"Just say that, Andra; nothing like saying just what you really feel."

It was a lesson in public speaking which I took to heart. There is one
rule I might suggest for youthful orators. When you stand up before an
audience reflect that there are before you only men and women. You
should speak to them as you speak to other men and women in daily
intercourse. If you are not trying to be something different from
yourself, there is no more occasion for embarrassment than if you were
talking in your office to a party of your own people--none whatever.
It is trying to be other than one's self that unmans one. Be your own
natural self and go ahead. I once asked Colonel Ingersoll, the most
effective public speaker I ever heard, to what he attributed his
power. "Avoid elocutionists like snakes," he said, "and be yourself."

[Illustration: AN AMERICAN FOUR-IN-HAND IN BRITAIN]

I spoke again at Dunfermline, July 27, 1881, when my mother laid the
foundation stone there of the first free library building I ever gave.
My father was one of five weavers who founded the earliest library in
the town by opening their own books to their neighbors. Dunfermline
named the building I gave "Carnegie Library." The architect asked for
my coat of arms. I informed him I had none, but suggested that above
the door there might be carved a rising sun shedding its rays with the
motto: "Let there be light." This he adopted.

We had come up to Dunfermline with a coaching party. When walking
through England in the year 1867 with George Lauder and Harry Phipps I
had formed the idea of coaching from Brighton to Inverness with a
party of my dearest friends. The time had come for the long-promised
trip, and in the spring of 1881 we sailed from New York, a party of
eleven, to enjoy one of the happiest excursions of my life. It was one
of the holidays from business that kept me young and happy--worth all
the medicine in the world.

All the notes I made of the coaching trip were a few lines a day in
twopenny pass-books bought before we started. As with "Round the
World," I thought that I might some day write a magazine article, or
give some account of my excursion for those who accompanied me; but
one wintry day I decided that it was scarcely worth while to go down
to the New York office, three miles distant, and the question was how
I should occupy the spare time. I thought of the coaching trip, and
decided to write a few lines just to see how I should g