BRYAN: THE MAN
The firm hold which Mr. Bryan has over the confidence, esteem, and love of his followers was strikingly proven in the dark days that followed November, 1896. It is certain that no other public man of his time could have been the candidate of the Democratic party on the Chicago platform, suffered that severe reversal, and yet retained, undisputed and undisturbed, the acknowledged leadership of the party. Whoso learns why it was that Mr. Bryan stood stronger in defeat then he was before has found the key to the man’s greatness. Certainly it was not that he was a great and eloquent orator. For the orator, while always assured a hearing and a place under the lime-light, is still far from the actual leadership of his party. It was not because of the views which he entertained on public questions, for they were those of scores of other well known and able men. It was not because of his honesty and sincerity alone, any more than of his undoubted courage or his clean and upright personality and blameless home life. These, while all real qualifications, were not essentials. Each and all of them were marked characteristics of other notable public men, although it is doubtful if any possessed them all alike in the same degree as Bryan. But there were other and rarer qualities, the most important, his cheerful and contagious optimismand his intensity of character, which spoke in his every act and utterance. His optimism is an unwavering faith in the ways and ends of the Creator; a firm and abiding belief that “He doeth all things well.” The verse from Ella Wheeler Wilcox with which Mr. Bryan closes his “First Battle” well illustrates this phase of his character:
“Let those who have failed take courage;Tho’ the enemy seems to have won,Tho’ his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrongThe battle is not yet done;For sure as the morning followsThe darkest hour of the night,No question is ever settledUntil it is settled right.”
“Let those who have failed take courage;Tho’ the enemy seems to have won,Tho’ his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrongThe battle is not yet done;For sure as the morning followsThe darkest hour of the night,No question is ever settledUntil it is settled right.”
“Let those who have failed take courage;Tho’ the enemy seems to have won,Tho’ his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrongThe battle is not yet done;For sure as the morning followsThe darkest hour of the night,No question is ever settledUntil it is settled right.”
“Let those who have failed take courage;
Tho’ the enemy seems to have won,
Tho’ his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrong
The battle is not yet done;
For sure as the morning follows
The darkest hour of the night,
No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.”
It is this inspiring belief, planted on a foundation so deep and so secure that no storm can shake it, that leaves Mr. Bryan as hopeful, confident, and serene in the darkest hour of defeat as his opponent can possibly be with the paeans of victory ringing in his ears. It is a rare trait, this superb optimism. It wins, instinctively, the hearts and affections of men, only to inspire them to heroic effort under the most adverse surroundings. But its strongest feature is its effect on the possessor. For when that discouragement which comes from failure, and the inertia which discouragement brings in its train, is eliminated from a strong man’s composition he becomes a god, with the power and greatness of the immortals. The scope of his vision is broadened, his mental horizon enlarges, fear and weakness are banished from his heart, andhis might becomes irresistible as he battles for the right as he sees the right. So Mr. Bryan’s optimism has made him a strong, self-poised, cheerful, happy man, whose confidence and good spirits are contagious and whose following increases as his reverses multiply.
His second marked characteristic, his intensity, is one even rarer than the first. The extent to which it is his it is most difficult to make clear. It may, perhaps, be best done by illustration drawn from the writer’s personal experience.
One Saturday, toward the end of the 1899 campaign, Mr. Bryan was speeding across southern Nebraska from east to west on a special train. Every half or quarter hour stops were made at stations along the route, and Mr. Bryan would hastily emerge from his car, make his way, generally unassisted, to a nearby platform, and speak for from ten minutes to an hour to the crowds assembled to hear him. It was most fatiguing work and done by a thoroughly worn-out man. For Mr. Bryan had for two weeks been constantly traveling by train and carriage, speaking from two to a dozen times daily, eating at irregular intervals, and sleeping not more than four or five hours out of each twenty-four. As a natural result his face was drawn and haggard, his muscles frequently twitching, and under his eyes were great black hollows. Yet at every stopping point, when he rose to face his fellow Nebraskans, the worn look would give way, the deep-set eyes would lighten with the fires of a holy zeal, and, in a voice that rang out clear andstrong and passionate he pleaded for the preservation of the Republic and its ideals, inviolate and intact. The train was running on schedule time, of course, and at each stopping point it was necessary for the engineer to toot his whistle and ring his bell, not once, but continuously, in order to tear Mr. Bryan away from his audience when the alloted time had expired. Then the indefatigable campaigner, shaking scores of outstretched hands as he ran, would hasten to his car, and the train would speed along to the next stopping place. Mr. Bryan would no sooner enter his car than he dropped his head on a pillow and slept until a tap on the shoulder awoke him, and he rushed out to make another speech, generally differing in form from any made that day or any previous day, though the substance of all was, of course, largely the same. Once, as the train was screaming along between stations Mr. Bryan called the writer to his state-room, where he lay at rest. He raised his head from the pillow as I entered, and started to speak. What words of suggestion or advice were on his tongue I shall never know, for, in the middle of his first sentence the tired head fell back, the lustrous eyes were closed, and his heavy breathing alone told that life remained in the man’s worn and exhausted frame as he lay there fast asleep.
Late in the afternoon of that same day Mr. Bryan’s dinner was brought him on the train, and he ate—as he slept—between stations. His traveling companions, it may be observed, had eaten hearty meals at a town long passed, dining in leisure while Mr. Bryan,standing with bared head on a wind-swept platform, with a scorching sun beating down upon him, addressed five thousand or more wildly cheering people. As he sat in his little compartment, hastily munching his food, there were with him Mr. Joseph A. Altsheler, of the New YorkWorld, and the writer, representing the OmahaWorld-Herald. One of us chanced to mention some interruption made at the last meeting, where a shrewd Republican partisan had raised a point which Mr. Bryan’s ready repartee had quickly, if not efficiently, disposed of. As soon as the matter was mentioned Mr. Bryan turned from the tray on which were his fried chicken, cold slaw, and coffee. And there, his eyes glowing like lakes of molten metal, his expressive features all in play, in the voice of one who addressed a multitude, he took up that Republican’s sophism and analyzed it for the benefit of us twain. Such was the concentrated and awful intensity of the man that it thrilled me to the core, and, under that burning gaze and vibrant, moving voice, in such an unusual entourage, I trembled with an emotion I could not name.
It was near midnight of that day when the train reached Benkelman, in far western Nebraska, where the last speech was to be delivered. The warm day had been succeeded by a night that was almost bitter cold, and, as we alighted from the train, tired, sleepy, and hungry, the cold, fierce wind from the mountains swooped down on us, and pierced us through and through. At that late hour, and in that semi-arid, scantily populated country, there were patiently waiting,wrapped in their great coats, nearly fifteen hundred people, most of whom had driven from twenty to one hundred miles “to hear Bryan speak.”
In the course of that day Mr. Bryan had already spoken sixteen times. To do this he had risen before five o’clock in the morning and had traveled over two hundred miles. At Benkelman, it was agreed, he should speak not longer than fifteen minutes, and go to bed.
The speaker’s stand was at the principal street intersection of the village. It was gaily decorated with flags and bunting, and lighted by flaring gas jets. The piercing mountain wind swooped down on it like a wolf on the fold. Up on this eminence the worn and wearied campaigner, half dead from want of sleep and his constant exertions, was hurried. Shrill volleys of cheers and yells rose to the heavens. There was a moment’s silence. Then, on the cold air, there fell the deep, melodious, serene voice of the orator, in words of earnest protest and warning, in a magnificent plea for the Republic. For ten or twelve minutes we, who were his traveling companions, remained; and though our eyes were heavy and our senses dulled, though we shivered from the cold even as we trembled with exhaustion, the splendid enthusiasm of that hardy little band of frontiersmen warmed our hearts, and we cheered with them. But, in a few minutes, tired nature called loud to us, and we plodded to the hotel, a block and a half away. We sat for a half hour about the blazing fire, absorbing the grateful warmth. Through the closed doors and windows there came tous, ever and anon, the rich and powerful voice of the orator down the street, punctuated by the wild yells of applause that came from the delighted men of the sand-hills. Again we retreated,—this time to our bed chambers. My teeth chattered like castanets as I disrobed. And now I could plainly hear the orator’s voice,—sometimes his very words,—words that thrilled and pulsated with the life of an animate thing. I pulled the blankets and comforters close about me, and fell into the sleep of utter exhaustion. The next morning we learned that, for just one hour and three quarters Mr. Bryan had stood in that bitter, piercing wind, under the inscrutable stars of midnight on the prairie, and preached the gospel of democracy. Do you gather, now, what I mean in saying that Mr. Bryan’s intensity is something most difficult to describe? It is something that knows not fear, nor hunger, nor exhaustion; that keeps him moving on,—ever and steadily on toward the goal, unswerved and unhindered by those hardships, trials, and obstacles that check the course of other men, or cause them to turn into broader and easier paths.
It is this intensity of character and purpose that makes heroes and martyrs. It also makes fanatics. But Mr. Bryan is no fanatic; his stubborn determination and unyielding purpose is tempered with mental equipoise, good judgment, and common sense.
The first impression one receives of Bryan as a man, and the last one to fade, is that of his reckless sincerity. Right or wrong, he is honest; he is of such a nature that he can not be otherwise; and all things forgood or evil, for success or defeat, must subordinate themselves to his personal conception of duty. He possesses all those qualities common to all great men, and some that but very few great men can claim. He has few friends among the rich men of the nation, and is a stranger to fashionable “society;” but he is loved and trusted by the millions who follow him with a devotion such as no other American has won. At his home or abroad, among his children or with his neighbors, or on his well-kept farm, may be found a kindly, upright, debt-paying, unassuming citizen, full of a gentle rollicking humor, a man without an impure thought or act, a profoundly religious Presbyterian, a man who does not smoke, yet who does not hesitate, on occasion, to offer cigars to his friends; who will sit hour after hour in tobacco-laden air, sharing in the conversation of those whose mouths are chimneys for the time. He never drinks wine or liquor, yet he never flaunted a phylactery, or called names when the clink of glasses was heard. In all things a temperate and abstemious man, yet, such is his toleration that there is nothing oppressive about his being better than most of us.
In personal appearance as well as mental gifts, Mr. Bryan is highly favored. Before uttering a word, his magnetic influence wins for him the favor of his audience. Simple is his delivery and bearing. “As he stands before his listeners,” said Mr. R. L. Metcalfe, in a book published four years ago: “he presents a bold and striking picture; intelligence is stamped on every feature; he commences in the soft, pleasant tone,instantly riveting your attention upon him. Your eyes are fastened upon the orator. As he moves, you in spirit move with him; as he advances to his climax his audience advances with him. In perfect harmony orator and audience travel over the path of thought, until the climax is reached, and then, as the last tone of the deep, rich, melodious voice of the orator is uttered with a dramatic force, there breaks forth the full, earnest applause that marks the approval of those who listen. The hand of the orator is raised; instantly perfect silence follows. The sweet tones of the marvelous voice are again heard within the enclosure, no matter how vast.
“There is much in Mr. Bryan’s oratory that recalls to us many of our noted speakers of long ago. Search his speeches through, whether in Congress, before the convention, or on the stump, and you will find them absolutely free from personalities. No audience ever sat within the sound of his voice and caught a word that would appeal to the lower passions of anger, hate, or revenge. He is always the master of himself.”
The directness, simplicity, and purity of Mr. Bryan’s style as an orator and the loftiness and beauty of his sentiment are well shown in the appended excerpt from one of his Congressional speeches on “Money,” in which occurs his famous apostrophe to Thomas Jefferson:
“There are wrongs to be righted; there are evils to be eradicated; there is injustice to be removed; there is good to be secured for those who toil and wait. In this fight for equal laws we can not fail, for right ismighty and will in time triumph over all obstacles. Even if our eyes do not behold success, we know that our labor is not in vain, and we can lay down our weapons, happy in the promise given by Bryant to the soldier:
‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,When they who help thee flee in fearDie full of hope and manly trustLike those who fall in battle here.Another hand by sword shall yield;Another hand the standard wave;Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealedThe blast of triumph o’er the grave.’
‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,When they who help thee flee in fearDie full of hope and manly trustLike those who fall in battle here.Another hand by sword shall yield;Another hand the standard wave;Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealedThe blast of triumph o’er the grave.’
‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,When they who help thee flee in fearDie full of hope and manly trustLike those who fall in battle here.Another hand by sword shall yield;Another hand the standard wave;Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealedThe blast of triumph o’er the grave.’
‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who help thee flee in fear
Die full of hope and manly trust
Like those who fall in battle here.
Another hand by sword shall yield;
Another hand the standard wave;
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o’er the grave.’
“Let us, then, with the courage of Andrew Jackson, apply to present conditions the principles taught by Thomas Jefferson—Thomas Jefferson, the greatest constructive statesman whom the world has ever known; the greatest warrior who ever battled for human liberty. He quarried from the mountain of eternal truth the four pillars upon whose strength all popular government must rest. In the Declaration of American Independence, he proclaimed the principles with which there is, without which there can not be, ‘a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ When he declared that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ he declared all that lies between the alpha and omega of the Democracy.
“Alexander ‘wept for other worlds to conquer,’ after he had carried his victorious banner throughout the then known world. Napoleon ‘rearranged the map of Europe with his sword’ amid the lamentations of those by whose blood he was exalted; but when these and other military heroes are forgotten and their achievements disappear in the cycle’s sweep of years, children will still lisp the name of Jefferson, and freedom will ascribe due praise to him who filled the kneeling subject’s heart with hope and bade him stand erect—a sovereign among his peers.”
In all of his rapid utterances and unpremeditated sentences one would fail to detect the slightest lapse from good English; not only good, but admirable. His talk is not that of a pedant,—far from it; but he does speak like a cultivated, well-read man; like a polished man of letters, but not so polished as to leave nothing but the gloss apparent. You may search his numerous speeches, lectures, and addresses without finding the slightest “lapsus linguae,” and all without sterility or banality. In his speeches he shows a very remarkable versatility. “He will talk along in a colloquial manner,” says Mr. Metcalfe, “making you laugh or stirring your heartstrings with his pathos as he wills, and suddenly he will throw forth his periods in language that makes one involuntarily suspect of plagiarism from Milton or the prophets. Simplest words are chosen, and they are formed in short, pithy sentences. No word is used solely for its sound; the mere jingle of words has no place in the mental workshop of our orator.To him words are the servants of thought, and take their real beauty from the thought that blazes through them. His style is as pure and captivating as that of Irving or Addison, and not dissimilar to either. But style with him, as with those two great masters, is valued not for itself, but because it conveys in the most pleasing manner the thoughts which he would have others know.
“Mr. Bryan is not averse to the employment of the thoughts of others wherever they add force and attractiveness to the argument in hand. Accordingly, we find his speeches interspersed with quotations from some of the best writers in both prose and poetry, but in each instance the quotation has a natural fitness for the place in which it is found. There are some productions which pass for oratory that are mere mechanisms—the offspring of minds cold and plodding without a ray of genius to illumine their path. The work of genius springs spontaneously from the depths of the heart ruled by purity.”
In the preparation of his deliverances Mr. Bryan reads widely and extensively, exhausting all the available sources of information. By carefully and thoroughly acquainting himself with every possible phase of his subject, by viewing it in all lights, he prepares himself not only to prove the correctness of his own position, but to meet every objection that may be offered against him.
In the diction of his speech the most acceptable language is chosen, and so clear and simple do the most profound thoughts appear when they comefresh-coined from his brain, that men have no difficulty in comprehending them in all their force.
But it takes more than good English to make a great public man, though good language is one of the most essential features of the part. An instance that is told will illustrate one of his other qualifications. On his arrival in a large city in the East, he had been taken for a drive, and a number of people were waiting for him when he alighted on his return. All the American people seem to consider it a duty to shake hands with a public man, and these were there for that purpose. Among them was a faded woman, apparently having worked out her hopes and ambitions; while her face showed refinement and intellectuality, her hands were gnarled by years of labor. As the candidate stepped from the gay carriage, he was at once encircled by a throng of local dignitaries, who successfully monopolized his attention, to the hopeless exclusion of the woman, who was thoughtlessly jostled aside.
Mr. Bryan, glancing quickly about, saw her turning away, her disappointment shown in her worn face, and, maneuvering about, he delicately managed to bring himself in front of her, and, as he saw her face light with pleasure, he extended his hands and murmured a few words of pleasant meaning to her and passed on.
It is extremely doubtful if, among the public men of all time, there has lived one more abounding in a superb vitality, or possessing so magnificent a physique as Mr. Bryan. In his case, as in that of mostmen of profound mentality, the powerful mind is found with powerful muscles and a strong constitution to back it in its contests. His massively moulded frame, capable of enduring the severest hardships and nerve-racking strains, is the result of a clean, strong ancestry and pure and temperate living in the life-giving atmosphere of the great West.
Altogether Mr. Bryan is a good specimen of an American. He is, for example, neat in his dress, but his apparel is the least obtrusive part of him. He is frank, companionable, courteous without subserviency, aggressive without boorish insistence, well poised, witty and yet cleanly minded, learned without conceit. And he loves his family above all else on earth. At one place a hasty departure from a hotel had to be made to catch a train, and one of the party took Mr. Bryan’s coat by mistake. The discovery was made as soon as the garment was put on, and to ascertain to whom it belonged the wearer put his hands in the pocket to see if any article might be found that would serve for identification. There were only two things found, and those were photographs of Mr. Bryan’s family. He had evidently put them where he could find them most readily.
One can not help but remember the marvelous campaign Bryan made four years ago. A terrible campaign for mind and body; no one who traveled with him will ever forget it. As for Bryan himself—though, needless to say, he worked harder, thought more, and shouldered an infinitely heavier responsibility than all the newspaper reporters who keptconstantly in his wake—he was least fatigued of all. Hoarse and husky he certainly did become toward the end—speaking from the rear end of a train to open air crowds of thousands, a dozen times a day, and at the top of his voice. But Bryan, upon a physique of the most vigorous and massive kind, inspired by a stupendous vitality, which should keep him in good condition for sixty years to come, had superimposed a brain of the healthiest, keenest, and most capable sort. In addition he had a colossal firmness, and an unmitigable will; he had thorough belief in the goodness of his cause, and in himself as its champion; and finally he understood the people, loved them, was in touch with them, and won their confidence to an extent and to a degree of enthusiasm that can not be paralleled in modern times. Had some of the qualities above named been less in him, or more, he might have been a broader statesman; but he would not have been so mighty and formidable a leader of men.
Other men are admired or feared, or can spend money, or swing a machine; but Bryan is personally trusted as no other man is, and as he deserves to be. “Bryan is a man standing plumb on his own feet, other candidates have been propped on their feet by other persons. Which will last the longer? No man can count on the ultimate triumph of his cause, or even know how strong or how weak it is, unless he comes out flat-footed and tells the people exactly what it contemplates and requires. He must show the seamy side as well as the smooth one; else, when the seamy side shows itself (as it is certain to do) thepeople will leap to the conclusion that the fabric is seamy on both sides, and the reaction will sweep it out of existence. McKinley, in laboring to make the people believe that his policy is all sweetness, honor, and virtue, is preventing himself from discovering how abhorrent it really is to the desires and wishes of the people.”
Bryan’s method is just the opposite of President McKinley’s. The only criticism to be passed on him is that he is too uncompromisingly outspoken and sincere. He says things that make his own party friends and managers shudder. He never strives for popularity except in so far as it may be consistent with truth and right. He does not want to please any one who can not be pleased with facts and realities. Bryan, in short, from the standpoint of mere policy, always puts his ugly foot forward, always turns his seamy side, always says “If you don’t have me this way, I am not to be had at all.”