Returning to the hotel a commercial traveler who had heard me a number of times said: "I congratulate you; you get younger. I never heard you put so much life into your lecture."
I replied: "Why man, I was trying to keep my feet from freezing."
He said: "I advise you to go on the platform every evening with cold feet."
John and Charles Wesley were going along a street in London when they came upon two market women engaged in a wordy war. John Wesley said: "Hold up, Charles, and let's learn how to preach. See how these women put earnestness and even eloquence into their street quarrel. Can't we be just as earnest and eloquent in dealing out the truth?" No wonder John Wesley gave such impetus to the platform.
It is said what John Wesley and George Whitefield were to the religious platform, Fox and Burke became later on to the political platform. They saw the platform was fast becoming the voice of public sentiment and dared to indorse it.
When Mr. Fox made his first platform address he said: "This is the first time I ever had the privilege of addressing an uncorrupted assembly." Going back into Parliament he said: "Let's put an end to a policy that separates us from the people. Let's cut all cables, snap all chains that bind us to an unfriendly shore and enter the peaceful harbor of public confidence."
When Mr. Burke made his platform debut, he was so inspired by the enthusiasm of the people, it is said, he made the greatest speech ever made in the English language up to that time. When he appeared in Parliament next evening a leader of the government took occasion to denounce the platform as a disturber of public peace, directing his remarks to Mr. Burke. The great orator was ready with the reply: "Yes, and the firebell at midnight disturbs public peace, but it keeps you from burning in your beds."
It would seem after years of fruitless effort to silence the platform, Parliament would accept it as a power for good and give it wise direction. Yet we are informed that in face of its growing popularity when Henry Hunt attempted to address an audience in a grove in England, a regiment of cavalry charged the grove. Eleven were killed and several hundred wounded. Henry Hunt was thrown into prison, but when released later one hundred thousand people welcomed him to the streets of London.
As well now had Parliament attempted to prevent a London fog as to prohibit platform meetings. John Bright said: "When I consider these meetings of the people, so sublime in their vastness and resolution, I see coming over the hilltops of time the dawning of a nobler and better day for my country."
It is our privilege to live in the good day of which John Bright spoke. Yet while a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between speaker and audience.