Chapter 43
It would be difficult to estimate the great part which practical drill in oratory may play in one's life.
Great occasions, when nations have been in peril, have developed and brought out some of the greatest orators of the world. Cicero, Mirabeau, Patrick Henry, Webster, and John Bright might all be called to witness to this fact.
The occasion had much to do with the greatest speech delivered in the United States Senate--Webster's reply to Hayne. Webster had no time for immediate preparation, but the occasion brought all the reserves in this giant, and he towered so far above his opponent that Hayne looked like a pygmy in comparison.
The pen has discovered many a genius, but the process is slower and less effective than the great occasion that discovers the orator.
Every crisis calls out ability, previously undeveloped, and perhaps unexpected.
No orator living was ever great enough to give out the same power and force and magnetism to an empty hall, to empty seats, that he could give to an audience capable of being fired by his theme.
In the presence of the audience lies a fascination, an indefinable magnetism that stimulates all the mental faculties, and acts as a tonic and vitalizer. An orator can say before an audience what he could not possibly say before he went on the platform, just as we can often say to a friend in animated conversation things which we could not possibly say when alone. As when two chemicals are united, a new substance is formed from the combination, which did not exist in either alone, he feels surging through his brain the combined force of his audience, which he calls inspiration, a mighty power which did not exist in his own personality.
Actors tell us that there is an indescribable inspiration which comes from the orchestra, the footlights, the audience, which it is impossible to feel at a cold mechanical rehearsal. There is something in a great sea of expectant faces which awakens the ambition and arouses the reserve of power which can never be felt except before an audience. The power was there just the same before, but it was not aroused.
In the presence of the orator, the audience is absolutely in his power to do as he will. They laugh or cry as he pleases, or rise and fall at his bidding, until he releases them from the magic spell.
What is oratory but to stir the blood of all hearers, to so arouse their emotions that they can not control themselves a moment longer without taking the action to which they are impelled?
"His words are laws" may be well said of the statesmen whose orations sway the world. What art is greater than that of changing the minds of men?
Wendell Phillips so played upon the emotions, so changed the convictions of Southerners who hated him, but who were curious to listen to his oratory, that, for the time being he almost persuaded them that they were in the wrong. I have seen him when it seemed to me that he was almost G.o.dlike in his power. With the ease of a master he swayed his audience. Some who hated him in the slavery days were there, and they could not resist cheering him. He warped their own judgment and for the time took away their prejudice.
When James Russell Lowell was a student, said Wetmore Story, he and Story went to Faneuil Hall to hear Webster. They meant to hoot him for his remaining in Tyler's cabinet. It would be easy, they reasoned, to get the three thousand people to join them. When he begun, Lowell turned pale, and Story livid. His great eyes, they thought, were fixed on them. His opening words changed their scorn to admiration, and their contempt to approbation.
"He gave us a glimpse into the Holy of Holies," said another student, in relating his experience in listening to a great preacher.
Is not oratory a fine art? The well-spring of eloquence, when up-gus.h.i.+ng as the very water of life, quenches the thirst of myriads of men, like the smitten rock of the wilderness reviving the life of desert wanderers.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE TRIUMPHS OF THE COMMON VIRTUES
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.--LONGFELLOW.
It is not a question of what a man knows but what use he can make of what he knows.--J. G. HOLLAND.
Seest thou a man diligent in business? He shall stand before kings.--SOLOMON.
The most encouraging truth that can be impressed upon the mind of youth is this: "What man has done man may do." Men of great achievements are not to be set on pedestals and reverenced as exceptions to the average of humanity. Instead, these great men are to be considered as setting a standard of success for the emulation of every aspiring youth. Their example shows what can be accomplished by the practise of the common virtues,--diligence, patience, thrift, self-denial, determination, industry, and persistence.
We can best appreciate the uplifting power of these simple virtues which all may cultivate and exercise, by taking some concrete example of great success which has been achieved by patient plodding toward a definite goal. No more ill.u.s.trious example of success won by the exercise of common virtues can be offered than Abraham Lincoln, rail-splitter and president.
Probably Lincoln has been the hero of more American boys during the last two generations than any
The strong thing about Lincoln was his manliness, his straightforward, downright honesty. You could depend upon him. He was ambitious to make the most of himself. He wanted to know something, to be somebody, to lift his head up from his humble environment and be of some account in the world. He simply wanted to better his condition.
It is true that he had a divine hunger for growth, a pa.s.sion for a larger and completer life than that of those about him; but there is no evidence of any great genius, any marvelous powers. He was a simple man, never straining after effect.
His simplicity was his chief charm. Everybody who knew him felt that he was a man, a large-hearted, generous friend, always ready to help everybody and everything out of their troubles, whether it was a pig stuck in the mire, a poor widow in trouble, or a farmer who needed advice. He had a helpful mind, open, frank, transparent. He never covered up anything, never had secrets. The door of his heart was always open so that anyone could read his inmost thoughts.
The ability to do hard work, and to stick to it, is the right hand of genius and the best subst.i.tute for it,--in fact, that is genius.
If young people were to represent Lincoln's total success by one hundred, they would probably expect to find some brilliant faculty which would rank at least fifty per cent of the total. But I think that the verdict of history has given his honesty of purpose, his purity and unselfishness of motive as his highest attributes, and certainly these qualities are within the reach of the poorest boy and the humblest girl in America.
Suppose we rank his honesty, his integrity twenty per cent of the total, his dogged persistence, his ability for hard work ten per cent, his pa.s.sion for wholeness, for completeness, for doing everything to a finish ten more, his aspiration, his longing for growth, his yearning for fulness of life ten more. The reader can see that it would be easy to make up the hundred per cent, without finding any one quality which could be called genius; that the total of his character would be made up of the sum of the commonest qualities, the most ordinary virtues within the reach of the poorest youth in the land. There is no one quality in his entire make-up so overpowering, so commanding that it could be ranked as genius.
What an inestimable blessing to the world, what an encouragement, an inspiration to poor boys and poor girls that his great achievement can be accounted for by the triumph in his character of those qualities which are beyond the reach of money, of family, of influence, but that are within the reach of the poorest and the humblest.
In a speech to the people in Colorado Mountains, Roosevelt said: "You think that my success is quite foreign to anything you can achieve.
Let me a.s.sure you that the big prizes I have won are largely accidental. If I have succeeded, it is only as anyone of you can succeed, merely because I have tried to do my duty as I saw it in my home and in my business, and as a citizen.
"If when I die the ones who know me best believe that I was a thoughtful, helpful husband, a loving, wise and painstaking father, a generous, kindly neighbor and an honest citizen, that will be a far more real honor, and will prove my life to have been more successful than the fact that I have ever been president of the United States.
Had a few events over which no one had control been other than they were it is quite possible I might never have held the high office I now occupy, but no train of events could accidentally make me a n.o.ble character or a faithful member of my home and community. Therefore each of you has the same chance to succeed in true success as I have had, and if my success in the end proves to have been as great as that achieved by many of the humblest of you I shall be fortunate."
McKinley did not start with great mental ability. There was nothing very surprising or startling in his career. He was not a great genius, not notable as a scholar. He did not stand very high in school; he was not a great lawyer; he did not make a great record in Congress; but he had a good, level head. He had _the best subst.i.tute for genius--the ability for hard work and persistence_. He knew how to keep plodding, how to hang on, and he knew that the only way to show what he was made of in Congress was to stick to one thing, and he made a specialty of the tariff, following the advice of a statesman friend.
The biographies of the giants of the race are often discouraging to the average poor boy, because the moment he gets the impression that the character he is reading about was a genius, the effect is largely lost upon himself, because he knows that he is not a genius, and he says to himself, "This is very interesting reading, but I can never do those things." But when he reads the life of McKinley he does not see any reason why he could not do the same things himself, because there were no great jumps, no great leaps and bounds in his life from particular ability or special opportunity. He had no very brilliant talents, but he averaged well. He had good common sense and was a hard worker. He had tact and diplomacy and made the most of every opportunity.
Nothing can keep from success the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed. When he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them.
Obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources. The record of human achievement is full of the truth. "There is no difficulty to him who wills."
"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance."
It has been well said that from the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes them something else. The boulder which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the resolute. The difficulties which dishearten one man only stiffen the sinews of another, who looks on them as a sort of mental spring-board by which to vault across the gulf of failure to the sure, solid ground of full success.
One of the greatest generals on the Confederate side in the Civil War, "Stonewall" Jackson, was noted for his slowness. With this he possessed great application and dogged determination. If he undertook a task, he never let go till he had it done. So, when he went to West Point, his habitual cla.s.s response was that he was too busy getting the lesson of a few days back to look at the one of the day. He kept up this steady gait, and, from the least promising "plebe," came out seventeenth in a cla.s.s of seventy, distancing fifty-three who started with better attainments and better minds. His cla.s.smates used to say that, if the course was ten years instead of four, he would come out first.
The world always stands aside for the determined man. You will find no royal road to your triumph. There is no open door to the Temple of Success.
One of the commonest of common virtues is perseverance, yet it has been the open sesame of more fast locked doors of opportunity than have brilliant tributes. Every man and woman can exercise this virtue of perseverance, can refuse to stop short of the goal of ambition, can decline to turn aside in search of pleasures that do but hinder progress.
The romance of perseverance under especial difficulty is one of the most fascinating subjects in history. Tenacity of purpose has been characteristic of all characters who have left their mark on the world.
Perseverance, it has been said, is the statesman's brain, the warrior's sword, the inventor's secret, the scholar's "open sesame."
Persistency is to talent what steam is to the engine. It is the driving force by which the machine accomplishes the work for which it was intended. A great deal of persistency, with a very little talent, can be counted on to go farther than a great deal of talent without persistency.
You cannot keep a determined man from success. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Lock him up in a dungeon, and he writes the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress."
Stick to a thing and carry it through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of yourself; others will exalt you.
Thoroughness is another of the common virtues which all may cultivate.
The man who puts his best into every task will leave far behind the man who lets a job go with the comment "That's good enough." Nothing is good enough unless it reflects our best.
Daniel Webster had no remarkable traits of character in his boyhood.