8 William D. Fenton. feet historian must possess an imagination sufficiently pow- erful to make his narrative effective and picturesque. Yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a pro- found and ingenious reasoner. Yet he must possess suffi- cient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can justly estimate these almost insuperable difficulties will not think it strange that every writer should have failed either in the narrative or in the speculative department of history." The record of the orator is most difficult to review, and an estimate of his talents cannot be made without danger from mere panegyric. Baker had the fervor and emotion necessary to every great orator. He had fluency of speech, richness of diction, accu- rate memory, and impressed his audience with a sense of that reserve power which in its last analysis is the secret of all great orators. On September 27, 1858, in San Francisco, California, Baker delivered an address in commemoration of the laying of the Atlantic cable. Among other expressions of beautiful sentiments so well expressed, he said : ' ' We repeat here today the names of Franklin, Morse and Field; we echo the sentiment of generous pride most felt in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the associated glory of her sons, but we know that this renown will spread wherever their deeds shall bless their kind; that, like their works, it will extend beyond ocean and deserts, and remain to latest generations." His concluding sentence was: "Our pride is for humanity; our joy is for the world; and amid all the wonders of past achievement, and all the splen- dors of present success, we turn with swelling hearts to gaze into the boundless future, with the earnest conviction that it will develop a universal brotherhood of man." In this address he stated that the Atlantic cable was but one link in a line of thought which was to bind the world, and that the next link would connect the Atlantic and the
