In one part of the hall we heard several vociferous answers: "Beecher! Beecher!" and some of the crowd seemed satisfied that the great preacher was to be the orator of the evening. Two burly policemen pushed into the corner from which the noisiest tumult came, and we began to surmise that those onions were "concealed weapons" and that the best policy was to be sure to keep them concealed. Many descriptions of that audience have been given by men from various viewpoints, but few have emphasized the important fact that when the people entered the hall the large majority were bitterly opposed to the abolitionists' cause. One-third of the audience was seemingly intent on mobbing the speaker, for some of the men carried missiles more offensive than onions. Mark Twain sagaciously wrote that the trouble with old men's memories is that they remember so many things "that ain't so." That warning may often be useful, even to those who are the most confident that their memories are infallible, but I should like to say, and quite modestly, that I still have a clear vision of that startling occasion and can testify to what I saw, heard, and felt in that hall on that memorable evening. I had previously read and studied the great models of eloquence, and was then in New York, using my carefully hoarded pennies to hear Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. R. S. Stone, Doctor Storrs, Doctor Bellows, Archbishop McCloskey, and other orators of current fame. I had studied much for the purpose of teaching my classes, from the great models, from Cicero to Daniel Webster, and I had found my ideal in Edward Everett. But those two hours in Cooper Union; like a sudden cyclone, were destined to shatter all my carefully built theories. After nearly sixty-two years of bewilderment I am still asking, "What was it that made that speech on that night an event of such world-wide importance?" It was not the physical man; it was not in what he said. Let us with open judgment meditate on the facts. The persons in the audience, and their city, as well, were antagonistic to Lincoln's party associates. The negro-haters had seemingly pre-empted the hall. Stories of negro brutality had been published in the papers of that week. Lincoln was regarded as an adventurer from the "wild and woolly West." He was expected to be an extremist. He was crude, unpolished, having no reputation in the East as a scholar. He was not an orator and had the reputation of being only a homely teller of grocery-store yarns. His voice was of a poor quality, grinding the ears sharply. He seemed to be a ludicrous scarecrow rival of the great gentleman, scholar, and statesman, William H. Seward. Even Lincoln's own party in New York City bowed religiously to Seward, the idol of New York State. The Quakers and the adherents of the pro-slavery party were conscientiously opposed to war, especially against a civil war.