Guess who is described below. He was at one time the most famous man in America.
Identify the mystery man, and Sims Wyeth & Co. will send 10 lucky winners a very special copy of a book called A Zen Monk had Sweaty Palms: Pointers on the Path to Better Public Speaking.
Enter to win!
Enter your guess here. Be sure to include your name and email address. Type your guess under MESSAGE.
Here are some things that people said about him at the time:
- People often said that if you read the texts of his speeches and sermons they didn’t seem all that special. But when you went to hear him speak, something magical happened between, beneath, and around the words.
- He wrote his sermons at the last minute on Sunday morning. “Some men like their bread cold,” he said. “I like mine hot.”
- He spoke plainly and with an air of candid personal confession that made him seem at once endearingly sensitive, admirably virile, and completely trustworthy.
- His sermons were filled with funny, poignant stories about his personal fortunes and foibles, inviting everyone to identify with him.
- He was almost shockingly casual in the pulpit. If a name or date slipped his mind, he asked one of the people near him.
- He knocked down the stifling solemnity of churches in that era, with a cheerful irreverence that sent shock waves through America. He was like no minister anyone had ever seen. He was bold and funny, a natural actor who made his ideas come alive.
- He was theatrical, using his whole body to communicate the whole range of human emotion, with dramatic gestures and subtle facial expressions. Audiences were startled by his imitation of a sailor taking a pinch of chewing tobacco and wiping his hands on his pants, of a fisherman casting, or a young girl flirting.
- Abraham Lincoln emancipated men’s bodies; (our mystery man) emancipated their minds. He was phenomenal in his ability to make people love him.
- He was always natural, always himself, always giving forth his own interior condition, honestly and frankly.