That matchless temperance orator and loving
friend, John B. Gough, introduced me to the little
audience in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1862.
What a foolish little school-boy speech it must
have been! But Mr. Gough's kind words of
praise, the bouquets and the applause, made me
feel that somehow the way to public oratory
would not be so hard as I had feared.
From that time I acted on Mr. Gough's advice
and ``sought practice'' by accepting almost every
invitation I received to speak on any kind of a
subject. There were many sad failures and tears,
but it was a restful compromise with my conscience
concerning the ministry, and it pleased my friends.
I addressed picnics, Sunday-schools, patriotic
meetings, funerals, anniversaries, commencements,
debates, cattle-shows, and sewing-circles without
partiality and without price. For the first five
years the income was all experience. Then
voluntary gifts began to come occasionally in the
shape of a jack-knife, a ham, a book, and the
first cash remuneration was from a farmers' club,
of seventy-five cents toward the ``horse hire.''
It was a curious fact that one member of that
club afterward moved to Salt Lake City and was
a member of the committee at the Mormon
Tabernacle in 1872 which, when I was a correspondent,
on a journey around the world, employed
me to lecture on ``Men of the Mountains'' in the
Mormon Tabernacle, at a fee of five hundred dollars.
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