Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/547

 or a ship gets up behind a fence and, half of the time not looking you in the face, reads off page after page in steady monotone—do you buy the carpet, or the ship? Do you think that feeble men go for much in the pulpit? Listen to one who has made wide and careful study, and hear what he says:

"The orator needs therefore a stout bodily frame, especially as his calling is one that rapidly wears nerve and exhausts the vital energy.

"The most potent speakers in all ages have been distinguished for bodily stamina. They have been, with a few remarkable exceptions, men of brawny frames, with powerful digestive organs, and lungs of great aerating capacity. They have been men who, while they had sufficient thought-power to create all their material needed, had pre-eminently the explosive power by which they could thrust their materials out at men.

"They were catapults; and men went down before them.

"Burke and Fox were men of stalwart frame. Mirabeau had the neck of a bull, and a prodigious chest, out of which issued that voice of thunder before which the French Chamber quailed in awe. Brougham had a constitution of lignum-vitae, which stood the wear and tear of ceaseless activity for more than eighty years. Daniel Webster's physique was so extraordinary that it drew all eyes upon him; and Sydney Smith could describe him only as a 'steam-engine in breeches.'

"Even those orators who have not had giant frames have had at least closely knit ones—the bodily activity and quickness of the athlete. It was said of Lord Erskine that his action sometimes reminded one of a blooded horse. When urging a plea with passionate fervor, his eye flashed, the nostrils distended, he threw back