study and thought and practice. He is one of those rare men who
always seize and hold the attention. When he speaks, men listen. It is
quality, temperament, control--the word is immaterial, but the fact is
very material indeed.

Some quarter of a century ago Conwell published a little book for
students on the study and practice of oratory. That "clear-cut
articulation is the charm of eloquence" is one of his insisted-upon
statements, and it well illustrates the lifelong practice of the man
himself, for every word as he talks can be heard in every part of a
large building, yet always he speaks without apparent effort. He avoids
"elocution." His voice is soft-pitched and never breaks, even now when
he is over seventy, because, so he explains it, he always speaks in his
natural voice. There is never a straining after effect.

"A speaker must possess a large-hearted regard for the welfare of
his audience," he writes, and here again we see Conwell explaining
Conwellism. "Enthusiasm invites enthusiasm," is another of his points
of importance; and one understands that it is by deliberate purpose,
and not by chance, that he tries with such tremendous effort to put
enthusiasm into his hearers with every sermon and every lecture that he
delivers.

"It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test
of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on
the solid earth of sober thinking." I have known him at the very end
of a sermon have a ripple of laughter sweep freely over the entire
congregation, and then in a moment he has every individual under his
control, listening soberly to his words.

He never fears to use humor, and it is always very simple and obvious
and effective. With him even a very simple pun may be used, not only
with-out taking away from the strength of what he is saying, but with a
vivid increase of impressiveness. And when he says something funny it
is in such a delightful and confidential way, with such a genial, quiet,
infectious humorousness, that his audience is captivated. And they never
think that he is telling something funny of his own; it seems, such is
the skill of the man, that he is just letting them know of something
humorous that they are to enjoy with him.

"Be absolutely truthful and scrupulously clear," he writes; and with
delightfully terse common sense, he says, "Use illustrations that
illustrate"--and never did an orator live up to this injunctio