newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter
of schools and patriotic organizations, the participant in
many political campaigns, the lay preacher of private and
public morals, the chosen orator of his nation for all great
occasions,--these are some of the characters in which we must
view him to form anything like a complete conception of his
many-sided individuality. Take the matter of oratory alone,
and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people
by the living word as he has by the printed page. He has
addressed hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian
countries and in Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty
thousand at a time, and his winged speech has gone straight
home to his hearers. All who ever heard him will agree that
his oratory was of the most persuasive and vital impressiveness.
Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following words:--

"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most
characteristic quality is its wealth of color; it finds
expression for every mood, from the lightest to the most serious,
from the most vigorous to the most delicate and tender. Now
his words ring like the voice of doom, filled with thunder and
lightning, now they become soft and persuasive with smiling mien.
With a single cadence, or a play of the facial muscles, or a
slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or an
object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers.
And what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most
brilliant manner by the virtuosity of his delivery. He does
not speak his words, he presents them; they take bodily form
and seem alive."