the accused.
In reply I wrote that I supposed he was a sensible man and that
he, of course, knew what he was talking about when he said the
accused were guilty; that the Government needed just such men as
he, and that he should come to the trial at once and testify. The
man wrote back: "Dear Colonel: I am a ---- fool."

_Question_. Will the church and the stage ever work together for
the betterment of the world, and what is the province of each?

_Answer_. The church and stage will never work together. The
pulpit pretends that fiction is fact. The stage pretends that
fiction is fact. The pulpit pretence is dishonest--that of the
stage is sincere. The actor is true to art, and honestly pretends
to be what he is not. The actor is natural, if he is great, and
in this naturalness is his truth and his sincerity. The pulpit is
unnatural, and for that reason untrue. The pulpit is for another
world, the stage for this. The stage is good because it is natural,
because it portrays real and actual life; because "it holds the
mirror up to nature." The pulpit is weak because it too often
belittles and demeans this life; because it slanders and calumniates
the natural and is the enemy of joy.

--_The Inter-Ocean_, Chicago, February 2, 1894.

ORATORS AND ORATORY.*

[* It was at his own law office in New York City that I had my talk
with that very notable American, Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. "Bob"
Ingersoll, Americans call him affectionately; in a company of friends
it is "The Colonel."

A more interesting personality it would be hard to find, and those
who know even a little of him will tell you that a bigger-hearted
man probably does not live. Suppose a well-knit frame, grown
stouter than it once was, and a fine, strong face, with a vivid
gleam in the eyes, a deep, uncommonly musical voice, clear cut,
decisive, and a manner entirely delightful, yet tinged with a
certain reserve. Introduce a smoking cigar, the smoke rising in
little curls and billows, then imagine a rugged sort of picturesqueness
in dress, and you get, not by any means the man, but, still, some
notion of "Bob" Ingersoll.

Colonel Ingersoll stands at the front of American orators. The
natural thing, therefore, was that I should ask him--a master in
the art--about oratory. What he said I shall give in his own words
precisely as I took them down from his lips, for in the case of
such a good commander of the old English tongue that is of some