Mr. Ingersoll’s method in the composition of his written and spoken words was singularly spontaneous and unmechanical. He was not a phrase-tinker or word-carpenter. His pictures flashed from his brain as finished products. They were fixed on the canvas without correcting touches of form or color, completed as created.

What his artist-soul saw and felt he instantly communicated as visible and audible images to others’ eyes and ears. No matter what the theme, his tongue responded to his thought in instant and perfect epigram, illustration, simile, or metaphor.

Excepting social letters, and memoranda found on scattered scraps of paper, he wrote little with his own hand. Nearly everything he gave for publication was dictated. His legal briefs and papers, his magazine and review articles, editorials, press interviews, monographs, speeches, lectures, – everything he wished to say – were delivered in faultless form through the portals of his facile lips.

Where-ever he happened to be, – in his office, at his home, on the boat, in the train, in the cab rattling through noisy streets, sitting, standing, reclining – he spoke the splendid words that the stenographer’s art caught and reproduced for him.