He will
refer to something that he heard a child say in a
train yesterday; in a few minutes he will speak
of something that he saw or some one whom he
met last month, or last year, or ten years ago--
in Ohio, in California, in London, in Paris, in
New York, in Bombay; and each memory, each
illustration, is a hammer with which he drives
home a truth.
The vast number of places he has visited and
people he has met, the infinite variety of things his
observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless
flow of illustrations, and his memory and his
skill make admirable use of them. It is seldom
that he uses an illustration from what he has
read; everything is, characteristically, his own.
Henry M. Stanley, who knew him well, referred
to him as ``that double-sighted Yankee,'' who
could ``see at a glance all there is and all there
ever was.''
And never was there a man who so supplements
with personal reminiscence the place or the person
that has figured in the illustration. When
he illustrates with the story of the discovery of
California gold at Sutter's he almost parenthetically
remarks, ``I delivered this lecture on that
very spot a few years ago; that is, in the town
that arose on that very spot.
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