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education in order that they may know its worthlessness. George William
Curtis was a very prince of gentlemen, and as an orator he won by his
manner and by his gentle voice fully as much as by the orderly
procession of his thoughts.

"Oh, what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices! Whoever speaks
to me in the right voice, him or her will I follow," says Walt Whitman.

If you have ever loved a woman and you care to go back to May-time and
try to analyze the why and the wherefore, you probably will not be able
to locate the why and the wherefore, but this negative truth you will
discover: you were not won by logic. Of course you admired the woman's
intellect--it sort of matched your own, and in loving her you
complimented yourself, for thus by love and admiration do we prove our
kinship with the thing loved.

But intellect alone is too cold to fuse the heart. Something else is
required, and for lack of a better word we call it "personality." This
glowing, winning personality that inspires confidence and trust is a
bouquet of virtues, the chief flower of which is Right Intent--honesty
may be a bit old-fashioned, but do not try to leave it out.

George William Curtis and Starr King had a frank, wide-open, genuine
quality that disarmed prejudice right at the start. And both were big
enough so that they never bemoaned the fact that Fate had sent them to
the University of Hard Knocks instead of matriculating them at Harvard.

I once heard George William Curtis speak at Saint James Hall, Buffalo,
on Civil-Service Reform--a most appalling subject with which to hold a
"popular audience." He was introduced by the Honorable Sherman S.
Rogers, a man who was known for ten miles up the creek as the greatest
orator in Erie County. After the speech of introduction, Curtis stepped
to the front, laid on the reading-desk a bundle of manuscript, turned
one page, and began to talk. He talked for two hours, and never once
again referred to his manuscript--we thought he had forgotten it. He
himself tells somewhere of Edward Everett doing the same. It is fine to
have a thing and still show that you do not need it. The style of Curtis
was in such marked contrast to the bluegrass article represented by
Rogers that it seemed a rebuke. One was florid, declamatory, strong,
full of reasons: the other was keyed low--it was so melodious, so gently
persuasive, that we were thrown off our guard and didn't know we had
imbibed rank heresy u