The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XI Part 43

"Why, Maj. Blank," he said, "come in. I did tell the boy I wouldn't see anybody, but you are more important than the biggest law case in the world."

The Colonel's memory had retained the sound of the major's voice, and because of that, the latter was not obliged to leave New York without seeing and renewing his old acquaintance.

Col. Ingersoll's retorts are as quick as a flash-light and as searching. One of them was so startling and so effective as to give a certain famous long drawn out railroad suit the nickname. "The Ananias and Sapphira ease." Ingersoll was speaking and had made certain statements highly damaging to the other side, in such a way as to thoroughly anger a member of the opposing counsel, who suddenly interrupted the speaker with the abrupt and sarcastic remark:

"I suppose the Colonel, in the nature of things, never heard of the story of Ananias ana Sapphira."

There were those present who expected to witness an angry outburst on the part of Ingersoll in response to this plain implication that his statement had not the quality of veracity, but they were disappointed. Ingersoll didn't even get angry. He turned slightly, fixed his limpid blue eyes upon the speaker, and looked cherubically. Then he gently drawled out.

"Oh, yes, I have, yes, I have. And I've watched the gentleman who has just spoken all through this case with a curious Interest. I've been expecting every once in a while to see him drop dead, but he seems to be all right down to the present moment."

Ingersoll never gets angry when he is interrupted, even if it is in the middle of an address or a lecture. A man interrupted him in Cincinnati once, cutting right into one of the lecturer's most resonant periods with a yell:

"That's a lie. Bob lngersoll, and you know it."

The audience was in an uproar in an instant, and cries of "Put him out!" "Throw him down stairs!" and the like were heard from all parts of the house. Ingersoll stopped talking for a moment, and held up his hands, smiling.

"Don't hurt the man," he said. "He thinks he is right. But let me explain this thing for his especial benefit."

Then he reasoned the matter out in language so simple and plain that no one of any intelligence whatever could fail to comprehend. The man was not ejected, but sat through the entire address, and at the close asked the privilege of begging the lecturer's pardon.

Like most men of genius, Colonel lngersoll is a pa.s.sionate lover of music, and the harmonies of Wagner seem to him to be the very acme of musical expression....

Notwithstanding his thoroughly heretical beliefs or lack of beliefs, or, as he would say, because of them, Colonel lngersoll is a very tender-hearted man. No one has ever made so strong an argument against vivisection in the alleged interests of science as lngersoll did in a speech a few years ago. To the presentation of his views against the refinements of scientific cruelty he brought his most vivid imagination, his most careful thought and his most impa.s.sioned oratory.

Colonel Ingersoll's popularity with those who know him is proverbial. The clerks in his offices not only admire him for his ability and his achievements, but they esteem him for his kindliness of heart and his invariable courtesy in his intercourse with them. His offices are located in one of the buildings devoted to corporations and professional men on the lower part of Na.s.sau street and consist of three rooms. The one used by the head of the firm is farthest from the entrance. All are furnished in solid black walnut. In the Colonel's room there is a picture of his loved brother Ebon, and hanging below the frame thereof is the tin sign that the two brothers hung out for a shingle when they went into the law business in Peoria. There are also pictures of a judge or two. The desks in all the rooms are littered with papers. Books are piled to the ceiling. Everywhere there is an air of personal freedom. There is no servility either to clients or the head of the business, but there is everywhere an informal courtesy somewhat akin to that which is born of a fueling of great comradeship.

Of the Colonel's ideal home life the world has often been told. He lives during the winter at his town house in Fifth Avenue; in the summer at Dobbs Ferry, a charming place a few miles up the Hudson from New York.--Boston Herald, July, 1894.

A FEW years ago there were many thousand miles of railroads to be built, a great many towns and cities to be located, constructed and filled; vast areas of uncultivated land were waiting for the plow, vast forests the axe, and thousands of mines were longing to be opened. In those days every young man of energy and industry had a future. The professions were not overcrowded; there were more patients than doctors, more litigants than lawyers, more buyers of goods than merchants. The young man of that time who was raised on a farm got a little education, taught school, read law or medicine--some of the weaker ones read theology--and there seemed to be plenty of room, plenty of avenues to success and distinction.

So, too, a few years ago a political life was considered honorable, and so in politics there were many great careers. So, hundreds of towns wanted newspapers, and in each of those towns there was an opening for some energetic young man. At that time the plant cost but little; a few dollars purchased the press--the young publisher could get the paper stock on credit.

Now the railroads have all been built; the ca.n.a.ls are finished; the cities have been located; the outside property has been cut into lots, and sold and mortgaged many times over. Now it requires great capital to go into business. The individual is counting for less and less; the corporation, the trust, for more and more. Now a great merchant employs hundreds of clerks; a few years ago most of those now clerks would have been merchants. And so it seems to be in nearly every department of life. Of course, I do not know what inventions may leap from the brains of the future; there may be millions and millions of fortunes yet to be made in that direction, but of that I am not speaking.

So, I think that a few years ago the chances were far more numerous and favorable to young men who wished to make a name for themselves, and to succeed in some department of human energy than now.

In savage life a living is very easy to get. Most any savage can hunt or fish; consequently there are few failures. But in civilized life compet.i.tion becomes stronger and sharper; consequently, the percentage of failures increases, and this seems to be the law. The individual is constantly counting for less. It may be that, on the average, people live better than they did formerly, that they have more to eat, drink and wear; but the individual horizon has lessened; it is not so wide and cloudless as formerly. So I say that the chances for great fortunes, for great success, are growing less and less.

I think a young man should do that which is easiest for him to do, provided there is an opportunity; if there is none, then he should take the next. The first object of every young man should be to be self-supporting, no matter in what direction--be independent. He should avoid being a clerk and he should avoid giving his future into the hands of any one person. He should endeavor to get a business in which the community will be his patron, and whether he is to be a lawyer, a doctor or a day-laborer depends on how much he has mixed mind with muscle.

If a young man imagines that he has an apt.i.tude for public speaking--that is, if he has a great desire to make his ideas known to the world--the probability is that the desire will choose the way, time and place for him to make the effort.

If he really has something to say, there will be plenty to listen. If he is so carried away with his subject, is so in earnest that he becomes an instrumentality of his thought--so that he is forgotten by himself; so that he cares neither for applause nor censure--simply caring to present his thoughts in the highest and best and most comprehensive way, the probability is that he will be an orator.

I think oratory is something that cannot be taught. Undoubtedly a man can learn to be a fair talker. He can by practice learn to present his ideas consecutively, clearly and in what you may call "form," but there is as much difference between this and an oration as there is between a skeleton and a living human being clad in sensitive, throbbing flesh.

There are millions of skeleton makers, millions of people who can express what may be called "the bones" of a discourse, but not one in a million who can clothe these bones.

You can no more teach a man to be an orator than you can teach him to be an artist or a poet of the first cla.s.s. When you teach him, there is the same difference between the man who is taught, and the man who is what he is by virtue of a natural apt.i.tude, that there is between a pump and a spring--between a ca.n.a.l and a river--between April rain and water-works. It is a question of capacity and feeling--not of education.

There are some things that you can tell an orator not to do. For instance, he should never drink water while talking, because the interest is broken, and for the moment he loses control of his audience.

He should never look at his watch for the same reason. He should never talk about himself. He should never deal in personalities. He should never tell long stories, and if he tells any story he should never say that it is a true story, and that he knew the parties. This makes it a question of veracity instead of a question of art. He should never clog his discourse with details. He should never dwell upon particulars--he should touch universals, because the great truths are for all time.

If he wants to know something, if he wishes to feel something, let him read Shakespeare. Let him listen to the music of Wagner, of Beethoven, or Schubert. If he wishes to express himself in the highest and most perfect form, let him become familiar with the great paintings of the world--with the great statues--all these will lend grace, will give movement and pa.s.sion and rhythm to his words. A great orator puts into his speech the perfume, the feelings, the intensity of all the great and beautiful and marvelous things that he has seen and heard and felt. An orator must be a poet, a metaphysician, a logician--and above all, must have sympathy with all.

SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT.

IT was thought at one time by many that science would do away with poetry--that it was the enemy of the imagination. We know now that is not true. We know that science goes hand in hand with imagination. We know that it is in the highest degree poetic and that the old ideas once considered so beautiful are flat and stale. Compare Kepler's laws with the old Greek idea that the planets were boosted or pushed by angels.

The more we know, the more beauty, the more poetry we find. Ignorance is not the mother of the poetic or artistic.

So, some people imagine that science will do away with sentiment. In my judgment, science will not only increase sentiment but sense.

A person will be attracted to another for a thousand reasons, and why a person is attracted to another, may, and in some degree will, depend upon the intellectual, artistic and ethical development of each.

The handsomest girl in Zululand might not be attractive to Herbert Spencer, and the fairest girl in England might not be able to hasten the pulse of a Choctaw brave. This does not prove that there is any lack of sentiment. Men are influenced according to their capacity, their temperament, their knowledge.

Some men fall in love with a small waist, an arched instep or curly hair, without the slightest regard to mind or muscle. This we call sentiment.

Now, educate such men, develop their brains, enlarge their intellectual horizon, teach them something of the laws of health, and then they may fall in love with women because they are developed grandly in body and mind. The sentiment is still there--still controls--but back of the sentiment is science.

Sentiment can never be destroyed, and love will forever rule the human race.

Thousands, millions of people fear that science will destroy not only poetry, not only sentiment, but religion. This fear is idiotic. Science will destroy superst.i.tion, but it will not injure true religion. Science is the foundation of real religion. Science teaches us the consequences of actions, the rights and duties of all. Without science there can be no real religion.

Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.

Do I think that the marriage of the sickly and diseased ought to be prevented by law?

I have not much confidence in law--in law that I know cannot be carried out. The poor, the sickly, the diseased, as long as they are ignorant, will marry and help fill the world with wretchedness and want.

We must rely on education instead of legislation.

We must teach the consequences of actions. We must show the sickly and diseased what their children will be. We must preach the gospel of the body. I believe the time will come when the public thought will be so great and grand that it will be looked upon as infamous to perpetuate disease--to leave a legacy of agony.

I believe the time will come when men will refuse to fill the future with consumption and insanity. Yes, we shall study ourselves. We shall understand the conditions of health and then we shall say: We are under obligation to put the flags of health in the cheeks of our children.

Even if I should get to heaven and have a harp, I know that I could not bear to see my descendants still on the earth, diseased, deformed, crazed--all suffering the penalties of my ignorance. Let us have more science and more sentiment--more knowledge and more conscience--more liberty and more love.

SOWING AND REAPING.

I HAVE read the sermon on "Sowing and Reaping," and I now understand Mr.