Well, O'Connell had all that; and true nature seemed to be speaking all over him. It would have been a pleasure even to look at him if he had not spoken at all, and all you thought of was a greyhound.
And then he had what so few American speakers have, a voice that sounded the gamut. I heard him once in Exeter Hall say, "Americans, I send my voice careering across the Atlantic like a thunderstorm, to tell the slave-holders of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the negro that the dawn of his redemption is drawing near," and I seemed to hear his voice reverberating and reëchoing back to Boston from the Rocky Mountains.
And then, with the slightest possible flavor of an Irish brogue, he would tell a story that would make all Exeter Hall laugh, and the next moment there would be tears in his voice, like an old song, and five thousand men would be in tears. And all the while no effort—he seemed only breathing.
"As effortless as woodland nooks
Send violets up and paint them blue."
FOOTNOTE:
[50] By permission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.