Alps, the Little Corporal stopped them and ordered the bands to play the

Marseillaise. Under its soul-stirring strains there were no Alps.

 

Listen! Emerson said: "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."

Carlyle declared that "Every great movement in the annals of history has been

the triumph of enthusiasm." It is as contagious as measles. Eloquence is half

inspiration. Sweep your audience with you in a pulsation of enthusiasm. Let

yourself go. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he

knows not whither he is going."

 

_How are We to Acquire and Develop Enthusiasm?_

 

It is not to be slipped on like a smoking jacket. A book cannot furnish you with

it. It is a growth--an effect. But an effect of what? Let us see.

 

Emerson wrote: "A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some

sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of his form

merely,--but, by watching for a time his motion and plays, the painter enters

his nature, and then can draw him at will in every attitude. So Roos 'entered

into the inmost nature of his sheep.' I knew a draughtsman employed in a public

survey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks until their geological

structure was first explained to him."

 

When Sarah Bernhardt plays a difficult role she frequently will speak to no one

from four o'clock in the afternoon until after the performance. From the hour of