The Art of Public Speaking
BY
J. BERG ESENWEIN
AUTHOR OF
"HOW TO ATTRACT AND HOLD AN AUDIENCE,"
"WRITING THE SHORT-STORY,"
"WRITING THE PHOTOPLAY," ETC., ETC.,
AND
DALE CARNAGEY
PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING, BALTIMORE SCHOOL OF COMMERCE AND
FINANCE; INSTRUCTOR IN PUBLIC SPEAKING, Y.M.C.A. SCHOOLS, NEW
YORK, BROOKLYN, BALTIMORE, AND PHILADELPHIA, AND THE NEW YORK
CITY CHAPTER, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF BANKING
THE WRITER'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY J. BERG ESENWEIN
THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1915
THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO F. ARTHUR METCALF
FELLOW-WORKER AND FRIEND
Table of Contents
Page
THINGS TO THINK OF FIRST--A FOREWORD IX
CHAPTER I--ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE 1
CHAPTER II--THE SIN OF MONOTONY 10
CHAPTER III--EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION 16
CHAPTER IV--EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PITCH 27
CHAPTER V--EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PACE 39
CHAPTER VI--PAUSE AND POWER 55
CHAPTER VII--EFFICIENCY THROUGH INFLECTION 69
CHAPTER VIII--CONCENTRATION IN DELIVERY 80
CHAPTER IX--FORCE 87
CHAPTER X--FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM 101
CHAPTER XI--FLUENCY THROUGH PREPARATION 115
CHAPTER XII--THE VOICE 125
CHAPTER XIII--VOICE CHARM 134
CHAPTER XIV--DISTINCTNESS AND PRECISION OF UTTERANCE 146
CHAPTER XV--THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE 156
CHAPTER XVI--METHODS OF DELIVERY 171
CHAPTER XVII--THOUGHT AND RESERVE POWER 184
CHAPTER XVIII--SUBJECT AND PREPARATION 199
CHAPTER XIX--INFLUENCING BY EXPOSITION 218
CHAPTER XX--INFLUENCING BY DESCRIPTION 231
CHAPTER XXI--INFLUENCING BY NARRATION 249
CHAPTER XXII--INFLUENCING BY SUGGESTION 262
CHAPTER XXIII--INFLUENCING BY ARGUMENT 280
CHAPTER XXIV--INFLUENCING BY PERSUASION 295
CHAPTER XXV--INFLUENCING THE CROWD 308
CHAPTER XXVI--RIDING THE WINGED HORSE 321
CHAPTER XXVII--GROWING A VOCABULARY 334
CHAPTER XXVIII--MEMORY TRAINING 343
CHAPTER XXIX--RIGHT THINKING AND PERSONALITY 355
CHAPTER XXX--AFTER-DINNER AND OTHER OCCASIONAL SPEAKING 362
CHAPTER XXXI--MAKING CONVERSATION EFFECTIVE 372
APPENDIX A--FIFTY QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE 379
APPENDIX B--THIRTY THEMES FOR SPEECHES, WITH SOURCE-REFERENCES 383
APPENDIX C--SUGGESTIVE SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES; HINTS FOR TREATMENT 386
APPENDIX D--SPEECHES FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE 394
GENERAL INDEX 506
=Things to Think of First=
A FOREWORD
The efficiency of a book is like that of a man, in one important
respect: its attitude toward its subject is the first source of its
power. A book may be full of good ideas well expressed, but if its
writer views his subject from the wrong angle even his excellent advice
may prove to be ineffective.
This book stands or falls by its authors' attitude toward its subject.
If the best way to teach oneself or others to speak effectively in
public is to fill the mind with rules, and to set up fixed standards for
the interpretation of thought, the utterance of language, the making of
gestures, and all the rest, then this book will be limited in value to
such stray ideas throughout its pages as may prove helpful to the
reader--as an effort to enforce a group of principles it must be
reckoned a failure, because it is then untrue.
It is of some importance, therefore, to those who take up this volume
with open mind that they should see clearly at the out-start what is the
thought that at once underlies and is builded through this structure. In
plain words it is this:
Training in public speaking is not a matter of externals--primarily; it
is not a matter of imitation--fundamentally; it is not a matter of
conformity to standards--at all. Public speaking is public utterance,
public issuance, of the man himself; therefore the first thing both in
time and in importance is that the man should be and think and feel
things that are worthy of being given forth. Unless there be something
of value within, no tricks of training can ever make of the talker
anything more than a machine--albeit a highly perfected machine--for the
delivery of other men's goods. So self-development is fundamental in our
plan.
The second principle lies close to the first: The man must enthrone his
will to rule over his thought, his feelings, and all his physical
powers, so that the outer self may give perfect, unhampered expression
to the inner. It is futile, we assert, to lay down systems of rules for
voice culture, intonation, gesture, and what not, unless these two
principles of having something to say and making the will sovereign have
at least begun to make themselves felt in the life.
The third principle will, we surmise, arouse no dispute: No one can
learn _how_ to speak who does not first speak as best he can. That may
seem like a vicious circle in statement, but it will bear examination.
Many teachers have begun with the _how_. Vain effort! It is an ancient
truism that we learn to do by doing. The first thing for the beginner in
public speaking is to speak--not to study voice and gesture and the
rest. Once he has spoken he can improve himself by self-observation or
according to the criticisms of those who hear.
But how shall he be able to criticise himself? Simply by finding out
three things: What are the qualities which by common consent go to make
up an effective speaker; by what means at least some of these qualities
may be acquired; and what wrong habits of speech in himself work against
his acquiring and using the qualities which he finds to be good.
Experience, then, is not only the best teacher, but the first and the
last. But experience must be a dual thing--the experience of others must
be used to supplement, correct and justify our own experience; in this
way we shall become our own best critics only after we have trained
ourselves in self-knowledge, the knowledge of what other minds think,
and in the ability to judge ourselves by the standards we have come to
believe are right. "If I ought," said Kant, "I can."
An examination of the contents of this volume will show how consistently
these articles of faith have been declared, expounded, and illustrated.
The student is urged to begin to speak at once of what he knows. Then he
is given simple suggestions for self-control, with gradually increasing
emphasis upon the power of the inner man over the outer. Next, the way
to the rich storehouses of material is pointed out. And finally, all the
while he is urged to speak, _speak_, _SPEAK_ as he is applying to his own
methods, in his own _personal_ way, the principles he has gathered from
his own experience and observation and the recorded experiences of
others.
So now at the very first let it be as clear as light that methods are
secondary matters; that the full mind, the warm heart, the dominant will
are primary--and not only primary but paramount; for unless it be a full
being that uses the methods it will be like dressing a wooden image in
the clothes of a man.
J. BERG ESENWEIN.
NARBERTH, PA.,
JANUARY 1, 1915.
THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to
make them understood. It too often happens in some
conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are
Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily
Dress'd as those that are full of precious Drugs.
They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level
Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of
the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings
have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the
Weather.
--WILLIAM PENN.
CHAPTER I
ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE
There is a strange sensation often experienced in the presence
of an audience. It may proceed from the gaze of the many eyes
that turn upon the speaker, especially if he permits himself to
steadily return that gaze. Most speakers have been conscious of
this in a nameless thrill, a real something, pervading the
atmosphere, tangible, evanescent, indescribable. All writers
have borne testimony to the power of a speaker's eye in
impressing an audience. This influence which we are now
considering is the reverse of that picture--the power _their_
eyes may exert upon him, especially before he begins to speak:
after the inward fires of oratory are fanned into flame the eyes
of the audience lose all terror.
--WILLIAM PITTENGER, _Extempore Speech_.
Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome
self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?"
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed
near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars,
while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer's wife will be
nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by?
How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars--graze him in a
back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or
drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear:
face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop
shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a
treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to
conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet,
perhaps even strangle and be "half scared to death." There are a great
many "wetless" bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever
learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.
Practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_ in speaking before an audience will tend
to remove all fear of audiences, just as practise in swimming will lead
to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by
speaking.
The Apostle Paul tells us that every man must work out his own
salvation. All we can do here is to offer you suggestions as to how best
to prepare for your plunge. The real plunge no one can take for you. A
doctor may prescribe, but _you_ must take the medicine.
Do not be disheartened if at first you suffer from stage-fright. Dan
Patch was more susceptible to suffering than a superannuated dray horse
would be. It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his
capacity is not a capacity for feeling. A blow that would kill a
civilized man soon heals on a savage. The higher we go in the scale of
life, the greater is the capacity for suffering.
For one reason or another, some master-speakers never entirely overcome
stage-fright, but it will pay you to spare no pains to conquer it.
Daniel Webster failed in his first appearance and had to take his seat
without finishing his speech because he was nervous. Gladstone was often
troubled with self-consciousness in the beginning of an address.
Beecher was always perturbed before talking in public.
Blacksmiths sometimes twist a rope tight around the nose of a horse, and
by thus inflicting a little pain they distract his attention from the
shoeing process. One way to get air out of a glass is to pour in water.
_Be Absorbed by Your Subject_
Apply the blacksmith's homely principle when you are speaking. If you
feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else.
Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters.
It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are
upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to
say--fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling
water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.
Self-consciousness is undue consciousness of self, and, for the purpose
of delivery, self is secondary to your subject, not only in the opinion
of the audience, but, if you are wise, in your own. To hold any other
view is to regard yourself as an exhibit instead of as a messenger with
a message worth delivering. Do you remember Elbert Hubbard's tremendous
little tract, "A Message to Garcia"? The youth subordinated himself to
the message he bore. So must you, by all the determination you can
muster. It is sheer egotism to fill your mind with thoughts of self when
a greater thing is there--_TRUTH_. Say this to yourself sternly, and
shame your self-consciousness into quiescence. If the theater caught
fire you could rush to the stage and shout directions to the audience
without any self-consciousness, for the importance of what you were
saying would drive all fear-thoughts out of your mind.
Far worse than self-consciousness through fear of doing poorly is
self-consciousness through assumption of doing well. The first sign of
greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before
you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must "not
look too good nor talk too wise."
Nothing advertises itself so thoroughly as conceit. One may be so full
of self as to be empty. Voltaire said, "We must conceal self-love." But
that can not be done. You know this to be true, for you have recognized
overweening self-love in others. If you have it, others are seeing it in
you. There are things in this world bigger than self, and in working for
them self will be forgotten, or--what is better--remembered only so as
to help us win toward higher things.
_Have Something to Say_
The trouble with many speakers is that they go before an audience with
their minds a blank. It is no wonder that nature, abhorring a vacuum,
fills them with the nearest thing handy, which generally happens to be,
"I wonder if I am doing this right! How does my hair look? I know I
shall fail." Their prophetic souls are sure to be right.
It is not enough to be absorbed by your subject--to acquire
self-confidence you must have something in which to be confident. If you
go before an audience without any preparation, or previous knowledge of
your subject, you ought to be self-conscious--you ought to be ashamed to
steal the time of your audience. Prepare yourself. Know what you are
going to talk about, and, in general, how you are going to say it. Have
the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be
troubled in the beginning to find words. Know your subject better than
your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.
_After Preparing for Success, Expect It_
Let your bearing be modestly confident, but most of all be modestly
confident within. Over-confidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions
of failure is worse, for a bold man may win attention by his very
bearing, while a rabbit-hearted coward invites disaster.
Humility is not the personal discount that we must offer in the presence
of others--against this old interpretation there has been a most healthy
modern reaction. True humility any man who thoroughly knows himself must
feel; but it is not a humility that assumes a worm-like meekness; it is
rather a strong, vibrant prayer for greater power for service--a prayer
that Uriah Heep could never have uttered.
Washington Irving once introduced Charles Dickens at a dinner given in
the latter's honor. In the middle of his speech Irving hesitated, became
embarrassed, and sat down awkwardly. Turning to a friend beside him he
remarked, "There, I told you I would fail, and I did."
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
Rid yourself of this I-am-a-poor-worm-in-the-dust idea. You are a god,
with infinite capabilities. "All things are ready if the mind be so."
The eagle looks the cloudless sun in the face.
_Assume Mastery Over Your Audience_
In public speech, as in electricity, there is a positive and a negative
force. Either you or your audience are going to possess the positive
factor. If you assume it you can almost invariably make it yours. If you
assume the negative you are sure to be negative. Assuming a virtue or a
vice vitalizes it. Summon all your power of self-direction, and remember
that though your audience is infinitely more important than you, the
truth is more important than both of you, because it is eternal. If your
mind falters in its leadership the sword will drop from your hands. Your
assumption of being able to instruct or lead or inspire a multitude or
even a small group of people may appall you as being colossal
impudence--as indeed it may be; but having once essayed to speak, be
courageous. _BE_ courageous--it lies within you to be what you will.
_MAKE_ yourself be calm and confident.
Reflect that your audience will not hurt you. If Beecher in Liverpool
had spoken behind a wire screen he would have invited the audience to
throw the over-ripe missiles with which they were loaded; but he was a
man, confronted his hostile hearers fearlessly--and won them.
In facing your audience, pause a moment and look them over--a hundred
chances to one they want you to succeed, for what man is so foolish as
to spend his time, perhaps his money, in the hope that you will waste
his investment by talking dully?
_Concluding Hints_
Do not make haste to begin--haste shows lack of control.
Do not apologize. It ought not to be necessary; and if it is, it will
not help. Go straight ahead.
Take a deep breath, relax, and begin in a quiet conversational tone as
though you were speaking to one large friend. You will not find it half
so bad as you imagined; really, it is like taking a cold plunge: after
you are in, the water is fine. In fact, having spoken a few times you
will even anticipate the plunge with exhilaration. To stand before an
audience and make them think your thoughts after you is one of the
greatest pleasures you can ever know. Instead of fearing it, you ought
to be as anxious as the fox hounds straining at their leashes, or the
race horses tugging at their reins.
So cast out fear, for fear is cowardly--when it is not mastered. The
bravest know fear, but they do not yield to it. Face your audience
pluckily--if your knees quake, _MAKE_ them stop. In your audience lies
some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go win it. Suppose
Charles Martell had been afraid to hammer the Saracen at Tours; suppose
Columbus had feared to venture out into the unknown West; suppose our
forefathers had been too timid to oppose the tyranny of George the
Third; suppose that any man who ever did anything worth while had been a
coward! The world owes its progress to the men who have dared, and you
must dare to speak the effective word that is in your heart to
speak--for often it requires courage to utter a single sentence. But
remember that men erect no monuments and weave no laurels for those who
fear to do what they can.
Is all this unsympathetic, do you say?
Man, what you need is not sympathy, but a push. No one doubts that
temperament and nerves and illness and even praiseworthy modesty may,
singly or combined, cause the speaker's cheek to blanch before an
audience, but neither can any one doubt that coddling will magnify this
weakness. The victory lies in a fearless frame of mind. Prof. Walter
Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by
mental attitude even than by mental capacity." Banish the fear-attitude;
acquire the confident attitude. And remember that the only way to
acquire it is--_to acquire it_.
In this foundation chapter we have tried to strike the tone of much that
is to follow. Many of these ideas will be amplified and enforced in a
more specific way; but through all these chapters on an art which Mr.
Gladstone believed to be more powerful than the public press, the note
of _justifiable self-confidence_ must sound again and again.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
1. What is the cause of self-consciousness?
2. Why are animals free from it?
3. What is your observation regarding self-consciousness in children?
4. Why are you free from it under the stress of unusual excitement?
5. How does moderate excitement affect you?
6. What are the two fundamental requisites for the acquiring of
self-confidence? Which is the more important?
7. What effect does confidence on the part of the speaker have on the
audience?
8. Write out a two-minute speech on "Confidence and Cowardice."
9. What effect do habits of thought have on confidence? In this
connection read the chapter on "Right Thinking and Personality."
10. Write out very briefly any experience you may have had involving the
teachings of this chapter.
11. Give a three-minute talk on "Stage-Fright," including a (kindly)
imitation of two or more victims.
CHAPTER II
THE SIN OF MONOTONY
One day Ennui was born from Uniformity.
--MOTTE.
Our English has changed with the years so that many words now connote
more than they did originally. This is true of the word _monotonous_.
From "having but one tone," it has come to mean more broadly, "lack of
variation."
The monotonous speaker not only drones along in the same volume and
pitch of tone but uses always the same emphasis, the same speed, the
same thoughts--or dispenses with thought altogether.
Monotony, the cardinal and most common sin of the public speaker, is not
a transgression--it is rather a sin of omission, for it consists in
living up to the confession of the Prayer Book: "We have left undone
those things we ought to have done."
Emerson says, "The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one
object from the embarrassing variety." That is just what the monotonous
speaker fails to do--he does _not_ detach one thought or phrase from
another, they are all expressed in the same manner.
To tell you that your speech is monotonous may mean very little to you,
so let us look at the nature--and the curse--of monotony in other
spheres of life, then we shall appreciate more fully how it will blight
an otherwise good speech.
If the Victrola in the adjoining apartment grinds out just three
selections over and over again, it is pretty safe to assume that your
neighbor has no other records. If a speaker uses only a few of his
powers, it points very plainly to the fact that the rest of his powers
are not developed. Monotony reveals our limitations.
In its effect on its victim, monotony is actually deadly--it will drive
the bloom from the cheek and the lustre from the eye as quickly as sin,
and often leads to viciousness. The worst punishment that human
ingenuity has ever been able to invent is extreme monotony--solitary
confinement. Lay a marble on the table and do nothing eighteen hours of
the day but change that marble from one point to another and back again,
and you will go insane if you continue long enough.
So this thing that shortens life, and is used as the most cruel of
punishments in our prisons, is the thing that will destroy all the life
and force of a speech. Avoid it as you would shun a deadly dull bore.
The "idle rich" can have half-a-dozen homes, command all the varieties
of foods gathered from the four corners of the earth, and sail for
Africa or Alaska at their pleasure; but the poverty-stricken man must
walk or take a street car--he does not have the choice of yacht, auto,
or special train. He must spend the most of his life in labor and be
content with the staples of the food-market. Monotony is poverty,
whether in speech or in life. Strive to increase the variety of your
speech as the business man labors to augment his wealth.
Bird-songs, forest glens, and mountains are not monotonous--it is the
long rows of brown-stone fronts and the miles of paved streets that are
so terribly same. Nature in her wealth gives us endless variety; man
with his limitations is often monotonous. Get back to nature in your
methods of speech-making.
The power of variety lies in its pleasure-giving quality. The great
truths of the world have often been couched in fascinating stories--"Les
Miserables," for instance. If you wish to teach or influence men, you
must please them, first or last. Strike the same note on the piano over
and over again. This will give you some idea of the displeasing, jarring
effect monotony has on the ear. The dictionary defines "monotonous" as
being synonymous with "wearisome." That is putting it mildly. It is
maddening. The department-store prince does not disgust the public by
playing only the one tune, "Come Buy My Wares!" He gives recitals on a
$125,000 organ, and the pleased people naturally slip into a buying
mood.
_How to Conquer Monotony_
We obviate monotony in dress by replenishing our wardrobes. We avoid
monotony in speech by multiplying our powers of speech. We multiply our
powers of speech by increasing our tools.
The carpenter has special implements with which to construct the several
parts of a building. The organist has certain keys and stops which he
manipulates to produce his harmonies and effects. In like manner the
speaker has certain instruments and tools at his command by which he
builds his argument, plays on the feelings, and guides the beliefs of
his audience. To give you a conception of these instruments, and
practical help in learning to use them, are the purposes of the
immediately following chapters.
Why did not the Children of Israel whirl through the desert in
limousines, and why did not Noah have moving-picture entertainments and
talking machines on the Ark? The laws that enable us to operate an
automobile, produce moving-pictures, or music on the Victrola, would
have worked just as well then as they do today. It was ignorance of law
that for ages deprived humanity of our modern conveniences. Many
speakers still use ox-cart methods in their speech instead of employing
automobile or overland-express methods. They are ignorant of laws that
make for efficiency in speaking. Just to the extent that you regard and
use the laws that we are about to examine and learn how to use will you
have efficiency and force in your speaking; and just to the extent that
you disregard them will your speaking be feeble and ineffective. We
cannot impress too thoroughly upon you the necessity for a real working
mastery of these principles. They are the very foundations of successful
speaking. "Get your principles right," said Napoleon, "and the rest is a
matter of detail."
It is useless to shoe a dead horse, and all the sound principles in
Christendom will never make a live speech out of a dead one. So let it
be understood that public speaking is not a matter of mastering a few
dead rules; the most important law of public speech is the necessity for
truth, force, feeling, and life. Forget all else, but not this.
When you have mastered the mechanics of speech outlined in the next few
chapters you will no longer be troubled with monotony. The complete
knowledge of these principles and the ability to apply them will give
you great variety in your powers of expression. But they cannot be
mastered and applied by thinking or reading about them--you must
practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_. If no one else will listen to you,
listen to yourself--you must always be your own best critic, and the
severest one of all.
The technical principles that we lay down in the following chapters are
not arbitrary creations of our own. They are all founded on the
practices that good speakers and actors adopt--either naturally and
unconsciously or under instruction--in getting their effects.
It is useless to warn the student that he must be natural. To be natural
may be to be monotonous. The little strawberry up in the arctics with a
few tiny seeds and an acid tang is a natural berry, but it is not to be
compared with the improved variety that we enjoy here. The dwarfed oak
on the rocky hillside is natural, but a poor thing compared with the
beautiful tree found in the rich, moist bottom lands. Be natural--but
improve your natural gifts until you have approached the ideal, for we
must strive after idealized nature, in fruit, tree, and speech.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
1. What are the causes of monotony?
2. Cite some instances in nature.
3. Cite instances in man's daily life.
4. Describe some of the effects of monotony in both cases.
5. Read aloud some speech without paying particular attention to its
meaning or force.
6. Now repeat it after you have thoroughly assimilated its matter and
spirit. What difference do you notice in its rendition?
7. Why is monotony one of the worst as well as one of the most common
faults of speakers?
CHAPTER III
EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION
In a word, the principle of emphasis...is followed best, not
by remembering particular rules, but by being full of a
particular feeling.
--C.S. BALDWIN, _Writing and Speaking_.
The gun that scatters too much does not bag the birds. The same
principle applies to speech. The speaker that fires his force and
emphasis at random into a sentence will not get results. Not every word
is of special importance--therefore only certain words demand emphasis.
You say Massa_CHU_setts and Minne_AP_olis, you do not emphasize each
syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over
the unimportant ones. Now why do you not apply this principle in
speaking a sentence? To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do
you in public discourse? It is there that monotony caused by lack of
emphasis is so painfully apparent.
So far as emphasis is concerned, you may consider the average sentence
as just one big word, with the important word as the accented syllable.
Note the following:
"Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice."
You might as well say _MASS-A-CHU-SETTS_, emphasizing every syllable
equally, as to lay equal stress on each word in the foregoing sentences.
Speak it aloud and see. Of course you will want to emphasize _destiny_,
for it is the principal idea in your declaration, and you will put some
emphasis on _not_, else your hearers may think you are affirming that
destiny _is_ a matter of chance. By all means you must emphasize
_chance_, for it is one of the two big ideas in the statement.
Another reason why _chance_ takes emphasis is that it is contrasted with
_choice_ in the next sentence. Obviously, the author has contrasted
these ideas purposely, so that they might be more emphatic, and here we
see that contrast is one of the very first devices to gain emphasis.
As a public speaker you can assist this emphasis of contrast with your
voice. If you say, "My horse is not _black_," what color immediately
comes into mind? White, naturally, for that is the opposite of black. If
you wish to bring out the thought that destiny is a matter of choice,
you can do so more effectively by first saying that "_DESTINY_ is _NOT_
a matter of _CHANCE_." Is not the color of the horse impressed upon us
more emphatically when you say, "My horse is _NOT BLACK_. He is _WHITE_"
than it would be by hearing you assert merely that your horse is white?
In the second sentence of the statement there is only one important
word--_choice_. It is the one word that positively defines the quality
of the subject being discussed, and the author of those lines desired to
bring it out emphatically, as he has shown by contrasting it with
another idea. These lines, then, would read like this:
"_DESTINY_ is _NOT_ a matter of _CHANCE_. It is a matter of _CHOICE_."
Now read this over, striking the words in capitals with a great deal of
force.
In almost every sentence there are a few _MOUNTAIN PEAK WORDS_ that
represent the big, important ideas. When you pick up the evening paper
you can tell at a glance which are the important news articles. Thanks
to the editor, he does not tell about a "hold up" in Hong Kong in the
same sized type as he uses to report the death of five firemen in your
home city. Size of type is his device to show emphasis in bold relief.
He brings out sometimes even in red headlines the striking news of the
day.
It would be a boon to speech-making if speakers would conserve the
attention of their audiences in the same way and emphasize only the
words representing the important ideas. The average speaker will deliver
the foregoing line on destiny with about the same amount of emphasis on
each word. Instead of saying, "It is a matter of _CHOICE_," he will
deliver it, "It is a matter of choice," or "_IT IS A MATTER OF
CHOICE_"--both equally bad.
Charles Dana, the famous editor of _The New York Sun_, told one of his
reporters that if he went up the street and saw a dog bite a man, to pay
no attention to it. _The Sun_ could not afford to waste the time and
attention of its readers on such unimportant happenings. "But," said Mr.
Dana, "if you see a man bite a dog, hurry back to the office and write
the story." Of course that is news; that is unusual.
Now the speaker who says "_IT IS A MATTER OF CHOICE_" is putting too
much emphasis upon things that are of no more importance to metropolitan
readers than a dog bite, and when he fails to emphasize "choice" he is
like the reporter who "passes up" the man's biting a dog. The ideal
speaker makes his big words stand out like mountain peaks; his
unimportant words are submerged like stream-beds. His big thoughts stand
like huge oaks; his ideas of no especial value are merely like the grass
around the tree.
From all this we may deduce this important principle: _EMPHASIS_ is a
matter of _CONTRAST_ and _COMPARISON_.
Recently the _New York American_ featured an editorial by Arthur
Brisbane. Note the following, printed in the same type as given here.
=We do not know what the President THOUGHT when he got that message, or
what the elephant thinks when he sees the mouse, but we do know what the
President DID.=
The words _THOUGHT_ and _DID_ immediately catch the reader's attention
because they are different from the others, not especially because they
are larger. If all the rest of the words in this sentence were made ten
times as large as they are, and _DID_ and _THOUGHT_ were kept at their
present size, they would still be emphatic, because different.
Take the following from Robert Chambers' novel, "The Business of Life."
The words _you_, _had_, _would_, are all emphatic, because they have been
made different.
He looked at her in angry astonishment.
"Well, what do _you_ call it if it isn't cowardice--to slink off
and marry a defenseless girl like that!"
"Did you expect me to give you a chance to destroy me and poison
Jacqueline's mind? If I _had_ been guilty of the thing with
which you charge me, what I have done _would_ have been
cowardly. Otherwise, it is justified."
A Fifth Avenue bus would attract attention up at Minisink Ford, New
York, while one of the ox teams that frequently pass there would attract
attention on Fifth Avenue. To make a word emphatic, deliver it
differently from the manner in which the words surrounding it are
delivered. If you have been talking loudly, utter the emphatic word in a
concentrated whisper--and you have intense emphasis. If you have been
going fast, go very slow on the emphatic word. If you have been talking
on a low pitch, jump to a high one on the emphatic word. If you have
been talking on a high pitch, take a low one on your emphatic ideas.
Read the chapters on "Inflection," "Feeling," "Pause," "Change of
Pitch," "Change of Tempo." Each of these will explain in detail how to
get emphasis through the use of a certain principle.
In this chapter, however, we are considering only one form of emphasis:
that of applying force to the important word and subordinating the
unimportant words. Do not forget: this is one of the main methods that
you must continually employ in getting your effects.
Let us not confound loudness with emphasis. To yell is not a sign of
earnestness, intelligence, or feeling. The kind of force that we want
applied to the emphatic word is not entirely physical. True, the
emphatic word may be spoken more loudly, or it may be spoken more
softly, but the _real_ quality desired is intensity, earnestness. It
must come from within, outward.
Last night a speaker said: "The curse of this country is not a lack of
education. It's politics." He emphasized _curse, lack, education,
politics_. The other words were hurried over and thus given no
comparative importance at all. The word _politics_ was flamed out with
great feeling as he slapped his hands together indignantly. His emphasis
was both correct and powerful. He concentrated all our attention on the
words that meant something, instead of holding it up on such words as
_of this_, _a_, _of_, _It's_.
What would you think of a guide who agreed to show New York to a
stranger and then took up his time by visiting Chinese laundries and
boot-blacking "parlors" on the side streets? There is only one excuse
for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: He must have
either truth or entertainment for them. If he wearies their attention
with trifles they will have neither vivacity nor desire left when he
reaches words of Wall-Street and skyscraper importance. You do not dwell
on these small words in your everyday conversation, because you are not
a conversational bore. Apply the correct method of everyday speech to
the platform. As we have noted elsewhere, public speaking is very much
like conversation enlarged.
Sometimes, for big emphasis, it is advisable to lay stress on every
single syllable in a word, as _absolutely_ in the following sentence:
I ab-so-lute-ly refuse to grant your demand.
Now and then this principle should be applied to an emphatic sentence by
stressing each word. It is a good device for exciting special
attention, and it furnishes a pleasing variety. Patrick Henry's notable
climax could be delivered in that manner very effectively:
"Give--me--liberty--or--give--me--death." The italicized part of the
following might also be delivered with this every-word emphasis. Of
course, there are many ways of delivering it; this is only one of several
good interpretations that might be chosen.
Knowing the price we must pay, the sacrifice we must make, the
burdens we must carry, the assaults we must endure--knowing full
well the cost--yet we enlist, and we enlist for the war. For we
know the justice of our cause, and _we know, too, its certain
triumph._
--_From "Pass Prosperity Around,"_ by ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE,
_before the Chicago National Convention of the Progressive Party_.
Strongly emphasizing a single word has a tendency to suggest its
antithesis. Notice how the meaning changes by merely putting the
emphasis on different words in the following sentence. The parenthetical
expressions would really not be needed to supplement the emphatic words.
_I_ intended to buy a house this Spring (even if you did not).
I _INTENDED_ to buy a house this Spring (but something
prevented).
I intended to _BUY_ a house this Spring (instead of renting as
heretofore).
I intended to buy a _HOUSE_ this Spring (and not an automobile).
I intended to buy a house _THIS_ Spring (instead of next
Spring).
I intended to buy a house this _SPRING_ (instead of in the
Autumn).
When a great battle is reported in the papers, they do not keep
emphasizing the same facts over and over again. They try to get new
information, or a "new slant." The news that takes an important place in
the morning edition will be relegated to a small space in the late
afternoon edition. We are interested in new ideas and new facts. This
principle has a very important bearing in determining your emphasis. Do
not emphasize the same idea over and over again unless you desire to lay
extra stress on it; Senator Thurston desired to put the maximum amount
of emphasis on "force" in his speech on page 50. Note how force is
emphasized repeatedly. As a general rule, however, the new idea, the
"new slant," whether in a newspaper report of a battle or a speaker's
enunciation of his ideas, is emphatic.
In the following selection, "larger" is emphatic, for it is the new
idea. All men have eyes, but this man asks for a _LARGER_ eye.
This man with the larger eye says he will discover, not rivers or safety
appliances for aeroplanes, but _NEW STARS_ and _SUNS_. "New stars and
suns" are hardly as emphatic as the word "larger." Why? Because we
expect an astronomer to discover heavenly bodies rather than cooking
recipes. The words, "Republic needs" in the next sentence, are emphatic;
they introduce a new and important idea. Republics have always needed
men, but the author says they need _NEW_ men. "New" is emphatic because
it introduces a new idea. In like manner, "soil," "grain," "tools," are
also emphatic.
The most emphatic words are italicized in this selection. Are there any
others you would emphasize? Why?
The old astronomer said, "Give me a _larger_ eye, and I will
discover _new stars_ and _suns_." That is what the _republic
needs_ today--_new men_--men who are _wise_ toward the _soil_,
toward the _grains_, toward the _tools_. If God would only raise
up for the people two or three men like _Watt_, _Fulton_ and
_McCormick_, they would be _worth more_ to the _State_ than that
_treasure box_ named _California_ or _Mexico_. And the _real
supremacy_ of man is based upon his _capacity_ for _education_.
Man is _unique_ in the _length_ of his _childhood_, which means
the _period_ of _plasticity_ and _education_. The childhood of a
_moth_, the distance that stands between the hatching of the
_robin_ and its _maturity_, represent a _few hours_ or a _few
weeks_, but _twenty years_ for growth stands between _man's_
cradle and his citizenship. This protracted childhood makes it
possible to hand over to the boy all the _accumulated stores
achieved_ by _races_ and _civilizations_ through _thousands_ of
_years_.
--_Anonymous_.
You must understand that there are no steel-riveted rules of emphasis.
It is not always possible to designate which word must, and which must
not be emphasized. One speaker will put one interpretation on a speech,
another speaker will use different emphasis to bring out a different
interpretation. No one can say that one interpretation is right and the
other wrong. This principle must be borne in mind in all our marked
exercises. Here your own intelligence must guide--and greatly to your
profit.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
1. What is emphasis?
2. Describe one method of destroying monotony of thought-presentation.
3. What relation does this have to the use of the voice?
4. Which words should be emphasized, which subordinated, in a sentence?
5. Read the selections on pages 50, 51, 52, 53 and 54, devoting special
attention to emphasizing the important words or phrases and
subordinating the unimportant ones. Read again, changing emphasis
slightly. What is the effect?
6. Read some sentence repeatedly, emphasizing a different word each
time, and show how the meaning is changed, as is done on page 22.
7. What is the effect of a lack of emphasis?
8. Read the selections on pages 30 and 48, emphasizing every word. What
is the effect on the emphasis?
9. When is it permissible to emphasize every single word in a sentence?
10. Note the emphasis and subordination in some conversation or speech
you have heard. Were they well made? Why? Can you suggest any
improvement?
11. From a newspaper or a magazine, clip a report of an address, or a
biographical eulogy. Mark the passage for emphasis and bring it with you
to class.
12. In the following passage, would you make any changes in the author's
markings for emphasis? Where? Why? Bear in mind that not all words
marked require the same _degree_ of emphasis--_in a wide variety of
emphasis, and in nice shading of the gradations, lie the excellence of
emphatic speech_.
I would call him _Napoleon_, but Napoleon made his way to empire
over _broken oaths_ and through a _sea_ of _blood_. This man
_never_ broke his word. "No Retaliation" was his great motto and
the rule of his life; and the last words uttered to his son in
France were these: "My boy, you will one day go back to Santo
Domingo; _forget_ that _France murdered your father_." I would
call him _Cromwell_, but Cromwell was _only_ a _soldier_, and
the state he founded _went down_ with him into his grave. I
would call him _Washington_, but the great Virginian _held
slaves_. This man _risked_ his _empire_ rather than _permit_ the
slave-trade in the _humblest village_ of his dominions.
You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history, _not_
with your _eyes_, but with your _prejudices_. But fifty years
hence, when _Truth_ gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put
_Phocion_ for the _Greek_, and _Brutus_ for the _Roman_,
_Hampden_ for _England_, _Lafayette_ for _France_, choose
_Washington_ as the bright, consummate flower of our _earlier_
civilization, and _John Brown_ the ripe fruit of our _noonday_,
then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear
blue, above them all, the name of the _soldier_, the
_statesman_, the _martyr_, _TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE_.
--WENDELL PHILLIPS, _Toussaint l'Ouverture_.
Practise on the following selections for emphasis: Beecher's "Abraham
Lincoln," page 76; Lincoln's "Gettysburg Speech," page 50; Seward's
"Irrepressible Conflict," page 67; and Bryan's "Prince of Peace," page
448.
CHAPTER IV
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PITCH
Speech is simply a modified form of singing: the principal
difference being in the fact that in singing the vowel sounds
are prolonged and the intervals are short, whereas in speech the
words are uttered in what may be called "staccato" tones, the
vowels not being specially prolonged and the intervals between
the words being more distinct. The fact that in singing we have
a larger range of tones does not properly distinguish it from
ordinary speech. In speech we have likewise a variation of
tones, and even in ordinary conversation there is a difference
of from three to six semi-tones, as I have found in my
investigations, and in some persons the range is as high as one
octave.
--WILLIAM SCHEPPEGRELL, _Popular Science Monthly_.
By pitch, as everyone knows, we mean the relative position of a vocal
tone--as, high, medium, low, or any variation between. In public speech
we apply it not only to a single utterance, as an exclamation or a
monosyllable (_Oh!_ or _the_) but to any group of syllables, words, and
even sentences that may be spoken in a single tone. This distinction it
is important to keep in mind, for the efficient speaker not only changes
the pitch of successive syllables (see Chapter VII, "Efficiency through
Inflection"), but gives a different pitch to different parts, or
word-groups, of successive sentences. It is this phase of the subject
which we are considering in this chapter.
_Every Change in the Thought Demands a Change in the Voice-Pitch_
Whether the speaker follows the rule consciously, unconsciously, or
subconsciously, this is the logical basis upon which all good voice
variation is made, yet this law is violated more often than any other by
_public_ speakers. A criminal may disregard a law of the state without
detection and punishment, but the speaker who violates this regulation
suffers its penalty at once in his loss of effectiveness, while his
innocent hearers must endure the monotony--for monotony is not only a
sin of the perpetrator, as we have shown, but a plague on the victims as
well.
Change of pitch is a stumbling block for almost all beginners, and for
many experienced speakers also. This is especially true when the words
of the speech have been memorized.
If you wish to hear how pitch-monotony sounds, strike the same note on
the piano over and over again. You have in your speaking voice a range
of pitch from high to low, with a great many shades between the
extremes. With all these notes available there is no excuse for
offending the ears and taste of your audience by continually using the
one note. True, the reiteration of the same tone in music--as in pedal
point on an organ composition--may be made the foundation of beauty, for
the harmony weaving about that one basic tone produces a consistent,
insistent quality not felt in pure variety of chord sequences. In like
manner the intoning voice in a ritual may--though it rarely
does--possess a solemn beauty. But the public speaker should shun the
monotone as he would a pestilence.
_Continual Change of Pitch is Nature's Highest Method_
In our search for the principles of efficiency we must continually go
back to nature. Listen--really listen--to the birds sing. Which of these
feathered tribes are most pleasing in their vocal efforts: those whose
voices, though sweet, have little or no range, or those that, like the
canary, the lark, and the nightingale, not only possess a considerable
range but utter their notes in continual variety of combinations? Even a
sweet-toned chirp, when reiterated without change, may grow maddening to
the enforced listener.
The little child seldom speaks in a monotonous pitch. Observe the
conversations of little folk that you hear on the street or in the home,
and note the continual changes of pitch. The unconscious speech of most
adults is likewise full of pleasing variations.
Imagine someone speaking the following, and consider if the effect would
not be just about as indicated. Remember, we are not now discussing the
inflection of single words, but the general pitch in which phrases are
spoken.
(High pitch) "I'd like to leave for my vacation tomorrow,--(lower)
still, I have so much to do. (Higher) Yet I suppose if I wait until I
have time I'll never go."
Repeat this, first in the pitches indicated, and then all in the one
pitch, as many speakers would. Observe the difference in naturalness of
effect.
The following exercise should be spoken in a purely conversational
tone, with numerous changes of pitch. Practise it until your delivery
would cause a stranger in the next room to think you were discussing an
actual incident with a friend, instead of delivering a memorized
monologue. If you are in doubt about the effect you have secured, repeat
it to a friend and ask him if it sounds like memorized words. If it
does, it is wrong.
_A SIMILAR CASE_
Jack, I hear you've gone and done it.--Yes, I know; most fellows
will; went and tried it once myself, sir, though you see I'm
single still. And you met her--did you tell me--down at Newport,
last July, and resolved to ask the question at a _soirée_? So
did I.
I suppose you left the ball-room, with its music and its light;
for they say love's flame is brightest in the darkness of the
night. Well, you walked along together, overhead the starlit
sky; and I'll bet--old man, confess it--you were frightened. So
was I.
So you strolled along the terrace, saw the summer moonlight pour
all its radiance on the waters, as they rippled on the shore,
till at length you gathered courage, when you saw that none was
nigh--did you draw her close and tell her that you loved her? So
did I.
Well, I needn't ask you further, and I'm sure I wish you joy.
Think I'll wander down and see you when you're married--eh, my
boy? When the honeymoon is over and you're settled down, we'll
try--What? the deuce you say! Rejected--you rejected? So was
I.
--_Anonymous_.
The necessity for changing pitch is so self-evident that it should be
grasped and applied immediately. However, it requires patient drill to
free yourself from monotony of pitch.
In natural conversation you think of an idea first, and then find words
to express it. In memorized speeches you are liable to speak the words,
and then think what they mean--and many speakers seem to trouble very
little even about that. Is it any wonder that reversing the process
should reverse the result? Get back to nature in your methods of
expression.
Read the following selection in a nonchalant manner, never pausing to
think what the words really mean. Try it again, carefully studying the
thought you have assimilated. Believe the idea, desire to express it
effectively, and imagine an audience before you. Look them earnestly in
the face and repeat this truth. If you follow directions, you will note
that you have made many changes of pitch after several readings.
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you
can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust
upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the
machinery but the friction.
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
_Change of Pitch Produces Emphasis_
This is a highly important statement. Variety in pitch maintains the
hearer's interest, but one of the surest ways to compel attention--to
secure unusual emphasis--is to change the pitch of your voice suddenly
and in a marked degree. A great contrast always arouses attention. White
shows whiter against black; a cannon roars louder in the Sahara silence
than in the Chicago hurly burly--these are simple illustrations of the
power of contrast.
"What is Congress going to do next?
-----------------------------------
(High pitch) |
|
| I do not know."
-----------------
(Low pitch)
By such sudden change of pitch during a sermon Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis
recently achieved great emphasis and suggested the gravity of the
question he had raised.
The foregoing order of pitch-change might be reversed with equally good
effect, though with a slight change in seriousness--either method
produces emphasis when used intelligently, that is, with a common-sense
appreciation of the sort of emphasis to be attained.
In attempting these contrasts of pitch it is important to avoid
unpleasant extremes. Most speakers pitch their voices too high. One of
the secrets of Mr. Bryan's eloquence is his low, bell-like voice.
Shakespeare said that a soft, gentle, low voice was "an excellent thing
in woman;" it is no less so in man, for a voice need not be blatant to
be powerful,--and _must_ not be, to be pleasing.
In closing, let us emphasize anew the importance of using variety of
pitch. You sing up and down the scale, first touching one note and then
another above or below it. Do likewise in speaking.
Thought and individual taste must generally be your guide as to where to
use a low, a moderate, or a high pitch.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Name two methods of destroying monotony and gaining force in
speaking.
2. Why is a continual change of pitch necessary in speaking?
3. Notice your habitual tones in speaking. Are they too high to be
pleasant?
4. Do we express the following thoughts and emotions in a low or a high
pitch? Which may be expressed in either high or low pitch? Excitement.
Victory. Defeat. Sorrow. Love. Earnestness. Fear.
5. How would you naturally vary the pitch in introducing an explanatory
or parenthetical expression like the following:
He started--_that is, he made preparations to start_--on
September third.
6. Speak the following lines with as marked variations in pitch as your
interpretation of the sense may dictate. Try each line in two different
ways. Which, in each instance, is the more effective--and why?
What have I to gain from you? Nothing.
To engage our nation in such a compact would be an infamy.
Note: In the foregoing sentence, experiment as to where the
change in pitch would better be made.
Once the flowers distilled their fragrance here, but now see the
devastations of war.
He had reckoned without one prime factor--his conscience.
7. Make a diagram of a conversation you have heard, showing where high
and low pitches were used. Were these changes in pitch advisable? Why or
why not?
8. Read the selections on pages 34, 35, 36, 37 and 38, paying careful
attention to the changes in pitch. Reread, substituting low pitch for
high, and vice versa.
_Selections for Practise_
Note: In the following selections, those passages that may best be
delivered in a moderate pitch are printed in ordinary (roman) type.
Those which may be rendered in a high pitch--do not make the mistake of
raising the voice too high--are printed _in italics_. Those which might
well be spoken in a low pitch are printed in _CAPITALS_.
These arrangements, however, are merely suggestive--we cannot make it
strong enough that you must use your own judgment in interpreting a
selection. Before doing so, however, it is well to practise these
passages as they are marked.
_Yes, all men labor. RUFUS CHOATE AND DANIEL WEBSTER_ labor, say
the critics. But every man who reads of the labor question knows
that it means the movement of the men that earn their living
with their hands; _THAT ARE EMPLOYED, AND PAID WAGES: are
gathered under roofs of factories, sent out on farms, sent out
on ships, gathered on the walls._ In popular acceptation, the
working class means the men that work with their hands, for
wages, so many hours a day, employed by great capitalists; that
work for everybody else. Why do we move for this class? "_Why_,"
asks a critic, "_don't you move FOR ALL WORKINGMEN?" BECAUSE,
WHILE DANIEL WEBSTER GETS FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR ARGUING THE
MEXICAN CLAIMS, there is no need of anybody's moving for him.
BECAUSE, WHILE RUFUS CHOATE GETS FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR
MAKING ONE ARGUMENT TO A JURY, there is no need of moving for
him, or for the men that work with their brains_,--that do
highly disciplined and skilled labor, invent, and write books.
The reason why the Labor movement confines itself to a single
class is because that class of work _DOES NOT GET PAID, does not
get protection. MENTAL LABOR is adequately paid_, and _MORE THAN
ADEQUATELY protected. IT CAN SHIFT ITS CHANNELS; it can vary
according to the supply and demand_.
_IF A MAN FAILS AS A MINISTER, why, he becomes a railway
conductor. IF THAT DOESN'T SUIT HIM, he goes West, and becomes
governor of a territory. AND IF HE FINDS HIMSELF INCAPABLE OF
EITHER OF THESE POSITIONS, he comes home, and gets to be a city
editor_. He varies his occupation as he pleases, and doesn't
need protection. _BUT THE GREAT MASS, CHAINED TO A TRADE, DOOMED
TO BE GROUND UP IN THE MILL OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND, THAT WORK SO
MANY HOURS A DAY, AND MUST RUN IN THE GREAT RUTS OF
BUSINESS,--they are the men whose inadequate protection, whose
unfair share of the general product, claims a movement in their
behalf_.
--WENDELL PHILLIPS.
_KNOWING THE PRICE WE MUST PAY, THE SACRIFICE WE MUST MAKE, THE
BURDENS WE MUST CARRY, THE ASSAULTS WE MUST ENDURE--KNOWING FULL
WELL THE COST--yet we enlist, and we enlist for the war. FOR WE
KNOW THE JUSTICE OF OUR CAUSE, and we know, too, its certain
triumph.
NOT RELUCTANTLY THEN, but eagerly_, not with _faint hearts BUT
STRONG, do we now advance upon the enemies of the people. FOR
THE CALL THAT COMES TO US is the call that came to our fathers_.
As they responded so shall we.
"_HE HATH SOUNDED FORTH A TRUMPET that shall never call retreat.
HE IS SIFTING OUT THE HEARTS OF MEN before His judgment seat.
OH, BE SWIFT OUR SOULS TO ANSWER HIM, BE JUBILANT OUR FEET,
Our God is marching on_."
--ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE.
Remember that two sentences, or two parts of the same sentence, which
contain changes of thought, cannot possibly be given effectively in the
same key. Let us repeat, every big change of thought requires a big
change of pitch. What the beginning student will think are big changes
of pitch will be monotonously alike. Learn to speak some thoughts in a
very high tone--others in a _very_, _very_ low tone. _DEVELOP RANGE._ It
is almost impossible to use too much of it.
_HAPPY AM I THAT THIS MISSION HAS BROUGHT MY FEET AT LAST TO
PRESS NEW ENGLAND'S HISTORIC SOIL and my eyes to the knowledge
of her beauty and her thrift._ Here within touch of Plymouth
Rock and Bunker Hill--_WHERE WEBSTER THUNDERED and Longfellow
sang, Emerson thought AND CHANNING PREACHED--HERE IN THE CRADLE
OF AMERICAN LETTERS and almost of American liberty,_ I hasten to
make the obeisance that every American owes New England when
first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. _Strange
apparition!_ This stern and unique figure--carved from the ocean
and the wilderness--its majesty kindling and growing amid the
storms of winter and of wars--until at last the gloom was
broken, _ITS BEAUTY DISCLOSED IN THE SUNSHINE, and the heroic
workers rested at its base_--while startled kings and emperors
gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful cast
on a bleak and unknown shore should have come the _embodied
genius of human government AND THE PERFECTED MODEL OF HUMAN
LIBERTY!_ God bless the memory of those immortal workers, and
prosper the fortunes of their living sons--and perpetuate the
inspiration of their handiwork....
Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by
a line--_once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced
in fratricidal blood, AND NOW, THANK GOD, BUT A VANISHING
SHADOW--lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is
the home of a brave and hospitable people. THERE IS CENTERED ALL
THAT CAN PLEASE OR PROSPER HUMANKIND. A PERFECT CLIMATE ABOVE a
fertile soil_ yields to the husbandman every product of the
temperate zone.
There, by night _the cotton whitens beneath the stars,_ and by
day _THE WHEAT LOCKS THE SUNSHINE IN ITS BEARDED SHEAF._ In the
same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and
tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. _THERE ARE
MOUNTAINS STORED WITH EXHAUSTLESS TREASURES: forests--vast and
primeval;_ and rivers that, _tumbling or loitering, run wanton to
the sea._ Of the three essential items of all industries--cotton,
iron and wood--that region has easy control. _IN COTTON, a fixed
monopoly--IN IRON, proven supremacy--IN TIMBER, the
reserve supply of the Republic._ From this assured and
permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot
much longer prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries.
Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar
off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting
in divine assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest--not
set amid costly farms from which competition has driven the
farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with
agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit--this
system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle
and illumine the world. _THAT, SIR, is the picture and the promise
of my home--A LAND BETTER AND FAIRER THAN I HAVE TOLD YOU, and
yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and
gentle quality of its citizenship._
This hour little needs the _LOYALTY THAT IS LOYAL TO ONE SECTION
and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement._
Give us the _broad_ and _perfect loyalty that loves and trusts
GEORGIA_ alike with _Massachusetts_--that knows no _SOUTH_, no
_North_, no _EAST_, no _West_, but _endears with equal and
patriotic love_ every foot of our soil, every State of our
Union.
_A MIGHTY DUTY, SIR, AND A MIGHTY INSPIRATION impels every one
of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration WHATEVER
ESTRANGES, WHATEVER DIVIDES._
_WE, SIR, are Americans--AND WE STAND FOR HUMAN LIBERTY!_ The
uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on
earth. _France, Brazil--THESE ARE OUR VICTORIES. To redeem the
earth from kingcraft and oppression--THIS IS OUR MISSION! AND WE
SHALL NOT FAIL._ God has sown in our soil the seed of His
millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the
ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. _OUR
HISTORY, SIR, has been a constant and expanding miracle, FROM
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND JAMESTOWN,_ all the way--aye, even from the
hour when from the voiceless and traceless ocean a new world
rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the
fourth centennial of that stupendous day--when the old world
will come to _marvel_ and to _learn_ amid our gathered
treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with
the spectacle of a Republic, _compact, united INDISSOLUBLE IN
THE BONDS OF LOVE_--loving from the Lakes to the Gulf--the
wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, _serene
and resplendent AT THE SUMMIT OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT AND EARTHLY
GLORY, blazing out the path and making clear the way up which
all the nations of the earth, must come in God's appointed
time!_
--HENRY W. GRADY, _The Race Problem_.
_ ... I WOULD CALL HIM NAPOLEON_, but Napoleon made his way to
empire _over broken oaths and through a sea of blood._ This man
never broke his word. "No Retaliation" was his great motto and
the rule of his life; _AND THE LAST WORDS UTTERED TO HIS SON IN
FRANCE WERE THESE: "My boy, you will one day go back to Santo
Domingo; forget that France murdered your father." I WOULD CALL
HIM CROMWELL,_ but Cromwell _was only a soldier, and the state
he founded went down with him into his grave. I WOULD CALL HIM
WASHINGTON,_ but the great Virginian _held slaves. THIS MAN
RISKED HIS EMPIRE rather than permit the slave-trade in the
humblest village of his dominions._
_YOU THINK ME A FANATIC TO-NIGHT,_ for you read history, _not
with your eyes, BUT WITH YOUR PREJUDICES._ But fifty years
hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put
_PHOCION for the Greek,_ and _BRUTUS for the Roman, HAMPDEN for
England, LAFAYETTE for France,_ choose _WASHINGTON as the
bright, consummate flower of our EARLIER civilization, AND JOHN
BROWN the ripe fruit of our NOONDAY,_ then, dipping her pen in
the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the
name of _THE SOLDIER, THE STATESMAN, THE MARTYR, TOUSSAINT
L'OUVERTURE._
--Wendell Phillips, _Toussaint l'Ouverture_.
Drill on the following selections for change of pitch: Beecher's
"Abraham Lincoln," p. 76; Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict," p. 67;
Everett's "History of Liberty," p. 78; Grady's "The Race Problem," p.
36; and Beveridge's "Pass Prosperity Around," p. 470.
CHAPTER V
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PACE
Hear how he clears the points o' Faith
Wi' rattlin' an' thumpin'!
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath,
He's stampin' an' he's jumpin'.
--ROBERT BURNS, _Holy Fair_.
The Latins have bequeathed to us a word that has no precise equivalent
in our tongue, therefore we have accepted it, body unchanged--it is the
word _tempo_, and means _rate of movement_, as measured by the time
consumed in executing that movement.
Thus far its use has been largely limited to the vocal and musical arts,
but it would not be surprising to hear tempo applied to more concrete
matters, for it perfectly illustrates the real meaning of the word to
say that an ox-cart moves in slow tempo, an express train in a fast
tempo. Our guns that fire six hundred times a minute, shoot at a fast
tempo; the old muzzle loader that required three minutes to load, shot
at a slow tempo. Every musician understands this principle: it requires
longer to sing a half note than it does an eighth note.
Now tempo is a tremendously important element in good platform work, for
when a speaker delivers a whole address at very nearly the same rate of
speed he is depriving himself of one of his chief means of emphasis and
power. The baseball pitcher, the bowler in cricket, the tennis server,
all know the value of change of pace--change of tempo--in delivering
their ball, and so must the public speaker observe its power.
_Change of Tempo Lends Naturalness to the Delivery_
Naturalness, or at least seeming naturalness, as was explained in the
chapter on "Monotony," is greatly to be desired, and a continual change
of tempo will go a long way towards establishing it. Mr. Howard Lindsay,
Stage Manager for Miss Margaret Anglin, recently said to the present
writer that change of pace was one of the most effective tools of the
actor. While it must be admitted that the stilted mouthings of many
actors indicate cloudy mirrors, still the public speaker would do well
to study the actor's use of tempo.
There is, however, a more fundamental and effective source at which to
study naturalness--a trait which, once lost, is shy of recapture: that
source is the common conversation of any well-bred circle. _This_ is the
standard we strive to reach on both stage and platform--with certain
differences, of course, which will appear as we go on. If speaker and
actor were to reproduce with absolute fidelity every variation of
utterance--every whisper, grunt, pause, silence, and explosion--of
conversation as we find it typically in everyday life, much of the
interest would leave the public utterance. Naturalness in public address
is something more than faithful reproduction of nature--it is the
reproduction of those _typical_ parts of nature's work which are truly
representative of the whole.
The realistic story-writer understands this in writing dialogue, and we
must take it into account in seeking for naturalness through change of
tempo.
Suppose you speak the first of the following sentences in a slow tempo,
the second quickly, observing how natural is the effect. Then speak both
with the same rapidity and note the difference.
I can't recall what I did with my knife. Oh, now I remember I
gave it to Mary.
We see here that a change of tempo often occurs in the same
sentence--for tempo applies not only to single words, groups of words,
and groups of sentences, but to the major parts of a public speech as
well.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. In the following, speak the words "long, long while" very slowly; the
rest of the sentence is spoken in moderately rapid tempo.
When you and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh but the long, long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds,
As the seven seas should heed a pebble cast.
Note: In the following selections the passages that should be given a
fast tempo are in italics; those that should be given in a slow tempo
are in small capitals. Practise these selections, and then try others,
changing from fast to slow tempo on different parts, carefully noting
the effect.
2. No MIRABEAU, NAPOLEON, BURNS, CROMWELL, NO _man_ ADEQUATE
_to_ DO ANYTHING _but is first of all in_ RIGHT EARNEST _about
it--what I call_ A SINCERE _man. I should say_ SINCERITY, _a_
GREAT, DEEP, GENUINE SINCERITY, _is the first_ CHARACTERISTIC
_of a man in any way_ HEROIC. _Not the sincerity that_ CALLS
_itself sincere. Ah no. That is a very poor matter indeed_--A
SHALLOW, BRAGGART, CONSCIOUS _sincerity, oftenest_ SELF-CONCEIT
_mainly. The_ GREAT MAN'S SINCERITY _is of a kind he_ CANNOT
SPEAK OF. _Is_ NOT CONSCIOUS _of_.--THOMAS CARLYLE.
3. TRUE WORTH _is in_ BEING--NOT SEEMING--_in doing each day
that goes by_ SOME LITTLE GOOD, _not in_ DREAMING _of_ GREAT
THINGS _to do by and by. For whatever men say in their_
BLINDNESS, _and in spite of the_ FOLLIES _of_ YOUTH, _there is
nothing so_ KINGLY _as_ KINDNESS, _and nothing so_ ROYAL _as_
TRUTH.--_Anonymous_.
4. To get a natural effect, where would you use slow and where fast
tempo in the following?
_FOOL'S GOLD_
See him there, cold and gray,
Watch him as he tries to play;
No, he doesn't know the way--
He began to learn too late.
She's a grim old hag, is Fate,
For she let him have his pile,
Smiling to herself the while,
Knowing what the cost would be,
When he'd found the Golden Key.
Multimillionaire is he,
Many times more rich than we;
But at that I wouldn't trade
With the bargain that he made.
Came here many years ago,
Not a person did he know;
Had the money-hunger bad--
Mad for money, piggish mad;
Didn't let a joy divert him,
Didn't let a sorrow hurt him,
Let his friends and kin desert him,
While he planned and plugged and hurried
On his quest for gold and power.
Every single wakeful hour
With a money thought he'd dower;
All the while as he grew older,
And grew bolder, he grew colder.
And he thought that some day
He would take the time to play;
But, say--he was wrong.
Life's a song;
In the spring
Youth can sing and can fling;
But joys wing
When we're older,
Like birds when it's colder.
The roses were red as he went rushing by,
And glorious tapestries hung in the sky,
And the clover was waving
'Neath honey-bees' slaving;
A bird over there
Roundelayed a soft air;
But the man couldn't spare
Time for gathering flowers,
Or resting in bowers,
Or gazing at skies
That gladdened the eyes.
So he kept on and swept on
Through mean, sordid years.
Now he's up to his ears
In the choicest of stocks.
He owns endless blocks
Of houses and shops,
And the stream never stops
Pouring into his banks.
I suppose that he ranks
Pretty near to the top.
What I have wouldn't sop
His ambition one tittle;
And yet with my little
I don't care to trade
With the bargain he made.
Just watch him to-day--
See him trying to play.
He's come back for blue skies.
But they're in a new guise--
Winter's here, all is gray,
The birds are away,
The meadows are brown,
The leaves lie aground,
And the gay brook that wound
With a swirling and whirling
Of waters, is furling
Its bosom in ice.
And he hasn't the price,
With all of his gold,
To buy what he sold.
He knows now the cost
Of the spring-time he lost,
Of the flowers he tossed
From his way,
And, say,
He'd pay
Any price if the day
Could be made not so gray.
_He can't play._
--HERBERT KAUFMAN. Used by permission of _Everybody's Magazine_.
_Change of Tempo Prevents Monotony_
The canary in the cage before the window is adding to the beauty and
charm of his singing by a continual change of tempo. If King Solomon had
been an orator he undoubtedly would have gathered wisdom from the song
of the wild birds as well as from the bees. Imagine a song written with
but quarter notes. Imagine an auto with only one speed.
EXERCISES
1. Note the change of tempo indicated in the following, and how it gives
a pleasing variety. Read it aloud. (Fast tempo is indicated by italics,
slow by small capitals.)
_And he thought that some day he would take the time to play;
but, say_--HE WAS WRONG. LIFE'S A SONG; _in the_ SPRING YOUTH
_can_ SING _and can_ FLING; BUT JOYS WING WHEN WE'RE OLDER, LIKE
THE BIRDS _when it's_ COLDER. _The roses were red as he went
rushing by, and glorious tapestries hung in the sky._
2. Turn to "Fools Gold," on Page 42, and deliver it in an unvaried
tempo: note how monotonous is the result. This poem requires a great
many changes of tempo, and is an excellent one for practise.
3. Use the changes of tempo indicated in the following, noting how they
prevent monotony. Where no change of tempo is indicated, use a moderate
speed. Too much of variety would really be a return to monotony.
_THE MOB_
"A MOB KILLS THE WRONG MAN" _was flashed in a newspaper headline
lately. The mob is an_ IRRESPONSIBLE, UNTHINKING MASS. _It
always destroys_ BUT NEVER CONSTRUCTS. _It criticises_ BUT NEVER
CREATES.
_Utter a great truth_ AND THE MOB WILL HATE YOU. _See how it
condemned_ DANTE _to_ EXILE. _Encounter the dangers of the
unknown world for its benefit_, AND THE MOB WILL DECLARE YOU
CRAZY. _It ridiculed_ COLUMBUS, _and for discovering a new
world_ GAVE HIM PRISON AND CHAINS.
_Write a poem to thrill human hearts with pleasure_, AND THE MOB
WILL ALLOW YOU TO GO HUNGRY: THE BLIND HOMER BEGGED BREAD
THROUGH THE STREETS. _Invent a machine to save labor_ AND THE
MOB WILL DECLARE YOU ITS ENEMY. _Less than a hundred years ago a
furious rabble smashed Thimonier's invention, the sewing
machine._
BUILD A STEAMSHIP TO CARRY MERCHANDISE AND ACCELERATE TRAVEL
_and the mob will call you a fool_. A MOB LINED THE SHORES OF
THE HUDSON RIVER TO LAUGH AT THE MAIDEN ATTEMPT OF "FULTON'S
FOLLY," _as they called his little steamboat._
Emerson says: "A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily
bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob
is man voluntarily descended to the nature of the beast. _Its
fit hour of activity_ is NIGHT. ITS ACTIONS ARE INSANE, _like
its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle_--IT WOULD
WHIP A RIGHT. It would tar and feather justice by inflicting
fire and outrage upon the house and persons of those who have
these."
The mob spirit stalks abroad in our land today. Every week gives
a fresh victim to its malignant cry for blood. There were 48
persons killed by mobs in the United States in 1913; 64 in 1912,
and 71 in 1911. Among the 48 last year were a woman and a child.
Two victims were proven innocent after their death.
IN 399 B.C. A DEMAGOG APPEALED TO THE POPULAR MOB TO HAVE
SOCRATES PUT TO DEATH _and he was sentenced to the hemlock cup._
FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEARS AFTERWARD AN ENTHUSIAST APPEALED TO THE
POPULAR MOB _and all Europe plunged into the Holy Land to kill
and mangle the heathen. In the seventeenth century a demagog
appealed to the ignorance of men_ AND TWENTY PEOPLE WERE
EXECUTED AT SALEM, MASS., WITHIN SIX MONTHS FOR WITCHCRAFT. _Two
thousand years ago the mob yelled_, "_RELEASE UNTO US
BARABBAS_"--AND BARABBAS WAS A MURDERER!
--_From an Editorial by D.C. in "Leslie's Weekly," by permission._
_Present-day business_ is as unlike OLD-TIME BUSINESS as the
OLD-TIME OX-CART is unlike the _present-day locomotive._
INVENTION has made the _whole world over again. The railroad,
telegraph, telephone_ have bound the people of MODERN NATIONS
into FAMILIES. _To do the business of these closely knit
millions in every modern country_ GREAT BUSINESS CONCERNS CAME
INTO BEING. _What we call big business is the_ CHILD OF THE
ECONOMIC PROGRESS OF MANKIND. _So warfare to destroy big
business_ is FOOLISH BECAUSE IT CAN NOT SUCCEED _and wicked_
BECAUSE IT OUGHT NOT TO SUCCEED. _Warfare to destroy big
business does not hurt big business, which always comes out on
top_, SO MUCH AS IT HURTS ALL OTHER BUSINESS WHICH, IN SUCH A
WARFARE, NEVER COME OUT ON TOP.
--A.J. BEVERIDGE.
_Change of Tempo Produces Emphasis_
Any big change of tempo is emphatic and will catch the attention. You
may scarcely be conscious that a passenger train is moving when it is
flying over the rails at ninety miles an hour, but if it slows down very
suddenly to a ten-mile gait your attention will be drawn to it very
decidedly. You may forget that you are listening to music as you dine,
but let the orchestra either increase or diminish its tempo in a very
marked degree and your attention will be arrested at once.
This same principle will procure emphasis in a speech. If you have a
point that you want to bring home to your audience forcefully, make a
sudden and great change of tempo, and they will be powerless to keep
from paying attention to that point. Recently the present writer saw a
play in which these lines were spoken:
"I don't want you to forget what I said. I want you to remember it the
longest day you--I don't care if you've got six guns." The part up to
the dash was delivered in a very slow tempo, the remainder was named out
at lightning speed, as the character who was spoken to drew a revolver.
The effect was so emphatic that the lines are remembered six months
afterwards, while most of the play has faded from memory. The student
who has powers of observation will see this principle applied by all our
best actors in their efforts to get emphasis where emphasis is due. But
remember that the emotion in the matter must warrant the intensity in
the manner, or the effect will be ridiculous. Too many public speakers
are impressive over nothing.
Thought rather than rules must govern you while practising change of
pace. It is often a matter of no consequence which part of a sentence is
spoken slowly and which is given in fast tempo. The main thing to be
desired is the change itself. For example, in the selection, "The Mob,"
on page 46, note the last paragraph. Reverse the instructions given,
delivering everything that is marked for slow tempo, quickly; and
everything that is marked for quick tempo, slowly. You will note that
the force or meaning of the passage has not been destroyed.
However, many passages cannot be changed to a slow tempo without
destroying their force. Instances: The Patrick Henry speech on page 110,
and the following passage from Whittier's "Barefoot Boy."
O for boyhood's time of June, crowding years in one brief moon,
when all things I heard or saw, me, their master, waited for. I
was rich in flowers and trees, humming-birds and honey-bees; for
my sport the squirrel played; plied the snouted mole his spade;
for my taste the blackberry cone purpled over hedge and stone;
laughed the brook for my delight through the day and through the
night, whispering at the garden wall, talked with me from fall
to fall; mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond; mine the walnut
slopes beyond; mine, an bending orchard trees, apples of
Hesperides! Still, as my horizon grew, larger grew my riches,
too; all the world I saw or knew seemed a complex Chinese toy,
fashioned for a barefoot boy!
--J.G. WHITTIER.
Be careful in regulating your tempo not to get your movement too fast.
This is a common fault with amateur speakers. Mrs. Siddons rule was,
"Take time." A hundred years ago there was used in medical circles a
preparation known as "the shot gun remedy;" it was a mixture of about
fifty different ingredients, and was given to the patient in the hope
that at least one of them would prove efficacious! That seems a rather
poor scheme for medical practice, but it is good to use "shot gun" tempo
for most speeches, as it gives a variety. Tempo, like diet, is best when
mixed.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Define tempo.
2. What words come from the same root?
3. What is meant by a change of tempo?
4. What effects are gained by it?
5. Name three methods of destroying monotony and gaining force in
speaking.
6. Note the changes of tempo in a conversation or speech that you hear.
Were they well made? Why? Illustrate.
7. Read selections on pages 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38, paying careful
attention to change of tempo.
8. As a rule, excitement, joy, or intense anger take a fast tempo, while
sorrow, and sentiments of great dignity or solemnity tend to a slow
tempo. Try to deliver Lincoln's Gettysburg speech (page 50), in a fast
tempo, or Patrick Henry's speech (page 110), in a slow tempo, and note
how ridiculous the effect will be.
Practise the following selections, noting carefully where the tempo may
be changed to advantage. Experiment, making numerous changes. Which one
do you like best?
_DEDICATION OF GETTYSBURG CEMETERY_
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are
engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation--or
any nation so conceived and so dedicated--can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to
dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who
have given their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our
power to add or to detract. The world will very little note nor
long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what
they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us: that from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God,
have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_A PLEA FOR CUBA_
[This deliberative oration was delivered by Senator Thurston in
the United States Senate on March 24, 1898. It is recorded in
full in the _Congressional Record_ of that date. Mrs. Thurston
died in Cuba. As a dying request she urged her husband, who was
investigating affairs in the island, to do his utmost to induce
the United States to intervene--hence this oration.]
Mr. President, I am here by command of silent lips to speak once
and for all upon the Cuban situation. I shall endeavor to be
honest, conservative, and just. I have no purpose to stir the
public passion to any action not necessary and imperative to
meet the duties and necessities of American responsibility,
Christian humanity, and national honor. I would shirk this task
if I could, but I dare not. I cannot satisfy my conscience
except by speaking, and speaking now.
I went to Cuba firmly believing that the condition of affairs
there had been greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own
efforts were directed in the first instance to the attempted
exposure of these supposed exaggerations. There has undoubtedly
been much sensationalism in the journalism of the time, but as
to the condition of affairs in Cuba, there has been no
exaggeration, because exaggeration has been impossible.
Under the inhuman policy of Weyler not less than four hundred
thousand self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defenseless country
people were driven from their homes in the agricultural portions
of the Spanish provinces to the cities, and imprisoned upon the
barren waste outside the residence portions of these cities and
within the lines of intrenchment established a little way
beyond. Their humble homes were burned, their fields laid waste,
their implements of husbandry destroyed, their live stock and
food supplies for the most part confiscated. Most of the people
were old men, women, and children. They were thus placed in
hopeless imprisonment, without shelter or food. There was no
work for them in the cities to which they were driven. They were
left with nothing to depend upon except the scanty charity of
the inhabitants of the cities and with slow starvation their
inevitable fate....
The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving
reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the
thousands. I never before saw, and please God I may never again
see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs
of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless
anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little
bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we
went among them....
Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger.
Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one
looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls.
The government of Spain has not appropriated and will not
appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being
attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the
United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding these
citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such
as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is
right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off. I say
that the time has come when muskets ought to go with the food.
We asked the governor if he knew of any relief for these people
except through the charity of the United States. He did not. We
asked him, "When do you think the time will come that these
people can be placed in a position of self-support?" He replied
to us, with deep feeling, "Only the good God or the great
government of the United States will answer that question." I
hope and believe that the good God by the great government of
the United States will answer that question.
I shall refer to these horrible things no further. They are
there. God pity me, I have seen them; they will remain in my
mind forever--and this is almost the twentieth century. Christ
died nineteen hundred years ago, and Spain is a Christian
nation. She has set up more crosses in more lands, beneath more
skies, and under them has butchered more people than all the
other nations of the earth combined. Europe may tolerate her
existence as long as the people of the Old World wish. God grant
that before another Christmas morning the last vestige of
Spanish tyranny and oppression will have vanished from the
Western Hemisphere!...
The time for action has come. No greater reason for it can exist
to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds
another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one
power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours is the
one great nation in the world, the mother of American republics.
She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the
peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her
glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise
the flag of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to
accept this responsibility which the God of the universe has
placed upon us as the one great power in the New World. We must
act! What shall our action be?
Against the intervention of the United States in this holy cause
there is but one voice of dissent; that voice is the voice of
the money-changers. They fear war! Not because of any Christian
or ennobling sentiment against war and in favor of peace, but
because they fear that a declaration of war, or the intervention
which might result in war, would have a depressing effect upon
the stock market. Let them go. They do not represent American
sentiment; they do not represent American patriotism. Let them
take their chances as they can. Their weal or woe is of but
little importance to the liberty-loving people of the United
States. They will not do the fighting; their blood will not
flow; they will keep on dealing in options on human life. Let
the men whose loyalty is to the dollar stand aside while the men
whose loyalty is to the flag come to the front.
Mr. President, there is only one action possible, if any is
taken; that is, intervention for the independence of the island.
But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of
force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene
on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love,
"Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at
the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men
who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their
fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in
the doctrine of peace; but, Mr. President, men must have liberty
before there can come abiding peace.
Intervention means force. Force means war. War means blood. But
it will be God's force. When has a battle for humanity and
liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong,
injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force?
Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great
Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of
Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation;
force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile
and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly
crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and
marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force
held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at
Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force
marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the
valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made
"niggers" men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the
impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the
song:--
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea.
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on."
Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead
for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay; but for
me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to
answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.
--JAMES MELLEN THURSTON.
CHAPTER VI
PAUSE AND POWER
The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave
his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence,
by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and
then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear
itself.
--GEORGE SAINTSBURY, on _English Prose Style_, in _Miscellaneous
Essays_.
... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in
other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the
movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and
compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we
must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no
compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense
of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.
--JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.
Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made
designedly eloquent.
When a man says: "I-uh-it is with profound-ah-pleasure that-er-I have
been permitted to speak to you tonight and-uh-uh-I should say-er"--that
is not pausing; that is stumbling. It is conceivable that a speaker may
be effective in spite of stumbling--but never because of it.
On the other hand, one of the most important means of developing power
in public speaking is to pause either before or after, or both before
and after, an important word or phrase. No one who would be a forceful
speaker can afford to neglect this principle--one of the most
significant that has ever been inferred from listening to great orators.
Study this potential device until you have absorbed and assimilated it.
It would seem that this principle of rhetorical pause ought to be easily
grasped and applied, but a long experience in training both college men
and maturer speakers has demonstrated that the device is no more readily
understood by the average man when it is first explained to him than if
it were spoken in Hindoostani. Perhaps this is because we do not eagerly
devour the fruit of experience when it is impressively set before us on
the platter of authority; we like to pluck fruit for ourselves--it not
only tastes better, but we never forget that tree! Fortunately, this is
no difficult task, in this instance, for the trees stand thick all about
us.
One man is pleading the cause of another:
"This man, my friends, has made this wonderful sacrifice--for
you and me."
Did not the pause surprisingly enhance the power of this statement? See
how he gathered up reserve force and impressiveness to deliver the words
"for you and me." Repeat this passage without making a pause. Did it
lose in effectiveness?
Naturally enough, during a premeditated pause of this kind the mind of
the speaker is concentrated on the thought to which he is about to give
expression. He will not dare to allow his thoughts to wander for an
instant--he will rather supremely center his thought and his emotion
upon the sacrifice whose service, sweetness and divinity he is
enforcing by his appeal.
_Concentration_, then, is the big word here--no pause without it can
perfectly hit the mark.
Efficient pausing accomplishes one or all of four results:
_1. Pause Enables the Mind of the Speaker to Gather His Forces Before
Delivering the Final Volley_
It is often dangerous to rush into battle without pausing for
preparation or waiting for recruits. Consider Custer's massacre as an
instance.
You can light a match by holding it beneath a lens and concentrating the
sun's rays. You would not expect the match to flame if you jerked the
lens back and forth quickly. Pause, and the lens gathers the heat. Your
thoughts will not set fire to the minds of your hearers unless you pause
to gather the force that comes by a second or two of concentration.
Maple trees and gas wells are rarely tapped continually; when a stronger
flow is wanted, a pause is made, nature has time to gather her reserve
forces, and when the tree or the well is reopened, a stronger flow is
the result.
Use the same common sense with your mind. If you would make a thought
particularly effective, pause just before its utterance, concentrate
your mind-energies, and then give it expression with renewed vigor.
Carlyle was right: "Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy
thought has silently matured itself. Out of silence comes thy strength.
Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech is human, Silence is
divine."
Silence has been called the father of speech. It should be. Too many of
our public speeches have no fathers. They ramble along without pause or
break. Like Tennyson's brook, they run on forever. Listen to little
children, the policeman on the corner, the family conversation around
the table, and see how many pauses they naturally use, for they are
unconscious of effects. When we get before an audience, we throw most of
our natural methods of expression to the wind, and strive after
artificial effects. Get back to the methods of nature--and pause.
_2. Pause Prepares the Mind of the Auditor to Receive Your
Message_
Herbert Spencer said that all the universe is in motion. So it
is--and all perfect motion is rhythm. Part of rhythm is rest.
Rest follows activity all through nature. Instances: day and night;
spring--summer--autumn--winter; a period of rest between breaths; an
instant of complete rest between heart beats. Pause, and give the
attention-powers of your audience a rest. What you say after such
a silence will then have a great deal more effect.
When your country cousins come to town, the noise of a passing car will
awaken them, though it seldom affects a seasoned city dweller. By the
continual passing of cars his attention-power has become deadened. In
one who visits the city but seldom, attention-value is insistent. To him
the noise comes after a long pause; hence its power. To you, dweller in
the city, there is no pause; hence the low attention-value. After riding
on a train several hours you will become so accustomed to its roar that
it will lose its attention-value, unless the train should stop for a
while and start again. If you attempt to listen to a clock-tick that is
so far away that you can barely hear it, you will find that at times you
are unable to distinguish it, but in a few moments the sound becomes
distinct again. Your mind will pause for rest whether you desire it to
do so or not.
The attention of your audience will act in quite the same way. Recognize
this law and prepare for it--by pausing. Let it be repeated: the thought
that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred.
What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your
mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had
been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first
page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the
"seventh day." You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your
audience will likewise demand rest. Observe nature, study her laws, and
obey them in your speaking.
_3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_
Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it
will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of
much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep
guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of
woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this
principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a
feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he
arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like to be kept
waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is a
circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the
back of a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed
and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a
great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once. We not only
like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for. If fish bite too
readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.
It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock
Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is
solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins'
receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em
laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if
they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.
Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to
arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:
"It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience
wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great
evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he
had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then
he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and
continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the
audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr.
Moody, then continued--"as the greatest preacher of his day." Let the
dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following:
"It was my privilege to hear--the great evangelist--Dwight L.
Moody.--I came to regard him--as the greatest preacher of his
day."
The unskilled speaker would have rattled this off with neither pause nor
suspense, and the sentences would have fallen flat upon the audience. It
is precisely the application of these small things that makes much of
the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful speaker.
_4. Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate_
Any Missouri farmer will tell you that a rain that falls too fast will
run off into the creeks and do the crops but little good. A story is
told of a country deacon praying for rain in this manner: "Lord, don't
send us any chunk floater. Just give us a good old drizzle-drazzle." A
speech, like a rain, will not do anybody much good if it comes too fast
to soak in. The farmer's wife follows this same principle in doing her
washing when she puts the clothes in water--and pauses for several hours
that the water may soak in. The physician puts cocaine on your
turbinates--and pauses to let it take hold before he removes them. Why
do we use this principle everywhere except in the communication of
ideas? If you have given the audience a big idea, pause for a second or
two and let them turn it over. See what effect it has. After the smoke
clears away you may have to fire another 14-inch shell on the same
subject before you demolish the citadel of error that you are trying to
destroy. Take time. Don't let your speech resemble those tourists who
try "to do" New York in a day. They spend fifteen minutes looking at the
masterpieces in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, ten minutes in the
Museum of Natural History, take a peep into the Aquarium, hurry across
the Brooklyn Bridge, rush up to the Zoo, and back by Grant's Tomb--and
call that "Seeing New York." If you hasten by your important points
without pausing, your audience will have just about as adequate an idea
of what you have tried to convey.
Take time, you have just as much of it as our richest multimillionaire.
Your audience will wait for you. It is a sign of smallness to hurry. The
great redwood trees of California had burst through the soil five
hundred years before Socrates drank his cup of hemlock poison, and are
only in their prime today. Nature shames us with our petty haste.
Silence is one of the most eloquent things in the world. Master it, and
use it through pause.
* * * * *
In the following selections dashes have been inserted where pauses may
be used effectively. Naturally, you may omit some of these and insert
others without going wrong--one speaker would interpret a passage in one
way, one in another; it is largely a matter of personal preference. A
dozen great actors have played Hamlet well, and yet each has played the
part differently. Which comes the nearest to perfection is a question
of opinion. You will succeed best by daring to follow your own
course--if you are individual enough to blaze an original trail.
A moment's halt--a momentary taste of being from the well amid
the waste--and lo! the phantom caravan has reached--the nothing
it set out from--Oh make haste!
The worldly hope men set their hearts upon--turns ashes--or it
prospers;--and anon like snow upon the desert's dusty
face--lighting a little hour or two--is gone.
The bird of time has but a little way to flutter,--and the bird
is on the wing.
You will note that the punctuation marks have nothing to do with the
pausing. You may run by a period very quickly and make a long pause
where there is no kind of punctuation. Thought is greater than
punctuation. It must guide you in your pauses.
A book of verses underneath the bough,--a jug of wine, a loaf of
bread--and thou beside me singing in the
wilderness--Oh--wilderness were paradise enow.
You must not confuse the pause for emphasis with the natural pauses that
come through taking breath and phrasing. For example, note the pauses
indicated in this selection from Byron:
But _hush!_--_hark!_--that deep sound breaks in once more,
And _nearer!_--_clearer!_--_deadlier_ than before.
_Arm_, ARM!--it is--it is the cannon's opening roar!
It is not necessary to dwell at length upon these obvious distinctions.
You will observe that in natural conversation our words are gathered
into clusters or phrases, and we often pause to take breath between
them. So in public speech, breathe naturally and do not talk until you
must gasp for breath; nor until the audience is equally winded.
A serious word of caution must here be uttered: do not overwork the
pause. To do so will make your speech heavy and stilted. And do not
think that pause can transmute commonplace thoughts into great and
dignified utterance. A grand manner combined with insignificant ideas is
like harnessing a Hambletonian with an ass. You remember the farcical
old school declamation, "A Midnight Murder," that proceeded in grandiose
manner to a thrilling climax, and ended--"and relentlessly murdered--a
mosquito!"
The pause, dramatically handled, always drew a laugh from the tolerant
hearers. This is all very well in farce, but such anti-climax becomes
painful when the speaker falls from the sublime to the ridiculous quite
unintentionally. The pause, to be effective in some other manner than in
that of the boomerang, must precede or follow a thought that is really
worth while, or at least an idea whose bearing upon the rest of the
speech is important.
William Pittenger relates in his volume, "Extempore Speech," an instance
of the unconsciously farcical use of the pause by a really great
American statesman and orator. "He had visited Niagara Falls and was to
make an oration at Buffalo the same day, but, unfortunately, he sat too
long over the wine after dinner. When he arose to speak, the oratorical
instinct struggled with difficulties, as he declared, 'Gentlemen, I have
been to look upon your mag--mag--magnificent cataract, one hundred--and
forty--seven--feet high! Gentlemen, Greece and Rome in their palmiest
days never had a cataract one hundred--and forty--seven--feet high!'"
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Name four methods for destroying monotony and gaining power in
speaking.
2. What are the four special effects of pause?
3. Note the pauses in a conversation, play, or speech. Were they the
best that could have been used? Illustrate.
4. Read aloud selections on pages 50-54, paying special attention to
pause.
5. Read the following without making any pauses. Reread correctly and
note the difference:
Soon the night will pass; and when, of the Sentinel on the
ramparts of Liberty the anxious ask: | "Watchman, what of the
night?" his answer will be | "Lo, the morn appeareth."
Knowing the price we must pay, | the sacrifice | we must make, |
the burdens | we must carry, | the assaults | we must endure, |
knowing full well the cost, | yet we enlist, and we enlist | for
the war. | For we know the justice of our cause, | and we know,
too, its certain triumph. |
Not reluctantly, then, | but eagerly, | not with faint hearts, |
but strong, do we now advance upon the enemies of the people. |
For the call that comes to us is the call that came to our
fathers. | As they responded, so shall we.
"He hath sounded forth a trumpet | that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men | before His judgment seat.
Oh, be swift | our souls to answer Him, | be jubilant our feet,
Our God | is marching on."
--ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, _From his speech as temporary chairman of
Progressive National Convention, Chicago, 1912_.
6. Bring out the contrasting ideas in the following by using the pause:
Contrast now the circumstances of your life and mine, gently and
with temper, Ĉschines; and then ask these people whose fortune
they would each of them prefer. You taught reading, I went to
school: you performed initiations, I received them: you danced
in the chorus, I furnished it: you were assembly-clerk, I was a
speaker: you acted third parts, I heard you: you broke down, and
I hissed: you have worked as a statesman for the enemy, I for my
country. I pass by the rest; but this very day I am on my
probation for a crown, and am acknowledged to be innocent of all
offence; while you are already judged to be a pettifogger, and
the question is, whether you shall continue that trade, or at
once be silenced by not getting a fifth part of the votes. A
happy fortune, do you see, you have enjoyed, that you should
denounce mine as miserable!
--DEMOSTHENES.
7. After careful study and practice, mark the pauses in the following:
The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the
great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of
preparation--the music of the boisterous drums, the silver
voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and
hear the appeals of orators; we see the pale cheeks of women and
the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all
the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight
of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great
army of freedom. We see them part from those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet woody places with the maiden
they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of
eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are
bending over cradles, kissing babies that are asleep. Some are
receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting from those
who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again,
and say nothing; and some are talking with wives, and
endeavoring with brave words spoken in the old tones to drive
from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
wife standing in the door, with the babe in her arms--standing
in the sunlight sobbing; at the turn of the road a hand
waves--she answers by holding high in her loving hands the
child. He is gone--and forever.
--ROBERT J. INGERSOLL, _to the Soldiers of Indianapolis_.
8. Where would you pause in the following selections? Try pausing in
different places and note the effect it gives.
The moving finger writes; and having writ moves on: nor all your
piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all
your tears wash out a word of it.
The history of womankind is a story of abuse. For ages men beat,
sold, and abused their wives and daughters like cattle. The
Spartan mother that gave birth to one of her own sex disgraced
herself; the girl babies were often deserted in the mountains to
starve; China bound and deformed their feet; Turkey veiled their
faces; America denied them equal educational advantages with
men. Most of the world still refuses them the right to
participate in the government and everywhere women bear the
brunt of an unequal standard of morality.
But the women are on the march. They are walking upward to the
sunlit plains where the thinking people rule. China has ceased
binding their feet. In the shadow of the Harem Turkey has opened
a school for girls. America has given the women equal
educational advantages, and America, we believe, will
enfranchise them.
We can do little to help and not much to hinder this great
movement. The thinking people have put their O.K. upon it. It is
moving forward to its goal just as surely as this old earth is
swinging from the grip of winter toward the spring's blossoms
and the summer's harvest.[1]
9. Read aloud the following address, paying careful attention to pause
wherever the emphasis may thereby be heightened.
_THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT_
... At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now,
as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and
its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men." Even when it
first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow
which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant
victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won
advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.
The secret of its assured success lies in that very
characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its
great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact
that it is a party of one idea; but that is a noble one--an idea
that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality
of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all
are equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.
I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and
all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty
senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in
Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of
freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared
to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the
government of the United States, under the conduct of the
Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain
and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United
States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering
together the forces with which to recover back again all the
fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound
and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the
Constitution and freedom forever.
--W.H. SEWARD.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From an editorial by D.C. in _Leslie's Weekly_, June 4,
1914. Used by permission.]
CHAPTER VII
EFFICIENCY THROUGH INFLECTION
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet; now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where Memory slept.
--WILLIAM COWPER, _The Task_.
Herbert Spencer remarked that "Cadence"--by which he meant the
modulation of the tones of the voice in speaking--"is the running
commentary of the emotions upon the propositions of the intellect." How
true this is will appear when we reflect that the little upward and
downward shadings of the voice tell more truly what we mean than our
words. The expressiveness of language is literally multiplied by this
subtle power to shade the vocal tones, and this voice-shading we call
_inflection_.
The change of pitch _within_ a word is even more important, because more
delicate, than the change of pitch from phrase to phrase. Indeed, one
cannot be practised without the other. The bare words are only so many
bricks--inflection will make of them a pavement, a garage, or a
cathedral. It is the power of inflection to change the meaning of words
that gave birth to the old saying: "It is not so much what you say, as
how you say it."
Mrs. Jameson, the Shakespearean commentator, has given us a penetrating
example of the effect of inflection; "In her impersonation of the part
of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons adopted successively three different
intonations in giving the words 'We fail.' At first a quick contemptuous
interrogation--'We fail?' Afterwards, with the note of admiration--'We
fail,' an accent of indignant astonishment laying the principal emphasis
on the word 'we'--'_we_ fail.' Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced
is the true reading--_We fail_--with the simple period, modulating the
voice to a deep, low, resolute tone which settles the issue at once as
though she had said: 'If we fail, why then we fail, and all is over.'"
This most expressive element of our speech is the last to be mastered in
attaining to naturalness in speaking a foreign language, and its correct
use is the main element in a natural, flexible utterance of our native
tongue. Without varied inflections speech becomes wooden and monotonous.
There are but two kinds of inflection, the rising and the falling, yet
these two may be so shaded or so combined that they are capable of
producing as many varieties of modulation as maybe illustrated by either
one or two lines, straight or curved, thus:
[Illustration of each line]
Sharp rising
Long rising
Level
Long falling
Sharp falling
Sharp rising and falling
Sharp falling and rising
Hesitating
These may be varied indefinitely, and serve merely to illustrate what
wide varieties of combination may be effected by these two simple
inflections of the voice.
It is impossible to tabulate the various inflections which serve to
express various shades of thought and feeling. A few suggestions are
offered here, together with abundant exercises for practise, but the
only real way to master inflection is to observe, experiment, and
practise.
For example, take the common sentence, "Oh, he's all right." Note how a
rising inflection may be made to express faint praise, or polite doubt,
or uncertainty of opinion. Then note how the same words, spoken with a
generally falling inflection may denote certainty, or good-natured
approval, or enthusiastic praise, and so on.
In general, then, we find that a bending upward of the voice will
suggest doubt and uncertainty, while a decided falling inflection will
suggest that you are certain of your ground.
Students dislike to be told that their speeches are "not so bad," spoken
with a rising inflection. To enunciate these words with a long falling
inflection would indorse the speech rather heartily.
Say good-bye to an imaginary person whom you expect to see again
tomorrow; then to a dear friend you never expect to meet again. Note the
difference in inflection.
"I have had a delightful time," when spoken at the termination of a
formal tea by a frivolous woman takes altogether different inflection
than the same words spoken between lovers who have enjoyed themselves.
Mimic the two characters in repeating this and observe the difference.
Note how light and short the inflections are in the following brief
quotation from "Anthony the Absolute," by Samuel Mervin.
_At Sea--March 28th_.
This evening I told Sir Robert What's His Name he was a fool.
I was quite right in this. He is.
Every evening since the ship left Vancouver he has presided over
the round table in the middle of the smoking-room. There he sips
his coffee and liqueur, and holds forth on every subject known
to the mind of man. Each subject is _his_ subject. He is an
elderly person, with a bad face and a drooping left eyelid.
They tell me that he is in the British Service--a judge
somewhere down in Malaysia, where they drink more than is good
for them.
Deliver the two following selections with great earnestness, and note
how the inflections differ from the foregoing. Then reread these
selections in a light, superficial manner, noting that the change of
attitude is expressed through a change of inflection.
When I read a sublime fact in Plutarch, or an unselfish deed in
a line of poetry, or thrill beneath some heroic legend, it is no
longer fairyland--I have seen it matched.
--WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
--CRANCH
It must be made perfectly clear that inflection deals mostly in subtle,
delicate shading _within single words_, and is not by any means
accomplished by a general rise or fall in the voice in speaking a
sentence. Yet certain sentences may be effectively delivered with just
such inflection. Try this sentence in several ways, making no
modulation until you come to the last two syllables, as indicated,
And yet I told him dis-
__________________________
(high) | tinctly.
|___________
(low)
tinctly.
____________
And yet I told him dis- | (high)
_________________________|
(low)
Now try this sentence by inflecting the important words so as to bring
out various shades of meaning. The first forms, illustrated above, show
change of pitch _within a single word_; the forms you will work out for
yourself should show a number of such inflections throughout the
sentence.
One of the chief means of securing emphasis is to employ a long falling
inflection on the emphatic words--that is, to let the voice fall to a
lower pitch on an _interior_ vowel sound in a word. Try it on the words
"every," "eleemosynary," and "destroy."
Use long falling inflections on the italicized words in the following
selection, noting their emphatic power. Are there any other words here
that long falling inflections would help to make expressive?
_ADDRESS IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE_
This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble
institution; it is the case of _every_ college in our land. It
is _more_; it is the case of _every eleemosynary_ institution
throughout our country--of _all_ those great charities founded
by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery and
scatter blessings along the pathway of life. Sir, you may
_destroy_ this little institution--it is _weak_, it is in your
hands. I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary
horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do you
must carry through your work; you must extinguish, one after
another, _all_ those great lights of science which, for more
than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!
It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet--there are
those who _love_ it!
Sir, I know not how others may feel, but as for myself when I
see my alma mater surrounded, like Cĉsar in the senate house,
by those who are reiterating _stab_ after _stab_, I would not
for this right hand have her turn to me and say, And _thou,
too_, my son!
--DANIEL WEBSTER.
Be careful not to over-inflect. Too much modulation produces an
unpleasant effect of artificiality, like a mature matron trying to be
kittenish. It is a short step between true expression and unintentional
burlesque. Scrutinize your own tones. Take a single expression like "Oh,
no!" or "Oh, I see," or "Indeed," and by patient self-examination see
how many shades of meaning may be expressed by inflection. This sort of
common-sense practise will do you more good than a book of rules. _But
don't forget to listen to your own voice._
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. In your own words define (a) cadence, (b) modulation, (c) inflection,
(d) emphasis.
2. Name five ways of destroying monotony and gaining effectiveness in
speech.
3. What states of mind does falling inflection signify? Make as full a
list as you can.
4. Do the same for the rising inflection.
5. How does the voice bend in expressing (_a_) surprise? (_b_) shame?
(_c_) hate? (_d_) formality? (_e_) excitement?
6. Reread some sentence several times and by using different inflections
change the meaning with each reading.
7. Note the inflections employed in some speech or conversation. Were
they the best that could be used to bring out the meaning? Criticise and
illustrate.
8. Render the following passages:
Has the gentleman done? Has he completely done?
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
9. Invent an indirect question and show how it would naturally be
inflected.
10. Does a direct question always require a rising inflection?
Illustrate.
11. Illustrate how the complete ending of an expression or of a speech
is indicated by inflection.
12. Do the same for incompleteness of idea.
13. Illustrate (_a_) trembling, (_b_) hesitation, and (_c_) doubt by
means of inflection.
14. Show how contrast may be expressed.
15. Try the effects of both rising and falling inflections on the
italicized words in the following sentences. State your preference.
Gentlemen, I am _persuaded_, nay, I am _resolved_ to speak.
It is sown a _natural_ body; it is raised a _spiritual_ body.
SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE
In the following selections secure emphasis by means of long falling
inflections rather than loudness.
Repeat these selections, attempting to put into practise all the
technical principles that we have thus far had; emphasizing important
words, subordinating unimportant words, variety of pitch, changing
tempo, pause, and inflection. If these principles are applied you will
have no trouble with monotony.
Constant practise will give great facility in the use of inflection and
will render the voice itself flexible.
_CHARLES I_
We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are
told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having
given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most
hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is,
that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We
censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of
Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration,
promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was
accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is
to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke
dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we
verily believe, most of his popularity with the present
generation.
--T.B. MACAULAY.
_ABRAHAM LINCOLN_
We needed not that he should put on paper that he believed in
slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal,
hovered around that majestic man to destroy his life. He was
himself but the long sting with which slavery struck at liberty;
and he carried the poison that belonged to slavery. As long as
this nation lasts, it will never be forgotten that we have one
martyred President--never! Never, while time lasts, while
heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten
that slavery, by its minions, slew him, and in slaying him made
manifest its whole nature and tendency.
But another thing for us to remember is that this blow was aimed
at the life of the government and of the nation. Lincoln was
slain; America was meant. The man was cast down; the government
was smitten at. It was the President who was killed. It was
national life, breathing freedom and meaning beneficence, that
was sought. He, the man of Illinois, the private man, divested
of robes and the insignia of authority, representing nothing but
his personal self, might have been hated; but that would not
have called forth the murderer's blow. It was because he stood
in the place of government, representing government and a
government that represented right and liberty, that he was
singled out.
This, then, is a crime against universal government. It is not a
blow at the foundations of our government, more than at the
foundations of the English government, of the French government,
of every compact and well-organized government. It was a crime
against mankind. The whole world will repudiate and stigmatize
it as a deed without a shade of redeeming light....
The blow, however, has signally failed. The cause is not
stricken; it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved,--but in
tears only. It stands, four-square, more solid, to-day, than any
pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted,
nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger
hate and love to-day than ever before. The Government is not
weakened, it is made stronger....
And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than
when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming.
Cities and states are his pall-bearers, and the cannon beats the
hours with solemn progression. Dead--dead--dead--he yet
speaketh! Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is
any man dead that ever was fit to live? Disenthralled of flesh,
and risen to the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes,
he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the
Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass
on, thou that hast overcome! Your sorrows O people, are his
peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in
his ear. Wail and weep here; God makes it echo joy and triumph
there. Pass on, victor!
Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried
man, and from among the people; we return him to you a mighty
conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours, but
the world's. Give him place, ye prairies! In the midst of this
great Continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to
myriads who shall make pilgrimage to that shrine to kindle anew
their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds, that move over the mighty
places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a
martyr, whose blood, as so many inarticulate words, pleads for
fidelity, for law, for liberty!
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
_THE HISTORY OF LIBERTY_
The event which we commemorate is all-important, not merely in
our own annals, but in those of the world. The sententious
English poet has declared that "the proper study of mankind is
man," and of all inquiries of a temporal nature, the history of
our fellow-beings is unquestionably among the most interesting.
But not all the chapters of human history are alike important.
The annals of our race have been filled up with incidents which
concern not, or at least ought not to concern, the great company
of mankind. History, as it has often been written, is the
genealogy of princes, the field-book of conquerors; and the
fortunes of our fellow-men have been treated only so far as they
have been affected by the influence of the great masters and
destroyers of our race. Such history is, I will not say a
worthless study, for it is necessary for us to know the dark
side as well as the bright side of our condition. But it is a
melancholy study which fills the bosom of the philanthropist and
the friend of liberty with sorrow.
But the history of liberty--the history of men struggling to be
free--the history of men who have acquired and are exercising
their freedom--the history of those great movements in the
world, by which liberty has been established and perpetuated,
forms a subject which we cannot contemplate too closely. This is
the real history of man, of the human family, of rational
immortal beings....
The trial of adversity was theirs; the trial of prosperity is
ours. Let us meet it as men who know their duty and prize their
blessings. Our position is the most enviable, the most
responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its
duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we
fail--if we fail--not only do we defraud our children of the
inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the
hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent,
throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time.
History is not without her examples of hard-fought fields, where
the banner of liberty has floated triumphantly on the wildest
storm of battle. She is without her examples of a people by whom
the dear-bought treasure has been wisely employed and safely
handed down. The eyes of the world are turned for that example
to us....
Let us, then, as we assemble on the birthday of the nation, as
we gather upon the green turf, once wet with precious blood--let
us devote ourselves to the sacred cause of constitutional
liberty! Let us abjure the interests and passions which divide
the great family of American freemen! Let the rage of party
spirit sleep to-day! Let us resolve that our children shall have
cause to bless the memory of their fathers, as we have cause to
bless the memory of ours!
--EDWARD EVERETT.
CHAPTER VIII
CONCENTRATION IN DELIVERY
Attention is the microscope of the mental eye. Its power may be
high or low; its field of view narrow or broad. When high power
is used attention is confined within very circumscribed limits,
but its action is exceedingly intense and absorbing. It sees but
few things, but these few are observed "through and through" ...
Mental energy and activity, whether of perception or of thought,
thus concentrated, act like the sun's rays concentrated by the
burning glass. The object is illumined, heated, set on fire.
Impressions are so deep that they can never be effaced.
Attention of this sort is the prime condition of the most
productive mental labor.
--DANIEL PUTNAM, _Psychology_.
Try to rub the top of your head forward and backward at the same time
that you are patting your chest. Unless your powers of coördination are
well developed you will find it confusing, if not impossible. The brain
needs special training before it can do two or more things efficiently
at the same instant. It may seem like splitting a hair between its north
and northwest corner, but some psychologists argue that _no_ brain can
think two distinct thoughts, absolutely simultaneously--that what seems
to be simultaneous is really very rapid rotation from the first thought
to the second and back again, just as in the above-cited experiment the
attention must shift from one hand to the other until one or the other
movement becomes partly or wholly automatic.
Whatever is the psychological truth of this contention it is undeniable
that the mind measurably loses grip on one idea the moment the attention
is projected decidedly ahead to a second or a third idea.
A fault in public speakers that is as pernicious as it is common is that
they try to think of the succeeding sentence while still uttering the
former, and in this way their concentration trails off; in consequence,
they start their sentences strongly and end them weakly. In a
well-prepared written speech the emphatic word usually comes at one end
of the sentence. But an emphatic word needs emphatic expression, and
this is precisely what it does not get when concentration flags by
leaping too soon to that which is next to be uttered. Concentrate all
your mental energies on the present sentence. Remember that the mind of
your audience follows yours very closely, and if you withdraw your
attention from what you are saying to what you are going to say, your
audience will also withdraw theirs. They may not do so consciously and
deliberately, but they will surely cease to give importance to the
things that you yourself slight. It is fatal to either the actor or the
speaker to cross his bridges too soon.
Of course, all this is not to say that in the natural pauses of your
speech you are not to take swift forward surveys--they are as important
as the forward look in driving a motor car; the caution is of quite
another sort: _while speaking one sentence do not think of the sentence
to follow_. Let it come from its proper source--within yourself. You
cannot deliver a broadside without concentrated force--that is what
produces the explosion. In preparation you store and concentrate thought
and feeling; in the pauses during delivery you swiftly look ahead and
gather yourself for effective attack; during the moments of actual
speech, _SPEAK--DON'T ANTICIPATE_. Divide your attention and you divide
your power.
This matter of the effect of the inner man upon the outer needs a
further word here, particularly as touching concentration.
"What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet replied, "Words. Words. Words." That
is a world-old trouble. The mechanical calling of words is not
expression, by a long stretch. Did you ever notice how hollow a
memorized speech usually sounds? You have listened to the ranting,
mechanical cadence of inefficient actors, lawyers and preachers. Their
trouble is a mental one--they are not concentratedly thinking thoughts
that cause words to issue with sincerity and conviction, but are merely
enunciating word-sounds mechanically. Painful experience alike to
audience and to speaker! A parrot is equally eloquent. Again let
Shakespeare instruct us, this tune in the insincere prayer of the King,
Hamlet's uncle. He laments thus pointedly:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
The truth is, that as a speaker your words must be born again every time
they are spoken, then they will not suffer in their utterance, even
though perforce committed to memory and repeated, like Dr. Russell
Conwell's lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," five thousand times. Such
speeches lose nothing by repetition for the perfectly patent reason
that they arise from concentrated thought and feeling and not a mere
necessity for saying something--which usually means anything, and that,
in turn, is tantamount to nothing. If the thought beneath your words is
warm, fresh, spontaneous, a part of your _self_, your utterance will
have breath and life. Words are only a result. Do not try to get the
result without stimulating the cause.
Do you ask _how_ to concentrate? Think of the word itself, and of its
philological brother, _concentric_. Think of how a lens gathers and
concenters the rays of light within a given circle. It centers them by a
process of withdrawal. It may seem like a harsh saying, but the man who
cannot concentrate is either weak of will, a nervous wreck, or has never
learned what will-power is good for.
You must concentrate by resolutely withdrawing your attention from
everything else. If you concentrate your thought on a pain which may be
afflicting you, that pain will grow more intense. "Count your blessings"
and they will multiply. Center your thought on your strokes and your
tennis play will gradually improve. To concentrate is simply to attend
to one thing, and attend to nothing else. If you find that you cannot do
that, there is something wrong--attend to that first. Remove the cause
and the symptom will disappear. Read the chapter on "Will Power."
Cultivate your will by willing and then doing, at all costs.
Concentrate--and you will win.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Select from any source several sentences suitable for speaking aloud;
deliver them first in the manner condemned in this chapter, and second
with due regard for emphasis toward the close of each sentence.
2. Put into about one hundred words your impression of the effect
produced.
3. Tell of any peculiar methods you may have observed or heard of by
which speakers have sought to aid their powers of concentration, such as
looking fixedly at a blank spot in the ceiling, or twisting a watch
charm.
4. What effect do such habits have on the audience?
5. What relation does pause bear to concentration?
6. Tell why concentration naturally helps a speaker to change pitch,
tempo, and emphasis.
7. Read the following selection through to get its meaning and spirit
clearly in your mind. Then read it aloud, concentrating solely on the
thought that you are expressing--do not trouble about the sentence or
thought that is coming. Half the troubles of mankind arise from
anticipating trials that never occur. Avoid this in speaking. Make the
end of your sentences just as strong as the beginning. _CONCENTRATE._
_WAR!_
The last of the savage instincts is war. The cave man's club
made law and procured food. Might decreed right. Warriors were
saviours.
In Nazareth a carpenter laid down the saw and preached the
brotherhood of man. Twelve centuries afterwards his followers
marched to the Holy Land to destroy all who differed with them
in the worship of the God of Love. Triumphantly they wrote "In
Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of
the Saracens up to the knees of their horses."
History is an appalling tale of war. In the seventeenth century
Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain warred for thirty years. At
Magdeburg 30,000 out of 36,000 were killed regardless of sex or
age. In Germany schools were closed for a third of a century,
homes burned, women outraged, towns demolished, and the untilled
land became a wilderness.
Two-thirds of Germany's property was destroyed and 18,000,000 of
her citizens were killed, because men quarrelled about the way
to glorify "The Prince of Peace." Marching through rain and
snow, sleeping on the ground, eating stale food or starving,
contracting diseases and facing guns that fire six hundred times
a minute, for fifty cents a day--this is the soldier's life.
At the window sits the widowed mother crying. Little children
with tearful faces pressed against the pane watch and wait.
Their means of livelihood, their home, their happiness is gone.
Fatherless children, broken-hearted women, sick, disabled and
dead men--this is the wage of war.
We spend more money preparing men to kill each other than we do
in teaching them to live. We spend more money building one
battleship than in the annual maintenance of all our state
universities. The financial loss resulting from destroying one
another's homes in the civil war would have built 15,000,000
houses, each costing $2,000. We pray for love but prepare for
hate. We preach peace but equip for war.
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and court
Given to redeem this world from error,
There would be no need of arsenal and fort.
War only defers a question. No issue will ever really be settled
until it is settled rightly. Like rival "gun gangs" in a back
alley, the nations of the world, through the bloody ages, have
fought over their differences. Denver cannot fight Chicago and
Iowa cannot fight Ohio. Why should Germany be permitted to fight
France, or Bulgaria fight Turkey?
When mankind rises above creeds, colors and countries, when we
are citizens, not of a nation, but of the world, the armies and
navies of the earth will constitute an international police
force to preserve the peace and the dove will take the eagle's
place.
Our differences will be settled by an international court with
the power to enforce its mandates. In times of peace prepare for
peace. The wages of war are the wages of sin, and the "wages of
sin is death."
--_Editorial by D.C., Leslie's Weekly; used by permission._
CHAPTER IX
FORCE
However, 'tis expedient to be wary:
Indifference, certes, don't produce distress;
And rash enthusiasm in good society
Were nothing but a moral inebriety.
--BYRON, _Don Juan_.
You have attended plays that seemed fair, yet they did not move you,
grip you. In theatrical parlance, they failed to "get over," which means
that their message did not get over the foot-lights to the audience.
There was no punch, no jab to them--they had no force.
Of course, all this spells disaster, in big letters, not only in a stage
production but in any platform effort. Every such presentation exists
solely for the audience, and if it fails to hit them--and the expression
is a good one--it has no excuse for living; nor will it live long.
_What is Force?_
Some of our most obvious words open up secret meanings under scrutiny,
and this is one of them.
To begin with, we must recognize the distinction between inner and outer
force. The one is cause, the other effect. The one is spiritual, the
other physical. In this important particular, animate force differs from
inanimate force--the power of man, coming from within and expressing
itself outwardly, is of another sort from the force of Shimose powder,
which awaits some influence from without to explode it. However
susceptive to outside stimuli, the true source of power in man lies
within himself. This may seem like "mere psychology," but it has an
intensely practical bearing on public speaking, as will appear.
Not only must we discern the difference between human force and mere
physical force, but we must not confuse its real essence with some of
the things that may--and may not--accompany it. For example, loudness is
not force, though force at times may be attended by noise. Mere roaring
never made a good speech, yet there are moments--moments, mind you, not
minutes--when big voice power may be used with tremendous effect.
Nor is violent motion force--yet force may result in violent motion.
Hamlet counseled the players:
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use
all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say)
whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to
the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings[2]; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing
but inexplicable dumb show, and noise. I would have such a
fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.
Pray you avoid it.
Be not too tame, neither, but let your discretion be your tutor:
suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature;
for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as
'twere, the mirror up to Nature, to show Virtue her own feature,
Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though
it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious
grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance,
o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, there be players that I
have seen play--and heard others praise, and that highly--not to
speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably.[3]
Force is both a cause and an effect. Inner force, which must precede
outer force, is a combination of four elements, acting progressively.
First of all, _force arises from conviction_. You must be convinced of
the truth, or the importance, or the meaning, of what you are about to
say before you can give it forceful delivery. It must lay strong hold
upon your convictions before it can grip your audience. Conviction
convinces.
_The Saturday Evening Post_ in an article on "England's T.R."--Winston
Spencer Churchill--attributed much of Churchill's and Roosevelt's public
platform success to their forceful delivery. No matter what is in hand,
these men make themselves believe for the time being that that one thing
is the most important on earth. Hence they speak to their audiences in a
Do-this-or-you-_PERISH_ manner.
That kind of speaking wins, and it is that virile, strenuous, aggressive
attitude which both distinguishes and maintains the platform careers of
our greatest leaders.
But let us look a little closer at the origins of inner force. How does
conviction affect the man who feels it? We have answered the inquiry in
the very question itself--he _feels_ it: _Conviction produces emotional
tension_. Study the pictures of Theodore Roosevelt and of Billy Sunday
in action--_action_ is the word. Note the tension of their jaw muscles,
the taut lines of sinews in their entire bodies when reaching a climax
of force. Moral and physical force are alike in being both preceded and
accompanied by in-_tens_-ity--tension--tightness of the cords of power.
It is this tautness of the bow-string, this knotting of the muscles,
this contraction before the spring, that makes an audience
_feel_--almost see--the reserve power in a speaker. In some really
wonderful way it is more what a speaker does _not_ say and do that
reveals the dynamo within. _Anything_ may come from such stored-up force
once it is let loose; and that keeps an audience alert, hanging on the
lips of a speaker for his next word. After all, it is all a question of
manhood, for a stuffed doll has neither convictions nor emotional
tension. If you are upholstered with sawdust, keep off the platform, for
your own speech will puncture you.
Growing out of this conviction-tension comes _resolve to make the
audience share that conviction-tension_. Purpose is the backbone of
force; without it speech is flabby--it may glitter, but it is the
iridescence of the spineless jellyfish. You must hold fast to your
resolve if you would hold fast to your audience.
Finally, all this conviction-tension-purpose is lifeless and useless
unless it results in _propulsion_. You remember how Young in his
wonderful "Night Thoughts" delineates the man who
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
Resolves, and re-resolves, and dies the same.
Let not your force "die a-borning,"--bring it to full life in its
conviction, emotional tension, resolve, and propulsive power.
_Can Force be Acquired?_
Yes, if the acquirer has any such capacities as we have just outlined.
How to acquire this vital factor is suggested in its very analysis: Live
with your subject until you are convinced of its importance.
If your message does not of itself arouse you to tension, _PULL_
yourself together. When a man faces the necessity of leaping across a
crevasse he does not wait for inspiration, he _wills_ his muscles into
tensity for the spring--it is not without purpose that our English
language uses the same word to depict a mighty though delicate steel
contrivance and a quick leap through the air. Then resolve--and let it
all end in actual _punch_.
This truth is worth reiteration: The man within is the final factor. He
must supply the fuel. The audience, or even the man himself, may add the
match--it matters little which, only so that there be fire. However
skillfully your engine is constructed, however well it works, you will
have no force if the fire has gone out under the boiler. It matters
little how well you have mastered poise, pause, modulation, and tempo,
if your speech lacks fire it is dead. Neither a dead engine nor a dead
speech will move anybody.
Four factors of force are measurably within your control, and in that
far may be acquired: _ideas_, _feeling about the subject_, _wording_, and
_delivery_. Each of these is more or less fully discussed in this
volume, except wording, which really requires a fuller rhetorical study
than can here be ventured. It is, however, of the utmost importance that
you should be aware of precisely how wording bears upon force in a
sentence. Study "The Working Principles of Rhetoric," by John Franklin
Genung, or the rhetorical treatises of Adams Sherman Hill, of Charles
Sears Baldwin, or any others whose names may easily be learned from any
teacher.
Here are a few suggestions on the use of words to attain force:
_Choice of Words_
PLAIN words are more forceful than words less commonly used--_juggle_
has more vigor than _prestidigitate_.
SHORT words are stronger than long words--_end_ has more directness than
_terminate_.
SAXON words are usually more forceful than Latinistic words--for force,
use _wars against_ rather than _militate against_.
SPECIFIC words are stronger than general words--_pressman_ is more
definite than _printer_.
CONNOTATIVE words, those that suggest more than they say, have more
power than ordinary words--"She _let_ herself be married" expresses more
than "She _married_."
EPITHETS, figuratively descriptive words, are more effective than direct
names--"Go tell that _old fox_," has more "punch" than "Go tell that
_sly fellow_." ONOMATOPOETIC words, words that convey the sense by the
sound, are more powerful than other words--_crash_ is more effective
than _cataclysm_.
_Arrangement of words_
Cut out modifiers.
Cut out connectives.
Begin with words that demand attention.
"End with words that deserve distinction," says Prof. Barrett Wendell.
Set strong ideas over against weaker ones, so as to gain strength by the
contrast.
Avoid elaborate sentence structure--short sentences are stronger than
long ones.
Cut out every useless word, so as to give prominence to the really
important ones.
Let each sentence be a condensed battering ram, swinging to its final
blow on the attention.
A familiar, homely idiom, if not worn by much use, is more effective
than a highly formal, scholarly expression.
Consider well the relative value of different positions in the sentence
so that you may give the prominent place to ideas you wish to emphasize.
"But," says someone, "is it not more honest to depend the inherent
interest in a subject, its native truth, clearness and sincerity of
presentation, and beauty of utterance, to win your audience? Why not
charm men instead of capturing them by assault?"
_Why Use Force?_
There is much truth in such an appeal, but not all the truth.
Clearness, persuasion, beauty, simple statement of truth, are all
essential--indeed, they are all definite parts of a forceful
presentment of a subject, without being the only parts. Strong
meat may not be as attractive as ices, but all depends on the
appetite and the stage of the meal.
You can not deliver an aggressive message with caressing little strokes.
No! Jab it in with hard, swift solar plexus punches. You cannot strike
fire from flint or from an audience with love taps. Say to a crowded
theatre in a lackadaisical manner: "It seems to me that the house is on
fire," and your announcement may be greeted with a laugh. If you flash
out the words: "The house's on fire!" they will crush one another in
getting to the exits.
The spirit and the language of force are definite with conviction. No
immortal speech in literature contains such expressions as "it seems to
me," "I should judge," "in my opinion," "I suppose," "perhaps it is
true." The speeches that will live have been delivered by men ablaze
with the courage of their convictions, who uttered their words as
eternal truth. Of Jesus it was said that "the common people heard Him
gladly." Why? "He taught them as one having _AUTHORITY_." An audience
will never be moved by what "seems" to you to be truth or what in your
"humble opinion" may be so. If you honestly can, assert convictions as
your conclusions. Be sure you are right before you speak your speech,
then utter your thoughts as though they were a Gibraltar of
unimpeachable _truth_. Deliver them with the iron hand and confidence of
a Cromwell. Assert them with the fire of _authority_. Pronounce them as
an _ultimatum_. If you cannot speak with conviction, be silent.
What force did that young minister have who, fearing to be too dogmatic,
thus exhorted his hearers: "My friends--as I assume that you are--it
appears to be my duty to tell you that if you do not repent, so to
speak, forsake your sins, as it were, and turn to righteousness, if I
may so express it, you will be lost, in a measure"?
Effective speech must reflect the era. This is not a rose water age, and
a tepid, half-hearted speech will not win. This is the century of trip
hammers, of overland expresses that dash under cities and through
mountain tunnels, and you must instill this spirit into your speech if
you would move a popular audience. From a front seat listen to a
first-class company present a modern Broadway drama--not a comedy, but a
gripping, thrilling drama. Do not become absorbed in the story; reserve
all your attention for the technique and the force of the acting. There
is a kick and a crash as well as an infinitely subtle intensity in the
big, climax-speeches that suggest this lesson: the same well-calculated,
restrained, delicately shaded force would simply _rivet_ your ideas in
the minds of your audience. An air-gun will rattle bird-shot against a
window pane--it takes a rifle to wing a bullet through plate glass and
the oaken walls beyond.
_When to Use Force_
An audience is unlike the kingdom of heaven--the violent do not always
take it by force. There are times when beauty and serenity should be the
only bells in your chime. Force is only one of the great extremes of
contrast--use neither it nor quiet utterance to the exclusion of other
tones: be various, and in variety find even greater force than you could
attain by attempting its constant use. If you are reading an essay on
the beauties of the dawn, talking about the dainty bloom of a
honey-suckle, or explaining the mechanism of a gas engine, a vigorous
style of delivery is entirely out of place. But when you are appealing
to wills and consciences for immediate action, forceful delivery wins.
In such cases, consider the minds of your audience as so many safes that
have been locked and the keys lost. Do not try to figure out the
combinations. Pour a little nitro glycerine into the cracks and light
the fuse. As these lines are being written a contractor down the street
is clearing away the rocks with dynamite to lay the foundations for a
great building. When you want to get action, do not fear to use
dynamite.
The final argument for the effectiveness of force in public speech is
the fact that everything must be enlarged for the purposes of the
platform--that is why so few speeches read well in the reports on the
morning after: statements appear crude and exaggerated because they are
unaccompanied by the forceful delivery of a glowing speaker before an
audience heated to attentive enthusiasm. So in preparing your speech you
must not err on the side of mild statement--your audience will
inevitably tone down your words in the cold grey of afterthought. When
Phidias was criticised for the rough, bold outlines of a figure he had
submitted in competition, he smiled and asked that his statue and the
one wrought by his rival should be set upon the column for which the
sculpture was destined. When this was done all the exaggerations and
crudities, toned by distances, melted into exquisite grace of line and
form. Each speech must be a special study in suitability and proportion.
Omit the thunder of delivery, if you will, but like Wendell Phillips put
"silent lightning" into your speech. Make your thoughts breathe and your
words burn. Birrell said: "Emerson writes like an electrical cat
emitting sparks and shocks in every sentence." Go thou and speak
likewise. Get the "big stick" into your delivery--be forceful.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Illustrate, by repeating a sentence from memory, what is meant by
employing force in speaking.
2. Which in your opinion is the most important of the technical
principles of speaking that you have studied so far? Why?
3. What is the effect of too much force in a speech? Too little?
4. Note some uninteresting conversation or ineffective speech, and tell
why it failed.
5. Suggest how it might be improved.
6. Why do speeches have to be spoken with more force than do
conversations?
7. Read aloud the selection on page 84, using the technical principles
outlined in chapters III to VIII, but neglect to put any force behind
the interpretation. What is the result?
8. Reread several times, doing your best to achieve force.
9. Which parts of the selection on page 84 require the most force?
10. Write a five-minute speech not only discussing the errors of those
who exaggerate and those who minimize the use of force, but by imitation
show their weaknesses. Do not burlesque, but closely imitate.
11. Give a list of ten themes for public addresses, saying which seem
most likely to require the frequent use of force in delivery.
12. In your own opinion, do speakers usually err from the use of too
much or too little force?
13. Define (a) bombast; (b) bathos; (c) sentimentality; (d) squeamish.
14. Say how the foregoing words describe weaknesses in public speech.
15. Recast in twentieth-century English "Hamlet's Directions to the
Players," page 88.
16. Memorize the following extracts from Wendell Phillips' speeches, and
deliver them with the of Wendell Phillips' "silent lightning" delivery.
We are for a revolution! We say in behalf of these hunted
lyings, whom God created, and who law-abiding Webster and
Winthrop have sworn shall not find shelter in Massachusetts,--we
say that they may make their little motions, and pass their
little laws in Washington, but that Faneuil Hall repeals them in
the name of humanity and the old Bay State!
* * * * *
My advice to workingmen is this:
If you want power in this country; if you want to make
yourselves felt; if you do not want your children to wait long
years before they have the bread on the table they ought to
have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the
opportunities in life they ought to have; if you don't want to
wait yourselves,--write on your banner, so that every political
trimmer can read it, so that every politician, no matter how
short-sighted he may be, can read it, "_WE NEVER FORGET!_ If you
launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ If
there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the
wrong scale, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ You may go down on your knees,
and say, 'I am sorry I did the act'--but we will say '_IT WILL
AVAIL YOU IN HEAVEN TO BE SORRY, BUT ON THIS SIDE OF THE GRAVE,
NEVER!_'" So that a man in taking up the labor question will
know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, "I
am to be true to justice and to man; otherwise I am a dead
duck."
* * * * *
In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what
government does, no remonstrance allowed, no agitation of public
issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the summit of
Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described as "a
despotism tempered by assassination." Meanwhile, such despotism
has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled
power doubtless made some of the twelve Cĉsars insane; a madman,
sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred millions of
men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled
roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into
exile for his opinions. The next week she is stripped naked and
flogged to death in the public square. No inquiry, no
explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead uniform silence, the
law of the tyrant. Where is there ground for any hope of
peaceful change? No, no! in such a land dynamite and the dagger
are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall.
Anything that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and
rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This
is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can
take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics
of our civilization.
Born within sight of Bunker Hill--son of Harvard, whose first
pledge was "Truth," citizen of a republic based on the claim
that no government is rightful unless resting on the consent of
the people, and which assumes to lead in asserting the rights of
humanity--I at least can say nothing else and nothing less--no
not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hooting my
words!
For practise on forceful selections, use "The Irrepressible Conflict,"
page 67; "Abraham Lincoln," page 76, "Pass Prosperity Around," page 470;
"A Plea for Cuba," page 50.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Those who sat in the pit or the parquet.]
[Footnote 3: _Hamlet_, Act III, Scene 2.]
CHAPTER X
FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit that hovers over
the production of genius.
--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character_.
If you are addressing a body of scientists on such a subject as the
veins in a butterfly's wings, or on road structure, naturally your theme
will not arouse much feeling in either you or your audience. These are
purely mental subjects. But if you want men to vote for a measure that
will abolish child labor, or if you would inspire them to take up arms
for freedom, you must strike straight at their feelings. We lie on soft
beds, sit near the radiator on a cold day, eat cherry pie, and devote
our attention to one of the opposite sex, not because we have reasoned
out that it is the right thing to do, but because it feels right. No one
but a dyspeptic chooses his diet from a chart. Our feelings dictate what
we shall eat and generally how we shall act. Man is a feeling animal,
hence the public speaker's ability to arouse men to action depends
almost wholly on his ability to touch their emotions.
Negro mothers on the auction-block seeing their children sold away from
them into slavery have flamed out some of America's most stirring
speeches. True, the mother did not have any knowledge of the technique
of speaking, but she had something greater than all technique, more
effective than reason: feeling. The great speeches of the world have
not been delivered on tariff reductions or post-office appropriations.
The speeches that will live have been charged with emotional force.
Prosperity and peace are poor developers of eloquence. When great wrongs
are to be righted, when the public heart is flaming with passion, that
is the occasion for memorable speaking. Patrick Henry made an immortal
address, for in an epochal crisis he pleaded for liberty. He had roused
himself to the point where he could honestly and passionately exclaim,
"Give me liberty or give me death." His fame would have been different
had he lived to-day and argued for the recall of judges.
_The Power of Enthusiasm_
Political parties hire bands, and pay for applause--they argue that, for
vote-getting, to stir up enthusiasm is more effective than reasoning.
How far they are right depends on the hearers, but there can be no doubt
about the contagious nature of enthusiasm. A watch manufacturer in New
York tried out two series of watch advertisements; one argued the
superior construction, workmanship, durability, and guarantee offered
with the watch; the other was headed, "A Watch to be Proud of," and
dwelt upon the pleasure and pride of ownership. The latter series sold
twice as many as the former. A salesman for a locomotive works informed
the writer that in selling railroad engines emotional appeal was
stronger than an argument based on mechanical excellence.
Illustrations without number might be cited to show that in all our
actions we are emotional beings. The speaker who would speak efficiently
must develop the power to arouse feeling.
Webster, great debater that he was, knew that the real secret of a
speaker's power was an emotional one. He eloquently says of eloquence:
"Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation,
all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it
come at all, like the outbreak of a fountain from the earth, or
the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous,
original, native force.
"The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and
studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when
their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children,
and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words
have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate
oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and
subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism
is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear
conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose,
the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue,
beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the
whole man onward, right onward to his subject--this, this is
eloquence; or rather, it is something greater and higher than
all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action."
When traveling through the Northwest some time ago, one of the present
writers strolled up a village street after dinner and noticed a crowd
listening to a "faker" speaking on a corner from a goods-box.
Remembering Emerson's advice about learning something from every man we
meet, the observer stopped to listen to this speaker's appeal. He was
selling a hair tonic, which he claimed to have discovered in Arizona. He
removed his hat to show what this remedy had done for him, washed his
face in it to demonstrate that it was as harmless as water, and enlarged
on its merits in such an enthusiastic manner that the half-dollars
poured in on him in a silver flood. When he had supplied the audience
with hair tonic, he asked why a greater proportion of men than women
were bald. No one knew. He explained that it was because women wore
thinner-soled shoes, and so made a good electrical connection with
mother earth, while men wore thick, dry-soled shoes that did not
transmit the earth's electricity to the body. Men's hair, not having a
proper amount of electrical food, died and fell out. Of course he had a
remedy--a little copper plate that should be nailed on the bottom of the
shoe. He pictured in enthusiastic and vivid terms the desirability of
escaping baldness--and paid tributes to his copper plates. Strange as it
may seem when the story is told in cold print, the speaker's enthusiasm
had swept his audience with him, and they crushed around his stand with
outstretched "quarters" in their anxiety to be the possessors of these
magical plates!
Emerson's suggestion had been well taken--the observer had seen again
the wonderful, persuasive power of enthusiasm!
Enthusiasm sent millions crusading into the Holy Land to redeem it from
the Saracens. Enthusiasm plunged Europe into a thirty years' war over
religion. Enthusiasm sent three small ships plying the unknown sea to
the shores of a new world. When Napoleon's army were worn out and
discouraged in their ascent of the Alps, the Little Corporal stopped
them and ordered the bands to play the Marseillaise. Under its
soul-stirring strains there were no Alps.
Listen! Emerson said: "Nothing great was ever achieved without
enthusiasm." Carlyle declared that "Every great movement in the annals
of history has been the triumph of enthusiasm." It is as contagious as
measles. Eloquence is half inspiration. Sweep your audience with you in
a pulsation of enthusiasm. Let yourself go. "A man," said Oliver
Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is
going."
_How are We to Acquire and Develop Enthusiasm?_
It is not to be slipped on like a smoking jacket. A book cannot furnish
you with it. It is a growth--an effect. But an effect of what? Let us
see.
Emerson wrote: "A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without
in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines
of his form merely,--but, by watching for a time his motion and plays,
the painter enters his nature, and then can draw him at will in every
attitude. So Roos 'entered into the inmost nature of his sheep.' I knew
a draughtsman employed in a public survey, who found that he could not
sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to
him."
When Sarah Bernhardt plays a difficult role she frequently will speak to
no one from four o'clock in the afternoon until after the performance.
From the hour of four she lives her character. Booth, it is reported,
would not permit anyone to speak to him between the acts of his
Shakesperean rôles, for he was Macbeth then--not Booth. Dante, exiled
from his beloved Florence, condemned to death, lived in caves, half
starved; then Dante wrote out his heart in "The Divine Comedy." Bunyan
entered into the spirit of his "Pilgrim's Progress" so thoroughly that
he fell down on the floor of Bedford jail and wept for joy. Turner, who
lived in a garret, arose before daybreak and walked over the hills nine
miles to see the sun rise on the ocean, that he might catch the spirit
of its wonderful beauty. Wendell Phillips' sentences were full of
"silent lightning" because he bore in his heart the sorrow of five
million slaves.
There is only one way to get feeling into your speaking--and whatever
else you forget, forget not this: _You must actually ENTER INTO_ the
character you impersonate, the cause you advocate, the case you
argue--enter into it so deeply that it clothes you, enthralls you,
possesses you wholly. Then you are, in the true meaning of the word, in
_sympathy_ with your subject, for its feeling is your feeling, you "feel
with" it, and therefore your enthusiasm is both genuine and contagious.
The Carpenter who spoke as "never man spake" uttered words born out of a
passion of love for humanity--he had entered into humanity, and thus
became Man.
But we must not look upon the foregoing words as a facile prescription
for decocting a feeling which may then be ladled out to a complacent
audience in quantities to suit the need of the moment. Genuine feeling
in a speech is bone and blood of the speech itself and not something
that may be added to it or substracted at will. In the ideal address
theme, speaker and audience become one, fused by the emotion and thought
of the hour.
_The Need of Sympathy for Humanity_
It is impossible to lay too much stress on the necessity for the
speaker's having a broad and deep tenderness for human nature. One of
Victor Hugo's biographers attributes his power as an orator and writer
to his wide sympathies and profound religious feelings. Recently we
heard the editor of _Collier's Weekly_ speak on short-story writing, and
he so often emphasized the necessity for this broad love for humanity,
this truly religious feeling, that he apologized twice for delivering a
sermon. Few if any of the immortal speeches were ever delivered for a
selfish or a narrow cause--they were born out of a passionate desire to
help humanity; instances, Paul's address to the Athenians on Mars Hill,
Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, The Sermon on the Mount, Henry's address
before the Virginia Convention of Delegates.
The seal and sign of greatness is a desire to serve others.
Self-preservation is the first law of life, but self-abnegation is the
first law of greatness--and of art. Selfishness is the fundamental cause
of all sin, it is the thing that all great religions, all worthy
philosophies, have struck at. Out of a heart of real sympathy and love
come the speeches that move humanity.
Former United States Senator Albert J. Beveridge in an introduction to
one of the volumes of "Modern Eloquence," says: "The profoundest feeling
among the masses, the most influential element in their character, is
the religious element. It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of
self-preservation. It informs the whole intellect and personality of the
people. And he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their
unformed thoughts must have this great and unanalyzable bond of sympathy
with them."
When the men of Ulster armed themselves to oppose the passage of the
Home Rule Act, one of the present writers assigned to a hundred men
"Home Rule" as the topic for an address to be prepared by each. Among
this group were some brilliant speakers, several of them experienced
lawyers and political campaigners. Some of their addresses showed a
remarkable knowledge and grasp of the subject; others were clothed in
the most attractive phrases. But a clerk, without a great deal of
education and experience, arose and told how he spent his boyhood days
in Ulster, how his mother while holding him on her lap had pictured to
him Ulster's deeds of valor. He spoke of a picture in his uncle's home
that showed the men of Ulster conquering a tyrant and marching on to
victory. His voice quivered, and with a hand pointing upward he declared
that if the men of Ulster went to war they would not go alone--a great
God would go with them.
The speech thrilled and electrified the audience. It thrills yet as we
recall it. The high-sounding phrases, the historical knowledge, the
philosophical treatment, of the other speakers largely failed to arouse
any deep interest, while the genuine conviction and feeling of the
modest clerk, speaking on a subject that lay deep in his heart, not
only electrified his audience but won their personal sympathy for the
cause he advocated.
As Webster said, it is of no use to try to pretend to sympathy or
feelings. It cannot be done successfully. "Nature is forever putting a
premium on reality." What is false is soon detected as such. The
thoughts and feelings that create and mould the speech in the study must
be born again when the speech is delivered from the platform. Do not let
your words say one thing, and your voice and attitude another. There is
no room here for half-hearted, nonchalant methods of delivery. Sincerity
is the very soul of eloquence. Carlyle was right: "No Mirabeau,
Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first
of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should
say sincerity, a great, deep, genuine sincerity, is the first
characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that
calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed; a
shallow braggart, conscious sincerity, oftenest self-conceit mainly. The
great man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of--is not
conscious of."
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
It is one thing to convince the would-be speaker that he ought to put
feeling into his speeches; often it is quite another thing for him to do
it. The average speaker is afraid to let himself go, and continually
suppresses his emotions. When you put enough feeling into your speeches
they will sound overdone to you, unless you are an experienced speaker.
They will sound too strong, if you are not used to enlarging for
platform or stage, for the delineation of the emotions must be enlarged
for public delivery.
1. Study the following speech, going back in your imagination to the
time and circumstances that brought it forth. Make it not a memorized
historical document, but feel the emotions that gave it birth. The
speech is only an effect; live over in your own heart the causes that
produced it and try to deliver it at white heat. It is not possible for
you to put too much real feeling into it, though of course it would be
quite easy to rant and fill it with false emotion. This speech,
according to Thomas Jefferson, started the ball of the Revolution
rolling. Men were then willing to go out and die for liberty.
_PATRICK HENRY'S SPEECH_
BEFORE THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF DELEGATES
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions
of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth,
and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us to
beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and
arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the
number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear
not, the things which so nearly concern our temporal salvation?
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am
willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to
provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the
lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future
but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what
there has been in the conduct of the British Ministry for the
last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have
been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that
insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your
feet. Suffer not yourselves to be "betrayed with a kiss"! Ask
yourselves, how this gracious reception of our petition comports
with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and
darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of
love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to
be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our
love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the
implements of war and subjugation, the last "arguments" to which
kings resort.
I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its
purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign
any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in
this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of
navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us;
they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and
to rivet upon us those chains which the British Ministry have
been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall
we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten
years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing.
We have held the subject up in every light of which it is
capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to
entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which
have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir,
deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that
could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We
have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we
have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored
its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry
and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our
remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our
supplications have been disregarded, and we have been spurned
with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these
things, may we indulge in the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish
to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable
privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean
not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been
so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to
abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be
obtained, we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An
appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak--"unable to cope with so
formidable an adversary"! But when shall we be stronger? Will it
be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are
totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in
every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and
inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by
lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of
hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are
not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God
of Nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people,
armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as
that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our
enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our
battles alone. There is a just Power who presides over the
destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our
battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it
is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have
no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too
late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in
submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking
may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable; and
let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain, sir,
to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry "Peace, peace!" but
there is no peace! The war is actually begun! The next gale that
sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of
resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why
stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would
they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty Powers!--I know not what course others may take; but as
for me, give me liberty or give me death!
2. Live over in your imagination all the solemnity and sorrow that
Lincoln felt at the Gettysburg cemetery. The feeling in this speech is
very deep, but it is quieter and more subdued than the preceding one.
The purpose of Henry's address was to get action; Lincoln's speech was
meant only to dedicate the last resting place of those who had acted.
Read it over and over (see page 50) until it burns in your soul. Then
commit it and repeat it for emotional expression.
3. Beecher's speech on Lincoln, page 76; Thurston's speech on "A Plea
for Cuba," page 50; and the following selection, are recommended for
practise in developing feeling in delivery.
A living force that brings to itself all the resources of
imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is
influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture,
in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine
thought and the divine arrangement; and there is no
misconstruction more utterly untrue and fatal than this: that
oratory is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles and
trifles, for the sake of making bubbles of pleasure for
transient effect on mercurial audiences. So far from that, it is
the consecration of the whole man to the noblest purposes to
which one can address himself--the education and inspiration of
his fellow men by all that there is in learning, by all that
there is in thought, by all that there is in feeling, by all
that there is in all of them, sent home through the channels of
taste and of beauty.
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
4. What in your opinion are the relative values of thought and feeling
in a speech?
5. Could we dispense with either?
6. What kinds of selections or occasions require much feeling and
enthusiasm? Which require little?
7. Invent a list of ten subjects for speeches, saying which would give
most room for pure thought and which for feeling.
8. Prepare and deliver a ten-minute speech denouncing the (imaginary)
unfeeling plea of an attorney; he may be either the counsel for the
defense or the prosecuting attorney, and the accused may be assumed to
be either guilty or innocent, at your option.
9. Is feeling more important than the technical principles expounded in
chapters III to VII? Why?
10. Analyze the secret of some effective speech or speaker. To what is
the success due?
11. Give an example from your own observation of the effect of feeling
and enthusiasm on listeners.
12. Memorize Carlyle's and Emerson's remarks on enthusiasm.
13. Deliver Patrick Henry's address, page 110, and Thurston's speech,
page 50, without show of feeling or enthusiasm. What is the result?
14. Repeat, with all the feeling these selections demand. What is the
result?
15. What steps do you intend to take to develop the power of enthusiasm
and feeling in speaking?
16. Write and deliver a five-minute speech ridiculing a speaker who uses
bombast, pomposity and over-enthusiasm. Imitate him.
CHAPTER XI
FLUENCY THROUGH PREPARATION
Animis opibusque parati--Ready in mind and resources.
--_Motto of South Carolina_.
In omnibus negotiis prius quam aggrediare, adhibenda est
prĉparatio diligens--In all matters before beginning a diligent
preparation should be made.
--CICERO, _De Officiis_.
Take your dictionary and look up the words that contain the Latin stem
_flu_--the results will be suggestive.
At first blush it would seem that fluency consists in a ready, easy use
of words. Not so--the flowing quality of speech is much more, for it is
a composite effect, with each of its prior conditions deserving of
careful notice.
_The Sources of Fluency_
Speaking broadly, fluency is almost entirely a matter of preparation.
Certainly, native gifts figure largely here, as in every art, but even
natural facility is dependent on the very same laws of preparation that
hold good for the man of supposedly small native endowment. Let this
encourage you if, like Moses, you are prone to complain that you are not
a ready speaker.
Have you ever stopped to analyze that expression, "a ready speaker?"
Readiness, in its prime sense, is preparedness, and they are most ready
who are best prepared. Quick firing depends more on the alert finger
than on the hair trigger. Your fluency will be in direct ratio to two
important conditions: your knowledge of what you are going to say, and
your being accustomed to telling what you know to an audience. This
gives us the second great element of fluency--to preparation must be
added the ease that arises from practise; of which more presently.
_Knowledge is Essential_
Mr. Bryan is a most fluent speaker when he speaks on political problems,
tendencies of the time, and questions of morals. It is to be supposed,
however, that he would not be so fluent in speaking on the bird life of
the Florida Everglades. Mr. John Burroughs might be at his best on this
last subject, yet entirely lost in talking about international law. Do
not expect to speak fluently on a subject that you know little or
nothing about. Ctesiphon boasted that he could speak all day (a sin in
itself) on any subject that an audience would suggest. He was banished
by the Spartans.
But preparation goes beyond the getting of the facts in the case you are
to present: it includes also the ability to think and arrange your
thoughts, a full and precise vocabulary, an easy manner of speech and
breathing, absence of self-consciousness, and the several other
characteristics of efficient delivery that have deserved special
attention in other parts of this book rather than in this chapter.
Preparation may be either general or specific; usually it should be
both. A life-time of reading, of companionship with stirring thoughts,
of wrestling with the problems of life--this constitutes a general
preparation of inestimable worth. Out of a well-stored mind, and--richer
still--a broad experience, and--best of all--a warmly sympathetic heart,
the speaker will have to draw much material that no _immediate_ study
could provide. General preparation consists of all that a man has put
into himself, all that heredity and environment have instilled into him,
and--that other rich source of preparedness for speech--the friendship
of wise companions. When Schiller returned home after a visit with
Goethe a friend remarked: "I am amazed by the progress Schiller can make
within a single fortnight." It was the progressive influence of a new
friendship. Proper friendships form one of the best means for the
formation of ideas and ideals, for they enable one to practise in giving
expression to thought. The speaker who would speak fluently before an
audience should learn to speak fluently and entertainingly with a
friend. Clarify your ideas by putting them in words; the talker gains as
much from his conversation as the listener. You sometimes begin to
converse on a subject thinking you have very little to say, but one idea
gives birth to another, and you are surprised to learn that the more you
give the more you have to give. This give-and-take of friendly
conversation develops mentality, and fluency in expression. Longfellow
said: "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better
than ten years' study of books," and Holmes whimsically yet none the
less truthfully declared that half the time he talked to find out what
he thought. But that method must not be applied on the platform!
After all this enrichment of life by storage, must come the special
preparation for the particular speech. This is of so definite a sort
that it warrants separate chapter-treatment later.
_Practise_
But preparation must also be of another sort than the gathering,
organizing, and shaping of materials--it must include _practise_, which,
like mental preparation, must be both general and special.
Do not feel surprised or discouraged if practise on the principles of
delivery herein laid down seems to retard your fluency. For a time, this
will be inevitable. While you are working for proper inflection, for
instance, inflection will be demanding your first thoughts, and the flow
of your speech, for the time being, will be secondary. This warning,
however, is strictly for the closet, for your practise at home. Do not
carry any thoughts of inflection with you to the platform. There you
must _think_ only of your subject. There is an absolute telepathy
between the audience and the speaker. If your thought goes to your
gesture, their thought will too. If your interest goes to the quality of
your voice, they will be regarding that instead of what your voice is
uttering.
You have doubtless been adjured to "forget everything but your subject."
This advice says either too much or too little. The truth is that while
on the platform you must not _forget_ a great many things that are not
in your subject, but you must not _think_ of them. Your attention must
consciously go only to your message, but subconsciously you will be
attending to the points of technique which have become more or less
_habitual by practise_.
A nice balance between these two kinds of attention is important.
You can no more escape this law than you can live without air: Your
platform gestures, your voice, your inflection, will all be just as good
as your _habit_ of gesture, voice, and inflection makes them--no better.
Even the thought of whether you are speaking fluently or not will have
the effect of marring your flow of speech.
Return to the opening chapter, on self-confidence, and again lay its
precepts to heart. Learn by rules to speak without thinking of rules. It
is not--or ought not to be--necessary for you to stop to think how to
say the alphabet correctly, as a matter of fact it is slightly more
difficult for you to repeat Z, Y, X than it is to say X, Y, Z--habit has
established the order. Just so you must master the laws of efficiency in
speaking until it is a second nature for you to speak correctly rather
than otherwise. A beginner at the piano has a great deal of trouble with
the mechanics of playing, but as time goes on his fingers become trained
and almost instinctively wander over the keys correctly. As an
inexperienced speaker you will find a great deal of difficulty at first
in putting principles into practise, for you will be scared, like the
young swimmer, and make some crude strokes, but if you persevere you
will "win out."
Thus, to sum up, the vocabulary you have enlarged by study,[4] the ease
in speaking you have developed by practise, the economy of your
well-studied emphasis all will subconsciously come to your aid on the
platform. Then the habits you have formed will be earning you a splendid
dividend. The fluency of your speech will be at the speed of flow your
practise has made habitual.
But this means work. What good habit does not? No philosopher's stone
that will act as a substitute for laborious practise has ever been
found. If it were, it would be thrown away, because it would kill our
greatest joy--the delight of acquisition. If public-speaking means to
you a fuller life, you will know no greater happiness than a well-spoken
speech. The time you have spent in gathering ideas and in private
practise of speaking you will find amply rewarded.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What advantages has the fluent speaker over the hesitating talker?
2. What influences, within and without the man himself, work against
fluency?
3. Select from the daily paper some topic for an address and make a
three-minute address on it. Do your words come freely and your sentences
flow out rhythmically? Practise _on the same topic_ until they do.
4. Select some subject with which you are familiar and test your fluency
by speaking extemporaneously.
5. Take one of the sentiments given below and, following the advice
given on pages 118-119, construct a short speech beginning with the last
word in the sentence.
Machinery has created a new economic world.
The Socialist Party is a strenuous worker for peace.
He was a crushed and broken man when he left prison.
War must ultimately give way to world-wide arbitration.
The labor unions demand a more equal distribution of the wealth
that labor creates.
6. Put the sentiments of Mr. Bryan's "Prince of Peace," on page 448,
into your own words. Honestly criticise your own effort.
7. Take any of the following quotations and make a five-minute speech on
it without pausing to prepare. The first efforts may be very lame, but
if you want speed on a typewriter, a record for a hundred-yard dash, or
facility in speaking, you must practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
--TENNYSON, _In Memoriam_.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
--TENNYSON, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
--CAMPBELL, _Pleasures of Hope_.
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
--GOLDSMITH, _The Deserted Village_.
Beware of desperate steps! The darkest day,
Live till tomorrow, will have passed away.
--COWPER, _Needless Alarm_.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
--PAINE, _Rights of Man_.
Trade it may help, society extend,
But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend:
It raises armies in a nation's aid,
But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd.
--POPE, _Moral Essays_.[5]
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal
away their brains!
--SHAKESPEARE, _Othello_.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
--HENLEY, _Invictus_.
The world is so full of a number of things,
I am sure we should all be happy as kings.
--STEVENSON, _A Child's Garden of Verses_.
If your morals are dreary, depend upon it they are wrong.
--STEVENSON, _Essays_.
Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content.
--EMERSON, _Essays_.
8. Make a two-minute speech on any of the following general subjects,
but you will find that your ideas will come more readily if you narrow
your subject by taking some specific phase of it. For instance, instead
of trying to speak on "Law" in general, take the proposition, "The Poor
Man Cannot Afford to Prosecute;" or instead of dwelling on "Leisure,"
show how modern speed is creating more leisure. In this way you may
expand this subject list indefinitely.
_GENERAL THEMES_
Law.
Politics.
Woman's Suffrage.
Initiative and Referendum.
A Larger Navy.
War.
Peace.
Foreign Immigration.
The Liquor Traffic.
Labor Unions.
Strikes.
Socialism.
Single Tax.
Tariff.
Honesty.
Courage.
Hope.
Love.
Mercy.
Kindness.
Justice.
Progress.
Machinery.
Invention.
Wealth.
Poverty.
Agriculture.
Science.
Surgery.
Haste.
Leisure.
Happiness.
Health.
Business.
America.
The Far East.
Mobs.
Colleges.
Sports.
Matrimony.
Divorce.
Child Labor.
Education.
Books.
The Theater.
Literature.
Electricity.
Achievement.
Failure.
Public Speaking.
Ideals.
Conversation.
The Most Dramatic Moment of My Life.
My Happiest Days.
Things Worth While.
What I Hope to Achieve.
My Greatest Desire.
What I Would Do with a Million Dollars.
Is Mankind Progressing?
Our Greatest Need.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: See chapter on "Increasing the Vocabulary."]
[Footnote 5: Money.]
CHAPTER XII
THE VOICE
Oh, there is something in that voice that reaches
The innermost recesses of my spirit!
--LONGFELLOW, _Christus_.
The dramatic critic of The London _Times_ once declared that acting is
nine-tenths voice work. Leaving the message aside, the same may justly
be said of public speaking. A rich, correctly-used voice is the greatest
physical factor of persuasiveness and power, often over-topping the
effects of reason.
But a good voice, well handled, is not only an effective possession for
the professional speaker, it is a mark of personal culture as well, and
even a distinct commercial asset. Gladstone, himself the possessor of a
deep, musical voice, has said: "Ninety men in every hundred in the
crowded professions will probably never rise above mediocrity because
the training of the voice is entirely neglected and considered of no
importance." These are words worth pondering.
There are three fundamental requisites for a good voice:
_1. Ease_
Signor Bonci of the Metropolitan Opera Company says that the secret of
good voice is relaxation; and this is true, for relaxation is the basis
of ease. The air waves that produce voice result in a different kind of
tone when striking against relaxed muscles than when striking
constricted muscles. Try this for yourself. Contract the muscles of your
face and throat as you do in hate, and flame out "I hate you!" Now relax
as you do when thinking gentle, tender thoughts, and say, "I love you."
How different the voice sounds.
In practising voice exercises, and in speaking, never force your tones.
Ease must be your watchword. The voice is a delicate instrument, and you
must not handle it with hammer and tongs. Don't _make_ your voice
go--_let_ it go. Don't work. Let the yoke of speech be easy and its
burden light.
Your throat should be free from strain during speech, therefore it is
necessary to avoid muscular contraction. The throat must act as a sort
of chimney or funnel for the voice, hence any unnatural constriction
will not only harm its tones but injure its health.
Nervousness and mental strain are common sources of mouth and throat
constriction, so make the battle for poise and self-confidence for which
we pleaded in the opening chapter.
But _how_ can I relax? you ask. By simply _willing_ to relax. Hold your
arm out straight from your shoulder. Now--withdraw all power and let it
fall. Practise relaxation of the muscles of the throat by letting your
neck and head fall forward. Roll the upper part of your body around,
with the waist line acting as a pivot. Let your head fall and roll
around as you shift the torso to different positions. Do not force your
head around--simply relax your neck and let gravity pull it around as
your body moves.
Again, let your head fall forward on your breast; raise your head,
letting your jaw hang. Relax until your jaw feels heavy, as though it
were a weight hung to your face. Remember, you must relax the jaw to
obtain command of it. It must be free and flexible for the moulding of
tone, and to let the tone pass out unobstructed.
The lips also must be made flexible, to aid in the moulding of clear and
beautiful tones. For flexibility of lips repeat the syllables,
_mo_--_me_. In saying _mo_, bring the lips up to resemble the shape of
the letter O. In repeating _me_ draw them back as you do in a grin.
Repeat this exercise rapidly, giving the lips as much exercise as
possible.
Try the following exercise in the same manner:
Mo--E--O--E--OO--Ah.
After this exercise has been mastered, the following will also be found
excellent for flexibility of lips:
Memorize these _sounds_ indicated (not the _expressions_) so that you
can repeat them rapidly.
| A as in May. | E as in Met. | U as in Use.
| A " Ah. | I " Ice. | Oi " Oil.
| A " At. | I " It. | Ou " Our.
| O " No. | O " No. | OO " Ooze.
| A " All. | OO " Foot. | A " Ah.
| E " Eat. | OO " Ooze. | E " Eat.
All the activity of breathing must be centered, not in the throat, but
in the middle of the body--you must breathe from the diaphragm. Note the
way you breathe when lying flat on the back, undressed in bed. You will
observe that all the activity then centers around the diaphragm. This is
the natural and correct method of breathing. By constant watchfulness
make this your habitual manner, for it will enable you to relax more
perfectly the muscles of the throat.
The next fundamental requisite for good voice is
_2. Openness_
If the muscles of the throat are constricted, the tone passage partially
closed, and the mouth kept half-shut, how can you expect the tone to
come out bright and clear, or even to come out at all? Sound is a series
of waves, and if you make a prison of your mouth, holding the jaws and
lips rigidly, it will be very difficult for the tone to squeeze through,
and even when it does escape it will lack force and carrying power. Open
your mouth wide, relax all the organs of speech, and let the tone flow
out easily.
Start to yawn, but instead of yawning, speak while your throat is open.
Make this open-feeling habitual when speaking--we say _make_ because it
is a matter of resolution and of practise, if your vocal organs are
healthy. Your tone passages may be partly closed by enlarged tonsils,
adenoids, or enlarged turbinate bones of the nose. If so, a skilled
physician should be consulted.
The nose is an important tone passage and should be kept open and free
for perfect tones. What we call "talking through the nose" is not
talking through the nose, as you can easily demonstrate by holding your
nose as you talk. If you are bothered with nasal tones caused by
growths or swellings in the nasal passages, a slight, painless operation
will remove the obstruction. This is quite important, aside from voice,
for the general health will be much lowered if the lungs are continually
starved for air.
The final fundamental requisite for good voice is
_3. Forwardness_
A voice that is pitched back in the throat is dark, sombre, and
unattractive. The tone must be pitched forward, but do not _force_ it
forward. You will recall that our first principle was ease. _Think_ the
tone forward and out. Believe it is going forward, and allow it to flow
easily. You can tell whether you are placing your tone forward or not by
inhaling a deep breath and singing _ah_ with the mouth wide open, trying
to feel the little delicate sound waves strike the bony arch of the
mouth just above the front teeth. The sensation is so slight that you
will probably not be able to detect it at once, but persevere in your
practise, always thinking the tone forward, and you will be rewarded by
feeling your voice strike the roof of your mouth. A correct
forward-placing of the tone will do away with the dark, throaty tones
that are so unpleasant, inefficient, and harmful to the throat.
Close the lips, humming _ng_, _im_, or _an_. Think the tone forward. Do
you feel it strike the lips?
Hold the palm of your hand in front of your face and say vigorously
_crash, dash, whirl, buzz_. Can you feel the forward tones strike
against your hand? Practise until you can. Remember, the only way to
get your voice forward is to _put_ it forward.
_How to Develop the Carrying Power of the Voice_
It is not necessary to speak loudly in order to be heard at a distance.
It is necessary only to speak correctly. Edith Wynne Matthison's voice
will carry in a whisper throughout a large theater. A paper rustling on
the stage of a large auditorium can be heard distinctly in the
furthermost seat in the gallery. If you will only use your voice
correctly, you will not have much difficulty in being heard. Of course
it is always well to address your speech to your furthest auditors; if
they get it, those nearer will have no trouble, but aside from this
obvious suggestion, you must observe these laws of voice production:
Remember to apply the principles of ease, openness and forwardness--they
are the prime factors in enabling your voice to be heard at a distance.
Do not gaze at the floor as you talk. This habit not only gives the
speaker an amateurish appearance but if the head is hung forward the
voice will be directed towards the ground instead of floating out over
the audience.
Voice is a series of air vibrations. To strengthen it two things are
necessary: more air or breath, and more vibration.
Breath is the very basis of voice. As a bullet with little powder behind
it will not have force and carrying power, so the voice that has little
breath behind it will be weak. Not only will deep breathing--breathing
from the diaphragm--give the voice a better support, but it will give
it a stronger resonance by improving the general health.
Usually, ill health means a weak voice, while abundant physical vitality
is shown through a strong, vibrant voice. Therefore anything that
improves the general vitality is an excellent voice strengthener,
provided you _use_ the voice properly. Authorities differ on most of the
rules of hygiene but on one point they all agree: vitality and longevity
are increased by deep breathing. Practise this until it becomes second
nature. Whenever you are speaking, take in deep breaths, but in such a
manner that the inhalations will be silent.
Do not try to speak too long without renewing your breath. Nature cares
for this pretty well unconsciously in conversation, and she will do the
same for you in platform speaking if you do not interfere with her
premonitions.
A certain very successful speaker developed voice carrying power by
running across country, practising his speeches as he went. The vigorous
exercise forced him to take deep breaths, and developed lung power. A
hard-fought basketball or tennis game is an efficient way of practising
deep breathing. When these methods are not convenient, we recommend the
following:
Place your hands at your sides, on the waist line.
By trying to encompass your waist with your fingers and thumbs, force
all the air out of the lungs.
Take a deep breath. Remember, all the activity is to be centered in the
_middle_ of the body; do not raise the shoulders. As the breath is taken
your hands will be forced out.
Repeat the exercise, placing your hands on the small of the back and
forcing them out as you inhale.
Many methods for deep breathing have been given by various authorities.
Get the air into your lungs--that is the important thing.
The body acts as a sounding board for the voice just as the body of the
violin acts as a sounding board for its tones. You can increase its
vibrations by practise.
Place your finger on your lip and hum the musical scale, thinking and
placing the voice forward on the lips. Do you feel the lips vibrate?
After a little practise they will vibrate, giving a tickling sensation.
Repeat this exercise, throwing the humming sound into the nose. Hold the
upper part of the nose between the thumb and forefinger. Can you feel
the nose vibrate?
Placing the palm of your hand on top of your head, repeat this humming
exercise. Think the voice there as you hum in head tones. Can you feel
the vibration there?
Now place the palm of your hand on the back of your head, repeating the
foregoing process. Then try it on the chest. Always remember to think
your tone where you desire to feel the vibrations. The mere act of
thinking about any portion of your body will tend to make it vibrate.
Repeat the following, after a deep inhalation, endeavoring to feel all
portions of your body vibrate at the same time. When you have attained
this you will find that it is a pleasant sensation.
What ho, my jovial mates. Come on! We will frolic it like
fairies, frisking in the merry moonshine.
_Purity of Voice_
This quality is sometimes destroyed by wasting the breath. Carefully
control the breath, using only as much as is necessary for the
production of tone. Utilize all that you give out. Failure to do this
results in a breathy tone. Take in breath like a prodigal; in speaking,
give it out like a miser.
_Voice Suggestions_
Never attempt to force your voice when hoarse.
Do not drink cold water when speaking. The sudden shock to the heated
organs of speech will injure the voice.
Avoid pitching your voice too high--it will make it raspy. This is a
common fault. When you find your voice in too high a range, lower it. Do
not wait until you get to the platform to try this. Practise it in your
daily conversation. Repeat the alphabet, beginning A on the lowest scale
possible and going up a note on each succeeding letter, for the
development of range. A wide range will give you facility in making
numerous changes of pitch.
Do not form the habit of listening to your voice when speaking. You will
need your brain to think of what you are saying--reserve your
observation for private practise.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What are the prime requisites for good voice?
2. Tell why each one is necessary for good voice production.
3. Give some exercises for development of these conditions.
4. Why is range of voice desirable?
5. Tell how range of voice may be cultivated.
6. How much daily practise do you consider necessary for the proper
development of your voice?
7. How can resonance and carrying power be developed?
8. What are your voice faults?
9. How are you trying to correct them?
CHAPTER XIII
VOICE CHARM
A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty
attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
--JOSEPH ADDISON, _The Tattler_.
Poe said that "the tone of beauty is sadness," but he was evidently
thinking from cause to effect, not contrariwise, for sadness is rarely a
producer of beauty--that is peculiarly the province of joy.
The exquisite beauty of a sunset is not exhilarating but tends to a sort
of melancholy that is not far from delight The haunting beauty of deep,
quiet music holds more than a tinge of sadness. The lovely minor
cadences of bird song at twilight are almost depressing.
The reason we are affected to sadness by certain forms of placid beauty
is twofold: movement is stimulating and joy-producing, while quietude
leads to reflection, and reflection in turn often brings out the tone of
regretful longing for that which is past; secondly, quiet beauty
produces a vague aspiration for the relatively unattainable, yet does
not stimulate to the tremendous effort necessary to make the dimly
desired state or object ours.
We must distinguish, for these reasons, between the sadness of beauty
and the joy of beauty. True, joy is a deep, inner thing and takes in
much more than the idea of bounding, sanguine spirits, for it includes a
certain active contentedness of heart. In this chapter, however the
word will have its optimistic, exuberant connotation--we are thinking
now of vivid, bright-eyed, laughing joy.
Musical, joyous tones constitute voice charm, a subtle magnetism that is
delightfully contagious. Now it might seem to the desultory reader that
to take the lancet and cut into this alluring voice quality would be to
dissect a butterfly wing and so destroy its charm. Yet how can we induce
an effect if we are not certain as to the cause?
_Nasal Resonance Produces the Bell-tones of the Voice_
The tone passages of the nose must be kept entirely free for the bright
tones of voice--and after our warning in the preceding chapter you will
not confuse what is popularly and erroneously called a "nasal" tone with
the true nasal quality, which is so well illustrated by the voice work
of trained French singers and speakers.
To develop nasal resonance sing the following, dwelling as long as
possible on the _ng_ sounds. Pitch the voice in the nasal cavity.
Practise both in high and low registers, and develop range--_with
brightness_.
Sing-song. Ding-dong. Hong-kong. Long-thong.
Practise in the falsetto voice develops a bright quality in the normal
speaking-voice. Try the following, and any other selections you choose,
in a falsetto voice. A man's falsetto voice is extremely high and
womanish, so men should not practise in falsetto after the exercise
becomes tiresome.
She perfectly scorned the best of his clan, and declared the
ninth of any man, a perfectly vulgar fraction.
The actress Mary Anderson asked the poet Longfellow what she could do to
improve her voice. He replied, "Read aloud daily, joyous, lyric poetry."
The joyous tones are the bright tones. Develop them by exercise.
Practise your voice exercises in an attitude of joy. Under the influence
of pleasure the body expands, the tone passages open, the action of
heart and lungs is accelerated, and all the primary conditions for good
tone are established.
More songs float out from the broken windows of the negro cabins in the
South than from the palatial homes on Fifth Avenue. Henry Ward Beecher
said the happiest days of his life were not when he had become an
international character, but when he was an unknown minister out in
Lawrenceville, Ohio, sweeping his own church, and working as a carpenter
to help pay the grocer. Happiness is largely an attitude of mind, of
viewing life from the right angle. The optimistic attitude can be
cultivated, and it will express itself in voice charm. A telephone
company recently placarded this motto in their booths: "The Voice with
the Smile Wins." It does. Try it.
Reading joyous prose, or lyric poetry, will help put smile and joy of
soul into your voice. The following selections are excellent for
practise.
_REMEMBER_ that when you first practise these classics you are to give
sole attention to two things: a joyous attitude of heart and body, and
bright tones of voice. After these ends have been attained to your
satisfaction, carefully review the principles of public speaking laid
down in the preceding chapters and put them into practise as you read
these passages again and again. _It would be better to commit each
selection to memory._
SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE
_FROM MILTON'S "L'ALLEGRO"_
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks, and wreathèd Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek,--
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty:
And, if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing, startle the dull Night
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled Dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow
Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the plowman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singing blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
_THE SEA_
The sea, the sea, the open sea,
The blue, the fresh, the fever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.
I'm on the sea, I'm on the sea,
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love, oh! how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest wind doth blow!
I never was on the dull, tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest,--
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,
As welcomed to life the ocean child.
I have lived, since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a rover's life,
With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change:
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!
--BARRY CORNWALL.
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the
wide world's joy. The lonely pine upon the mountain-top waves
its sombre boughs, and cries, "Thou art my sun." And the little
meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its
perfumed breath, "Thou art my sun." And the grain in a thousand
fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, "Thou art my sun."
And so God sits effulgent in Heaven, not for a favored few, but
for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so
low that he may not look up with child-like confidence and say,
"My Father! Thou art mine."
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
_THE LARK_
Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place:
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
Wild is thy lay, and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,--
Love gives it energy; love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven; thy love is on earth.
O'er fell and fountain sheen,
O'er moor and mountain green,
O'er the red streamer that heralds the day;
Over the cloudlet dim,
Over the rainbow's rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place.
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
--JAMES HOGG.
In joyous conversation there is an elastic touch, a delicate stroke,
upon the central ideas, generally following a pause. This elastic touch
adds vivacity to the voice. If you try repeatedly, it can be sensed by
feeling the tongue strike the teeth. The entire absence of elastic touch
in the voice can be observed in the thick tongue of the intoxicated man.
Try to talk with the tongue lying still in the bottom of the mouth, and
you will obtain largely the same effect. Vivacity of utterance is gained
by using the tongue to strike off the emphatic idea with a decisive,
elastic touch.
Deliver the following with decisive strokes on the emphatic ideas.
Deliver it in a vivacious manner, noting the elastic touch-action of the
tongue. A flexible, responsive tongue is absolutely essential to good
voice work.
_FROM NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO THE DIRECTORY ON HIS RETURN FROM EGYPT_
What have you done with that brilliant France which I left you?
I left you at peace, and I find you at war. I left you
victorious and I find you defeated. I left you the millions of
Italy, and I find only spoliation and poverty. What have you
done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen, my companions in
glory? They are dead!... This state of affairs cannot last long;
in less than three years it would plunge us into despotism.
Practise the following selection, for the development of elastic touch;
say it in a joyous spirit, using the exercise to develop voice charm in
_all_ the ways suggested in this chapter.
_THE BROOK_
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges;
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret,
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,
With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers,
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows,
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses,
I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
--ALFRED TENNYSON.
The children at play on the street, glad from sheer physical vitality,
display a resonance and charm in their voices quite different from the
voices that float through the silent halls of the hospitals. A skilled
physician can tell much about his patient's condition from the mere
sound of the voice. Failing health, or even physical weariness, tells
through the voice. It is always well to rest and be entirely refreshed
before attempting to deliver a public address. As to health, neither
scope nor space permits us to discuss here the laws of hygiene. There
are many excellent books on this subject. In the reign of the Roman
emperor Tiberius, one senator wrote to another: "To the wise, a word is
sufficient."
"The apparel oft proclaims the man;" the voice always does--it is one of
the greatest revealers of character. The superficial woman, the brutish
man, the reprobate, the person of culture, often discloses inner nature
in the voice, for even the cleverest dissembler cannot entirely prevent
its tones and qualities being affected by the slightest change of
thought or emotion. In anger it becomes high, harsh, and unpleasant; in
love low, soft, and melodious--the variations are as limitless as they
are fascinating to observe. Visit a theatrical hotel in a large city,
and listen to the buzz-saw voices of the chorus girls from some
burlesque "attraction." The explanation is simple--buzz-saw lives.
Emerson said: "When a man lives with God his voice shall be as sweet as
the murmur of the brook or the rustle of the corn." It is impossible to
think selfish thoughts and have either an attractive personality, a
lovely character, or a charming voice. If you want to possess voice
charm, cultivate a deep, sincere sympathy for mankind. Love will shine
out through your eyes and proclaim itself in your tones. One secret of
the sweetness of the canary's song may be his freedom from tainted
thoughts. Your character beautifies or mars your voice. As a man
thinketh in his heart so is his voice.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Define (_a_) charm; (_b_) joy; (_c_) beauty.
2. Make a list of all the words related to _joy_.
3. Write a three-minute eulogy of "The Joyful Man."
4. Deliver it without the use of notes. Have you carefully considered
all the qualities that go to make up voice-charm in its delivery?
5. Tell briefly in your own words what means may be employed to develop
a charming voice.
6. Discuss the effect of voice on character.
7. Discuss the effect of character on voice.
8. Analyze the voice charm of any speaker or singer you choose.
9. Analyze the defects of any given voice.
10. Make a short humorous speech imitating certain voice defects,
pointing out reasons.
11. Commit the following stanza and interpret each phase of delight
suggested or expressed by the poet.
An infant when it gazes on a light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.
--BYRON, _Don Juan_.
CHAPTER XIV
DISTINCTNESS AND PRECISION OF UTTERANCE
In man speaks God.
--HESIOD, _Words and Days_.
And endless are the modes of speech, and far
Extends from side to side the field of words.
--HOMER, _Iliad_.
In popular usage the terms "pronunciation," "enunciation," and
"articulation" are synonymous, but real pronunciation includes three
distinct processes, and may therefore be defined as, _the utterance of a
syllable or a group of syllables with regard to articulation,
accentuation, and enunciation_.
Distinct and precise utterance is one of the most important
considerations of public speech. How preposterous it is to hear a
speaker making sounds of "inarticulate earnestness" under the contented
delusion that he is telling something to his audience! Telling? Telling
means communicating, and how can he actually communicate without making
every word distinct?
Slovenly pronunciation results from either physical deformity or habit.
A surgeon or a surgeon dentist may correct a deformity, but your own
will, working by self-observation and resolution in drill, will break a
habit. All depends upon whether you think it worth while.
Defective speech is so widespread that freedom from it is the exception.
It is painfully common to hear public speakers mutilate the king's
English. If they do not actually murder it, as Curran once said, they
often knock an _i_ out.
A Canadian clergyman, writing in the _Homiletic Review_, relates that in
his student days "a classmate who was an Englishman supplied a country
church for a Sunday. On the following Monday he conducted a missionary
meeting. In the course of his address he said some farmers thought they
were doing their duty toward missions when they gave their 'hodds and
hends' to the work, but the Lord required more. At the close of the
meeting a young woman seriously said to a friend: 'I am sure the farmers
do well if they give their hogs and hens to missions. It is more than
most people can afford.'"
It is insufferable effrontery for any man to appear before an audience
who persists in driving the _h_ out of happiness, home and heaven, and,
to paraphrase Waldo Messaros, will not let it rest in hell. He who does
not show enough self-knowledge to see in himself such glaring faults,
nor enough self-mastery to correct them, has no business to instruct
others. If he _can_ do no better, he should be silent. If he _will_ do
no better, he should also be silent.
Barring incurable physical defects--and few are incurable nowadays--the
whole matter is one of will. The catalogue of those who have done the
impossible by faithful work is as inspiring as a roll-call of warriors.
"The less there is of you," says Nathan Sheppard, "the more need for you
to make the most of what there is of you."
_Articulation_
Articulation is the forming and joining of the elementary sounds of
speech. It seems an appalling task to utter articulately the third-of-a
million words that go to make up our English vocabulary, but the way to
make a beginning is really simple: _learn to utter correctly, and with
easy change from one to the other, each of the forty-four elementary
sounds in our language_.
The reasons why articulation is so painfully slurred by a great many
public speakers are four: ignorance of the elemental sounds; failure to
discriminate between sounds nearly alike; a slovenly, lazy use of the
vocal organs; and a torpid will. Anyone who is still master of himself
will know how to handle each of these defects.
The vowel sounds are the most vexing source of errors, especially where
diphthongs are found. Who has not heard such errors as are hit off in
this inimitable verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for s[=o]ap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode
The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for r[=o]ad;
Less stern to him who calls his c[=o]at, a c[)o]at
And steers his b[=o]at believing it a b[)o]at.
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast.
Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of m[=o]st,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a r[=oo]t a r[)oo]t.
The foregoing examples are all monosyllables, but bad articulation is
frequently the result of joining sounds that do not belong together.
For example, no one finds it difficult to say _beauty_, but many persist
in pronouncing _duty_ as though it were spelled either _dooty_ or
_juty_. It is not only from untaught speakers that we hear such slovenly
articulations as _colyum_ for _column_, and _pritty_ for _pretty_, but
even great orators occasionally offend quite as unblushingly as less
noted mortals.
Nearly all such are errors of carelessness, not of pure ignorance--of
carelessness because the ear never tries to hear what the lips
articulate. It must be exasperating to a foreigner to find that the
elemental sound _ou_ gives him no hint for the pronunciation of _bough_,
_cough_, _rough_, _thorough_, and _through_, and we can well forgive
even a man of culture who occasionally loses his way amidst the
intricacies of English articulation, but there can be no excuse for the
slovenly utterance of the simple vowel sounds which form at once the
life and the beauty of our language. He who is too lazy to speak
distinctly should hold his tongue.
The consonant sounds occasion serious trouble only for those who do not
look with care at the spelling of words about to be pronounced. Nothing
but carelessness can account for saying _Jacop_, _Babtist_, _sevem_,
_alwus_, or _sadisfy_.
"He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw," is the rendering which an
Anglophobiac clergyman gave of the familiar scripture, "He that hath
ears to hear, let him hear." After hearing the name of Sir Humphry Davy
pronounced, a Frenchman who wished to write to the eminent Englishman
thus addressed the letter: "Serum Fridavi."
_Accentuation_
Accentuation is the stressing of the proper syllables in words. This it
is that is popularly called _pronunciation_. For instance, we properly
say that a word is mispronounced when it is accented _in'-vite_instead
of _in-vite'_, though it is really an offense against only one form of
pronunciation--accentuation.
It is the work of a lifetime to learn the accents of a large vocabulary
and to keep pace with changing usage; but an alert ear, the study of
word-origins, and the dictionary habit, will prove to be mighty helpers
in a task that can never be finally completed.
_Enunciation_
Correct enunciation is the complete utterance of all the sounds of a
syllable or a word. Wrong articulation gives the wrong sound to the
vowel or vowels of a word or a syllable, as _doo_ for _dew_; or unites
two sounds improperly, as _hully_ for _wholly_. Wrong enunciation is the
_incomplete_ utterance of a syllable or a word, the sound omitted or
added being usually consonantal. To say _needcessity_ instead of
_necessity_ is a wrong articulation; to say _doin_ for _doing_ is
improper enunciation. The one articulates--that is, joints--two sounds
that should not be joined, and thus gives the word a positively wrong
sound; the other fails to touch all the sounds in the word, and _in that
particular way_ also sounds the word incorrectly.
"My tex' may be foun' in the fif' and six' verses of the secon' chapter
of Titus; and the subjec' of my discourse is 'The Gover'ment of ar
Homes.'"[6]
What did this preacher do with his final consonants? This slovenly
dropping of essential sounds is as offensive as the common habit of
running words together so that they lose their individuality and
distinctness. _Lighten dark_, _uppen down_, _doncher know_,
_partic'lar_, _zamination_, are all too common to need comment.
Imperfect enunciation is due to lack of attention and to lazy lips. It
can be corrected by resolutely attending to the formation of syllables
as they are uttered. Flexible lips will enunciate difficult combinations
of sounds without slighting any of them, but such flexibility cannot be
attained except by habitually uttering words with distinctness and
accuracy. A daily exercise in enunciating a series of sounds will in a
short time give flexibility to the lips and alertness to the mind, so
that no word will be uttered without receiving its due complement of
sound.
Returning to our definition, we see that when the sounds of a word are
properly articulated, the right syllables accented, and full value given
to each sound in its enunciation, we have correct pronunciation. Perhaps
one word of caution is needed here, lest any one, anxious to bring out
clearly every sound, should overdo the matter and neglect the unity and
smoothness of pronunciation. Be careful not to bring syllables into so
much prominence as to make words seem long and angular. The joints must
be kept decently dressed.
Before delivery, do not fail to go over your manuscript and note every
sound that may possibly be mispronounced. Consult the dictionary and
make assurance doubly sure. If the arrangement of words is unfavorable
to clear enunciation, change either words or order and do not rest until
you can follow Hamlet's directions to the players.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Practise repeating the following rapidly, paying particular attention
to the consonants.
"Foolish Flavius, flushing feverishly, fiercely found fault with
Flora's frivolity.[7]"
Mary's matchless mimicry makes much mischief.
Seated on shining shale she sells sea shells.
You youngsters yielded your youthful yule-tide yearnings
yesterday.
2. Sound the _l_ in each of the following words, repeated in sequence:
Blue black blinkers blocked Black Blondin's eyes.
3. Do you say a _bloo_ sky or a _blue_ sky?
4. Compare the _u_ sound in _few_ and in _new_. Say each aloud, and
decide which is correct, _Noo York_, _New Yawk_, or _New York_?
5. Pay careful heed to the directions of this chapter in reading the
following, from Hamlet. After the interview with the ghost of his
father, Hamlet tells his friends Horatio and Marcellus that he intends
to act a part:
_Horatio_. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
_Hamlet_. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,--
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,--
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would,"
Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if there might,"
Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.
--_Act I. Scene V._
6. Make a list of common errors of pronunciation, saying which are due
to faulty articulation, wrong accentuation, and incomplete enunciation.
In each case make the correction.
7. Criticise any speech you may have heard which displayed these faults.
8. Explain how the false shame of seeming to be too precise may hinder
us from cultivating perfect verbal utterance.
9. Over-precision is likewise a fault. To bring out any syllable unduly
is to caricature the word. Be _moderate_ in reading the following:
_THE LAST SPEECH OF MAXIMILIAN DE ROBESPIERRE_
The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such they
would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should
grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be
grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from
denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support;
there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have
tools. But the enemies of tyranny,--whither does their path
tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my
protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What
faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and
annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the people,--our
principles--are that faction--a faction to which I am devoted,
and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded!
The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know
that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis
of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred
principles, the league is formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon
without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the
future. What friend of this country would wish to survive the
moment when he could no longer serve it,--when he could no
longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I
continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally
triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the
most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred
interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices
which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid
communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have
sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of
posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who
had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends
of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my
country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line
of demarcation between themselves and all true men.
Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in
all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers
died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
but in very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen!
Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade
your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death
is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that
motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all
nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its
support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death!
Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement
of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a
terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence
befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful
truth--"Thou shalt die!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]
[Footnote 7: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]
CHAPTER XV
THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE
When Whitefield acted an old blind man advancing by slow steps
toward the edge of the precipice, Lord Chesterfield started up
and cried: "Good God, he is gone!"
--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.
Gesture is really a simple matter that requires observation and common
sense rather than a book of rules. Gesture is an outward expression of
an inward condition. It is merely an effect--the effect of a mental or
an emotional impulse struggling for expression through physical avenues.
You must not, however, begin at the wrong end: if you are troubled by
your gestures, or a lack of gestures, attend to the cause, not the
effect. It will not in the least help matters to tack on to your
delivery a few mechanical movements. If the tree in your front yard is
not growing to suit you, fertilize and water the soil and let the tree
have sunshine. Obviously it will not help your tree to nail on a few
branches. If your cistern is dry, wait until it rains; or bore a well.
Why plunge a pump into a dry hole?
The speaker whose thoughts and emotions are welling within him like a
mountain spring will not have much trouble to make gestures; it will be
merely a question of properly directing them. If his enthusiasm for his
subject is not such as to give him a natural impulse for dramatic
action, it will avail nothing to furnish him with a long list of rules.
He may tack on some movements, but they will look like the wilted
branches nailed to a tree to simulate life. Gestures must be born, not
built. A wooden horse may amuse the children, but it takes a live one to
go somewhere.
It is not only impossible to lay down definite rules on this subject,
but it would be silly to try, for everything depends on the speech, the
occasion, the personality and feelings of the speaker, and the attitude
of the audience. It is easy enough to forecast the result of multiplying
seven by six, but it is impossible to tell any man what kind of gestures
he will be impelled to use when he wishes to show his earnestness. We
may tell him that many speakers close the hand, with the exception of
the forefinger, and pointing that finger straight at the audience pour
out their thoughts like a volley; or that others stamp one foot for
emphasis; or that Mr. Bryan often slaps his hands together for great
force, holding one palm upward in an easy manner; or that Gladstone
would sometimes make a rush at the clerk's table in Parliament and smite
it with his hand so forcefully that D'israeli once brought down the
house by grimly congratulating himself that such a barrier stood between
himself and "the honorable gentleman."
All these things, and a bookful more, may we tell the speaker, but we
cannot know whether he can use these gestures or not, any more than we
can decide whether he could wear Mr. Bryan's clothes. The best that can
be done on this subject is to offer a few practical suggestions, and let
personal good taste decide as to where effective dramatic action ends
and extravagant motion begins.
_Any Gesture That Merely Calls Attention to Itself Is Bad_
The purpose of a gesture is to carry your thought and feeling into the
minds and hearts of your hearers; this it does by emphasizing your
message, by interpreting it, by expressing it in action, by striking its
tone in either a physically descriptive, a suggestive, or a typical
gesture--and let it be remembered all the time that gesture includes
_all_ physical movement, from facial expression and the tossing of the
head to the expressive movements of hand and foot. A shifting of the
pose may be a most effective gesture.
What is true of gesture is true of all life. If the people on the street
turn around and watch your walk, your walk is more important than you
are--change it. If the attention of your audience is called to your
gestures, they are not convincing, because they _appear_ to be--what
they have a doubtful right to be in reality--studied. Have you ever seen
a speaker use such grotesque gesticulations that you were fascinated by
their frenzy of oddity, but could not follow his thought? Do not smother
ideas with gymnastics. Savonarola would rush down from the high pulpit
among the congregation in the _duomo_ at Florence and carry the fire of
conviction to his hearers; Billy Sunday slides to base on the platform
carpet in dramatizing one of his baseball illustrations. Yet in both
instances the message has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture--it
is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the _form_ of
dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as
"Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious
hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time,
every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this
gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, and discuss its
realistic power.
Only when gesture is subordinated to the absorbing importance of the
idea--a spontaneous, living expression of living truth--is it
justifiable at all; and when it is remembered for itself--as a piece of
unusual physical energy or as a poem of grace--it is a dead failure as
dramatic expression. There is a place for a unique style of walking--it
is the circus or the cake-walk; there is a place for surprisingly
rhythmical evolutions of arms and legs--it is on the dance floor or the
stage. Don't let your agility and grace put your thoughts out of
business.
One of the present writers took his first lessons in gesture from a
certain college president who knew far more about what had happened at
the Diet of Worms than he did about how to express himself in action.
His instructions were to start the movement on a certain word, continue
it on a precise curve, and unfold the fingers at the conclusion, ending
with the forefinger--just so. Plenty, and more than plenty, has been
published on this subject, giving just such silly directions. Gesture is
a thing of mentality and feeling--not a matter of geometry. Remember,
whenever a pair of shoes, a method of pronunciation, or a gesture calls
attention to itself, it is bad. When you have made really good gestures
in a good speech your hearers will not go away saying, "What beautiful
gestures he made!" but they will say, "I'll vote for that measure." "He
is right--I believe in that."
_Gestures Should Be Born of the Moment_
The best actors and public speakers rarely know in advance what gestures
they are going to make. They make one gesture on certain words tonight,
and none at all tomorrow night at the same point--their various moods
and interpretations govern their gestures. It is all a matter of impulse
and intelligent feeling with them--don't overlook that word
_intelligent_. Nature does not always provide the same kind of sunsets
or snow flakes, and the movements of a good speaker vary almost as much
as the creations of nature.
Now all this is not to say that you must not take some thought for your
gestures. If that were meant, why this chapter? When the sergeant
despairingly besought the recruit in the awkward squad to step out and
look at himself, he gave splendid advice--and worthy of personal
application. Particularly while you are in the learning days of public
speaking you must learn to criticise your own gestures. Recall them--see
where they were useless, crude, awkward, what not, and do better next
time. There is a vast deal of difference between being conscious of self
and being self-conscious.
It will require your nice discrimination in order to cultivate
spontaneous gestures and yet give due attention to practise. While you
depend upon the moment it is vital to remember that only a dramatic
genius can effectively accomplish such feats as we have related of
Whitefield, Savonarola, and others: and doubtless the first time they
were used they came in a burst of spontaneous feeling, yet Whitefield
declared that not until he had delivered a sermon forty times was its
delivery perfected. What spontaneity initiates let practise complete.
Every effective speaker and every vivid actor has observed, considered
and practised gesture until his dramatic actions are a sub-conscious
possession, just like his ability to pronounce correctly without
especially concentrating his thought. Every able platform man has
possessed himself of a dozen ways in which he might depict in gesture
any given emotion; in fact, the means for such expression are
endless--and this is precisely why it is both useless and harmful to
make a chart of gestures and enforce them as the ideals of what may be
used to express this or that feeling. Practise descriptive, suggestive,
and typical movements until they come as naturally as a good
articulation; and rarely forecast the gestures you will use at a given
moment: leave something to that moment.
_Avoid Monotony in Gesture_
Roast beef is an excellent dish, but it would be terrible as an
exclusive diet. No matter how effective one gesture is, do not overwork
it. Put variety in your actions. Monotony will destroy all beauty and
power. The pump handle makes one effective gesture, and on hot days that
one is very eloquent, but it has its limitations.
_Any Movement that is not Significant, Weakens_
Do not forget that. Restlessness is not expression. A great many useless
movements will only take the attention of the audience from what you are
saying. A widely-noted man introduced the speaker of the evening one
Sunday lately to a New York audience. The only thing remembered about
that introductory speech is that the speaker played nervously with the
covering of the table as he talked. We naturally watch moving objects. A
janitor putting down a window can take the attention of the hearers from
Mr. Roosevelt. By making a few movements at one side of the stage a
chorus girl may draw the interest of the spectators from a big scene
between the "leads." When our forefathers lived in caves they had to
watch moving objects, for movements meant danger. We have not yet
overcome the habit. Advertisers have taken advantage of it--witness the
moving electric light signs in any city. A shrewd speaker will respect
this law and conserve the attention of his audience by eliminating all
unnecessary movements.
_Gesture Should either be Simultaneous with or Precede the Words--not
Follow Them_
Lady Macbeth says: "Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue."
Reverse this order and you get comedy. Say, "There he goes," pointing at
him after you have finished your words, and see if the result is not
comical.
_Do Not Make Short, Jerky Movements_
Some speakers seem to be imitating a waiter who has failed to get a tip.
Let your movements be easy, and from the shoulder, as a rule, rather
than from the elbow. But do not go to the other extreme and make too
many flowing motions--that savors of the lackadaisical.
Put a little "punch" and life into your gestures. You can not, however,
do this mechanically. The audience will detect it if you do. They may
not know just what is wrong, but the gesture will have a false
appearance to them.
_Facial Expression is Important_
Have you ever stopped in front of a Broadway theater and looked at the
photographs of the cast? Notice the row of chorus girls who are supposed
to be expressing fear. Their attitudes are so mechanical that the
attempt is ridiculous. Notice the picture of the "star" expressing the
same emotion: his muscles are drawn, his eyebrows lifted, he shrinks,
and fear shines through his eyes. That actor _felt_ fear when the
photograph was taken. The chorus girls felt that it was time for a
rarebit, and more nearly expressed that emotion than they did fear.
Incidentally, that is one reason why they _stay_ in the chorus.
The movements of the facial muscles may mean a great deal more than the
movements of the hand. The man who sits in a dejected heap with a look
of despair on his face is expressing his thoughts and feelings just as
effectively as the man who is waving his arms and shouting from the
back of a dray wagon. The eye has been called the window of the soul.
Through it shines the light of our thoughts and feelings.
_Do Not Use Too Much Gesture_
As a matter of fact, in the big crises of life we do not go through many
actions. When your closest friend dies you do not throw up your hands
and talk about your grief. You are more likely to sit and brood in
dry-eyed silence. The Hudson River does not make much noise on its way
to the sea--it is not half so loud as the little creek up in Bronx Park
that a bullfrog could leap across. The barking dog never tears your
trousers--at least they say he doesn't. Do not fear the man who waves
his arms and shouts his anger, but the man who comes up quietly with
eyes flaming and face burning may knock you down. Fuss is not force.
Observe these principles in nature and practise them in your delivery.
The writer of this chapter once observed an instructor drilling a class
in gesture. They had come to the passage from Henry VIII in which the
humbled Cardinal says: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness."
It is one of the pathetic passages of literature. A man uttering such a
sentiment would be crushed, and the last thing on earth he would do
would be to make flamboyant movements. Yet this class had an
elocutionary manual before them that gave an appropriate gesture for
every occasion, from paying the gas bill to death-bed farewells. So they
were instructed to throw their arms out at full length on each side and
say: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness." Such a gesture
might possibly be used in an after-dinner speech at the convention of a
telephone company whose lines extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
but to think of Wolsey's using that movement would suggest that his fate
was just.
_Posture_
The physical attitude to be taken before the audience really is included
in gesture. Just what that attitude should be depends, not on rules, but
on the spirit of the speech and the occasion. Senator La Follette stood
for three hours with his weight thrown on his forward foot as he leaned
out over the footlights, ran his fingers through his hair, and flamed
out a denunciation of the trusts. It was very effective. But imagine a
speaker taking that kind of position to discourse on the development of
road-making machinery. If you have a fiery, aggressive message, and will
let yourself go, nature will naturally pull your weight to your forward
foot. A man in a hot political argument or a street brawl never has to
stop to think upon which foot he should throw his weight. You may
sometimes place your weight on your back foot if you have a restful and
calm message--but don't worry about it: just stand like a man who
genuinely feels what he is saying. Do not stand with your heels close
together, like a soldier or a butler. No more should you stand with them
wide apart like a traffic policeman. Use simple good manners and common
sense.
Here a word of caution is needed. We have advised you to allow your
gestures and postures to be spontaneous and not woodenly prepared
beforehand, but do not go to the extreme of ignoring the importance of
acquiring mastery of your physical movements. A muscular hand made
flexible by free movement, is far more likely to be an effective
instrument in gesture than a stiff, pudgy bunch of fingers. If your
shoulders are lithe and carried well, while your chest does not retreat
from association with your chin, the chances of using good
extemporaneous gestures are so much the better. Learn to keep the _back_
of your neck touching your collar, hold your chest high, and keep down
your waist measure.
So attention to strength, poise, flexibility, and grace of body are the
foundations of good gesture, for they are expressions of vitality, and
without vitality no speaker can enter the kingdom of power. When an
awkward giant like Abraham Lincoln rose to the sublimest heights of
oratory he did so because of the greatness of his soul--his very
ruggedness of spirit and artless honesty were properly expressed in his
gnarly body. The fire of character, of earnestness, and of message swept
his hearers before him when the tepid words of an insincere Apollo would
have left no effect. But be sure you are a second Lincoln before you
despise the handicap of physical awkwardness.
"Ty" Cobb has confided to the public that when he is in a batting slump
he even stands before a mirror, bat in hand, to observe the "swing" and
"follow through" of his batting form. If you would learn to stand well
before an audience, look at yourself in a mirror--but not too often.
Practise walking and standing before the mirror so as to conquer
awkwardness--not to cultivate a pose. Stand on the platform in the same
easy manner that you would use before guests in a drawing-room. If your
position is not graceful, make it so by dancing, gymnasium work, and _by
getting grace and poise in your mind_.
Do not continually hold the same position. Any big change of thought
necessitates a change of position. Be at home. There are no rules--it is
all a matter of taste. While on the platform forget that you have any
hands until you desire to use them--then remember them effectively.
Gravity will take care of them. Of course, if you want to put them
behind you, or fold them once in awhile, it is not going to ruin your
speech. Thought and feeling are the big things in speaking--not the
position of a foot or a hand. Simply _put_ your limbs where you want
them to be--you have a will, so do not neglect to use it.
Let us reiterate, do not despise practise. Your gestures and movements
may be spontaneous and still be wrong. No matter how natural they are,
it is possible to improve them.
It is impossible for anyone--even yourself--to criticise your gestures
until after they are made. You can't prune a peach tree until it comes
up; therefore speak much, and observe your own speech. While you are
examining yourself, do not forget to study statuary and paintings to see
how the great portrayers of nature have made their subjects express
ideas through action. Notice the gestures of the best speakers and
actors. Observe the physical expression of life everywhere. The leaves
on the tree respond to the slightest breeze. The muscles of your face,
the light of your eyes, should respond to the slightest change of
feeling. Emerson says: "Every man that I meet is my superior in some
way. In that I learn of him." Illiterate Italians make gestures so
wonderful and beautiful that Booth or Barrett might have sat at their
feet and been instructed. Open your eyes. Emerson says again: "We are
immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision." Toss this book
to one side; go out and watch one child plead with another for a bite of
apple; see a street brawl; observe life in action. Do you want to know
how to express victory? Watch the victors' hands go high on election
night. Do you want to plead a cause? Make a composite photograph of all
the pleaders in daily life you constantly see. Beg, borrow, and steal
the best you can get, _BUT DON'T GIVE IT OUT AS THEFT_. Assimilate it
until it becomes a part of you--then _let_ the expression come out.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. From what source do you intend to study gesture?
2. What is the first requisite of good gestures? Why?
3. Why is it impossible to lay down steel-clad rules for gesturing?
4. Describe (_a_) a graceful gesture that you have observed; (_b_) a
forceful one; (_c_) an extravagant one; (_d_) an inappropriate one.
5. What gestures do you use for emphasis? Why?
6. How can grace of movement be acquired?
7. When in doubt about a gesture what would you do?
8. What, according to your observations before a mirror, are your faults
in gesturing?
9. How do you intend to correct them?
10. What are some of the gestures, if any, that you might use in
delivering Thurston's speech, page 50; Grady's speech, page 36? Be
specific.
11. Describe some particularly appropriate gesture that you have
observed. Why was it appropriate?
12. Cite at least three movements in nature that might well be imitated
in gesture.
13. What would you gather from the expressions: _descriptive_ gesture,
_suggestive_ gesture, and _typical_ gesture?
14. Select any elemental emotion, such as fear, and try, by picturing in
your mind at least five different situations that might call forth this
emotion, to express its several phases by gesture--including posture,
movement, and facial expression.
15. Do the same thing for such other emotions as you may select.
16. Select three passages from any source, only being sure that they are
suitable for public delivery, memorize each, and then devise gestures
suitable for each. Say why.
17. Criticise the gestures in any speech you have heard recently.
18. Practise flexible movement of the hand. What exercises did you find
useful?
19. Carefully observe some animal; then devise several typical gestures.
20. Write a brief dialogue between any two animals; read it aloud and
invent expressive gestures.
21. Deliver, with appropriate gestures, the quotation that heads this
chapter.
22. Read aloud the following incident, using dramatic gestures:
When Voltaire was preparing a young actress to appear in one of
his tragedies, he tied her hands to her sides with pack thread
in order to check her tendency toward exuberant gesticulation.
Under this condition of compulsory immobility she commenced to
rehearse, and for some time she bore herself calmly enough; but
at last, completely carried away by her feelings, she burst her
bonds and flung up her arms. Alarmed at her supposed neglect of
his instructions, she began to apologize to the poet; he
smilingly reassured her, however; the gesture was _then_
admirable, because it was irrepressible.
--REDWAY, _The Actor's Art_.
23. Render the following with suitable gestures:
One day, while preaching, Whitefield "suddenly assumed a
nautical air and manner that were irresistible with him," and
broke forth in these words: "Well, my boys, we have a clear sky,
and are making fine headway over a smooth sea before a light
breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land. But what means
this sudden lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud arising
from beneath the western horizon? Hark! Don't you hear distant
thunder? Don't you see those flashes of lightning? There is a
storm gathering! Every man to his duty! The air is dark!--the
tempest rages!--our masts are gone!--the ship is on her beam
ends! What next?" At this a number of sailors in the
congregation, utterly swept away by the dramatic description,
leaped to their feet and cried: "The longboat!--take to the
longboat!"
--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.
CHAPTER XVI
METHODS OF DELIVERY
The crown, the consummation, of the discourse is its delivery.
Toward it all preparation looks, for it the audience waits, by
it the speaker is judged.... All the forces of the orator's life
converge in his oratory. The logical acuteness with which he
marshals the facts around his theme, the rhetorical facility
with which he orders his language, the control to which he has
attained in the use of his body as a single organ of expression,
whatever richness of acquisition and experience are his--these
all are now incidents; _the fact_ is the sending of his message
home to his hearers.... The hour of delivery is the "supreme,
inevitable hour" for the orator. It is this fact that makes lack
of adequate preparation such an impertinence. And it is this
that sends such thrills of indescribable joy through the
orator's whole being when he has achieved a success--it is like
the mother forgetting her pangs for the joy of bringing a son
into the world.
--J.B.E., _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_.
There are four fundamental methods of delivering an address; all others
are modifications of one or more of these: reading from manuscript,
committing the written speech and speaking from memory, speaking from
notes, and extemporaneous speech. It is impossible to say which form of
delivery is best for all speakers in all circumstances--in deciding for
yourself you should consider the occasion, the nature of the audience,
the character of your subject, and your own limitations of time and
ability. However, it is worth while warning you not to be lenient in
self-exaction. Say to yourself courageously: What others can do, I can
attempt. A bold spirit conquers where others flinch, and a trying task
challenges pluck.
_Reading from Manuscript_
This method really deserves short shrift in a book on public speaking,
for, delude yourself as you may, public reading is not public speaking.
Yet there are so many who grasp this broken reed for support that we
must here discuss the "read speech"--apologetic misnomer as it is.
Certainly there are occasions--among them, the opening of Congress, the
presentation of a sore question before a deliberative body, or a
historical commemoration--when it may seem not alone to the "orator" but
to all those interested that the chief thing is to express certain
thoughts in precise language--in language that _must_ not be either
misunderstood or misquoted. At such times oratory is unhappily elbowed
to a back bench, the manuscript is solemnly withdrawn from the capacious
inner pocket of the new frock coat, and everyone settles himself
resignedly, with only a feeble flicker of hope that the so-called speech
may not be as long as it is thick. The words may be golden, but the
hearers' (?) eyes are prone to be leaden, and in about one instance out
of a hundred does the perpetrator really deliver an impressive address.
His excuse is his apology--he is not to be blamed, as a rule, for some
one decreed that it would be dangerous to cut loose from manuscript
moorings and take his audience with him on a really delightful sail.
One great trouble on such "great occasions" is that the essayist--for
such he is--has been chosen not because of his speaking ability but
because his grandfather fought in a certain battle, or his constituents
sent him to Congress, or his gifts in some line of endeavor other than
speaking have distinguished him.
As well choose a surgeon from his ability to play golf. To be sure, it
always interests an audience to see a great man; because of his eminence
they are likely to listen to his words with respect, perhaps with
interest, even when droned from a manuscript. But how much more
effective such a deliverance would be if the papers were cast aside!
Nowhere is the read-address so common as in the pulpit--the pulpit, that
in these days least of all can afford to invite a handicap. Doubtless
many clergymen prefer finish to fervor--let them choose: they are rarely
men who sway the masses to acceptance of their message. What they gain
in precision and elegance of language they lose in force.
There are just four motives that can move a man to read his address or
sermon:
1. Laziness is the commonest. Enough said. Even Heaven cannot make a
lazy man efficient.
2. A memory so defective that he really cannot speak without reading.
Alas, he is not speaking when he is reading, so his dilemma is
painful--and not to himself alone. But no man has a right to assume that
his memory is utterly bad until he has buckled down to memory
culture--and failed. A weak memory is oftener an excuse than a reason.
3. A genuine lack of time to do more than write the speech. There are
such instances--but they do not occur every week! The disposition of
your time allows more flexibility than you realize. Motive 3 too often
harnesses up with Motive 1.
4. A conviction that the speech is too important to risk forsaking the
manuscript. But, if it is vital that every word should be so precise,
the style so polished, and the thoughts so logical, that the preacher
must write the sermon entire, is not the message important enough to
warrant extra effort in perfecting its delivery? It is an insult to a
congregation and disrespectful to Almighty God to put the phrasing of a
message above the message itself. To reach the hearts of the hearers the
sermon must be delivered--it is only half delivered when the speaker
cannot utter it with original fire and force, when he merely repeats
words that were conceived hours or weeks before and hence are like
champagne that has lost its fizz. The reading preacher's eyes are tied
down to his manuscript; he cannot give the audience the benefit of his
expression. How long would a play fill a theater if the actors held
their cue-books in hand and read their parts? Imagine Patrick Henry
reading his famous speech; Peter-the-Hermit, manuscript in hand,
exhorting the crusaders; Napoleon, constantly looking at his papers,
addressing the army at the Pyramids; or Jesus reading the Sermon on the
Mount! These speakers were so full of their subjects, their general
preparation had been so richly adequate, that there was no necessity for
a manuscript, either to refer to or to serve as "an outward and visible
sign" of their preparedness. No event was ever so dignified that it
required an _artificial_ attempt at speech making. Call an essay by its
right name, but never call it a speech. Perhaps the most dignified of
events is a supplication to the Creator. If you ever listened to the
reading of an original prayer you must have felt its superficiality.
Regardless of what the theories may be about manuscript delivery, the
fact remains that it does not work out with efficiency. _Avoid it
whenever at all possible._
_Committing the Written Speech and Speaking from Memory_
This method has certain points in its favor. If you have time and
leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are
expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in
perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material
for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although
you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should
take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a
sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches, like plays, are
not written; they are rewritten. The National Cash Register Company
follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization: they
require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk. They
maintain that there is one best way of putting their selling arguments,
and they insist that each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ
any haphazard phrases that may come into his mind at the moment.
The method of writing and committing has been adopted by many noted
speakers; Julius Cĉsar, Robert Ingersoll, and, on some occasions,
Wendell Phillips, were distinguished examples. The wonderful effects
achieved by famous actors were, of course, accomplished through the
delivery of memorized lines.
The inexperienced speaker must be warned before attempting this method
of delivery that it is difficult and trying. It requires much skill to
make it efficient. The memorized lines of the young speaker will usually
_sound_ like memorized words, and repel.
If you want to hear an example, listen to a department store
demonstrator repeat her memorized lingo about the newest furniture
polish or breakfast food. It requires training to make a memorized
speech sound fresh and spontaneous, and, unless you have a fine native
memory, in each instance the finished product necessitates much labor.
Should you forget a part of your speech or miss a few words, you are
liable to be so confused that, like Mark Twain's guide in Rome, you will
be compelled to repeat your lines from the beginning.
On the other hand, you may be so taken up with trying to recall your
written words that you will not abandon yourself to the spirit of your
address, and so fail to deliver it with that spontaneity which is so
vital to forceful delivery.
But do not let these difficulties frighten you. If committing seems best
to you, give it a faithful trial. Do not be deterred by its pitfalls,
but by resolute practise avoid them.
One of the best ways to rise superior to these difficulties is to do as
Dr. Wallace Radcliffe often does: commit without writing the speech,
making practically all the preparation mentally, without putting pen to
paper--a laborious but effective way of cultivating both mind and
memory.
You will find it excellent practise, both for memory and delivery, to
commit the specimen speeches found in this volume and declaim them, with
all attention to the principles we have put before you. William Ellery
Channing, himself a distinguished speaker, years ago had this to say of
practise in declamation:
"Is there not an amusement, having an affinity with the drama, which
might be usefully introduced among us? I mean, Recitation. A work of
genius, recited by a man of fine taste, enthusiasm, and powers of
elocution, is a very pure and high gratification. Were this art
cultivated and encouraged, great numbers, now insensible to the most
beautiful compositions, might be waked up to their excellence and
power."
_Speaking from Notes_
The third, and the most popular method of delivery, is probably also the
best one for the beginner. Speaking from notes is not ideal delivery,
but we learn to swim in shallow water before going out beyond the ropes.
Make a definite plan for your discourse (for a fuller discussion see
Chapter XVIII) and set down the points somewhat in the fashion of a
lawyer's brief, or a preacher's outline. Here is a sample of very simple
notes:
ATTENTION
I. INTRODUCTION.
Attention indispensable to the performance of any
great work. _Anecdote_.
II. DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED.
1. From common observation.
2. From the lives of great men {Carlyle, Robert E. Lee.}
III. ITS RELATION TO OTHER MENTAL POWERS.
1. Reason.
2. Imagination.
3. Memory.
4. Will. _Anecdote_.
IV. ATTENTION MAY BE CULTIVATED.
1. Involuntary attention.
2. Voluntary attention. _Examples_.
V. CONCLUSION.
The consequences of inattention and of attention.
Few briefs would be so precise as this one, for with experience a
speaker learns to use little tricks to attract his eye--he may
underscore a catch-word heavily, draw a red circle around a pivotal
idea, enclose the key-word of an anecdote in a wavy-lined box, and so on
indefinitely. These points are worth remembering, for nothing so eludes
the swift-glancing eye of the speaker as the sameness of typewriting, or
even a regular pen-script. So unintentional a thing as a blot on the
page may help you to remember a big "point" in your brief--perhaps by
association of ideas.
An inexperienced speaker would probably require fuller notes than the
specimen given. Yet that way lies danger, for the complete manuscript is
but a short remove from the copious outline. Use as few notes as
possible.
They may be necessary for the time being, but do not fail to look upon
them as a necessary evil; and even when you lay them before you, refer
to them only when compelled to do so. Make your notes as full as you
please in preparation, but by all means condense them for platform use.
_Extemporaneous Speech_
Surely this is the ideal method of delivery. It is far and away the most
popular with the audience, and the favorite method of the most efficient
speakers.
"Extemporaneous speech" has sometimes been made to mean unprepared
speech, and indeed it is too often precisely that; but in no such sense
do we recommend it strongly to speakers old and young. On the contrary,
to speak well without notes requires all the preparation which we
discussed so fully in the chapter on "Fluency," while yet relying upon
the "inspiration of the hour" for some of your thoughts and much of your
language. You had better remember, however, that the most effective
inspiration of the hour is the inspiration you yourself bring to it,
bottled up in your spirit and ready to infuse itself into the audience.
If you extemporize you can get much closer to your audience. In a sense,
they appreciate the task you have before you and send out their
sympathy. Extemporize, and you will not have to stop and fumble around
amidst your notes--you can keep your eye afire with your message and
hold your audience with your very glance. You yourself will feel their
response as you read the effects of your warm, spontaneous words,
written on their countenances.
Sentences written out in the study are liable to be dead and cold when
resurrected before the audience. When you create as you speak you
conserve all the native fire of your thought. You can enlarge on one
point or omit another, just as the occasion or the mood of the audience
may demand. It is not possible for every speaker to use this, the most
difficult of all methods of delivery, and least of all can it be used
successfully without much practise, but it is the ideal towards which
all should strive.
One danger in this method is that you may be led aside from your subject
into by-paths. To avoid this peril, firmly stick to your mental outline.
Practise speaking from a memorized brief until you gain control. Join a
debating society--talk, _talk_, _TALK_, and always extemporize. You may
"make a fool of yourself" once or twice, but is that too great a price
to pay for success?
Notes, like crutches, are only a sign of weakness. Remember that the
power of your speech depends to some extent upon the view your audience
holds of you. General Grant's words as president were more powerful than
his words as a Missouri farmer. If you would appear in the light of an
authority, be one. Make notes on your brain instead of on paper.
_Joint Methods of Delivery_
A modification of the second method has been adopted by many great
speakers, particularly lecturers who are compelled to speak on a wide
variety of subjects day after day; such speakers often commit their
addresses to memory but keep their manuscripts in flexible book form
before them, turning several pages at a time. They feel safer for having
a sheet-anchor to windward--but it is an anchor, nevertheless, and
hinders rapid, free sailing, though it drag never so lightly.
Other speakers throw out a still lighter anchor by keeping before them a
rather full outline of their written and committed speech.
Others again write and commit a few important parts of the address--the
introduction, the conclusion, some vital argument, some pat
illustration--and depend on the hour for the language of the rest. This
method is well adapted to speaking either with or without notes.
Some speakers read from manuscript the most important parts of their
speeches and utter the rest extemporaneously.
Thus, what we have called "joint methods of delivery" are open to much
personal variation. You must decide for yourself which is best for you,
for the occasion, for your subject, for your audience--for these four
factors all have their individual claims.
Whatever form you choose, do not be so weakly indifferent as to prefer
the easy way--choose the _best_ way, whatever it cost you in time and
effort. And of this be assured: only the practised speaker can hope to
gain _both_ conciseness of argument and conviction in manner, polish of
language and power in delivery, finish of style and fire in utterance.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Which in your judgment is the most suitable of delivery for you? Why?
2. What objections can you offer to, (_a_) memorizing the entire speech;
(_b_) reading from manuscript; (_c_) using notes; (_d_) speaking from
memorized outline or notes; (_e_e) any of the "joint methods"?
3. What is there to commend in delivering a speech in any of the
foregoing methods?
4. Can you suggest any combination of methods that you have found
efficacious?
5. What methods, according to your observation, do most successful
speakers use?
6. Select some topic from the list on page 123, narrow the theme so as
to make it specific (see page 122), and deliver a short address,
utilizing the four methods mentioned, in four different deliveries of
the speech.
7. Select one of the joint methods and apply it to the delivery of the
same address.
8. Which method do you prefer, and why?
9. From the list of subjects in the Appendix select a theme and deliver
a five-minute address without notes, but make careful preparation
without putting your thoughts on paper.
NOTE: It is earnestly hoped that instructors will not pass this stage of
the work without requiring of their students much practise in the
delivery of original speeches, in the manner that seems, after some
experiment, to be best suited to the student's gifts. Students who are
studying alone should be equally exacting in demand upon themselves.
One point is most important: It is easy to learn to read a speech,
therefore it is much more urgent that the pupil should have much
practise in speaking from notes and speaking without notes. At this
stage, pay more attention to manner than to matter--the succeeding
chapters take up the composition of the address. Be particularly
insistent upon _frequent_ and _thorough_ review of the principles of
delivery discussed in the preceding chapters.
CHAPTER XVII
THOUGHT AND RESERVE POWER
Providence is always on the side of the last reserve.
--NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed,
And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!
--BARRY CORNWALL, _The Sea in Calm_.
What would happen if you should overdraw your bank account? As a rule
the check would be protested; but if you were on friendly terms with the
bank, your check might be honored, and you would be called upon to make
good the overdraft.
Nature has no such favorites, therefore extends no credits. She is as
relentless as a gasoline tank--when the "gas" is all used the machine
stops. It is as reckless for a speaker to risk going before an audience
without having something in reserve as it is for the motorist to essay a
long journey in the wilds without enough gasoline in sight.
But in what does a speaker's reserve power consist? In a well-founded
reliance on his general and particular grasp of his subject; in the
quality of being alert and resourceful in thought--particularly in the
ability to think while on his feet; and in that self-possession which
makes one the captain of all his own forces, bodily and mental.
The first of these elements, adequate preparation, and the last,
self-reliance, were discussed fully in the chapters on "Self-Confidence"
and "Fluency," so they will be touched only incidentally here; besides,
the next chapter will take up specific methods of preparation for public
speaking. Therefore the central theme of this chapter is the second of
the elements of reserve power--Thought.
_The Mental Storehouse_
An empty mind, like an empty larder, may be a serious matter or not--all
will depend on the available resources. If there is no food in the
cupboard the housewife does not nervously rattle the empty dishes; she
telephones the grocer. If you have no ideas, do not rattle your empty
_ers_ and _ahs_, but _get_ some ideas, and don't speak until you do get
them.
This, however, is not being what the old New England housekeeper used to
call "forehanded." The real solution of the problem of what to do with
an empty head is never to let it become empty. In the artesian wells of
Dakota the water rushes to the surface and leaps a score of feet above
the ground. The secret of this exuberant flow is of course the great
supply below, crowding to get out.
What is the use of stopping to prime a mental pump when you can fill
your life with the resources for an artesian well? It is not enough to
have merely enough; you must have more than enough. Then the pressure of
your mass of thought and feeling will maintain your flow of speech and
give you the confidence and poise that denote reserve power. To be away
from home with only the exact return fare leaves a great deal to
circumstances!
Reserve power is magnetic. It does not consist in giving the idea that
you are holding something in reserve, but rather in the suggestion that
the audience is getting the cream of your observation, reading,
experience, feeling, thought. To have reserve power, therefore, you must
have enough milk of material on hand to supply sufficient cream.
But how shall we get the milk? There are two ways: the one is
first-hand--from the cow; the other is second-hand--from the milkman.
_The Seeing Eye_
Some sage has said: "For a thousand men who can speak, there is only one
who can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one who
can see." To see and to think is to get your milk from your own cow.
When the one man in a million who can see comes along, we call him
Master. Old Mr. Holbrook, of "Cranford," asked his guest what color
ash-buds were in March; she confessed she did not know, to which the old
gentleman answered: "I knew you didn't. No more did I--an old fool that
I am!--till this young man comes and tells me. 'Black as ash-buds in
March.' And I've lived all my life in the country. More shame for me not
to know. Black; they are jet-black, madam."
"This young man" referred to by Mr. Holbrook was Tennyson.
Henry Ward Beecher said: "I do not believe that I have ever met a man
on the street that I did not get from him some element for a sermon. I
never see anything in nature which does not work towards that for which
I give the strength of my life. The material for my sermons is all the
time following me and swarming up around me."
Instead of saying only one man in a million can see, it would strike
nearer the truth to say that none of us sees with perfect understanding
more than a fraction of what passes before our eyes, yet this faculty of
acute and accurate observation is so important that no man ambitious to
lead can neglect it. The next time you are in a car, look at those who
sit opposite you and see what you can discover of their habits,
occupations, ideals, nationalities, environments, education, and so on.
You may not see a great deal the first time, but practise will reveal
astonishing results. Transmute every incident of your day into a subject
for a speech or an illustration. Translate all that you see into terms
of speech. When you can describe all that you have seen in definite
words, you are seeing clearly. You are becoming the millionth man.
De Maupassant's description of an author should also fit the
public-speaker: "His eye is like a suction pump, absorbing everything;
like a pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is
constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures,
intentions, everything that goes on in his presence--the slightest look,
the least act, the merest trifle." De Maupassant was himself a millionth
man, a Master.
"Ruskin took a common rock-crystal and saw hidden within its stolid
heart lessons which have not yet ceased to move men's lives. Beecher
stood for hours before the window of a jewelry store thinking out
analogies between jewels and the souls of men. Gough saw in a single
drop of water enough truth wherewith to quench the thirst of five
thousand souls. Thoreau sat so still in the shadowy woods that birds and
insects came and opened up their secret lives to his eye. Emerson
observed the soul of a man so long that at length he could say, 'I
cannot hear what you say, for seeing what you are.' Preyer for three
years studied the life of his babe and so became an authority upon the
child mind. Observation! Most men are blind. There are a thousand times
as many hidden truths and undiscovered facts about us to-day as have
made discoverers famous--facts waiting for some one to 'pluck out the
heart of their mystery.' But so long as men go about the search with
eyes that see not, so long will these hidden pearls lie in their shells.
Not an orator but who could more effectively point and feather his
shafts were he to search nature rather than libraries. Too few can see
'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running brooks,' because they are
so used to seeing merely sermons in books and only stones in running
brooks. Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, 'Look in thy heart and write;'
Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying,
'I learned it by studying myself;' Byron says of John Locke that 'all
his knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his
own mind.' Since multiform nature is all about us, originality ought not
to be so rare."[8]
_The Thinking Mind_
Thinking is doing mental arithmetic with facts. Add this fact to that
and you reach a certain conclusion. Subtract this truth from another and
you have a definite result. Multiply this fact by another and have a
precise product. See how many times this occurrence happens in that
space of time and you have reached a calculable dividend. In
thought-processes you perform every known problem of arithmetic and
algebra. That is why mathematics are such excellent mental gymnastics.
But by the same token, thinking is work. Thinking takes energy. Thinking
requires time, and patience, and broad information, and clearheadedness.
Beyond a miserable little surface-scratching, few people really think at
all--only one in a thousand, according to the pundit already quoted. So
long as the present system of education prevails and children are taught
through the ear rather than through the eye, so long as they are
expected to remember thoughts of others rather than think for
themselves, this proportion will continue--one man in a million will be
able to see, and one in a thousand to think.
But, however thought-less a mind has been, there is promise of better
things so soon as the mind detects its own lack of thought-power. The
first step is to stop regarding thought as "the magic of the mind," to
use Byron's expression, and see it as thought truly is--_a weighing of
ideas and a placing of them in relationships to each other_. Ponder this
definition and see if you have learned to think efficiently.
Habitual thinking is just that--a habit. Habit comes of doing a thing
repeatedly. The lower habits are acquired easily, the higher ones
require deeper grooves if they are to persist. So we find that the
thought-habit comes only with resolute practise; yet no effort will
yield richer dividends. Persist in practise, and whereas you have been
able to think only an inch-deep into a subject, you will soon find that
you can penetrate it a foot.
Perhaps this homely metaphor will suggest how to begin the practise of
consecutive thinking, by which we mean _welding a number of separate
thought-links into a chain that will hold_. Take one link at a time, see
that each naturally belongs with the ones you link to it, and remember
that a single missing link means _no chain_.
Thinking is the most fascinating and exhilarating of all mental
exercises. Once realize that your opinion on a subject does not
represent the choice you have made between what Dr. Cerebrum has written
and Professor Cerebellum has said, but is the result of your own
earnestly-applied brain-energy, and you will gain a confidence in your
ability to speak on that subject that nothing will be able to shake.
Your thought will have given you both power and reserve power.
Someone has condensed the relation of thought to knowledge in these
pungent, homely lines:
"Don't give me the man who thinks he thinks,
Don't give me the man who thinks he knows,
But give me the man who knows he thinks,
And I have the man who knows he knows!"
_Reading As a Stimulus to Thought_
No matter how dry the cow, however, nor how poor our ability to milk,
there is still the milkman--we can read what others have seen and felt
and thought. Often, indeed, such records will kindle within us that
pre-essential and vital spark, the _desire_ to be a thinker.
The following selection is taken from one of Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis's
lectures, as given in "A Man's Value to Society." Dr. Hillis is a most
fluent speaker--he never refers to notes. He has reserve power. His mind
is a veritable treasure-house of facts and ideas. See how he draws from
a knowledge of fifteen different general or special subjects: geology,
plant life, Palestine, chemistry, Eskimos, mythology, literature, The
Nile, history, law, wit, evolution, religion, biography, and
electricity. Surely, it needs no sage to discover that the secret of
this man's reserve power is the old secret of our artesian well whose
abundance surges from unseen depths.
_THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING[9]_
Each Kingsley approaches a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to
unlock the hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll
the juicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until
the bit of carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That
little book of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees
and shrubs as eating, drinking and marrying. We see certain date
groves in Palestine, and other date groves in the desert a hundred
miles away, and the pollen of the one carried upon the trade winds
to the branches of the other. We see the tree with its strange
system of water-works, pumping the sap up through pipes and mains;
we see the chemical laboratory in the branches mixing flavor for the
orange in one bough, mixing the juices of the pineapple in another;
we behold the tree as a mother making each infant acorn ready
against the long winter, rolling it in swaths soft and warm as wool
blankets, wrapping it around with garments impervious to the rain,
and finally slipping the infant acorn into a sleeping bag, like
those the Eskimos gave Dr. Kane.
At length we come to feel that the Greeks were not far wrong in
thinking each tree had a dryad in it, animating it, protecting it
against destruction, dying when the tree withered. Some Faraday
shows us that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces
sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from
Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how
hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars
will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book
opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus
books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous glass that showed
its owner all things distant and all things hidden. Through books
our world becomes as "a bud from the bower of God's beauty; the
sun as a spark from the light of His wisdom; the sky as a bubble
on the sea of His Power." Therefore Mrs. Browning's words, "No
child can be called fatherless who has God and his mother; no
youth can be called friendless who has God and the companionship
of good books."
Books also advantage us in that they exhibit the unity of
progress, the solidarity of the race, and the continuity of
history. Authors lead us back along the pathway of law, of
liberty or religion, and set us down in front of the great man in
whose brain the principle had its rise. As the discoverer leads
us from the mouth of the Nile back to the headwaters of Nyanza,
so books exhibit great ideas and institutions, as they move
forward, ever widening and deepening, like some Nile feeding many
civilizations. For all the reforms of to-day go back to some
reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes.
Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and
plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked
stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march
forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington.
Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and
Cromwell. The great Puritans lock hands with Luther and
Savonarola.
The unbroken procession brings us at length to Him whose Sermon
on the Mount was the very charter of liberty. It puts us under a
divine spell to perceive that we are all coworkers with the great
men, and yet single threads in the warp and woof of civilization.
And when books have related us to our own age, and related all
the epochs to God, whose providence is the gulf stream of
history, these teachers go on to stimulate us to new and greater
achievements. Alone, man is an unlighted candle. The mind needs
some book to kindle its faculties. Before Byron began to write he
used to give half an hour to reading some favorite passage. The
thought of some great writer never failed to kindle Byron into a
creative glow, even as a match lights the kindlings upon the
grate. In these burning, luminous moods Byron's mind did its best
work. The true book stimulates the mind as no wine can ever
quicken the blood. It is reading that brings us to our best, and
rouses each faculty to its most vigorous life.
We recognize this as pure cream, and if it seems at first to have its
secondary source in the friendly milkman, let us not forget that the
theme is "The Uses of Books and Reading." Dr. Hillis both sees and
thinks.
It is fashionable just now to decry the value of reading. We read, we
are told, to avoid the necessity of thinking for ourselves. Books are
for the mentally lazy.
Though this is only a half-truth, the element of truth it contains
is large enough to make us pause. Put yourself through a good
old Presbyterian soul-searching self-examination, and if
reading-from-thought-laziness is one of your sins, confess it. No one
can shrive you of it--but yourself. Do penance for it by using your
own brains, for it is a transgression that dwarfs the growth of thought
and destroys mental freedom. At first the penance will be trying--but
at the last you will be glad in it.
Reading should entertain, give information, or stimulate thought. Here,
however, we are chiefly concerned with information, and stimulation of
thought.
What shall I read for information?
The ample page of knowledge, as Grey tells us, is "rich with the spoils
of time," and these are ours for the price of a theatre ticket. You may
command Socrates and Marcus Aurelius to sit beside you and discourse of
their choicest, hear Lincoln at Gettysburg and Pericles at Athens, storm
the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may
explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with
Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle
Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the
inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and
experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was right: "The
true university of these days is a collection of books."
To master a worth-while book is to master much else besides; few of us,
however, make perfect conquest of a volume without first owning it
physically. To read a borrowed book may be a joy, but to assign your own
book a place of its own on your own shelves--be they few or many--to
love the book and feel of its worn cover, to thumb it over slowly, page
by page, to pencil its margins in agreement or in protest, to smile or
thrill with its remembered pungencies--no mere book borrower could ever
sense all that delight.
The reader who possesses books in this double sense finds also that his
books possess him, and the volumes which most firmly grip his life are
likely to be those it has cost him some sacrifice to own. These
lightly-come-by titles, which Mr. Fatpurse selects, perhaps by proxy,
can scarcely play the guide, philosopher and friend in crucial moments
as do the books--long coveted, joyously attained--that are welcomed into
the lives, and not merely the libraries, of us others who are at once
poorer and richer.
So it is scarcely too much to say that of all the many ways in which an
owned--a mastered--book is like to a human friend, the truest ways are
these: A friend is worth making sacrifices for, both to gain and to
keep; and our loves go out most dearly to those into whose inmost lives
we have sincerely entered.
When you have not the advantage of the test of time by which to judge
books, investigate as thoroughly as possible the authority of the books
you read. Much that is printed and passes current is counterfeit. "I
read it in a book" is to many a sufficient warranty of truth, but not to
the thinker. "What book?" asks the careful mind. "Who wrote it? What
does he know about the subject and what right has he to speak on it? Who
recognizes him as authority? With what other recognized authorities does
he agree or disagree?" Being caught trying to pass counterfeit money,
even unintentionally, is an unpleasant situation. Beware lest you
circulate spurious coin.
Above all, seek reading that makes you use your own brains. Such reading
must be alive with fresh points of view, packed with special knowledge,
and deal with subjects of vital interest. Do not confine your reading to
what you already know you will agree with. Opposition wakes one up. The
other road may be the better, but you will never know it unless you
"give it the once over." Do not do all your thinking and investigating
in front of given "Q.E.D.'s;" merely assembling reasons to fill in
between your theorem and what you want to prove will get you nowhere.
Approach each subject with an open mind and--once sure that you have
thought it out thoroughly and honestly--have the courage to abide by the
decision of your own thought. But don't brag about it afterward.
No book on public speaking will enable you to discourse on the tariff if
you know nothing about the tariff. Knowing more about it than the other
man will be your only hope for making the other man listen to you.
Take a group of men discussing a governmental policy of which some one
says: "It is socialistic." That will commend the policy to Mr. A., who
believes in socialism, but condemn it to Mr. B., who does not. It may be
that neither had considered the policy beyond noticing that its
surface-color was socialistic. The chances are, furthermore, that
neither Mr. A. nor Mr. B. has a definite idea of what socialism really
is, for as Robert Louis Stevenson says, "Man lives not by bread alone
but chiefly by catch words." If you are of this group of men, and have
observed this proposed government policy, and investigated it, and
thought about it, what you have to say cannot fail to command their
respect and approval, for you will have shown them that you possess a
grasp of your subject and--to adopt an exceedingly expressive bit of
slang--_then_ some.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Robert Houdin trained his son to give one swift glance at a shop
window in passing and be able to report accurately a surprising number
of its contents. Try this several times on different windows and report
the result.
2. What effect does reserve power have on an audience?
3. What are the best methods for acquiring reserve power?
4. What is the danger of too much reading?
5. Analyze some speech that you have read or heard and notice how much
real information there is in it. Compare it with Dr. Hillis's speech on
"Brave Little Belgium," page 394.
6. Write out a three-minute speech on any subject you choose. How much
information, and what new ideas, does it contain? Compare your speech
with the extract on page 191 from Dr. Hillis's "The Uses of Books and
Reading."
7. Have you ever read a book on the practise of thinking? If so, give
your impressions of its value.
NOTE: There are a number of excellent books on the subject of thought
and the management of thought. The following are recommended as being
especially helpful: "Thinking and Learning to Think," Nathan C.
Schaeffer; "Talks to Students on the Art of Study," Cramer; "As a Man
Thinketh," Allen.
8. Define (_a_) logic; (_b_) mental philosophy (or mental science);
(_c_) psychology; (_d_) abstract.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]
[Footnote 9: Used by permission.]
CHAPTER XVIII
SUBJECT AND PREPARATION
Suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
--BYRON, _Hints from Horace_.
Look to this day, for it is life--the very life of life. In its
brief course lie all the verities and realities of your
existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the
splendor of beauty. For yesterday is already a dream and
tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every
yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of
hope. Look well, therefore, to this day. Such is the salutation
of the dawn.
--_From the Sanskrit_.
In the chapter preceding we have seen the influence of "Thought and
Reserve Power" on general preparedness for public speech. But
preparation consists in something more definite than the cultivation of
thought-power, whether from original or from borrowed sources--it
involves a _specifically_ acquisitive attitude of the whole life. If you
would become a full soul you must constantly take in and assimilate, for
in that way only may you hope to give out that which is worth the
hearing; but do not confuse the acquisition of general information with
the mastery of specific knowledge. Information consists of a fact or a
group of facts; knowledge is _organized_ information--knowledge knows a
fact in relation to other facts.
Now the important thing here is that you should set all your faculties
to take in the things about you with the particular object of
correlating them and storing them for use in public speech. You must
hear with the speaker's ear, see with the speaker's eye, and choose
books and companions and sights and sounds with the speaker's purpose in
view. At the same time, be ready to receive unplanned-for knowledge. One
of the fascinating elements in your life as a public speaker will be the
conscious growth in power that casual daily experiences bring. If your
eyes are alert you will be constantly discovering facts, illustrations,
and ideas without having set out in search of them. These all may be
turned to account on the platform; even the leaden events of hum-drum
daily life may be melted into bullets for future battles.
_Conservation of Time in Preparation_
But, you say, I have so little time for preparation--my mind must be
absorbed by other matters. Daniel Webster never let an opportunity pass
to gather material for his speeches. When he was a boy working in a
sawmill he read out of a book in one hand and busied himself at some
mechanical task with the other. In youth Patrick Henry roamed the fields
and woods in solitude for days at a time unconsciously gathering
material and impressions for his later service as a speaker. Dr. Russell
H. Conwell, the man who, the late Charles A. Dana said, had addressed
more hearers than any living man, used to memorize long passages from
Milton while tending the boiling syrup-pans in the silent New England
woods at night. The modern employer would discharge a Webster of today
for inattention to duty, and doubtless he would be justified, and
Patrick Henry seemed only an idle chap even in those easy-going days;
but the truth remains: those who take in power and have the purpose to
use it efficiently will some day win to the place in which that
stored-up power will revolve great wheels of influence.
Napoleon said that quarter hours decide the destinies of nations. How
many quarter hours do we let drift by aimlessly! Robert Louis Stevenson
conserved _all_ his time; _every_ experience became capital for his
work--for capital may be defined as "the results of labor stored up to
assist future production." He continually tried to put into suitable
language the scenes and actions that were in evidence about him. Emerson
says: "Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself whilst we are
preparing to live."
Why wait for a more convenient season for this broad, general
preparation? The fifteen minutes that we spend on the car could be
profitably turned into speech-capital.
Procure a cheap edition of modern speeches, and by cutting out a few
pages each day, and reading them during the idle minute here and there,
note how soon you can make yourself familiar with the world's best
speeches. If you do not wish to mutilate your book, take it with
you--most of the epoch-making books are now printed in small volumes.
The daily waste of natural gas in the Oklahoma fields is equal to ten
thousand tons of coal. Only about three per cent of the power of the
coal that enters the furnace ever diffuses itself from your electric
bulb as light--the other ninety-seven per cent is wasted. Yet these
wastes are no larger, nor more to be lamented than the tremendous waste
of time which, if conserved would increase the speaker's powers to their
_nth_ degree. Scientists are making three ears of corn grow where one
grew before; efficiency engineers are eliminating useless motions and
products from our factories: catch the spirit of the age and apply
efficiency to the use of the most valuable asset you possess--time. What
do you do mentally with the time you spend in dressing or in shaving?
Take some subject and concentrate your energies on it for a week by
utilizing just the spare moments that would otherwise be wasted. You
will be amazed at the result. One passage a day from the Book of Books,
one golden ingot from some master mind, one fully-possessed thought of
your own might thus be added to the treasury of your life. Do not waste
your time in ways that profit you nothing. Fill "the unforgiving minute"
with "sixty seconds' worth of distance run" and on the platform you will
be immeasurably the gainer.
Let no word of this, however, seem to decry the value of recreation.
Nothing is more vital to a worker than rest--yet nothing is so vitiating
to the shirker. Be sure that your recreation re-creates. A pause in the
midst of labors gathers strength for new effort. The mistake is to pause
too long, or to fill your pauses with ideas that make life flabby.
_Choosing a Subject_
Subject and materials tremendously influence each other.
"This arises from the fact that there are two distinct ways in which a
subject may be chosen: by arbitrary choice, or by development from
thought and reading.
"Arbitrary choice ... of one subject from among a number involves so
many important considerations that no speaker ever fails to appreciate
the tone of satisfaction in him who triumphantly announces: 'I have a
subject!'
"'Do give me a subject!' How often the weary school teacher hears that
cry. Then a list of themes is suggested, gone over, considered, and, in
most instances, rejected, because the teacher can know but imperfectly
what is in the pupil's mind. To suggest a subject in this way is like
trying to discover the street on which a lost child lives, by naming
over a number of streets until one strikes the little one's ear as
sounding familiar.
"Choice by development is a very different process. It does not ask,
What shall I say? It turns the mind in upon itself and asks, What do I
think? Thus, the subject may be said to choose itself, for in the
process of thought or of reading one theme rises into prominence and
becomes a living germ, soon to grow into the discourse. He who has not
learned to reflect is not really acquainted with his own thoughts;
hence, his thoughts are not productive. Habits of reading and reflection
will supply the speaker's mind with an abundance of subjects of which he
already knows something from the very reading and reflection which gave
birth to his theme. This is not a paradox, but sober truth.
"It must be already apparent that the choice of a subject by development
savors more of collection than of conscious selection. The subject
'pops into the mind.' ... In the intellect of the trained thinker it
concentrates--by a process which we have seen to be induction--the facts
and truths of which he has been reading and thinking. This is most often
a gradual process. The scattered ideas may be but vaguely connected at
first, but more and more they concentrate and take on a single form
until at length one strong idea seems to grasp the soul with
irresistible force, and to cry aloud, 'Arise, I am your _theme_!
Henceforth, until you transmute me by the alchemy of your inward fire
into vital speech, you shall know no rest!' Happy, then, is that
speaker, for he has found a subject that grips him.
"Of course, experienced speakers use both methods of selection. Even a
reading and reflective man is sometimes compelled to hunt for a theme
from Dan to Beersheba, and then the task of gathering materials becomes
a serious one. But even in such a case there is a sense in which the
selection comes by development, because no careful speaker settles upon
a theme which does not represent at least some matured thought."[10]
_Deciding on the Subject Matter_
Even when your theme has been chosen for you by someone else, there
remains to you a considerable field for choice of subject matter. The
same considerations, in fact, that would govern you in choosing a theme
must guide in the selection of the material. Ask yourself--or someone
else--such questions as these:
What is the precise nature of the occasion? How large an audience may be
expected? From what walks of life do they come? What is their probable
attitude toward the theme? Who else will speak? Do I speak first, last,
or where, on the program? What are the other speakers going to talk
about? What is the nature of the auditorium? Is there a desk? Could the
subject be more effectively handled if somewhat modified? Precisely how
much time am I to fill?
It is evident that many speech-misfits of subject, speaker, occasion and
place are due to failure to ask just such pertinent questions. _What_
should be said, by _whom_, and _in what circumstances_, constitute
ninety per cent of efficiency in public address. No matter who asks you,
refuse to be a square peg in a round hole.
_Questions of Proportion_
Proportion in a speech is attained by a nice adjustment of time. How
fully you may treat your subject it is not always for you to say. Let
ten minutes mean neither nine nor eleven--though better nine than
eleven, at all events. You wouldn't steal a man's watch; no more should
you steal the time of the succeeding speaker, or that of the audience.
There is no need to overstep time-limits if you make your preparation
adequate and divide your subject so as to give each thought its due
proportion of attention--and no more. Blessed is the man that maketh
short speeches, for he shall be invited to speak again.
Another matter of prime importance is, what part of your address
demands the most emphasis. This once decided, you will know where to
place that pivotal section so as to give it the greatest strategic
value, and what degree of preparation must be given to that central
thought so that the vital part may not be submerged by non-essentials.
Many a speaker has awakened to find that he has burnt up eight minutes
of a ten-minute speech in merely getting up steam. That is like spending
eighty percent of your building-money on the vestibule of the house.
The same sense of proportion must tell you to stop precisely when you
are through--and it is to be hoped that you will discover the arrival of
that period before your audience does.
_Tapping Original Sources_
The surest way to give life to speech-material is to gather your facts
at first hand. Your words come with the weight of authority when you can
say, "I have examined the employment rolls of every mill in this
district and find that thirty-two per cent of the children employed are
under the legal age." No citation of authorities can equal that. You
must adopt the methods of the reporter and find out the facts underlying
your argument or appeal. To do so may prove laborious, but it should not
be irksome, for the great world of fact teems with interest, and over
and above all is the sense of power that will come to you from original
investigation. To see and feel the facts you are discussing will react
upon you much more powerfully than if you were to secure the facts at
second hand.
Live an active life among people who are doing worth-while things, keep
eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of
the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the
world loves nothing so much as real life.
_How to Use a Library_
Unsuspected treasures lie in the smallest library. Even when the owner
has read every last page of his books it is only in rare instances that
he has full indexes to all of them, either in his mind or on paper, so
as to make available the vast number of varied subjects touched upon or
treated in volumes whose titles would never suggest such topics.
For this reason it is a good thing to take an odd hour now and then to
browse. Take down one volume after another and look over its table of
contents and its index. (It is a reproach to any author of a serious
book not to have provided a full index, with cross references.) Then
glance over the pages, making notes, mental or physical, of material
that looks interesting and usable. Most libraries contain volumes that
the owner is "going to read some day." A familiarity with even the
contents of such books on your own shelves will enable you to refer to
them when you want help. Writings read long ago should be treated in the
same way--in every chapter some surprise lurks to delight you.
In looking up a subject do not be discouraged if you do not find it
indexed or outlined in the table of contents--you are pretty sure to
discover some material under a related title.
Suppose you set to work somewhat in this way to gather references on
"Thinking:" First you look over your book titles, and there is
Schaeffer's "Thinking and Learning to Think." Near it is Kramer's "Talks
to Students on the Art of Study"--that seems likely to provide some
material, and it does. Naturally you think next of your book on
psychology, and there is help there. If you have a volume on the human
intellect you will have already turned to it. Suddenly you remember your
encyclopedia and your dictionary of quotations--and now material fairly
rains upon you; the problem is what _not_ to use. In the encyclopedia
you turn to every reference that includes or touches or even suggests
"thinking;" and in the dictionary of quotations you do the same. The
latter volume you find peculiarly helpful because it suggests several
volumes to you that are on your own shelves--you never would have
thought to look in them for references on this subject. Even fiction
will supply help, but especially books of essays and biography. Be aware
of your own resources.
To make a general index to your library does away with the necessity for
indexing individual volumes that are not already indexed.
To begin with, keep a note-book by you; or small cards and paper
cuttings in your pocket and on your desk will serve as well. The same
note-book that records the impressions of your own experiences and
thoughts will be enriched by the ideas of others.
To be sure, this note-book habit means labor, but remember that more
speeches have been spoiled by half-hearted preparation than by lack of
talent. Laziness is an own-brother to Over-confidence, and both are your
inveterate enemies, though they pretend to be soothing friends.
Conserve your material by indexing every good idea on cards, thus:
[HW:
_Socialism_
Progress of S., Env. 16
S. a fallacy, 96/210
General article on S., Howells', Dec. 1913
"Socialism and the Franchise," Forbes
"Socialism in Ancient Life," Original Ms.,
Env. 102
]
On the card illustrated above, clippings are indexed by giving the
number of the envelope in which they are filed. The envelopes may be of
any size desired and kept in any convenient receptacle. On the foregoing
example, "Progress of S., Envelope 16," will represent a clipping, filed
in Envelope 16, which is, of course, numbered arbitrarily.
The fractions refer to books in your library--the numerator being the
book-number, the denominator referring to the page. Thus, "S. a fallacy,
96/210," refers to page 210 of volume 96 in your library. By some
arbitrary sign--say red ink--you may even index a reference in a public
library book.
If you preserve your magazines, important articles may be indexed by
month and year. An entire volume on a subject may be indicated like the
imaginary book by "Forbes." If you clip the articles, it is better to
index them according to the envelope system.
Your own writings and notes may be filed in envelopes with the clippings
or in a separate series.
Another good indexing system combines the library index with the
"scrap," or clipping, system by making the outside of the envelope serve
the same purpose as the card for the indexing of books, magazines,
clippings and manuscripts, the latter two classes of material being
enclosed in the envelopes that index them, and all filed alphabetically.
When your cards accumulate so as to make ready reference difficult under
a single alphabet, you may subdivide each letter by subordinate guide
cards marked by the vowels, A, E, I, O, U. Thus, "Antiquities" would be
filed under _i_ in A, because A begins the word, and the second letter,
_n_, comes after the vowel _i_ in the alphabet, but before _o_. In the
same manner, "Beecher" would be filed under _e_ in B; and "Hydrogen"
would come under _u_ in H.
_Outlining the Address_
No one can advise you how to prepare the notes for an address. Some
speakers get the best results while walking out and ruminating, jotting
down notes as they pause in their walk. Others never put pen to paper
until the whole speech has been thought out. The great majority,
however, will take notes, classify their notes, write a hasty first
draft, and then revise the speech. Try each of these methods and choose
the one that is best--_for you_. Do not allow any man to force you to
work in _his_ way; but do not neglect to consider his way, for it may be
better than your own.
For those who make notes and with their aid write out the speech, these
suggestions may prove helpful:
After having read and thought enough, classify your notes by setting
down the big, central thoughts of your material on separate cards or
slips of paper. These will stand in the same relation to your subject as
chapters do to a book.
Then arrange these main ideas or heads in such an order that they will
lead effectively to the result you have in mind, so that the speech may
rise in argument, in interest, in power, by piling one fact or appeal
upon another until the climax--the highest point of influence on your
audience--has been reached.
Next group all your ideas, facts, anecdotes, and illustrations under the
foregoing main heads, each where it naturally belongs.
You now have a skeleton or outline of your address that in its polished
form might serve either as the brief, or manuscript notes, for the
speech or as the guide-outline which you will expand into the written
address, if written it is to be.
Imagine each of the main ideas in the brief on page 213 as being
separate; then picture your mind as sorting them out and placing them in
order; finally, conceive of how you would fill in the facts and examples
under each head, giving special prominence to those you wish to
emphasize and subduing those of less moment. In the end, you have the
outline complete. The simplest form of outline--not very suitable for
use on the platform, however--is the following:
_WHY PROSPERITY IS COMING_
What prosperity means.--The real tests of prosperity.--Its basis in the
soil.--American agricultural progress.--New interest in
farming.--Enormous value of our agricultural products.--Reciprocal
effect on trade.--Foreign countries affected.--Effects of our new
internal economy--the regulation of banking and "big business"--on
prosperity.--Effects of our revised attitude toward foreign markets,
including our merchant marine.--Summary.
Obviously, this very simple outline is capable of considerable expansion
under each head by the addition of facts, arguments, inferences and
examples.
Here is an outline arranged with more regard for argument:
FOREIGN IMMIGRATION SHOULD BE RESTRICTED[11]
I. FACT AS CAUSE: Many immigrants are practically paupers.
(Proofs involving statistics or statements of authorities.)
II. FACT AS EFFECT: They sooner or later fill our alms-houses
and become public charges. (Proofs involving statistics or
statements of authorities.)
III. FACT AS CAUSE: Some of them are criminals. (Examples of
recent cases.)
IV. FACT AS EFFECT: They reënforce the criminal classes.
(Effects on our civic life.)
V. FACT AS CAUSE: Many of them know nothing of the duties of
free citizenship. (Examples.)
VI.FACT AS EFFECT: Such immigrants recruit the worst element in
our politics. (Proofs.)
A more highly ordered grouping of topics and subtopics is shown in the
following:
OURS A CHRISTIAN NATION
I. INTRODUCTION: Why the subject is timely. Influences
operative against this contention today.
II. CHRISTIANITY PRESIDED OVER THE EARLY HISTORY OF
AMERICA.
1. First practical discovery by a Christian explorer. Columbus
worshiped God on the new soil.
2. The Cavaliers.
3. The French Catholic settlers.
4. The Huguenots.
5. The Puritans.
III. THE BIRTH OF OUR NATION WAS UNDER CHRISTIAN AUSPICES.
1. Christian character of Washington.
2. Other Christian patriots.
3. The Church in our Revolutionary struggle. Muhlenberg.
IV. OUR LATER HISTORY HAS ONLY EMPHASIZED OUR NATIONAL
ATTITUDE. Examples of dealings with foreign nations show
Christian magnanimity. Returning the Chinese Indemnity;
fostering the Red Cross; attitude toward Belgium.
V. OUR GOVERNMENTAL FORMS AND MANY OF OUR LAWS ARE OF A
CHRISTIAN TEMPER.
1. The use of the Bible in public ways, oaths, etc.
2. The Bible in our schools.
3. Christian chaplains minister to our law-making bodies, to our
army, and to our navy.
4. The Christian Sabbath is officially and generally recognized.
5. The Christian family and the Christian system of morality are
at the basis of our laws.
VI. THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE TESTIFIES OF THE POWER OF
CHRISTIANITY. Charities, education, etc., have Christian
tone.
VII. OTHER NATIONS REGARD US AS A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE.
VIII. CONCLUSION: The attitude which may reasonably be
expected of all good citizens toward questions touching the
preservation of our standing as a Christian nation.
_Writing and Revision_
After the outline has been perfected comes the time to write the speech,
if write it you must. Then, whatever you do, write it at white heat,
with not _too_ much thought of anything but the strong, appealing
expression of your ideas.
The final stage is the paring down, the re-vision--the seeing again, as
the word implies--when all the parts of the speech must be impartially
scrutinized for clearness, precision, force, effectiveness, suitability,
proportion, logical climax; and in all this you must _imagine yourself
to be before your audience_, for a speech is not an essay and what will
convince and arouse in the one will not prevail in the other.
_The Title_
Often last of all will come that which in a sense is first of all--the
title, the name by which the speech is known. Sometimes it will be the
simple theme of the address, as "The New Americanism," by Henry
Watterson; or it may be a bit of symbolism typifying the spirit of the
address, as "Acres of Diamonds," by Russell H. Conwell; or it may be a
fine phrase taken from the body of the address, as "Pass Prosperity
Around," by Albert J. Beveridge. All in all, from whatever motive it be
chosen, let the title be fresh, short, suited to the subject, and likely
to excite interest.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Define (_a_) introduction; (_b_) climax; (_c_) peroration.
2. If a thirty-minute speech would require three hours for specific
preparation, would you expect to be able to do equal justice to a speech
one-third as long in one-third the time for preparation? Give reasons.
3. Relate briefly any personal experience you may have had in conserving
time for reading and thought.
4. In the manner of a reporter or investigator, go out and get
first-hand information on some subject of interest to the public.
Arrange the results of your research in the form of an outline, or
brief.
5. From a private or a public library gather enough authoritative
material on one of the following questions to build an outline for a
twenty-minute address. Take one definite side of the question, (_a_)
"The Housing of the Poor;" (_b_) "The Commission Form of Government for
Cities as a Remedy for Political Graft;" (_c_) "The Test of Woman's
Suffrage in the West;" (_d_) "Present Trends of Public Taste in
Reading;" (_e_) "Municipal Art;" (_f_) "Is the Theatre Becoming more
Elevated in Tone?" (_g_) "The Effects of the Magazine on Literature;"
(_h_) "Does Modern Life Destroy Ideals?" (_i_) "Is Competition 'the Life
of Trade?'" (_j_) "Baseball is too Absorbing to be a Wholesome National
Game;" (_k_) "Summer Baseball and Amateur Standing;" (_l_) "Does College
Training Unfit a Woman for Domestic Life?" (_m_) "Does Woman's
Competition with Man in Business Dull the Spirit of Chivalry?" (_n_)
"Are Elective Studies Suited to High School Courses?" (_o_) "Does the
Modern College Prepare Men for Preeminent Leadership?" (_p_) "The
Y.M.C.A. in Its Relation to the Labor Problem;" (_q_) "Public Speaking
as Training in Citizenship."
6. Construct the outline, examining it carefully for interest,
convincing character, proportion, and climax of arrangement.
NOTE:--This exercise should be repeated until the student shows facility
in synthetic arrangement.
7. Deliver the address, if possible before an audience.
8. Make a three-hundred word report on the results, as best you are able
to estimate them.
9. Tell something of the benefits of using a periodical (or cumulative)
index.
10. Give a number of quotations, suitable for a speaker's use, that you
have memorized in off moments.
11. In the manner of the outline on page 213, analyze the address on
pages 78-79, "The History of Liberty."
12. Give an outline analysis, from notes or memory, of an address or
sermon to which you have listened for this purpose.
13. Criticise the address from a structural point of view.
14. Invent titles for any five of the themes in Exercise 5.
15. Criticise the titles of any five chapters of this book, suggesting
better ones.
16. Criticise the title of any lecture or address of which you know.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]
[Footnote 11: Adapted from _Competition-Rhetoric_, Scott and Denny, p.
241.]
CHAPTER XIX
INFLUENCING BY EXPOSITION
Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak;
care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with
undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.
--THOMAS CARLYLE, Essay on _Biography_.
A complete discussion of the rhetorical structure of public speeches
requires a fuller treatise than can be undertaken in a work of this
nature, yet in this chapter, and in the succeeding ones on
"Description," "Narration," "Argument," and "Pleading," the underlying
principles are given and explained as fully as need be for a working
knowledge, and adequate book references are given for those who would
perfect themselves in rhetorical art.
_The Nature of Exposition_
In the word "expose"--_to lay bare, to uncover, to show the true
inwardness of_--we see the foundation-idea of "Exposition." It is the
clear and precise setting forth of what the subject really is--it is
explanation.
Exposition does not draw a picture, for that would be description. To
tell in exact terms what the automobile is, to name its characteristic
parts and explain their workings, would be exposition; so would an
explanation of the nature of "fear." But to create a mental image of a
particular automobile, with its glistening body, graceful lines, and
great speed, would be description; and so would a picturing of fear
acting on the emotions of a child at night. Exposition and description
often intermingle and overlap, but fundamentally they are distinct.
Their differences will be touched upon again in the chapter on
"Description."
Exposition furthermore does not include an account of how events
happened--that is narration. When Peary lectured on his polar
discoveries he explained the instruments used for determining latitude
and longitude--that was exposition. In picturing his equipment he used
description. In telling of his adventures day by day he employed
narration. In supporting some of his contentions he used argument. Yet
he mingled all these forms throughout the lecture.
Neither does exposition deal with reasons and inferences--that is the
field of argument. A series of connected statements intended to convince
a prospective buyer that one automobile is better than another, or
proofs that the appeal to fear is a wrong method of discipline, would
not be exposition. The plain facts as set forth in expository speaking
or writing are nearly always the basis of argument, yet the processes
are not one. True, the statement of a single significant fact without
the addition of one other word may be convincing, but a moment's thought
will show that the inference, which completes a chain of reasoning, is
made in the mind of the hearer and presupposes other facts held in
consideration.[12]
In like manner, it is obvious that the field of persuasion is not open
to exposition, for exposition is entirely an intellectual process, with
no emotional element.
_The Importance of Exposition_
The importance of exposition in public speech is precisely the
importance of setting forth a matter so plainly that it cannot be
misunderstood.
"To master the process of exposition is to become a clear
thinker. 'I know, when you do not ask me,'[13] replied a
gentleman upon being requested to define a highly complex idea.
Now some large concepts defy explicit definition; but no mind
should take refuge behind such exceptions, for where definition
fails, other forms succeed. Sometimes we feel confident that we
have perfect mastery of an idea, but when the time comes to
express it, the clearness becomes a haze. Exposition, then, is
the test of clear understanding. To speak effectively you must
be able to see your subject clearly and comprehensively, and to
make your audience see it as you do."[14]
There are pitfalls on both sides of this path. To explain too little
will leave your audience in doubt as to what you mean. It is useless to
argue a question if it is not perfectly clear just what is meant by the
question. Have you never come to a blind lane in conversation by finding
that you were talking of one aspect of a matter while your friend was
thinking of another? If two do not agree in their definitions of a
Musician, it is useless to dispute over a certain man's right to claim
the title.
On the other side of the path lies the abyss of tediously explaining too
much. That offends because it impresses the hearers that you either do
not respect their intelligence or are trying to blow a breeze into a
tornado. Carefully estimate the probable knowledge of your audience,
both in general and of the particular point you are explaining. In
trying to simplify, it is fatal to "sillify." To explain more than is
needed for the purposes of your argument or appeal is to waste energy
all around. In your efforts to be explicit do not press exposition to
the extent of dulness--the confines are not far distant and you may
arrive before you know it.
_Some Purposes of Exposition_
From what has been said it ought to be clear that, primarily, exposition
weaves a cord of understanding between you and your audience. It lays,
furthermore, a foundation of fact on which to build later statements,
arguments, and appeals. In scientific and purely "information" speeches
exposition may exist by itself and for itself, as in a lecture on
biology, or on psychology; but in the vast majority of cases it is used
to accompany and prepare the way for the other forms of discourse.
Clearness, precision, accuracy, unity, truth, and necessity--these must
be the _constant_ standards by which you test the efficiency of your
expositions, and, indeed, that of every explanatory statement. This
dictum should be written on your brain in letters most plain. And let
this apply not alone to the _purposes_ of exposition but in equal
measure to your use of the
_Methods of Exposition_
The various ways along which a speaker may proceed in exposition are
likely to touch each other now and then, and even when they do not meet
and actually overlap they run so nearly parallel that the roads are
sometimes distinct rather in theory than in any more practical respect.
=Definition=, the primary expository method, is a statement of precise
limits.[15] Obviously, here the greatest care must be exercised that the
terms of definition should not themselves demand too much definition;
that the language should be concise and clear; and that the definition
should neither exclude nor include too much. The following is a simple
example:
To expound is to set forth the nature, the significance, the
characteristics, and the bearing of an idea or a group of ideas.
--ARLO BATES, _Talks on Writing English_.
=Contrast and Antithesis= are often used effectively to amplify
definition, as in this sentence, which immediately follows the
above-cited definition:
Exposition therefore differs from Description in that it deals
directly with the meaning or intent of its subject instead of
with its appearance.
This antithesis forms an expansion of the definition, and as such it
might have been still further extended. In fact, this is a frequent
practise in public speech, where the minds of the hearers often ask for
reiteration and expanded statement to help them grasp a subject in its
several aspects. This is the very heart of exposition--to amplify and
clarify all the terms by which a matter is defined.
=Example= is another method of amplifying a definition or of expounding
an idea more fully. The following sentences immediately succeed Mr.
Bates's definition and contrast just quoted:
A good deal which we are accustomed inexactly to call
description is really exposition. Suppose that your small boy
wishes to know how an engine works, and should say: "Please
describe the steam-engine to me." If you insist on taking his
words literally--and are willing to run the risk of his
indignation at being wilfully misunderstood--you will to the
best of your ability picture to him this familiarly wonderful
machine. If you explain it to him, you are not describing but
expounding it.
The chief value of example is that it makes clear the unknown by
referring the mind to the known. Readiness of mind to make illuminating,
apt comparisons for the sake of clearness is one of the speaker's chief
resources on the platform--it is the greatest of all teaching gifts. It
is a gift, moreover, that responds to cultivation. Read the three
extracts from Arlo Bates as their author delivered them, as one passage,
and see how they melt into one, each part supplementing the other most
helpfully.
=Analogy=, which calls attention to similar relationships in objects not
otherwise similar, is one of the most useful methods of exposition. The
following striking specimen is from Beecher's Liverpool speech:
A savage is a man of one story, and that one story a cellar.
When a man begins to be civilized he raises another story. When
you christianize and civilize the man, you put story upon story,
for you develop faculty after faculty; and you have to supply
every story with your productions.
=Discarding= is a less common form of platform explanation. It consists
in clearing away associated ideas so that the attention may be centered
on the main thought to be discussed. Really, it is a negative factor in
exposition though a most important one, for it is fundamental to the
consideration of an intricately related matter that subordinate and side
questions should be set aside in order to bring out the main issue. Here
is an example of the method:
I cannot allow myself to be led aside from the only issue before
this jury. It is not pertinent to consider that this prisoner is
the husband of a heartbroken woman and that his babes will go
through the world under the shadow of the law's extremest
penalty worked upon their father. We must forget the venerable
father and the mother whom Heaven in pity took before she
learned of her son's disgrace. What have these matters of heart,
what have the blenched faces of his friends, what have the
prisoner's long and honorable career to say before this bar when
you are sworn to weigh only the direct evidence before you? The
one and only question for you to decide on the evidence is
whether this man did with revengeful intent commit the murder
that every impartial witness has solemnly laid at his door.
=Classification= assigns a subject to its class. By an allowable extension
of the definition it may be said to assign it also to its order, genus,
and species. Classification is useful in public speech in narrowing the
issue to a desired phase. It is equally valuable for showing a thing in
its relation to other things, or in correlation. Classification is
closely akin to Definition and Division.
This question of the liquor traffic, sirs, takes its place
beside the grave moral issues of all times. Whatever be its
economic significance--and who is there to question
it--whatever vital bearing it has upon our political system--and
is there one who will deny it?--the question of the licensed
saloon must quickly be settled as the world in its advancement
has settled the questions of constitutional government for the
masses, of the opium traffic, of the serf, and of the slave--not
as matters of economic and political expediency but as questions
of right and wrong.
=Analysis= separates a subject into its essential parts. This it may do by
various principles; for example, analysis may follow the order of time
(geologic eras), order of place (geographic facts), logical order (a
sermon outline), order of increasing interest, or procession to a climax
(a lecture on 20th century poets); and so on. A classic example of
analytical exposition is the following:
In philosophy the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto
God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted
upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise
three knowledges: divine philosophy, natural philosophy, and
human philosophy or humanity. For all things are marked and
stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the
difference of nature, and the use of man.
--LORD BACON, _The Advancement of Learning_.[16]
=Division= differs only from analysis in that analysis follows the
inherent divisions of a subject, as illustrated in the foregoing
passage, while division arbitrarily separates the subject for
convenience of treatment, as in the following none-too-logical example:
For civil history, it is of three kinds; not unfitly to be
compared with the three kinds of pictures or images. For of
pictures or images, we see some are unfinished, some are
perfect, and some are defaced. So of histories we may find three
kinds, memorials, perfect histories, and antiquities; for
memorials are history unfinished, or the first or rough drafts
of history; and antiquities are history defaced, or some
remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of
time.
--LORD BACON, _The Advancement of Learning_.[16A]
=Generalization= states a broad principle, or a general truth, derived
from examination of a considerable number of individual facts. This
synthetic exposition is not the same as argumentative generalization,
which supports a general contention by citing instances in proof.
Observe how Holmes begins with one fact, and by adding another and
another reaches a complete whole. This is one of the most effective
devices in the public speaker's repertory.
Take a hollow cylinder, the bottom closed while the top remains
open, and pour in water to the height of a few inches. Next
cover the water with a flat plate or piston, which fits the
interior of the cylinder perfectly; then apply heat to the
water, and we shall witness the following phenomena. After the
lapse of some minutes the water will begin to boil, and the
steam accumulating at the upper surface will make room for
itself by raising the piston slightly. As the boiling continues,
more and more steam will be formed, and raise the piston higher
and higher, till all the water is boiled away, and nothing but
steam is left in the cylinder. Now this machine, consisting of
cylinder, piston, water, and fire, is the steam-engine in its
most elementary form. For a steam-engine may be defined as an
apparatus for doing work by means of heat applied to water; and
since raising such a weight as the piston is a form of doing
work, this apparatus, clumsy and inconvenient though it may be,
answers the definition precisely.[17]
=Reference to Experience= is one of the most vital principles in
exposition--as in every other form of discourse.
"Reference to experience, as here used, means reference to the known.
The known is that which the listener has seen, heard, read, felt,
believed or done, and which still exists in his consciousness--his stock
of knowledge. It embraces all those thoughts, feelings and happenings
which are to him real. Reference to Experience, then, means _coming into
the listener's life_.[18]
The vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are
practised by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs
of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the
marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that
by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from
fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and
deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a particular kind
upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand
thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and
Leverrier discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact,
simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all
habitually, and at every moment, use carelessly.
--THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, _Lay Sermons_.
Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are
written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a
moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a
decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken?
your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every
part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call
yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
--SHAKESPEARE, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.
Finally, in preparing expository material ask yourself these questions
regarding your subject:
What is it, and what is it not?
What is it like, and unlike?
What are its causes, and effects?
How shall it be divided?
With what subjects is it correlated?
What experiences does it recall?
What examples illustrate it?
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What would be the effect of adhering to any one of the forms of
discourse in a public address?
2. Have you ever heard such an address?
3. Invent a series of examples illustrative of the distinctions made on
pages 232 and 233.
4. Make a list of ten subjects that might be treated largely, if not
entirely, by exposition.
5. Name the six standards by which expository writing should be tried.
6. Define any one of the following: (_a_) storage battery; (_b_) "a free
hand;" (_c_) sail boat; (_d_) "The Big Stick;" (_e_) nonsense; (_f_) "a
good sport;" (_g_) short-story; (_h_) novel; (_i_) newspaper; (_j_)
politician; (_k_) jealousy; (_l_) truth; (_m_) matinée girl; (_n_)
college honor system; (_o_) modish; (_p_) slum; (_q_) settlement work;
(_r_) forensic.
7. Amplify the definition by antithesis.
8. Invent two examples to illustrate the definition (question 6).
9. Invent two analogies for the same subject (question 6).
10. Make a short speech based on one of the following: (_a_) wages and
salary; (_b_) master and man; (_c_) war and peace; (_d_) home and the
boarding house; (_e_) struggle and victory; (_f_) ignorance and
ambition.
11. Make a ten-minute speech on any of the topics named in question 6,
using all the methods of exposition already named.
12. Explain what is meant by discarding topics collateral and
subordinate to a subject.
13. Rewrite the jury-speech on page 224.
14. Define correlation.
15. Write an example of "classification," on any political, social,
economic, or moral issue of the day.
16. Make a brief analytical statement of Henry W. Grady's "The Race
Problem," page 36.
17. By what analytical principle did you proceed? (See page 225.)
18. Write a short, carefully generalized speech from a large amount of
data on one of the following subjects: (_a_) The servant girl problem;
(_b_) cats; (_c_) the baseball craze; (_d_) reform administrations;
(_e_) sewing societies; (_f_) coeducation; (_g_) the traveling salesman.
19. Observe this passage from Newton's "Effective Speaking:"
"That man is a cynic. He sees goodness nowhere. He sneers at
virtue, sneers at love; to him the maiden plighting her troth is
an artful schemer, and he sees even in the mother's kiss nothing
but an empty conventionality."
Write, commit and deliver two similar passages based on your choice from
this list: (_a_) "the egotist;" (_b_) "the sensualist;" (_c_) "the
hypocrite;" (_d_) "the timid man;" (_e_) "the joker;" (_f_) "the flirt;"
(_g_) "the ungrateful woman;" (_h_) "the mournful man." In both cases
use the principle of "Reference to Experience."
20. Write a passage on any of the foregoing characters in imitation of
the style of Shakespeare's characterization of Sir John Falstaff, page
227.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: Argumentation will be outlined fully in subsequent
chapter.]
[Footnote 13: _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F. Genung.]
[Footnote 14: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]
[Footnote 15: On the various types of definition see any college manual
of Rhetoric.]
[Footnote 16: Quoted in _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F.
Genung.]
[Footnote 16A: Quoted in _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F.
Genung.]
[Footnote 17: G.C.V. Holmes, quoted in _Specimens of Exposition_, H.
Lamont.]
[Footnote 18: _Effective Speaking_, Arthur Edward Phillips. This work
covers the preparation of public speech in a very helpful way.]
CHAPTER XX
INFLUENCING BY DESCRIPTION
The groves of Eden vanish'd now so long,
Live in description, and look green in song.
--ALEXANDER POPE, _Windsor Forest_.
The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar
facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it
clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he
watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a
material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind,
contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment
of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the
blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It
is proper creation.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Nature_.
Like other valuable resources in public speaking, description loses its
power when carried to an extreme. Over-ornamentation makes the subject
ridiculous. A dust-cloth is a very useful thing, but why embroider it?
Whether description shall be restrained within its proper and important
limits, or be encouraged to run riot, is the personal choice that comes
before every speaker, for man's earliest literary tendency is to depict.
_The Nature of Description_
To describe is to call up a picture in the mind of the hearer. "In
talking of description we naturally speak of portraying, delineating,
coloring, and all the devices of the picture painter. To describe is to
visualize, hence we must look at description as a pictorial process,
whether the writer deals with material or with spiritual objects."[19]
If you were asked to describe the rapid-fire gun you might go about it
in either of two ways: give a cold technical account of its mechanism,
in whole and in detail, or else describe it as a terrible engine of
slaughter, dwelling upon its effects rather than upon its structure.
The former of these processes is exposition, the latter is true
description. Exposition deals more with the _general_, while description
must deal with the _particular_. Exposition elucidates _ideas_,
description treats of _things_. Exposition deals with the _abstract_,
description with the _concrete_. Exposition is concerned with the
_internal_, description with the _external_. Exposition is
_enumerative_, description _literary_. Exposition is _intellectual_,
description _sensory_. Exposition is _impersonal_, description
_personal_.
If description is a visualizing process for the hearer, it is first of
all such for the speaker--he cannot describe what he has never seen,
either physically or in fancy. It is this personal quality--this
question of the personal eye which sees the things later to be
described--that makes description so interesting in public speech. Given
a speaker of personality, and we are interested in his personal
view--his view adds to the natural interest of the scene, and may even
be the sole source of that interest to his auditors.
The seeing eye has been praised in an earlier chapter (on "Subject and
Preparation") and the imagination will be treated in a subsequent one
(on "Riding the Winged Horse"), but here we must consider the
_picturing mind_: the mind that forms the double habit of seeing things
clearly--for we see more with the mind than we do with the physical
eye--and then of re-imaging these things for the purpose of getting them
before the minds' eyes of the hearers. No habit is more useful than that
of visualizing clearly the object, the scene, the situation, the action,
the person, about to be described. Unless that primary process is
carried out clearly, the picture will be blurred for the
hearer-beholder.
In a work of this nature we are concerned with the rhetorical analysis
of description, and with its methods, only so far as may be needed for
the practical purposes of the speaker.[20] The following grouping,
therefore, will not be regarded as complete, nor will it here be
necessary to add more than a word of explanation:
_Description for Public Speakers_
Objects { Still
" " { In motion
Scenes { Still
" " { Including action
Situations { Preceding change
" " { During change
" " { After change
Actions { Mental
" " { Physical
Persons { Internal
" " { External
Some of the foregoing processes will overlap, in certain instances, and
all are more likely to be found in combination than singly.
When description is intended solely to give accurate information--as to
delineate the appearance, not the technical construction, of the latest
Zeppelin airship--it is called "scientific description," and is akin to
exposition. When it is intended to present a free picture for the
purpose of making a vivid impression, it is called "artistic
description." With both of these the public speaker has to deal, but
more frequently with the latter form. Rhetoricians make still further
distinctions.
_Methods of Description_
In public speaking, _description should be mainly by suggestion_, not
only because suggestive description is so much more compact and
time-saving but because it is so vivid. Suggestive expressions connote
more than they literally say--they suggest ideas and pictures to the
mind of the hearer which supplement the direct words of the speaker.
When Dickens, in his "Christmas Carol," says: "In came Mrs. Fezziwig,
one vast substantial smile," our minds complete the picture so deftly
begun--a much more effective process than that of a minutely detailed
description because it leaves a unified, vivid impression, and that is
what we need. Here is a present-day bit of suggestion: "General Trinkle
was a gnarly oak of a man--rough, solid, and safe; you always knew where
to find him." Dickens presents Miss Peecher as: "A little pin-cushion, a
little housewife, a little book, a little work-box, a little set of
tables and weights and measures, and a little woman all in one." In his
"Knickerbocker's" "History of New York," Irving portrays Wouter van
Twiller as "a robustious beer-barrel, standing on skids."
Whatever forms of description you neglect, be sure to master the art of
suggestion.
_Description may be by simple hint._ Lowell notes a happy instance of
this sort of picturing by intimation when he says of Chaucer: "Sometimes
he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before
setting himself down, drives away the cat. We know without need of more
words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."
_Description may depict a thing by its effects._ "When the spectator's
eye is dazzled, and he shades it," says Mozley in his "Essays," "we form
the idea of a splendid object; when his face turns pale, of a horrible
one; from his quick wonder and admiration we form the idea of great
beauty; from his silent awe, of great majesty."
_Brief description may be by epithet._ "Blue-eyed," "white-armed,"
"laughter-loving," are now conventional compounds, but they were fresh
enough when Homer first conjoined them. The centuries have not yet
improved upon "Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked," or "Shields smooth,
beautiful, brazen, well-hammered." Observe the effective use of epithet
in Will Levington Comfort's "The Fighting Death," when he speaks of
soldiers in a Philippine skirmish as being "leeched against a rock."
_Description uses figures of speech._ Any advanced rhetoric will discuss
their forms and give examples for guidance.[21] This matter is most
important, be assured. A brilliant yet carefully restrained figurative
style, a style marked by brief, pungent, witty, and humorous comparisons
and characterizations, is a wonderful resource for all kinds of platform
work.
_Description may be direct._ This statement is plain enough without
exposition. Use your own judgment as to whether in picturing you had
better proceed from a general view to the details, or first give the
details and thus build up the general picture, but by all means BE
BRIEF.
Note the vivid compactness of these delineations from Washington
Irving's "Knickerbocker:"
He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double
chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was
supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the
constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.
He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five
inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of
such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature, with all her sex's
ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable
of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and
settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the
shoulders. His body was of an oblong form, particularly
capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence,
seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to
the idle labor of walking.
The foregoing is too long for the platform, but it is so good-humored,
so full of delightful exaggeration, that it may well serve as a model
of humorous character picturing, for here one inevitably sees the inner
man in the outer.
Direct description for platform use may be made vivid by the _sparing_
use of the "historical present." The following dramatic passage,
accompanied by the most lively action, has lingered in the mind for
thirty years after hearing Dr. T. De Witt Talmage lecture on "Big
Blunders." The crack of the bat sounds clear even today:
Get ready the bats and take your positions. Now, give us the
ball. Too low. Don't strike. Too high. Don't strike. There it
comes like lightning. Strike! Away it soars! Higher! Higher!
Run! Another base! Faster! Faster! Good! All around at one
stroke!
Observe the remarkable way in which the lecturer fused speaker,
audience, spectators, and players into one excited, ecstatic whole--just
as you have found yourself starting forward in your seat at the delivery
of the ball with "three on and two down" in the ninth inning. Notice,
too, how--perhaps unconsciously--Talmage painted the scene in Homer's
characteristic style: not as having already happened, but as happening
before your eyes.
If you have attended many travel talks you must have been impressed by
the painful extremes to which the lecturers go--with a few notable
exceptions, their language is either over-ornate or crude. If you would
learn the power of words to make scenery, yes, even houses, palpitate
with poetry and human appeal, read Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Pierre Loti, and Edmondo De Amicis.
Blue-distant, a mountain of carven stone appeared before
them,--the Temple, lifting to heaven its wilderness of chiseled
pinnacles, flinging to the sky the golden spray of its
decoration.
--LAFCADIO HEARN, _Chinese Ghosts_.
The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A
faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the
black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness
of the pack-saddle I could see Modestine walking round and round
at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching
at the sward; but there was not another sound save the
indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones.
--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, _Travels with a Donkey_.
It was full autumn now, late autumn--with the nightfalls gloomy,
and all things growing dark early in the old cottage, and all
the Breton land looking sombre, too. The very days seemed but
twilight; immeasurable clouds, slowly passing, would suddenly
bring darkness at broad noon. The wind moaned constantly--it was
like the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but
playing profane airs, or despairing dirges; at other times it
would come close to the door, and lift up a howl like wild
beasts.
--PIERRE LOTI, _An Iceland Fisherman_.
I see the great refectory,[22] where a battalion might have
drilled; I see the long tables, the five hundred heads bent
above the plates, the rapid motion of five hundred forks, of a
thousand hands, and sixteen thousand teeth; the swarm of
servants running here and there, called to, scolded, hurried, on
every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the deafening
noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread--bread!"
and I feel once more the formidable appetite, the herculean
strength of jaw, the exuberant life and spirits of those far-off
days.[23]
--EDMONDO DE AMICIS, _College Friends_.
_Suggestions for the Use of Description_
Decide, on beginning a description, what point of view you wish your
hearers to take. One cannot see either a mountain or a man on all sides
at once. Establish a view-point, and do not shift without giving notice.
Choose an attitude toward your subject--shall it be idealized?
caricatured? ridiculed? exaggerated? defended? or described impartially?
Be sure of your mood, too, for it will color the subject to be
described. Melancholy will make a rose-garden look gray.
Adopt an order in which you will proceed--do not shift backward and
forward from near to far, remote to close in time, general to
particular, large to small, important to unimportant, concrete to
abstract, physical to mental; but follow your chosen order. Scattered
and shifting observations produce hazy impressions just as a moving
camera spoils the time-exposure.
Do not go into needless minutiĉ. Some details identify a thing with its
class, while other details differentiate it from its class. Choose only
the significant, suggestive characteristics and bring those out with
terse vividness. Learn a lesson from the few strokes used by the poster
artist.
In determining what to describe and what merely to name, seek to read
the knowledge of your audience. The difference to them between the
unknown and the known is a vital one also to you.
Relentlessly cut out all ideas and words not necessary to produce the
effect you desire. Each element in a mental picture either helps or
hinders. Be sure they do not hinder, for they cannot be passively
present in any discourse.
Interruptions of the description to make side-remarks are as powerful to
destroy unity as are scattered descriptive phrases. The only visual
impression that can be effective is one that is unified.
In describing, try to call up the emotions you felt when first you saw
the scene, and then try to reproduce those emotions in your hearers.
Description is primarily emotional in its appeal; nothing can be more
deadly dull than a cold, unemotional outline, while nothing leaves a
warmer impression than a glowing, spirited description.
Give a swift and vivid general view at the close of the portrayal. First
and final impressions remain the longest. The mind may be trained to
take in the characteristic points of a subject, so as to view in a
single scene, action, experience, or character, a unified impression of
the whole. To describe a thing as a whole you must first see it as a
whole. Master that art and you have mastered description to the last
degree.
SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE
_THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE_
I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol
Hill; my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of
my country's Capitol and the mist gathered in my eyes as I
thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the
treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and
the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the
sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than
that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its
best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and
justice abided therein, the world would at last owe to that
great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is
lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.
Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a
modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple,
unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in
meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest. The fragrance
of the pink and hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the
aroma of the orchard and of the gardens, and resonant with the
cluck of poultry and the hum of bees.
Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. There was
the old clock that had welcomed, in steady measure, every
newcomer to the family, that had ticked the solemn requiem of
the dead, and had kept company with the watcher at the bedside.
There were the big, restful beds and the old, open fireplace,
and the old family Bible, thumbed with the fingers of hands long
since still, and wet with the tears of eyes long since closed,
holding the simple annals of the family and the heart and the
conscience of the home.
Outside, there stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright
man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops,
master of his land and master of himself. There was his old
father, an aged, trembling man, but happy in the heart and home
of his son. And as they started to their home, the hands of the
old man went down on the young man's shoulder, laying there the
unspeakable blessing of the honored and grateful father and
ennobling it with the knighthood of the fifth commandment.
And as they reached the door the old mother came with the sunset
falling fair on her face, and lighting up her deep, patient
eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of her
heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond
was the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart
and conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down
the lane came the children, trooping home after the cows,
seeking as truant birds do the quiet of their home nest.
And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as
the wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled
bird called from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the
cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky--got the
family around him, and, taking the old Bible from the table,
called them to their knees, the little baby hiding in the folds
of its mother's dress, while he closed the record of that
si