One who had heard me many times said: "Why do you do better at Ocean Grove than anywhere else I hear you?" My answer was: "Because of conditions. The great auditorium seats ten thousand, the atmosphere is invigorated by salt sea breezes; a choir of five hundred sing the audience into a receptive mood and the speaker is borne from climax to climax on wings of applause."
I would not have you infer from this that a large audience is always necessary to success. Indeed the most successful and satisfactory address I ever made was to an audience of one. If I can make as favorable an impression upon you as I did upon that young lady I shall be gratified.
In Pauling, New York, Chauncey M. Depew by his attention and applause inspired me more than the whole audience beside; while time and again have I been helped to do my best by the presence of that matchless queen of the platform, Frances E. Willard.
The very opposite of greatness has had the same effect upon me. At the Pontiac, Illinois, Chautauqua after lecturing to a great audience, I was invited by the superintendent of the State Reformatory to address the inmates of the prison. At the close of a thirty minutes' talk the superintendent said: "Your address to my boys exceeded the one you gave at the Chautauqua."
Why was it better? At the Chautauqua I was trying to entertain and instruct an intelligent audience. Within the grey walls of that prison I was reaching down to the very depths, endeavoring to lift up human beings, marred and scarred by sin and crime, but dear to the mothers who bore them and the Savior who died for them.
If I were a preacher in New York City and were announced to preach a sermon on home missionary work I would not go to the church by way of the mansions of the rich where children, shod in satin slippers dance and play over velvet tapestry, but by way of the slums where I would meet the children of misery, where,
"To stand at night 'mid the city's throng,
And scan the faces that pass along,
Is to read a book whose every leaf
Is a history of woe and want and grief.