a play or any other form of entertainment.

Very few of the great orators have had loud voices, or, if they did
have them, they did not employ them. I am told that Wendell Phillips
always spoke in a conversational tone, and yet he was able to make an
audience of many thousands hear distinctly; and Phillips was one of
the greatest speakers America has produced.

It is probable that no man ever lived who had a more sensuous effect
upon his hearers than Ingersoll. In a literal and a physical sense he
charmed them. I never heard him talk in a loud voice. There was no
"bell-like" quality. It was not an "organ-like" voice.

The greatest feat of modern speech, in its immediate effect, was Henry
Ward Beecher's speech to the Liverpool mob. A gentleman who heard that
speech told me that, notwithstanding the pandemonium that reigned
around him, Beecher did not shout, nor speak at the top of his voice,
a single time during that terrible four hours.

It is true that AEschines spoke of Demosthenes' delivery of his
"Oration on the Crown" as having the ferocity of a wild beast. I do
not see how that can be, however, because Demosthenes selected Isaeus
as his teacher for the reason that Isaeus was "business-like" in
method.

This, however, is common to the voices of nearly all great speakers;
they have a peculiar power of penetration that carries them much
farther than the shout and halloo of the loudest-voiced person. They
have, too, a singularly touching and tender quality, which, in a
sensuous way, captivates and holds the hearers. James Whitcomb Riley
has this quality in his voice when reciting. Edwin Booth had it. All
great actors have it. Every true orator has it. It touches you
strangely, thrills you, affects you much as music does.

It is a remarkable thing that there _is neither wit nor humor in any
of the immortal speeches_ that have fallen from the lips of man. To
find a joke in Webster would be an offense. The only things which
Ingersoll wrote that will live are his oration at his brother's grave
and his famous "The Past Rises before Me like a Dream." But in neither
of these productions of this genius of jesters is there a single trace
of wit.

There is not a funny sally in all Burke's speeches. Lincoln's
Gettysburg address, his first and second inaugurals, his speech
beginning the Douglas campaign, and his Cooper Union address in New
York, are perhaps the only utterances of his that will endure.

Yet this greates