Question. Would you mind telling me how it was you came to be a public speaker, a lecturer, an orator?
Answer. We call this America of ours free, and yet I found it was very far from free. Our writers and our speakers declared that here in America church and state were divorced. I found this to be untrue. I found that the church was supported by the state in many ways, that people who failed to believe certain portions of the creeds were not allowed to testify in courts or to hold office. It occurred to me that some one ought to do something toward making this country intellectually free, and after a while I thought that I might as well endeavor to do this as wait for another. This is the way in which I came to make speeches; it was an action in favor of liberty. I have said things because I wanted to say them, and because I thought they ought to be said.
Question. Perhaps you will tell me your methods as a speaker, for I'm sure it would be interesting to know them?
Answer. Sometimes, and frequently, I deliver a lecture several times before it is written. I have it taken by a shorthand writer, and afterward written out. At other times I have dictated a lecture, and delivered it from manuscript. The course pursued depends on how I happen to feel at the time. Sometimes I read a lecture, and sometimes I deliver lectures without any notes—this, again, depending much on how I happen to feel. So far as methods are concerned, everything should depend on feeling. Attitude, gestures, voice, emphasis, should all be in accord with and spring from feeling, from the inside.
Question. Is there any possibility of your coming to England, and, I need hardly add, of your coming to speak?
Answer. I have thought of going over to England, and I may do so. There is an England in England for which I have the highest possible admiration, the England of culture, of art, of principle.
—The Sketch, London, Eng., March 21, 1894.