Much of my reading became such as had a bearing on forthcoming debates and that gave clearness and fixity to my ideas.
The self-possession I afterwards came to have before an audience may very safely be attributed to the experience of the "Webster Society." My two rules for speaking then (and now) were: Make yourself perfectly at home before your audience, and simply talk _to_ them, not _at_ them.

Do not try to be somebody else; be your own self and _talk_, never "orate" until you can't help it.
I finally became an operator by sound, discarding printing entirely.
The accomplishment was then so rare that people visited the office to be satisfied of the extraordinary feat.

This brought me into such notice that when a great flood destroyed all telegraph communication between Steubenville and Wheeling, a distance of twenty-five miles, I was sent to the former town to receive the entire business then passing between the East and the West, and to send every hour or two the dispatches in small boats down the river to Wheeling.

In exchange every returning boat brought rolls of dispatches which I wired East, and in this way for more than a week the entire telegraphic communication between the East and the West _via_ Pittsburgh was maintained.
While at Steubenville I learned that my father was going to Wheeling and Cincinnati to sell the tablecloths he had woven.

I waited for the boat, which did not arrive till late in the evening, and went down to meet him.