"
"I wonder if the people would like to hear me, I can tell my experience,"
I said. I asked her to tell Mr. Duminel, my lawyer, to come to
my cell. I told him of it, and he said he would call the commissioners
together and would have them let me out by paying my fines by monthly
installments. This he did. So Mr. Furlong sent the money needed and
Dr. Harding and Mrs. Goodwin collected seventy dollars from my friends
to help me out. When I got to Kansas City, I lacked fifty cents of having
enough money to pay for my ticket east, so I borrowed that of the man
at the fruit stand in the depot. In about a week from that I spoke at
Atlantic City for the Philadelphia American, the proceeds being used to
give the poor children an outing. Thousands of people were present.
I never made a note or wrote a sentence for the platform in my life.
Have spoken extemporaneously from the first and often went on the
platform when I could not have told what I was to say to save my life,
and for several weeks God compelled me to open my Bible at random and
speak from what my eyes fell on. I have literally proved that: "You
shall not think of what you shall speak but it shall be given in that
hour." The best thoughts have come to me after being asleep, waking
in the night or in the morning.
The way I happened to think of a hatchet as a souvenir, some one
brought me one and told me I ought to carry them.
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