world's common people.

Imagination, reason, and that peculiar human quality in speech which
defies analysis as much as the perfume of the rose, but which touches
the heart and reaches the mind, are blended in each of these
utterances in perfect proportion.

But, above all, each of these model speeches which the world has thus
far produced teaches. They instruct. And, in doing this, they assert.
The men who spoke them did not weaken them by suggesting a doubt of
what they said. This is common to all great speeches.

Not one immortal utterance can be produced which contains such
expressions as, "I may be wrong," or, "In my humble opinion," or, "In
my judgment." The great speakers, in their highest moments, have
always been so charged with aggressive conviction that they have
announced their conclusions as ultimate truths. They have spoken as
persons "having authority," and therefore "the common people have
heard them gladly."

All of this means that the two indispensable requisites of speaking
are, first, to have something to say, and, second, to say it as though
you mean it. Of course one cannot have something really to say--a
lesson to teach, a message to deliver--every fifteen minutes. Very
well, then; until one does have something to say, let one hold one's
peace.

Carlyle's idea is correct. He thought that no man has the right to
speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season
for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in
a deed--a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old
Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no room for anything but deeds.

If such instruction is needed; if a great movement requires the
forming and constructive word to interpret it and give it direction;
if a movement in a wrong direction needs halting and turning to its
proper course; if a cause needs pleading; if a law needs
interpretation; if anything really _needs to be said_--the occasion
for the orator, in the large sense of that word, has arrived.
Therefore when he speaks "the common people will hear him gladly";
they will hear him because he teaches, and does it "as one having
authority."

Whenever a speaker fails to make his audience forget voice, gesture,
and even the speaker himself; whenever he fails to make the listeners
conscious only of the living truth he utters, he has failed in his
speech itself, which then has no other reason for having been
delivered than