294 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



could lay down rules for others to do the same, in 

 which they were much mistaken. For there is no 

 more an art of writing than there is an art of speaking. 

 To speak well is equivalent to thinking aloud. Success 

 either in speaking or writing has never but one cause 

 absolute sincerity. "When you excite the enthusiasm 

 of a meeting and succeed in reducing that which is 

 the most obdurate thing in the world to metaphors, 

 and the most refractory to the artifices of the so-called 

 art of fine talking I mean capital it is not your 

 words but your individuality which attracts; or, I 

 should rather say, your whole person speaks; you 

 exercise a charm. You have that supreme gift which 

 works miracles, like faith, and which is in truth of the 

 same order. Charm has its secret motives, but not its 

 definite reasons. Its action is wholly spiritual. You 

 obtain the same amount of success at Chicago, a city 

 which is not a third your age, as you do in the ancient 

 cities of Europe. You convince the Turk, the Arab, 

 the Abyssinian, the Paris speculator, and the Liverpool 

 merchant, by reasons which differ only in appearance. 

 The true reason of your ascendancy is that people 

 detect in you a heart full of sympathy for all that is 

 human ; a genuine passion for ameliorating the lot of 

 your fellow-creatures. You have in you that ' Misereor 

 super turbas' (I have pity upon the masses) which 

 is the sentiment of all great organisers. People love 

 you and like to see you, and before you have opened 

 your mouth you are cheered. Your adversaries call 



