The subject of the present article was born not far from the year 1810. Whether or no any comet or other unusual heavenly phenomenon heralded his entrance upon the scenes of earth, is not recorded. If, however, the astronomical appearances which are said to accompany the birth of the mighty ones of the sons of earth are gauged with any degree of fairness, there should have been at least six large comets and any number of meteors distinctly visible. His early life glided by gently as the placid Hoosick, by which he frolicked. Several desperate attempts were made by various misguided individuals to educate him. From all these, however, he escaped unscathed, with the wings of his genius unfettered. At what precise period he began to exhibit symptoms of that highly original and forcible eloquence which he now possesses, we are unable to state. We presume that his first efforts were co-existent with the commencement of his career as a wood-sawyer. Certainly, at present, he is rarely filled with the divine afflatus except when plying his saw. He is unlike Shakespeare, as he often repeats. One utterance—"Ottah"—the coinage of his own brain, seems to be the attempt of his daring and unschooled genius to strike out not only into new lines of thought, but even to find a mystic mode of expression. This term is evidently a portion of a language wholly differing from our own. It is at once a noun, adjective, and verb, and, in the full flood of his eloquence, it changes from the one to the other with astounding rapidity.
The extreme versatility of his genius renders it peculiarly difficult to give any adequate idea of his oratory. He is equally bold in the expression of his sentiments on any subject. Perhaps for convenience in consideration we may roughly divide his oratory into wood-pile and conversational eloquence.
Specimens of his genuine wood-pile eloquence, though by no means uncommon, are yet not easily accessible to the biographical compiler. Very few of his sayings have ever found their way into print, and when thus presented they are of necessity shorn of much of their strength, and deprived of the impressiveness which they derive from the orator's gesticulation and delivery. We will, however, endeavor to present our readers with a few, selected at random, from discourses on various occasions and subjects.
It is morning. A group of students, just before going into recitation, cluster around Bill in the hope of getting a speech from him. He remains deaf to their entreaties till the bell sounds, when with uplifted hand and glaring eye he thus addresses them, in a voice audible for about half a mile.
"Go in and take your secretary, persecuting yourself with the dandelions and robes of righteousness. All the life, all the music, and the blood and electricity rolling over the mountains with the elements of pietude spread all over the fundament. Ottah!! R-R-R-Rose Ottah! Rack-a-tack."
As might be surmised from a perusal of this effort, his peroration is rarely in keeping with the main portion of his oration. In fact, the close of all his speeches may be said to be very similar, being invariably "Ottah," or some variation of it.
Occasionally the exuberance of his genius leads him into the error of crowding together metaphors to the detriment of perspicuity. When, for example, he says:
"The waters of heaven descending on the breast-bones of the women; and the youthful Moses, sitting on the back-bone of eternity, sucking the pap of time," we feel that there is a redundancy in the expression.
Some specimens of his remarkable verbal and figurative power in conversation are forcible in the extreme. It is said, with what truth we know not, that on one occasion the venerable head of this institution ventured to "tackle" him in a religious argument. Bill, after listening with a deference which was evidently a tribute of respect to the Doctor's position rather than an acknowledgment of the cogency of his reasoning, settled the question by an interrogatory: "Dr. Hopkins, do you suppose I'm goin' to believe that when I die I'll go up and sit on one of those clouds with my legs hangin' over?"
We infer from the above that his religious belief is somewhat vague.