about learning something from every man we meet, the observer stopped to listen

to this speaker's appeal. He was selling a hair tonic, which he claimed to have

discovered in Arizona. He removed his hat to show what this remedy had done for

him, washed his face in it to demonstrate that it was as harmless as water, and

enlarged on its merits in such an enthusiastic manner that the half-dollars

poured in on him in a silver flood. When he had supplied the audience with hair

tonic, he asked why a greater proportion of men than women were bald. No one

knew. He explained that it was because women wore thinner-soled shoes, and so

made a good electrical connection with mother earth, while men wore thick,

dry-soled shoes that did not transmit the earth's electricity to the body. Men's

hair, not having a proper amount of electrical food, died and fell out. Of

course he had a remedy--a little copper plate that should be nailed on the

bottom of the shoe. He pictured in enthusiastic and vivid terms the desirability

of escaping baldness--and paid tributes to his copper plates. Strange as it may

seem when the story is told in cold print, the speaker's enthusiasm had swept

his audience with him, and they crushed around his stand with outstretched

"quarters" in their anxiety to be the possessors of these magical plates!

 

Emerson's suggestion had been well taken--the observer had seen again the

wonderful, persuasive power of enthusiasm!

 

Enthusiasm sent millions crusading into the Holy Land to redeem it from the

Saracens. Enthusiasm plunged Europe into a thirty years' war over religion.

Enthusiasm sent three small ships plying the unknown sea to the shores of a new

world. When Napoleon's army were worn out and discouraged in their ascent of the