staff, bear it away in triumph, and come 
 home with stars on my shoulder and hold every office 
 in the gift of the nation. Then I will be great !" 
 
 Young man, remember greatness does not consist in 
 holding office even in war. The office does not make 
 the great man. But alas ! we mislead the young in 
 teaching history. If you ask a scholar in school who 
 sank the Merrimac, he will answer "Hobson", and tell 
 seven-eights of a lie. For eight men sank the Merri- 
 mac. Yet where are the women here tonight who 
 have kissed the other seven men? 
 
 A young man says, "I was studying the history of 
 the war the other day, and I read about Generals 
 Grant, Meade, Beauregard, Hood, and those great 
 leaders, and they were great." 
 
 Did you read anything about their predecessors? 
 There is very little in History about them. If the of- 
 fice had made their predecessors great you would 
 never have heard of Grant or Sherman or McClel- 
 lan. But they were great men intrinsically, not made 
 so by the office. The way we teach history leads the 
 young to think that when people get into office they 
 become great. But it is terribly misleading. 
 
 Every great general of the war is credited with 
 many victories he never knew anything about, be- 
 cause they were won by his subordinates. But it is 
 unfair to give the credit to the general who did not 
 know anything about it. I tell you that if the light- 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 103 
 
 ning of heaven had struck out of existence every man 
 who wore shoulder straps in our wars, there would 
 have arisen out of the ranks of our private soldiers 
 just as great men to lead the nation on to victory. 
 
 21. I will give one more illustration. I don't like 
 to give it, I don't know how I ever fell into the habit. 
 Indeed it was first given at a Grand Army post of 
 which I was a member. I hesitate to give it now. 
 
 I close my eyes and I can see my own native hills 
 once more, I can see my mountain home, the Con- 
 gregational Church and the Town Hall. They are 
 there spread before me with increasing detail as the 
 years fly by. I can see again the crowd that was there 
 in the war time, 1864, dressed in red, white and blue, 
 the flags flying, the band playing. I see a platoon of 
 soldiers who have returned from one term of service 
 and re-enlisted for a second. They are now to be 
 received by the mountain town. Well do I remember 
 the day. I was captain of the company. Although I 
 was only in my teens, I was marching at the head of 
 that company and was puffed out with pride. A cam- 
 bric needle would have burst me all to pieces. I am 
 sincerely ashamed of the whole thing now. But in 
 the august pride of my youth I was being received 
 by the town authorities. We marched into the town 
 hall. They seated my soldiers in the middle of the 
 hall and the crowds came in on the right and on the 
 left. Then the town officers filed up on the platform 
 and took their position in a half circle. The good old 
 mayor of the town, and the Chairman of the Select- 
 men, sat there in his dignity, with his powerful spec- 
 
104 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 tacles. He may have thought that, if he could get 
 into office, that would give him power to do almost 
 anything. He never held an office before and never 
 made a speech before. When he had taken his place, 
 he saw me on the front seat, and he came right for- 
 ward and invited me up on the platform with the Se- 
 lectmen. Invited me! Why, no town officer ever 
 took notice of me before I went to war. Yet, perhaps 
 I ought not to say that, because one of them, I re- 
 member, did once advise a teacher to "whale" me! 
 But I meant, no "honorable mention". Now I was on 
 the stand with the Selectmen. They gave me a prom- 
 inent chair. I sat down and let my sword fall to the 
 floor and waited to be received. Napoleon the Vth! 
 "Pride goeth before destruction" — and it ought! 
 
 22. When the Selectmen and mayor had taken their 
 seats the mayor waited for a while, and then came 
 forward to the table. Oh, that speech ! We had sup- 
 posed he would simply introduce the Congregational 
 minister who usually gave such public addresses. But 
 you should have seen the surprise when this old man 
 began to give the address on this august occasion. He 
 had never delivered an address before. He thought 
 that the office would make him an orator. But he had 
 forgotten that a man must speak his piece as a boy 
 if he would become an orator as a man. Yet he made 
 a common mistake. So he had written out and learned 
 it by heart. But he brought the manuscript with him, 
 very wisely, and took it out, opened it, and spread it 
 on the table, then adjusted his spectacles that he might 
 see it. Then he walked back and came forward again 
 
ACRBS OF DIAMONDS 105 
 
 to deliver that address. He must have studied the 
 idea a great deal, for he assumed an "elocutionary at- 
 titude". He "rested heavily on his left heel, slightly 
 advanced his right foot, threw back his shoulders 
 and placed his right foot at an angle of forty-five". 
 As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, this is the 
 way he delivered that speech: 
 
 "Fellow citizens" — and then he paused until his 
 fingers and knees shook. He began to swallow, then 
 turned aside to look at his manuscript. "Fellow cit- 
 izens : we are — we are — we are — we are very 
 happy. We are very happy — we are very happy — 
 we are very happy. We are very happy — to wel- 
 come back to their native town — - to their native 
 town — to their native town — these soldiers — these 
 soldiers — who have fought and died, and — are 
 back again in their native town. We are especially 
 pleased — we are especially pleased — to see with us 
 this young hero — (that meant me) — who in imag- 
 ination we have seen leading his troops on to the 
 deadly breach. We have seen his shining — we have 
 seen his shining sword — his shining sword — flash- 
 ing in the sunlight, as he called to his troops 'Come 
 on !' " 
 
 23. He was a good old man. But how little he knew 
 about the war. If he had known anything about war 
 at all, he would have known that it is next to a crime 
 for an officer of infantry ever, in time of danger, to 
 go ahead of his men. I, with "my shining sword 
 flashing in the sunlight, calling to my troops "Come 
 on' " — I never did it ! Do you suppose I would go in 
 
To6 THB DBLIVHRY 0? A SPEECH 
 
 front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and 
 in the back by my own men? It is no place for an of- 
 ficer. The place for an officer, in time of danger, is 
 behind the private soldier. It is the private soldier 
 who faces the enemy. Often, as a staff officer, I have 
 ridden down the line before the battle, and as I rode, 
 I have given the general's order, "Officers to the 
 rear". And then every officer go^s behind the line 
 of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's rank the 
 farther behind he goes. It is the place for him, for if 
 your officers and generals were killed on the first dis- 
 charge where would the plan of battle be? How 
 ashamed I was of the whole affair. In actual war 
 such an officer has no right to go ahead of his men. 
 Some of those men had carried that boy across the 
 Carolina rivers. Some of them had given him their 
 last draught of coffee. One of them had leaped in 
 front of him and had his cheek-bone shot away : he 
 had leaped in front of the boy to save his life. Some 
 were not there at all, and the tears flowing from the 
 eyes of the widows and orphans showed that they 
 had gone down for their country. Yet in the good 
 man's speech he scarcely noticed those who had died. 
 The hero of the hour was that boy. We do not know 
 even now where many of those comrades sleep. They 
 went down to death. Sometimes in my dreams I call, 
 "answer me, ye sighing pines of the Carolinas ; an- 
 swer me, ye shining sands of Florida; answer me, ye 
 crags and rocks of Kentucky and Tennessee; where 
 sleep my dead?" But to my call no answer comes. I 
 know not where they sleep, but this I know : they were 
 
ACRES OF DIAMONDS 107 
 
 brave men ; they went down before a brave foe, fight- 
 ing for a cause both believed to be right. Yet the hero 
 of the hour was a boy. He was an officer — they 
 were only private soldiers. 
 
 24. As I went through the war, I learned a lesson 
 I will never forget until the bell of time ceases to 
 swing for me, that greatness consists not in holding 
 an office. Greatness really consists in doing great 
 deeds with little means, in the accomplishment of vast 
 purposes, in the private ranks of life, in benefiting 
 one's own neighborhood, in blessing one's own city, 
 the community in which he lives. There, and there 
 only, is the great test of human goodness and hu- 
 man ability. He who waits for an office before he 
 does great and noble deeds must fail altogether. 
 
 I learned that lesson then, that henceforth in life I 
 will call no man great simply because he holds an 
 office. Greatness ! It is something more than office, 
 something more than fame, more than genius. It is 
 the great-heartedness that encloses those in need, 
 reaches down to those below and lifts them up. May 
 this thought come to every one of you who hear me 
 tonight, and abide through future years. 
 
 I close with the words of Bailey. He was not one 
 of our greatest writers, but after all he was one of our 
 best: 
 
 "We live in deeds, not years, 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial, 
 In thoughts, not breaths ; 
 We should count time by heart throbs. 
 He lives most who thinks most, — " 
 
108 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 And friends, if you forget everything else I say, 
 don't forget these two lines : for if you think two 
 thoughts where I think one, you live twice as much 
 as I do in the same length of time, — 
 
 "He most lives who thinks most, 
 Who feels the noblest, 
 And who acts the best." 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD 
 
 By Robert G. Ingersow, 
 
 Robert Green Ingersoll was born at Dresden, New York, 
 August ii, 1833. His father was a Congregational preacher 
 of some ability but of strict orthodox views. There seems 
 to be no foundation for the story that Ingersoll's agnosticism 
 was due to any tyranny of his father. Ingersoll himself 
 speaks with the greatest affection of his father. In fact, the 
 father seems to have granted young Robert the perfect right 
 to form opinions for himself, and never to have been unduly 
 insistent on his own views. The family moved to Illinois, 
 where Robert grew to manhood. In 1852-3 he tried school 
 teaching, "boarding 'round," but got into trouble with the 
 school authorities and had to quit. Having been repeatedly 
 asked what he thought of baptism, he is said to have replied, 
 "With soap, baptism is a good thing." This ended his teach- 
 ing experience. In 1853 he began the study of law and about 
 1855 began to practice in partnership with his brother, Ebon 
 C. Ingersoll. They moved their offices from Shawneetown 
 to Peoria in 1857. Robert was a candidate for Congress in 
 i860 on the Democratic ticket, and, strangely enough, made 
 his campaign largely on the basis of emancipation, going fur- 
 ther than the Republicans led by Lincoln. He was defeated. 
 From the day of the attack on Fort Sumpter he was a 
 Republican and so continued until his death. He was one 
 of the first to enlist in the armies of the North in 1861, and 
 helped to raise three regiments of volunteers. He became a 
 colonel. He was captured by the Confederates and paroled. 
 Despairing of being exchanged, he finally resigned his com- 
 mission in 1863. 
 
 From 1867 to 1869 he was attorney-general of Illinois. 
 Here, began a career that, according to many able political 
 
no THB DELIVERY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 critics, might easily have ended in the White House had it 
 not been for Mr. Ingersoll's religious utterances. As it was, 
 he absolutely refused to give up his attacks on organized reli- 
 gion, and so his political career ended where it began, and 
 he is known today, not as a great statesman, but as the cham- 
 pion of political and religious freedom, and as "The Great 
 Agnostic." On June 15, 1876, as a delegate to the National 
 Republican Convention in Cincinnati, he made the speech 
 nominating James G. Blaine for the presidency. It is perhaps 
 the greatest nominating speech on record. 
 
 In 1877 he first delivered "The Liberty of Man, Woman 
 and Child." This was followed by many others, including 
 the lecture on Burns and the one on Shakespeare. On May 
 31, 1879, he was called upon to fulfill the promise of years 
 before, the compact made between the brothers, Robert and 
 Ebon, that whichever died first the other would say the final 
 words over his grave. As he stood over the grave of the 
 brother whom he loved as he did his own life, he gave voice 
 to that most beautiful of tributes, known as "A Tribute to 
 Ebon C. Ingersoll." His oratorical triumphs went on and on, 
 until he was generally conceded to be the most eloquent man 
 of his generation. Henry Ward Beecher, the greatest preacher 
 of his age, said of him, "He is the most brilliant speaker of 
 the English tongue of all men on this globe." He died of 
 angina pectoris, very suddenly, July 22, 1899. 
 
 "The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child" is here reprinted 
 in full. It will be seen that it contains more assignments 
 than the "Acres of Diamonds." It is suggested that the 
 teacher choose those that best suit the needs of the class, 
 leaving out the rest. Other modifications of the assignments 
 may also be made in the way of cuttings. It is thought best 
 to give the lecture complete, to afford a basis for the extem- 
 poraneous assignment following. But in the memorized 
 speeches such parts may be omitted as circumstances make 
 it advisable to omit. 
 
 The lecture is reprinted by the kind permission of Mr. 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN in 
 
 C. P. Farrell, publisher, Mr. Ingersoll's brother-in-law, 117 
 East Twenty-first Street, Gramercy Park, New York City. 
 It is taken from the Dresden Edition of Mr. Ingersoll's works, 
 Volume I, page 329. 
 
 Liberty Sustains the: Same: Relation to Mind 
 That Space: Does to Matter 
 
 1. There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the 
 child of intelligence. 
 
 The history of man is simply the history of slav- 
 ery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means 
 by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, 
 slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport 
 and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition 
 and cruel might. Crowned force has governed ig- 
 norance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny — two 
 vultures — have fed upon the liberties of man. From 
 all these there has been, and is, but one means of es- 
 cape — intellectual development. Upon the back of 
 industry has been the whip. Upon the brain have been 
 the fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left un- 
 done by the enemies of freedom. Every art and arti- 
 fice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and 
 perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great 
 struggle every crime has been rewarded and every 
 virtue has been punished. Reading, writing, think- 
 ing and investigating have all been crimes. 
 
 Every science has been an outcast. 
 
 All the altars and all the thrones united to arrest the 
 forward march of the human race. The king said 
 that mankind must not work for themselves. The 
 priest said that mankind must not think for them- 
 
H2 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 selves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for 
 the soul. Under this infamous regime the eagle of the 
 human intellect was for ages a slimy serpent of hy- 
 pocrisy. 
 
 The human race was imprisoned. Through some of 
 the prison 'bars came a few struggling rays of light. 
 Against these bars Science pressed its pale and 
 thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn of human 
 advancement. Bar after bar was broken away. A few 
 grand men escaped and devoted their lives to the lib- 
 eration of their fellows. 
 
 Only a few years ago there was a great awakening 
 of the human mind. Men began to inquire by what 
 right a crowned robber made them work for him? 
 The man who asked this question was called a traitor. 
 Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite 
 rule my thought? Such men were called infidels. The 
 priest said, and the king said, where is this spirit of 
 investigation to stop? They said then and they say 
 now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny 
 it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough 
 for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space 
 enough for every wing. 
 
 2. The man who does not do his own thinking is a 
 slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 Every man should stand under the blue and stars, 
 under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every 
 other man. 
 
 Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have 
 the same right to think, and all are equally interested 
 in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN 1 13 
 
 claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expres- 
 sion. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is 
 absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not 
 pretend to tell all the truth. 
 
 I do not claim that I have floated level with the 
 heights of thought, or that I have descended to the 
 very depths of things. I simply claim that what ideas 
 I have, I have a right to express; and that any man 
 who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and 
 robber. That is all. 
 
 Take those chains from the human soul. Break 
 those fetters. If I have no right to think, why have I 
 a brain? If I have no such right, have three or four 
 men, or any number, who may get together, and sign 
 a creed, and build a house, and put a steeple upon it, 
 and a bell in it — have they the right to think? The 
 good men, the good women are tired of the whip and 
 the lash in the realm of thought. They remember the 
 chain and fagot with a shudder. They are free, and 
 they give liberty to others. Whoever claims any right 
 that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dis- 
 honest and infamous. 
 
 In the good old times, our fathers had the idea that 
 they could make people believe to suit them. Our an- 
 cestors, in the ages that are gone, really believed that 
 by force you could convince a man. You cannot change 
 the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social 
 ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by 
 these, and what you have done. You can make hypo- 
 crites by the million. You can make a man say that 
 he has changed his mind ; but he remains of the same 
 opinion still. Put fetters all over him; crush his feet 
 
ii4 
 
 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 in iron boots ; stretch him to the last gasp upon the 
 holy rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will 
 be of the same opinion still. 
 
 3. Our fathers in the good old times — and the 
 best thing I can say about them is, that they have 
 passed away — had an idea that they could force men 
 to think their way. That idea is still prevalent in 
 many parts, even of this country. Even in our day 
 some extremely religious people say, "We will not 
 trade with that man; we will not vote for him; we 
 will not hire him if he is a lawyer; we will die before 
 we will take his medicine if he is a doctor; we will 
 not invite him to dinner; we will socially ostracise 
 him ; he must come to our church ; he must believe our 
 doctrines ; he must worship our god or we will not in 
 any way contribute to his support." 
 
 In the old times of which I have spoken, they de- 
 sired to make all men think exactly alike. All the me- 
 chanical ingenuity of the world cannot make two 
 clocks run exactly alike, and how are you going to 
 make hundreds of millions of people, differing in brain 
 and disposition, in education and aspiration, in condi- 
 tions and surroundings, each clad in a living robe of 
 passionate flesh — how are you going to make them 
 think and feel alike? If there is an infinite god, one 
 who made us, and wishes us to think alike, why did 
 he give a spoonful of brains to one, and a magnifi- 
 cent intellectual development to another? Why is it 
 that we have all degrees of intelligence, from ortho- 
 doxy to genius, if it was intended that all should think 
 and feel alike? 
 
 I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN 115 
 
 mankind. But I never appreciated it. I read it, but 
 it did not burn itself into my soul. I did not really 
 appreciate the infamies that have been committed in 
 the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments 
 that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew — two 
 little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with 
 protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through 
 each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when 
 some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be 
 said, "I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a 
 man to keep him from drowning," then they put his 
 thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name 
 of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw 
 these pieces together. When this was done most men 
 said, "I will recant." Probably I should have done 
 the same. Probably I would have said : "Stop ; I will 
 admit anything that you wish ; I will admit that there 
 is one god or a million, one hell or a billion ; suit your- 
 selves ; but stop." 
 
 But there was now and then a man who would not 
 swerve the breadth of a hair; there was now and then 
 some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual 
 conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would 
 be savages tonight. Had it not been for a few brave, 
 heroic souls in every age, we would have been canni- 
 bals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our 
 flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich. 
 
 4. Let us thank every good and noble man who 
 stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of 
 hatred and death, for what he believed to be the 
 truth. 
 
 Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. 
 
n6 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 The man who would not recant was not forgiven. 
 They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, 
 and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, 
 in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer 
 the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in 
 the name of love — in the name of mercy — in the 
 name of the compassionate Christ. 
 
 I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. 
 Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred 
 points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was 
 fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he 
 could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the 
 neck being punctured by these points. In a little 
 while the throat would begin to swell, and suffoca- 
 tion would end the agonies of that man. This man, 
 it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with 
 tears upon his cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the 
 father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of 
 the children of men." 
 
 I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's 
 Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, 
 not only where they now are, but at the points as 
 well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, 
 a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would 
 be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the 
 iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would 
 be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown 
 prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles 
 produced such agony that insanity would in pity end 
 his pain. 
 
 This was done by gentlemen who said : "Whosoever 
 
THE LIBBRTY OF MAN 117 
 
 smiteth thee upon one cheek turn to him the other 
 also." 
 
 I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a 
 wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and 
 ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went 
 chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the suf- 
 ferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergy- 
 men, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, 
 and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, 
 the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim 
 were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the 
 sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physic- 
 ian to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? 
 Yes. In mercy ? No ; simply that they might rack 
 him once again. 
 
 This was done, remember, in the name of civiliza- 
 tion; in the name of law and order; in the name of 
 mercy ; in the name of religion ; in the name of the 
 most merciful Christ. 
 
 5. Sometimes, when I read and think about these 
 frightful things, it seems to me that I have suffered 
 all these horrors myself. It seems sometimes, as 
 though I had stood upon the shore of exile and gazed 
 with tearful eyes toward home and native land ; as 
 though my nails had been torn from my hands, and 
 into the bleeding quick needles had been thrust; as 
 though my feet had 'been crushed in iron boots; as 
 though I had been chained in the cell of the Inquisi- 
 tion and listened with dying ears for the coming foot- 
 steps of release ; as though I had stood upon the scaf- 
 fold and had seen the glittering axe fall upon me ; as 
 
n8 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 though I had been upon the rack and had seen, bend- 
 ing above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests ; as 
 though I had been taken from my fireside, from my 
 wife and children, taken to the public square, chained ; 
 as though fagots had been piled about me; as though 
 the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched 
 my eyes to blindness, and as though my ashes had 
 been scattered to the four winds, by all the countless 
 hands of hate. And when I so feel, I swear that 
 while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and 
 to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child. 
 
 It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of 
 intellectual development. If there is a man in the 
 world who is not willing to give to every human being 
 every right he claims for himself, he is just so much 
 nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a question of hon- 
 esty. The man who is not willing to give to every 
 other the same intellectual rights he claims for him- 
 self, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. 
 
 It is a question of intellectual development. Who- 
 ever holds another man responsible for his honest 
 thought, has a deformed and distorted brain. It is a 
 question of intellectual development. 
 
 6. A little while ago I saw models of nearly every- 
 thing that man has made. I saw models of all the 
 water craft, from the rude dug-out in which floated 
 a naked savage — one of our ancestors — a naked 
 savage, with teeth two inches in length, with a spoon- 
 ful of brains in the back of his head — I saw models 
 of all the water craft of the world, from that dug-out 
 up to a man-of-war, that carries a hundred guns and 
 miles of canvas — from that dug-out to the steamship 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN 119 
 
 that turns its brave prow from the port of New York, 
 with a compass like a conscience, crossing three thous- 
 and miles of billows without missing a throb or beat 
 of its mighty iron heart. 
 
 I saw at the same time the weapons that man has 
 made, from a club, such as was grasped by that same 
 savage, when he crawled from his den in the ground 
 and hunted a snake for his dinner; from that club 
 to the boomerang, to the sword, to the cross-bow, to 
 the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, to the cap-lock, to 
 the needle-gun, up to a cannon cast by Krupp, capable 
 of hurling a ball weighing two thousand pounds 
 through eighteen inches of solid steel. 
 
 I saw, too, the armor from the shell of a turtle, that 
 one of our brave ancestors lashed upon his breast 
 when he went to fight for his country; the skin of a 
 porcupine, dried with the quills on, which this same 
 savage pulled over his orthodox head, up to the shirts 
 of mail, that were worn in the Middle Ages, that 
 laughed at the edge of the sword and defied the point 
 of the spear ; up to a monitor clad in complete steel. 
 
 I saw at the same time, their musical instruments, 
 from the tom-tom — that is, a hoop with a couple of 
 strings of raw hide drawn across it — from that tom- 
 tom, up to the instruments we have today, that make 
 the common air blossom with melody. 
 
 I saw, too, their paintings, from a daub of yellow 
 mud, to the great works which now adorn the gal- 
 leries of the world. I saw also their sculpture, from 
 the rude god with four legs, a half dozen arms, sev- 
 eral noses, and two or three rows of ears, and one lit- 
 tle, contemptible, brainless head, up to the figures of 
 
120 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 today — to the marbles that genius has clad in such 
 a personality that it seems almost impudent to touch 
 them without an introduction. 
 
 I saw their books — books written upon skins of 
 wild beasts — upon shoulder-blades of sheep — 
 books written upon leaves, upon bark, up to the splen- 
 did volumes that enrich the librares of our day. When 
 I speak of libraries, I think of the remark of Plato: 
 "A house that has a library in it has a soul." 
 
 7. I saw their implements of agriculture, from a 
 crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an ox 
 by some twisted straw, to the agricultural implements 
 of this generation, that make it possible for a man to 
 cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus. 
 
 While looking upon these things I was forced to say 
 that man advanced only as he mingled his thought 
 with his labor, — only as he got into partnership 
 with the forces of nature, — only as he learned to 
 take advantage of his surroundings — only as he 
 freed himself from the bondage of fear, — only as he 
 depended upon himself — only as he lost confidence in 
 the gods. 
 
 I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, from 
 the lowest skull that has been found, the Neander- 
 thal skull — skulls from Central Africa, skulls from 
 the Bushmen of Australia — skulls from the farthest 
 isles of the Pacific sea — up to the best skulls of the 
 last generation; — and I noticed that there was the 
 same difference between those skulls that there was 
 between the products of those skulls, and I said to my- 
 self, "After all, it is a simple question of intellectual 
 development." There was the same difference between 
 
THB UBBRTY OF MAN 121 
 
 those skulls, the lowest and highest skulls, that there 
 was between the dug-out and the man-of-war and the 
 steamship, between the club and the Krupp gun, be- 
 tween the yellow daub and the landscape, between the 
 tom-tom and an opera by Verdi. 
 
 The first and lowest skull in this row was the den 
 in which crawled the base and meaner instincts of 
 mankind, and the last was a temple in which dwelt 
 joy, liberty, and love. 
 
 It is all a question of brain, of intellectual develop- 
 ment. 
 
 If we are nearer free than were our fathers, it is 
 because we have better heads upon the average, and 
 more brains in them. 
 
 8. Now, I ask you to be honest with me. It makes 
 no difference to you what I believe, nor what I wish 
 to prove. I simply ask you to be honest. Divest your 
 minds, for a moment at least, of all religious preju- 
 dice. Act, for a few moments, as though you were 
 men and women. 
 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 
 if there was one, at the time this gentleman floated 
 in the dug-out, and charmed his ears with the music 
 of the tom-tom, had said: 'That dug-out is the best 
 boat that ever can be built by man; the pattern of 
 that came from on high, from the great god of storm 
 and flood, and any man who says that he can improve 
 it by putting a mast in it, with a sail upon it, is an in- 
 fidel, and shall be burned at the stake ;" what, in your 
 judgment — honor bright — would have been the ef- 
 fect upon the circumnavigation of the globe? 
 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 
 
122 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 if there was one — and I presume there was a priest, 
 because it was a very ignorant age — suppose this 
 king and priest had said: "That tom-tom is the most 
 beautiful instrument of music of which any man can 
 conceive; that is the kind of music they have in 
 heaven; an angel sitting upon the edge of a fleecy 
 cloud, golden in the setting sun, playing upon that 
 tom-tom, became so enraptured, so entranced with her 
 own music, that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it — 
 that is how we obtained it; and any man who says 
 that it can be improved by putting a back and front 
 to it, and four strings, and a bridge, and getting a bow 
 of hair with rosin, is a blaspheming wretch, and shall 
 die the death," — I ask you, what effect would that 
 have had upon music? If that course had been pur- 
 sued, would the human ears, in your judgment, ever 
 have been enriched with the divine symphonies of 
 Beethoven? 
 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 
 had said: "That crooked stick is the best plow that 
 can be invented : the pattern of that plow was given 
 to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted 
 straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and 
 any man who says he can make an improvement upon 
 that plow, is an atheist;" what, in your judgment, 
 would have been the effect upon the science of agricul- 
 ture? 
 
 But the people said, and the king and priest said: 
 "We want better weapons with which to kill our fel- 
 low-Christians ; we want better plows, better music, 
 better paintings, and whoever will give us better weap- 
 ons, and better music, better houses to live in, better 
 
THB LIBERTY OF MAX 123 
 
 clothes,, we will robe him in wealth, and crown him 
 with honor.*' Every incentive was held out to every 
 human being to improve these things. That is the 
 reason the club has been changed to a cannon, the 
 dug-out to a steamship, the daub to a painting ; that is 
 the reason that the piece of rough and broken stone 
 finally became a glorified statue. 
 
 9. You must not, however, forget that the gentle- 
 man in the dug-out, the gentleman who was enrap- 
 tured with the music of the tom-tom, and cultivated his 
 land with a crooked stick had a religion of his own. 
 That gentleman in the dug-out was orthodox. He was 
 never troubled with doubts. He lived and died set- 
 tled in his mind. He believed in hell ; and he thought 
 he would be far happier in heaven if he could just 
 lean over and see certain people who expressed doubts 
 as to the truth of his creed, gently but everlastingly 
 broiled and burned. 
 
 It is a very sad and unhappy fact that this man has 
 had a great many intellectual descendants. It is also 
 an unhappy fact in nature, that the ignorant multi- 
 ply much faster than the intellectual. This fellow in 
 the dug-out believed in a personal devil. His devil 
 had a cloven hoof, a long tail, armed with a fiery 
 dart; and his devil breathed brimstone. This devil 
 was at least the equal of God; not quite so stout but a 
 little shrewder. And do you know there has not been 
 a patentable improvement made upon that devil for 
 six thousand years. 
 
 This gentleman in the dug-out believed that God 
 was a tyrant; that he would eternally damn the man 
 who lived in accordance with his highest and grandest 
 
I2 4 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ideal. He believed that the earth was flat. He be- 
 lieved in a literal, burning, seething hell of fire and 
 sulphur. He had also his idea of politics ; and his 
 doctrine was, might makes right. And it will take 
 thousands of years before the world will reverse this 
 doctrine, and believingly say, "Right makes might." 
 
 All I ask is the same privilege to improve upon that 
 gentleman's theology as upon his musical instrument; 
 the same right to improve upon his politics as upon 
 his dug-out. That is all. I ask for the human soul the 
 same liberty in every direction. That is the only 
 crime I have committed. I say, let us think. Let each 
 one express his thought. Let us become investiga- 
 tors, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there 
 is in heaven an infinite being, he never will be satis- 
 fied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. Hon- 
 est unbelief, honest infidelity, honest atheism, will be 
 a perfume in heaven when pious hypocrisy, no matter 
 how religious it may be outwardly, will be a stench. 
 
 10. This is my doctrine: Give every other human 
 being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your 
 mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new 
 thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance. 
 
 The religionist of today wants the ship of his soul 
 to lie at the wharf of orthodoxy and rot in the sun. 
 He delights to hear the sails of old opinions flap 
 against the masts of old creeds. He loves to see the 
 joints and the sides open and gape in the sun, and 
 it is a kind of bliss for him to repeat again and again : 
 "Do not disturb my opinions. Do not unsettle my 
 mind ; I have it all made up, and I want no infidelity. 
 Let me go backward rather than forward." 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN 125 
 
 As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the 
 high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, and 
 wave, and star. And I had rather go down in the 
 glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in any 
 orthodox harbor whatever. 
 
 After all, we are improving from age to age. The 
 most orthodox people in this country two hundred 
 years ago would have been burned for the crime of 
 heresy. The ministers who denounce me for express- 
 ing my thought would have been in the Inquisition 
 themselves. Where once burned and blazed the biv- 
 ouac fires of the army of progress, now glow the al- 
 tars of the church. The religionists of our time are 
 occupying about the same ground occupied by heretics 
 and infidels of one hundred years ago. The church 
 has advanced in spite, as it were, of itself. It has fol- 
 lowed the army of progress protesting and denounc- 
 ing, and had to keep within protesting and denouncing 
 distance. If the church had not made great progress I 
 could not express my thoughts. 
 
 Man, however, has advanced just exactly in the 
 proportion with which he has mingled his thought with 
 his labor. The sailor, without control of the wind and 
 wave, knowing nothing or very little of the myste- 
 rious currents and pulses of the sea, is superstitious. 
 So also is the agriculturist, whose prosperity depends 
 upon something he cannot control. But the mechanic, 
 when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of drop- 
 ping on his knees and asking the assistance of some 
 divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows 
 that something is too large or too small ; that there is 
 something wrong with his machine; and he goes to 
 
126 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, 
 until the wheel will turn. Now, just in proportion as 
 man gets away from being, as it were, the slave of his 
 surroundings, the serf of the elements, — of the heat, 
 the frost, the snow, and the lightning, — just to the 
 extent that he has gotten control of his own destiny, 
 just to the extent that he has triumphed over the ob- 
 stacles of nature, he has advanced physically and in- 
 tellectually. As man develops, he places a greater 
 value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander 
 and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he be- 
 gins to value the rights of others. And when all men 
 give to all others all the rights they claim for them- 
 selves, this world will be civilized. 
 
 ii. A few years ago the people were afraid to ques- 
 tion the king, afraid to question the priest, afraid to in- 
 vestigate a creed, afraid to deny a book, afraid to de- 
 nounce a dogma, afraid to reason, afraid to think. Be- 
 fore wealth they bowed to the very earth, and in the 
 presence of titles they became abject. All this is 
 slowly but surely changing. We no longer bow to 
 men simply because they are rich. Our fathers wor- 
 shiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an 
 American now is, he worships the gold of the calf. 
 Even the calf is beginning to see this distinction. 
 
 It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great man 
 to be a king or emperor. The last Napoleon was not 
 satisfied with being emperor of the French. He was 
 not satisfied with having a circlet of gold about his 
 head. He wanted some evidence that he had some- 
 thing of value within his head. So he wrote the life 
 of Julius Caesar, that he might become a member of the 
 
THE LIBERTY OF MAN 127 
 
 French Academy. The emperors, the kings, the 
 popes, no longer tower above their fellows. Compare 
 king William with the philosopher Haekel. The king 
 is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim — ■ 
 one upon whose head has been poured the divine pe- 
 troleum of authority. Compare this king with Haec- 
 kel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the 
 crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with 
 Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments 
 given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, 
 while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the 
 loom of her own genius 
 
 The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, 
 to genius, to heart. 
 
 We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of 
 every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every di- 
 vine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand 
 the torch to the next generation, having added a little 
 to the intensity and glory of the flame. 
 
 12. When I think of how much this world has suf- 
 fered; when I think of how long our fathers were 
 slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of 
 the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they 
 abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the 
 presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am 
 amazed. 
 
 This world has not been fit for a man to live in 
 fifty years. It was not until the year 1808 that Great 
 Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to that time hef 
 judges, sitting upon the bench in the name of justice, 
 her priests, occupying her pulpits, in the name of uni- 
 versal love, owned stock in the slave ships, and lux- 
 
128 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 uriated upon the profits of piracy and murder. It 
 was not until the same year that the United States of 
 America abolished the slave trade between this and 
 other countries, but carefully preserved it as between 
 the States. It was not until the 28th day of August, 
 1833, that Great Britain abolished human slavery in 
 her colonies ; and it was not until the 1st day of Janu- 
 ary, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the sub- 
 lime and heroic North, rendered our flag pure as the 
 sky in which it floats. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many 
 respects, the grandest man ever President of the 
 United States. Upon his monument these words 
 should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the 
 history of the world, who, having been clothed with 
 almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon 
 the side of mercy." 
 
 Think how long we clung to the institution of hu- 
 man slavery, how long lashes upon the naked back 
 were a legal tender for labor performed. Think of it 
 The pulpit of this country deliberately and willingly, 
 for a hundred years, turned the cross of Christ into 
 a whipping post. 
 
 With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate 
 every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate 
 dictation. I love liberty. 
 
 13. What do I mean by liberty? By physical lib- 
 erty I mean the right to do anything which does not 
 interfere with the happiness of another. By intellec- 
 tual liberty I mean the right to think right and the 
 right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which 
 we endeavor to arrive at truth. If we know the truth 
 
THE LIBERTY OP MAN 129 
 
 already, we need not think. All that can be required 
 is honesty of purpose. You ask my opinion about any- 
 thing; I examine it honestly, and when my mind is 
 made up, what should I tell you? Should I tell you 
 my real thought? What should I do? There is a 
 book put in my hands. I am told this is the Koran ; it 
 was written by inspiration. I read it, and when I 
 get through, suppose that I think in my heart and in 
 my brain, that it is utterly untrue, and you then ask 
 me, what do you think? Now, admitting that I live 
 in Turkey, and have no chance to get any office un- 
 less I am on the side of the Koran, what should I 
 say ? Should I make a clean breast and say, that upon 
 my honor I do not believe it ? What would you think 
 then of my fellow-citizens if they said : "That man is 
 dangerous, he is dishonest." 
 
 Supose I read the book called the Bible, and when I 
 get through I make up my mind that it was written 
 by men. A minister asks me, "Did you read the Bi- 
 ble ?" I answer, that I did. "Do you think it divinely 
 inspired?" What should I reply? Should I say to 
 myself, "If I deny the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 the people will never clothe me with power." What 
 ought I to answer? Ought I not to say like a man: 
 "I have read it; I do not believe it." Should I not 
 give the real transcript of my mind? Or should I 
 turn hypocrite and pretend what I do not feel, and 
 hate myself forever after for being a cringing coward. 
 For my part I would rather a man would tell me what 
 he honestly thinks. I would rather he would preserve 
 his manhood. I had a thousand times rather be a 
 manly unbeliever than an unmanly believer. And if 
 
1 3 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 there is a judgment day, a time when all will stand 
 before some supreme being, I believe I will stand 
 higher, and stand a better chance of getting my case 
 decided in my favor, than any man sneaking through 
 life pretending to believe what he does not. 
 
 I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do 
 it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I know 
 there are thousands of men who substantially agree 
 with me, but who are not in a condition to express 
 their thoughts. They are poor ; they are in business ; 
 and they know that should they tell their honest 
 thought, persons will refuse to patronize them — to 
 trade with them ; they wish to get bread for their lit- 
 tle children ; they wish to take care of their wives ; they 
 wish to have homes and the comforts of life. Every 
 such person is a certificate of the meanness of the com- 
 munity in which he resides. And yet I do not blame 
 these people for not expressing their thought. I say 
 to them : "Keep your ideas to yourselves ; feed and 
 clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for 
 you. The church can not touch, can not crush, can not 
 starve, can not stop nor stay me ; I will express your 
 thoughts." 
 
 14. As an excuse for tyranny, as a justification of 
 slavery, the church has taught that man is totally 
 depraved. Of the truth of that doctrine, the church 
 has furnished the only evidence there is. The truth 
 is, we are both good and bad. The worst are capable 
 of some good deeds, and the best are capable of bad. 
 The lowest can rise, and the highest may fall. That 
 mankind can be divided into two great classes, sin- 
 ners and saints, is an utter falsehood. In times of 
 
THE LIBERTY OP WOMAN 131 
 
 great disaster, called it may be, by the despairing 
 voices of women, men, denounced by the church as 
 totally depraved, rush to death as to a festival. By such 
 men, deeds are done so filled with self-sacrifice and 
 generous daring, that millions pay to them the tribute, 
 not only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds, 
 above all religions, after all, is that divine thing, — 
 Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the 
 wide, wild sea, or 'mid the rocks and breakers of 
 some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame 
 writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric 
 soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives the 
 lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these fright- 
 ful doctrines have been used to degrade and to enslave 
 mankind. 
 
 Away, forever away with the creeds and books and 
 forms and laws and religions that take from the soul 
 liberty and reason. Down with the idea that thought 
 is dangerous ! Perish the infamous doctrine that 
 man can have property in man. Let us resent with 
 indignation every effort to put a chain upon our 
 minds. If there is no God; certainly we should not 
 bow and cringe and crawl. If there is a God, there 
 should be no slaves. 
 
 The Liberty of Woman 
 
 15. Women have been the slaves of slaves; and in 
 my judgment it took millions of ages for woman to 
 come from the condition of abject slavery up to the 
 institution of marriage. Let me say right here, that 
 I regard marriage as the holiest institution among 
 men. Without the fireside there is no human ad- 
 
132 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 vancement; without the family relation there is no 
 life worth living. Every good government is made 
 up of good families. The unit of good government 
 is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the 
 family is perfectly devilish and infamous. I believe in 
 marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the opinions 
 of those long-haired men and short-haired women who 
 denounce the institution of marriage. 
 
 The grandest ambition that any man can possibly 
 have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart 
 and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splen- 
 did woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is 
 to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of 
 some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no 
 success in life without love and marriage. You had 
 better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, 
 and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the 
 world. The man who has really won the love of one 
 good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in 
 the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success. 
 
 I say it took millions of years to come from the con- 
 dition of abject slavery up to the condition of mar- 
 riage. Ladies, the ornaments you wear upon your 
 persons tonight are but the souvenirs of your mother's 
 bondage. The chains around your necks, and the 
 bracelets clasped upon your white arms by the thrilled 
 hand of love, have been changed by the wand of civ- 
 ilization from iron to shining, glittering gold. 
 
 But nearly every religion has accounted for all the 
 devilment in this world by the crime of woman. What 
 a gallant thing that is ! And if it is true, I had rather 
 
THE LIBERTY OF WOMAN 133 
 
 live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, 
 than to live in heaven with nobody but men. 
 
 I read in a book — and I will say now that I can- 
 not give the exact language, as my memory does not 
 retain the words, but I can give the substance — I 
 read in a book that the Supreme Being concluded to 
 make a world and one man; that he took some noth- 
 ing and made a world and one man, and put this man 
 in a garden. In a little while he noticed that the man 
 got lonesome; that he wandered around as if he was 
 waiting for a train. There was nothing to interest 
 him ; no news ; no papers ; no politics ; no policy ; and, 
 as the devil had not yet made his appearance, there 
 was no chance for reconciliation; not even for civil 
 service reform. Well, he wandered about the gar- 
 den in this condition, until finally the Supreme Being 
 made up his mind to make him a companion. 
 
 16. Having used up all the nothing he originally 
 took in making the world and one man, he had to take 
 a part of the man to start a woman with. So he 
 caused a sleep to fall on this man — now understand 
 me, I do not say this story is true. After the sleep 
 fell upon this man, the Supreme Being took a rib, or 
 as the French would call it, a cutlet, out of this man, 
 and from that he made a woman. And considering 
 the amount of raw material used, I look upon it as the 
 most successful job ever performed. Well, after he 
 got the woman done, she was brought to the man ; not 
 to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her. 
 He liked her, and they started housekeeping ; and they 
 were told of certain things they might do and of one 
 
134 ?#£ DBUVERY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 thing they could not do — and of course they did it. I 
 would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know it. 
 There wouldn't have been an apple on that tree half 
 an hour from date, and the limbs would have been 
 full of clubs. And then they were turned out of the 
 park and extra policemen were put on to keep them 
 from getting back. 
 
 Devilment commenced. The mumps, and the 
 measles, and the whooping-cough, and the scarlet fever 
 started in their race for man. They began to have the 
 toothache, roses began to have thorns, snakes began 
 to have poisoned teeth, and people began to divide 
 about religion and politics, and the world has been full 
 of trouble from that day to this. 
 
 Nearly all of the religions of this world account for 
 the existence of evil by such a story as that! 
 
 I read in another book what appeared to be an 
 account of the same transaction. It was written 
 about four thousand years before the other. All com- 
 mentators agree that the one that was written last was 
 the original, and that the one that was written first 
 was copied from the one that was written last. But I 
 would advise you all not to allow your creed to be dis- 
 turbed by a little matter of four or five thousand 
 years. In this other story Brahma made up his mind 
 to make the world and a man and woman. He made 
 the world, and he made the man and then the woman, 
 and put them on the island of Ceylon. According to 
 the account it was the most beautiful island of which 
 man can conceive. Such birds, such songs, such 
 flowers and such verdure ! And the branches of the 
 trees were so arranged that when the wind swept 
 
THE LIBERTY OF WOMAN 135 
 
 through them every tree was a thousand iEolian 
 harps. 
 
 Brahma, when he put them there, said: "Let them 
 have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and 
 will that true love should forever precede marriage." 
 When I read that, it was so much more beautiful and 
 lofty than the other, that I said to myself, "If either 
 one of these stories ever turns out to be true, I hope 
 it will be this one." 
 
 17. Then they had their courtship, with the nightin- 
 gale singing, and the stars shining, and the flowers 
 blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine that court- 
 ship ! No prospective fathers nor mothers-in-law ; 
 no prying and gossiping neighbors ; nobody to say, 
 "Young man, how do you expect to support her?" 
 Nothing of that kind. They were married by the Su- 
 preme Brahma, and he said to them: "Remain here; 
 you must never leave this island." Well, after a little 
 while the man — and his name was Adami, and the 
 woman's name was Heva — said to Heva: "I believe 
 I'll look about a little." He went to the northern ex- 
 tremity of the island where there was a little narrow 
 neck of land connecting it with the mainland, and 
 the devil, who is always playing pranks with us, pro- 
 duced a mirage, and when he looked over to the main- 
 land, such hills and vales, such dells and dales, such 
 mountains crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in 
 bows of glory did he see there, that he went back and 
 told Heva: "The country over there is a thousand 
 times better than this; let us migrate." She, like every 
 other woman that ever lived, said : "Let well enough 
 alone ; we have all we want ; let us stay here." But he 
 
136 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 said, "No, let us go ;" so she followed him, and when 
 they came to this narrow neck of land, he took her 
 on his hack like a gentleman, and carried her over. 
 But the moment they got over they heard a crash, and, 
 looking back, discovered that this narrow neck of 
 land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had disap- 
 peared, and there were naught but rocks and sand; 
 and then the Supreme Brahma cursed them both to 
 the lowest hell. 
 
 Then it was that the man spoke, — and I have 
 liked him ever since for it — "Curse me, but curse 
 not her, it was not her fault, it was mine." 
 
 That's the kind of man to start a world with. 
 
 The Supreme Brahma said: "I will save her, but 
 not thee." And then she spoke out of her fullness of 
 love, out of a heart in which there was love enough 
 to make all her daughters rich in holy affection, and 
 said: "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; 
 I do not wish to live without him; I love him." Then 
 the Supreme Brahma said — and I have liked him 
 ever since I read it — "I will spare you both and 
 watch over you and your children forever." 
 
 Honor bright, is not that the better and grander 
 story? 
 
 1 8. And from that same book I want to show you 
 what ideas some of these miserable heathen had; the 
 heathen we are trying to convert. We send mission- 
 aries over yonder to convert heathen there, and we 
 send soldiers out on the plains to kill heathen here. 
 If we can convert the heathen, why not convert those 
 nearest home ? Why not convert those we can get at ? 
 Why not convert those who have the immense advan- 
 
 
THE LIBBRTY OF WOMAN 137 
 
 tage of the example of the average pioneer? But to 
 show you the men we are trying to convert: In this 
 book it says : "Man is strength, woman is beauty ; man 
 is courage, woman is love. When the one man loves 
 the one woman and the one woman loves the one 
 man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit 
 in that house and sing for joy." 
 
 They are the men we are converting. Think of it ! 
 I tell you, when I read these things, I say that love 
 is not of any country ; nobility does not belong exclu- 
 sively to any race, and through all the ages, there have 
 been a few great and tender souls blossoming in love 
 and pity. 
 
 In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the 
 man. She has all the rights I have and one more, 
 and that is the right to be protected. That is my 
 doctrine. You are married; try and make the woman 
 you love happy. Whoever marries simply for him- 
 self will make a mistake ; but whoever loves a woman 
 so well that he says "I will make her happy," makes 
 no mistake. And so with the woman who says, "I 
 will make him happy." There is only one way to be 
 happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you 
 cannot be happy by going cross lots; you have got to 
 go the regular turnpike road. 
 
 If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks 
 he is the head of a family — the man who thinks he 
 is "boss !" The fellow in the dug-out used that word 
 "boss" ; that was one of his favorite expressions. 
 
 Imagine a young man and a young woman court- 
 ing, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightinglae 
 singing a song of pain and love, as though the thorn 
 
i 3 8 THH DtiUVHRY OP A SPBBCH 
 
 touched her heart — imagine them stopping there in 
 the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying, 
 "Now, here, let us settle who is 'boss !' " I tell you it 
 is an infamous word and an infamous feeling — I 
 abhor a man who is "boss", who is going to govern 
 in his family, and when he speaks orders all the rest 
 to be still as some mighty idea is about to be launched 
 from his mouth. Do you know I dislike this man un- 
 speakably ? 
 
 19. I hate above all things a cross man. What 
 right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? What 
 right has he to assassinate the joy of life? When you 
 go home you ought to go like a ray of light — so 
 that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors 
 and windows and illuminate the darkness. Some 
 men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil ; 
 they have been thinking about who will be alderman 
 from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about 
 politics ; great and mighty questions have been engag- 
 ing their minds ; they have bought calico at five cents 
 or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the in- 
 tellectual strain that must have been upon that man, 
 and when he gets home everybody else in the house 
 must look out for his comfort. A woman who has 
 only taken care of five or six children, and one or two 
 of them sick, has been nursing them and singing to 
 them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the 
 work of two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and 
 ready to wait upon this gentleman — the head of the 
 family — the boss ! 
 
 Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy 
 man. I do not see how it is possible for a man to die 
 
THB LIBERTY OP WOMAN 139 
 
 worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dol- 
 lars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost 
 every day the withered hand of beggary and the white 
 lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, 
 and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty 
 million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do 
 not see how he can do it. I should not think he could 
 do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber 
 on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men 
 were drowning in the sea. 
 
 20. Do you know that I have known men who 
 would trust their wives with their hearts and their 
 honor but not with their pocketbook; not with a dol- 
 lar. When I see a man of that kind, I always think 
 he knows which of these articles is the most valuable. 
 Think of making your wife a beggar ! Think of her 
 having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two 
 dollars or fifty cents ! "What did you do with that dol- 
 lar I gave you last week?" Think of having a wife that 
 is afraid of you! What kind of children do you ex- 
 pect to have with a beggar and a coward for their 
 mother? Oh, I tell you if you have but a dollar in the 
 world, and you have got to spend it, spend it like a 
 king ; spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the 
 owner of unbounded forests ! That's the way to spend 
 it ! I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar 
 like a king, than be a king and spend my money like 
 a beggar! If it has got to go, let it go! 
 
 Get the best you can for your family — try to 
 look as well as you can yourself. When you used to 
 go courting, how elegantly you looked ! Ah, your eye 
 was bright, your step was light, and you looked like a 
 
l4 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 prince. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in 
 you to suppose a woman is going to love you always 
 looking as slovenly as you can ! Think of it ! Any 
 good woman on earth will be true to you forever when 
 you do your level best. 
 
 Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about loving, 
 and wives, and all that, is splendid for the rich, but it 
 won't do for the poor." I tell you tonight there is 
 more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces 
 of the rich. The meanest hut with love in it is a 
 palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a 
 den only fit for wild beasts. That is my doctrine! 
 You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody. 
 Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; 
 and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, 
 to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me that you 
 have got to be rich ! We have a false standard of 
 greatness in the United States. We think here that a 
 man must be great, that he must be notorious ; that he 
 must be extremely wealthy, or that his name must be 
 upon the putrid lips of rumor. It is all a mistake. It 
 is not necessary to be rich or to be great, or to be pow- 
 erful, to' be happy. The happy man is the successful 
 man. 
 
 Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. 
 
 Joy is wealth. 
 
 21. A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the 
 old Napoleon — a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, 
 fit almost for a dead deity — and gazed upon the sar- 
 cophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at 
 last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the 
 
THB LIBERTY OF WOMAN ,141 
 
 balustrade and thought about the career of the great- 
 est soldier of the modern world. 
 
 I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, 
 contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon — I saw 
 him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris — I 
 saw him at the head of the army of Italy — I saw 
 him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in 
 his hand — I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the 
 pyramids — I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle 
 the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I 
 saw him at Marengo — at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw 
 him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and 
 the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like 
 winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in de- 
 feat and disaster — driven by a million bayonets back 
 upon Paris — clutched like a wild beast — banished 
 to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by 
 the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful 
 field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to 
 wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw 
 him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, 
 gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. 
 
 I thought of the orphans and widows he had made — 
 of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of 
 the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his 
 heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I 
 would rather have been a French peasant and worn 
 wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut 
 with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes 
 growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I 
 would rather have been that poor peasant with my 
 
i 4 2 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out 
 of the sky — with my children upon my knees and 
 their arms about me — I would rather have been that 
 man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the 
 dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial im- 
 personation of force and murder, known as "Napo- 
 leon the Great". 
 
 It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is 
 not necessary to be rich to be just and generous and 
 to have a heart filled with divine affection. No matter 
 whether you are rich or poor, treat your wife as 
 though she were a splendid flower, and she will fill 
 your life with perfume and with joy. 
 
 . 22. And do you know, it is a splendid thing to 
 think that the woman you really love will never grow 
 old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through 
 the mask of years, if you really love her, you will al- 
 ways see the face you loved and won. And a woman 
 who really loves a man does not see that he grows old ; 
 he is not decrepit to her; he does not tremble; he is 
 not old ; she always sees the same gallant gentleman 
 who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in 
 that way. I like to think that love is eternal. And to 
 love in that way and then go down the hill of life to- 
 gether, and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laugh- 
 ter of grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love 
 sing once more in the leafless branches of the tree of 
 age. 
 
 I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy 
 of home. I believe in the republicanism of the fam- 
 ily. I believe in liberty, equality and love. 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 143 
 
 The: Liberty of Children 
 
 If women have been slaves, what shall I say of 
 children ; of the little children in alleys and sub-cel- 
 lars; the little children who turn pale when they hear 
 their fathers' footsteps ; little children who run away 
 when they only hear their names called by the lips of 
 a mother; little children — the children of poverty, 
 the children of crime, the children of brutality, wher- 
 ever they are — flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, 
 mad sea of life — my heart goes out to them, one 
 and all. 
 
 I tell you the children have the same rights that we 
 have, and we ought to treat them as though they were 
 human beings. They should be reared with love, with 
 kindness, with tenderness, and not with brutality. 
 That is my idea of children. 
 
 When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at him 
 as though the world were about to go into bank- 
 ruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will 
 have liars for his children ; do you know that ? A lie 
 is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness 
 upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy 
 with a club in your hand, of course he lies. 
 
 I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put in- 
 genuity enough in the brain of a child, when attacked 
 by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in 
 the shape of a lie. 
 
 23. When one of your children tells a lie, be honest 
 with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of 
 them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way ; that 
 you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in Maine 
 when his boy left home: "Jo nn > honesty is the best 
 
1 44 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 policy; I have tried both." Be honest with him. Sup- 
 pose a man as much larger than you as you are larger 
 than a child five years old, should come at you with 
 a liberty pole in his hand, and in a voice of thunder 
 shout, "Who broke that plate?" There is not a soli- 
 tary one of you who would not swear you never saw 
 it, or that it was cracked when you got it. Why not 
 be honest with these children? Just imagine a man 
 who deals in stocks whipping his boy for putting false 
 rumors afloat ! Think of a lawyer beating his own 
 flesh and blood for evading the truth when he makes 
 half of his own living that way! Think of a minis- 
 ter punishing his child for not telling all he thinks ! 
 Just think of it ! 
 
 When your child commits a wrong, take it in your 
 arms ; let it feel your heart beat against its heart ; let 
 the child know that you really and truly and sincerely 
 love it. Yet some Christians, good Christians, when a 
 child commits a fault, drive it from the door and say : 
 "Never do you darken this house again." Think of 
 that! And then these same people will get down on 
 their knees and ask God to take care of the child they 
 have driven from home. I will never ask God to take 
 care of my children unless I am doing my level best 
 in that same direction. 
 
 But I will tell you what I say to my children : "Go 
 where you will ; commit what crime you may ; fall to 
 what depth of degradation you may; you can never 
 commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, 
 or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have 
 one sincere friend." 
 
 Do you know that I have seen some people who 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 145 
 
 acted as though they thought that when the Savior 
 said "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of 
 such is the kingdom of heaven," he had a raw-hide 
 under his mantle, and made that remark simply to get 
 the children within striking distance? 
 
 I do not believe in the government of the lash. If 
 any one of you ever expects to whip your children 
 again, I want you to have a photograph taken of your- 
 self when you are in the act, with your face red with 
 vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with 
 eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled 
 with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden 
 cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little 
 child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to 
 spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the 
 cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and 
 little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of re- 
 gret, from the sad heart of the earth — and sit down 
 upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think 
 of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is 
 wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your 
 home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly 
 with them in everything. 
 
 24. Give them a little liberty and love, and you can 
 not drive them out of your house. They will want 
 to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let them play 
 any game they wish. Do not be so foolish as to say : 
 "You may roll balls on the ground, but you must not 
 roll them on a green cloth. You may knock them 
 with a mallet, but you must not push them with a 
 cue. You may play with little pieces of paper which 
 have 'authors' written on them, but you must not 
 
I 4 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 have 'cards'." Think of it ! "You may go to a min- 
 strel show where people blacken themselves and imi- 
 tate humanity below them, but you must not go to a 
 theatre and see the characters created by immortal 
 genius put upon the stage." Why ? Well, I can't think 
 of any reason in the world except "minstrel" is a 
 word of two syllables, and "theatre" has three. 
 
 Let children have some daylight at home if you 
 want to keep them there, and do not commence at the 
 cradle and shout "Don't !" "Don't !" "Stop !" That is 
 nearly all that is said to a child from the cradle un- 
 til he is twenty-one years old, and when he comes of 
 age other people begin saying "Don't!" And the 
 church says "Don't !" and the party he belongs to says 
 "Don't !" 
 
 I despise that way of going through this world. Let 
 us have liberty — just a little. Call me infidel, call 
 me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat 
 my children, that they can come to my grave and 
 truthfully say : "He who sleeps here never gave us a 
 moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never 
 came to us an unkind word." 
 
 People justify all kinds of tyranny toward children 
 upon the ground that they are totally depraved. At the 
 bottom of ages of cruelty lies this infamous doctrine of 
 total depravity. Religion contemplates a child as a 
 living crime — heir to an infinite curse — doomed to 
 eternal fire. 
 
 25. In the olden time, they thought some days were 
 too good for a child to enjoy himself. When I was 
 a boy Sunday was considered altogether too holy to 
 be happy in. Sunday used to commence then when 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 147 
 
 the sun went down on Saturday night. We com- 
 menced at that time for the purpose of getting a good 
 ready, and when the sun fell below the horizon on 
 Saturday evening, there was a darkness fell upon the 
 house ten thousand times deeper than that of night. 
 Nobody said a pleasant word; nobody laughed; no- 
 body smiled; the child that looked the sickest was 
 regarded as the most pious. That night you could 
 not even crack hickory nuts. If you were caught chew- 
 ing gum it was only another evidence of the total de- 
 pravity of the human heart. It was an exceedingly 
 solemn night. Dyspepsia was in the very air you 
 breathed. Everybody looked sad and mournful. I 
 have noticed all my life that many people think they 
 have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia. 
 If there could be found an absolute specific for that 
 disease, it would be the hardest blow the church has 
 ever received. 
 
 On Sunday morning the solemnity had simply in- 
 creased. Then we went to church. The minister was 
 in a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sound- 
 ing-board above him, and he commenced at "firstly" 
 and went on and on and on to about "twenty-thirdly". 
 Then he made a few remarks by way of application; 
 and then took a general view of the subject, and in 
 about two hours reached the last chapter in Revela- 
 tion. 
 
 In those days, no matter how cold the weather was, 
 there was no fire in the church. It was thought to be 
 a kind of sin to be comfortable while you were thank- 
 ing God. The first church that ever had a stove in it 
 in New England, divided on that account. So the first 
 
148 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 church in which they sang by note, was torn in frag- 
 ments. 
 
 After the sermon we had an intermission. Then 
 came the catechism with the chief end of man. We 
 went through with that. We sat in a row with our 
 feet coming in about six inches of the floor. The min- 
 ister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to 
 hell, and we all answered "Yes". Then we were asked 
 if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's 
 will, and every little liar shouted "Yes". Then the 
 same sermon was preached once more, commencing 
 at the other end and going back. After that, we started 
 for home, sad and solemn — overpowered with the 
 wisdom displayed in the scheme of the atonement. 
 When we got home, if we had been good boys, and 
 the weather was warm, sometimes they would take us 
 out to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. It did 
 cheer me. When I looked at the sunken tombs and 
 the leaning stones, and read the half-effaced inscrip- 
 tions through the moss of silence and forgetfulness, it 
 was a great comfort. The reflection came to my mind 
 that the observance of the Sabbath could not last al- 
 ways. Sometimes they would sing that beautiful 
 hymn in which occur these cheerful lines: 
 
 "Where congregations ne'er break up, 
 And Sabbaths never end." 
 
 These lines, I think, prejudiced me a little against 
 even heaven. 
 
 26. Then we had good books that we read on Sun- 
 days by way of keeping us happy and contented. There 
 were Milners' "History of the Waldenses", Baxter's 
 
THB LIBERTY OF CHILDREN i 49 
 
 "Call to the Unconverted", Yahn's "Archaeology of 
 the Jews", and Jenkyns' "On the Atonement". I used 
 to read Jenkyns' "On the Atonement". I have often 
 thought that an atonement would have to be exceed- 
 ingly broad in its provisions to cover the case of a 
 man who would write a book like that for a boy. 
 
 But at last the Sunday wore away, and the moment 
 the sun went down we were free. Between three and 
 four o'clock we would go out to see how the sun was 
 coming on. Sometimes it seemed to me that it was 
 stopping from pure meanness. But finally it went 
 down. It had to. And when the last rim of light sank 
 below the horizon, off would go our caps, and we 
 would give three cheers for liberty once more. 
 
 Sabbaths used to be prisons. Every Sunday was a 
 Bastile. Every Christian was a kind of turnkey, and 
 every child was a prisoner, — a convict. In that dun- 
 geon, a smile was a crime. 
 
 It was thought wrong for a child to laugh upon 
 this holy day. Think of that! 
 
 A little child would go out into the garden, and 
 there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the 
 little fellow would lean against it, and there would 
 be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging, 
 and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed 
 by the breast of its mate, — singing and swinging, 
 and the music in happy waves rippling out of its tiny 
 throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air filled with 
 perfume and the great white clouds floating in the 
 sky, and the little boy would lean up against that tree 
 and think about hell and the worm that never dies. 
 
 I have heard them preach, when I sat in the pew 
 
1 5 o THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEHCH 
 
 and my feet did not touch the floor, about the final 
 home of the unconverted. In order to impress upon 
 the children the length of time they would probably 
 stay if they settled in that country, the preacher would 
 frequently give us the following illustration: "Sup- 
 pose that once in a billion years a bird should come 
 from some far-distant planet, and carry off in its little 
 bill a grain of sand, a time would finally come when 
 the last atom composing this earth would be carried 
 away; and when this last atom was taken, it would 
 not even be sun up in hell." Think of such an infam- 
 ous doctrine being taught to children! 
 
 2J. The laugh of a child will make the holiest day 
 more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird 
 musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; 
 fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet 
 and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys ; blow, bu- 
 gler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the 
 moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid 
 the vine-clad hills. But know, your sweetest strains are 
 discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh — 
 the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart 
 with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the 
 blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; 
 and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some 
 fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped daugh- 
 ter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to 
 catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. 
 
 And yet the minds of children have been polluted 
 by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment. I de- 
 nounce it today as a doctrine, the infamy of which no 
 ianguage is sufficient to' express. 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 151 
 
 Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment for 
 men and women and children come from? It came 
 from the low and beastly skull of that wretch in the 
 dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir 
 from the animals. The doctrine of eternal punish- 
 ment was born in the glittering eyes of snakes — 
 snakes that hung in fearful coils watching for their 
 prey. It was born of the howl and bark and growl of 
 wild beasts. It was born of the grin of hyenas and of 
 the depraved chatter of unclean baboons. I despise it 
 with every drop of my blood. Tell me there is a 
 God in the serene heavens that will damn his children 
 for the expression of an honest belief ! More men 
 have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox 
 creeds, than there are leaves on all the forests in the 
 wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these 
 men are in hell ; that these men are in torment ; that 
 these children are in eternal pain, and that they are 
 to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this 
 doctrine as the most infamous of lies. 
 
 28. When the great ship containing the hopes and 
 aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted 
 with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos 
 and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I 
 will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of pad- 
 dling away in some orthodox canoe. I will go down 
 with the ship, with those who love me, and with those 
 whom I have loved. If there is a God who will damn 
 his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to 
 go to heaven and keep the society of such an infam- 
 out tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that 
 doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with 
 
152 
 
 THE DBUVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and 
 poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a con- 
 stant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and 
 woman and child. It has filled the good with horror 
 and with fear; but it has no effect upon the in- 
 famous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the 
 tender ; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This 
 doctrine should be preached again. What right have 
 you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gos- 
 pel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vesti- 
 bule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and 
 with fear ? I do not believe this doctrine : neither do 
 you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any 
 man who believes it, and has within his breast a de- 
 cent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who 
 believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the 
 heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his 
 doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy 
 hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, 
 preached this doctrine; and he said: "Can the believ- 
 ing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving 
 wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be 
 happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the 
 loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving 
 husband in hell ?" And he replies : "I tell you, yea. 
 Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase 
 rather than diminish their bliss." There is no wild 
 beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would 
 not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine. 
 
 29. These doctrines have been taught in the name 
 of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 153 
 
 the name of infinite love and charity. Do not, I pray 
 you, soil the minds of your children with this dogma. 
 Let them read for themselves ; let them think for 
 themselves. 
 
 Do not treat your children like orthodox posts to 
 be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need light 
 and sun and air. Be fair and honest with them; give 
 them a chance. Recollect that their rights are equal 
 to yours. Do not have it in your mind that you must 
 govern them; that they must obey. Throw away for- 
 ever the idea of master and slave. 
 
 In old times they used to make the children go to 
 bed when they were not sleepy, and get up when they 
 were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when they are 
 sleepy, and get up when they are not sleepy. 
 
 But you say, this doctrine will do for the rich but 
 not for the poor. Well, if the poor have to waken their 
 children early in the morning it is as easy to wake 
 them with a kiss as with a blow. Give your children 
 freedom; let them preserve their individuality. Let 
 your children eat what they desire, and commence at 
 the end of a dinner they like. That is their business 
 and not yours. They know what they wish to eat. If 
 they are given their liberty from the first, they know 
 what they want better than any doctor in the world can 
 prescribe. Do you know that all the improvement 
 that has ever been made in the practice of medicine 
 has been made by the recklessness of patients and not 
 by the doctors? For thousands and thousands of 
 years the doctors would not let a man suffering from 
 fever have a drop of water. Water they looked upon 
 as poison. But every now and then some man got 
 
1 5 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 reckless and said, "I had rather die than not to slake 
 my thirst." Then he would drink two or three quarts 
 of water and get well. And when the doctor was 
 told of what the patient had done, he expressed great 
 surprise that he was still alive, and complimented his 
 constitution upon being able to bear such a frightful 
 strain. The reckless men, however, kept on drinking 
 the water, and persisted in getting well. And finally 
 the doctors said: "In a fever, water is the very best 
 thing you can take." So, I have more confidence in 
 the voice of nature about such things than I have in 
 the conclusions of the medical schools. 
 
 30. Let your children have freedom and they will 
 fall into your ways ; they will do substantially as you 
 do; but if you try to make them, there is some mag- 
 nificent, splendid thing in the human heart that re- 
 fuses to be driven. And do you know that it is the 
 luckiest thing that ever happened for this world, that 
 people are that way. What would have become of 
 the people five hundred years ago if they had followed 
 strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have 
 all been dead. What would the people have been, if 
 at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the 
 direction of the church? They would have all been 
 idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some 
 grand man who will not mind, and who will think for 
 himself. 
 
 I believe in allowing the children to think for them- 
 selves. I believe in the democracy of the family. If 
 in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home 
 where all are equals. 
 
 You will remember that only a few years ago par- 
 
THB LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 155 
 
 ents would tell their children to "let their victuals 
 stop their mouths." They used to eat as though it 
 were a religious ceremony — a very solemn thing. Life 
 should not be treated as a solemn matter. I like to 
 see the children at table, and hear each one telling 
 of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I 
 like to hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons 
 mingling with their happy voices. I had rather hear 
 it than any opera that was ever put upon the boards. 
 Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with 
 them ; be just ; 'be tender, and they will make you rich 
 in love and joy. 
 
 Men are oaks, women are vines, children are 
 flowers. 
 
 31. The human race has been guilty of almost count- 
 less crimes; but I have some excuse for man- 
 kind. This world, after all, is not very well adapted 
 to raising good people. In the first place, nearly all 
 of it is water. It is much better adapted to fish cul- 
 ture than to the production of folks. Of that por- 
 tion which is land not one-eighth has suitable soil and 
 climate to produce great men and women. You can- 
 not raise men and women of genius, without the 
 proper soil and climate, any more than you can raise 
 corn and wheat upon the ice fields of the Arctic sea. 
 You must have the necessary conditions and sur- 
 roundings. Man is a product ; you must have the soil 
 and food. The obstacles presented by nature must 
 not be so great that man cannot, by reasonable indus- 
 try and courage, overcome them. There is upon this 
 world only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the 
 globe, upon which you can produce men and women 
 
i 5 6 THB DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere the real cli- 
 mate that man needs falls mostly upon the sea, and 
 the result is, that the southern half of our world has 
 never produced a man or woman of great genius. In 
 the far north there is no genius — it is too cold. In 
 the far south there is no genius — it is too warm. 
 There must be winter, and there must be summer. In 
 a country where man needs no coverlet but a cloud, 
 revolution is his normal condition. Winter is the 
 mother of industry and prudence. Above all, it is the 
 mother of the family relation. Winter holds in its icy 
 arms the husband and wife and the sweet children. If 
 upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it 
 is when we pass a home in winter, at night, and 
 through the windows, the curtains drawn aside, we 
 see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady 
 knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the children 
 wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives 
 or somethings, as there are sparks going out to join 
 the roaring blast; the father reading and smoking, 
 and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of 
 domestic joy. I never passed such a house without 
 feeling that I had received a benediction. 
 
 Civilization, liberty, justice, charity, intellectual ad- 
 vancement, are all flowers that blossom in the drifted 
 snow. 
 
 32. I do not know that I can better illustrate the 
 great truth that only part of the world is adapted to 
 the production of great men and women than by call- 
 ing your attention to the difference between vegeta- 
 tion in valleys and upon mountains. In the valley you 
 find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 157 
 
 to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain 
 side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the 
 fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that 
 look like other trees seen through a telescope re- 
 versed — every limb twisted as though in pain — get- 
 ting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of 
 the rocks. You go on and on, until at last the highest 
 crag is freckled with a kind of moss, and vegetation 
 ends. You might as well try to raise oaks and elms 
 where the mosses grow, as to raise great men and great 
 women where their surroundings are unfavorable. 
 You must have the proper climate and soil. 
 
 A few years ago we were talking about the annexa- 
 tion of Santo Domingo to this country. I was in 
 Washington at the time. I was opposed to it. I was 
 told that it was a most delicious climate ; that the soil 
 produced everything. But I said : "We do not want 
 it; it is not the right kind of country in which to raise 
 American citizens. Such a climate would debauch us. 
 You might go there with five thousand Congregational 
 preachers, five thousand ruling elders, five thousand 
 professors in colleges, five thousand of the solid men 
 of Boston and their wives ; settle them all in San Dom- 
 ingo, and you will see the second generation riding 
 upon a mule, bareback, no shoes, a grapevine bridle, 
 hair sticking out at the top of their sombreros, with a 
 rooster under each arm, going to a cock fight on Sun- 
 day." Such is the influence of climate. 
 
 Science, however, is gradually widening the area 
 within which men of genius can be produced. We 
 are conquering the north with houses, clothing, food 
 and fuel. We are in many ways overcoming the heat 
 
158 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 of the south. If we attend to this world instead of 
 another, we may in time cover the land with men and 
 women of genius. 
 
 I have still another excuse. I believe that man 
 came up from the lower animals. I do not say this as 
 a fact. I simply say I believe it to be a fact. Upon 
 that question I stand about eight to seven, which, for 
 all practical purposes, is very near a certainty. When 
 I first heard of that doctrine I did not like it. My 
 heart was filled with sympathy for those people who 
 have nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I 
 thought, how terrible this will be upon the nobility of 
 the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace 
 their ancestry back to' the duke Orang Outang, or to 
 the princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over, I 
 came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. 1 
 became convinced in spite of myself. I read about rud- 
 imentary bones and muscles. I was told that every- 
 body had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear 
 into the cheek. I asked "What are they?" I was 
 told: "They are the remains of muscles; that they 
 became rudimentary from lack of use; they went into 
 bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your 
 ancestors used to flap their ears." I do not know now 
 so much wonder that we once had them as that we 
 have outgrown them. 
 
 33. After all I had rather belong to a race that 
 started from the skull-less vertebrates in the dim 
 Laurentian seas, vertebrates wiggling without know- 
 ing why they wiggled, swimming without knowing 
 where they were going, but that in some way began 
 to develop, and began to get a little higher and a little 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 159 
 
 higher in the scale of existence; that came up by de- 
 grees through millions of ages through all the animal 
 world, through all that crawls and swims and floats 
 and climbs and walks, and finally produced the gen- 
 tleman in the dug-out; and then from this man, get- 
 ting a little grander, and each one below calling every 
 one above him a heretic, calling every one who had 
 made a little advance an infidel or an atheist — for in 
 the history of this world the man who is ahead has 
 always been called a heretic — I would rather come 
 from a race that started from that skull-less verte- 
 brate, and came up and up and up and finally pro- 
 duced Shakespeare, the man who found the human 
 intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand 
 of his genius and it became a palace domed and pin- 
 nacled; Shakespeare, who harvested all the fields of 
 dramatic thought, and from whose day to this, there 
 have been only gleaners of straw and chafT — I would 
 rather belong to that race that commenced a skull- 
 less vertebrate and produced Shakespeare, a race that 
 has before it an infinite future, with the angel of prog- 
 ress leaning from the far horizon, beckoning men for- 
 ward, upward and onward forever — I had rather 
 belong to' such a race, commencing there, producing 
 this, and with that hope, than to have sprung from a 
 perfect pair upon which the Lord has lost money 
 every moment from that day to this. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I have given you my honest thought. Surely in- 
 vestigation is better than unthinking faith. Surely 
 reason is a better guide than fear. This world should 
 
i6o THB DBUVHRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 be controlled by the living, not by the dead. The 
 grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. Man 
 should not try to live on ashes. 
 
 The theologians dead, knew no more than the the- 
 ologians now living. More than this cannot be said. 
 About this world little is known, — about another 
 world, nothing. 
 
 Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fa- 
 thers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were 
 ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has 
 upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the 
 ashes of fagot. 
 
 Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. 
 They believed in the logic of fire and sword. They 
 hated reason, they despised thought, they abhorred 
 liberty. 
 
 Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought 
 will give us truth. When all have the right to think 
 and to express their thoughts, every brain will give 
 to all the best it has. The world will then be filled with 
 intellectual wealth. 
 
 34. As long as men and women are afraid of the 
 church, as long as a minister inspires fear, as long as 
 people reverence a thing simply because they do not 
 understand it, as long as it is respectable to lose your 
 self-respect, as long as the church has power, as long 
 as mankind worship a book, just so long will the world 
 be filled with intellectual paupers and vagrants, cov- 
 ered with the soiled and faded rags of superstition. 
 
 As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter 
 of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The Bible 
 was not written by a woman. Within its lids there 
 
THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 161 
 
 is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is 
 regarded as the property of man. She is made to ask 
 forgiveness for becoming a mother. She is as much 
 below her husband, as her husband is below Christ. 
 She is not allowed to speak. The gospel is too pure 
 to be spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should 
 learn in silence. 
 
 In the Bible will be found no description of a civil- 
 ized home. The free mother surrounded by free and 
 loving children, adored by a free man, her husband, 
 -was unknown to the inspired writers of the Bible. 
 They did not believe in the democracy of home — in 
 the republicanism of the fireside. 
 
 These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the 
 rights of children. They were the advocates of brute 
 force — the disciples of the lash. They knew nothing 
 of human rights. Their doctrines have brutalized the 
 homes of millions, and filled the eyes of infancy with 
 tears. 
 
 Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a book, 
 from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the aris- 
 tocracy of the air. 
 
 There has never been upon the earth a generation of 
 free men and women. It is not yet time to write a 
 creed. Wait until the chains are broken — until dun- 
 geons are not regarded as temples. Wait until so- 
 lemnity is not mistaken for wisdom — until mental 
 cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait un- 
 til the living are considered the equals of the dead — 
 until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait 
 until what we know can be spoken without regard to 
 what others may believe. Wait until teachers take 
 
1 62 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 the place of preachers — until followers become in- 
 vestigators. Wait until the world is free before you 
 write a creed. 
 
 In this creed there will be but one word — Liberty. 
 
 Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon — 
 remain not forever in the aream of the enthusiast, the 
 philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home 
 among the children of men ! 
 
 I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what 
 thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I 
 know not what garments of glory may be woven by 
 the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories 
 to be won upon the fields of thought ; but I do know, 
 that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there 
 will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a 
 richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for 
 woman, and for child. 
 
 A TRIBUTE TO EBON C. INGERSOLL 
 By His Brother Robert 
 
 THE RECORD OF A GENEROUS LjEE RUNS LIKE A VINE 
 AROUND THE MEMORY OE OUR DEAD, AND EVERY 
 SWEET, UNSELEISH ACT IS NOW A PEREUMED 
 FXOWER. 
 
 35. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which 
 the dead oft promised he would do for me. 
 
 The loved and loving brother, husband, father, 
 friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches 
 noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward 
 the west. 
 
TRIBUTE TO E. C. INGERSOLL 163 
 
 He had not passed on life's highway the stone that 
 marks the highest point; but, being weary for a mo- 
 ment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his bur- 
 den for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that 
 kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with 
 life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence 
 and pathetic dust. 
 
 Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, 
 sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are 
 kissing even" sail, to dash against the unseen rock, 
 and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken 
 ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers 
 of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the 
 end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its 
 every hour is rich with love and every moment jew- 
 eled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as 
 sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp 
 and woof of mystery and death. 
 
 This brave and tender man in every storm of life 
 was oak and rock ; but in the sunshine he was vine and 
 flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He 
 climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far be- 
 low, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of 
 the grander day. 
 
 36. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, 
 and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, 
 the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With 
 loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully 
 discharged all public trusts. 
 
 He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the op- 
 pressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote 
 these words : ''For Justice all place a temple, and all 
 
164 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 season, summer/' He believed that happiness was the 
 only good, reason the only torch, justice the only wor- 
 ship, humanity the only religion, and love the only 
 priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and 
 were every one to whom he did some loving service to 
 bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep tonight 
 beneath a wilderness of flowers. 
 
 Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren 
 peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look be- 
 yond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer 
 is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless 
 lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word ; but 
 in the night of death hope sees a star and listening 
 love can hear the rustle of a wing. 
 
 He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the ap- 
 proach of death for the return of health, whispered 
 with his latest breath, "I am better now." Let us be- 
 lieve, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and 
 tears, that these dear words are true of all the count- 
 less dead. 
 
 And now, to you, who have been chosen, from 
 among the many men he loved, to do the last sad of- 
 fice for the dead, we give his sacred dust. 
 
 Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there 
 is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man. 
 
THE PRINCE OE PEACE 
 By Wiujam Jennings Bryan 
 
 William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, March 
 19, i860. He was graduated from Illinois College in 1881, 
 valedictorian of his class, and received the degree of A.M. in 
 1884. The Union College of Law, Chicago, granted him the 
 degree of LL.B. in 1883. The Universities of Nebraska and 
 Arizona have conferred upon him the honorary degree of 
 LL.D. He practiced law at Jacksonville, Illinois, from 1883 
 to 1887, when he removed to Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a 
 member of Congress from 1891 to 1895. He was a delegate 
 to the National Democratic Convention in 1896, where he 
 wrote the "silver plank" in the platform and made the famous 
 "Cross of Gold" speech which won for him the nomination 
 to the presidency of the United States. He travelled over 
 18,000 miles during that campaign, making speeches at almost 
 every stopping place. He was defeated by William McKinley, 
 and again in 1900. He then established his magazine, "The 
 Commoner," and still publishes it. He was nominated for 
 the third time in 1908, but was again defeated. He became 
 Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, 
 resigning in 1915. During this period he made treaties with 
 governments which include more than three-fourths of the 
 world's population, the treaties providing for investigation of 
 international disputes before resorting to war. 
 
 In addition to his political activities he has spoken very 
 widely on religious questions. "The Prince of Peace" is per- 
 haps the best known of his religious lectures. It is here 
 reprinted with the kind permission of Mr. Bryan. 
 
 Mr. Bryan is commonly known as one of the very best, 
 if not the best, public speaker of our time. He has from the 
 first been an advocate of issues that were unpopular, usually 
 because of the fact that they were new. He has lived to see 
 
166 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 most of his policies adopted in this country, among them 
 popular election of United States senators, equal suffrage 
 and prohibition of liquor. His style is conversational and 
 direct, vigorous, clear, and emotionally strong. A keen sense 
 of humor and a delightful personality make him a universal 
 favorite with audiences. 
 
 I. I offer no apology for writing upon a religious 
 theme, for it is the most universal of all themes. I am 
 interested in the science of government, but I am more 
 interested in religion than in government. I enjoy 
 making a political speech — I have made a good many 
 and shall make more — but I would rather speak on 
 religion than on politics. I commenced speaking on 
 the stump when I was only twenty, but I commenced 
 speaking in the church six years earlier — and I shall 
 be in the church even after I am out of politics. I 
 feel sure of my ground when I make a political 
 speech, but I feel even more certain of my ground 
 when I make a religious speech. If I addressed you 
 upon the subject of law I might interest the lawyers; 
 if I discussed the science of medicine I might interest 
 the physicians; in like manner merchants might be 
 interested in comments on commerce, and farmers in 
 matters pertaining to agriculture ; but no one of these 
 subjects appeals to all. 
 
 Even the science of government, though broader 
 than any profession or occupation, does not embrace 
 the whole sum of life, and those who think upon it 
 differ so among themselves that one could not enlarge 
 upon the subject so as to please a part without dis- 
 pleasing others. While to me the science of govern- 
 ment is intensely absorbing, I recognize that the most 
 
THE PRINCB OF PBACB 167 
 
 important things in life lie outside of the realm of 
 government and that more depends upon what the in- 
 dividual does for himself than upon what the govern- 
 ment does or can do for him. Men can be miserable 
 under the best government and they can be happy 
 under the worst government. 
 
 Government affects but a part of the life which we 
 live here and does not deal at all with the life beyond, 
 while religion touches the infinite circle of existence 
 as well as the small arc of that circle which we spend 
 on earth. No greater theme, therefore, can engage 
 our attention. If I discuss questions of government 
 I must secure the cooperation of a majority before I 
 can put my ideas into practice but if, in referring to 
 religion, I can touch one human heart for good, I 
 have not laboured in vain no matter how large the ma- 
 jority may be against me. 
 
 2. Man is a religious being; the heart instinctively 
 seeks for a God. Whether he worships on the banks 
 of the Ganges, prays with his face upturned to the 
 sun, kneels towards Mecca or, regarding all space as 
 a temple, communes with the Heavenly Father ac- 
 cording to the Christian creed, man is essentially de- 
 vout. 
 
 There are honest doubters whose sincerity we rec- 
 ognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men 
 who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it 
 were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at 
 creeds and to refuse to connect themselves with 
 churches. They call themselves "Liberal", as if a 
 Christian were narrow minded. Some go so far as 
 to assert that the "advanced thought of the world" 
 
j68 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 has discarded the idea that there is a God. To these 
 young men I desire to address myself. 
 
 Even some older people profess to regard religion as 
 a superstition, pardonable in the ignorant but un- 
 worthy of the educated. Those who hold this view 
 look down with mild contempt upon such as give to 
 religion a definite place in their thoughts and lives. 
 They assume an intellectual superiority and often take 
 little pains to conceal the assumption. Tolstoy ad- 
 ministers to the "cultured crowd" (the words quoted 
 are his) a severe rebuke when he declares that the re- 
 ligious sentiment rests not upon a superstitious fear 
 of the invisible forces of nature, but upon man's con- 
 sciousness of his finiteness amid an infinite universe 
 and of his sinfulness ; and this consciousness, the great 
 philosopher adds, man can never outgrow. Tolstoy 
 is right ; man recognizes how limited are his own 
 powers and how vast is the universe, and he leans 
 upon the arm that is stronger than his. Man feels the 
 weight of his sins and looks for One who is sinless. 
 
 Religion has been defined by Tolstoy as the relation 
 which man fixes between himself and his God, and 
 morality as the outward manifestation of this inward 
 relation. Every one, by the time he reaches maturity, 
 has fixed some relation between himself and God and 
 no material change in this relation can take place with- 
 out a revolution in the man, for this relation is the 
 most potent influence that acts upon a human life. 
 
 3. Religion is the foundation of morality in the in- 
 dividual and in the group of individuals. Material- 
 ists have attempted to build up a system of morality 
 upon the basis of enlightened self-interest. They 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE i6g 
 
 would have man figure out by mathematics that it pays 
 him to abstain from wrong-doing; they would even 
 inject an element of selfishness into altruism, but the 
 moral system elaborated by the materialists has sev- 
 eral defects. 
 
 First, its virtues are borrowed from moral systems 
 based upon religion. All those who are intelligent 
 enough to discuss a system of morality are so satur- 
 ated with the morals derived from systems resting 
 upon religion that they cannot frame a system rest- 
 ing upon reason alone. Second, as it rests upon argu- 
 ment rather than upon authority, the young are not 
 in a position to accept or reject. Our laws do not 
 permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he 
 is twenty-one. Why this restraint? Because his rea- 
 son is not mature ; and yet a man's life is largely 
 moulded by the environment of his youth. Third, one 
 never knows just how much of his decision is due to 
 reason and how much is due to passion or to selfish 
 interest. Passion can dethrone the reason — we rec- 
 ognize this in our criminal laws. We also recognize 
 the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the 
 jury every man, no matter how reasonable or upright 
 he may be, who has a pecuniary interest in the result 
 of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality rests 
 upon a nice calculation of benefits to be secured 
 spends time figuring that he should spend in action. 
 Those who keep a book account of their good deeds 
 seldom do enough good to justify keeping books. A 
 noble life cannot be built upon an arithmetic ; it must 
 be rather like the spring that pours forth constantly 
 of that which refreshes and invigorates. 
 
1 7 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 Morality is the power of endurance in man ; and a 
 religion which teaches personal responsibility to God 
 gives strength to morality. There is a powerful re- 
 straining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye 
 scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the in- 
 dividual. 
 
 4. There is a wide difference between the man who 
 is trying to conform his life to a standard of morality 
 about him and the man who seeks to make his life ap- 
 proximate to a divine standard. The former attempts 
 to live up to the standard, if it is above him, and down 
 to it, if it below him — and if he is doing right only 
 when others are looking he is sure to find a time when 
 he thinks he is unobserved, and then he takes a vaca- 
 tion and falls. One needs the inner strength which 
 comes with the conscious presence of a personal God. 
 If those who are thus fortified sometimes yield to 
 temptation, how helpless and hopeless must those be 
 who rely upon their own strength alone ! 
 
 There are difficulties to be encountered in religion, 
 but there are difficulties to be encountered every- 
 where. If Christians sometimes have doubts and 
 and fears, unbelievers have more doubts and greater 
 fears. I passed through a period of skepticism when 
 I was in college, and I have been glad ever since that 
 I became a member of the church before I left home 
 for college, for it helped me during those trying days. 
 And the college days cover the dangerous period in 
 the young man's life; he is just coming into posses- 
 sion of his powers, and feels stronger than he ever 
 feels afterwards — and he thinks he knows more than 
 he ever does know. 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 171 
 
 It was at this period that I became confused by the 
 different theories of creation. But I examined these 
 theories and found that they all assumed something 
 to begin with. You can test this for yourselves. The 
 nebular hypothesis, for instance, assumes that matter 
 and force existed — matter in particles infinitely fine 
 and each particle separated from every other particle 
 by space infinitely great. Beginning with this assump- 
 tion, force working on matter — according to this 
 hypothesis — created a universe. 
 
 5. Well, I have a right to assume, and I prefer to 
 assume, a Designer back of the design — a Creator 
 back of the creation; and no matter how long you 
 draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands 
 back of it you cannot shake my faith in Jehovah. In 
 Genesis it is written that, in the beginning, God cre- 
 ated the heavens and the earth, and I can stand on 
 that proposition until I find some theory of creation 
 that goes farther back than "the beginning". We 
 must begin with something — we must start some- 
 where — and the Christian begins with God. 
 
 I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as 
 some do ; I am not yet convinced that man is a lineal 
 descendant of the lower animals. I do not mean to 
 find fault with you if you want to accept the theory; 
 all I mean to say is that while you may trace your 
 ancestry back to the monkey if you find pleasure or 
 pride in doing so, you shall not connect me with your 
 family tree without more evidence than has yet been 
 produced. I object to the theory for several reasons. 
 
 First, it is a dangerous theory. If a man links him- 
 self in generations with the monkey, it then becomes 
 
i 7 2 THE DELIVERY OE A SPEECH 
 
 an important question whether he is going towards 
 him or coming from him — and I have seen them 
 going in both directions. I do not know of any ar- 
 gument that can be used to prove that man is an im- 
 proved monkey that may not be used just as well to 
 prove that the monkey is a degenerate man, and the 
 latter theory is more plausible than the former. 
 
 It is true that man in some physical characteristics 
 resembles the beast, but man has a mind as well as a 
 body, and a soul as well as a mind. The mind is 
 greater than the body and the soul is greater than the 
 mind, and I object to having man's pedigree traced on 
 one-third of him only — and that the lowest third. 
 Fairbairn, in his "Philosophy of Christianity", lays 
 down a sound proposition when he says that it is not 
 sufficient to explain man as an animal ; that it is neces- 
 sary to explain man in history — and the Darwinian 
 theory does not do this. The ape, according to this 
 theory, is older than man and yet the ape is still an 
 ape while man is the author of the marvellous civil- 
 ization which we see about us. 
 
 6. One does not escape from mystery, however, by 
 accepting this theory, for it does not explain the ori- 
 gin of life. When the follower of Darwin has traced 
 the germ of life back to the lowest form in which it 
 appears — and to follow him one must exercise more 
 faith than religion calls for — he finds that scientists 
 differ. Those who reject the idea of creation are di- 
 vided into two schools, some believing that the first 
 germ of life came from another planet and others 
 holding that it was the result of spontaneous genera- 
 tion. Each school answers the arguments advanced 
 

 THE PRINCE OF PEACE 173 
 
 by the other, and as they cannot agree with each 
 other, I am not compelled to agree with either. 
 
 If I were compelled to accept one of these theories 
 I would prefer the first, for if we can chase the germ 
 of life off this planet and get it out into space we can 
 guess the rest of the way and no one can contradict 
 us; if we accept the doctrine of spontaneous genera- 
 tion we cannot explain why spontaneous generation 
 ceased to act after the first germ was created. 
 
 Go back as far as we may, we cannot escape from 
 the creative act, and it is just as easy for me to be- 
 lieve that God created man as he is as to believe that, 
 millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and 
 endowed it with power to develop into all that we see 
 today. I object to the Darwinian theory, until more 
 conclusive proof is produced, because I fear we shall 
 lose the consciousness of God's presence in our daily 
 life, if we must accept the theory that through all the 
 ages no spiritual force has touched the life of man or 
 shaped the destiny of nations. 
 
 But there is another objection. The Darwinian the- 
 ory represents man as reaching his present perfection 
 by the operation of the law of hate — the merciless 
 law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the 
 weak. If this is the law of our development then, if 
 there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we 
 shall turn backward towards the beast in proportion 
 as we substitute the law of love. I prefer to believe 
 that love rather than hatred is the law of develop- 
 ment. How can hatred be the law of development 
 when nations have advanced in proportion as thej 
 
i 7 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 have departed from that law and adopted the law of 
 love? 
 
 7. But, I repeat, while I do not accept the Darwin- 
 ian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it: I 
 only refer to it to remind you that it does not solve 
 the mystery of life or explain human progress. I fear 
 that some have accepted it in the hope of escaping 
 from the miracle, but why should the miracle frighten 
 us? And yet I am inclined to think that it is one of 
 the test questions with the Christian. 
 
 Christ cannot be separated from the miraculous ; 
 His birth, His ministrations, and His resurrection, all 
 involve the miraculous, and the change which His re- 
 ligion works in the human heart is a continuing mira- 
 cle. Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely 
 a human being and His Gospel is stripped of divine 
 authority. 
 
 The miracle raises two questions : "Can God per- 
 form a miracle?" and "Would He want to?" The 
 first is easy to answer. A God who can make a world 
 can do anything He wants to do with it. The power 
 to perform miracles is necessarily implied in the power 
 to create. But would God want to perform a mira- 
 cle? — this is the question which has given most of 
 the trouble. The more I have considered it the less 
 inclined I am to answer in the negative. To say that 
 God would not perform a miracle is to assume a more 
 intimate knowledge of God's plans and purposes than 
 I can claim to have. I will not deny that God does 
 perform a miracle or may perform one merely be- 
 cause I do not know how or why He does it. I find it 
 so difficult to decide each day what God wants done 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 175 
 
 now that I am not presumptuous enough to attempt to 
 declare what God might have wanted to do thousands 
 of years ago. 
 
 8. The fact that we are constantly learning of the 
 existence of new forces suggests the possibility that 
 God may operate through forces yet unknown to us, 
 and the mysteries with which we deal every day warn 
 me that faith is as necessary as sight. Who would 
 have credited a century ago the stories that are now 
 told of the wonder-working electricity? For ages man 
 had known the lightning, but only to fear it ; now, this 
 invisible current is generated by a man-made ma- 
 chine, imprisoned in a man-made wire and made to do 
 the bidding of man. We are even able to dispense 
 with the wire and hurl words through space, and the 
 X-ray has enabled us to look through substances which 
 were supposed, until recently, to exclude all light. The 
 miracle is not more mysterious than many of the 
 things with which man now deals — it is simply dif- 
 ferent. The miraculous birth of Christ is not more 
 mysterious than any other conception — it is simply 
 unlike it; nor is the resurrection of Christ more mys- 
 terious than the myriad resurrections which mark 
 each annual seed-time. 
 
 It is sometimes said that God could not suspend one 
 of His laws without stopping the universe, but do we 
 not suspend or overcome the law of gravitation every 
 day? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we 
 temporarily overcome one of the most universal of 
 natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed. 
 
 9. Science has taught us so many things that we 
 are tempted to conclude that we know everything, but 
 
i 7 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 there is really a great unknown which is still unex- 
 plored and that which we have learned ought to in- 
 crease our reverence rather than our egotism. Science 
 has disclosed some of the machinery of the universe, 
 but science has not yet revealed to us the great se- 
 cret — the secret of life. It is to be found in every 
 blade of grass, in every insect, in every bird and in 
 every animal, as well as in man. Six thousand years 
 of recorded history and yet we know no more about 
 the secret of life than they knew in the beginning! We 
 live, we plan; we have our hopes, our fears; and yet 
 in a moment a change may come over any one of us 
 and this body will become a mass of lifeless clay. 
 What is it that, having, we live, and having not, we 
 are as the clod ? The progress of the race and the civ- 
 ilization which we now behold are the work of men 
 and women who have not yet solved the mystery of 
 their own lives. 
 
 And our food, must we understand it before we eat 
 it? If we refused to eat anything until we could under- 
 stand the mystery of its growth, we would die of star- 
 vation. But mystery does not bother us in the dining- 
 room; it is only in the church that it is a stumbling- 
 block. 
 
 io. I was eating a piece of watermelon some months 
 ago and was struck with its beauty. I took some of 
 the seeds and dried them and weighed them, and found 
 that it would require some five thousand seeds to 
 weigh a pound ; and then I applied mathematics to 
 that forty-pound melon. One of these seeds, put into 
 the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened 
 by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 177 
 
 gathers from somewhere two hundred thousand times 
 its own weight, and forcing this raw material through 
 a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon. It ornaments 
 the outside with a covering of green ; inside the green 
 it puts a layer of white, and within the white a core of 
 red, and all through the red it scatters seeds, each one 
 capable of continuing the work of reproduction. 
 Where does that little seed get its tremendous power? 
 Where does it find its colouring matter? How does it 
 collect its flavouring extract? How does it build a 
 watermelon? Until you can explain a watermelon, 
 do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power 
 of the Almighty and say just what He would do or 
 how He would do it. I cannot explain the water- 
 melon, but I eat it and enjoy it. 
 
 The egg is the most universal of foods and its use 
 dates from the beginning, but what is more mysterious 
 than an egg? When an egg is fresh it is an important 
 article of merchandise ; a hen can destroy its market 
 value in a week's time, but in two weeks more she can 
 bring forth from it what man could not find in it. We 
 eat eggs, but we cannot explain an egg. 
 
 Water has been used from the birth of man; we 
 learned after it had been used for ages that it is 
 merely a mixture of gases, but it is far more impor- 
 tant that we have water to drink than that we know 
 that it is not water. 
 
 11. Everything that grows tells a like story of in- 
 finite power. Why should I deny that a divine hand 
 fed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes when 1! 
 see hundreds of millions fed every year by a hand 
 which converts the seeds scattered over the field into 
 
178 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 an abundant harvest? We know that food can be 
 multiplied in a few months' time; shall we deny the 
 power of the Creator to eliminate the element of time, 
 when we have gone so far in eliminating the element 
 of space? Who am I that I should attempt to meas- 
 ure the arm of the Almighty with my puny arm, or 
 to measure the brain of the Infinite with my finite 
 mind ? Who am I that I should attempt to put metes 
 and bounds to the power of the Creator ? 
 
 But there is something even more wonderful still — 
 the mysterious change that takes place in the human 
 heart when the man begins to hate the things he loved 
 and to love the things he hated ; the marvellous trans- 
 formation that takes place in the man who, before the 
 change, would have sacrificed a world for his own 
 advancement but who, after the change, would give 
 his life for a principle and esteem it a privilege to 
 make sacrifice for his convictions ! What greater mir- 
 acle than this, that converts a selfish, self-centred hu- 
 man being into a centre from which good influences 
 flow out in every direction! And yet this miracle has 
 been wrought in the heart of each one of us — or 
 may be wrought — and we have seen it wrought in the 
 hearts and lives of those about us. No, living a life 
 that is a mystery, and living in the midst of mystery 
 and miracles, I shall not allow either to deprive me 
 of the benefits of the Christian religion. If you ask 
 me if I understand everything in the Bible, I answer, 
 no, but if we will try to live up to what we do under- 
 stand, we will be kept so busy doing good that we will 
 not have time to worry about the passages which we 
 do not understand. 
 
THE PRINCE OP PEACE 179 
 
 12. Some of those who question the miracle also 
 question the theory of atonement; they assert that it 
 does not accord with their idea of justice for one to 
 die for all. Let each one bear his own sins and the 
 punishments due for them, they say. The doctrine of 
 vicarious suffering is not a new one ; it is as old as the 
 race. That one should suffer for others is one of the 
 most familiar of principles and we see the principle 
 illustrated every day of our lives. Take the family, 
 for instance; from the day the mother's first child is 
 born, for twenty or thirty years her children are 
 scarcely out of her waking thoughts. Her life trem- 
 bles in the balance at each child's birth; she sacrifices 
 for them, she surrenders herself to them. 
 
 Is it because she expects them to pay her back? 
 Fortunate for the parent and fortunate for the child 
 if the latter has an opportunity to repay in part the 
 debt it owes. But no child can compensate a parent 
 for a parent's care. In the course of nature the debt 
 is paid, not to the parent, but to the next generation, 
 and the next — each generation suffering, sacrificing 
 for and surrendering itself to the generation that fol- 
 lows. This is the law of our lives. 
 
 Nor is this confined to the family. Every step in 
 civilization has been made possible by those who have 
 been willing to sacrifice for posterity. Freedom of 
 speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience 
 and free government have all been won for the world 
 by those who were willing to labour unselfishly for 
 their fellows. So well established is this doctrine that 
 we do not regard any one as great unless he recog- 
 
180 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 nizes how unimportant his life is in comparison with 
 the problems with which he deals. 
 
 I find proof that man was made in the image of his 
 Creator in the fact that, throughout the centuries, man 
 has been willing to die, if necessary, that blessings 
 denied to him might be enjoyed by his children, his 
 children's children and the world. 
 
 13. The seeming paradox: "He that saveth his life 
 shall lose it and he that loseth his life for My sake 
 shall find it," has an application wider than that us- 
 ually given to it; it is an epitome of history. Those 
 who live only for themselves live little lives, but those 
 who stand ready to give themselves for the advance- 
 ment of things greater than themselves find a larger 
 life than the one they would have surrendered. Wen- 
 dell Phillips gave expression to the same idea when he 
 said, "What imprudent men the benefactors of the 
 race have been. How prudently most men sink into 
 nameless graves, while now and then a few forget 
 themselves into immortality." We win immortality, 
 not by remembering ourselves, but by forgetting our- 
 selves in devotion to things larger than ourselves. 
 
 Instead of being an unnatural plan, the plan of sal- 
 vation is in perfect harmony with human nature as we 
 understand it. Sacrifice is the language of love, and 
 Christ, in suffering for the world, adopted the only 
 means of reaching the heart. This can be demon- 
 strated not only by theory but by experience, for the 
 story of His life, His teachings, His sufferings and 
 His death has been translated into every language and 
 everywhere it has touched the heart. 
 
 But if I were going to present an argument in fa- 
 
THB PRINCE OF PBACB 181 
 
 vour of the divinity of Christ, I would not begin with 
 miracles or mystery or with the theory of atonement. 
 I would begin as Carnegie Simpson does in his book 
 entitled, "The Fact of Christ". Commencing with the 
 undisputed fact that Christ lived, he points out that 
 one cannot contemplate this fact without feeling that 
 in some way it is related to those now living. He says 
 that one can read of Alexander, of Csesar or of Na- 
 poleon, and not feel that it is a matter of personal 
 concern; but that when one reads that Christ lived, 
 and how He lived and how He died, he feels that 
 somehow there is a cord that stretches from that life 
 to his. 
 
 14. As he studies the character of Christ he be- 
 comes conscious of certain virtues which stand out in 
 bold relief — His purity. His forgiving spirit, and 
 His unfathomable love. The author is correct. Christ 
 presents an example of purity in thought and life, and 
 man, conscious of his own imperfections and grieved 
 over his shortcomings, finds inspiration in the fact that 
 He was tempted in all points like as we are, and yet 
 without sin. I am not sure but that each can find just 
 here a way of determining for himself whether he pos- 
 sesses the true spirit of a Christian. If the sinless- 
 ness of Christ inspires within him an earnest desire 
 to conform his life more nearly to the perfect exam- 
 ple, he is indeed a follower; if, on the other hand, he 
 resents the reproof which the purity of Christ offers, 
 and refuses to mend his ways, he has yet to be born 
 again. 
 
 The most difficult of all the virtues to cultivate is 
 the forgiving spirit. Revenge seems to be natural with 
 
1 82 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 man ; it is human to want to get even with an enemy. 
 It has even been popular to boast of vindictiveness ; it 
 was once inscribed on a man's monument that he had 
 repaid both friends and enemies more than he had re- 
 ceived. This was not the spirit of Christ. He taught 
 forgiveness and in that incomparable prayer which He 
 left as a model for our petitions, He made our will- 
 ingness to forgive the measure by which we may 
 claim forgiveness. He not only taught forgiveness 
 but He exemplified His teachings in His life. When 
 those who persecuted Him brought Him to the most 
 disgraceful of all deaths, His spirit of forgiveness rose 
 above His sufferings and He prayed, "Father, forgive 
 them, for they know not what they do \" 
 
 But love is the foundation of Christ's creed. The 
 world had known love before ; parents had loved their 
 children, and children their parents; husbands had 
 loved their wives, and wives their husbands; and 
 friend had loved friend; but Jesus gave a new defi- 
 nition of love. His love was as wide as the sea; its 
 limits were so far-flung that even an enemy could not 
 travel beyond its bounds. Other teachers sought to 
 regulate the lives of their followers by rule and form- 
 ula, but Christ's plan was to purify the heart and then 
 to leave love to direct the footsteps. 
 
 15. What conclusion is to be drawn from the life, 
 the teachings and the death of this historic figure? 
 Reared in a carpenter shop; with no knowledge of 
 literature save Bible literature; with no acquaintance 
 with philosophers living or with the writings of sages 
 dead, when only about thirty years old He gathered 
 disciples about Him, promulgated a higher code of 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 183 
 
 morals than the world had ever known before and 
 proclaimed Himself the Messiah. He taught and 
 performed miracles for a few brief months and then 
 was crucified; His disciples were scattered and many 
 of them put to death; His claims were disputed, His 
 resurrection denied and His followers persecuted ; and 
 yet from this beginning His religion spread until hun- 
 dreds of millions have taken His name with rever- 
 ence upon their lips and millions have been willing to 
 die rather than surrender the faith which He put into 
 their hearts. 
 
 How shall we account for Him? Here is the great- 
 est fact of history ; here is One who has with increas- 
 ing power, for nineteen hundred years, .moulded the 
 hearts, the thoughts and the lives of men, and He ex- 
 erts more influence today than ever before. ''What 
 think ye of Christ?'' It is easier to believe Him divine 
 than to explain in any other way what He said and did 
 and was. And I have greater faith even than before, 
 since I have visited the Orient and witnessed the suc- 
 cessful contest which Christianity is waging against 
 the religions and philosophies of the East. 
 
 I was thinking a few years ago of the Christmas 
 which was then approaching and of Him in whose 
 honour the day is celebrated. I recalled the message, 
 "Peace on earth, good will to men," and then my 
 thoughts ran back to the prophecy uttered centuries 
 before His birth, in which He was described as the 
 Prince of Peace. To reinforce my memory I reread 
 the prophecy and I found immediately following a 
 verse which I had forgotten — a verse which declares 
 that of the increase of His peace and government there 
 
184 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 shall be no end. And, Isaiah adds, that He shall judge 
 His people with justice, and with judgment. I had 
 been reading of the rise and fall of nations, and occa- 
 sionally I had met a gloomy philosopher who preached 
 the doctrine that nations, like individuals, must of ne- 
 cessity have their birth, their infancy, their maturity 
 and finally their decay and death. But here I read of 
 a government that is to be perpetual — a government 
 of increasing peace and blessedness — the government 
 of the Prince of Peace — and it is to rest on justice. 
 
 1 6. I have thought of this prophecy many times 
 during the last few years, and I have selected this 
 theme that I might present some of the reasons which 
 lead me to believe that Christ has fully earned the 
 right to be called the Prince of Peace — a title that 
 will in the years to come be more and more applied to 
 Him. If He can bring peace to each individual heart, 
 and if His creed when applied will bring peace 
 throughout the earth, who will deny His right to be 
 called the Prince of Peace? 
 
 All the world is in search of peace ; every heart that 
 ever beat has sought for peace, and many have been 
 the methods employed to secure it. Some have thought 
 to purchase it with riches and have laboured to secure 
 wealth, hoping to find peace when they were able to 
 go where they pleased and buy what they liked. Of 
 those who have endeavoured to purchase peace with 
 money, the large majority have failed to secure the 
 money.. But what has been the experience of those 
 who have been eminently successful in finance? They 
 all tell the same story, viz., that they spent the first 
 half of their lives trying to get money from others 
 
THE PRINCE OP PEACE 185 
 
 and the last half trying to keep others from getting 
 their money, and that they found peace in neither 
 half. 
 
 Some have even reached the point where they find 
 difficulty in getting people to accept their money; and 
 I know of no better indication of the ethical awaken- 
 ing in this country than the increasing tendency to 
 scrutinize the methods of money-making. I am san- 
 guine enough to believe that the time will yet come 
 when respectability will no longer be sold to great 
 criminals by helping them to spend their ill-gotten 
 gains. A long step in advance will have been taken 
 when religious, educational and charitable institutions 
 refuse to condone conscienceless methods in business 
 and leave the possessor of illegitimate accumulations 
 to learn how lonely life is when one prefers money to 
 morals. 
 
 17. Some have sought peace in social distinction, 
 but whether they have been within the charmed circle 
 and fearful lest they might fall out, or outside, and 
 hopeful that they might get in, they have not found 
 peace. Some have thought, vain thought, to find 
 peace in political prominence; but whether office 
 comes by birth, as in monarchies, or by election, as in 
 republics, it does not bring peace. An office is not 
 considered a high one if all can occupy it. Only when 
 few in a generation can hope to enjoy an honour do 
 we call it a great honour. 
 
 I am glad that our Heavenly Father did not make 
 the peace of the human heart to depend upon our 
 ability to buy it with money, secure it in society, or 
 win it at the polls, for in either case but few could 
 
^6 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 
 
 have obtained it, but when He made peace the reward 
 of a conscience void of offense towards God and man, 
 He put it within the reach of all. The poor can se- 
 cure it as easily as the rich, the social outcast as freely 
 as the leader of society, and the humblest citizen 
 equally with those who wield political power. 
 
 To those who have grown gray in the Church, I 
 need not speak of the peace to be found in faith in 
 God and trust in an over-ruling Providence. Christ 
 taught that our lives are precious in the sight of God, 
 and poets have taken up the thought and woven it 
 into immortal verse. No uninspired writer has ex- 
 pressed it more beautifully than William Cullen Bry- 
 ant in his Ode to a Waterfowl. After following the 
 wanderings of the bird of passage as it seeks first its 
 southern and then its northern home, he concludes : 
 
 "Thou art gone; the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 "He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 
 flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 Will lead my steps aright." 
 
 Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that 
 a line of communication can be established between 
 the Father above and the child below. And who will 
 measure the consolations of the hour of prayer? 
 
THE PRINCB OP PBACB 187 
 
 18. And immortality. Who will estimate the peace 
 which a belief in a future life has brought to the sor- 
 rowing hearts of the sons of men? You may talk to 
 the young about death ending all, for life is full and 
 hope is strong, but preach not this doctrine to the 
 mother who stands by the death-bed of her babe or 
 to one who is within the shadow of a great affliction. 
 
 When I was a young man I wrote to Colonel In- 
 gersoll and asked him for his views on God and im- 
 mortality. His secretary answered that the great in- 
 fidel was not at home, but enclosed a copy of a speech 
 of Colonel Ingersoll's which covered my question. I 
 scanned it with eagerness and found that he had ex- 
 pressed himself about as follows : "I do not say that 
 there is no God, I simply say I do not know. I do not 
 say that there is no life beyond the grave, I simply 
 say I do not know." And from that day to this I 
 have asked myself the question and have been un- 
 able to answer it to my own satisfaction, how could 
 any one find pleasure in taking from a human heart a 
 living faith and substituting therefor the cold and 
 cheerless doctrine, "I do not know." 
 
 Christ gave us proof of immortality and it was a 
 welcome assurance, although it would hardly seem 
 necessary that one should rise from the dead to con- 
 vince us that the grave is not the end. To every cre- 
 ated thing God has given a tongue that proclaims a 
 future life. 
 
 If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the 
 cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to 
 make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He 
 leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in 
 
1 88 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 the image of his Creator ? If He stoops to give to the 
 rosebush, whose withered blossoms float upon the au- 
 tumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another spring- 
 time, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of 
 men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, 
 mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of 
 nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will 
 the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it 
 has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tene- 
 ment of clay? Rather let us believe that He who in 
 His apparent prodigality wastes not the rain-drops, the 
 evening sighing zephrys, the blade of grass, and cre- 
 ated nothing without a cause — has made provision for 
 a future life in which man's universal longing for im- 
 mortality will find its realization. I am as sure that 
 we live again as I am sure that we live today. 
 
 19. In Cairo I secured a few grains of wheat that 
 had slumbered for more than thirty centuries in an 
 Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this thought 
 came into my mind: If one of those grains had been 
 planted on the banks of the Nile the year after it 
 grew, and all its lineal descendants had been planted 
 and replanted from that time until now, its progeny 
 would today be sufficiently numerous to feed the 
 teeming millions of the world. An unbroken chain of 
 life connects the earliest grains of wheat with the 
 grains that we sow and reap. There is in the grain of 
 wheat an invisible something which has power to dis- 
 card the body that we see, and from earth and air 
 fashion a new body so much like the old one that we 
 cannot tell the one from the other. If this invisible 
 germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass un- 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 189 
 
 impaired through three thousand resurrections, I shall 
 not doubt that my soul has power to clothe itself with 
 a body suited to its new existence when this earthly 
 frame has crumbled into dust. 
 
 A belief in immortality not only consoles the indi- 
 vidual, but it exerts a powerful influence in bringing 
 peace between individuals. If one actually thinks that 
 man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more easily 
 to the temptation to do' injustice to his neighbor when 
 the circumstances are such as to promise security 
 from detection. But if one really expects to meet 
 again, and live eternally with, those whom he knows 
 today, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of 
 endless remorse. We do not know what rewards are 
 in store for us or what punishments may be reserved, 
 but if there were no other it would be some punish- 
 ment for one who deliberately and consciously wrongs 
 another to have to live forever in the company of the 
 person wronged and have his littleness and selfishness 
 laid bare. I repeat, a belief in immortality must ex- 
 ert a powerful influence in establishing justice between 
 men and thus laying the foundation for peace. 
 
 20. Again, Christ deserves to be called the Prince of 
 Peace because He has given us a measure of greatness 
 which promotes peace. When His disciples quar- 
 relled among themselves as to which should be great- 
 est in the kingdom of Heaven, He rebuked them and 
 said: "Let him who would be chiefest among you be 
 the servant of all." 
 
 Service is the measure of greatness ; it always has 
 been true ; it is true today ; and it always will be true, 
 that he is greatest who does the most of good. And 
 
190 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 how this old world will be transformed when this 
 standard of greatness becomes the standard of every 
 life ! Nearly all of our controversies and combats 
 grow out of the fact that we are trying to get some- 
 thing from each other — there will be peace when our 
 aim is to do something for each other. Our enmities 
 and animosities arise largely from our efforts to get 
 as much as possible out of the world — there will be 
 peace when our endeavor is to put as much as pos- 
 sible into the world. The human measure of a human 
 life is its income ; the divine measure of a life is its 
 outgo, its overflow — its contribution to the welfare 
 of all. 
 
 Christ also led the way to peace by giving us a for- 
 mula for the propagation of truth. Not all of those 
 who have really desired to do good have employed the 
 Christian method — not all Christians even. In the his- 
 tory of the human race but two methods have been 
 used. The first is the forcible method, and it has been 
 employed most frequently. A man has an idea which 
 he thinks is good; he tells his neighbours about it and 
 they do not like it. This makes him angry; he thinks 
 it would be so much better for them if they would 
 like it, and, seizing a club, he attempts to make them 
 like it. But one trouble about this rule is that it works 
 both ways ; when a man starts out to compel his neigh- 
 bours to think as he does, he generally finds them 
 willing to accept the challenge and they spend so much 
 time in trying to coerce each other that they have no 
 time left to do each other good. 
 
 21. The other is the Bible plan — "Be not overcome 
 of evil but overcome evil with good." And there is no 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 191 
 
 other way of overcoming evil. I am not much of a 
 farmer — I get more credit for my farming than I 
 deserve, and my little farm receives more advertising 
 than it is entitled to. But I am farmer enough to 
 know that if I cut down weeds they will spring up 
 again; and farmer enough to know that if I plant 
 something there which has more vitality than the weeds 
 I shall not only get rid of the constant cutting, but 
 have the benefit of the crop besides. 
 
 In order that there might be no mistake in His plan 
 of propagating the truth, Christ went into detail and 
 laid emphasis upon the value of example — "So- live 
 that others seeing your good works may be constrained 
 to glorify your Father which is in Heaven". There is 
 no human influence so potent for good as that which 
 goes out from an upright life. A sermon may be en- 
 swered; the arguments presented in a speech may be 
 disputed; but no one can answer a Christian life — 
 it is the unanswerable argument in favour of our re- 
 ligion. 
 
 It may be a slow process — this conversion of the 
 world by the silent influence of a noble example but 
 it is the only sure one, and the doctrine applies to na- 
 tions as well as to individuals. The Gospel of the 
 Prince of Peace gives us the only hope that the world 
 has — and it is an increasing hope — of the substitu- 
 tion of reason for the arbitrament of force in the set- 
 tlement of international disputes. And our nation 
 ought not to wait for other nations — it ought to take 
 the lead and prove its faith in the omnipotence of 
 truth. 
 
 But Christ has given us a platform so fundamental 
 
i 9 2 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 that it can be applied successfully to all controversies. 
 We are interested in platforms ; we attend conventions, 
 sometimes travelling long distances ; we have wordy 
 wars over the phraseology of various planks, and then 
 we wage earnest campaigns to secure the endorsement 
 of these platforms at the polls. The platform given 
 to the world by the Prince of Peace is more far-reach- 
 ing and more comprehensive than any platform ever 
 written by the convention of any party in any country. 
 
 22. When He condensed into one commandment 
 those of the ten which relate to man's duty towards 
 his fellows and enjoined upon us the rule, "Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself," He presented a plan 
 for the solution of all the problems that now vex so- 
 ciety or may hereafter arise. Other remedies may 
 palliate or postpone the day of settlement, but this is 
 all-sufficient and the reconciliation which it effects is 
 a permanent one. 
 
 My faith in the future — and I have faith — and 
 my optimism — for I am an optimist — my faith and 
 my optimism rest upon the belief that Christ's teach- 
 ings are being more studied today than ever before, 
 and that with this larger study will come a larger ap- 
 plication of those teachings to the every-day life of the 
 world, and to the questions with which we deal. 
 
 In former times when men read that Christ came 
 "to bring life and immortality to light", they placed 
 the emphasis upon immortality ; now they are studying 
 Christ's relation to human life. People used to read 
 the Bible to find out what it said of Heaven ; now they 
 read it more to find what light it throws upon the path- 
 way of today. In former years many thought to pre- 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 193 
 
 pare themselves for future bliss by a life of seclusion 
 here; we are learning that to follow in the footsteps 
 of the Master we must go about doing good. Christ 
 declared that He came that we might have life and 
 have it more abundantly. The world is learning that 
 Christ came not to narrow life, but to enlarge it — 
 not to rob it of its joy, but to fill it to overflowing with 
 purpose, earnestness and happiness. 
 
 23. But this Prince of Peace promises not only 
 peace but strength. Some have thought His teachings 
 fit only for the weak and the timid and unsuited to 
 men of vigour, energy and ambition. Nothing could 
 be farther from the truth. Only the man of faith can 
 be courageous. Confident that he fights on the side of 
 Jehovah, he doubts not the success of his cause. What 
 matters it whether he shares in the shouts of triumph? 
 If every word spoken in behalf of truth has its influ- 
 ence and every deed done for the right weighs in the 
 final account, it is immaterial to the Christian whether 
 his eyes behold victory or whether he dies in the midst 
 of the conflict. 
 
 "Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, 
 
 When they who helped thee flea in fear, 
 Die full of hope and manly trust, 
 Like those who fell in battle here. 
 
 "Another hand thy sword shall wield, 
 
 Another hand the standard wave, 
 Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 
 
 The blast of triumph o'er thy grave." 
 
194 
 
 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 Only those who believe attempt the seemingly im- 
 possible, and, by attempting, prove that one, with God, 
 can chase a thousand and that two can put ten 
 thousand to flight. I can imagine that the early Chris- 
 tians, who were carried into the Coliseum to make a 
 spectacle for those more savage than the beasts, were 
 entreated by their doubting companions not to en- 
 danger their lives. But, kneeling in the centre of the 
 arena, they prayed and sang until they were devoured. 
 How helpless they seemed, and, measured by every 
 human rule, how hopeless was their cause! And yet 
 within a few decades the power which they invoked 
 proved mightier than the legions of the emperor and 
 the faith in which they died was triumphant o'er all 
 the land. It is said that those who went to mock at 
 their sufferings returned asking themselves, "What is 
 it that can enter into the heart of man and make him 
 die as these die?" They were greater conquerors in 
 their death than they could have been had they pur- 
 chased life by a surrender of their faith. 
 
 24. What would have been the fate of the Church 
 if the early Christians had had as little faith as many 
 of our Christians today? And if the Christians of to- 
 day had the faith of the martyrs, how long would it 
 be before the fulfillment of the prophecy that "Every 
 knee shall bow and every tongue confess" ? 
 
 I am glad that He, who is called the Prince of 
 Peace — who can bring peace to every troubled heart 
 and whose teachings, exemplified in life, will bring 
 peace between man and man, between community and 
 community, between state and state, between nation 
 and nation throughout the world — I am glad that He 
 
THE PRINCE OF PEACE 195 
 
 brings courage as well as peace so that those who fol- 
 low Him may take up and each day bravely do the 
 duties that to that day fall. 
 
 As the Christian grows older he appreciates more 
 and more the completeness with which Christ satisfies 
 the longings of the heart, and grateful for the peace 
 which he enjoys and for the strength which he has re- 
 ceived, he repeats the words of the great scholar, Sir 
 William Jones : 
 
 "Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth, 
 I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth, 
 Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, 
 And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray. ,s 
 
SOUR GRAPES 
 By Edward A. Ott 
 
 Edward Amherst Ott was born at Youngstown, Ohio, 
 November 2.7, 1867. He studied at Hiram College and at 
 Drake University, receiving his degree from the latter insti- 
 tution. He was professor of English and Oratory at Drake 
 University from 1891 to 1901. He was three times elected 
 to the presidency of the International Lyceum -Association. 
 His greatest work has been done in the popular lecture field, 
 where for many years he has had an enviable reputation. 
 He is the author of several books, among them at least two 
 on the technique of public speaking. 
 
 He is best known among public audiences for his lecture, 
 "Sour Grapes," which is herewith printed. The lecture is a 
 popularized account of the subject of heredity, written in 
 1897. Conversationally direct, forceful and animated in style, 
 Mr. Ott has left a vivid impression on the thousands of people 
 who have been fortunate enough to hear him and to come 
 under the influence of his personality. 
 
 The lecture is reprinted, with some cuttings made in the 
 interest of brevity, by permission of Mr. Ott and of his pub- 
 lishers, The Educational Extension Service, Byron, New York. 
 
 I. In "Sour Grapes" we emphasize no new fad of 
 the hour. The subject, even in its wording, is more 
 than three thousand years old. A sarcastic humorist, 
 in ridiculing the degeneracy of the Hebrew race at a 
 certain period of their history, said : "The fathers 
 have eaten 'Sour Grapes' and the children's teeth are 
 set on edge." The earnest-minded prophet who quoted 
 this criticism hoped for a time when it could be said 
 no more. 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 197 
 
 The critic intended to convey the idea which we now 
 express with the word heredity, or with the slang ex- 
 pression, "3. chip off the old block", or with the ex- 
 pression, "like father, like son", or "like begets like". 
 It will not matter which one of these phrases we use 
 if we understand each other. 
 
 We are to discuss the most interesting subject in 
 life — the law of life itself. Why is one man tall and 
 another man short; one man dark and another man 
 light; one man kind, gentle, generous, a good friend, 
 and another man sour, cruel, mean and crabbed; one 
 a success and another a failure ? The first time in life 
 that the author's own attention was called to the fact 
 that a character has a physical foundation ; that it lasts 
 from generation to generation, that you can't get one 
 in a day or lose it in a night, — that lesson came from 
 the lips of an old gray-haired man, who knew little 
 of his dictionary, nothing of his grammar, but a great 
 deal about nature and the laws of life. I asked him 
 why a little crippled child was crawling up the streets 
 of our city, instead of running, romping and playing 
 as the other children were doing; one that was cursed 
 physically from the beginning and that had no hope 
 in life? He tried to explain the matter as best he 
 could, and finally ended by saying : "Why, my boy, you 
 seem to know nothing of life ; you have only theories 
 of character. This boy is not crippled because some- 
 thing has happened to him, or because someone hurt 
 him. It is just a matter of hitteridittery." 
 
 And this old philosopher, who could come no nearer 
 to pronouncing the word heredity than to call it hit- 
 
I 9 8 THH DBL1VBRY OB A SPBBCH 
 
 teridittery, seemed to understand the philosophy of 
 life better than many of our moralists do today. 
 
 We do our moralizing "up in the air". We have 
 great agitations and reform movements ; we pass new 
 criminal laws. The real inherent condition of the peo- 
 ple remains untouched. We talk about life as it 
 might be, could be and should be. This old gentle- 
 man had noticed it as it is. He had noticed that when- 
 ever a blade of grass drops a seed it plants its own 
 successor — timothy, clover, blue grass. He had no- 
 ticed that, when the great oak drops the acorn, the 
 branches of the parent tree soon shadow the little oak ; 
 and that, when the pyramid-shaped beechnut drops 
 into the rich, black loam of the forest, it is the little 
 beech tree that springs up. 
 
 2. In all nature there is no law more fundamental or 
 far-reaching in its consequences than this tendency of 
 life to reproduce itself. It is the only law by which 
 you could explain the character of the horses that 
 career upon our race tracks, and beat out the music of 
 the jockey's heart with their polished hoofs upon the 
 earth. It is the only law by which you could explain 
 the character of the cattle that bear away the premium 
 ribbons at our county fairs. It is the only law by which 
 you could explain national characteristics. The genius 
 of the Mexican people is the result of the mingling of 
 the proud blood that marched under the banners of 
 Leon and Castillo, with the lower Aztec tribes. It is 
 the only law by which you could explain the charac- 
 ter of the leaders in the world of letters, arts, state- 
 craft and war. "Like begets like." And when the 
 objection is made that the theory cannot be proved, 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 199 
 
 that no two people are alike, we concede the point, and 
 acknowledge that there is in nature a law of variety as 
 well as a law of heredity. 
 
 The law of heredity gives the race its stability. If 
 it were not for an inherent character in people any 
 crazy reform movement might sweep a state or na- 
 tion to its destruction. Now, even a French Revolu- 
 tion cannot destroy a nation, for there is something in 
 the blood, bone and fiber of the people that leads them 
 to take up the problems of life just where they were 
 before the storm came. We foolishly thought we could 
 "make over" the negro with a civil war ; and when the 
 storm was passed the negro, industrially, socially and 
 educationally, was left untouched. The long climb of 
 civilization is still ahead of him; and if he ever ar- 
 rives, he will arrive as the white man did, after cen- 
 turies of voluntary work, of prayers, and agony, and 
 tears — - but you can't give him civilization any more 
 than you can give a lazy boy an education. You can 
 furnish free opportunity, and there helpfulness meets 
 a stone wall. All great good things people must do 
 for themselves. No great good can be given to peo- 
 ple. We all have to live out the days of life with the 
 character we inherit. This law of inheritance for the 
 individual is modified by the law of variety for the 
 race. 
 
 We pause to mention one great blessing under this 
 law of variety. We never have more than one man 
 of a kind in the world; and we acknowledge that this 
 is a great blessing, because up to date one of a kind 
 has been enough. 
 
 3. And now, to note how the law of variety and the 
 
200 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 law of heredity together bless the world. Some fifty 
 years ago, the luscious strawberry which we now en- 
 joy in our markets was not in existence. Nature did 
 not produce it for us. God had not planted it. Na- 
 ture had planted a little, sweet-flavored wild straw- 
 berry upon the prairies of the West. In another part 
 of the world she had planted a large, hollow, tasteless 
 strawberry — very prolific, but not good to eat. So the 
 scientist, the biological priest of the world, a man who 
 thinks about things, — and it educates the brain very 
 much faster to think about things than it does to play 
 with words and fool with language — the scientist 
 stooped and whispered into the ears of this little wild 
 rascal, and he went roving ; and by a process of cross- 
 fertilization, a wedding took place ; and as a result of 
 the union of this sweet-flavored little wild strawberry 
 and the large, hollow, prolific one we have today the 
 large, luscious strawberry of the market — one for- 
 eign marriage that was not a failure — the only one 
 recorded up to date. 
 
 In a certain garden field, it was the custom to grow 
 a fine variety of squash. One particular summer, a 
 pumpkin seed got into the bed. The sun wooed, and 
 the pumpkin and the squash grew side by side. The 
 leaves spread, the vines intertwined, the plants looked 
 so nearly alike that it seemed cruel to part them. At 
 times the scoundrel so much resembles the gentleman 
 that we lose the courage to root him out. So they 
 grew, side by side, these two, and in autumn the leaves 
 began to dry as usual and the harvest was gathered. 
 There were some magnificent squashes, the house- 
 wife's pride; and there were some magnificent pump- 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 201 
 
 kins, the Jersey's pride; and there were some things, 
 neither squashes nor pumpkins — failures — results 
 of an unfortunate marriage. 
 
 We have, however, a nurseryman in one of our 
 Western states, who is earning a small fortune through 
 his knowledge of this "Sour Grapes" idea. After many 
 years of horticultural skill, he produced in his nurs- 
 eries a large luscious pear. The sun kissed it a gold 
 upon one side ; it was a beautiful brown upon the 
 other, but the tree upon which it grew could not en- 
 dure our winters, and so he thought, — and thought 
 is still the most profitable thing in this world. He went 
 around the globe, and in the sandhills of Japan he 
 found a little China pear tree that you can't kill. Cut 
 off at the roots, it will spring up again. He brought 
 it around the globe; a wedding took place, and as a 
 result of that union we have today a large, luscious 
 hybrid pear, growing upon a rugged little tree, that 
 can endure our winters; and the man is making a 
 fortune out of it. However, all pears (pairs) are not 
 so fortunate. 
 
 4. We have a right to say this in more than a face- 
 tious way. For, in all the world's history of which we 
 have a record, there have appeared among humankind 
 only about four hundred geniuses. If a young man 
 wants a biographical library of the world's celebrated 
 great he can put all the books into one good book- 
 case. On the other hand, here in America, where life 
 should be at its best; here where we have few large 
 cities to contaminate us with their diseases and vices ; 
 here where we have lived much out-of-doors and are 
 well-housed and clothed and fed, and have never suf- 
 
202 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 fered a famine — here, too, where we should know 
 how to live, for we are an educated and enlightened 
 people, yet here among us, out of every one hundred 
 children born in the United States today one is a fail- 
 ure, a cripple, imbecile or hereditary criminal child. In 
 the states where we have statistics, it is now recorded 
 that out of every one thousand children born, one hun- 
 dred and sixty-five die before they are one year of 
 age ; and in the congested manufacturing cities about 
 three hundred and sixty-five die before the age of 
 two. We are the most enlightened people in the 
 world; but we do not know how to live. 
 
 We get sick — we know not why. We get well — 
 and are as surprised as the doctor attending us. Each 
 year there are epidemics sweeping over the land — 
 pneumonia, la grippe, scarlet and typhoid fever, and a 
 thousand other ailments — and most of them abso- 
 lutely unnecessary, foolish and morally wrong. We 
 have an example in typhoid fever. Science knows 
 how to prevent it. There is a city in the northwest 
 where they have not had a case in six years. "How 
 did they free themselves ?" Easily. They elected on the 
 board of health a scientist, a man who knows some- 
 thing, — not a politician. Then they elected some gen- 
 tlemen on the council — and that settled it. The man 
 of science knew what to do ; the council had morality 
 enough to do it. The disease was stamped out by 
 perfect sanitation. 
 
 We preach and moralize theoretically, but give the 
 public at large too little information. There is an 
 ethics of biology. In "Sour Grapes" we are trying to 
 emphasize one more reason for being good. If we 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 203 
 
 bred the right kind of people, the work of the school 
 and the church would be easy. We have proceeded on 
 the theory that you can make people over, and if we 
 had emphasized sanitation, hygiene and the biological 
 views of life as we have the abstract morals, we would 
 now have a different human race. 
 
 5. We do not as yet approach the question of edu- 
 cation from a scientific standpoint. The laymen still 
 expect the teachers to reconstruct the child. They fool- 
 ishly ask: "Why, — now that we have well-equipped 
 schools, the best textbooks, the latest methods of edu- 
 cation — why do not the number of good scholars 
 multiply faster among the pupils ?" The answer, based 
 on fact and not on theory, is that the teachers have to 
 do their work with the kind of pupils the parents send 
 to school. The healthy, bright, normal child becomes 
 educated under any system, and if we had placed as 
 much empahsis on the child as we have on the meth- 
 ods of education, results would not now be so disap- 
 pointing. The same critic asks : "Why, — now that 
 we have one hundred thousand well-trained preachers 
 in the country — why do not the saints multiply faster 
 in our churches?" We have the same biological an- 
 swer: It is because the preacher has to do his work 
 with the kind of people who join. The people who 
 unite with the churches sometimes bring very little of 
 character and stamina, of strength of blood and bone 
 and marrow to build on ; and the minister has to carry 
 forward his organization with the material at hand. 
 It is fair, therefore, to say to the critic of the school 
 and the church that these institutions are doing mar- 
 velously well when you consider the material they 
 
204 TH $ DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 work with, and to call attention to the fact that there 
 is only one institution that does not keep the pace of 
 progress ; and that is the home that produces the en- 
 feebled, erratic and abnormal child, the despair of 
 teacher, preacher and lawmaker alike. 
 
 A legitimate question has always been asked by the 
 audiences that have listened to the plea of "Sour 
 Grapes" in the years past: "Why do we produce so 
 many failures?" We must give hundreds of reasons 
 in one answer: We have ceased to be good animals. 
 And you can never lift people morally and intellec- 
 tually above the level of the physical perfection. Moral 
 degeneracy is a physiological fact. The minister has 
 treated it as a moral and ethical fact, and has applied 
 a moral and ethical cure; but boards of health and 
 national crusades for hygiene and sanitation are also 
 basic remedies. A single proof that we are no longer 
 good animals, is the fact that it takes as many drug 
 stores now to feed our people drugs and medicines 
 every twenty-four hours as it does dry goods stores 
 to clothe our bodies. We are a nation of drug fiends. 
 We have been physiologically careless. In a single 
 year our people expended one hundred million dollars 
 for patent medicines alone. 
 
 Our forefathers used to take bitters, — and that was 
 a very polite name for it, too. We take powders, pel- 
 lets and pills; and even the gray-haired saints, who 
 would not frequent the saloons for the sake of their 
 moral reputations, buy their patent medicines by the 
 box ; and they buy them for the stimulants that are in 
 them; and the people that are not drug fiends take 
 absent treatment. 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 205 
 
 6. Let us turn from this view of degeneracy to 
 study the record of success. I have examined with 
 some degree of care the history of the world's four 
 hundred eminently successful people. I find that al- 
 most without exception they came from families that 
 would naturally produce their kind. Going back to 
 the time of Aristotle we note that his father was a 
 scholar and philosopher before him — so wise as to 
 be chosen the intellectual counselor of the King of 
 Macedonia and the physician to the King's household ; 
 and from his time down we select now at random the 
 leaders in the various professions. Here is Mrs. Sid- 
 dons, — the greatest actress the world ever knew, — 
 her father and mother were upon the stage. She 
 graced it as it has not been graced since. Her chil- 
 dren were upon the stage, and her children's children. 
 And even in our day the Siddons blood is recognized 
 in theatrical circles. It is only some ten years since 
 that one died in her hotel in the city of Paris with an 
 international reputation. Joseph Jefferson says, in the 
 first sentence of his beautiful autobiography: "I was 
 literally born upon the stage, or, at least, when I 
 opened the back door of my home and stepped out 
 into the back yard I was upon the stage of the old 
 Washington theater, next to which my mother and 
 father lived." Booth's whole life current flowed 
 through a theatrical landscape ; and Henry Ward 
 Beecher, regardless of the fact that some people think 
 preachers never do have good sons, came from a fam- 
 ily of preachers. I am frequently reminded that 
 Beecher had his critics; but I also remember that no 
 ten of his critics ever accomplished for this country 
 
2o6 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH ' 
 
 and its religious and intellectual freedom what he ac- 
 complished for it, and I personally have little sympa- 
 thy for any critic who has done less in life than the 
 man he criticises. Is it not fair, therefore, to include 
 him in the list of hereditary genius? 
 
 Lord Bacon's father was the Lord Keeper of the 
 Great Seal and ranked as Chancellor, while the mother 
 was "exquisitely skilled in Latin and Greek" and 
 noted for her piety. The genius of the Darwin family 
 is marked for several generations. Newton seems to 
 be an exception, but there is no authentic family his- 
 tory. Byron, the poet, could be loved and pitied more 
 if people knew his family. A "strange, proud, half- 
 mad" mother, an imprudent and vicious father, and a 
 grandfather who was as restless as the poet, all plead 
 for mercy on Lord Byron. 
 
 William Pitt was but another example of "hitter-i- 
 dittery". His father was at the head of the English 
 government at the age of twenty-seven. The son 
 gained control at the age of twenty-three and held 
 England in his hand for seventeen years. No one 
 taught him to be a statesman — he was born one. 
 Hannibal, Alexander, Wellington, Caesar, all seem to 
 have been peculiarly endowed. They did not choose. 
 No credit attaches to birth, no shame. Praise belongs 
 only to those who do bravely all they can. 
 
 7. In the musical world the law seems to prevail 
 most strikingly. Only two of the creative musicians 
 seem to be exceptions. These are Mendelssohn and 
 Meyerbeer, and all the rest seem to follow in their 
 line, generation after generation. One of the musical 
 journals of Germany gives the story of the Bachs, 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 207 
 
 that great German family of creative musicians. At a 
 family reunion there were present one hundred and 
 twenty great musicians. The Dictionary of Music 
 names fifty-seven renowned musicians in this family; 
 and now there is not a single drop of this musical 
 Bach blood in existence. They are lost to the world 
 forever; and this loss was an international calamity. 
 
 Think of the premium we pay for good music, — 
 and most of it imported. When Patti was here the 
 last time she received five thousand dollars a night, 
 and in some of the large cities, eight thousand. During 
 the season of 1908 we paid five thousand dollars a 
 night to two separate singers for the entire season. 
 To three others we paid forty-five hundred dollars a 
 night, and to another singer we paid fifteen hundred 
 dollars a night for as many nights as she would con- 
 sent to sing on this side of the Atlantic. Consent to 
 sing for fifteen hundred dollars a night ! We all know 
 people who would do it for fifteen hundred dollars a 
 year, — but no audience would listen to the music. 
 Her rival received a thousand dollars a night for as 
 many nights as London, Paris and St. Petersburg 
 would spare her. Why? Because there is no competi- 
 tion. There are less than ten great sopranos in all the 
 world — not even one to a nation, with all their mil- 
 lions of inhabitants. When we wish to hear superla- 
 tive music we have to hear the singers en route. The 
 voice that thrills an audience in Melbourne, Austra- 
 lia, is known as Melba's voice around the world. 
 
 The amateur reformer, the man who knows how to 
 settle all problems without thinking, interrupts and 
 gives a solution: "We will build musical conserva- 
 
208 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 tories, go to teaching music, and so meet the situa- 
 tion." No! We will not meet it for centuries. Nor 
 will we get the full benefit of our schools of music or 
 our other educational institutions until we realize, bet- 
 ter than we seem to now, their real purpose. The ob- 
 ject of a school of music is not to make musicians, but 
 to rear up a generation of young men and women who 
 can understand music, listen to it appreciatively, per- 
 haps interpret it in a measure, and so increase the joy 
 of living. They would accomplish much if they did 
 nothing more than to bring into the home life of the 
 people one joy that does not debauch. 
 
 8. The object of a school is not to produce schol- 
 ars. The foolish theory that schools are creative in- 
 stitutions has led to the expenditure of hundreds of 
 millions of dollars to benefit what is known as the 
 "top of the system", when the large expenditure 
 should have been made near the bottom of the sys- 
 tem where the millions go to school. All of this has 
 been done on the foolish theory that you can "make 
 the children over". The school is not a manufactur- 
 ing plant, but a retail store of learning. The chil- 
 dren customers carry away from the institution all 
 their baskets of capacity will hold ; and when a greater 
 respect for individuality comes, we will educate each 
 child with the complete recognition of its powers, and 
 so make the greatest ethical and industrial saving the 
 world of education has ever known. The most dis- 
 heartening condition recognized by all educators ex- 
 ists today. The sad spectacle of thousands of young 
 men who have been taken out of one classification, 
 natural and normal to themselves, and led to failure 
 
. SOUR GRAPHS 209 
 
 in abnormal conditions, is before us. The pettifogging 
 lawyer, misdirected in the choice of his profession, is 
 a menace to society; he drifts into cheap politics, be- 
 comes the local grafter through no inherent fault of 
 his own. The quack doctor never intended to be a 
 quack. He hoped to shine in his profession; but 
 someone planted a false hope in his breast and he took 
 up the wrong profession. 
 
 This sin to nature, this sin of misdirection, is also 
 clearly seen in the realm of arts. The schools of elo- 
 cution turn out hundreds of graduates, who are abso- 
 lute failures both industrially and artistically. In 
 the musical world there are examples numbered in the 
 thousands. I have in mind a poor girl, whom some 
 over-enthusiastic adviser told that she could become a 
 concert player. Her ear is faulty to the point of dis- 
 ease. The scientist would call her "sound blind" as he 
 would call another "color blind". She has been 
 "pounding away" at the piano for nine long, tedious, 
 miserable, horrible years, — horrible to the neigh- 
 bors. Faithful to a fault, diligent and hopeful, she 
 produces heart-breaking results. A good friend asked 
 the author not to tell the story of her failure, saying, 
 "You might discourage some other young woman. If 
 she keeps at it long enough, and is patient enough, she 
 can learn how to play. Do you not believe it?" The 
 answer, — yes. If she keeps at it long enough she 
 can learn how, and that is what eternity is for; but 
 we only live this life once, and there is not time enough 
 on this side of the grave for her to learn" how. 
 
 9. The pathos of the situation is this, with her as 
 with all other failures, victims of misdirection, still 
 
2io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 hopeful and confident in their own ability, they blame 
 society and continue in their failure. If a man fails in 
 business he says the town in which he is located is "no 
 good". If the teacher fails in his control of a school 
 he does not acknowledge his inability, but says the 
 Board of Directors did not sustain him. If the min- 
 ister empties a church, does he acknowledge that he 
 cannot preach ? Never ! And even on the last Sunday, 
 when he presents his resignation to the handful of the 
 faithful followers left, he explains that the commu- 
 nity is the most unresponsive and ungodly in which he 
 ever labored. This poor girl's case symbolizes the en- 
 tire situation. I met her at a party, where she told 
 me her disappointments. These are her own words : 
 "Isn't it strange that America is so slow to respond 
 to any art? I have had the best of teachers, I have 
 worked hard, and if somebody doesn't give me an 
 opportunity soon to show what I can do with my art 
 I will take things in my own hands, organize a con- 
 cert company and go out and fill dates and get my 
 money back." One feels like praying for the public. 
 She continued : "I play the very best of music, the 
 finest, classic music in the world, and sometimes the 
 people don't listen. They whisper, talk, and laugh. 
 Do you think that the public really appreciates good 
 music?" One does not like to be impolite, but the case 
 was desperate, and I mustered courage enough to re- 
 ply: "Yes; I think the public appreciates good mu- 
 sic — whenever it has the chance to hear it." This 
 impertinence was bald enough to do some good, but it 
 evidently failed, for she replied: "You do not know 
 how much you encourage me" — and I did not dare 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 211 
 
 to make it any plainer than that. A man doesn't like 
 to say mean things to a woman — at least, not unless 
 he is married to her. 
 
 One does not like to criticise the individual. When 
 the minister has spent nine years to prepare for the 
 ministry, and is then a failure, even the bishop hesi- 
 tates to tell him, and yet the wrong classification of 
 individual effort is the greatest personal tragedy in 
 human life. I did not wish to criticise this girl farther. 
 She was moral, religious, earnest, and one whom a 
 critic listed in the class of those who play the piano 
 religiously — she never sat down to the keyboard 
 without practicing according to the scriptures ; she 
 obeys the scriptural injunction and never allows her 
 "left hand to know what her right hand doeth". 
 
 10. In passing to the history of the military world, 
 we find that this law of blood prevails with a ven- 
 geance. We find representatives of the Lee family 
 marching to the Holy Land in the days of the Cru- 
 sades — already leaders of men; in another genera- 
 tion we find them crossing the bloody field of Hast- 
 ings, — leaders of men : in another generation, march- 
 ing under the banners of Henry the VIII, invading 
 Scotland, — leaders of men : in another generation, on 
 this side of the Atlantic ocean in revolutionary days, 
 helping to make the Declaration of Independence ; and 
 then we find them inarching across the sad and pa- 
 thetic fields of our own civil war — on down to the 
 island of Cuba, giving us, in our own day and genera- 
 tion, Fitzhugh Lee. And from Cuba to Palestine, the 
 Lees were leaders of men, marching under the flaunt- 
 ing flags of war. They were a great family of fight- 
 
212 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ers and leaders, just as the Bachs were a great family 
 of musicians. I know that Cromwell and Grant are 
 spoken of as exceptions to the rule of early service, 
 but Napoleon Bonaparte, in his wild, erratic, mur- 
 derous career, was not an exception in either partic- 
 ular. 
 
 His mother was a Corsican heroine. She 'was one 
 of those women that can look into the face of physi- 
 cal danger without winking. She knew what it was, 
 by choice, to accompany the father in the disturbed 
 states of the island. She saw men marching up and 
 down clad in the paraphernalia of war. She heard 
 the clatter and clash of arms, and in her own imagi- 
 nation charged the fortress of the enemy, and had 
 halted armies in defeat and disaster. It was out of 
 the bone, blood, marrow, desire and ambition of this 
 Corsican heroine that the first Napoleon was born. 
 Born under the eagles of France, lifted to the breeze 
 by smoke that was blazed and puffed from the can- 
 non's mouth. 
 
 And from that early time on, he was never satisfied 
 until he heard the echo of this cannonade of the sky, 
 reproduced in the rolling cannonade on the fields of 
 war. At the age of nineteen he was a failure. He 
 walked down the banks of the Seine river, contem- 
 plating suicide. But four years later they gave him 
 a chance to fight. He could do that. He reached out 
 the strong right hand of his military will over the 
 raging mob in the streets of Paris, and at the first ef- 
 fort crushed it. Three years later, he was at the head 
 of the entire army of Italy; and from that time on he 
 conquered everything before him; until at last he lay 
 
SOUR GRAPES 213 
 
 dying upon the island to which Great Britain chained 
 him. The last words that came from the white lips 
 of the dying Corsican were not of God or France or 
 Josephine. The words, which showed the very in- 
 most soul of the man, were these: "Head of the 
 army ! Head of the army !" and even in death his 
 fevered brain was marching his battalions on the 
 frightful fields of war. 
 
 11. If a man's first self is one of the ever present 
 forces to determine what he shall be, there are mighty 
 lessons to learn. All his education should be based 
 upon his individuality, properly understood. If a 
 man is born capable, much can be expected and should 
 be demanded ; but when he is born inferior, he should 
 be — ■ not excused but understood. Many men are 
 failing as business men who could succeed in profes- 
 sions, and many teachers and preachers should have 
 been in other professions — or in none. Even horses 
 have to be bred for their uses. 
 
 Therefore, we say, blessed is the man who finds his 
 work in life, and so large a part of the success of each 
 individual depends upon this, that I am praying in my 
 heart of hearts for the time to come, when in this 
 great Republic of ours, in each community, there shall 
 be at least one school, founded upon an absolutely in- 
 dustrial basis, where the average boy can find him- 
 self, and prepare for the real struggles of life; and 
 that this machine-like process of educating all our 
 children in the same way, boys and girls, and all kinds 
 of boys and all kinds of girls, the weak and the strong, 
 the sick and the well, the bright and the dull, shall 
 pass from our educational history forever, and the in- 
 
214 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 dividual, the sacred individual, be given a chance to 
 make a success of his own life. 
 
 It might be interesting here to call a longer roll of 
 honor of the world's celebrated and romantically 
 great. But I must call attention to the fact that vice 
 as well as virtue runs in families. The patriot had a 
 right to believe that here on American soil we would 
 raise at last a more perfect human race. Now, in 
 several respects, we are leading all the other nations 
 of the earth in our criminal and vice statistics. Pen- 
 itentiaries and insane asylums are as prevalent as in 
 the Old World; and in some localities the number of 
 incompetent people sustained at public expense is ap- 
 palling. This, too, in spite of the fact that here in 
 America religion is most perfectly organized, educa- 
 tion universally free, and general information cheap. 
 In view of this condition, we have a right to empha- 
 size the ethics of biology and show that mere moral- 
 izing will not perfect the human race, that the recog- 
 nition and application of the biological conditions of 
 life development will help much, and to urge the ush- 
 ering in of an era of "conscious evolution" for the 
 human race. 
 
 It is not an accident that some people go to jail. 
 Vice is no more -accidental than virtue. It is as nat- 
 ural for one man to go to jail as it is for another to go 
 to the legislature. 
 
 12. We have a large number of criminals because 
 we breed them. A single family in New York State 
 has produced nearly twelve hundred of the criminals 
 in this country, and has cost the taxpayers one and 
 one-quarter millions of dollars for arrests and deten- 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 215 
 
 tions. The annual report of the convention of chari- 
 ties published in 1890 gives the story of the Ishmael- 
 ite tribe of criminals in Cincinnati, Ohio, and tells us 
 that about twenty-two hundred and fifty petty , crim- 
 inals sprung from this one line of blood. 
 
 The only way to empty the jails and penitentiaries 
 and insane asylums of this country is to allow a cer- 
 tain class of people to die out. We have no machin- 
 ery by which people can be made over, and the first 
 step upward is to teach the normal and the healthy 
 the laws of race preservation, and something of the 
 dignity and beauty and sacredness .of the marriage in- 
 stitution. There seems to be too little pride in the 
 question of marriage. Anyone can get married. A 
 young man may be behind the prison bars for murder. 
 Some woman will carry him flowers, and, if the sheriff 
 permits, will say the wedding vows, with no thought 
 of the future or future generations. A young woman 
 may be dying of tuberculosis, the family physician 
 knows that she cannot possibly recover, yet some man 
 will lead her to the marriage altar; and the minister, 
 who preaches much on the sacredness of the home, will 
 ask God's blessing on the union of two lives that can- 
 not possibly be blessed under the laws of life. Our 
 young people, well educated and trained, are ignorant 
 of the one most important subject, the marriage rela- 
 tion. They do not know how to marry. 
 
 One couple out of every twelve under oath declare 
 that for them married life is a failure, and are di- 
 vorced. In the last twenty years one million couples 
 under oath have sworn that married life was a fail- 
 ure, and have been granted divorces. The amateur 
 
216 THB DBL1VBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 reformer springs up and cries : "Down with this di- 
 vorce evil ; it is the greatest disgrace of the nation ; 
 change the divorce laws !" 
 
 No ! We have done too much hasty reforming. The 
 reformer should be a lighthouse builder and not a 
 wrecker. To prevent a ship from going on the rocks 
 is better than to snatch a plank from the waves. In 
 the settling of the divorce problem the attack should 
 be on the marriage side, not on the loose divorce laws. 
 When people are happily and properly married there 
 will be no divorces, even though divorce decrees could 
 be had for the asking. I know something worse than 
 divorce, and that is a bad home, and the longer it 
 lasts the worse it is for society. To the one who says 
 it is an awful thing to break up a home in the divorce 
 court, the answer must ever be, that it is never done. 
 Homes are broken up in the minds and hearts of men 
 and women and they are usually wrecked before the 
 court hears of the tragedy, and all the judge does is 
 to hang out a little red flag to show where the wreck 
 went down. Again, the critic quotes, "Whom God 
 hath joined together let no man put asunder," and the 
 humorist responds, "Whom God has tried to keep 
 asunder, let no man join." 
 
 13. We therefore propose a change that would 
 make marriage more dignified and place it on a higher 
 social basis. The change proposed has become known 
 as the "Marriage Diploma Idea". The plan briefly 
 stated is this: To grant marriage diplomas on these 
 three conditions : 
 
 First : A three months' public announcement of the 
 engagement. Publicity is in itself an education. The 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 217 
 
 public has a right to know of intended marriages. 
 Above all things, marriage is not a purely personal 
 matter. When the young man and woman in the 
 mountains of the Hudson river foolishly elected to 
 marry each other they started a family which has 
 given us twelve hundred criminals and has cost us one 
 and one-quarter millions of dollars. Society, against 
 its will, has one and one-quarter million dollars in- 
 vested in this family. We certainly have a right to 
 be invited to the next wedding. 
 
 Second: A medical certificate should be demanded 
 by a County Board acting upon all marriage licenses 
 before granting them. This would work a hardship 
 on no one who is fit to marry. A certificate from the 
 local family physician as a rule would meet the re- 
 quirements, but such a law would be the means of 
 preventing much heartache, sorrow, shame, disease 
 and crime. To argue the matter would require a lec- 
 ture in itself. A few pictures must serve. Some fif- 
 teen years ago when I was lecturing in a Western city 
 an intelligent young woman of twenty-two, a gradu- 
 ate of the local high school, and one who for two 
 years had attended the State College, sat in my audi- 
 ence. She was engaged to marry the young man who 
 accompanied her. 
 
 This young man had been ill all the year. He was 
 a neurotic: and yet this intelligent young woman, 
 whose education in all other matters was much above 
 the average, intended to sacrifice her life to this im- 
 possible example of young manhood. Aroused by the 
 argument of the evening, she told her lover that she 
 would wait a year, that she must have time to think. 
 
2i8 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 Five months later, with much distress, she came to 
 me in a distant city to tell me that her lover was in the 
 asylum, was pronounced incurable, and with tears of 
 gratitude, to tell of her relief that she was not the 
 wife of an insane man. 
 
 A young man was placed in an insane asylum at 
 eighteen. At twenty his parents took charge of him 
 and tried to care for him at home ; eight months later 
 he was married. The years rolled by; children were 
 born ; later he was again sent to the asylum, and after- 
 wards his two oldest sons were placed in cells adjoin- 
 ing his; and the State is caring for three insane per- 
 sons instead of one. 
 
 In the light of these facts, and in the light of the 
 fact that these are not exceptional stories, has not 
 the time arrived, under the rule of conscious evolu- 
 tion, for the human race to protect itself? 
 
 14. Third: The three months' probation should be 
 devoted to an education for domestic life. The period 
 of three months, between the time of announcing an 
 engagement and granting a diploma, could well be 
 spent in this preparation. The marriage board in each 
 county could have this matter in charge. The train- 
 ing should be for young men, as well as for young 
 women. Lessons on the mutual obligations, duties and 
 relations of domestic life, could be taught with tre- 
 mendous and saving advantages. The relation of the 
 individuals, the relation of the home to the State, to 
 society, and, above all, to the destiny of the human 
 race, could be taught; and if such change were made 
 in the marriiage laws, it is safe to say that at least 
 ninety per cent, of the divorce evil would disappear. 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 219 
 
 I dwell, therefore, upon marriage and the courtship 
 which leads to it. When people are married it is too 
 late to moralize. Like begets like. The child is the 
 joint product of the lives, experience and ancestry of 
 the father and mother. How important, then, that our 
 boys and girls should mate well, with strong, healthy, 
 good companions, and establish happy homes and de- 
 sirable ones. How many children, could they have 
 chosen, would have selected their fathers and moth- 
 ers ? Some one has facetiously advised children to se- 
 lect good fathers and mothers. Garfield, addressing 
 the thousands of upturned faces in the great nominat- 
 ing convention at Chicago, said : "Not here where the 
 party banners flutter, not here in excitement and en- 
 thusiasm, is the safety and glory of our nation, the 
 dignity, the grandeur. The safety and beauty of the 
 American republic is there where families sit in the 
 shadow of the roof -tree and in the glow of the 
 hearthstone. The strength of our nation is in the 
 home." 
 
 The hopes of the great and good, the longings of all 
 statesmen who love their country, is for the home, 
 where men and women, united in love, fitted in body, 
 mind and disposition to become fathers and mothers, 
 are married indeed. Every home of this sort is a 
 blessing. There are too many unhappy and unfortu- 
 nate ones. "Married in haste," unfitted by nature, and 
 unprepared by education, "anybody and everybody", 
 consumptives, half imbecile, insane, paupers, moral 
 lepers, criminals, children, anybody, from the meanest 
 soul whose blood is poisoned, whose imagination is a 
 wilderness and whose heart is a hell, to the most cour- 
 
220 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ageous and God-like hero of the world, all propagate 
 the human race. 
 
 "Anybody" may do to marry. "Anybody" will make 
 a plaything to court. "Anybody" can wear dry goods 
 and millinery. "Anybody" can run a tailor's bill. But 
 only men and women can be true husbands and wives. 
 Only men and women should become fathers and 
 mothers, and live to counsel and to guide such rosy, 
 healthy children as God shall send and give. 
 
 15. Young people should be taught to place a pre- 
 mium upon sturdy, rugged manhood and womanhood. 
 Many a strong, healthy, plain but good girl is slighted. 
 Many a worthy "fellow" with broad shoulders and 
 heavy hands is willing to pour the honest devotion of 
 his worshipful heart at the feet of some true woman. 
 The sporty young man who runs in debt for his 
 clothes, and the girl who forgets to assist an old 
 mother in her home are not desirable. 
 
 The ideas of home life and matrimony should be the 
 highest. I bring a home from the world of realism, in 
 settings of an old-fashioned farm house in the West- 
 ern Reserve. Trees surround it, and an old scattered 
 orchard drops its ripening fruits on the bosom of the 
 hills. We open the gate, that is, draw back the bars, 
 and walk over the old lawn where the croquet balls 
 used to click, while the children's laughter echoed 
 from the old bank barn. We turn the corner where 
 the old-fashioned rose bush grew, scraggy and lux- 
 uriant. There on the old porch where the morning- 
 glories twine, sit an old man of seventy-three and an 
 old women of sixty-eight, courting. They rise to 
 greet us and tell us the story of their life: how as a 
 
SOUR GRAPES 221 
 
 young man and woman they started together, hand in 
 hand and heart to heart; how they stood by each 
 other, and helped each other, sustained, comforted, 
 inspired, marched through life's cares and bore its 
 burdens together. How they mingled their tears with 
 the white flowers that lay upon the little coffin of that 
 child which sleeps in the village churchyard, where 
 the myrtle of summer and the white snows of winter 
 are its sacred covering. How their oldest daughter 
 was given to a home as happy as their own. How the 
 boys, one by one, went out to fill positions of useful- 
 ness and prosperity. 
 
 We see them sitting hand in hand and heart to 
 heart, bodies dying and souls glowing. They have 
 marched up the hillslopes of life together ; now we see 
 them almost at he summit where the twilight glories 
 of old age mingle with the morning purples of eter- 
 nity — hand in hand and heart to heart from the be- 
 ginning to the end. 
 
 The objection is sometimes raised that all of this 
 savors of "blue-bloodism". To which we must an- 
 swer that in the realm of science we recognize no blue 
 ribbons of society. The stamp of aristocracy, in the 
 kingdom of biology, is perfect health, and a set of 
 nerves that do not twitch and tremble, muscles that 
 are elastic and free, a heart beat that is normal in its 
 rhythm, and brain cells, undiseased. Many fail to un- 
 derstand the laws of heredity, the laws of breeding, 
 because they think and observe superficially. Genius 
 may be born in poverty, but it is never born of impov- 
 erished blood. A Lincoln may be born in the forests 
 of Kentucky, a Garfield march toward the White 
 
222 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 House on the tow path of an Ohio canal, and imbe- 
 cility may be born in a palace, when the parents in the 
 palace have become pale, anaemic and diseased. 
 
 1 6. What has been said, has been said to link the 
 word responsibility to the words home and marriage 
 and love ; to emphasize the fact that the age of con- 
 scious evolution has arrived. It is a century since 
 Charles Darwin was born and lived and taught. It 
 is not too soon to emphasize the ethics of biology. 
 
 I wish now to emphasize a sweeter word, that grows 
 directly out of this "Sour Grape" doctrine — the 
 word "mercy". If it is a fact, that every man has a 
 character peculiar to himself when he is born, it is 
 also true that the rest of us should take that character 
 into account. 
 
 All men have a character, a personality, when they 
 are born. Every man we see affects us by form and 
 features peculiar to himself. People embody tastes, 
 dispositions, habits, impulses, passions, vices and vir- 
 tues peculiarly their own. No two people are exactly 
 alike. Each differs from the other in size, weight, 
 height, complexion, mental forces, and inherent tastes. 
 
 They have some of these differences from the be- 
 ginning, and in addition to the inherent character, the 
 one given to them by their ancestors, they have an- 
 other, a second, moulded and fashioned by the con- 
 ditions and moral forces surrounding the plastic souls 
 of childhood. People have as little choice over this 
 second character as over the first. Babyhood and 
 youth are both subject to forces omnipotent but not 
 always divinely good. Some men are born cripples, 
 some are made such. Some are born imbeciles, some 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 223 
 
 are dwarfed by conditions and some are ruined by 
 themselves — that is, indeed, "original sin". Some 
 men have three characters, the two of which I have 
 spoken, and one which they have the courage to 
 make. These are God's heroes and heroines ; men and 
 women who battle against vice, disease, perverted im- 
 pulses and runaway passions ; the men and women 
 who march to victory, conquering even the forces that 
 are inherent. There should be more of these, — 
 
 "Who break their birth's invidious bar 
 And grasp the skirts of happy chance, 
 And breast the blows of circumstance, 
 And grapple with their evil star." 
 
 In studying life, in measuring character, in punish- 
 ing vice and in rewarding virtue, we have paid too 
 little attention to heredity and all that it means and 
 involves. 
 
 We judge people too easily. We see what they are, 
 but forget their beginnings. We do not credit them 
 with what they have done. We do not know the 
 weary road they have been traveling. It is a long way 
 from the cabin to the White House, from the canal 
 to the capitol. 
 
 17. A man's personality is a composite, complex 
 thing. It rests upon the threefold basis of heredity, 
 environment and self-education. It embodies the 
 blood and nerves, imagination and intelligence, and 
 history of his ancestors. It is touched by the angelic 
 smile of a mother's love, the stern rebuke of a digni- 
 fied father, the sweet graces of a fond sister, the wise 
 counsel of proud brothers, and inspiration of wise 
 
224 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 masters. The blows and buffets of adverse circum- 
 stances affect it. The weariness born of hard labor 
 and the sweet benediction of rest are needed. The 
 landscape of one's childhood creeps into it; hills and 
 valleys where boyhood romped ; love songs of wooing 
 birds ; the buzz of busy bees ; the quiet influences of 
 farm life, as well as the graceful curves of a sea 
 beach where the pulse-beats of the Creator are heard 
 in the breaking waves that lave the feet of the rever- 
 ent fisherboy. Whittier's poetry is full of the scenes 
 of his childhood. Robert Burns reached his best ef- 
 forts when writing about the plow field and the farm 
 life of old Scotland. 
 
 It has taken the world five thousand years to learn 
 that it is only a coward that would strike a cripple. 
 Now, is it going to take another five thousand years 
 to teach the world to treat with mercy the intellec- 
 tually and morally crippled of the human race? All 
 recognize the fact that it is the duty of the strong 
 man to push along the cart of the cripple ; but little of 
 mercy and tenderness have been shown the morally 
 delinquent cripples. 
 
 As yet we seem to have recognized only the physi- 
 cal deformities in our code of charity. Over yonder 
 is a family, the children of which all have black hair. 
 This we understand. We say it is a legacy from grand- 
 parents and parents, a case of "hitteridittery". And 
 yonder is a family, the children of which all have red 
 hair, and again we understand ; there is no criticism or 
 tendency to moralize. The fact is accepted; it is a 
 question of "Sour Grapes", a "chip off the old block". 
 And yonder is a family of varied complexions. Some 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 225 
 
 of the children have dark hair, some light; and we 
 say here is a mingling of national strains. You do not 
 find the varied complexions among the negroes, the 
 Japanese, the Chinese, but only among the peoples 
 that have intermarried. And as one looks out on the 
 audiences up and down the country and sees the heads 
 without hair, he is led to believe there will be many 
 children born in the next generation without any. 
 
 18. Yonder is a family, the children of which have 
 black hearts instead of black hair. Now, there seems 
 to be a lack of understanding or sympathy. The un- 
 der dog, morally and intellectually, has had little sym- 
 pathy. The physically ill are given the best room in 
 the house, the physician's care, the faithful nurse, the 
 best of food, are shielded from annoyance; they re- 
 ceive the kiss and caress of merciful understanding. 
 For the morally crippled we have stone walls and the 
 iron bars. 
 
 To those who have given the matter little thought, 
 it may have sounded cruel to say that the only way 
 to empty the jails, penitentiaries, and insane asylums 
 of the country, is to allow a certain degenerate class 
 of people to die out; and yet, such a suggestion has less 
 of cruelty and more of Christianity in it than the 
 present method of treating the criminal class. Stone 
 walls and iron bars do not make bad people good. It 
 is high time that we substitute criminal reservations 
 for jails and penitentiaries; and detain our delin- 
 quents in normal surroundings, in the free, open-air 
 life; establish a wise system of parole for the ones 
 who are making an honest effort at reform; and es- 
 tablish this uniform punishment for the rest— namely, 
 
226 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 prevent marriage and reproduction among them; and 
 so let the criminal class disappear. 
 
 An extended plea of mercy for the unfortunate is 
 not here necessary. Lips, a thousand times more elo- 
 quent than mine, are making this plea upon the Amer- 
 ican platform. I speak of the work of the bighearted 
 Ben Lindsey of Denver, Colo., the friend of the bad 
 boy, the man who believes in child culture; in a 
 chance for "Mickey" of the streets. And the plea for 
 the adult criminal is made, as no one else could make 
 it, by Maude Ballington Booth. It is not given to all 
 to help in the great national reform movements, but all 
 have an opportunity to put into practice one bit of 
 moralizing that is pertinent to this question. We can 
 learn to be good to the people that are unfortunate 
 enough to live under the same roof with us. 
 
 It is easy to allow other people to "get on our 
 nerves". Perhaps all of us are frequently annoyed 
 by the conduct, words and manner of our associates, 
 and few of us take time to think how tedious and an- 
 noying we may be to others. They have to listen to 
 our voices, see our way of doing things. They are an- 
 noyed by our tastes and demands. There is really a 
 great deal of unhappiness in the world that is un- 
 necessary, unhappiness that comes because we do not 
 cultivate the fine art of appreciation as much as we 
 do the folly of criticism. Now, the way to be good to 
 other people is to be good to them "in their way". A 
 friend of mine states this moral well. He says : "I 
 would rather be understood for two minutes than be 
 loved all day." 
 
 19. We know love never made a happy home un- 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 227 
 
 less it was coupled with thoughtfulness and courtesy. 
 Affection itself may become a source of deep sorrow 
 and bring intensest pain to other people's lives, un- 
 less it is considerate, respectful, wise. Even the doc- 
 trine of Christian love was not operative until St. 
 Paul defined and explained it with an entire chapter. 
 Hate can make no one unhappy except the one who 
 hates. The saddest-faced woman in a community was 
 made sad through love. Love is the only passion that 
 brings deep sorrow into life, — tears, heartache and 
 scars. Nor is it the disappointing love alone that 
 hurts. This woman's husband may love her unto 
 death. She would die for the man to whom she is 
 wed, and still a failure to understand the individual 
 needs and desires may leave the lives unblessed and 
 full of sorrow. 
 
 "It isn't the shame and it isn't the blame 
 That stings like a white-hot brand. 
 It's coming to know that (they) never could know, 
 And never could understand." 
 
 The highest compliment we can pay to any individ- 
 ual is the compliment of complete understanding. Mary 
 is to be made happy in Mary's way, — Charlie in 
 his, — Mother in hers, — and "Daddie" in his. And 
 we of the younger generation might well learn how 
 to be more appreciative of the generation that is 
 passing. 
 
 After calling attention to the impertinence and con- 
 duct approaching insolence with which the younger 
 generation sometimes treat the passing one in our own 
 
228' THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 America, the following protest was made by a young 
 and newly-married couple: "It's very well to plead 
 for old age, but you can't do much for old people. 
 They are set in their ways, old fogy in their notions. 
 We invited grandfather to share our cottage in the 
 city when grandmother died. He seemed to enjoy 
 the change, and walked about the village carrying an 
 old wooden stick as a cane. We sympathized with the 
 situation, and bought him a new, gold-headed walking 
 stick. He set it in the corner, and hasn't used it once. 
 Now, what are you going to do with the old people?" 
 There are some things you must remember; and 
 if you open your home to give its hospitality to old 
 age you must remember that old age has a history. 
 That old wooden stick Grandfather cut from a tree 
 under which he and Grandmother stood fifty years 
 ago, the day they were betrothed back there in the 
 forests. You thought he could throw it away and use 
 your new, gold-headed and varnished stick; but 
 Grandfather is a gentleman. He is a gentleman of 
 the old school, and can't forget. 
 
 20. The wife says, "I had just fixed up our little 
 sitting-room and he brought with him an old-fashioned 
 rocker from the farm. It must have been manufac- 
 tured with an ax after dark. He didn't even want me 
 to paint it, so that it would blend with the color scheme 
 of my room." 
 
 Oh, but did you forget the wrinkled hands that 
 rested on the arms of that chair the last winter that 
 Grandfather and Grandmother sat side by side before 
 the open fireplace, out on the farm, and rocked the 
 days and the hours away, talking and rocking, rocking 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 229 
 
 and talking ? Why ! Grandfather couldn't smoke his 
 evening pipe in any other chair, or dream the dreams 
 of the future, or "see the purple lights that dawn on 
 the eternal hills, where the twilight glories of old age 
 mingled with the morning purples of eternity". 
 
 It takes some thought, some consideration, this cul- 
 tivation of the social art of being good to others. We 
 men must learn how to be good to women, and to be 
 good to them in their way. 
 
 Here is the story of a man who has been married 
 for forty years. He certainly had time to learn how 
 to be good to his wife ; and he loved her devotedly. He 
 was "big and good-natured". He made up his mind 
 to present her the finest anniversary Christmas pres- 
 ent he had ever given her. Like all other women, 
 there were numbers of little things that she wanted, 
 but never felt free to purchase. Her good-meaning 
 husband saved up his spare money for three months 
 and then — bought her a dress. Oh, the tragedy of 
 the dresses that husbands pick out for their wives ! Any 
 man who will buy his wife a dress for a Christmas 
 present, — and not allow her to pick it out — is in- 
 discreet. Christmas morning he was the exuberantly 
 happy one in the family. He gathered the whole fam- 
 ily about the table and brought out the big bundle and 
 undid it with triumph. That dress was a gorgeous 
 splendor. Solomon in all his glory never saw any- 
 thing half so gorgeous. It was such a dress — as only 
 a man could have picked out ; and it was a color this 
 poor woman had detested all her life. She looked at 
 it in dismay — even the children were silent — and 
 when she thought of herself wearing it in public, she 
 
2$0 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 gave a scream of alarm. But it was Christmas; she 
 put her arms about his neck, and was going to kiss 
 him and thank him; but even she couldn't go that far. 
 Her face fell upon his shoulder, and she broke into 
 sobs. While he was so happy at what he had done, 
 so proud of his purchase and his taste, that he thought 
 she must be crying for joy. He took her in his big, 
 awkward arms, and encouraged her by saying: "Why, 
 God bless you, wife, don't cry. Why, — you de- 
 served it. If I had known you wanted a dress like 
 this that badly I would have given it to you long ago. 
 Go, — put it right on, — and wear it out, — wear it 
 every day; and as soon as it is worn out I'll get you 
 another one just like it." 
 
 21. What's the use? This man loved this woman, 
 but he never thought about her. He thought of her 
 but never about her. What's the use of being loved 
 by people who never take time to think us over? If 
 you are going to make a woman happy you must 
 make her happy in her way. Why, even a man likes 
 to be understood. 
 
 Of course, the question of appreciation with a man 
 is not so important. We men are not supposed to 
 suffer keenly. We have no sensibilities. We are just 
 crude, coarse, virile, masculine animals. But even a 
 man will notice a sentiment if you make it plain 
 enough ; and as one of our plainsmen puts it "Even a 
 man wouldn't like to get a side-saddle for a Christ- 
 mas present." 
 
 Some one should make an effective plea for man's 
 domestic rights. There is a worldwide movement on 
 to give woman her political rights, and woman has 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 231 
 
 suffered and lost much, but she has not lost in the 
 political realm anything half so sacred or important as 
 man has lost in the feminization of the American 
 homes. From an architectural standpoint and a dec- 
 orative standpoint our homes are feminine. There are 
 few pictures on the walls that a man would have 
 chosen; and the furniture in its outlines and treat- 
 ment and use is feminine — chairs bought by women 
 for women never fit a man. The woman in defense, 
 may say that the man in the modern home has his li- 
 brary or den that he can call his own. That is as 
 far as it goes — he can call it his own, but twice a 
 week the woman will invade it and hide everything a 
 man owns. A man needs little space, but what he 
 needs should be sacred. When a man puts a thing in 
 a place, six weeks, six months or six years later, he 
 should find it there. The one domestic instinct you 
 can depend on in a man is this : When a man puts a 
 thing in any place he wants to find it where he put 
 it. Or where he thinks he put it. A plea for man's 
 domestic rights would probably do little good. If he 
 asserts himself and buys a stand for his little home, 
 where he can lay his newspapers and magazines and 
 glasses, the very next day when he comes to look at 
 that stand, there will be a doily on the top of it. There 
 is no remedy just now. "Cheer up ; there is no hope," 
 is the best advice. 
 
 This statement would not be made in behalf of the 
 man and masculine rights in the home if it were not 
 for the American boy. But nearly all of the mascu- 
 line amusements, the games that men like to play, have 
 been driven from the homes. Men have spent hun- 
 
232 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 dreds of millions of dollars to erect lodges and club 
 rooms that would never have been built if houses had 
 been masculine as well as feminine in their arrange- 
 ment and atmosphere. Now, the man has provided 
 for himself, and the public amusement hall has taken 
 the place of domestic games and pleasures. 
 
 22. The Y. M. C. A. is caring for the young man, 
 but the young boy is still without his rights. He grows 
 up on the streets and is cursed because he fails at the 
 task of making "bricks without straw". At the age 
 of from five to fifteen the American boys' club house 
 is the public street. Some of the cities have even 
 failed to provide playgrounds and parks, and the mor- 
 alists wonder at the degeneracy of the American boy. 
 It is a wonder that he is as good as he is. 
 
 A mother, who is somewhat typical, tried to explain 
 by saying that boys do not take care of their things ; 
 that they do not appreciate what is done for them, 
 and that they are the most ungrateful little animals in 
 nature, and then gave her own experience. She said : 
 "There is a boy and a girl in my family. I made up 
 my mind that there should be no jealousy between 
 them. There were two rooms in the house, and I fit- 
 ted them up — one for the boy and one for the girl. 
 My daughter was perfectly delighted; and the boy 
 never acted so mean about anything in his life as he 
 did about that room, in spite of the fact that I fixed 
 them up just exactly alike." 
 
 And this poor, good mother doesn't know yet why 
 her boy was disgusted. Why couldn't she fix this room 
 up for her boy in the boy way ? On the bed she could 
 have put a fine leather spread, left the carpet from the 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 233 
 
 floor, put in a punching bag that he could hit and take 
 out his spite on, give him some indian clubs and dumb 
 bells, fish lines, hooks, poles, thread, rope, pulleys, old 
 pieces of machinery, wheels, horseshoes, stilts, bows 
 and arrows, cross-guns, balls and bats, screws, rings, 
 nails and — some things. 
 
 We know, of course, that he would have taken care 
 of them in the boy's way. Everyone knows how or- 
 derly boys are. A boy wants a set of tools like his 
 father's. He will put them in the same place every 
 time, where they are handy, and he can easily put his 
 hands on them, and always in the same place — al- 
 ways in the same place — on the floor. And then his 
 mother, if she has nerves instead of good sense, will 
 look at the tools on the floor, and cry out: "I just 
 can't have it — this disorder — I can't have it." 
 
 Why not? The woman has the hall, the parlor, the 
 sitting-room, the dining-room, the library and music- 
 room, if the house is large; the kitchen, the pantry, 
 her own room and the girls', as she wants them. Why 
 can't the boy have a place ten feet square, dedicated 
 to himself, and have it as he wants it? But the good 
 woman says : "No good housekeeper — " Ah ! there 
 is the trouble. You can hire a colored porter to keep 
 a house, but it takes a sensible mother to keep a home ; 
 and my particular plea is for the home — not for the 
 perfect housekeeping. 
 
 23. It is frequently asked, why a plea for Heredity 
 or Sour Grapes instead of a plea for Environment is 
 presented. The answer is that heredity is so inevita- 
 ble, so final. The humorist has asked the young peo- 
 ple to pick out their own fathers and mothers; but it 
 
234 TH E DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ever remains true that when young womanhood ac- 
 cepts a husband, the bride chooses the father of the 
 children ; and the young man who goes courting, picks 
 out the mother of the children that must bear his 
 name; and that choice is final. The saddest specta- 
 cle in all this world of ours is the sight of a child 
 that blushes for the parent. It seems unnecessary 
 just now to make a plea for environment, for all the 
 social forces are organized to emphasize that word. 
 It has been emphasized, but as yet we have not se- 
 cured satisfactory results. The author chose to em- 
 phasize the word ''heredity" because people can choose 
 their environment. 
 
 If a man finds the city where he lives is not the best 
 in the matter of climate or moral conditions, for the 
 rearing of his children, he can move. If he is rich 
 he can afford it, and if he is poor it won't cost him 
 anything. Not only that, but the environment of a 
 community can be changed. If the intelligent people 
 of any community so desire, by organization they may 
 make an environment that will be healthy and normal 
 for their children. It seems wise, therefore, in con- 
 cluding the argument, to appeal to something deeper 
 than environment — the character spirit out of which 
 good social environment springs — the fight spirit — 
 courage. 
 
 The man who finds he has a tendency to tuberculo- 
 sis does not need to accept an office position. He can 
 work in God's out-of-doors and take advantage of his 
 own weakness. The crippled boy does not need to go 
 in for the athletic career. He can take advantage of 
 his own weakness. The man with a weak will does 
 
SOUR GRAPHS 235 
 
 not need to do mission work in the slums, nor work in 
 a store next to a bar. He can fight, and fight intelli- 
 gently. To tell people that their characters are the 
 product of environment is to lose the fight. It is bet- 
 ter to say to the young man : "Get into the battle line 
 and if you get a bullet in the lungs, and the froth 
 blood is on your lips, when the bugle sounds the 
 charge, start forward ; and if you must come to the 
 earth, strike it, a corpse. The brave soldier dies on 
 his feet. Die fighting, and die at the last ditch." 
 
 24. Every young man who is discouraged in the 
 battle of life, needs to hear the story of Charlie — and 
 if Charlie made the fight he made, the rest of us can 
 make ours. This young boy came down to the uni- 
 versity, thin-chested, large-eyed and nervous. His 
 father was a scholar, and the son had a good brain; 
 but his mind was flowering in an enfeebled body. We 
 gave him a medical examination and found that our 
 first duty was to his body. We led him to the gymna- 
 sium and brought him face to face with a chest 
 weight. 
 
 He put his thin, white fingers about the handles, and 
 started to draw them back, but cried out, "I can't do 
 that. It hurts every muscle in my body." The hand 
 of faith and courage was upon his shoulder in a mo- 
 ment, and the instructor was ready with the reply : 
 "I thought you came here to be a man. You have a 
 good brain and you can't afford to waste it in a weak 
 body. Your medical record shows that for generations 
 there has been this physical weakness in your family. 
 Now, take hold of the handles, and when I give the 
 count you are not to let go." 
 
236 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 Thin lips came down over tightly clenched teeth, 
 and we heard the boy mutter: "If you say it can be 
 done, I will do it." He drew the handles steadily 
 back, and God's fresh air rushed in and filled the cells 
 of his lungs. It was fight, day after day; fight, week 
 after week ; fight, month after month ; fight, year after 
 year. He pulled the handles through all the various 
 motions, until his head was erect, his shoulders back, 
 and he walked up and down the streets of that col- 
 leeg town looking like a man; — and then came the 
 week of graduation. 
 
 The boys were in the gymnasium for the last time. 
 They all marched down the old gymnasium to the 
 rhythm of music, swinging easily, and in single file, 
 crossed over and down the opposite side, each turning 
 gracefully in his place for the tests of endurance. 
 Charlie, the last in the line, planted his feet on the 
 floor, braced his knees, and when the count was given 
 for the test of endurance, the one, two and three of 
 command, he drew the handle steadily back; the 
 blood was surging now from finger tips to toes; the 
 heart was making merry music ; the flush on the neck 
 and cheek and temple showed how the red corpuscles 
 had multiplied. Again and again to the steady one, 
 two and three he drew the handles back, and smiled 
 into the face of the old machine as much as to say, 
 "I have conquered you." 
 
 "Out of the night that covers me, 
 Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
 I thank whatever gods may be 
 For my unconquerable soul. 
 
SOUR GRAPES 237 
 
 "In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud; 
 Under the bludgeoning of chance 
 My head is bloody but unbowed. 
 
 "It matters not how straight the gate, 
 
 How charged with punishment the scroll ; 
 I am the master of my fate ; 
 I am the captain of my soul.'' 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 
 By Henry W. Grady 
 
 Henry W. Grady was born in Athens, Georgia, April 24, 
 1850. He was graduated from the State University of Geor- 
 gia and took post-graduate work at the University of Vir- 
 ginia. He became a journalist, being connected with the 
 New York Herald as Southern correspondent. Later he 
 edited the Rome (Georgia) Daily Commercial and the Atlanta 
 Herald. In 1880 he bought a part interest in the Atlanta Con- 
 stitution and became its editor, which position he retained 
 until his death, December 23, 1889. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that journalism was his life 
 work, he is best known as an orator. His career in this 
 respect was short but brilliant. He studied hard while in 
 college to perfect his speaking style, this being the main object 
 of his study at the University of Virginia. It was not until 
 1886, however, that he came into national prominence as an 
 orator. His speech on "The New South," delivered before 
 the New England Society at its annual banquet in New York 
 City, won him a national reputation over night. Perhaps his 
 best known speech is "The Race Problem in the South," 
 delivered at the annual banquet of the Boston Merchants' 
 Association. Joel Chandler Harris says of it that it "reaches 
 the high water mark of modern oratory. It was his last, as 
 it was his best, contribution to the higher politics of the 
 country." 
 
 Mr. Grady's extended and varied experience as a journalist 
 gave him an exceptional background for his work as an ora- 
 tor. His passionate love for the South, his marvelous com- 
 mand of language, his sense of humor, and his instinctive 
 musical sense made him the most popular spokesman that "The 
 New South" has had. An untimely death cut short a career that 
 promised to be among the most brilliant that this country has 
 known. He died of a cold contracted in making the last and 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 239 
 
 greatest of his efforts. Ten days after "The Race Problem 
 in the South" was given in Boston, Grady lay dead at his 
 home in Atlanta. 
 
 The following two speeches are printed with the permis- 
 sion of Professor E. D. Shurter, of the University of Texas, 
 who has edited the complete works of Mr. Grady. 
 
 I. Mr. President: — Bidden by your invitation to 
 a discussion of the race problem — forbidden by oc- 
 casion to make a political speech — I appreciate, in 
 trying to reconcile orders with propriety, the perplex- 
 ity of the little maid, who, bidden to learn to swim, 
 was yet adjured, "Now, go, my darling; hang your 
 clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the wa- 
 ter." 
 
 The stoutest apostle of the Church, they say, is the 
 missionary, and the missionary, wherever he unfurls 
 his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of 
 unction and address than I, bidden tonight to plant the 
 standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's ban- 
 quet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in 
 the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. Pres- 
 ident, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and 
 sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast inter- 
 ests involved ; if a consecrating sense of what disaster 
 may follow further misunderstanding and estrange- 
 ment ; if these may be counted to steady undisciplined 
 speech and to strengthen an untried arm — then, sir, 
 I shall find the courage to proceed. 
 
 Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet 
 at last to press New England's historic soil and my 
 eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. 
 Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker 
 
240 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 Hill — where Webster thundered and Longfellow 
 sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached — 
 here, in the cradle of American letters and almost of 
 American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that 
 every American owes New England when first he 
 stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange ap- 
 parition ! This stern and unique figure — carved from 
 the ocean and the wilderness — its majesty kindling 
 and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars — 
 until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed 
 in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its 
 base — while startled kings and emperors gazed and 
 marveled that from the rude touch of this handful 
 cast on a bleak and unknown shore should have come 
 the embodied genius of human government and the 
 perfected model of human liberty ! God bless the mem- 
 ory of those immortal workers, and prosper the for- 
 tunes of their living sons — and perpetuate the in- 
 spiration of their handiwork. 
 
 2. Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New 
 York that caught the attention of the North. As I 
 stand here to reiterate, as I have done everywhere, 
 every word I then uttered — to declare that the sen- 
 timents I then avowed were universally approved in 
 the South — I realize that the confidence begotten by 
 that speech is largely responsible for my presence here 
 tonight. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that 
 confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by with- 
 holding one essential element of the truth. Apropos 
 of this last, let me confess, Mr. President, before the 
 praise of New England has died on my lips, that I 
 believe the best product of her present life is the pro- 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 241 
 
 cession of seventeen thousand Vermont Democrats 
 that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, un- 
 requited by birth or conversion, have marched over 
 their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots and 
 gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neigh- 
 bors, and awake to read the record of twenty-five 
 thousand Republican majority. May the God of the 
 helpless and the heroic help them, and may their 
 sturdy tribe increase ! 
 
 Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from this 
 section by a line — once defined in irrepressible dif- 
 ference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, 
 thank God, but a vanishing shadow — lies the fairest 
 and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a 
 brave and hospitable people. There is centered all that 
 can please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate 
 above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every 
 product of the temperate zone. There, by night the 
 cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the 
 wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the 
 same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, 
 and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. 
 There are mountains stored with exhaustless treas- 
 ures; forests — vast and primeval; and rivers that, 
 tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the 
 three essential items of all industries — cotton, iron 
 and wood — that region has easy control. In cot- 
 ton, a fixed monopoly — in iron, proven supremacy — 
 in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. 
 
 3. From this assured and permanent advantage, 
 against which artificial conditions cannot much longer 
 prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. 
 
242 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or cap- 
 ital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of 
 supply, but resting in divine assurance, within touch 
 of field and mine and forest — not set amid costly 
 farms from which competition has driven the farmer 
 in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with 
 agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set 
 a limit — this system of industries is mounting to a 
 splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. 
 That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home — 
 a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet 
 but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal 
 and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against that, 
 sir, we have New England, recruiting the Republic 
 from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded 
 hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land 
 all over with its energy and its courage. And yet — 
 while in the Eldorado of which I have told you but 
 fifteen per cent, of its lands are cultivated, its mines 
 scarcely touched, and its population so scant that, 
 were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice 
 could not be heard from Virginia to Texas — while 
 on the threshold of nearly every house in New Eng- 
 land stands a son, seeking, with troubled eyes, some 
 new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the 
 strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer 
 Northern-born citizens than she had in 1870 — fewer 
 in '70 than in '60. Why is this ? Why is it, sir, though 
 the section line be now but a mist that the breath may 
 dispel, fewer men of the North have crossed it over 
 to the South, than when it was crimson with the best 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 243 
 
 blood of the Republic, or even when the slaveholder 
 stood guard every inch of its way? 
 
 There can be but one answer. It is the very prob- 
 lem we are now to consider. The key that opens that 
 problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of 
 this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands 
 whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Bet- 
 ter than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for 
 thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comrade- 
 ship a million hands now witheld in doubt. Nothing, 
 sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, hin- 
 ders a clear understanding and a perfect union. Noth- 
 ing else stands between us and such love as bound 
 Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and York- 
 town, chastened by the sacrifices of Manassas and 
 Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better 
 work and a nobler destiny than was ever wrought with 
 the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth. 
 
 4. If this does not invite your patient hearing to- 
 night — hear one thing more. My people, your broth- 
 ers in the South — brothers in blood, in destiny, in 
 all that is best in our past and future — are so beset 
 with this problem that their very existence depends on 
 its right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for 
 its presence. The slave-ships of the Republic sailed 
 from your ports, the slaves worked in our fields. You 
 will not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But 
 I do here declare that in its wise and humane ad- 
 ministration in lifting the slave to heights of which 
 he had not dreamed in his savage home, and in giving 
 him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom, our 
 fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. 
 
244 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank 
 God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone 
 forever from American soil. But the free man re- 
 mains. With him, a problem without precedent or 
 parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly 
 dissimilar races on the same soil — with equal po- 
 litical and civil rights — almost equal in numbers, but 
 terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility — 
 each pledged against fusion — one for a century in 
 servitude to the other, and freed at last by a desolat- 
 ing war, the experiment sought by neither but ap- 
 proached by both with doubt, these are the conditions. 
 Under these, adverse at every point, we are required 
 to carry these two races in peace and honor to the 
 end. 
 
 5. Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal 
 stewardship. Never before in this Republic has the 
 white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The 
 red man was cut down as a weed because he hindered 
 the way of the American citizen. The yellow man 
 was shut out of this Republic because he is an alien, 
 and inferior. The red man was owner of the land — 
 the yellow man was highly civilized and assimilable — 
 but they hindered both sections and are gone! But 
 the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed 
 with every privilege of government and pinned to the 
 soil, and my people commanded to make good at any 
 hazard, and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of 
 American privilege and prosperity. It matters not 
 that every other race has been routed or excluded 
 without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wher- 
 ever the whites and blacks have touched, in any era 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 245 
 
 or in any clime, there has been an irreconcilable vio- 
 lence. It matters not that no two races, however sim- 
 ilar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same 
 soil with equal rights in peace ! In spite of these 
 things we are commanded to make good this change 
 of American policy which has not perhaps changed 
 American prejudice — to make certain here what has 
 elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks 
 — and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the 
 universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, 
 to this superhuman task with an impatience that 
 brooks no delay — a rigor that accepts no excuse — 
 and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sin- 
 cerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so in- 
 terwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot 
 disentangle it if we would — so bound up in our hon- 
 orable obligation to the world, that we would not if 
 we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it 
 into our hands, He alone can know. But this the 
 weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve 
 it with less than your tolerant and patient sympa- 
 thy — with less than the knowledge that the blood 
 that runs in your veins is our blood — and that, when 
 we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or 
 won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and 
 hear the beating of your approving hearts ! 
 
 6. The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men 
 of the South, the men whose genius made glorious 
 every page of the first seventy years of American his- 
 tory — whose courage and fortitude you tested in five 
 years of the fiercest war — whose energy has made 
 bricks without straw and spread splendor amid the 
 
246 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ashes of their war-wasted homes — these men wear 
 this problem in their hearts and brains, by day and by 
 night. They realize, as you cannot, what this prob- 
 lem means — what they owe to this kindly and de- 
 pendent race — the measure of their debt to the world 
 in whose despite they defended and maintained slav- 
 ery. And though their feet are hindered in its under- 
 growth, and their march cumbered with its burdens, 
 they have lost neither the patience from which comes 
 clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. 
 Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed to 
 them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid 
 abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God 
 they may never go, are they struck with more of ap- 
 prehension than is needed to complete their consecra- 
 tion ! 
 
 Such is the temper of my people. But what of the 
 problem itself? Mr. President, we need not go one 
 step further unless you concede right here that the 
 people I speak for are as honest, as sensible and as 
 just as your people, seeking as earnestly as you would 
 in their place to rightly solve the problem that touches 
 them at every vital point. If you insist that they are 
 ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun 
 to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my 
 self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But ad- 
 mit that they are men of common sense and common 
 honesty, wisely modifying an environment they can- 
 not wholly disregard — guiding and controlling as 
 best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either 
 race — compensating error with frankness, and re- 
 trieving in patience what they lost in passion, and con- 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 247 
 
 scious all the time that wrong means ruin — admit 
 this, and we may reach an understanding tonight. 
 
 7. The President of the United States, in his late 
 message to Congress, discussing the plea that the 
 South should be left to solve this problem, asks : "Are 
 they at work upon it? What solution do they offer? 
 When will the black man cast a free ballot? When 
 will he have the civil rights that are his?" I shall not 
 here protest against a partisanry that, for the first time 
 in our history, in the time of peace, has stamped with 
 the great seal of our government a stigma upon the 
 people of a great and loyal section; though I grate- 
 fully remember that the great dead soldier, who held 
 the helm of State for the eight stormiest years of re- 
 construction, never found need for such a step; and 
 though there is no personal sacrifice I would not make 
 to remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my 
 people from the archives of my country ! But, sir, 
 backed by a record, on every page of which is prog- 
 ress, I venture to make earnest and respectful answer 
 to the questions that are asked. We give to the world 
 this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth 
 $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses 
 and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come 
 from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It 
 comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and 
 gossip rise above the hum of industry, and content- 
 ment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that 
 this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I 
 present the tax books of Georgia, which show that 
 the negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in 
 Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property, worth 
 
248 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 
 
 twice that much. Does not that record honor him and 
 vindicate his neighbors? 
 
 8. What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so 
 well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring 
 the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you 
 a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, till- 
 ing their own land by day, and at night taking from 
 the lips of their children the helpful message their 
 State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And the 
 schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we 
 added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a 
 total of more than $1,000,000 — and this in the face 
 of prejudice not yet conquered and of the fact that 
 the whites are assessed for $368,000,000, the blacks 
 for $10,000,000, and yet forty-nine per cent, of the 
 beneficiaries are black children; and in the doubt of 
 many wise men if education helps, or can help, our 
 problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut 
 half in two since i860, pays more in proportion for 
 public schools than Boston. Although it is easier to 
 give much out of much than little out of little, the 
 South, with one-seventh of the taxable property of 
 the country, with relatively larger debt, having re- 
 ceived only one-twelfth as much public land, and hav- 
 ing back of its tax books none of the half billion of 
 bonds that enrich the North — and though it pays an- 
 nually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions — yet 
 gives nearly one-sixth of the public school fund. The 
 South since 1865 has spent $122,000,000 in education, 
 and this year is pledged to $37,000,000 more for State 
 and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thir- 
 tieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half of the fund. Go 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 249 
 
 into our fields and see whites and blacks working 
 side by side; on our buildings in the same squad; in 
 our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd 
 the whites from work, or lower wages by their 
 greater need and simpler habits, and yet are permit- 
 ted, because we want to bar them from no avenue in 
 which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not 
 there be elected orators of white universities, as they 
 have been here, but they do enter there a hundred use- 
 ful trades that are closed against them here. We 
 hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the gar- 
 den than to water the exotic in the window. 
 
 9. In the South there are negro lawyers, teachers, 
 editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying with 
 the increasing ability of their race to support them. 
 In villages and towns they have their military com- 
 panies equipped from the armories of the State, their 
 churches and societies built and supported largely by 
 their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? 
 In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies 
 to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigat- 
 ing punishment for crime, that we might save, as far 
 as possible, this dependent race from its own weak- 
 ness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent of the 
 prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro 
 criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may 
 judge his case. 
 
 In the North, one negro in every 466 is in jail — in 
 the South, only one in 1865. In the North the percent- 
 age of negro prisoners is six times as great as that 
 of native whites ; in the South, only four times as 
 great. If prejudice wrongs him in Southern courts, 
 
250 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 the record shows it to be deeper in Northern courts. 
 I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as 
 the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my 
 assertion, that in the Southern courts, from highest to 
 lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the ne- 
 gro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt 
 to be overreached, oppressed — and that this advan- 
 tage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to 
 the judge in measuring his sentence. 
 
 Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained 
 that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing 
 hands comes every year $1,000,000,000 of farm 
 crops? Or have robbed a people who, twenty-five 
 years from unrewarded slavery, have amassed in one 
 state $20,000,000 of property? Or that we intend to 
 oppress the people we are arming every day? Or de- 
 ceive them, when we are educating them to the utmost 
 limit of our ability? Or outlaw them, when we work 
 side by side with them? Or re-enslave them under 
 legal forms, when for their benefit we have even im- 
 prudently narrowed the limit of felonies and miti- 
 gated the severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as 
 you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the 
 bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give 
 to my people tonight the fair and unanswerable con- 
 clusion of these incontestable facts. 
 
 10. But it is claimed that under this fair seeming 
 there is disorder and violence. This I admit. And 
 there will be until there is one ideal community on 
 earth after which we may pattern. But how widely 
 is it misjudged ! It is hard to measure with exactness 
 whatever touches the negro. His helplessness, his is- 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 251 
 
 olation, his century of servitude, — these dispose us 
 to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposi- 
 tion, inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led 
 to injustice and delusion. Lawless men may ravage 
 a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an incident — 
 in the South, a drunken row is declared to be the fixed 
 habit of the community. Regulators may whip vag- 
 abonds in Indiana by platoons and it scarcely arrests 
 attention — a chance collision in the South among 
 relatively the same classes is gravely accepted as evi- 
 dence that one race is destroying the other. We might 
 as well claim that the Union was ungrateful to the 
 colored soldier who followed its flag because a Grand 
 Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro 
 veteran as for you to give racial significance to every 
 incident in the South, or to accept exceptional grounds 
 as the rule of our society. I am not one of those who 
 becloud American honor with the parade of the out- 
 rages of either section, and belie American character 
 by declaring them to be significant and representa- 
 tive. I prefer to maintain that they are neither, and 
 stand for nothing but the passion and sin of our poor 
 fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no 
 stronger than its weakest part, I should despair of 
 both sections. But, knowing that society, sentient 
 and responsible in every fiber, can mend and repair 
 until the whole has the strength of the best, I de- 
 spair of neither. These gentlemen who come with me 
 here, knit into Georgia's busy life as they are, never 
 saw, I dare assert, an outrage committed on a negro ! 
 And if they did, no one of you would be swifter to 
 prevent or punish. It is through them, and the men 
 
252 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 and women who think with them — making ntne- 
 tenths of every Southern community — that these 
 two races have been carried thus far with less of vio- 
 lence than would have been possible anywhere else on 
 earth. And in their fairness and courage and stead- 
 fastness — more than in all the laws that can be 
 passed, or all the bayonets that can be mustered — 
 is the hope of our future. 
 
 ii. When will the blacks cast a free ballot? When 
 ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will of 
 the intelligent; when the laborer anywhere casts a 
 vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the 
 poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the 
 rich; when the strong and steadfast do not every- 
 where control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless — ■ 
 then, and not until then, will the ballot of the negro be 
 free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. 
 President, not in prejudice against the blacks — not 
 in sectional estrangement — not in the hope of po- 
 litical dominion — but in a deep and abiding necessity. 
 Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote — 
 clannish, credulous, impulsive, and passionate — ■ 
 tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible 
 to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in 
 that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and 
 taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, 
 it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties 
 through logical currents, for it lacks political convic- 
 tion and even that information on which conviction 
 must be based. It must remain a faction — strong 
 enough in every community to control on the slightest 
 division of the whites. Under that division it becomes 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 253 
 
 the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous of both par- 
 ties. Its credulity is imposed upon, its patience in- 
 flamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses misdirected 
 — and even its superstition made to play its part in a 
 campaign in which every interest of society is jeo- 
 pardized and every approach to the ballot-box de- 
 bauched. It is against such campaigns as this — the 
 folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every 
 Southern community has drunk deeply — that the 
 white people of the South are banded together. Just 
 as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300.000 
 men, not one in a hundred able to read his ballot — 
 banded in race instinct, holding against you the mem- 
 ory of a century of slavery, taught by your late con- 
 querors to distrust and oppose you, had already tra- 
 vestied legislation from our State House, and in every 
 species of folly or villiany had wasted your substance 
 and exhausted your credit. 
 
 12. But admitting the right of the whites to unite 
 against this tremendous menace, we are challenged 
 with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flip- 
 pantly charged to be evidence and has now been sol- 
 emnly and ofricially declared to be proof of political 
 turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Vir- 
 ginia — a state now under fierce assault for this al- 
 leged crime — cast in 1888 seventy-five per cent, of 
 her vote; Massachusetts, the State in which I speak, 
 sixty per cent, of her vote. Was it suppression in Vir- 
 ginia and natural causes in Massachusetts ? Last month 
 Virginia cast sixty-nine per cent, of her vote; and 
 Massachusetts, fighting in every district, cast only 
 forty-nine per cent, of hers. If Virginia is condemned 
 
254 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 because thirty-one per cent, of her vote was silent, how 
 shall this State escape, in which fifty-one per cent, was 
 dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen 
 Southern States in '88 cast sixty-seven per cent, of 
 their total vote — the six New England States but sixty- 
 three per cent, of theirs. By what fair rule shall the 
 stigma be put upon one section while the other es- 
 capes? A congressional election in New York last 
 week, with the polling places in touch of every voter, 
 brought out only 6,000 votes of 28,000 — and the lack 
 of opposition is assigned as the natural cause. In a 
 district in my State, in which an opposition speech 
 has not been heard in ten years and the polling places 
 are miles apart — under the unfair reasoning of which 
 my section has been a constant victim — the small 
 vote is charged to be proof of forcible suppression. In 
 Virginia an average majority of 10,000, by a hopeless 
 division of the minority, was raised to 40,000; in 
 Iowa, in the same election, a majority of 32,000 was 
 wiped out and an opposition majority of 8,000 was es- 
 tablished. The change of 40,000 votes in Iowa is ac- 
 cepted as political revolution — in Virginia an in- 
 crease of 30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be 
 proof of political fraud. 
 
 13. It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger 
 percentage of the vote is not regularly cast. But more 
 inexplicable that this should be so in New England 
 than in the South. What invites the negro to the bal- 
 lot-box? He of all men knows that it has promised 
 him most and yielded him least. His first appeal to 
 suffrage was the promise of "forty acres and a mule" ; 
 his second, the threat that Democratic success meant 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 255 
 
 his re-enslavement. Both have been proved false in 
 his experience. He looked for a home, and he got the 
 Freedman's Bank. He fought under promise of the 
 loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Dis- 
 couraged and deceived, he has realized at last that his 
 best friends are his neighbors with whom his lot is 
 cast, and whose prosperity is bound up in his — and 
 that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate 
 the loss of their confidence and sympathy that is at 
 last his best and enduring hope. And so, without 
 leaders or organization — and lacking the resolute 
 heroism of my party friends in Vermont that make 
 their hopeless march over the hills a high and inspir- 
 ing pilgrimage — he shrewdly measures the occa- 
 sional agitator, balances his little account with poli- 
 tics, touches up his mule, and jogs down the furrow, 
 letting the mad world wag as it will. 
 
 The negro voter can never control in the South, and 
 it would be well if partisans at the North would un- 
 derstand this. I have seen the white people of a State 
 set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. 
 But, sir, some brave men, banding them together, 
 would rise as Elisha rose in beleagured Samaria, and, 
 touching their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad to 
 see the very air "filled with the chariots of Israel and 
 the horsemen thereof. 
 
 14. If there is any human force that cannot be with- 
 stood, it is the power of the banded intelligence and 
 responsibility of a free community. Against it. num- 
 bers and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be for- 
 bidden in the law, or divorced in force. It is the 
 inalienable right of every free community — the just 
 
256 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 and righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt 
 suffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely in the South. 
 Not the cowardly menace of mask or shotgun, but the 
 peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility, 
 massed and unified for the protection of its homes and 
 the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our "reli- 
 ance and our hope", and against it all the powers of 
 earth shall not prevail. It is just as certain that Vir- 
 ginia would come back to the unchallenged control of 
 her white race — that before the moral and material 
 power of her people once more unified, opposition 
 would crumble until its last desperate leader was left 
 alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts — 
 as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the 
 sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not 
 avail. You may surrender your own liberties to fed- 
 eral election law; you may submit, in fear of a ne- 
 cessity that does not exist, that the very form of this 
 government may be changed; you may invite federal 
 interference with the New England town meeting, that 
 has been for a hundred years the guarantee of local 
 government in America — this old State which holds 
 in its charter the boast that it "is a free and independ- 
 ent commonwealth" — it may deliver its election ma- 
 chinery into the hands of the government it helped to 
 create — but never, sir, will a single State of this 
 Union, North or South, be delivered again to the con- 
 trol of an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our 
 state governments from negro supremacy when the 
 Federal drumbeat rolled closer to the ballot-box, and 
 Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will ever 
 again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 257 
 
 though the cannon of this Republic thundered in every 
 voting district in the South, we still should find in the 
 mercy of God the means and the courage to prevent 
 its re-establishment. 
 
 15. I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this 
 problem, stands in seeming estrangement to the 
 North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path 
 down which the white people of the South, divided, 
 may walk in peace and honor, I will take that path, 
 though I take it alone — for at its end,, and nowhere 
 else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my 
 section and the full restoration of this Union. But, 
 sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South 
 would have been divided and the Republic united. His 
 enfranchisement — against which I enter no protest — 
 holds the South united and compact. What solution, 
 then, can we offer for the problem? Time alone 
 can disclose it to us. We simply report progress, and 
 ask your patience. If the problem be solved at all — 
 and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has 
 it been — it will be solved by the people -most deeply 
 bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its 
 solution. I had rather see my people render back this 
 question rightly solved than to see them gather all the 
 spoils over which faction has contended since Cataline 
 conspired and Caesar fought. Meantime we treat the 
 negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fullness 
 the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in 
 the steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may no 
 longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and the sport 
 of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in 
 which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his train- 
 
258 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ing and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and 
 friendship — and to pin him to the soil with owner- 
 ship, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearth- 
 stone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can 
 never know. And we gather him into that alliance 
 of intelligence and responsibility that, though it now 
 runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and 
 intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in 
 our judgment, and justified in the progress already 
 made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the 
 end. 
 
 1 6. The love we feel for that race, you cannot meas- 
 ure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of 
 my old black mammy, from her home up there, looks 
 down to bless, and through the tumult of this night 
 steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years 
 ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling 
 to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch 
 a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pil- 
 lars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the 
 golden air. I see women with strained and anxious 
 faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come 
 down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a 
 big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch 
 of loving hands — now worn and wrinkled, but fairer 
 to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and 
 stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal 
 man — as they lay a mother's blessing there, while at 
 her knees — the truest altar I yet have found — I 
 thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because 
 her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 259 
 
 chamber door, put a black man's loyalty between her 
 and danger. 
 
 I catch another vision. The crisis of battle — a 
 soldier, struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuf- 
 fling through the smoke, winding his black arms about 
 the fallen form; reckless of hurtling death — bending 
 his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the 
 stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that 
 he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see 
 him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncom- 
 plaining patience, praying with all his humble heart 
 that God will lift his master up, until death comes in 
 mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal 
 the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave — 
 mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death 
 of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see 
 him, when the mould is heaped and the great drama 
 of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast 
 eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange 
 fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his 
 shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and 
 brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice, 
 saying, "Follow him ! put your arms about him in his 
 need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as 
 he was mine. And out into this new world — strange 
 to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both — I fol- 
 low ! And may God forget my people — when they 
 forget these! 
 
 17. Whatever the future may hold for them, 
 whether they plod along in the servitude from which 
 they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was 
 laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to 
 
a6o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 bear the cross of the fainting Christ — whether they 
 find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the proph- 
 ecy of the psalmist, who said, "And suddenly Ethiopia 
 shall hold out her hands unto God" — whether for- 
 ever dislocated and separate, they remain a weak peo- 
 ple, beset by stronger, and exist, as the Turk, who 
 lives in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of 
 Europe — or whether in this miraculous Republic they 
 break through the caste of twenty centuries, and, bely- 
 ing universal history, reach the full stature of citizen- 
 ship, and in peace maintain it — we shall give them 
 uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And what- 
 ever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we 
 may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we beat* 
 this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its' serv- 
 ice. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new 
 loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the tem- 
 ple of our hopes, and whose arm was clothed with our 
 strength, renewed his allegiance to this Government at 
 Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be 
 false, and he spoke for every honest man from Mary- 
 land to Texas. From that day to this Hamilcar has 
 nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred 
 and vengeance, but everywhere to loyalty and to love. 
 Witness the veteran standing at the base of a Confed- 
 erate monument, above the graves of his comrades, 
 his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring 
 the young men about him to serve as earnest and loyal 
 citizens the Government against which their fathers 
 fought. This message, delivered from that sacred 
 presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows ! 
 And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always 
 
RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 261 
 
 equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir, if 
 need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought 
 to dissolve. 
 
 18. Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see 
 it, such is the temper in which we approach it, such the 
 progress made. What do we ask of you? First, pa- 
 tience; out of this alone can come perfect work. 
 Second, confidence ; in this alone can you judge fairly. 
 Third, sympathy ; in this you can help us best. 
 
 Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you 
 plant your capital in millions, send your sons that 
 they may know how true are our hearts and may help 
 to swell the Anglo-Saxon current until it can carry 
 without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to 
 the Republic — for there is sectionalism in loyalty as 
 in estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty 
 that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachu- 
 setts — that knows no South, no North, no East, no 
 West, but endears with equal and patriotic love every 
 foot of our soil, every State of our Union. 
 
 A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels 
 every one of us tonight to lose in patriotic consecra- 
 tion whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, 
 are Americans — and we stand for human liberty ! 
 The uplifting force of the American idea is under 
 every throne on earth. France, Brazil — these are 
 our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft 
 and oppression — this is our mission ! And we shall 
 not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of His 
 millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the 
 ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. 
 Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding 
 
262 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 miracle, from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, all the 
 way — aye, even from the hour when from the voice- 
 less and traceless ocean a new world rose to the sight 
 of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth 
 centennial of that stupendous day — when the old 
 world will come to marvel and to learn amid our 
 gathered treasures — let us resolve to crown the mir- 
 acles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, 
 compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love — 
 loving from the Lakes to the Gulf — the wounds of 
 war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and 
 resplendent at the summit of human achievement and 
 earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear 
 the way up which all the nations of the earth must 
 come in God's appointed time ! 
 
THE NEW SOUTH 
 Henry W. Grady 
 
 19. "There was a South of slavery and secession: 
 that South is dead. There is a South of union and 
 freedom: that South, thank God, is living, breathing, 
 growing every hour." These words, delivered from 
 the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany 
 Hall in 1866, true then and truer now, I shall make 
 my text tonight. 
 
 I beg that you will bring your full faith in Ameri- 
 can fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I 
 shall say. There was an old preacher once who told 
 some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read 
 in the morning. The boys, finding the place, glued to- 
 gether the connecting pages. The next morning he 
 read at the bottom of one page, "When Noah was 
 one hundred and twenty years old he took unto him- 
 self a wife who was" — then turning the page — 
 "140 cubits long, 40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood, 
 and covered with pitch inside and out." He was nat- 
 urally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, 
 and then said: "My friends, this is the first time I 
 ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an evi- 
 dence of the assertion that we are fearfully and won- 
 derfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith 
 tonight, I could proceed cheerfully to the task I oth- 
 erwise approach with a sense of consecration. 
 
 My friend Dr. Talmage has told you that the typi- 
 cal American has yet to come. Eet me tell you that 
 
264 TH % DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, 
 are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of 
 these colonies, Puritans and Cavaliers, — from the 
 straightening of their purposes and the crossing of 
 their blood, slow perfecting through a century, — 
 came he who stands as the first typical American, the 
 first who comprehended within himself all the strength 
 and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this re- 
 public — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his 
 ardent nature were fused the virtues of both and in 
 the depths of his great soul the faults of both were 
 lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cav- 
 alier, in that he was American, and that in his honest 
 form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces 
 of his ideal government — charging it with such tre- 
 mendous meaning and so elevating it above human suf- 
 fering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, 
 came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the 
 cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the 
 traditions and honoring his fathers, build with rever- 
 ent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, 
 in which all types are honored ; and in our common 
 glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare 
 for your forefathers and for mine. 
 
 20. In speaking to the toast with which you have 
 honored me, I accept the term, "The New South", as 
 in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me, sir, 
 is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my 
 people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they 
 won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught 
 from the splendor and grace of their civilization — 
 
THE NEW SOUTH 265 
 
 never equalled and perhaps never to be equalled in its 
 chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, 
 not through protest against the Old, but because of 
 new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, 
 new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address 
 myself. 
 
 Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's 
 hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has 
 told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war 
 they came back to you, marching with proud and vic- 
 torious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes ! 
 Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army 
 that sought its home at the close of the late war; an 
 army that marched home in defeat and not in vic- 
 tory; in pathos and not in splendor; but in glory that 
 equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever wel- 
 comed heroes home? Let me picture to you the foot- 
 sore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded 
 gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to 
 his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face 
 southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. 
 
 Think of him as — ragged, half-starved, heavy- 
 hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having 
 fought to exhaustion — he surrenders his gun, wrings 
 the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his 
 tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the 
 graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap 
 over his brow and begins the slow and painful jour- 
 ney. What does he find — let me ask you who went 
 to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had 
 justly earned, full payment for four years' sacri- 
 fice — what does he find when, having followed the 
 
266 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dread- 
 ing death not half so much as surrender, he reaches 
 the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? 
 
 He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his 
 slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade 
 destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, 
 feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people 
 without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and 
 the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed 
 by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without 
 money, credit, employment, material, or training; and 
 besides all this confronted with the gravest problem 
 that ever met human intelligence — the establishing 
 of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. 
 
 21. What does he do — this hero in gray with a 
 heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and 
 despair? Not for a day. Surely God who had strip- 
 ped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adver- 
 sity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, 
 never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped 
 from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had 
 charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and 
 fields that ran red with human blood in April were 
 green with the harvest in June ; women reared in lux- 
 ury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their 
 husbands, and with a patience and heroism that fit 
 women always as a garment gave their hands to work. 
 There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and 
 frankness prevailed. 
 
 I want to say to General Sherman, — who is con- 
 sidered an able man in our parts, though some peo- 
 ple think he is a kind of careless man about fire, — 
 
THB NBW SOUTH 267 
 
 that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised 
 a brave and beautiful city ; that somehow or other we 
 have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of 
 our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble 
 prejudice or memory. 
 
 We have learned that one Northern immigrant is 
 worth fifty foreigners; and have smoothed the path 
 to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and 
 Dixon's line used to be, and hung out our latch-string 
 to you and yours. We have reached the point that 
 marks perfect harmony in every household, when the 
 husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks 
 are as good as those his mother used to bake ; and we 
 admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as 
 softly as it did before the war. We have established 
 thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love 
 with our work. We have restored comfort to homes 
 from which culture and elegance never departed. We 
 have let economy take root and spread among us as 
 rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's 
 cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the 
 Georgia Yankee — as he manufactures relics, of the 
 battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive 
 oil out of his cottonseed — against any Down-Easter 
 that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel saus- 
 age in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we know 
 that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" 
 a fuller independence for the South than that which 
 our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eleo- 
 quence, or compel in the field by their swords. 
 
 22. But what of the negro? 
 
 We understand that when Lincoln signed the Eman - 
 
268 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 cipation Proclamation, your victory was assured, for 
 he then committed you to the cause of human liberty, 
 against which the arms of man cannot prevail ; while 
 those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery 
 the "corner-stone" of the Confederacy, doomed us to 
 defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause 
 that reason could not defend or the sword maintain 
 in the sight of advancing civilization. 
 
 The relations of the Southern people with the ne- 
 gro are close and cordial. We remember with what 
 fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless 
 women and children, whose husbands and fathers were 
 fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be 
 it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own 
 liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he 
 raised his black and humble hands that the shackles 
 might be struck off, those hands were innocent of 
 wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be 
 taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty 
 and devotion. 
 
 Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled 
 him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the 
 South, with the North, protests against injustice to 
 this simple and sincere people. To liberty and en- 
 franchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. 
 The rest must be left to conscience and common sense. 
 It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, 
 with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose 
 prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelli- 
 gent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept 
 with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the con- 
 trary by those who assume to speak for us, or by 
 
THE NEW SOUTH 269 
 
 frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the 
 future, if the South holds her reason and integrity. 
 
 But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest 
 sense, yes. When Lee surrendered — I don't say when 
 Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still 
 alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last 
 as the time when he determined to abandon any fur- 
 ther prosecution of the struggle; when Lee surren- 
 dered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became, and 
 has since been, loyal to this Union. 
 
 We fought hard enough to know that we were 
 whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the 
 arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. 
 
 23. The Old South rested everything on slavery and 
 agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give 
 nor maintain healthy growth. The New South pre- 
 sents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the 
 popular movement : a social system compact and 
 closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but 
 stronger at the core ; a hundred farms for every plan- 
 tation, fifty homes for every palace ; and a diversified 
 industry that meets the complex need of this complex 
 age. 
 
 The New South is enamored of her new work. Her 
 soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light 
 of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is 
 thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and 
 prosperity. As she stands upright, full statured and 
 equal among the people of the earth, breathing the 
 keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, 
 she understands that her emancipation came because 
 through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest 
 
270 
 
 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were 
 beaten. 
 
 This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. 
 The South has nothing for which to apologize. She 
 believes that the late struggle between the States was 
 war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy; 
 and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I 
 should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South 
 and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain 
 in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. 
 In my native town of Athens is a monument that 
 crowns its central hill — a plain, white shaft. Deep 
 cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above 
 the names of men — that of a brave and simple man 
 who died in a brave and simple faith. Not for all the 
 glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all 
 the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in 
 his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall 
 send my children's children to reverence him who 
 ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, 
 speaking from the shadow of that memory which I 
 honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the 
 cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his 
 life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than 
 his or mine; and I am glad that the omniscient God 
 held the balance of battle in his Almighty hand, and 
 that human slavery was swept forever from Ameri- 
 can soil — the American Union saved from the wreck 
 of war. 
 
 24. This message, Mr. President, comes to you 
 from consecrated ground. Every foot of soil about 
 the city in which I live is as sacred as a battle-ground 
 
THE NEW SOUTH 271 
 
 of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed 
 to you by the blood of your brothers who died for 
 your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood 
 of those who died hopeless, but undaunted in defeat: 
 sacred soil to all of us ; rich with memories that make 
 us purer and stronger and better; silent but staunch 
 witnesses, in its red desolation, of thfc matchless valor 
 of American hearts and the deathless glory of Amer- 
 ican arms ; speaking an eloquent witness in its white 
 peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of Amer- 
 ican States and the imperishable brotherhood of the 
 American people. 
 
 Now, what answer has New England to this mes- 
 sage? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain 
 in the hearts of the conquerors when it has died in the 
 hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this 
 prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts — 
 which never felt the generous ardor of conflict — it 
 may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in 
 strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his 
 soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? 
 Will she make the vision of a restored and happy peo- 
 ple, which gathered above the couch of your dying 
 captain — filling his heart with grace, touching his 
 lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave 
 — will she make this vision on which the last sigh of 
 his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and 
 delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in ask- 
 ing for comradeship, must accept with dignity its re- 
 fusal ; but if she does not refuse to accept in frank- 
 ness and sincerity this message of good will and 
 friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, deliv- 
 
272 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ered in this very Society forty years ago amid tre- 
 mendous applause, become true, be verified in its full- 
 est sense, when he said : "Standing hand to hand and 
 clasping hands, we should remain united as we have 
 been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, 
 members of the same government, united, all united 
 now and united forever." There have been difficulties, 
 contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in 
 my judgment — 
 
 "Those opposed eyes, 
 Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, 
 All of one nature, of one substance, bred, 
 Did lately meet in the intestine shock 
 And furious close of civil butchery, 
 Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, 
 March all one way." 
 
THE RISE AXD FALL OF THE MUSTACHE 
 By Robert J. Burdette 
 
 Robert J. Burdette. humorist, lecturer and preacher, 
 was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, June 30, 1844. He 
 was educated in Illinois and served in the Union armies from 
 1862 to 1865. He became a journalist, and was assistant edi- 
 tor of the Burlington, Iowa, Buckeye, for several years. He 
 began to lecture in 1876. 
 
 While connected with the Peoria Transcript he collected 
 bits of humor to lighten the dull hours of his invalid wife, 
 and it was under her encouragement that these bits of hu- 
 mor grew into the lecture "The Rise and Fall of the Mus- 
 tache", herewith printed. 
 
 Years later he was called to the pastorate of the Baptist 
 Temple in Los Angeles. Here he used his gift of humor 
 to advantage, believing, with Beecher, "When you are iight- 
 the Devil, shoot him with anything", and his keen humor was 
 his greatest weapon. But it is as a lecturer that he is remem- 
 bered throughout the length and breadth of the United 
 States. His control over audiences was perfect and he 
 could take them from humor to pathos and back again with 
 r.:;.rvelous ease. As a lecture whose purpose was wholesome 
 entertainment "The Rise and Fall of the Mustache" has no 
 superior. He knew boyhood, and never lost his boyhood point 
 of view. At the same time his mature experience enabled him 
 to view human life in a kindly and sympathetic way. His 
 humor was always kindly, and his personality made him a 
 great favorite with popular audiences. 
 
 He died at his home in Pasedena, California, November 
 19, 1914. after an illness of two years. 
 
 He used to say that there was not only as much fun in the 
 world as there ever was but a great deal more, because "there 
 are more people in it, and people are the funniest things on 
 this side of the grave". 
 
 The following reprint of the lecture is made with the 
 
274 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 gracious permission of Mrs. Burdette, and of the Bobbs-Mer- 
 rill Company, publishers, of Indianapolis, Indiana. It may be 
 found, with several other writings of Mr. Burdette, in the 
 book "Old Time and Young Tom", published by the Bobbs- 
 Merrill Company. 
 
 In making assignments the teacher should select from 
 the forty-one assignments in this lecture such as best suit the 
 class, leaving the others out. 
 
 I. Once upon a time — last night, last week, a 
 month ago, a year, five, ten years ago — something 
 like that, I had a dream that I remember to this day, 
 and that in itself is remarkable, for few dreams are 
 made of stuff that endures. The dream you had last 
 night you told this morning at the breakfast table very 
 well, and everybody recognized it as a dream, because 
 of its vivid unreality ; but when you told it at noon it 
 began to frazzle out at the edges ; and when you told 
 it this evening at the dinner table you made it up as 
 you went along, every word of it, and everybody knew 
 it, because it didn't sound anything like a dream. 
 
 But I think that to every man and woman God sends 
 one dream in a lifetime that lasts so long as life lasts — 
 one Bethel vision of loneliness and loving sympathy. 
 I dreamed I was a boy again. Not a great big, rol- 
 licking, football boy, trying to learn the new rules to 
 play them in the old way, but a wee tiny boy; so lit- 
 tle I couldn't sleep alone. So I was sleeping back in 
 the dear old place, with my head pillowed on my 
 mother's shoulder, that "blessed hollow of the shoul- 
 der" that Celia Thaxter said God made for some 
 tired human head to rest in. I was so happy sleeping 
 there that I woke up with an excess of comfort. I 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 275 
 
 reached out my hand for her with a child's caress, and 
 she wasn't there. Then I reached over on the other 
 side, and she wasn't there. Then I sat bolt upright in 
 the bed. There I was, half awake, half a hundred 
 years old, all alone, in the dark, and my mother was 
 gone. So homesick I was for her, I wanted to cry. 
 And then I laughed aloud to think how funny it 
 would sound to hear an old man crying in the night, 
 like a baby who wanted a drink. I put my head back 
 on the pillow, and I wished — oh, how earnestly I 
 wished ! — that I was back in the dear old place, where 
 I had been safe, safe, safe as I had never been since 
 I left it. For half a minute I foolishly wished I was 
 a boy again. But when I arose in the morning, when 
 I settled down to my work, and felt the highest and 
 noblest joy that comes into the soul of man or wom- 
 an — the delight of having work to do and the hap- 
 piness of doing it — I was so glad I wasn't a boy, and 
 gladder still that never again in this life or in any 
 other would I be a boy. 
 
 2. But sometimes a man says, "Oh, I don't know 
 about that. I would like to be a boy again." "Why ?" 
 "Oh," he says, "a boy has such an easy time — no 
 trouble — no care — no responsibility." Yes, I know, 
 children have no troubles — only they have. They 
 have more troubles than grown-up people. I do sym- 
 pathize with grown-up people in trouble, but not 
 enough to hurt me or do them much good. If a man 
 got into a thousand troubles I would break my heart 
 over him. But he doesn't. He gets into the same 
 trouble a thousand times. That is different. I get 
 tired of it after I have pulled him out of the same old 
 
276 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 hole, by his long silken ears, on the Sabbath day, about 
 five hundred times. If he was anything but a man, by 
 that time he would have sense enough to go around 
 the hole or stay on his own side of it. 
 
 But a boy's troubles are all new, as he gets into one 
 and another and another until he has gone the whole 
 round of experimental experiences. He thought when 
 he landed on this planet, it was a good, sweet, tender- 
 hearted world, with a light caressing hand. Little by 
 little he learns there is cruelty, injustice, meanness 
 and treachery written on the calendar, even between 
 the lines of love and truth. He can't understand this. 
 It hurts him. He gets used to trouble by and by, as 
 grown-up people do. Just as the soldier under the 
 old system of military discipline would stand with his 
 wrists leashed to the stake and his back bared for the 
 punishment. 
 
 The sergeant standing at his side, counted with 
 cruel deliberation the descending blows of the lash. 
 When he got as far as "twenty — twenty-one — twen- 
 ty-two — " that didn't hurt so much. By that time the 
 soldier had caught the rhythm of the lash. He knew 
 the blow was coming; he braced his shoulders and 
 waited for it. His pride nerved him. His purpose of 
 revenge burned in his soul like a smouldering vol- 
 cano. You might whip the life out of him after that, 
 and you could not wring a moan from his set teeth. 
 But when the first blow uncoiled itself like a hissing 
 serpent on the surprised and quivering shoulders — 
 that startled the scream from him. That hurt. It had 
 the whole back to hit on, and it hit in an unexpected 
 place. It is the new trouble that hurts. 
 
RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 277 
 
 3. Think, then, what must have been the experience 
 of the first family in the human race, when all the 
 troubles in the world were not only new, but had to 
 be invented. Adam and Eve are the only people in 
 history who started out in life under the terrible hand- 
 icap of being born full-grown. They had scarcely 
 got their farm — the only one on earth — reduced to 
 a kind of weed-producing, weather-fighting, grange- 
 like order of things, with nothing to disturb the quiet, 
 happy, care-free, independent life of the jocund 
 farmer, except maybe a little rust in the oats; blight 
 in the wheat; army-worm in the corn; Colorado bee- 
 tles foraging the potato patch ; cutworms laying waste 
 the cucumbers ; curculio in the plums and borers per- 
 forating the apple-trees; a new kind of insect they 
 couldn't guess the name of desolating the pastures ; dry 
 weather burning up the barley ; wet weather rotting the 
 corn; too cold for the melons and too hot for the 
 strawberries ; chickens dying with the pip ; hogs being 
 gathered to their fathers with the cholera ; sheep fading 
 away with a complication of things no man could re- 
 member; horses getting along as well as could be ex- 
 pected, with a little spavin, ring-bone, wolf-teeth, dis- 
 temper, heaves, blind staggers, collar-chafes, saddle- 
 galls, colic now and then, foundering occasionally, ep- 
 izootic when there was nothing else ; cattle going wild 
 with the horn ail ; moth in the beehives ; snakes in the 
 milk-house ; moles in the kitchen garden — Adam had 
 just about got through breaking wild land with a 
 crooked stick, and settled down comfortably, when 
 the sound of the Boy was heard in the land. 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that Adam was probably 
 
278 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 the most troubled and worried man that ever lived? 
 I have often pictured him as a careworn-looking 
 man; a puzzled-looking farmer who would sigh fifty 
 times a day, and run his irresolute fingers through his 
 hair while he wondered what under the canopy he was 
 going to do with those boys, and whatever was going 
 to become of them. For you see they were the first 
 and only boys on earth. There were no other parents 
 in the neighborhood with whom Adam, in his mo- 
 ments of perplexity, could consult. There wasn't a 
 boy in the country with whom Adam's boys could play 
 and fight. And Adam had never been a boy himself ; 
 what could he know about boy nature or boy troubles 
 and pleasures? 
 
 4. Imagine, if you can, the celerity with which he 
 kicked off the leaves, and paced up and down in the 
 moonlight the first time little Cain made the welkin 
 ring when he had the colic. How could Adam know 
 what ailed him? He couldn't tell Eve that she had 
 been sticking the baby full of pins. He didn't even 
 know enough to turn the vociferous infant over on 
 his face and jolt him into serenity. If the fence cor- 
 ners on his farm had been overgrown with catnip, 
 never an idea had Adam what to do with it. It is 
 probable that after he got down on his knees and felt 
 for thorns or snakes or rats in the bad, and thor- 
 oughly examined young Cain for bites or scratches, 
 he passed him over to Eve with the usual remark : 
 
 ''There, take your baby" (accent heavy on "your"), 
 "and hush him up, for heaven's sake," and then went 
 off and sat down under^. distant tree with his fingers 
 in his ears, and perplexity in his brain, while young 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 279 
 
 Cain split the night with the most hideous howls the 
 empty little world had ever listened to. It must have 
 stirred the animals up to a degree unto which no' me- 
 nagerie has ever since attained. No sleep in the vi- 
 cinity of Eden that night for baby, beasts or Adam. 
 It is more than probable that the weeds got a long 
 start of Adam the next day, while he lay around in 
 shady places and slept in troubled dozes, disturbed, 
 perhaps, by awful visions of possible twins and more 
 colic. 
 
 And when the other boy came along, and the boys 
 got old enough to sleep in a bed by themselves, they 
 had no pillows to fight with. What comfort could 
 two boys get out of pelting each other with frag- 
 ments of moss or bundles of brush? What dismal 
 views of future humanity Adam must have received 
 from the glimpses of original sin which began to de- 
 velop itself in his boys. How he must have wondered 
 what put into their heads the thousand and one ques- 
 tions with which they plied their parents day after 
 day. I wonder what he thought when they first be- 
 gan to string buckeyes on the cat's tail. And when 
 night came there was no "hired girl" or black 
 "mammy" to keep the boys quiet by telling them ghost 
 stories. Adam didn't know so much as an anecdote. 
 
 5. Cain's education depended on his inexperienced 
 parents, who had never seen a boy until they met 
 Cain. There wasn't an educational help in the mar- 
 ket. There wasn't an alphabet block in the county. 
 There were no other boys in the republic to teach 
 young Cain to lie, and swear, and smoke, and drink, 
 fight and steal, and thus develop the boy's dormant 
 
2 8o THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 statesmanship, and prepare him for the political du- 
 ties of his maturer years. There wasn't a pocket- 
 knife in the universe that he could borrow — and 
 lose. When he wanted to cut his ringer, as all boys 
 must do now and then, he had to cut it with a clam 
 shell. There were no country relations upon whom 
 little Cain could be inflicted for two or three weeks 
 at a time, when his wearied parents wanted a little 
 rest. There was nothing for him to play with. Adam 
 couldn't show him how to make a kite. He had a 
 much better idea of angels' wings than he had of a 
 kite. If little Cain had even asked for such a simple 
 bit of mechanism as a "shinny-club" — sometimes vul- 
 garly called a "hockey-stick" — Adam would have 
 gone out into the depths of the primeval forest and 
 wept in helpless confessed ignorance. 
 
 Small wonder that Cain turned out "bad". I al- 
 ways thought he would. For his entire education de- 
 pended on a most ignorant man, a man in the very 
 palmiest days of his ignorance, who couldn't have 
 known less if he had tried all his life on a high salary 
 and had a man to help him. And the boy's education 
 had to be conducted entirely upon the catechetical 
 system; only, in this instance, the pupil asked the 
 questions, and his parent teachers — heaven help 
 them — had to answer at them. 
 
 For they could not take refuge from the steady 
 stream of questions that poured in upon them day 
 after day, by interpolating a fairy story, as you do- 
 when your boy asks you questions about something of 
 which you never heard. For how could Adam begin, 
 "Once upon a time", when with one incisive question 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 281 
 
 Cain could pin him right back against the dead wall 
 of creation, and make him either specify what time, 
 or acknowledge the fraud? How could Eve tell him 
 about Jack and the Bean-Stalk, when Cain, fairly 
 crazy for some one to play with, knew perfectly well 
 there was not, and never had been, another boy on the 
 plantation? And as day by day Cain brought home 
 things in his hands about which to ask questions that 
 no mortal could answer, how grateful his bewildered 
 parents must have been that he had no pockets in 
 which to transport his collections. For many genera- 
 tions came into the fair young world, got into no end 
 of trouble and died out of it, before a boy's pocket 
 solved the problem how to make the things contained 
 seven times greater than the container. 
 
 6. The only thing that saved Adam and Eve from 
 interrogational insanity was the paucity of the lan- 
 guage. If little Cain had possessed the verbal abun- 
 dance of the language in which men today are talked 
 to death, his father's bald head would have gone down 
 in shining flight to the ends of the earth to escape 
 him, leaving Eve to look after the stock, save the 
 crop, and raise her boy as best she could. 
 
 Which would have been, six thousand years ago, as 
 today, just like a man. 
 
 Because it was no off-hand, absent-minded work 
 answering questions about things in those spacious old 
 days, when there was crowds of room, and every- 
 thing grew by the acre. When a placid but exceed- 
 ingly unanimous-looking animal went rolling by, pro- 
 ducing the general effect of an eclipse, and Cain would 
 shout : 
 
282 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 "Oh, lookee, lookee, pa! what's that?" 
 
 Then the patient Adam, trying to saw enough 
 kitchen wood with a piece of flint to last over Sun- 
 day, would have to pause and gather up words enough 
 to say : 
 
 "That, my son? That is only a mastodon gigan- 
 tens; he has a bad look, but a placid temper." 
 
 And presently: 
 
 "Oh, pa! pa! What's that over yon?" 
 
 "Oh, bother," Adam would reply ; "it's only a paleo- 
 therium, mammalia pachydermata." 
 
 "Oh, yes; theliocomeafterus. Oh! lookee, lookee at 
 this 'un !" 
 
 "Where, Cainny? Oh, that in the mud? That's 
 only an acephala lamelli branchiata. It won't bite you, 
 but you mustn't eat it. It's poison as politics." 
 
 "Whee! See there! see, see, see! What's him?" 
 
 "Oh, that? Looks like a plesiosaurus ; keep out of 
 his way; he has a jaw like — " And just in time 
 Adam remembered that he had no mother-in-law. 
 
 "Oh, yes; a plenosserus. And what's that fellow, 
 poppy ?" 
 
 "That's a silurus malapterurus. Don't you go near 
 him; he has the disposition of a Georgia mule." 
 
 "Oh, yes; a slapterus. And what's this little one?" 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing but an aristolochioid. Where did 
 you get it? There, now, quit throwing stones at that 
 acanthopterygian ; do you want to get yourself kicked ? 
 And keep away from the nothodenatrichomanoides. 
 My stars, Eve ! where did he get that anonaceas-hydro- 
 charideo-nymphseoid ? Do you never look after him 
 at all? Here, you, Cain, get right away down from 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 283 
 
 there, and chase that megalosaurius out of the melon 
 patch, or I'll set the monopleuro branchian on you." 
 
 7. Just think of it, Christian man with a family to 
 support, with last year's stock on your shelves, and 
 a draft as long as a clothes-line to pay tomorrow ! 
 Think of it, woman, with all a woman's love and con- 
 stancy, and a mother's sympathetic nature, with three 
 meals a day three hundred and sixty-five times a 
 year to think of, and the flies to chase out of the sit- 
 ting-room; think, if your cherub boy was the only 
 boy in the wide, wide world, and all his questions 
 which now radiate in a thousand directions among 
 other boys, who help him to cut his eye-teeth, were 
 focused upon you ! 
 
 Well, you have no time to pity Adam. You have 
 your own boy to look after. Or, your neighbor has 
 a boy, whom you can look after much more closely 
 than his mother does, and much more to your own 
 satisfaction than to the boy's comfort. 
 
 Your boy is, as Adam's boy was, an animal that 
 asks questions. If there were any truth in the old 
 theory of the transmigration of souls, when a boy 
 died he would pass into an interrogation-point. And 
 he'd stay there. He'd never get out of it ; for he never 
 gets through asking questions. The older he grows 
 the more he asks, and the more perplexing his ques- 
 tions are, and the more unreasonable he is about want- 
 ing them answered to suit himself. Why, the oldest 
 boy I ever knew — he was fifty-seven years old, and 
 I went to school to him — could and did ask the long- 
 est, hardest, crookedest questions, that no fellow who 
 used to trade off all his books for a pair of skates 
 
2 8 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 could answer. And when his questions were not an- 
 swered to suit him, it was his custom — a custom more 
 honored in the breeches than in the observance — to 
 take up a long, slender, but exceedingly tenacious rod, 
 which lay ever near the big dictionary, and smite with 
 it the boy whose naturally-derived, Adamic ignorance 
 was made manifest. 
 
 Ah, me, if the boy could only do as he is done by, 
 and ferule the man or the woman who fails to reply 
 to his inquiries, as he is himself corrected for similar 
 shortcomings, what a valley of tears, what a howling 
 wilderness he could make of this world. 
 
 8. Your boy, asking today pretty much the same 
 questions, with heaven knows how many additional 
 ones, that Adam's boy did, is told, every time that he 
 asks one that you don't know anything about, just as 
 Adam told Cain fifty times a day, that he will know 
 all about it when he is a man. And so from the days 
 of Cain down to the present generation of boys, the 
 boy ever looks forward to the time when he will be 
 a man and know everything. 
 
 His questions multiply when he begins learning the 
 English language, which he never does learn, because 
 it changes faster than any boy can grow, and no mat- 
 ter how he spells it some dictionary contradicts him. 
 But always, to the boy, any language is merely a me- 
 dium of communicating questions. He asks questions 
 that no grown person would think of, and a score of 
 "grown-ups" could not answer. We grow so weary 
 of his interrogations at times that we say, "He asks 
 such foolish questions." But no boy asks foolish ques- 
 tions. He asks questions we cannot answer — that 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 285 
 
 is what makes us tired. There is an old proverb, "Any 
 fool can ask questions, but it takes a wise man to an- 
 swer them." But a fool cannot ask questions without 
 at once exposing his folly and ignorance. One of the 
 best and wisest school-teachers I ever suffered under 
 used to mark the boys in class, not on their recita- 
 tions, but on the questions they asked about the les- 
 son. 
 
 There is no way in which a man exposes his ignor- 
 ance so completely and thoroughly as by "butting in- 
 to" a conversation and asking questions about the 
 subject under discussion. His first question may be- 
 tray his ignorance. Go to the court-house some day — 
 go there before you have to; you will enjoy the illus- 
 tration better. Here is a man on the witness-stand 
 who tells a story apparently as straight as a rule — a 
 clean-cut statement of facts. His testimony is so 
 strong that we say, "Well, that settles the question for 
 the prosecution; there is no use calling another wit- 
 ness." Then a lawyer on the other side takes the man 
 in hand. Now, mind you, he does not contradict a 
 word the man says : he simply asks him a few inno- 
 cent-sounding questions, and the witness' beautiful 
 story falls into a hundred fragments. Now, who was 
 the fool, the man asking the questions, or the fellow 
 in the witness-box, sweating himself to death trying to 
 remember how he answered that same question the 
 other time ? Why, it took that lawyer years of study 
 of books, and years of the profoundest study of the 
 deeper book of human nature, to learn to ask ques- 
 tions. 
 
 9. And the boy's questions have a philosophical 
 
286 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 meaning behind them. I remember going to a World's 
 Fair, once upon a time, with a boy with whom I loved 
 very dearly to travel — he showed me so many more 
 things than I could have seen by myself. One day we 
 ran up against a great big electric incubator, a ma- 
 chine where they hatched chickens by lightning. I 
 have eaten some I thought had been struck by lightning 
 in order to kill them. But this machine hatched them 
 out. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to give 
 the boy a little instruction in practical biology. I said : 
 "Is it not wonderful, my son, to see how the little 
 chicken comes out of the egg?" He said: "No, I don't 
 see anything remarkable about that. I see easy 
 enough how he gets out. What puzzles me is how the 
 little beggar got in !" 
 
 Here is a man sitting down some evening, who 
 wants to read about twenty pounds of evening paper 
 before he goes to bed, and his little son is assisting 
 him with irrelevant questions about various things. 
 The wearied parent lowers the paper a little bit. "Bob- 
 bie," he says, "I will let you have one more question 
 tonight; then I don't want to hear the sound of your 
 voice for six weeks." Bobbie has one right on the 
 hair-trigger, ready to fire when he gets the word. 
 "Pa," he says, "is it true, what this book says, that a 
 camel can go forty days without water?" "Yes, he 
 can. Now, shut up." By and by the boy pleads — 
 "Just one more." His father says : "Well, if it is a 
 foolish one, you go to bed." The boy says : "How 
 long could he go if he had water?" And the next min- 
 ute Bobbie is under the blankets. Not to get warm — 
 oh, no; he gets warm on the way up. 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 287 
 
 So, by and by we send the boy to school, and then 
 he realizes that they are increased that rise up against 
 him. Because now other people ask the questions, and 
 he has to answer them. He learns how to sympathize 
 with his parents. He gets tangled in the ungrammat- 
 ical mazes of the English grammar, which has not yet 
 been invented, and he gets blocked by mathematics. 
 "Do you not know — " the dear patient teacher was 
 looking at a cluster of errors on the blackboard — 
 "do you not know that always and under all circum- 
 stances two and two make four?" The boy said: "No, 
 sir; I do not." "What else can it possibly make?" 
 And the boy said : "It depends. If you put one two 
 in front of the other, it makes twenty-two every 
 time." 
 
 10. And yet, all the time the boy is asking ques- 
 tions he is answering them, until we stand amazed at 
 the breadth and depth of his knowledge. He asks 
 questions and gets answers of teachers that we and the 
 school board know not of. Day by day, great un- 
 printed books, upon the broad pages of which the 
 hand of nature has traced characters that only a boy 
 can read, are spread out before him. He knows now 
 where the first snow-drop lifts its tiny head, a pearl 
 on the bosom of the barren earth, in the spring ; he 
 knows where the last Indian pink lingers, a flame in 
 the brown and rustling woods, in the autumn days. 
 His pockets are cabinets, from which he drags curi- 
 ous fossils, hideous beetles and bugs and things that 
 you never saw before, and for which he has appro- 
 priate names of his own. He knows where there are 
 three orioles' nests, and so far back as you can re- 
 
288 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 member you never saw an oriole's nest in your life. 
 He can tell you how to distinguish the good mush- 
 rooms from the poisonous ones, and poison grapes 
 from good ones, and how he ever found out, except 
 by eating both kinds, is a mystery to his mother. 
 Every root, bud, leaf, berry or bark that will make 
 any bitter tea, reputed to have marvelous medicinal 
 virtues, he knows where to find, and in the season he 
 does find, and brings home, and all but sends the en- 
 tire family to the cemetery by making practical tests 
 of his remedies. 
 
 As his knowledge broadens, his human superstition 
 develops itself. He has a formula, repeating which 
 nine times a day, while pointing his ringer fixedly to- 
 ward the sun, will cause warts to disappear from the 
 hand. If the eight-day clock at home tells him it is 
 two o'clock, and the flying leaves of the dandelion de- 
 clare it is half past five, he will stand or fall with the 
 dandelion. 
 
 He has a charm by which anything that has been 
 lost may be found. He has a natural instinct for the 
 woods, and can on more be lost in them than a squir- 
 rel. If the cow does not come home — and if she is 
 a town cow, like a town man, she does not come 
 home, three nights in the week — you lose half a day 
 of valuable time looking for her. Then you pay a 
 man three dollars to look for her two days longer, or 
 as long as the appropriation holds out. Finally, a 
 quarter sends a boy to the woods ; he comes back at 
 milking-time, whistling the tune that no man ever 
 imitated, and the cow ambles contentedly along be- 
 fore him. 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 289 
 
 11. He has one particular marble which he regards 
 with about the same superstitious reverence that a 
 pagan does his idol. Carnelian, crystal, bull's-eye, 
 china, pottery, boly, blood alley, or commie, whatever 
 he may call it, there is "luck in it". When he loses 
 this marble, he sees panic and bankruptcy ahead of 
 him, and retires from business prudently, before the 
 crash comes, failing, in true commercial style, with 
 both pockets full of winnings, and a creditors' meet- 
 ing in the back room. 
 
 A boy's world is open to no one but a boy. You 
 never really revisit the glimpses of your boyhood, 
 much as you may dream of it. After you get into a 
 tail-coat and tight boots, you never again set foot in 
 boy world. You lose this instinct for the woods; you 
 cant' tell a pig-nut tree from a pecan ; you can't make 
 friends with strange dogs; you can't make the terrific 
 noises with your mouth; you can't invent the inimi- 
 table signals or the characteristic catchwords of boy- 
 hood. 
 
 He is getting on, is your boy. He reaches the dime- 
 novel age. He wants to be a missionary, or a pirate. 
 As far as he expresses any preference, he would 
 rather be a pirate, an occupation in which there are 
 more chances for making money, and fewer opportu- 
 nities for being devoured. He develops a yearning 
 love for school and study about this time, and every 
 time he dreams of being a pirate he dreams of hang- 
 ing his dear teacher at the yard-arm in the presence 
 of the delighted scholars. His voice develops, even 
 more rapidly and thoroughly than his morals. In the 
 yard, on the housetop, down the street, around the 
 
290 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 
 
 corner; wherever there is a patch of ice big enough 
 for him to break his neck on, or a pond of water deep 
 enough to drown in, the voice of your boy is heard. 
 He whispers in a shout, and converses, in confidential 
 moments, in a shriek. He exchanges bits of back- 
 fence gossip about his father's domestic matters with 
 the boy living in the adjacent township, to which in- 
 teresting revelations of home life the intermediate 
 neighborhood listens with intense satisfaction, and the 
 two home circles in helpless dismay. 
 
 12. He has an unconquerable hatred for company, 
 and an aversion for walking down-stairs. For a year 
 or two his feet never touch the stairway in his descent, 
 and his habit of polishing the stair rail by using it as 
 a passenger tramway soon breaks the other members 
 of the family of the careless habit of setting a lamp 
 or water-pitcher on the newel post. He wears the 
 same size boot as his father ; and on the driest dusti- 
 est days in the year, always manages to convey some 
 mud on the carpets. He carefully steps over the door- 
 mat, and until he is about seventeen years old he act- 
 ually never knew there was a scraper at the front 
 porch. 
 
 About this time, bold but inartistic pencil sketches 
 break out mysteriously on the alluring background of 
 the wall-paper. He asks, with great regularity, alarm- 
 ing frequency, and growing diffidence, for a new hat. 
 You might as well buy him a new disposition. He 
 wears his hat in the air and on the ground far more 
 than he does on his head, and he never hangs it up 
 that he doesn't pull the hook through the crown, un- 
 less the hook breaks off or the hat-rack pulls over. 
 
RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 291 
 
 He is a perfect Robinson Crusoe in inventive ge- 
 nius. He can make a kite that will fly higher and pull 
 harder than a balloon. He can take out a couple of 
 the pantry shelves and make a sled that is amazement 
 itself. The mouse-trap he builds out of the water- 
 pitcher and the family album is a marvel of mechani- 
 cal ingenuity. So is the excuse he gives for such a 
 selection of raw material. When, suddenly, some Mon- 
 day morning, the clothes-line, without any just or ap- 
 parent cause or provocation, shrinks sixteen feet, 
 philosophy cannot make you believe that the weather 
 man did it with his little barometer. Because, far 
 down the dusty street, you can see Tom in the dim 
 distance, driving a prancing team, six-in-hand, with 
 the missing link. 
 
 13. You send your boy on an errand. There are 
 three ladies in the parlor. You have waited as long as 
 you can, in all courtesy, for them to go. They have 
 developed alarming symptoms of staying to tea. And 
 you know there aren't half enough strawberries to go 
 around. It is only a three-minutes' walk to the gro- 
 cery, however, and Tom sets off like a rocket, and you 
 are so pleased with his celerity and ready good nature 
 that you want to run after him and kiss him. He 
 is gone a long time, however. Ten minutes become 
 fifteen, fifteen grow into twenty, the twenty swell into 
 the half hour, and your guests exchange very signifi- 
 cant glances as the half becomes three-quarters. Your 
 boy returns at last, — apprehension in his downcast 
 eyes, humility in his laggard step, penitence in the ap- 
 pealing slouch of his battered hat, and a pound and a 
 half of shingle nails in his hands. 
 
292 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 "Mother," he says "what else was it you told me 
 to get besides the nails ?" And while you are counting 
 your scanty store of berries to make them go round 
 without a fraction, you hear Tom out in the back 
 yard whistling and hammering away, building a dog- 
 house with the nails you never told him to get. 
 
 Poor Tom, he loves at this age quite as ardently 
 as he makes mistakes and mischief. And he is re- 
 pulsed quite as ardently as he makes love. If he hugs 
 his sister, he musses her ruffle, and gets cuffed for it. 
 Two hours later another boy, not more than twenty- 
 two or twenty-three years older than Tom, some 
 neighbor's Tom, will come in, and will just make the 
 most hopeless, terrible, chaotic wreck of that ruffle that 
 lace can be distorted into. And the only reproof he 
 gets is the reproachful murmur, "Must go so soon?" 
 when he doesn't make a move to go until he hears 
 the alarm clock up-stairs and the old gentleman in the 
 adjoining room banging around building the morning 
 fires, and loudly wondering if young Mr. Bostwick 
 is going to stay to breakfast. 
 
 Tom is at this age set in deadly enmity against 
 "company", which he soon learns to regard as his 
 mortal foe. He regards "company" as a mysterious 
 and eminently respectable delegation that always stays 
 to dinner, invariably crowds him to the second table, 
 never leaves him any of the pie, and usually makes 
 him late for school. Naturally, he learns to love re- 
 fined society, but in a conservative non-committal sort 
 of way, dissembling his love so effectually that even 
 his parents never dream of its existence until it is 
 gone. 
 
MSB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 293 
 
 14. Tom's life is not all comedy in the happy days 
 of boyhood. Sometimes, after a troubled day at 
 school, where he has had conflicts with teachers and 
 books, and other boys, he comes home in the eventide 
 with joyous anticipations — home, a sure refuge for 
 him ; home, where love, with many caresses, will make 
 up for all his troubles. He isn't in the house ten min- 
 utes before somebody "tells on him". It doesn't make 
 much difference what you tell on a boy; most any- 
 thing hits him somewhere. He can't dodge every- 
 thing when it rains "informations". The boy comes 
 galloping home, empty as a drum, hungrier than a 
 shark, and with an appetite like an ostrich. He hears 
 his father's voice, gentle, patient, firm, calling, "Thom- 
 as!" Well, that gives the boy cold feet. When his 
 father says "Tom", he knows the barometer is "set 
 fair". When he says "Thomas", the boy is at once 
 aware that the investigating committee is in session, 
 with power to send for persons, and to act. 
 
 Tom goes before him wondering and apprehensive. 
 "My son, what is that I hear about you today?" Well, 
 Tom is no prophet. How can he tell what anybody 
 has heard about him that day ? It is all he can do to 
 keep track of the thrilling incidents of his career. But, 
 like most boys under the circumstances, Tom is a 
 might good guesser. He can always guess what his 
 father has been very likely to hear about if he isn't 
 deaf and blind. When he guesses what it is, being a 
 good honest boy, he owns up. When the average boy 
 sees trouble coming down a narrow lane to meet him, 
 and he can't run around either end, or get through 
 the center, or crawl under, or climb over, he owns up. 
 
294 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 He makes a full and frank confession, to save the 
 trouble and expense of a trial before a prejudiced 
 court. Not being an infallible guesser, however, two 
 or three times he "owns up" to the wrong thing — 
 something his father hasn't heard a word about. Then 
 he is in for two of them — one for the case the court 
 had information about, and one for the one con- 
 fessed. After one or two breaks of that kind the boy 
 learns the wisdom of the serpent, and when next his 
 father asks him what it is he has heard about him 
 that day, Tom says, "If it please the court, I would 
 rather hear the indictment read before I plead." It 
 takes a little longer but it's safer for the defendant. 
 
 15. Sometimes when the tragedies of the day have 
 been unusually painful; when, after the closing act 
 wherein the boy's foes have been they of his own 
 household, Tom, feeling that nobody in all the world 
 loves him or cares for him; believing honestly that he 
 is in everybody's way, has crawled off to his own 
 room, and cried himself to sleep. For no one can feel 
 a deeper pity for, or a tenderer sympathy with any one 
 else, than a boy can entertain for himself, when he 
 gives himself up to the luxury of personal woe. By 
 and by, you, being the boy's mother, rise and gently 
 steal away after him, sometimes, it may be, pausing 
 at the sitting-room door to explain * — as though the 
 sweetest thing the mother ever does requires explana- 
 tion or apology — that you are just going up to Tom's 
 room to see that he is "tucked in nicely for the night." 
 Tuck a boy in for the night ! You can wrap and roll 
 him up in quilt and blanket until he looks like a cocoon 
 or a mummy, and then, the first time he turns over, 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 295 
 
 there won't be a rag on the bed. You might as well 
 try to tuck in a hound pup as a boy. He sleeps as 
 actively as he plays ball. 
 
 He has earned his sleep. The curtain has fallen 
 on one day's act in the drama of a boy's life. The 
 restless feet that all day long have pattered and wan- 
 dered so far — down dusty roads, over hot pave- 
 ments, through long stretches of quiet wooded lanes, 
 along the winding cattle paths in the deep silent 
 woods; that have dabbled in the cool brook where it 
 babbles and dimples over the shining pebbles, that have 
 filled your house with noise and dust and racket, are 
 still. The stained hand outside the sheet is soiled 
 and rough, and the cut finger, with the rude bandage 
 of the boy's own surgery, pleads with a mute effec- 
 tive pathos of its own for the mischievous hand that 
 is never idle. 
 
 On the brown cheek the trace of a tear marks the 
 piteous close of the day's troubles, the closing scene 
 in a troubled little drama; trouble at school with 
 books that were too many for him ; trouble with temp- 
 tations to have unlawful fun that were too strong for 
 him, as they are frequently too strong for his father; 
 trouble in the street with boys that were to big for 
 him; at last, in his home, in his castle, his refuge, 
 trouble has pursued him, until, feeling utterly friend- 
 less and in everybody's way, he crawled off to the dis- 
 mantled den, dignified by the title of "the boy's room". 
 His overcharged heart has welled up into his eyes, his 
 waking breath has broken into a sob, and just as he 
 begins to think that, after all, life is only one broad 
 sea of troubles, whose restless billows, in never-end- 
 
296 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ing succession, break and beat and double upon the 
 short shore-line of a boy's life, he has drifted away 
 into the wonderland of a boy's sleep, where fairy fin- 
 gers picture his dreams. 
 
 16. How soundly, deeply, peacefully he sleeps! No 
 mother, who has never dragged a sleepy boy off the 
 lounge at nine o'clock, and hauled him off up-stairs to 
 bed, can know with what a herculean grip a square 
 sleep takes hold of a boy's senses, nor how fearfully 
 and wonderfully limp and nerveless it makes him ; nor 
 how, in direct antagonism to all established laws of 
 anatomy, it develops joints that work both ways, all 
 the way up and down, before and behind that boy. 
 
 And what pen can portray the wonderful enchant- 
 ments of a boy's dreamland! No marvelous visions 
 wrought by the weird power of hashish, no dreams 
 that come to the sleep of jaded woman or tired man, 
 no ghastly specters that dance attendance upon cold 
 mince pie, but shrink into stale and trifling common- 
 places compared with the marvelous, the grotesque, 
 the wonderful, the terrible, the beautiful and the en- 
 chanting scenes and people of a boy's dreamland. This 
 may be owing, in a great measure, to the fact that the 
 boy never relates his dream until all the members of 
 the family have related theirs and then he comes in, 
 like a back county, with the necessary majority. 
 
 We love to go to the rooms where the "little peo- 
 ple" sleep. We go there because, when the day is 
 gone, when the twilight fades into night and the stars 
 come out, when all the world is hushed and all the 
 house is still, we remember, in that quiet moment, how 
 cross we have been with the child, how unjust we 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 297 
 
 have been; how many times the little ones have wor- 
 ried and fretted us. We may remember, too, how 
 once, not because of anything worthy of sudden pun- 
 ishment the boy has done, but because some one else, 
 too big for us to punish, even with an expression of 
 resentment, had irritated the over-tense nerves, we 
 struck the boy out of our way. And in this quiet of 
 the night and the watching stars, we remember how 
 we ourselves, wayward and perverse children that we 
 are, have tempted and defied infinite love and meas- 
 ureless patience all along the way of that day's pil- 
 grimage. 
 
 17. And somehow the bed where the little ones 
 sleep transforms itself into a homely kind of altar. We 
 love to kneel down beside their innocence and lift up 
 our hearts to the great All-father and ask for the 
 blessing of sleep. Not for the children — oh, no ; they 
 sleep well enough. The flossy heads just touch the 
 pillow, and the little hearts go drifting out into the 
 beautiful wonderland of childhood's dreams. They 
 sleep well enough. We pray that the blessing of sleep 
 may come down like the touch of God's caressing 
 hand upon our own restless brains, our own troubled 
 hearts, our own accusing consciences. We need to 
 be hushed and lulled and soothed to sleep by the blessed 
 promises upon which we pillow our sobbing hearts. 
 The little children sleep well enough, for they are 
 folded in the trustfulness of innocence. It is the 
 "grown-up children", the children of many years, who 
 have to be hushed to sleep every night by the love that 
 is wider than all the seas and higher than the farthest 
 star. 
 
298 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 The boy's room! The room itself is a comically- 
 pathetic appeal to the heart of mother or father. The 
 boy's room — well, it is better than it used to be, I 
 am glad to say, but it is not perfection yet. The mother 
 protests. "It is a very nice room for a boy, and be- 
 sides," she says, "the boy never goes into the room 
 till after dark." That's right. The boy doesn't want 
 to go into that room while he can see anything in it. 
 If he did, he'd have a nightmare. 
 
 The mother says: "Well, it is small, but then we 
 furnish it for him very nicely." Yes, we do; not. 
 Furnish the boy's room nicely ! We furnish it se- 
 curely. We are not going to have his life risked by 
 any untoward accident because of weak untried fur- 
 niture. We give him furniture that has been carefully 
 tested. It has been graduated from every room in the 
 house, and has taken a postgraduate course in the 
 kitchen. "Well," the mother says, "that is all right, 
 because the boy kicks to pieces everything you put in 
 there, anyhow." So he does. He thinks that is what 
 his furniture is for, to kick to pieces. He sees every- 
 body else "has had a kick at it so he goes in for a 
 scrappy game with it, and makes his touch-down in the 
 first half. There is no second half to his furniture. 
 "Oh, well," some one says, "you don't understand 
 boys. They don't care for nice things. Almost any- 
 thing will do for a boy." Don't fool yourself, good 
 mother. A boy does love nice things and pretty 
 things. A boy has better taste, is more artistic, he has 
 more correct ideas of the beautiful, the fair and the 
 good than his sister. He proves this when he is mar- 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 299 
 
 ried. Just look at the thing his sister marries ! Don't 
 you talk to me about that girl's superior taste ! 
 
 18. I was in Cleveland, once upon a time, attending a 
 meeting of the Boys' Y. M. C. A., for boys under 
 eighteen down to little fellows of twelve. Well, one 
 Christmas-time the ladies of the "West Side" gave the 
 boys a loan exhibition of calendars. They had every 
 room tapestried with calendars. Beautiful calendars, 
 romantic calendars, sentimental calendars, warlike 
 calendars, comic calendars, religious and commercial 
 calendars . — every sort of calendar. The last day of 
 the exhibition they took a secret vote of the boys to 
 select the picture they loved best. Of course every- 
 body guessed what the boys would take — a bear hunt 
 or a boat race, a sea-fight, something funny or he- 
 roic — something that we would say "appealed to 
 boys". 
 
 With, I think, less than a dozen dissenting votes, 
 the boys selected Raphael's Madonna, the last picture 
 anybody guessed would be selected by boys at their 
 very rough, rollicking, coltish age. But the helpless- 
 ness and innocence and the sweetness of the little one 
 in her arms; the look of universal mother-love in the 
 Madonna face, caught the hearts of those boys, and 
 that was their picture. They never would have done 
 that if they had voted by holding up their hands. A 
 boy is more sensitive in some heart matters than a 
 girl, and he could never let you see down into the sen- 
 timental part of his heart — never; an open vote 
 would have selected an Indian fight, a tiger hunt or 
 the battle of Manila Bay. 
 
 What was the second choice ? There is a picture — 
 
3 oo THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 you have seen it repeated in lithograph a great many 
 times — called The Physician. The scene is a pov- 
 erty-stricken garret room; rough rafters showing; a 
 rude little pallet made by turning two chairs together. 
 On the bed lies a little girl. The physician, a man of 
 about fifty, with grizzled beard, has turned the cheap 
 paper shade on the lamp so as to focus all the light on 
 the white little face. The parted lips tell of the fever 
 that is devouring her. The little hand lies loosely over 
 the side of the chair, just as the physician's fingers 
 have let go of the wrist. 
 
 Standing in the shadow at the foot of the bed are 
 a working-man and a woman. He is holding her in 
 his arms, her head buried on his shoulder. You can 
 hear the sobs that are shaking her figure. The man 
 clasps her in his embrace, tenderly, lovingly, with all 
 the comfort his heart and arms can give. So poor 
 they are, they have nothing in this world but what 
 they can carry into the other world — love. The man's 
 eyes are turned in an agonizing question upon the 
 face of the physician, whose look is bent upon the tiny 
 charity patient, grave, earnest, anxious, as though he 
 sat at the bedside of a queen. This scene of poverty, 
 and sorrow, and love, and loyal devotion — this picture 
 was the second choice of these boys. And all the 
 funny and fighting pictures received only a few scat- 
 tering votes. There is a little bit of womanish ten- 
 derness and sentiment in the heart of every boy. You 
 see, his mother is a woman, and he has just a touch 
 of her nature. 
 
 19. Give him a whole room for his very own. It 
 isn't only the boy who suffers. The man, when he be- 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 301 
 
 gins to prosper, builds a new house. His wife designs 
 it, and gets two or three closets in every room. She 
 says to the man, "Here, you have always complained 
 that you never had any place to put your things about 
 the house. Now, here is the biggest clothes closet in 
 this house, eight feet wide, ten feet deep, twelve feet 
 high, three rows of hooks on two sides, two rows of 
 shelving, and a locker at the farther end. This is all 
 for the man — there is nothing to go in there but the 
 man's things !" Oh, how proud and rich you feel ! 
 That is Monday morning. By Saturday night you are 
 lucky if you have one hook. If you complain about 
 it, your wife says she "has to have some place for her 
 things." 
 
 Let your boy help to furnish and decorate his 
 own room. While he must have in it a great many 
 things that we like, let him have a few things that he 
 likes. It's his room. The treasures he brings home 
 from field and wood and stream are more precious to 
 him than the things that money can buy. But often, 
 when we find these treasures in the boy's room, we 
 throw them out of the window and tell him we don't 
 want him to drag all the "trash" in the county into 
 that room. Then we pile a lot of our own "trash" into 
 it, because we have nowhere else to bestow it. 
 
 When you buy pictures for the boy, don't put him 
 off with advertisement pictures that you try to put 
 into an old looking-glass frame which never did fit 
 anything. Buy him new pictures, especially appro- 
 priate to a boy's room. Have them framed down at 
 the shop, as you do the pictures for the drawing-room 
 and the hall. And let the boy go down and select one 
 
3 02 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 or two pictures all by himself. Don't you go with 
 him. I know what you would do. You would say, 
 "Now, dear, I don't want to influence you, but you 
 must not buy this picture." "Well," the mother or the 
 father says, "he is a boy ; he is rough ; he will buy 
 something awful." Perhaps he may. Let him buy it. 
 If the boy likes "rough" things, train him out of the 
 liking for them gradually and sweetly, by giving him 
 better things. 
 
 20. And I'm not so certain that what we call 
 "rough" things are not a rather important part of a 
 boy's education. I believe it's a good thing to have one 
 or two good hard-fighting pictures in a boy's room. 
 They will inspire him to give and take hard knocks. 
 He must be a fighter himself if he amounts to any- 
 thing in the world. He must learn courage. And he 
 must learn that it will require the noblest, highest, 
 most-enduring type of courage in all this world to 
 enable him to fight against and to conquer the mean- 
 est, strongest, most treacherous, most persistent and 
 relentless enemy he will ever encounter in this life — 
 that is himself. The "fighting picture" need not make 
 a slugger of the boy. It will probably save him from 
 such a fate. The modern pugilist is not a fighter. He 
 is a talker. All wars have been terrible. All wars have 
 not been wicked. Napoleon Bonaparte was one sold- 
 ier. George Washington was another. 
 
 Instead of the "fighting picture", we sometimes put 
 into his room a work of art by "ma", a little thing she 
 did herself, when she went to school. It is a picture 
 of a flower, done in pastel, faded and blended with 
 the touch of the years. The flower grows on a 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 303 
 
 lightning-rod. A leaf on this side — a leaf on that 
 side — leaf, leaf — leaf, leaf — and right on the tip- 
 top of the rod, the flower. You couldn't break a petal 
 off that chrysanthemum with a mallet and a cold- 
 chisel. You can't hang it in the drawing-room, because 
 people will ask what it is. And you are afraid to 
 hang it in your own bed-room. You might wake up in 
 the night and see it. So you put it in the boy's room. 
 You tell him it's "pretty". 
 
 Get nice furnishings for the boy's room. When 
 you get him a dressing-table, get him something hand- 
 some, with at least two legs of the same length. The 
 boy would be satisfied with that, but usually the boy's 
 table hasn't even one leg of the same length. Have an 
 embroidered cover for it, such as his sister makes for 
 some other fellow's table. His mother says, "That 
 wouldn't do at all, because every time the boy washes 
 his face you have to change the table cover." I know 
 that. Every time the boy washes his face everything 
 on that side of the room is soaking, sopping, drip- 
 ping wet. With one exception — that's his face. That 
 comes through dry-shod. ,He can use more water and 
 wash less face than anything else on earth, except a 
 cat. 
 
 21. When you get him a looking-glass, get him a 
 fine mirror, plate-glass, with beveled edge, and an ar- 
 tistic frame. You ask the man for something real 
 nice in the way of mirrors, and he shows you some- 
 thing like that. "This," he says, "will be ten dollars 
 and a half, to you." "Oh," you say, "this is for a 
 boy's room." "Oh," the man says. Now, that is all 
 you say, and that is all the man says — you just say 
 
3°4 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 "Oh". There is no word in the English language that 
 is capable of more variety of expression than the mon- 
 osyllable "Oh". 
 
 The man knows just what you want. They carry 
 them in special lines in the furniture stores, called 
 "boy's mirrors". They come two hundred in a 
 crate, a dollar and a half a crate. The frame looks as 
 though it had some cutaneous disorder. The glass is 
 blistered and corrugated and wrinkled like an old 
 wash-board. The boy looks into it and is horrified. 
 He discovers therein a half dozen sectional boys, 
 with only one eye for the six of them. He comes 
 down-stairs, and we say to him, "Go right back to your 
 room and brush your hair. How dare you come down 
 to breakfast with your hair standing around like a 
 quarter-back's?" "Well," he says, "I did brush all the 
 heads I could see !" 
 
 That is the room some boys grow up in. People 
 wonder sometimes the boy has so little native refine- 
 ment. The only wonder is that he has any. 
 
 The boy is growing. He enters the hobbledehoy 
 stage of life. For a little season, during this period 
 of transition, he does not belong to the human race. 
 For he isn't a boy any longer ; he isn't a man ; he cer- 
 tainly isn't a woman or a girl. He is listed with the 
 unclassified fauna of this planet. He is a little too 
 tall for knickerbockers, and not quite old enough for 
 long trousers. He is as awkward as he can be, be- 
 fore death. Whatever he picks up he drops and 
 breaks. Whatever is too heavy for him to lift he 
 steps on and breaks. And whatever is too big for 
 him to step on he runs into and breaks. 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 305 
 
 22. And his voice is changing. You hear him in an 
 adjoining room, singing, all by himself, a sad sweet 
 song. And you anxiously call out, "What are you 
 boys quarreling about, in there?" Sounds like half a 
 dozen of him in a scrap. This is a boy's exclusive 
 experience. Women know nothing about it. The 
 boy's sister never passes through these bitter waters. 
 From babyhood to womanhood she is gracious, and 
 graceful, and dear. Even when she is a laughing 
 happy girl of twelve, with no more shape than a bol- 
 ster, we say she is as sweet as she ever will be. No, 
 indeed. She will grow lovelier and sweeter, more 
 lovable and more — er — huggable, so to speak, for 
 many years after that. 
 
 And: His mother never cuts his hair again. Never. 
 When Tom assumes the manly gown, she has looked 
 her last upon his head, with trimming ideas. His 
 hair will be trimmed and clipped, barberously it may 
 be, but she will not be acscissory before the fact. She 
 may sometimes long to have her boy kneel down be- 
 fore her, while she gnaws around his terrified locks 
 with a pair of scissors that were sharpened when they 
 were made; and have since then cut acres of calico, 
 and miles of paper, and great stretches of cloth, and 
 snarls and coils of string, and furlongs of lamp-wick; 
 and have snuffed candles ; and dug refractory corks out 
 of the family "ink-bottle" ; and punched holes in skate 
 straps ; and trimmed the family nails ; and have done 
 their level best, at the annual struggle, to cut stove- 
 pipe lengths in two ; and have successfully opened 
 oyster and fruit cans; and pried up carpet tacks; and 
 have many a time gone snarling around Tom's head, 
 
3 o6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 and made him an object of terror to the children in 
 the street, looking so much like a yearling colt that 
 people have been afraid to approach him too suddenly, 
 lest he should jump through his collar and run away. 
 He feels, too, the consciousness of another grand 
 truth in the human economy. It dawns upon his in- 
 telligence that man's upper lip was designed by nature 
 for a mustache pasture. How tenderly reserved he is 
 when he is brooding over this discovery ! With what 
 exquisite caution are his primal investigations con- 
 ducted. In his microscopical researches it appears to 
 him that the down on his upper lip is certainly more 
 determined down, more positive, more pronounced, 
 more individual fuzz than that which vegetates in 
 neglected tenderness upon his cheeks. He makes cau- 
 tious explorations along the land of promise with the 
 tip of his tenderest finger, delicately backing up the 
 grade the wrong way, going always against the grain, 
 that he may the more readily detect the slightest symp- 
 tom of an uprising by the first feeling of velvety re- 
 sistance. 
 
 23. And day by day he is more and more firmly con- 
 vinced that there is in his lip the protoplasm of a glory 
 that will, in its full development, eclipse even the maj- 
 esty of his first tail-coat. And in the first dawning 
 consciousness that the mustache is there, like the vote, 
 and only needs to be brought out, how often Tom 
 walks down to the barber shop, gazes longingly in at 
 the window, and walks past. And how often, when 
 he musters up sufficient courage to go in, and climbs 
 into the chair, and is just on the point of huskily whis- 
 pering to the barber that he would like a shave, the 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 307 
 
 entrance of a man with a beard like Frederick Bar- 
 barossa's frightens away his resolution, and he has his 
 hair cut again — the third time that week, and his 
 hair is so short the barber has to part it with a 
 straight-edge, and a scratch-awl. After that, he de- 
 termines to shave himself, and surreptitiously obtains 
 possession of the ancestral shaving machinery. His 
 first shave is followed by a paternal investigation to 
 discover "Who has been sharpening lead-pencils or 
 opening sardine cans with my razor?" Nobody ever 
 knows. 
 
 All that we know about it is, that Tom holds the 
 razor in his hand about a minute, wondering what to 
 do with it, before the blade falls across his fingers and 
 cuts every one of them. First blood claimed and al- 
 lowed, for the razor. Then he straps the razor furi- 
 ously. Or, rather, he razors the strap. He slashes 
 that passive instrument in as many directions as he 
 can make motions with the razor. He would cut it 
 oftener if the strap lasted longer. Then he nicks the 
 razor against the side of the mug. Then he drops it 
 on the floor and steps on it and nicks it again. They 
 are small nicks, not so large by half as a saw-tooth, and 
 he flatters himself his father will never see them. 
 Next he soaks the razor in hot water, as he has seen 
 his father do. Then he takes it out, at a temperature 
 anywhere under nine hundred eighty degrees Fahren- 
 heit, and lays it against his cheek, and raises a blister 
 there the size of the razor, as he never saw his father 
 do, but as his father most assuredly did, many, many 
 years before Tom met him. Then he makes a va- 
 riety of indescribable grimaces and labial contortions 
 
3 o8 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 in a frenzied effort to get his upper lip into approach- 
 able shape, and, at last, the first offer he makes at his 
 embryo mustache, he slashes his nose with a vicious 
 uppercut. He gashes the corners of his mouth ; wher- 
 ever those nicks touch his cheek they leave a scratch 
 apiece, and he learns what a good nick in a razor is 
 for. When at last he lays the blood-stained weapon 
 down, his gory lip looks as though it has just come 
 out of a stubborn contest with a straw-cutter. 
 
 But he learns to shave, after a while — just before 
 he cuts his lip clear off. 
 
 24. Tom is a big boy now. He is introduced, by 
 young people of his own age, as "Mister". He scoffs 
 at it, and likes it, not foreseeing the distant years when 
 he will be heart-hungry for his old school nickname. 
 He receives an invitation to a "party". He goes. He 
 goes early. He runs nearly all the way for fear he 
 may be "late to the party". Family isn't dressed when 
 he gets there. 
 
 When he is ushered into the drawing-room there is 
 nobody there but chairs; all the chairs in the house, 
 it seems to him. He is alone, and he can pick out 
 the best and most comfortable one there, and sit in it 
 all the evening. Instead of which, he picks out the 
 meanest chair that was ever designed, an odd hall 
 chair that got in by mistake ; one of these things with 
 a haircloth cushion that a fly couldn't cling to, and a 
 back that is so straight it leans forward a little bit, 
 and a big carved ornament in the middle of it that 
 catches you right in the shoulder-blades. Then he 
 braces his feet against the carpet and by some miracle 
 manages to stay in that chair. After he gets in it 
 
R1SB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 309 
 
 money couldn't hire him to move. By and by the 
 guests begin to arrive. He wants people to under- 
 stand he is accustomed to these little social functions, 
 and knows what to do with himself. 
 
 In order to look easy and unconscious, he piles one 
 hand on top of the other. It doesn't fit, so he piles the 
 other one on top. That fits worse than it did before, 
 so he keeps trying on his hands, one after another. He 
 wonders why hands didn't come in pairs instead of 
 triplets. He could get along all right if it wasn't for 
 the third hand. In course of time some lady comes 
 along, as the crowd gets denser, and offers him a nice 
 plate. He says, "No, thanks ; no plate." She doesn't 
 pay any attention to what he says. She puts the plate 
 on his lap. He says to himself, "All right. If it stays 
 on, all right; if it slips off on the floor, all right." He 
 didn't ask for the old thing, and he isn't going to feel 
 responsible for broken china in that house. Another 
 lady comes along with a napkin and a tea-cup and 
 saucer. Others bring rations of cake and pile them 
 on the boy's plate. 
 
 You know the kind of place it is. You have suf- 
 fered at it. One of those places where they pass re- 
 freshments around the room. Oh, woman ! That is 
 no kind of a way to feed a grown man. Nature never 
 designed man for that kind of a picnicking animal, 
 anyhow. If she had, she would have built him that 
 way. She would have made his knees broad and 
 flat, like a beaver's tail. Then you would have a lap 
 you could hold something on besides a ninety-pound 
 girl. And even she won't stay on unless she is held. 
 So I have been told. They give you a tiny plate, with 
 
3 io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 cake and wafers on it, and a toy cup and saucer, and 
 two lumps of sugar, and a doll's spoon, which you 
 know will fall off by and by — and it does. There you 
 stand — no place to sit down, and you are tired after 
 your long day's work. 
 
 25. You can't let go of your tea-cup to eat your 
 cake, and you can't let go of the cake to drink your 
 tea. So you hold them there for fifteen minutes ; then 
 some kind-hearted woman says, "Sha'n't I relieve 
 you?" and takes them away from you. And you won- 
 der why they gave them to you. You can't hear a 
 word that is said. Every time anybody comes along 
 and asks, "Are you enjoying the evening?" — you say, 
 in a dying tone, you are having a "very nice time." 
 You don't remember when you had such a good time, 
 except in the dentist's chair. And you look it. 
 
 Now, the boy hasn't enough nerve to decline any- 
 thing, so they pile the cake high on his plate. All 
 kinds of cake: loaf cake; soft squashy cake; layer 
 cake. Layer cake ! You take up a piece of it, and 
 the roof comes off. Then you don't know whether 
 you are expected to eat the "floor" or not. And there 
 is one kind of cake — I don't know the name of it. 
 I never heard it called any names, except by unhappy 
 men who had eaten fragments of it under compul- 
 sion. It has this peculiar, soft, gaumy, sticky, fly-pa- 
 per-like icing all over it. I don't know what you call 
 it, but after you have eaten a piece you feel as though 
 you had been fooling with the mucilage bottle. Or- 
 dinarily you are not a very conceited man, but that 
 night you are "dead stuck on yourself". 
 
 Now, the boy doesn't want to eat anything, but he 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 311 
 
 thinks Society expects it of him, and he eats patiently 
 down to the bottom; and by and by he gets down to 
 the wafers — wafers, you know, about as thick as 
 window-glass, not quite so nutritious, and with just 
 about as much taste in them. I don't know what the 
 women make them for, except to serve at these little 
 gatherings. Well, the boy gets down to the wafers. 
 Up to this time you haven't paid the slightest atten- 
 tion to him. But just when he is loaded to the muz- 
 zle with these dry, crumby, dusty, brittle things, you 
 stand before him and ask him if he is "enjoying the 
 evening". Poor boy, he feels he must answer you 
 right away, promptly; he blows a perfect geyser of 
 crumbs half-way across the room; then he gives one 
 shuddering gasp and chokes all the rest of the eve- 
 ning. 
 
 26. But he is young, he has a good constitution, 
 and he is strong; he lives through it, and goes home 
 alone. Didn't intend to go home alone when he went 
 there — oh, no, indeed ! He had another schedule. But 
 when he reaches the end of the evening he feels faint 
 and weak and cowardly. He sneaks out of the house 
 without being observed, escapes and gets home unpur- 
 sued. He doesn't even pause to tell his hostess, as 
 his mother told him to be sure to do, that he has 
 had "such a delightful evening", and he hopes he may 
 be permitted to come again. But he feels better as he 
 thinks it all over at home. He did have a good time. 
 Alternately wretched and miserable and happy, dis- 
 contented, humiliated, overjoyed he was all evening — 
 but he liked it. He goes back to that house once, 
 
312 
 
 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 
 
 and again, and again, and yet again. Nor for more 
 cake — oh, no, he has had all the cake he wants. 
 
 He has discovered another kind of confectionery at 
 that house, which is sweeter also than the honeycomb. 
 Her name is Laura, or Helen, or something like that. 
 And he goes to her home with two or three fellows; 
 goes with half a dozen people ; and at last he goes all 
 by himself. After the most elaborate grooming he 
 ever gave himself, he feels that he is dressed like a 
 tramp. He has a half-defined impression that every- 
 thing he has on is a size too small for any other man 
 of his size; that his boots are a trifle snug, like a 
 house with four rooms for a family of thirty-seven; 
 that the hat which sits so lightly on the crown of his 
 head is jaunty but limited, like a junior clerk's salary; 
 that his gloves are a neat fit, and can't be buttoned 
 with a stump machine. Tom doesn't know all this : 
 he has only a general vague impression that it may be 
 so. And he doesn't know that his sisters know every 
 line of it. For he has lived many years longer, and 
 got in ever so much more trouble, before he learns 
 that one bright, good, sensible girl — and I believe 
 they are all that — will see and notice more in a 
 glance, remember it more accurately, and talk more 
 about it, than twenty men can see in a week. 
 
 27. Tom does not know, for his crying feet will not 
 let him, how he gets from his room to the earthly 
 paradise where Laura lives. Nor does he know, after 
 he gets there, that Laura sees him trying to rest one 
 foot by setting it upon the heel. And she sees him 
 sneak it back under his chair, and tilt it up on the toe 
 for a change. She sees him fidget and fuss, she sees 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 313 
 
 the look of anguish flitting across his face under the 
 heartless deceitful veneering of smiles, and she makes 
 the mental remark that Master Tom would feel much 
 happier, and much more comfortable, and more like 
 staying longer, if he had worn his father's boots. 
 
 But on his way to the house, despite the distraction 
 of his crying feet, how many pleasant, really beauti- 
 ful, romantic things Tom thinks up and recollects and 
 compiles and composes to say to Laura, to impress 
 her with his originality and wisdom and genius and 
 bright exuberant fancy and general superiority over 
 all the rest of Tom-kind. Real earnest things, you 
 know; no hollow conventional compliments, or non- 
 sense, but such things, Tom flatters himself, as none 
 of the other fellows can or will say. And he has them 
 all in beautiful order when he gets to the foot of the 
 hill. The remark about the weather, to begin with; 
 not the stereotyped old phrase, but a quaint, droll, hu- 
 morous conceit that no one in the world but Tom could 
 think of. Then, after the opening overture about the 
 weather, something about music, and then something 
 about art, and a profound thought or two on science 
 and philosophy, and so on to poetry, and from poetry 
 on an easy grade to "business". 
 
 But alas, when Tom reaches the gate all these well- 
 ordered ideas display evident symptoms of breaking 
 up; as he crosses the yard, he is dismayed to know 
 that they are in the convulsions of a panic, and when 
 he touches the bell button every, each, all and several 
 of the ideas, original and compiled, that he has had 
 on any subject during the last ten years forsake him 
 and return no more that evening. 
 
3 i4 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 28. When Laura welcomed him at the door, he had 
 intended to say something real splendid about the 
 imprisoned sunlight of something beaming out a wel- 
 come upon the what-you-may-call-it of the night or 
 something. Instead of which he says, or rather gasps : 
 
 "Oh, yes, to be sure ; to be sure ; ho." 
 
 And then, conscious that he has not said anything 
 particularly brilliant or original, or that most any of 
 the other fellows could not say with a little practice, 
 he adds, "Good morning!" And even this seems out 
 of place at eight thirty p. m. Then he pulls himself 
 together and asks, "How is your mother?" He is in- 
 formed of "Ma's" well-being, and feeling that he has 
 struck a conversational lead, he follows it a little 
 deeper. "How is your father?" He is not greatly re- 
 assured by the information that "Pa is around and 
 kicking." But he prospects a little further and asks, 
 "How are your parents?" And then he finds that his 
 lead was only a pocket, and that he has already ex- 
 hausted his first topic of conversation. 
 
 He gets through the evening, though he never knows 
 how. He hears his own voice, sounding far away. He 
 sees Laura's face as in a mist, when he dares look at 
 it. She says something about literature and he says 
 he is reading "John Stuart Mill on the Floss." "Does 
 he like it?" No, he doesn't read things he likes; he 
 reads to feed his mind. "And does his mind require 
 a great deal of feeding?" Then he wonders if she is 
 laughing at him. By and by, sometime the same night, 
 he looks at his watch again, and says it is time for 
 him to go. But he doesn't go. He merely admits that 
 it is time. Sits still for a long, long time after that. 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 315 
 
 Doesn't say much, but thinks a great deal. After a 
 while he says, ''Well, really, I ought to go." 
 
 Now, that is encouraging. He ought to go. It shows 
 the young man is thinking seriously upon the subject 
 of going. His conscience is working on him — he 
 "ought to go" ; he is a young man of principle ; when 
 he feels he ought to do a thing, he is not the kind of 
 man to shirk his duty, and as he "ought" to go, why, 
 by and by he goes. He doesn't rush out of the house 
 violently, like a man going to a fire, upsetting the fur- 
 niture and scaring the cat. No, he walks across the 
 room, and down the hall, with the slow, steady, de- 
 liberate, meditative, lingering tread of a man working 
 by the day — for the city. When he gets out into the 
 hall he runs into the hat-rack. He seems surprised to 
 find there is a hat-rack there. He contemplates it for 
 a long, long time. He says after a while, "Really, 
 now, I must go." When you must do anything you 
 do it. 
 
 29. He goes at last. Goes as far as the door this 
 time, and gets hold of the door-knob — clutches it, as 
 a drowning man grasps a life-line. Seems astonished 
 to find there is a knob on the door — had never no- 
 ticed one there before. He clings to it as though he 
 had determined if any burglar came down the street 
 and tried to steal that door-knob, he would have to 
 drag his dead body through the key-hole before he got 
 away with it. By and by the opens the door as wide 
 as it will go. He would open it wider, but the wall is 
 in his way. He holds it open there in the middle of 
 December, as though his one great ambition in life 
 was to cool off that house before he died. He cools 
 
3 i6 THE DBLIVBRY OP A SPEECH 
 
 it off; and the family is shivering to death in bed, 
 when he finally manages to say a plain "Good night", 
 such as you and I would say, whereas he intended to 
 say a very sentimental, poetical good night. And as 
 he goes down the steps he hears the door close behind 
 him; he hears the key turn in the lock; he hears the 
 chain shot into place, and he looks around to see what 
 is the cause of all this haste, and the last light in the 
 house has gloomed into darkness. 
 
 He has been there only five or six hours, and that 
 was his first formal call. What he will do when he 
 gets more familiar with the family and feels a little 
 more at home nQbody can guess. On his way home 
 he feels what an utter fool he made of himself. Laura 
 is not for him, and he will never think of her again. 
 So he thinks of her all night. He thinks he was the 
 awfulest ass that ever tried to entertain anybody. That 
 girl will never want to see him again, never want to 
 hear the dreary sound of his stupid voice — never; 
 and he never will go back there again — never — 
 never — never. 
 
 30. He goes back the next night. And many other 
 nights. Until at last there comes the night of a thou- 
 sand nights. When a kindly Providence keeps every- 
 body else out of the way. When there is nobody 
 there but Tom and Laura, and the furniture, and a 
 lamp that turns down, and the starlight looking in 
 through the half-curtained windows. When, without 
 knowing how or why, they talk about life and its real- 
 ities instead of the last concert or the next lecture; 
 when they talk of their plans, their day-dreams and as- 
 pirations, and their ideals of real men and women; 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 317 
 
 they talk about the heroes and heroines of days long 
 gone by, gray and dim in the ages that are ever made 
 young and new by the lives of noble men and noble 
 women who never died in those grand old days, but 
 lived and live on, as fadeless as the stars. When the 
 room seems strangely silent if for a moment their 
 voices hush; when the flush of earnestness upon her 
 face gives it a tinge of sadness that makes it more 
 beautiful than ever ; when the dream of a home Eden, 
 and home life, and home love, and a home-goddess 
 with a face like Laura's, grows every moment more 
 lovely, more entrancing to him, until at last poor, 
 blundering, stupid Tom speaks without knowing 
 what he is going to say, speaks without preparation or 
 rehearsal, just speaks, and his honest manly heart 
 touches his faltering lips with eloquence and tender- 
 ness and earnestness, that all the rhetoric in the world 
 never did and never will inspire; and — That is all 
 we know about it. Nobody knows what he says, or 
 how he says it. 
 
 And when he goes away from her home that night, 
 with the answer in his heart he had hoped and prayed 
 for, although he knew he didn't deserve it, he goes out 
 into that wondrous night a new man, into a new 
 world. There are constellations in the sky he never 
 saw before. It is a new world, and he is a new man, 
 with new hopes and new aspirations, new ambitions 
 and new purposes. His whole life is transformed by 
 a woman's love. No wonder he walks home on the 
 air, about ten feet up above the earth, which is the 
 planet we inhabit, by permission of the trusts. Tom 
 abides in this altitudinous condition of things for sev- 
 
3 i8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 eral days. He doesn't come down for his meals. 
 Meals ! "Victuals !" Air is rich enough for his 
 blood. A little atmosphere on a crystal salver is all 
 he wants, three times a day. He lives on the essence 
 of her name breathed into a "vawse". 
 
 31. But Laura brings him down to earth one eve- 
 ning when they are sitting down together, brings him 
 down with a thud. She wants to know if he has 
 said anything about this, by the way, to "Pa". Pa! 
 Tom had forgotten there was such a creature on earth 
 as Pa. It hasn't occurred to him that Pa had any 
 connection with this circus at all. Now, he under- 
 stands that Pa is the gentleman in the middle of the 
 ring, with the long whip. He is the ring-master, who 
 makes the animals and the performers go around. No, 
 he hadn't said anything to Pa. He says he didn't think 
 of it — he hasn't had time ; he hasn't seen him ; they 
 were taking account of stock this week. No, he hasn't 
 yet, but he will some time. There was no hurry about 
 it — the old gentleman would last, wouldn't he, a 
 few weeks longer? 
 
 Tom had not exactly, as you might say, poured out 
 his heart to Pa. Somehow or other he had a rose- 
 colored idea that the thing was going to go right along 
 in this way forever. Tom had a thought that the pro- 
 gram was all arranged, printed and distributed, rose- 
 colored, gilt-edged and perfumed. He was going to 
 sit and hold Laura's hands, and Pa was to stay down 
 at the office, and Ma was to make her visits like an- 
 gels'. But he sees, now that the matter has been re- 
 ferred to, that Pa is a grim necessity. And Laura does- 
 n't like to see such a spasm of terror pass over Tom's 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 319 
 
 face; and her lips quiver a little as she hides her 
 flushed face out of sight on Tom's shoulder, and tells 
 him how kind and tender Pa has always been with 
 her, until Tom feels positively jealous of him. And she 
 tells him that he must not dread going to see Pa, for 
 Pa will be, oh, so glad to know how happy, happy, 
 happy he can make Pa's little girl. And as she talks 
 of him — the hard-working, old-fashioned man, who 
 loves his girls as though he were yet only a big boy — 
 her heart grows tenderer, and she speaks so elo- 
 quently that Tom, at first savagely jealous of him, is 
 persuaded to fall in love with the old gentleman — he 
 calls him "Pa", too. "Why," he says 'Tm not afraid 
 of your father. For that matter, I'm not afraid of 
 any man that ever walked on buffalo-grass. I will go 
 and see him now if you want me to." No, not right 
 now ; she thinks it isn't necessary right now, but some- 
 time soon. He will go down tomorrow afternoon — 
 and he does. 
 
 32. He commits to memory a beautiful speech, an 
 impressive, persuasive, convincing speech. He walks 
 right down to the private office at the end of the store 
 where it says "No Admittance" on the glass door. 
 He opens the door and walks right up to the old man 
 sitting at the desk, and looks him right in the eye, bold 
 as a sheep. The old gentleman lifts his head and looks 
 Tom in the eye. Once. Just once. That is enough. 
 Tom takes the count after that. He wasn't sure 
 whether the old man looked him in the eye or poked 
 him in the eye. It has the same effect on him; it 
 knocks his speech endwise. 
 
 By and by he starts in the middle of a sentence and 
 
3 2o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 says it both ways, leaves out all the verbs and forgets 
 all the substantives. But he gets through alive, and 
 he tells Laura that night — oh, he says, if she could 
 only have heard what he said to her father! He 
 walked right up to him, and he wishes he could re- 
 member the speech he made. If Daniel Webster could 
 have heard that speech he would have turned over in 
 his grave. Likely he would — he would have come 
 out of it with a brick. Only one man on earth could 
 have understood what the boy was trying to say, and 
 that happened to be the man he was talking to, and 
 he understood him because he knew all the symp- 
 toms. He had been there himself, and a man never 
 gets over it. But when you come to this crisis in your 
 life, my son, don't you make up any speech for Pa. 
 You wouldn't remember it if you did. Pa wouldn't 
 be moved by it, hard-headed, solid, matter-of-fact man 
 of business that he is. You get him alone first — 
 that is the main thing. Tell him you would like to see 
 him alone for a couple of minutes, if he has an hour 
 or two to spare. Then he will know what you want 
 right away. 
 
 He understands, when a young man of your age 
 comes in at the busiest time of a busy day, and asks 
 him for a private interview, that you are either going 
 to ask him for his daughter or try to borrow money 
 of him. It amounts to the same thing in the end. So 
 he will be ready for you in either case. Oh, of course, 
 if there are two or three sisters in the family, if I 
 were you I would mention the name of the particular 
 girl I was after. Because, if you leave it to Pa to se- 
 lect the member of his family that he thinks is best 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 321 
 
 adapted to your needs and age, it will be just like him 
 to offer you the old lady. You get her anyhow, son; 
 you needn't worry about that. 
 
 33. Then you mustn't hurry the old man. We have 
 an idea when a man gets about fifty years old that all 
 the sentiment in his heart has been burned to ashes 
 long years ago in the struggle for life, with the fierce 
 competition in the market, and the contact with other 
 keen fighting men. But sometimes, when the boy and 
 the man stand and sit there, looking at each other, the 
 counting-room, with the heavy shadows lurking in 
 every corner, with its time-worn furnishings, with the 
 scanty dash of sunlight breaking in through the dusty 
 window, looks like an old painting; the beginning and 
 finishing of a race : one man nearly ready to lay his 
 armor off, glad to be so nearly and so safely through 
 with the contest that Tom, in all his inexperience and 
 with his enthusiasm and conceit of a young man, is 
 just getting ready to run and fight, or fight and run, 
 you never can tell which until he is through with it. 
 
 The old man, looking at Tom, and through him, and 
 past him, without seeing him, feels his heart throb 
 almost as quickly as does that of the young man be- 
 fore him. For, looking down a long vista of years 
 bordered with roseate hopes and bright dreams and 
 anticipations, he sees a tender face, radiant with smiles 
 and kindled with blushes ; he feels a soft hand drop 
 into his own with its timid pressure ; he sees the vi- 
 sion open, under the summer stars, down mossy hill- 
 sides, where the restless breezes, sighing through the 
 rustling leaves, whisper their secret to the noisy katy- 
 dids ; strolling along winding paths, deep in the bend- 
 
322 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ing wild grass, down in the aisles of the dim old 
 woods; loitering where the meadow brook sparkles 
 over the white pebbles or murmurs around the great 
 flat stepping-stones ; lingering on the foot-bridge, 
 while he gazes into eyes eloquent and tender in their 
 silent love-light; up through the long pathway of 
 years, flecked and checkered with sunshine and cloud, 
 with storm and calm, through years of struggle, trial, 
 sorrow, disappointment, out at last into the crowning 
 beauty and benison of hard-won and well-deserved 
 success, he sees now this second Laura, re-imaging in 
 all her girlish grace and loveliness of face and figure, 
 and echoing, in the music of her voice, her mother — 
 just as her mother was, back in the dear, old, sun- 
 crowned days, "When all the days were made of 
 gold, and all the nights of silver", when Laura's 
 mother was a "little girl", and Laura's father was a 
 boy like Tom. And Pa, brushing "nothing" out of 
 his eyes, tells Tom he'll think it over and see him 
 again — oh, well — about nine o'clock next week. 
 
 34. And so they are duly and formally engaged; 
 and the very first thing they do, they make the very 
 sensible, though very uncommon resolution so to con- 
 duct themselves that no one will ever suspect it. And 
 they succeed admirably. No one ever does suspect 
 it. They come into church in time to hear the bene- 
 diction — every time they come together. They shun 
 all other people when church is dismissed, and are 
 seen to go home alone the longest way. At picnics 
 they are missed not more than fifty times a day, and 
 are discovered sitting under a lone and silent tree, 
 holding each other's hands, gazing into each other's 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 323 
 
 eyes. They call this acting coldly toward each other. 
 They do look as though they were trying to keep each 
 other from freezing to death. 
 
 If, at sociable or festival, they are left alone in a 
 dressing-room a second and a half, Laura emerges 
 with her ruffles standing around like a railroad acci- 
 dent; and Tom has enough good complexion on his 
 shoulder to go around a young ladies' seminary. When 
 they drive out, they sit in a buggy with a seat eighteen 
 inches wide, and there is two feet of unoccupied room 
 at either end of it. Long years afterward, when they 
 drive, a flat-car isn't too wide for them ; and when they 
 walk, you could drive a load of hay between them. 
 
 They come to me, sometimes, these light-hearted 
 children, and say they are "the happiest people in all 
 this world". And when I ask why this superlative 
 felicity, they say they have been engaged for six 
 weeks. Oh, well; they are happy, are as happy as 
 children and birds and kittens know how to be. They 
 have all the happiness they will hold, but they don't 
 hold very much. Children between twenty and thirty 
 have a very limited capacity for happiness. If I should 
 pick out the happiest lovers I know, I wouldn't select 
 the boy and girl, with the morning light shining on 
 their faces, or the starlight gleaming in their eyes. I 
 would choose your white-haired old grandfather, and 
 your grandmother with the silver locks. 
 
 35. Some people say, "Oh, Grandma and Grand- 
 pa! — they are not sentimental. They are not at all 
 lover-like. They are as matter-of-fact as the multi- 
 plication table." Yes, but don't you know these gray- 
 haired old lovers can teach you that love is a rose 
 
324 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 that rarely unfolds to its perfection in the morning 
 sunshine? It takes more than the laughing, singing, 
 dancing months of your engagement to teach you what 
 love is. It takes years of deep and wide life experi- 
 ences. It takes years to learn and to understand each 
 other's little infirmities of temper and disposition; 
 years of sharing sorrow and heartache, as well as 
 laughter and joy; years of bearing each other's bur- 
 dens, years of life's woes and life's work, it takes to 
 interweave two hearts so closely that every throb in 
 one awakens an answering thought in the other. Love 
 that has been tried by the wet fleece and by the dry; 
 love that has been tested a thousand times in a thou- 
 sand ways, and has never once faltered in its pa- 
 tience, in its loyalty, and its devotion. By and by, lover 
 and sweetheart, you will love each other in that way — 
 not this year, nor the next. But after many years, 
 this blessing will come. 
 
 Then dawns the wedding-day. The wedding day ! 
 Everybody about the house laughing, happy and 
 bright — everybody singing and chatting, with one 
 exception. Somebody cries. At every wedding you 
 ever attended in your life somebody cried. You can 
 hear her all through the ceremony — sniff, sniff, 
 sniff! Sounds like somebody trying to make re- 
 sponses to the service with a cold in his head. And 
 another thing: the person who is crying at the wed- 
 ding is always somebody who is not being married. 
 Every time. The people who are being married seem 
 to stand it bravely. 
 
 36. Poor Ma, no wonder she cries, when she real- 
 izes what it means to her. Ma, with the thousand and 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 325 
 
 one anxieties attendant on the great event in her 
 daughter's life hidden away under her dear smiling 
 face, away down under the glistening eyes, deep in 
 the loving heart; Ma, hurrying here and fluttering 
 there, in the intense excitement of something strange- 
 ly made up of happiness and grief, of apprehension 
 and hope; Ma, with her sudden disappearances and 
 flushed reappearances, indicating struggles and tri- 
 umphs in the turbulent world down-stairs ; Ma, seeing 
 that everything is going right, from kitchen to dress- 
 ing-rooms ; looking after everything and everybody, 
 with her hands and heart just as full as they will hold, 
 and more voices calling, "Ma", from every room in the 
 house than you would think one hundred "Mas" could 
 answer ; Ma, with the quivering lip and glistening eyes, 
 who has to be cheerful, and lively, and smiling; be- 
 cause, if, as she thinks of the dearest and best-loved 
 of her little flock going away from her sheltering arms 
 into the keeping of another heart, she lets the fear and 
 sorrow cloud her eyes for one moment, she hears a 
 reproachful whisper — "Oh-h, Ma !" How it all comes 
 back to Laura, like the tender shadow of a dream, 
 long years after the mother-love that shone in the 
 quiet eyes has gone out in darkness in the dear old 
 home ; how sweetly the vision comes back to the bride 
 when she is a mother! 
 
 And Pa — dear old "Dad", wandering about the 
 house as though he were lost in his own home; blun- 
 dering into rooms where he has no business, and get- 
 ting himself repelled therefrom with hysterical shrieks 
 and gigglings ; Pa, who gets tired of people who laugh 
 and chatter, and gets away from them for a little min- 
 
326 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 ute, hiding himself in an empty room, where he stands 
 at the window by himself, and looks out, dreaming of 
 his little girl going away today out of the old home 
 into the new one. 
 
 37. Why, only yesterday she was a dimpled, dainty, 
 white-robed baby girl, the lily blossom that brought 
 the first music of baby cooing into his home; his lit- 
 tle baby girl. Then a little girl in short dresses, with 
 schoolgirl troubles and schoolgirl pleasures, but yet 
 his little girl. And then an older little girl still — his 
 comrade now, and companion — but still his little 
 girl. He feels the caressing touch of her white arms 
 about his neck, he hears her ringing laugh, he sees 
 again the romping ways he loved so well — his little 
 girl. Then an older "little girl", out of school, and 
 into society, admired, beloved, and at last — 
 
 But this is as far as he cares to think. Because, 
 somehow, his father heart sees in the flight of this, his 
 first-born, by and by the flight of all the other fledg- 
 lings of his flock. He thinks, when they all have mated 
 and flown away, how empty and desolate the old home 
 nest will seem. He thinks how, in the years to come, 
 when his girls shall make other homes bright and 
 beautiful with the music of their voices and the light 
 of their faces, mother will sit sometimes in the old 
 home, beside the empty cradle that rocked them all, 
 tenderly singing once more, with quivering lips and 
 faltering voice, the cradle songs that in the olden days 
 brooded so tenderly over all their baby sleep, until 
 at last the rising tears will choke the song, and the 
 swaying cradle will stand still, silent and empty, and 
 back over river and prairie, mountain and desert, from 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 327 
 
 new homes in the newer lands, come drifting back 
 into the old home and its silence the tender cadences 
 of the songs the children used to sing at home. Come 
 back again the murmured prayers from the whisper- 
 ing lips, rising like the incense of the evening sacrifice 
 around the dear loving altar of the mother knees. Come 
 back the snatches of their childish plays. Come back 
 all the love and the beauty of their childhood, until the 
 old home, bereft of its little ones, is blessed so ten- 
 derly with their memories. 
 
 Old and gray the absent children may be now, with 
 other children clustering like olive plants about their 
 knees, but to the mother love that goes out into the 
 world with every one of us, they are "the children" 
 still. Down to white-haired old age, in her letters to 
 them, in her talk about them, in her prayers for 
 them, on her loving lips and deep in her tender heart, 
 they are her "boys" and her "girls". 
 
 38. We thank God it is so. We thank God for the 
 human love that is so like the love divine, that when 
 the great All-father would make His children under- 
 stand the tenderness of His love, the only phrase He 
 could put on the lips of His prophet was, "As one 
 whom his mother comforteth, so will I." It is as 
 though we could never understand the love of God if 
 we had never known the love of a mother. 
 
 No wonder a man wants to be a boy again some- 
 times. No wonder that sometimes, amid the storms 
 and conflicts, in all the troubles and toils of life, a 
 man longs for just one little moment to go back to 
 her, just to creep into her arms once more; once more 
 to lean his head on the dearest, sweetest, tenderest 
 
328 THB DELIVERY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 pillow that ever a head with an ache, or a heart with 
 a sorrow in it, rested itself upon, and for one happy 
 moment cry away all the troubles and sorrows and 
 disappointments of his manhood years, God pity him! 
 He can't. Because maybe the mother love is gone. 
 And, anyhow, he can't, because he is a man, and the 
 troubles and sorrows of manhood are sorrows that 
 you can't cry away in your mother's arms. You have 
 to set your teeth and turn your face to the storm, and 
 let it rain and drive against your face, because you are 
 a man. 
 
 The boy won't always have the mother arms to 
 run to, when somebody tramples on his heart or some- 
 body hurt his feelings ; when he is defeated and dis- 
 crowned. That's a good thing for the boy to remem- 
 ber before he forgets it. And the mother — oh, her 
 arms will ache, ache, ache a thousand times more 
 with their emptiness than ever they did with the weight 
 of a tousled head and the grimy face that came tear- 
 stained to her for comfort. That is a good thing for 
 the mother to remember before the boy grows up. 
 
 39. In conclusion, the young people have a final 
 spasm of superhuman wisdom. They are going to 
 keep house. They are going to get ready for house- 
 keeping the first thing. They are going to have that 
 house stocked from cellar to garret and back again, 
 with everything they need for a whole year — every- 
 thing in the market. Just as well, Tom says, to get 
 everything at once and have it delivered right up at 
 the house, as to spend five or six or ten or twenty 
 years in stocking up a home, as his father did. And 
 Laura thinks so, too, and she wonders that Tom, 
 
RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 329 
 
 young as he is, should know so much more than his 
 father. Tom wonders at this himself, and it puzzles 
 him until he is forty-five or fifty years old, and has a 
 young Tom of his own to advise him. So the young 
 people make out this wonderful list of all the things 
 they have to have, with the proper quantities and 
 prices, so they won't outrun their little income — fifty 
 cents' worth of flour ; two dollars' worth of chewing- 
 gum — little things like that. They revise this list 
 until it is humanly complete. 
 
 Then, the first time they want anything to eat, they 
 discover there isn't a knife or a fork or a plate or a 
 spoon in the new house. And the first day the laun- 
 dress comes, and the water is hot, and the clothes 
 are all ready, it is discovered that there isn't a wash- 
 tub nearer than the grocery. And further along in 
 the day the discovery is made that while Tom has 
 bought a clothes-line that will reach to the north pole 
 and back, and then has to be coiled up a mile or two, 
 there isn't a clothes-pin in the settlement. And, in 
 the course of a week or two. Tom slowly awakens 
 to the realization of the fact that he has only begun 
 to get. 
 
 When the first meal is prepared in the little home — 
 no, that is wrong. The first meal never is "pre- 
 pared", — it is eaten raw — they take dinner with 
 Ma. They'd starve to death the first month if it was- 
 n't for Ma — her Ma — the one Tom makes jokes 
 about. 
 
 The fact is, they have just begun to buy things. 
 They live in the sweet buy and buy, long before they 
 get to it. If Tom should live to be a hundred years 
 
33o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 
 
 old, they would think, just before he died, of some 
 things they had wanted for seventy-five years, which 
 Tom had always forgotten to get. He says, in ex- 
 tenuation of his fault, that he "can't remember ten 
 thousand things every time he goes out of the house; 
 he has something to do besides shopping and market- 
 ing". He is right. Five thousand are as many things 
 as a married man can carry on his mind at one time. 
 Some men have very poor memories, and can only re- 
 member one thousand things — and they must all be 
 the same thing. Then sometimes they remember it. 
 Tom goes on saying he "forgot" until he is ashamed 
 to say it any more. It is such a puerile reason. 
 
 40. One day he comes home with a new excuse. He 
 says he did order the things but the man forgot to 
 fetch them up. I don't know whether you ought to 
 call that a lie or not. It sounds like one — it is not 
 absolute truth. But I don't know about this remark 
 being a lie, because a lie is something that is calcu- 
 lated to deceive. That statement never deceives any- 
 body — it is perfectly harmless. Young husband, never 
 lie to your wife. Not only because it is mean, cruel, 
 brutal, cowardly ; but it is such a waste of talent. She 
 knows you, backward and forward, she knows you in 
 and out, round and round, crisscross, zigzag, and so 
 back to the place of beginning. She can tell you when 
 you are telling her the straight honest truth, and when 
 you are telling her big wicked "whacks", just as well 
 by looking at your shoulder-blades as you go out of 
 the door as she can when she looks you right in the 
 eye. She knows you. And sometime, some day of 
 mutual knowledge, you will know your little wife just 
 
MSB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 331 
 
 as thoroughly and just as intuitively as she knows 
 you today. But, by that time you will both of you 
 have been in Heaven about two thousand years. 
 
 Day by day their oldest and best friend, old Time, 
 comes along, and looks into the little home to see how 
 the young people are getting along. He loves young 
 people, because he sees what beautiful material they 
 are of which to make the loveliest kind of old people ; 
 and if you give him half a chance, children, that is just 
 what he will do with you, and he will do it beauti- 
 fully. He has a little memorandum of things the 
 young people need ; he has thought of things you never 
 have dreamed of, or would think of. 
 
 The first thing that old Time brings is a little pros- 
 perity — just enough to make your heart sing for 
 gladness. You had that down in your little book. 
 Then he has a little adversity. Just enough to put the 
 soul into the song of the heart that it couldn't have 
 without it. He brings just enough sunshine to make 
 the roses and lilies blossom in your lives. You had 
 that down, too, in your little book. Then he has writ- 
 ten down for you once in a while some beautiful gray 
 days. You don't love the gray days now. You want 
 the sunshiny days, the roses and the carnations. Let 
 me tell you, children, you will love the gray days just 
 as well when they come. Some day, when the heart 
 is wearied, when the eyes are hot and tired and dry 
 with weeping, when the face is burned by the noonday 
 sun, you will know how like a kiss of blessedness from 
 Heaven comes the soft cool touch of the mist, creep- 
 ing up out of the sea or coming down over the moun- 
 tain, until it folds you in a little curtain of gray, soft 
 
332 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 
 
 as the wings of a dove, and shuts you in with peace 
 and rest and hope, and the tenderness of God. Oh, you 
 will thank God again and again for the gray days. 
 
 41. Old Time brings into the house, by and by, the 
 cooing music of a baby voice. The baby ! He puts 
 tone and color and meaning into the home. Why, peo- 
 ple come into your little home, and they look at the 
 beautiful furniture. They don't say, "Did that table 
 come over in the Mayflower?" Oh, no — it looks too 
 slick and glossy and Grand Rapidsy for that. But one 
 unemployed day the baby gets at it with the scissors 
 and a tack-hammer. Then when people ask, "Did 
 that lovely antique table come over in the Mayflower ?" 
 you reply, with a superior air, "Oh, no ! That came 
 over in the Ark." 
 
 So Time comes and goes, bringing memories and 
 blessings. Sends a messenger, one day, to take young 
 Tom to college, and when he goes away, he leaves a 
 great aching quiet in the home, harder to endure than 
 the noisest noise any boy ever made. Time brings him 
 home from college by and by, and with him a college 
 yell that makes all the other noises he ever made in his 
 life, all put together and megaphoned, sound in com- 
 parison like deep, profound, religious silence. And it 
 makes life seem real and earnest to Tom, and brings 
 the old laugh rippling over Laura's face, when they 
 see old Tom's first mustache, budding into second life, 
 on young Tom's face. 
 
 And still old Time comes on his rounds, bringing 
 each year whiter frosts to scatter on the whitening 
 mustache, and brighter gleams of silver to glint the 
 brown of Laura's hair. Bringing the blessings of old 
 
RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 333 
 
 age and a love-locked home to crown these common- 
 place, workaday, human lives, bristling with human 
 faults, marred with human mistakes, scarred and 
 seamed and rifted with human troubles, and crowned 
 with the compassion that only perfection can send upon 
 imperfection. Comes, with happy memories of the 
 past, and quiet confidence for the future. Comes, with 
 the changing scenes of day and night; comes, with 
 the sunny peace and the backward dreams of age ; 
 comes, with December's drifting snows, and comes — ■ 
 just as often — with the perfumed roses of beautiful 
 June. Comes, until one day, in the golden harvest- 
 time, the eye of the old reaper rests upon old Tom, 
 standing right in the line of the swath, amid the rip- 
 ened grain. The sweep of the noiseless scythe, whose 
 edge is never turned; Time passes on; old Tom steps 
 aside, out of young Tom's way, and the mysterious 
 beautiful cycle of a life, ending always where it be- 
 gins, and beginning ever where it ends, is complete. 
 
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