Of Enoch's speeches on that trip little need be said here. Never
before had he spoken with such fire and with such simple eloquence.
The group of speeches he made are familiar now to every schoolboy. One
cannot read them to-day without realizing that the Secretary was trying
as never before to interpret for the public his own ideals of service
to the common need. He seemed to Abbott and to the newspaper men who
for six weeks were so intimately associated with him to draw
inspiration and information from the free air. And there was to all of
his speeches an almost wistful persuasiveness, as if, Abbott said, he
picked one listener in each audience, each night, and sought anew to
make him feel the insidious peril to the nation's soul that lay in
personal complacency and indifference to the nation's spiritual
welfare. Only Jonas, struggling to induce the Secretary to take a
decent amount of sleep, nodded wisely to himself. He knew that Enoch
made each speech to a lovely, tender face, that no man who saw ever
forgot.
Little by little, the newspapers of the country began to take Enoch's
point of view. They not only gave his speeches in full, but they
commented on them editorially, at great length, and with the exception
of the Brown papers, favorably.
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