often asserted most forcefully.

 

Note that in the following Mr. Bryan did not say that Mr. McKinley would be

defeated. He implied it in a much more effective manner:

 

Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform which declared for the

maintenance of the gold standard until it can be changed into bimetallism by

international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the

Republicans, and three months ago everybody in the Republican party prophesied

his election. How is it today? Why, the man who was once pleased to think that

he looked like Napoleon--that man shudders today when he remembers that he was

nominated on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he

listens he can hear with ever-increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as

they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.

 

Had Thomas Carlyle said: "A false man cannot found a religion," his words would

have been neither so suggestive nor so powerful, nor so long remembered as his

implication in these striking words:

 

A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he

does not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what

else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap. It will not

stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall

straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, be verily in communion

with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all!