Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-10-18

| in the hundreds Some of his mail he
never sees, a part of it he answers by stem
ographers, but the most of his personal let
| tiers receive replies in his own handwriting.
He is a very rapid writer, is rarely at loss
| for a word to express his meaning and he
dictates quite as rapidly as he writes. He
gets to his Office between and 10 o'clock
| every morning. and first takes up his mail
and his newspaper clippings. He is a
patron of the clipping bureaus and he often
| pays these bureaus as high as S100 a
| month.
HOW CHAUNCEY DEPEw SPEAKS.
In speaking he uses the conversational
| tone, seldom makes gesture and has no
mannerisms nor trick-cards of oratory. His
speaking makes me think of Joe Jefferson s
acting and he says he got his first ideas of
| good speaking from Wendell Phillips, who
simply talked to the brains of the
people in front of him. He looks more
| like preacher than club man, and as he
stands swinging his glasses in his hand
| looking out of his sober blue eyes up and
| down the table, his cultured, clerical face
makes you wonder when he stepped out of
the pulpit and whether after all it is not a
mistaks and he is not about to ask grace.
He begins to talk. His words come freely
and naturally. He smiles little as he tells
a good story, and his blue eyes twinkle as
he wittily replies to the sally of one of the
men from the other side of the table. As
he goes on, his face beams with good fellow
ship and you note that his 58 years have not
made him old, and that though his hair and
beard are frosted silver, HIS soul is as Young
as that of any boy about the board. As he
continues you find that his speeches al
more than stories. You note that he has
ideas as we'll as wit, and you realize that the
speaker is not only an orator, but a man,
and that'a great one.
AN INTERVIEW ON THE TRAIN.
But to return. waited for several hours
to have an interview at his Office, but i'm
perative work kept .piling up and it was
O'Clock before got access to him. At 3:15
he had to make the train for his summer
home at Pawling, two hours from New
York; his engagements were all full for to-
morrow, and he finally suggested that 1
lump on the cars and run up to Pawling
with him, and we could have our talk on
the train. He ordered a pass for me and
ten minutes later we were seated in a chair
car on lie New York Central Railroad, the
train going at 40 miles an hour and Mr.
Depew talking in response to my questions
at the rate of 150 words per minute.
eMr Depew," asked, chow do you find
it possible to get your mind away from your
business and railway down to your after
dinner speech?"
ut is hard sometimes" replied Mr.
Depew, ''but 1 have the faculty of leaving
my business at my Office, and such success
as have had in life 1 attribute largely to
the fact that can drop my business and
get rest by thinking of other things. AS a
rule, whatever be the cares of the day, ten
minutes after 1 have gotten to my house. 1
have dismissed them altogether and l do
not take them up again until the next day
have peculiar theory of the working of
the mind, and that is that it tends to keen
up the same pace in which it has been run
ming when it enters new field.
READS MACAULEY FOR INSPIRATION.
1.-THE trouble with most men is that thev
have only one pace and they never get out
of it. They confine themselves to thinking
about three things, their business, them
selves and "heir families. Now, the plane
of the dinner-table is higher one than that
of business lie, and in preparing for a
speech fnd must first get nv mind ON a
different level from the one / have been
working on all day. do this by reading
Macauleys Essays. Ten minutes reading
turns my thought into new channel I
cast off the clothes of EVERYDAY work and
my soul seems to be rehabilitated into
more intellectual and critical garb can
then think OF the audience am to address,
and by remembering the people / am to
meet adapt my remarks to them. II dnesn't
seem to make much difference which part of
Macauley read, and a few minutes changes
the pace OF my mind entirely"
do you write out your speeches, Mr..
"Not my after-dinner speeches." was the