“Alexander ‘wept for other worlds to conquer,’ after he had carried his victorious banner throughout the then known world. Napoleon ‘rearranged the map of Europe with his sword’ amid the lamentations of those by whose blood he was exalted; but when these and other military heroes are forgotten and their achievements disappear in the cycle’s sweep of years, children will still lisp the name of Jefferson, and freedom will ascribe due praise to him who filled the kneeling subject’s heart with hope and bade him stand erect—a sovereign among his peers.”
In all of his rapid utterances and unpremeditated sentences one would fail to detect the slightest lapse from good English; not only good, but admirable. His talk is not that of a pedant,—far from it; but he does speak like a cultivated, well-read man; like a polished man of letters, but not so polished as to leave nothing but the gloss apparent. You may search his numerous speeches, lectures, and addresses without finding the slightest “lapsus linguae,” and all without sterility or banality. In his speeches he shows a very remarkable versatility. “He will talk along in a colloquial manner,” says Mr. Metcalfe, “making you laugh or stirring your heartstrings with his pathos as he wills, and suddenly he will throw forth his periods in language that makes one involuntarily suspect of plagiarism from Milton or the prophets. Simplest words are chosen, and they are formed in short, pithy sentences. No word is used solely for its sound; the mere jingle of words has no place in the mental workshop of our orator. To him words are the servants of thought, and take their real beauty from the thought that blazes through them. His style is as pure and captivating as that of Irving or Addison, and not dissimilar to either. But style with him, as with those two great masters, is valued not for itself, but because it conveys in the most pleasing manner the thoughts which he would have others know.
“Mr. Bryan is not averse to the employment of the thoughts of others wherever they add force and attractiveness to the argument in hand. Accordingly, we find his speeches interspersed with quotations from some of the best writers in both prose and poetry, but in each instance the quotation has a natural fitness for the place in which it is found. There are some productions which pass for oratory that are mere mechanisms—the offspring of minds cold and plodding without a ray of genius to illumine their path. The work of genius springs spontaneously from the depths of the heart ruled by purity.”
In the preparation of his deliverances Mr. Bryan reads widely and extensively, exhausting all the available sources of information. By carefully and thoroughly acquainting himself with every possible phase of his subject, by viewing it in all lights, he prepares himself not only to prove the correctness of his own position, but to meet every objection that may be offered against him.
In the diction of his speech the most acceptable language is chosen, and so clear and simple do the most profound thoughts appear when they come fresh-coined from his brain, that men have no difficulty in comprehending them in all their force.
But it takes more than good English to make a great public man, though good language is one of the most essential features of the part. An instance that is told will illustrate one of his other qualifications. On his arrival in a large city in the East, he had been taken for a drive, and a number of people were waiting for him when he alighted on his return. All the American people seem to consider it a duty to shake hands with a public man, and these were there for that purpose. Among them was a faded woman, apparently having worked out her hopes and ambitions; while her face showed refinement and intellectuality, her hands were gnarled by years of labor. As the candidate stepped from the gay carriage, he was at once encircled by a throng of local dignitaries, who successfully monopolized his attention, to the hopeless exclusion of the woman, who was thoughtlessly jostled aside.
Mr. Bryan, glancing quickly about, saw her turning away, her disappointment shown in her worn face, and, maneuvering about, he delicately managed to bring himself in front of her, and, as he saw her face light with pleasure, he extended his hands and murmured a few words of pleasant meaning to her and passed on.
It is extremely doubtful if, among the public men of all time, there has lived one more abounding in a superb vitality, or possessing so magnificent a physique as Mr. Bryan. In his case, as in that of most men of profound mentality, the powerful mind is found with powerful muscles and a strong constitution to back it in its contests. His massively moulded frame, capable of enduring the severest hardships and nerve-racking strains, is the result of a clean, strong ancestry and pure and temperate living in the life-giving atmosphere of the great West.
Altogether Mr. Bryan is a good specimen of an American. He is, for example, neat in his dress, but his apparel is the least obtrusive part of him. He is frank, companionable, courteous without subserviency, aggressive without boorish insistence, well poised, witty and yet cleanly minded, learned without conceit. And he loves his family above all else on earth. At one place a hasty departure from a hotel had to be made to catch a train, and one of the party took Mr. Bryan’s coat by mistake. The discovery was made as soon as the garment was put on, and to ascertain to whom it belonged the wearer put his hands in the pocket to see if any article might be found that would serve for identification. There were only two things found, and those were photographs of Mr. Bryan’s family. He had evidently put them where he could find them most readily.
One can not help but remember the marvelous campaign Bryan made four years ago. A terrible campaign for mind and body; no one who traveled with him will ever forget it. As for Bryan himself—though, needless to say, he worked harder, thought more, and shouldered an infinitely heavier responsibility than all the newspaper reporters who kept constantly in his wake—he was least fatigued of all. Hoarse and husky he certainly did become toward the end—speaking from the rear end of a train to open air crowds of thousands, a dozen times a day, and at the top of his voice. But Bryan, upon a physique of the most vigorous and massive kind, inspired by a stupendous vitality, which should keep him in good condition for sixty years to come, had superimposed a brain of the healthiest, keenest, and most capable sort. In addition he had a colossal firmness, and an unmitigable will; he had thorough belief in the goodness of his cause, and in himself as its champion; and finally he understood the people, loved them, was in touch with them, and won their confidence to an extent and to a degree of enthusiasm that can not be paralleled in modern times. Had some of the qualities above named been less in him, or more, he might have been a broader statesman; but he would not have been so mighty and formidable a leader of men.