It will repay you to study this speech closely and to wrest from it its innermost secrets of power and effectiveness.  The greatest underlying quality of this speech is its rare simplicity—­simplicity of thought, simplicity of language, simplicity of purpose, and shining through it all, the simplicity of the great emancipator himself.

This simplicity is one of the great distinguishing qualities of effective public speaking.  It is characteristic of all true art.  It is subtle and difficult to define, but Fenelon gives a definition that will aid us when he says, “Simplicity is an uprightness of soul that has no reference to self.”  It is another word for unselfishness.

In these days of self-exploitation and self-aggrandizement, how refreshing it is to meet a man of true simplicity.  We are won by his unaffected manner, his gentleness of argument, his ingratiating tones of voice, his freedom from prejudice and passion.  Such a man wins us almost wholly by the power of his simplicity.

This supreme quality is noticeable in men who are said to have come to themselves.  They have tasted and tested life, they have learned proportion and perspective, they have appraised things at their real value, and now they carry themselves in poise and power and confidence.  They have found themselves in a high and true sense, and they have come to be known as men of simplicity.

Simplicity is not to be confounded with weakness or ignorance.  It comes through long education.  It does not mean the trite, or the commonplace, or the obvious.  It is a strong and sturdy quality, is this simplicity of which I am speaking, and nothing else will atone for lack of it in the public speaker.

Longfellow calls it the supreme excellence, since it is the quality which above all others brings serenity to the soul and makes life really worth living.  Every man should earnestly seek to cultivate this great quality as essential to noble character.

This speech is conspicuous for another indispensable quality for effective public speaking,—­the quality of sincerity.  It grows largely out of simplicity and is the product of integrity of mind and heart.  Men recognize it quickly, though they cannot easily tell whence it comes.  We find it highly developed in great leaders in business and professional life.  There has never been a really great public speaker who was not preeminently a sincere man.

Beecher said, “Let no man who is a sneak try to be an orator.”  Such a man can not be.  He will shortly be found out.  The world’s ultimate estimate of a man is not far wrong.

A politician of much promise was addressing a distinguished audience in Washington.  The Opera House was crowded to the doors to hear him and apparently he was making a good impression upon all his hearers.  But suddenly, at the very climax of his speech, while upwards of two thousand eyes were rivetted upon him, he was seen to wink at a personal friend of his sitting in a nearby box, and at that instant his future political prospects were shattered as a vase struck by lightning.  In that single instant of insincerity he was appraised by that discriminating audience and his doom was sealed.