This brilliant finish is the result of most patient work, as he delivers but five or six sermons a year.
When Sir Walter Scott visited a ruined castle about which he wished to write, he wrote in a notebook the separate names of grasses and wild flowers growing near, saying that only by such means can a writer be natural.
The historian, Macaulay, never allowed a sentence to stand until it was as good as he could make it.
Besides his scrapbooks, Garfield had a large case of some fifty pigeonholes, labeled "Anecdotes," "Electoral Laws and Commissions," "French Spoliation," "General Politics," "Geneva Award," "Parliamentary Decisions," "Public Men," "State Politics," "Tariff," "The Press," "United States History," etc.; every valuable hint he could get being preserved in the cold exactness of black and white.
When he chose to make careful preparation on a subject, no other speaker could command so great an array of facts.

Accurate people are methodical people, and method means character.
"Am offered 10,000 bushels wheat on your account at $1.00.

Shall I buy, or is it too high ?" telegraphed a San Francisco merchant to one in Sacramento.

"No price too high," came back over the wire instead of "No.

Price too high," as was intended.