Emerson’s suggestion had been well taken—­the observer had seen again the wonderful, persuasive power of enthusiasm!

Enthusiasm sent millions crusading into the Holy Land to redeem it from the Saracens.  Enthusiasm plunged Europe into a thirty years’ war over religion.  Enthusiasm sent three small ships plying the unknown sea to the shores of a new world.  When Napoleon’s army were worn out and discouraged in their ascent of the Alps, the Little Corporal stopped them and ordered the bands to play the Marseillaise.  Under its soul-stirring strains there were no Alps.

Listen!  Emerson said:  “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”  Carlyle declared that “Every great movement in the annals of history has been the triumph of enthusiasm.”  It is as contagious as measles.  Eloquence is half inspiration.  Sweep your audience with you in a pulsation of enthusiasm.  Let yourself go.  “A man,” said Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.”

How are We to Acquire and Develop Enthusiasm?

It is not to be slipped on like a smoking jacket.  A book cannot furnish you with it.  It is a growth—­an effect.  But an effect of what?  Let us see.

Emerson wrote:  “A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of his form merely,—­but, by watching for a time his motion and plays, the painter enters his nature, and then can draw him at will in every attitude.  So Roos ‘entered into the inmost nature of his sheep.’  I knew a draughtsman employed in a public survey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to him.”

When Sarah Bernhardt plays a difficult role she frequently will speak to no one from four o’clock in the afternoon until after the performance.  From the hour of four she lives her character.  Booth, it is reported, would not permit anyone to speak to him between the acts of his Shakesperean roles, for he was Macbeth then—­not Booth.  Dante, exiled from his beloved Florence, condemned to death, lived in caves, half starved; then Dante wrote out his heart in “The Divine Comedy.”  Bunyan entered into the spirit of his “Pilgrim’s Progress” so thoroughly that he fell down on the floor of Bedford jail and wept for joy.  Turner, who lived in a garret, arose before daybreak and walked over the hills nine miles to see the sun rise on the ocean, that he might catch the spirit of its wonderful beauty.  Wendell Phillips’ sentences were full of “silent lightning” because he bore in his heart the sorrow of five million slaves.

There is only one way to get feeling into your speaking—­and whatever else you forget, forget not this:  You must actually ENTER INTO the character you impersonate, the cause you advocate, the case you argue—­enter into it so deeply that it clothes you, enthralls you, possesses you wholly.  Then you are, in the true meaning of the word, in sympathy with your subject, for its feeling is your feeling, you “feel with” it, and therefore your enthusiasm is both genuine and contagious.  The Carpenter who spoke as “never man spake” uttered words born out of a passion of love for humanity—­he had entered into humanity, and thus became Man.