your mind is unconsciously
at work upon it. When you resume correcting your manuscript you
find that in many things about which you thought well you have
changed your mind. Leisurely corrections and additions will
perfect the address."

As my orations and speeches have always been the by-product of
spare evenings and Sundays taken from an intensely active and busy
life, if I had followed any of these examples my twelve volumes of
speeches would never have seen the light of day.

One of the greatest orators of his generation, and I might say of
ours, was Robert G. Ingersoll. I was privileged to meet
Colonel Ingersoll many times, and on several occasions to be
a speaker on the same platform. The zenith of his fame was reached
by his "plumed-knight" speech, nominating James G. Blaine for
president at the national Republican convention in 1876. It was
the testimony of all the delegates that if the vote could have
been taken immediately at the conclusion of the speech, Mr. Blaine
would have been elected.

Colonel Ingersoll carried off the oratorical honors that campaign
in a series of speeches, covering the whole country. I say a
series of speeches; he really had but one, which was the most
effective campaign address I ever heard, but which he delivered
over and over again, and every time with phenomenal success,
a success the like of which I have never known. He delivered it
to an immense audience in New York, and swept them off their feet.
He repeated this triumph the next day at an open-air meeting in
Wall Street, and again the next day at a great gathering in
New Jersey. The newspapers printed the speech in full every day
after its delivery, as if it had been a new and first utterance
of the great orator.

I spoke with him several times when he was one of the speakers
after an important dinner. It was a rare treat to hear him. The
effort apparently was impromptu, and that added to its effect upon
his auditors. That it was thoroughly prepared I found by hearing
it several times, always unchanged and always producing the same
thrilling effect.

He spoke one night at Cooper Institute at a celebration by the
colored people of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation emancipating them
from slavery. As usual he was master of the occasion and of his
audience. He was then delivering a series of addresses attacking
the Bible. His mind was full of that subject, and apparently he
could not help assailing the faith of the n