This is the Memory Palace.
I'm Nate Tamayo.
Could they even hear him?
There in the hall.
They had heard of him.
There's this misunderstanding or myth that developed around William Jennings Bryant that when he took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in July of 1896,
he was an unknown, that the delegates saw this man step to the podium,
cut from a different cloth than all the politicians who had droned on before him,
stodgy and stiff and old,
and then suddenly there's this different kind of cat, young, just 36 and fit,
a bit shy of six feet, which was weirdly tall at that time.
maturely balding but, I don't know, owning it.
It outcomes this big baritone voice,
not reedy or mealy mouth or whatever the speakers before him were given.
But the story that has been passed down that Brian bound it up to the podium and people are like,
who is this guy?
Isn't true, they knew who he was.
A former two term congressman for Nebraska,
a failed senate candidate who then made his name in the lecture circuit,
railing against the gold standard.