If he was not an orator, he had something that was greater than oratory, though I find it hard to define what I mean by that saying. Perhaps the prime quality of his speaking was its veracity. I mean by that the quality of saying precisely no more and no less in words or in the emotion or colour imparted to the words than the speaker thinks, feels, or wishes to say. He expressed what was in his mind as exactly as words could do. Except occasionally in conversation or private correspondence when in an expletive or whimsical mood, he never indulged in over-emphasis or hyperbole, as Carlyle and Ruskin so often did. His meaning was never overmastered by his words—was never encumbered or cloyed by conventional phrase or literary jargon, or unduly heightened or barbed by metaphor or epigram. Yet on the other hand he unhesitatingly used the commonest idioms and tritest sayings when these adequately expressed what he wished to say. His integrity of utterance in this respect, both in writing and in speaking, was, considering the custom of exaggerated and over-emphasised expression in literature and public speech, truly remarkable. This temperance and probity of speech is one of the rarest qualities among educated and literary people. Only amongst the simpler-minded and stronger-natured type of the working class, especially among northern countryfolk, can it be found, and then far from commonly.
There was yet another quality in Morris as a speaker or teacher which I may perhaps touch upon here, though it belongs rather to the substance of his teaching than his manner of speech. From the first time I heard him lecture I was aware, though unable to say why, that there was something in his attitude towards his hearers, something, too, in his vein of feeling towards the world in which we dwell, that was different from that customary with speakers in public address. What was it? I tried to define it to myself, but was puzzled.
On one occasion when he was addressing an open-air meeting at Glasgow Green gates, I was struck so forcibly
