last time, slipped
a lozenge into his mouth, and was about to appear upon the platform, when
he felt a tug at the tail of his dress-coat. On looking around, he saw the
anxious face of his friend, James Payn. "For God's sake, Walter,"
whispered Payn, "you are not going to explain to 'em how you do it, are
you?" But Walter did not explain how to write fiction, because he could
not, and Payn's quizzing question happily relieved the lecture of the
bumptiousness it might otherwise have contained.

The first culture for which a people reach out is oratory. The Indian is
an orator with "the natural method"; he takes the stump on small
provocation, and under the spell of the faces that look up to him, is
often moved to strange eloquence. I have heard negro preachers who could
neither read nor write, move vast congregations to profoundest emotion by
the magic of their words and presence. And further, they proved to me that
the ability to read and write is a cheap accomplishment, and that a man
can be a very strong character, and not know how to do either.

For the most part, people who live in cities are not moved by oratory;
they are unsocial, unimaginative, unemotional. They see so much and hear
so much that they cease to be impressed. When they come together in
assemblages they are so apathetic that they fail to generate
magnetism--there is no common soul to which the speaker can address
himself. They are so cold that the orator never welds them into a mass. He
may amuse them, but in a single hour to change the opinions of a lifetime
is no longer possible in America. There are so many people, and so much
business to transact, that emotional life plays only upon the surface--in
it there is no depth. To possess depth you must commune with the Silences.
No more do you find men and women coming for fifty miles, in wagons, to
hear speakers discuss political issues; no more do you find campmeetings
where the preacher strikes conviction home until thousands are on their
knees crying to God for mercy.

Intelligence has increased; spirituality has declined, and as a people the
warm emotions of our hearts are gone forever.

Oratory is a rustic product. The great orators have always been
country-bred, and their appeal has been made to rural people. Those who
live in a big place think they are bigger on that account. They acquire
glibness of speech and polish of manner; but they purchase these things at
a price. They lack the power t