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J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY
THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
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Titel
A FOREWORD
THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE
Assume Mastery Over Your Audience_
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
THE SIN OF MONOTONY
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES.
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PITCH
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PACE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
PAUSE AND POWER
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
EFFICIENCY THROUGH INFLECTION
--WILLIAM COWPER, _The Task_.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
CONCENTRATION IN DELIVERY
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
FORCE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
FLUENCY THROUGH PREPARATION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
THE VOICE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
VOICE CHARM
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
METHODS OF DELIVERY
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
THOUGHT AND RESERVE POWER
The Thinking Mind_
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
SUBJECT AND PREPARATION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING BY EXPOSITION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING BY DESCRIPTION
SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
INFLUENCING BY NARRATION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING BY SUGGESTION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING BY ARGUMENT
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING BY PERSUASION
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
INFLUENCING THE CROWD
RIDING THE WINGED HORSE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
GROWING A VOCABULARY
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
RIGHT THINKING AND PERSONALITY
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
AFTER-DINNER AND OTHER OCCASIONAL SPEAKING
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
MAKING CONVERSATION EFFECTIVE
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
APPENDICES FIFTY QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE
THIRTY THEMES FOR SPEECHES
SUGGESTIVE SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES[36]
SPEECHES FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE
THE NEW AMERICANISM
THE CALL TO DEMOCRATS
LAST SPEECH
EULOGY OF WEBSTER
Impressum neobooks
A FOREWORD
The Art of Public Speaking
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
=Things to Think of First=
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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, Æschines; 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.]
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 Cæsar 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.
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._
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 Cæsars 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.]
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.
FLUENCY THROUGH PREPARATION
Animis opibusque parati--Ready in mind and resources.
--_Motto of South Carolina_.
In omnibus negotiis prius quam aggrediare, adhibenda est
præparatio 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.]
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