Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1881-11-16
Defender of the Star Reuters.

When, during the last Presidential cam
paign, Henry Ward Beecher introduced
Colonel Robert Ingersoll to very crowded
meeting in Brooklyn as ''the greatest ora
tor of the age" though he said what may
be open to dispute, he gave prominence at
an appropriate time to Colonel Ingersoll's s
strongest qualification. For the genial man
of Illinois or rather now of Washington,
though Illinois is the State most honored in
his wonderful success as public speaker,
because he won it during the time he re-
sided there's born public speaker, as
certainly as nature put up William Shakes
peare for poet. His thoughts shape them
selves, as a matter of course, into express
sions apt, striking, glowing, often witty,
always telling. There is withal simplicity,
tenderness and hearty goodwill about Rob-
ert which endear him to his hearers,
whether they will or not.
Colonel Ingersoll is a lawyer by profess
sion. He had built up good practice in
! Illinois when his eminence as a speaker
gave him wider scope of popularity as a
lecturer. He is now i'll Washington, a
resident of the capital, and as counsel for
the accused in the "Star Route" cases, is
giving flavor to very dry proceedings,
which is truly Ingersollian.
years of age. He was born and raised East,
but, as we have seen, earned bis first nOto-
riety as Western advocate His personal
appearance and gifts are remarkably pleas
ing. With q well-built body, a round
good-natured face, large, dark, eloquent
! eyes, easy, unconscious grace of movement,
he capdyates his hearers-to perpetrate a
bull for once-before he opens his mouth.
| His appearance, preliminary bow and smile,
secure him au interested and delighted at
| tention. Mr. Ingersol is simple modest
man. He is reputed to have once said
1.-The dignitied man is an idiot" The un
consciousness of early childhood possesses
him, and pomposity and pretension are
among the subjects OF his happiest banter
His eioquence has great variety in it, now
full of tears and then a trumpet peal now
coplous and vehement as cataract, ther
keen, incisive and concise as an extaact from
Bacon's Essays.
But Colonel Ingersoll attacks Christianity
We don't commend him on this account
and it is not our business to Judge him. w,
think if he saw the Christian religion will
the eye that many who read these lines Sc,
it-in its essential purity, moral grandeur
and as the means of giving the human
conscious acquaintance with the divine, b
would be the last man to assai1 it, for Rob
ert IngersoI has great natural goodness
without question. He does not see as the,
see, but need the friends of Christianity de
spair that he will not If Colonel Ingersol
is mistaken in supposing that the impregna
bic fortress of Christianity can be success
fully assaiied by even his brillian oratory
are not many Church people unreasonabl,
weak, not to say narrow-minded, in thei
judgment of his attack? The truth, lik
gold, cannot be deprecated in its essentia
valne and perfection. Let Christian peopl
be less apprehensive about the force of In
gersolps daring and eloquent unbelief, an
they largely abate even its seeming strength
for, it being assumed that the Christian re
igion is true, nothing can harm it.