Fifty years! I was a young man, not yet of
age, when I delivered my first platform lecture.
The Civil War of 1861-65 drew on with all its
passions, patriotism, horrors, and fears, and I was
studying law at Yale University. I had from
childhood felt that I was ``called to the ministry.''
The earliest event of memory is the prayer of
my father at family prayers in the little old cottage
in the Hampshire highlands of the Berkshire
Hills, calling on God with a sobbing voice
to lead me into some special service for the
Saviour. It filled me with awe, dread, and fear, and
I recoiled from the thought, until I determined
to fight against it with all my power. So I sought
for other professions and for decent excuses for
being anything but a preacher.
Yet while I was nervous and timid before the
class in declamation and dreaded to face any
kind of an audience, I felt in my soul a strange
impulsion toward public speaking which for years
made me miserable. The war and the public
meetings for recruiting soldiers furnished an outlet
for my suppressed sense of duty, and my first
lecture was on the ``Lessons of History'' as
applied to the campaigns against the Confederacy.
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