o one another.

If you would know what makes the great river as it nears the sea, you must
travel up the stream. You must go up into the hills and back into the
forests and see the little rivulets, the little streams, all gathering in
hidden places to swell the great body of water in the channel. And so with
the making of public opinion: Back in the country, on the farms, in the
shops, in the hamlets, in the homes of cities, in the schoolhouses, where
men get together and are frank and true with one another, there come
trickling down the streams which are to make the mighty force of the
river, the river which is to drive all the enterprises of human life as it
sweeps on into the great common sea of humanity.

I feel nothing so much as the intensity of the common man. I can pick out
in any audience the men who are at ease in their fortunes: they are seeing
a public man go through his stunts. But there are in every crowd other men
who are not doing that,--men who are listening as if they were waiting to
hear if there were somebody who could speak the thing that is stirring in
their own hearts and minds. It makes a man's heart ache to think that he
cannot be sure that he is doing it for them; to wonder whether they are
longing for something that he does not understand. He prays God that
something will bring into his consciousness what is in theirs, so that the
whole nation may feel at last released from its dumbness, feel at last
that there is no invisible force holding it back from its goal, feel at
last that there is hope and confidence and that the road may be trodden as
if we were brothers, shoulder to shoulder, not asking each other anything
about differences of class, not contesting for any selfish advance, but
united in the common enterprise.

The burden that is upon the heart of every conscientious public man is the
burden of the thought that perhaps he does not sufficiently comprehend the
national life. For, as a matter of fact, no single man does comprehend it.
The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one
another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man, but to
depend upon the counsel of all. For only as men are brought into counsel,
and state their own needs and interests, can the general interests of a
great people be compounded into a policy that will be suitable to all.

I have realized all my life, as a man connected with the tasks of
education, that the chief use of ed