My Memories of Eighty Years Part 26

At a large dinner I had a pleasant encounter with Sir Henry.

In order to meet another engagement, he tried to slip quietly out while I was speaking. I caught sight of his retreating figure and called loudly the refrain of the familiar song, "Linger longer, Lucy." The shout of the crowd brought Sir Henry back, and the other entertainment lost a guest.

In several of my visits to London I went to see not only places of interest but also houses and streets made famous in English literature. In one of my many trips to St. Paul's Cathedral I was looking at the tomb of the Duke of Wellington in the crypt and also at the modest tomb of Cruikshank, the artist, near by.

The superintendent asked me who I was and many questions about America, and then said: "Many Americans come here, but the most remarkable of them all was Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. He was very inquisitive and wanted to know all about Wellington's tomb.

I told him that the duke's body was first put in a wooden coffin, and this was incased in steel; that this had made for it a position in a stone weighing twenty tons and over that was a huge stone weighing forty tons. He gave me a slap on the back which sent me flying quite a distance and exclaimed: 'Old man, you have got him safe. If he ever escapes cable at my expense to Robert G. Ingersoll, Peoria, Illinois, U. S. A.'"

I had an opportunity to know that the war by Germany against France and England was a surprise to both countries. While in London during part of June, 1914, I met Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament, and their whole thought and anxiety were concentrated on the threatened revolution in Ireland.

The Cabinet had asked the king to intervene and he had called representatives of all parties to meet him at Buckingham Palace.

After many consultations he declared settlement or compromise were impossible. The situation was so critical that it absorbed the attention of the government, the press, and the public.

About the first of July I was in Paris and found the French worried about their finances and the increase in their military expenses which were reaching threatening figures. The syndicate of French bankers were seriously alarmed. There was no suspicion of German purpose and preparations for attack.

While in Geneva a few weeks afterwards I became alarmed by letters from relatives in Germany who were socially intimate with people holding very important positions in the government and the army, and their apprehensions from what their German friends told them and what they saw led to their joining us in Switzerland.

One day the Swiss refused to take foreign money or to make exchange for Swiss, or to cash letters of credit or bank checks. I immediately concluded that the Swiss bankers knew of or suspected Germany's hostile intentions, and with only two hours, and two families with their trunks to pack, we managed to reach and secure accommodations on the regular train for Paris. There was nothing unusual either at the railroad station or in the city.

One of the amusing incidents which are my life-preservers occurred at the station. Two elderly English spinsters were excitedly discussing the currency trouble. One of them smoothed out a bank of England note and said to her sister: "There, Sarah, is a bank of England note which has been good as gold all over the world since Christ came to earth, and these Swiss pigs won't take it."

I told this incident afterwards to a banker in London. He said they were very ignorant women, there were no bank of England notes at that time.

German hostility developed so rapidly that our train was the last which left Switzerland for France for nearly two months. We were due in Paris at ten o'clock in the evening, but did not arrive until the next morning because of the mobilization of French recruits.

The excitement in Paris was intense. A French statesman said to me: "We are doing our best to avoid war. Our troops are kept ten kilometres from the frontier, but the Germans have crossed and seized strategic points. They will hear nothing and accept nothing and are determined to crush us if they can."

From all ranks of the people was heard: "We will fight to the last man, but we are outnumbered and will be destroyed unless England helps. Will England help? Will England help?" I have been through several crises but never witnessed nor felt such a reaction to ecstatic joy as occurred when Great Britain joined France.

The restrictions on leaving Paris required time, patience, and all the resources of our Emba.s.sy to get us out of France. The helpfulness, resourcefulness, and untiring efforts of our Amba.s.sador, Myron T. Herrick, won the grat.i.tude of all Americans whom the war had interned on the continent and who must get home.

There was a remarkable change in England. When we left in July there was almost hysteria over the threatening civil war. In October the people were calm though involved in the greatest war in their history. They did not minimize the magnitude of the struggle, or the sacrifices it would require. There was a characteristic grim determination to see the crisis through, regardless of cost.

Cabinet ministers whom I met thought the war would last three years.

The constant appeal to me, as to other Americans, was, "When will you join us? If we fail it is your turn next. It is autocracy and militarism against civilization, liberty, and representative government for the whole world."

We had a perilous and anxious voyage home and found few grasping the situation or working to be prepared for the inevitable, except Theodore Roosevelt and General Wood.

XX. ORATORS AND CAMPAIGN SPEAKERS

During my college days at Yale Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Ward Beecher were frequent lecturers, and generally on the slavery question. I have heard most of the great orators of the world, but none of them produced such an immediate and lasting effect upon their audience as Wendell Phillips. He was the finest type of a cultured New Englander. He was the recipient of the best education possible in his time and with independent means which enabled him to pursue his studies and career. Besides, he was one of the handsomest men I ever saw upon the platform, and in his inspired moments met one's imaginative conception of a Greek G.o.d.

Phillips rarely made a gesture or spoke above the conversational, but his musical voice reached the remotest comers of the hall.

The eager audience, fearful of losing a word, would bend forward with open mouths as well as attentive ears. It was always a hostile audience at the beginning of Mr. Phillips's address, but before the end he swayed them to applause, tears, or laughter, as a skilled performer upon a perfect instrument. His subject was nearly always slavery, his views very extreme and for immediate abolition, but at that time he had a very small following.

Nevertheless, his speeches, especially because of the riots and controversies they caused, set people thinking, and largely increased the hostility to slavery, especially to its extension.

I met Mr. Phillips one evening, after a lecture, at the house of Professor Goodrich. He was most courtly and considerate to students and invited questions. While I was charmed, even captivated, by his eloquence, I had at that time very little sympathy with his views. I said to him: "Mr. Phillips, your attack to-night upon Caleb Cushing, one of the most eminent and able public men in the country, was very vitriolic and most destructive of character and reputation. It seems so foreign to all I know of you that, if you will pardon me, I would like to know why you did it." He answered: "I have found that people, as a rule, are not interested in principles or their discussions. They are so absorbed in their personal affairs that they do very little thinking upon matters outside their business or vocation. They embody a principle in some public man in whom they have faith, and so that man stands for a great body of truth or falsehood, and may be exceedingly dangerous because a large following connects the measure with the man, and, therefore, if I can destroy the man who represents a vicious principle I have destroyed the principle." It did not strike me favorably at the time, nor does it now. Nevertheless, in politics and in the battles of politics it represents a dynamic truth.

The perfect preparation of a speech was, in Wendell Phillip's view, that one in which the mental operations were a.s.sisted in no way by outside aid. Only two or three times in his life did he prepare with pen and paper an address, and he felt that these speeches were the poorest of his efforts. He was constantly studying the art of oratory. In his daily walks or in his library metaphors and similes were suggested, which he tucked away in his memory, and he even studied action as he watched the muscular movements of men whom he saw in public places. He believed that a perfect speech could be prepared only after intense mental concentration. Of course the mind must first be fortified by such reading as provided facts. Having thus saturated his mind with information, he would frequently lie extended for hours upon his sofa, with eyes closed, making mental arrangements for the address.

In fact, he used to write his speeches mentally, as Victor Hugo is said to have written some of his poems. A speech thus prepared, Phillips thought, was always at the command of the speaker. It might vary upon every delivery, and could be altered to meet emergencies with the audience, but would always be practically the same.

This method of preparation explains what has been a mystery to many persons. The several reports of Phillips's lecture on "The Lost Arts" differ in phraseology and even in arrangement.

Mr. Phillips did not read his speeches in print, and, therefore, never revised one. He was firmly of the belief that the printed thought and the spoken thought should be expressed in different form, and that the master of one form could not be the master of the other.

I met many young men like myself in the canva.s.s of 1856, and also made many acquaintances of great value in after-life. It was difficult for the older stump speakers to change the addresses they had been delivering for years, so that the young orators, with their fresh enthusiasm, their intense earnestness and undoubting faith, were more popular with the audiences, who were keenly alive to the issues raised then by the new Republican party.

The Republican party was composed of Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats. In this first campaign the old-timers among the Whigs and the Democrats could not get over their long antagonism and distrusted each other. The young men, whether their ancestry was Democratic or Whig, were the amalgam which rapidly fused all elements, so that the party presented a united front in the campaign four years afterwards when Mr. Lincoln was elected.

In the course of that campaign I had as fellow speakers many times on the platform statesmen of national reputation. These gentlemen, with few exceptions, made heavy, ponderous, and plat.i.tudinous speeches. If they ever had possessed humor they were afraid of it.

The crowd, however, would invariably desert the statesman for the speaker who could give them amus.e.m.e.nt with instruction. The elder statesmen said by way of advice: "While the people want to be amused, they have no faith in a man or woman with wit or anecdote. When it comes to the election of men to conduct public affairs, they invariably prefer serious men." There is no doubt that a reputation for wit has seriously impaired the prospects of many of the ablest men in the country.

The only exception to this rule was Abraham Lincoln. But when he ran for president the first time he was comparatively unknown outside his State of Illinois. The campaign managers in their literature put forward only his serious speeches, which were very remarkable, especially the one he delivered in Cooper Union, New York, which deeply impressed the thoughtful men of the East.

He could safely tell stories and jokes after he had demonstrated his greatness as president. Then the people regarded his story-telling as the necessary relief and relaxation of an overburdened and overworked public servant. But before he had demonstrated his genius as an executive, they would probably have regarded these same traits as evidences of frivolity, unfitting the possessor for great and grave responsibilities.

I had a very interesting talk on the subject with General Garfield, when he was running for president. He very kindly said to me: "You have every qualification for success in public life; you might get anywhere and to the highest places except for your humor.

I know its great value to a speaker before an audience, but it is dangerous at the polls. When I began in politics, soon after graduation, I found I had a keen sense of humor, and that made me the most sought-after of all our neighborhood speakers, but I also soon discovered it was seriously impairing the public opinion of me for responsible positions, so I decided to cut it out. It was very difficult, but I have succeeded so thoroughly that I can no longer tell a story or appreciate the point of one when it is told to me. Had I followed my natural bent I should not now be the candidate of my party for President of the United States."

The reason so few men are humorists is that they are very shy of humor. My own observations in studying the lives and works of our public men demonstrate how thoroughly committed to this idea they have been. There is not a joke, nor a mot, nor a scintilla of humor irradiating the Revolutionary statesmen. There is a stilted dignity about their utterances which shows that they were always posing in heroic att.i.tudes. If they lived and moved in family, social, and club life, as we understand it, the gloom of their companionship accounts for the enjoyment which their contemporaries took in the three hours' sermons then common from the pulpit.

As we leave the period of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and the Adamses, we find no humor in the next generation. The only relief from the tedium of argument and exhaustless logic is found in the savage sarcasm of John Randolph, which was neither wit nor humor.

A witty ill.u.s.tration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument. The old-time audience demanded a speech of not less than two hours' duration and expected three. The audience of to-day grows restive after the first hour, and is better pleased with forty minutes. It prefers epigrams to arguments and humor to rhetoric. It is still true, however, that the press presents to readers from a speaker who indulges in humor only the funny part of his effort, and he is in serious danger of receiving no credit for ability in the discussion of great questions, no matter how conspicuous that ability may be. The question is always presented to a frequent speaker whether he shall win the applause of the audience and lose the flattering opinion of the critics, or bore his audience and be complimented by readers for wisdom.

When I look back over sixty-five years on the platform in public speaking, and the success of different methods before audiences, political, literary, business, or a legislative committee, or a legislature itself, and especially when I consider my own pleasure in the efforts, the results and compensations have been far greater than the attainment of any office. For, after all, a man might be dull and a bore to himself and others for a lifetime and have the reputation of being a serious thinker and a solid citizen, and yet never reach the presidency.

It was always a delight to listen to George W. Curtis. He was a finished orator of the cla.s.sic type, but not of the Demosthenian order. His fine personal appearance, his well-modulated and far-reaching voice, and his refined manner at once won the favor of his audience. He was a splendid type of the scholar in politics.

In preparing a speech he took as much pains as he did with a volume which he was about to publish.

I accepted under great pressure the invitation to deliver the oration at the unveiling of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, because the time was so short, only a few days.

Mr. Curtis said to me afterwards: "I was very much surprised that you accepted that invitation. I declined it because there was only a month left before the unveiling. I invariably refuse an invitation for an important address unless I can have three months. I take one month to look up authorities and carefully prepare it and then lay it on the shelf for a month. During that period, while you are paying no attention to the matter, your mind is unconsciously at work upon it. When you resume correcting your ma.n.u.script you find that in many things about which you thought well you have changed your mind. Leisurely corrections and additions will perfect the address."

As my orations and speeches have always been the by-product of spare evenings and Sundays taken from an intensely active and busy life, if I had followed any of these examples my twelve volumes of speeches would never have seen the light of day.

One of the greatest orators of his generation, and I might say of ours, was Robert G. Ingersoll. I was privileged to meet Colonel Ingersoll many times, and on several occasions to be a speaker on the same platform. The zenith of his fame was reached by his "plumed-knight" speech, nominating James G. Blaine for president at the national Republican convention in 1876. It was the testimony of all the delegates that if the vote could have been taken immediately at the conclusion of the speech, Mr. Blaine would have been elected.

Colonel Ingersoll carried off the oratorical honors that campaign in a series of speeches, covering the whole country. I say a series of speeches; he really had but one, which was the most effective campaign address I ever heard, but which he delivered over and over again, and every time with phenomenal success, a success the like of which I have never known. He delivered it to an immense audience in New York, and swept them off their feet.

He repeated this triumph the next day at an open-air meeting in Wall Street, and again the next day at a great gathering in New Jersey. The newspapers printed the speech in full every day after its delivery, as if it had been a new and first utterance of the great orator.

I spoke with him several times when he was one of the speakers after an important dinner. It was a rare treat to hear him. The effort apparently was impromptu, and that added to its effect upon his auditors. That it was thoroughly prepared I found by hearing it several times, always unchanged and always producing the same thrilling effect.

He spoke one night at Cooper Inst.i.tute at a celebration by the colored people of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation emanc.i.p.ating them from slavery. As usual he was master of the occasion and of his audience. He was then delivering a series of addresses attacking the Bible. His mind was full of that subject, and apparently he could not help a.s.sailing the faith of the negroes by asking, if there was a G.o.d of justice and mercy, why did he leave them so long in slavery or permit them ever to be slaves.

To an emotional audience like the one before him it was a most dangerous attack upon faith. I was so fond of the colonel and such an intense admirer of him, I hated to controvert him, but felt it was necessary to do so. The religious fervor which is so intense with the colored people, made it comparatively easy to restore their faith, if it had been weakened, and to bring them to a recognition of the fact that their blessings had all come from G.o.d.