Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/99

 speech in America. The ice was broken. Mr. Harvey triumphed over my diffidence. Invitations to address meetings poured in upon me from all sides and kept me busy during the whole campaign.

I did not yet trust myself to make a public speech in English, and therefore in that campaign addressed only German audiences in their own language. But I gathered very valuable experiences in coming face to face with a great variety of human beings which gave me ample opportunity for studying their ways of thinking and the motives which would be likely to govern their action, and also for weighing the different available methods to reach their minds and hearts by argument and appeal. I met simple-minded farmers in little country schoolhouses or court-rooms,—men who so far had more or less passively followed the accustomed party lead, and were slow to change, but who honestly and earnestly meant to find out what was right and how to do it, and who sat before me with serious faces, not seldom with a puzzled expression when I happened to say something they had never thought of; men who would listen quietly without giving any sign of assent or dissent, except an occasional nod or shake of the head, and who, when, after the close of the speech, applause came forth, would join in it, sometimes heartily, sometimes with timid reticence, and sometimes not at all. I met quick-witted townspeople who had been more or less used to political activity and were acquainted with the current language of political discussion, and who would promptly grasp the point of an argument or the catch-words or battle-cries of party and instantly respond with applause or signs of disapproval. I met the ingrained partisans of the opposite creed who would, some from personal interest, some from mere traditional prejudice, stubbornly, close their ears and minds to every argument going against their side,