The Art of Public Speaking
inflections rather than loudness.
Repeat these selections, attempting to put into practise all the
technical principles that we have thus far had; emphasizing important
words, subordinating unimportant words, variety of pitch, changing
tempo, pause, and inflection. If these principles are applied you will
have no trouble with monotony.
Constant practise will give great facility in the use of inflection and
will render the voice itself flexible.
_CHARLES I_
We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are
told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having
given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most
hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is,
that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We
censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of
Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration,
promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was
accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is
to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke
dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we
verily believe, most of his popularity with the present
generation.
--T.B. MACAULAY.
_ABRAHAM LINCOLN_
We needed not that he should put on paper that he believed in
slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal,
hovered around that majestic man to destroy his life. He was
himself but the long sting with which slavery struck at liberty;
and he carried the poison that belonged to slavery. As long as
this nation lasts, it will never be forgotten that we have one
martyred President--never! Never, while time lasts, while
heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten
that slavery, by its minions, slew him, and in slaying him made
manifest its whole nature and tendency.
But another thing for us to remember is that this blow was aimed
at the life of the government and of the nation. Lincoln was
slain; America was meant. The man was cast down; the government
was smitten at. It was the President who was killed. It was
national life, breathing freedom and meaning beneficence, that
was sought. He, the man of Illinois, the private man, divested
of robes and the insignia of authority, representing nothing but
his personal self, might have been hated; but that would not
have called forth the murderer's blow. It was because he stood
in the place of government, representing government and a
government that represented right and liberty, that he was
singled out.
This, then, is a crime against universal government. It is not a
blow at the foundations of our government, more than at the
foundations of the English government, of the French government,
of every compact and well-organized government. It was a crime
against mankind. The whole world will repudiate and stigmatize
it as a deed without a shade of redeeming light....
The blow, however, has signally failed. The cause is not
stricken; it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved,--but in
tears only. It stands, four-square, more solid, to-day, than any
pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted,
nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger
hate and love to-day than ever before. The Government is not
weakened, it is made stronger....
And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than
when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming.
Cities and states are his pall-bearers, and the cannon beats the
hours with solemn progression. Dead--dead--dead--he yet
speaketh! Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is
any man dead that ever was fit to live? Disenthralled of flesh,
and risen to the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes,
he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the
Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass
on, thou that hast overcome! Your sorrows O people, are his
peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in
his ear. Wail and weep here; God makes it echo joy and triumph
there. Pass on, victor!
Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried
man, and from among the people; we return him to you a mighty
conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours, but
the world's. Give him place, ye prairies! In the midst of this
great Continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to
myriads who shall make pilgrimage to that shrine to kindle anew
their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds, that move over the mighty
places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a
martyr, whose blood, as so many inarticulate words, pleads for
fidelity, for law, for liberty!
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
_THE HISTORY OF LIBERTY_
The event which we commemorate is all-important, not merely in
our own annals, but in those of the world. The sententious
English poet has declared that "the proper study of mankind is
man," and of all inquiries of a temporal nature, the history of
our fellow-beings is unquestionably among the most interesting.
But not all the chapters of human history are alike important.
The annals of our race have been filled up with incidents which
concern not, or at least ought not to concern, the great company
of mankind. History, as it has often been written, is the
genealogy of princes, the field-book of conquerors; and the
fortunes of our fellow-men have been treated only so far as they
have been affected by the influence of the great masters and
destroyers of our race. Such history is, I will not say a
worthless study, for it is necessary for us to know the dark
side as well as the bright side of our condition. But it is a
melancholy study which fills the bosom of the philanthropist and
the friend of liberty with sorrow.
But the history of liberty--the history of men struggling to be
free--the history of men who have acquired and are exercising
their freedom--the history of those great movements in the
world, by which liberty has been established and perpetuated,
forms a subject which we cannot contemplate too closely. This is
the real history of man, of the human family, of rational
immortal beings....
The trial of adversity was theirs; the trial of prosperity is
ours. Let us meet it as men who know their duty and prize their
blessings. Our position is the most enviable, the most
responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its
duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we
fail--if we fail--not only do we defraud our children of the
inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the
hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent,
throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time.
History is not without her examples of hard-fought fields, where
the banner of liberty has floated triumphantly on the wildest
storm of battle. She is without her examples of a people by whom
the dear-bought treasure has been wisely employed and safely
handed down. The eyes of the world are turned for that example
to us....
Let us, then, as we assemble on the birthday of the nation, as
we gather upon the green turf, once wet with precious blood--let
us devote ourselves to the sacred cause of constitutional
liberty! Let us abjure the interests and passions which divide
the great family of American freemen! Let the rage of party
spirit sleep to-day! Let us resolve that our children shall have
cause to bless the memory of their fathers, as we have cause to
bless the memory of ours!
--EDWARD EVERETT.
CHAPTER VIII
CONCENTRATION IN DELIVERY
Attention is the microscope of the mental eye. Its power may be
high or low; its field of view narrow or broad. When high power
is used attention is confined within very circumscribed limits,
but its action is exceedingly intense and absorbing. It sees but
few things, but these few are observed "through and through" ...
Mental energy and activity, whether of perception or of thought,
thus concentrated, act like the sun's rays concentrated by the
burning glass. The object is illumined, heated, set on fire.
Impressions are so deep that they can never be effaced.
Attention of this sort is the prime condition of the most
productive mental labor.
--DANIEL PUTNAM, _Psychology_.
Try to rub the top of your head forward and backward at the same time
that you are patting your chest. Unless your powers of cooerdination 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