Then while he rocked
himself to a state of balance an expectant silence settled over the
hall. With perfect assurance the young man had taken his listeners in
hand and his words when they came were steady and confident and of the
school of "straight from the shoulder."
"Men!"--he began, and paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the
end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily,
were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly
upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling
of bowling balls he launched himself into the sea of exposition.
"This bright and sunny morning you picked up your favorite newspaper and
you found an advertisement which made the plain, unadorned statement
that _you_ could sell. That was all it said--it didn't say 'what,' it
didn't say 'how,' it didn't say 'why.' It just made one single solitary
assertion that _you_ and _you_ and _you_"--business of pointing--"could
sell. Now my job isn't to make a success of you, because every man is
born a success, he makes himself a failure; it's not to teach you how to
talk, because each man is a natural orator and only makes himself a
clam; my business is to tell you one thing in a way that will make you
_know_ it--it's to tell you that _you_ and _you_ and _you_ have the
heritage of money and prosperity waiting for you to come and claim it.
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