Besides the absence of
good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice.
Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that
I could get through a long speech without serious irritation
of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the
best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England,
on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston,
Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli,
Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and
Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.
At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward
Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale,
Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James
A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin
F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks,
and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker,
Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George
Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my
experience and observation, too late for my own advantage,
may be worth something to my younger readers.
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