The Art of Public Speaking
yourself to that need, and this leads to invention on the part of the
people you would not dream of before. The great inventors are simply
great men; the greater the man the more simple the man; and the more
simple a machine, the more valuable it is. Did you ever know a really
great man? His ways are so simple, so common, so plain, that you think
any one could do what he is doing. So it is with the great men the world
over. If you know a really great man, a neighbor of yours, you can go
right up to him and say, "How are you, Jim, good morning, Sam." Of
course you can, for they are always so simple.
When I wrote the life of General Garfield, one of his neighbors took me
to his back door, and shouted, "Jim, Jim, Jim!" and very soon "Jim" came
to the door and General Garfield let me in--one of the grandest men of
our century. The great men of the world are ever so. I was down in
Virginia and went up to an educational institution and was directed to a
man who was setting out a tree. I approached him and said, "Do you think
it would be possible for me to see General Robert E. Lee, the President
of the University?" He said, "Sir, I am General Lee." Of course, when
you meet such a man, so noble a man as that, you will find him a simple,
plain man. Greatness is always just so modest and great inventions are
simple.
I asked a class in school once who were the great inventors, and a
little girl popped up and said, "Columbus." Well, now, she was not so
far wrong. Columbus bought a farm and he carried on that farm just as I
carried on my father's farm. He took a hoe and went out and sat down on
a rock. But Columbus, as he sat upon that shore and looked out upon the
ocean, noticed that the ships, as they sailed away, sank deeper into the
sea the farther they went. And since that time some other "Spanish
ships" have sunk into the sea. But as Columbus noticed that the tops of
the masts dropped down out of sight, he said: "That is the way it is
with this hoe handle; if you go around this hoe handle, the farther off
you go the farther down you go. I can sail around to the East Indies."
How plain it all was. How simple the mind--majestic like the simplicity
of a mountain in its greatness. Who are the great inventors? They are
ever the simple, plain, everyday people who see the need and set about
to supply it.
I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank sat
directly behind a lady who wore a very large hat. I said to that
audience, "Your wealth is too near to you; you are looking right over
it." He whispered to his friend, "Well, then, my wealth is in that hat."
A little later, as he wrote me, I said, "Wherever there is a human need
there is a greater fortune than a mine can furnish." He caught my
thought, and he drew up his plan for a better hat pin than was in the
hat before him, and the pin is now being manufactured. He was offered
fifty-five thousand dollars for his patent. That man made his fortune
before he got out of that hall. This is the whole question: Do you see a
need?
I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for twenty
years was helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a wide-spreading
maple tree that covered the poor man's cottage like a benediction from
on high. I remember that tree, for in the spring--there were some
roguish boys around that neighborhood when I was young--in the spring of
the year the man would put a bucket there and the spouts to catch the
maple sap, and I remember where that bucket was; and when I was young
the boys were, oh, so mean, that they went to that tree before that man
had gotten out of bed in the morning, and after he had gone to bed at
night, and drank up that sweet sap. I could swear they did it. He didn't
make a great deal of maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the
sugar so white and crystalline that the visitor did not believe it was
maple sugar; thought maple sugar must be red or black. He said to the
old man: "Why don't you make it that way and sell it for confectionery?"
The old man caught his thought and invented the "rock maple crystal,"
and before that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had
built a beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty years
owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it.
And many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we
own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its
value because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries and
inventions this is one of the most romantic things of life.
I have received letters from all over the country and from England,
where I have lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that,
and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last spring,
and said that they cost him $680,000, and said he, "I was not worth a
cent in the world when I heard your lecture 'Acres of Diamonds;' but I
made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it
is." He showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a
continual experience now as I travel through the country, after these
many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that
you can do the same if you will.
Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who
used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was
out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him to "go
out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do--he
obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his
back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in
possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down
into that little brook which ran through that back yard into the
meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding
under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful
poem:
"Chatter, chatter, as I flow,
To join the brimming river,
Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."
But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and
managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester.
They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill for another
such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to
help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united,
that five dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They
went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not
another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home
disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how
trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and
that will give you the information you want." They did so, and found all
about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six
hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every
year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons per
annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found
that, they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if they
could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in
that same back yard with the coal sifter up stream and window screen
down the stream, they began the culture of trout. They afterwards moved
to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in the United
States upon the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on
the United States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man's
wealth was out there in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn't
see it until his wife drove him out with a mop stick.
I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham,
Massachusetts, who was out of work and in poverty. His wife also drove
him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and whittled a soaked shingle
into a wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the evening, and
while he was whittling a second one, a neighbor came along and said,
"Why don't you whittle toys if you can carve like that?" He said, "I
don't know what to make!" There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to
him: "Why don't you ask your own children?" Said he, "What is the use of
doing that? My children are different from other people's children." I
used to see people like that when I taught school. The next morning when
his boy came down the stairway, he said, "Sam, what do you want for a
toy?" "I want a wheelbarrow." When his little girl came down, he asked
her what she wanted, and she said, "I want a little doll's washstand, a
little doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella," and went on with a
whole lot of things that would have taken his lifetime to supply. He
consulted his own children right there in his own house and began to
whittle out toys to please them. He began with his jack-knife, and made
those unpainted Hingham toys. He is the richest man in the entire New
England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his statement
concerning such things, and yet that man's fortune was made by
consulting his own children in his own house. You don't need to go out
of your own house to find out what to invent or what to make. I always
talk too long on this subject.
I would like to meet the great men who are here to-night. The great men!
We don't have any great men in Philadelphia. Great men! You say that
they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or
anywhere else but here--anywhere else but Philadelphia--and yet, in
fact, there are just as great men in Philadelphia as in any city of its
size. There are great men and women in this audience. Great men, I have
said, are very simple men. Just as many great men here as are to be
found anywhere. The greatest error in judging great men is that we think
that they always hold an office. The world knows nothing of its greatest
men. Who are the great men of the world? The young man and young woman
may well ask the question. It is not necessary that they should hold an
office, and yet that is the popular idea. That is the idea we teach now
in our high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world
are those who hold some high office, and unless we change that very soon
and do away with that prejudice, we are going to change to an empire.
There is no question about it. We must teach that men are great only on
their intrinsic value, and not on the position that they may
incidentally happen to occupy. And yet, don't blame the young men saying
that they are going to be great when they get into some official
position. I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great?
Says a young man: "I am going to be great." "When are you going to be
great?" "When I am elected to some political office." Won't you learn
the lesson, young man; that it is _prima facie_ evidence of littleness
to hold public office under our form of government? Think of it. This is
a government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and
not for the office-holder, and if the people in this country rule as
they always should rule, an office-holder is only the servant of the
people, and the Bible says that "the servant cannot be greater than his
master." The Bible says that "he that is sent cannot be greater than him
who sent him." In this country the people are the masters, and the
office-holders can never be greater than the people; they should be
honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men. Young
man, remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political
office in this country unless he took that office at an expense to