Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[357] at any rate, he surprises himself by going beyond his accustomed range. Or it may be, on the other hand, that he has heard bad news, or the audience is particularly antagonistic, so that he gets the warmth by reaction, as from a cold bath. When Wendell Phillips was speaking more tamely than usual, the younger Abolitionists would sometimes go round behind the audience and start a hiss, which roused him without fail. The most experienced public speaker can never fully allow for these variations, or foretell with precision what his success is to be. No doubt there may be for all grades of intellect something akin to inspiration, when it is the ardor of the blood which speaks, and the orator himself seems merely to listen. Probably a scolding fishwoman has her days of glory when she is in remarkably good form, and looks back afterward in astonishment at her own flow of language. Whatever surprises the speaker is almost equally sure to arrest the audience; his prepared material may miss its effect, but his impulse rarely does. “Indeed,” as I wrote elsewhere long ago, “the best hope that any orator can have is to rise at favored moments to some height of enthusiasm that shall make all his previous structure of preparation superfluous; as the ship in launching glides from the ways, and scatters cradletimbers ”