“Certainly, my boys,” I answered instantly, “go ahead.”
“Are you going to preach again this evening, sir?” said one of them, simply.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, “but suppose I was, what then?”
“Well, sir,” murmured the boy, looking down, “if you were, we wanted to come and hear you again.”
Nothing that has ever been said to me or about me in connection with my oratorical efforts has ever given me such unmitigated delight as those few words, spoken, as I am convinced they must have been, with the most absolute sincerity. But it is quite unnecessary to enlarge upon them, their significance will be seen at once.
And now in order to close this chapter, already too long, let me say that there is a class of public speaker, fortunately very small, who neither in manner nor in matter is worth listening to, and yet these men will hold an otherwise intelligent audience, nay, will compel enthusiasm and subsequent adherence to the most fantastic or immoral of causes. I have in mind two such men, widely differing in personal character and aim but both indubitably possessed of this dangerous power, call it what one may. Some twelve years ago I stood in the Auditorium at Chicago and listened to John Alexander Dowie. I honestly declare that I never looked upon a less attractive man. In spite of his gorgeous robes (he was then posing as Elijah) all purple velvet and gold, his face and form were mean and contemptible, looking only fit for the taproom of a low public-house. And his address! It was beneath contempt. Poor, shoddy, bad in delivery, sheer ungrammatical twaddle meaning nothing and leading nowhere. Yet his audience hung upon those banal words as if they had been the very oracles of God. In Heaven’s name why?
The other man was Richard Seddon, Prime Minister of New Zealand. I attended a banquet given in his honour at the Australia Hotel, in Sydney, N.S.W., and sat among the élite of Southern journalism. Indeed, the company present was a thoroughly representative one, for the occasion was most important. I occupied the seat next but one to Mr. Seddon, and can honestly say that no guest there could be less biased than I was. I knew nothing of the man except common rumour, and that was entirely favourable. Yet before he spoke I was fascinated by the back of his head, which sloped forward from the neck without any “bulge” at all. In common parlance he had no back to his head. And I confess I felt doubtful. But when I heard him speak, and continue speaking for one hour and a quarter, I was aghast. I have heard a hundred times better matter from street-corner orators, in fact I have rarely listened to more turgid rubbish. The most astounding thing of all was that it literally hypnotised his audience. Had an archangel been addressing them they could not have shown wilder excitement, in fact whenever they got a chance they raved. And when the sorry performance was over I said to my friend next to me, the Editor of one of the great Sydney newspapers:
“In Heaven’s name, what does all this mean? What is the matter with all these people?”
He had been just as bad as the rest, but he was now slightly ashamed of himself, I think, for he passed off my question diffidently and did not attempt to answer me. I could not call it turgid rhetoric, for it was not rhetoric, it was simply noisy rubbish, the few grains of sense that it contained being poured out within the first five minutes, and afterwards the whole performance might well have been summed up in Shakespeare’s immortal lines:
“Like unto a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
And signifying nothing.”