nation. The real difficulty of our nation has been that not enough of us
realized that the matters we discussed were matters of common concern. We
have talked as if we had to serve now this part of the country and again
that part, now this interest and again that interest; as if all interests
were not linked together, provided we understood them and knew how they
were related to one another.

If you would know what makes the great river as it nears the sea, you must
travel up the stream. You must go up into the hills and back into the
forests and see the little rivulets, the little streams, all gathering in
hidden places to swell the great body of water in the channel. And so with
the making of public opinion: Back in the country, on the farms, in the
shops, in the hamlets, in the homes of cities, in the schoolhouses, where
men get together and are frank and true with one another, there come
trickling down the streams which are to make the mighty force of the
river, the river which is to drive all the enterprises of human life as it
sweeps on into the great common sea of humanity.

I feel nothing so much as the intensity of the common man. I can pick out
in any audience the men who are at ease in their fortunes: they are seeing
a public man go through his stunts. But there are in every crowd other men
who are not doing that,--men who are listening as if they were waiting to
hear if there were somebody who could speak the thing that is stirring in
their own hearts and minds. It makes a man's heart ache to think that he
cannot be sure that he is doing it for them; to wonder whether they are
longing for something that he does not understand. He prays God that
something will bring into his consciousness what is in theirs, so that the
whole nation may feel at last released from its dumbness, feel at last
that there is no invisible force holding it back from its goal, feel at
last that there is hope and confidence and that the road may be trodden as