e image, and never loses it. A
popular assembly, like the House of Commons, or the French Chamber, or
the American Congress, is commanded by these two powers,--first by a
fact, then by skill of statement. Put the argument into a concrete
shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball,
which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause
is half won.

Statement, method, imagery, selection, tenacity of memory, power of
dealing with facts, of illuminating them, of sinking them by ridicule
or by diversion of the mind, rapid generalization, humor, pathos, are
keys which the orator holds; and yet these fine gifts are not
eloquence, and do often hinder a man's attainment of it. And if we
come to the heart of the mystery, perhaps we should say that the truly
eloquent man is a sane man with power to communicate his sanity. If
you arm the man with the extraordinary weapons of this art, give him a
grasp of facts, learning, quick fancy, sarcasm, splendid allusion,
interminable illustration,--all these talents, so potent and charming,
have an equal power to insnare and mislead the audience and the
orator. His talents are too much for him, his horses run away with
him; and people always perceive whether you drive, or whether the
horses take the bits in their teeth and run. But these talents are
quite something else when they are subordinated and serve him; and we
go to Washington, or to Westminster Hall, or might well go round the
world, to see a man who drives, and is not run away with,--a man who,
in prosecuting great designs, has an absolute command of the means of
representing his ideas, and uses them only to express these; placing
facts, placing men; amid the inconceivable levity of human beings,
never for an instant warped from his erectness. There is for every man
a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to
receive,--a statement possible, so broad and so pungent, that he
cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it. Else
there would be no such word as eloquence, which means this. The
listener cannot hide from himself that something has been shown him
and the whole world, which he did not wish to see; and, as he cannot
dispose of it, it disposes of him. The history of public men and
affairs in America will readily furnish tragic examples of this fatal
force.

For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must still be required,
namely, a reinforcing of