; drawing himself up to his
loftiest proportion, his brow charged with thunder, before the listening
thousands, he said, "Gentlemen, I am a Whig, a Massachusetts Whig, a
Faneuil Hall Whig, a revolutionary Whig, a constitutional Whig. If you
break up the Whig party, sir, where am I to go?" And says Lowell, "We
all held our breath, thinking where he could go. But if he had been five
feet three, we should have said, 'Who cares where you go?'"

Well, O'Connell had all that; and true nature seemed to be speaking all
over him. It would have been a pleasure even to look at him if he had
not spoken at all, and all you thought of was a greyhound.

And then he had what so few American speakers have, a voice that sounded
the gamut. I heard him once in Exeter Hall say, "Americans, I send my
voice careering across the Atlantic like a thunderstorm, to tell the
slave-holders of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to
remind the negro that the dawn of his redemption is drawing near," and I
seemed to hear his voice reverberating and reechoing back to Boston from
the Rocky Mountains.

And then, with the slightest possible flavor of an Irish brogue, he
would tell a story that would make all Exeter Hall laugh, and the next
moment there would be tears in his voice, like an old song, and five
thousand men would be in tears. And all the while no effort--he seemed
only breathing.

"As effortless as woodland nooks
Send violets up and paint them blue."

FOOTNOTE:

[50] By permission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

THE OPEN DOOR

PATRICK HENRY

I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this
favored land among the most powerful on earth; able, sir, to take care
of herself, without resorting to that policy which is always so
dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes,
sir, they will see her great in arts and in arms, her golden harvests
waving over fields of immeasurable extent, her commerce permeating the
most distant seas. But, sir, you must have men, you cannot get along
without them. Those heavy forests of valuable timber under which your
lands are groaning must be cleared away. Those vast riches which cover
the face of your soil as well as those which lie hid in its bosom are to
be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Your
timber must be worked up into ships to transport the productions of the
soil from wh