He affected no graces of oratory, and shunned everything like
rhetorical flourish. He was the first of our public speakers to
introduce this improvement which has since found its way into the
court-room and the theatre. His manner was direct, terse and earnest,
with an habitual pause or hesitation to select just the right verb or
adjective that would convey the idea he wished to express. His delivery
was suited to his thought. His hearers were not commonly pleased with it
at first, but if they continued to listen most of them came to have a
great liking for it. He had a habit of pausing now and then and turning
over the pages before him, as if he had lost his place or was looking
for a passage which he could not find; but he never made any explanation
for it, and his own family did not know the reason. It may have been
done to rest himself; or perhaps to give time for his ideas to settle in
the minds of his audience. Some people were foolishly annoyed by it; but
not those who understood him. He used to say that either a speaker
commands his audience, or his audience commands him.
He was the best lecturer of his time: the one who wore the best. Between
1860 and 1870 he gave four courses of lectures in Boston which were well
and profitably attended. No one else could have done this, except
perhaps Agassiz. There were others who drew larger houses, but the
quality was not so good.
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