Well, throughout our long journey across the State of Oregon and the Territories of Idaho, Montana and Dakota, and the State of Minnesota, it was one continual ovation. Dempsey had a world-wide reputation, I found, co-extensive with the horizon, as I may say, and bounded only by the zodiac.
In my great forthcoming work, entitled “Half-Hours with Great Men, or Eminent People Which I Have Saw,” I shall give a fuller description of this journey. The book will be a great boon.
Mr. Dempsey is not a man who would be picked out as a great man. You might pass by him two or three times without recognizing his eminence, and yet, at a scrapping matinee or swatting recital, he seems to hold his audiences at his own sweet will—also his antagonist.
Mr. Dempsey does not crave notoriety. He seems rather to court seclusion. This is characteristic of the man. See how he walked around all over the State of New York last week—in the night, too—in order to evade the crowd.
His logic, however, is wonderful. Though quiet and unassuming in his manner, his arguments are powerful and generally make a large protuberance wherever they alight.
Nothing is more pleasing than the sight of a man who has risen by his own unaided effort, fought his way up, as it were, and yet who is not vain. Mr. Dempsey conversed with me frequently during our journey, and did not seem to feel above me.
I opened the conversation by telling him that I had seen a number of his works. Nothing pleases a young author so much as a little friendly remark in relation to his work. I had seen a study of his one day in New York last spring. It was an italic nose with quotation marks on each side.
It was a very happy little bon mot on Mr. Dempsey's part, and attracted a good deal of notice at the time.
Mr. Dempsey is not a college graduate, as many suppose. He is a self-made man. This should be a great encouragement to our boys who are now unknown, and whose portraits have not as yet appeared in the sporting papers.
But Mr. Dempsey's great force as a debater is less, perhaps, in the matter than in the manner. His delivery is good and his gestures cannot fail to convince the most skeptical. Striking in appearance, aggressive in his nature, and happy in his gestures, he is certain to attract the attention of the police, and he cannot fail to rivet the eye of his adversary. I saw one of his adversaries, not long ago, whose eye had been successfully riveted in that way.