Cyclopedia of Illustrations For Public Speakers
ABBREVIATION
I remember a lesson in brevity I once
received in a barber's shop. An Irishman
came in, and the unsteady gait with which
he approached the chair showed that he had
been imbibing of the produce of the still
run by North Carolina moonshiners. He
wanted his hair cut, and while the barber
was getting him ready, went off into a
drunken sleep. His head got bobbing from
one side to the other, and at length the
barber, in making a snip, cut off the lower
part of his ear. The barber jumped about
and howled, and a crowd of neighbors
rushed in. Finally, the demonstration became
so great that it began to attract the
attention of the man in the chair, and he
opened one eye and said, "Wh-wh-at's the
matther wid yez?" "Good Lord!" said the
barber, "I've cut off the whole lower part
of your ear." "Have yez? Ah, thin, go on
wid yer bizness—it was too long, anyhow!"—Horace
Porter.
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ABDICATION
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." If men who are obscure and quiet and tempted to envy the glory of kings they might profitably meditate on the speech that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Richard II while he abandons his crown:
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy scepter from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my value,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.
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Aberration, Mental—See Absent-*mindedness.
Abhorrence, Instinctive—See Antipathy,
Instinctive.
ABILITIES
Lord Bacon says that "natural abilities are
like natural plants that need pruning by
study." Conversely untrained talents are
like wild plants that degenerate when left to
themselves.
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Ability Commanding Trust—See Confidence.
Ability, Determining—See Worth, Estimating.
ABILITY, GAGE OF
Mr. Edmund Driggs, of Brooklyn, gives
a motto that came into his life like an influence,
and greatly helped him toward
success. At the age of fifteen he left home
to engage with an older brother in the
freighting business on the Hudson River.
The first duty he performed on the vessel
was to go aloft to reef the pennant-halyards
through the truck of the topmast,
which was forty feet above the top of the
mainmast, without any rigging attached
thereto. When the sailing-master had arranged
the halyards over his shoulder,
with a running bowline under his right
arm, he ordered him aloft. The new sailor
looked at the sailing-master and then aloft,
and then asked the question, "Did anybody
ever do that?" "Yes, you fool," was the
answer. "Do you suppose that I would
order you to do a thing that was never
done before?" The young sailor replied,
"If anybody ever did it, I can do it." He
did it. That maxim has been his watch-*word
through life. Tho he is now over
seventy years of age, he is still engaged
in active business life, and whatever enterprise
he undertakes the watchword still
is, "If anybody ever did it, I can do it."
(Text.)—Wilbur F. Crafts, "Successful
Men of To-day."
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