bable 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 godlike 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-gushing 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 XXXIV

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 i