as fond of committing and declaiming such orations and poems
as appealed to me. Patrick Henry's revolutionary speech had first place.
Robert Emmet's immortal oration was a great favorite and moved me
deeply. Drake's "American Flag" stirred my blood as did also Schiller's
"Burgschaft." Often I felt myself thrilled under the spell of these,
recited to myself, inaudibly at times, and at others declaimed boldly
and dramatically, when no one else was listening.

Everything that was revolutionary appealed to me and it was this that
made Patrick Henry one of my first heroes; and my passion for his
eloquent and burning defiance of King George inspired the first speech I
ever attempted in public, with Patrick himself as the theme. This was
before the Occidental Literary Club of Terre Haute, Ind., of which I was
then a member, and I still shudder as I recall the crowded little
club-room which greeted me, and feel again the big drops of cold sweat
standing out all over me as I realized the plight I was in and the
utter hopelessness of escape.

The spectacle I made of myself that evening will never be effaced from
my memory, and the sympathetic assurances of my friends at the close of
the exhibition did not relieve the keen sense of humiliation and shame I
felt for the disgrace I had brought upon myself and my patron saint. The
speech could not possibly have been worse and my mortification was
complete. In my heart I hoped most earnestly that my hero's spiritual
ears were not attuned to the affairs of this earth, at least that
evening.

It was then I realized and sorely felt the need of the education and
training I had missed and then and there I resolved to make up for it as
best I could. I set to work in earnest to learn what I so much needed to
know. While firing a switch-engine at night I attended a private school
half a day each day, sleeping in the morning and attending school in the
afternoon. I bought an encyclopedia on the installment plan, one volume
each month, and began to read and study history and literature and to
devote myself to grammar and composition.

The revolutionary history of the United States and France stirred me
deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered
above them all. A thousand times since then I have found inspiration and
strength in the thrilling words, "These are the times that try men's
souls."

Here I should say, for the purpose of this writing, that from the time