brilliant speakers and
statesmen.

Henry Clay clearly describes his own exercises in self-training when
he was quite a grown man.

"I owe my success in life to one single fact, namely, at the
age of twenty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the
practice of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of
some historical or scientific book. These offhand efforts
were made sometimes in a corn field, at others in the
forests, and not infrequently in some distant barn with the
horse and ox for my auditors. It is to this early practice in
the art of all arts that I am indebted to the primary and
leading impulses that stimulated me forward, and shaped and
molded my entire destiny."

Abraham Lincoln never let pass any opportunity to try to make a
speech. His early employers, when called upon after his fame was won
to describe his habits as a young man, admitted that they might have
been disposed to consider him an idle fellow. They explained that he
was not only idle himself but the cause of idleness in others. Unless
closely watched, he was likely to mount a stump and, to the intense
delight of his fellow farm hands, deliver a side-splitting imitation
of some itinerant preacher or a stirring political harangue.

The American whose reputation for speech is the greatest won it more
through training than by natural gift.

"I could not speak before the school," said Daniel Webster.
... "Many a piece did I commit to memory and rehearse in my
room over and over again, but when the day came, and the
schoolmaster called my name, and I saw all eyes turned upon
my seat, I could not raise myself from it.... Mr. Buckminster
always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would
venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution.
When the occasion was over I went home and wept bitter tears
of mortification."

Results of Training. The significance of all these illustrations is
that no great speaker has come by his ability without careful and
persistent training. No molder of the world's destinies springs fully
equipped from the welter of promiscuous events. He has been training
for a long time. On the other hand the much more practical lesson to
be derived from these biographical excerpts is that these men started
from ordinary conditions to make themselves into forceful thinkers
with powers of convincing expression. They overcame handica