demagogue is,--a great demagogue, if you please, than which it is hard
for one to call to mind a more contemptible animal, and the greater the
more contemptible. But without laying hold of and building upon this
great principle you never can become a great orator.

Call to mind the greatest in the world's history, from Demosthenes--Men
of Athens, march against Philip, your country and your fellow-men will
be in early bondage unless you give them your best service now--down to
our own Phillips and Gough,--Wendell Phillips against the traffic in
human blood, John B. Gough against a slavery among his fellow-men more
hard and galling and abject than the one just spoken of; for by it the
body merely is in bondage, the mind and soul are free, while in this,
body, soul, and mind are enslaved. So you can easily discover the great
_purpose_, the great cause for _service_, behind each and every one.

The man who can't get beyond himself, his own aggrandizement and
interests, must of necessity be small, petty, personal, and at once
marks his own limitations; while he whose life is a life of service and
self-devotion has no limits, for he thus puts himself at once on the
side of the _Universal_, and this more than all else combined gives a
tremendous power in oratory. Such a one can mount as on the wings of an
eagle, and Nature herself seems to come forth and give a great soul of
this kind means and material whereby to accomplish his purposes, whereby
the great universal truths go direct to the minds and hearts of his
hearers to mould them, to move them; for the orator is he who moulds the
minds and hearts of his hearers in the great moulds of universal and
eternal truth, and then moves them along a definite line of action, not
he who merely speaks pieces to them.

How thoroughly Webster recognized this great principle is admirably