Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

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XI. on the outskirts of public life

Living in a university city, I am occasionally asked by students how they can best train themselves for public speaking; and I always begin with one bit of counsel, based on half a century's experience: “Enlist in a reform.” Engage in something which you feel for the moment to be so unspeakably more important than yourself as wholly to dwarf you, and the rest will come. No matter what it is,--tariff or free trade, gold standard or silver, even communism or imperialism,--the result is the same as to oratory, if you are only sincere. Even the actor on the dramatic stage must fill himself with his part, or he is nothing, and the public speaker on the platform must be more than a dramatic actor to produce the highest effects. When the leading debater in an intercollegiate competition told me, the other day, that he did not believe in the cause which he was assigned to advocate, my heart sank for him, and I dimly foresaw the defeat which came. There is an essential thing wanting to