The Art of Public Speaking
In two anecdotes, told also in "The New South," Mr. Grady illustrated
another way of enforcing the application: in both instances he split
the idea he wished to drive home, bringing in part before and part after
the recital of the story. The fact that the speaker misquoted the words
of Genesis in which the Ark is described did not seem to detract from
the burlesque humor of the story.
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy tonight. I am not
troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man
whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, who,
tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions
as the landings afforded, into the basement, and, while picking
himself up, had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out:
"John, did you break the pitcher?
"No, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't."
So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with
energy, if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from
you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in American
fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say. There
was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson
he was going to read in the morning. The boys, finding the
place, glued together the connecting pages. The next morning he
read on the bottom of one page: "When Noah was one hundred and
twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was"--then
turning the page--"one hundred and forty cubits long, forty
cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside
and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again,
verified it, and then said, "My friends, this is the first time
I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of
the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made." If I
could get you to hold such faith to-night, I could proceed
cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of
consecration.
Now and then a speaker will plunge without introduction into an
anecdote, leaving the application to follow. The following illustrates
this method:
A large, slew-footed darky was leaning against the corner of the
railroad station in a Texas town when the noon whistle in the
canning factory blew and the hands hurried out, bearing their
grub buckets. The darky listened, with his head on one side
until the rocketing echo had quite died away. Then he heaved a
deep sigh and remarked to himself:
"Dar she go. Dinner time for some folks--but jes' 12 o'clock fur
me!"
That is the situation in thousands of American factories, large
and small, today. And why? etc., etc.
Doubtless the most frequent platform use of the anecdote is in the
pulpit. The sermon "illustration," however, is not always strictly
narrative in form, but tends to extended comparison, as the following
from Dr. Alexander Maclaren:
Men will stand as Indian fakirs do, with their arms above their
heads until they stiffen there. They will perch themselves upon
pillars like Simeon Stylites, for years, till the birds build
their nests in their hair. They will measure all the distance
from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with their bodies along
the dusty road. They will wear hair shirts and scourge
themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build
cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do,
labor by fits and starts all thru your lives at the endless task
of making yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by
obedience and by righteousness. They will do all these things
and do them gladly, rather than listen to the humbling message
that says, "You do not need to do anything--wash." Is it your
washing, or the water, that will clean you? Wash and be clean!
Naaman's cleaning was only a test of his obedience, and a token
that it was God who cleansed him. There was no power in Jordan's
waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our cleansing is in
that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take away all
sin, and to make the foulest amongst us pure and clean.
One final word must be said about the introduction to the anecdote. A
clumsy, inappropriate introduction is fatal, whereas a single apt or
witty sentence will kindle interest and prepare a favorable hearing. The
following extreme illustration, by the English humorist, Captain Harry
Graham, well satirizes the stumbling manner:
The best story that I ever heard was one that I was told once in
the fall of 1905 (or it may have been 1906), when I was visiting
Boston--at least, I think it was Boston; it may have been
Washington (my memory is so bad).
I happened to run across a most amusing man whose name I
forget--Williams or Wilson or Wilkins; some name like that--and
he told me this story while we were waiting for a trolley car.
I can still remember how heartily I laughed at the time; and
again, that evening, after I had gone to bed, how I laughed
myself to sleep recalling the humor of this incredibly humorous
story. It was really quite extraordinarily funny. In fact, I can
truthfully affirm that it is quite the most amusing story I have
ever had the privilege of hearing. Unfortunately, I've forgotten
it.
_Biographical Facts_
Public speaking has much to do with personalities; naturally, therefore,
the narration of a series of biographical details, including anecdotes
among the recital of interesting facts, plays a large part in the
eulogy, the memorial address, the political speech, the sermon, the
lecture, and other platform deliverances. Whole addresses may be made up
of such biographical details, such as a sermon on "Moses," or a lecture
on "Lee."
The following example is in itself an expanded anecdote, forming a link
in a chain:
_MARIUS IN PRISON_
The peculiar sublimity of the Roman mind does not express
itself, nor is it at all to be sought, in their poetry. Poetry,
according to the Roman ideal of it, was not an adequate organ
for the grander movements of the national mind. Roman sublimity
must be looked for in Roman acts, and in Roman sayings. Where,
again, will you find a more adequate expression of the Roman
majesty, than in the saying of Trajan--_Imperatorem oportere
stantem mori_--that Caesar ought to die standing; a speech of
imperatorial grandeur! Implying that he, who was "the foremost
man of all this world,"--and, in regard to all other nations,
the representative of his own,--should express its
characteristic virtue in his farewell act--should die _in
procinctu_--and should meet the last enemy as the first, with a
Roman countenance and in a soldier's attitude. If this had an
imperatorial--what follows had a consular majesty, and is almost
the grandest story upon record.
Marius, the man who rose to be seven times consul, was in a
dungeon, and a slave was sent in with commission to put him to
death. These were the persons,--the two extremities of exalted
and forlorn humanity, its vanward and its rearward man, a Roman
consul and an abject slave. But their natural relations to each
other were, by the caprice of fortune, monstrously inverted: the
consul was in chains; the slave was for a moment the arbiter of
his fate. By what spells, what magic, did Marius reinstate
himself in his natural prerogatives? By what marvels drawn from
heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again
invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and
his assassin a host of shadowy lictors? By the mere blank
supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He _fascinated_ the
slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe,"
he smote him with his eye, and said, "_Tune, homo, audes
occidere C. Marium?_"--"Dost thou, fellow, presume to kill Caius
Marius?" Whereat, the reptile, quaking under the voice, nor
daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the
ground--turned round upon his hands and feet--and, crawling out
of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in
solitude as steadfast and immovable as the capitol.
--THOMAS DE QUINCY.
Here is a similar example, prefaced by a general historical statement
and concluding with autobiographical details:
_A REMINISCENCE OF LEXINGTON_
One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the 19th day
of this month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that
Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had
"obstructed an officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a
thousand strong, came to seize them and carry them over sea for
trial, and so nip the bud of Freedom auspiciously opening in
that early spring. The town militia came together before
daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with a large head
and a high, wide brow, their captain,--one who had "seen
service,"--marshalled them into line, numbering but seventy, and
bade "every man load his piece with powder and ball. I will
order the first man shot that runs away," said he, when some
faltered. "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want to
have a war, let it begin here."
Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics
"fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers
the bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their
sacred honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it
also their lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up
amid the memories of that day. When a boy, my mother lifted me
up, one Sunday, in her religious, patriotic arms, and held me
while I read the first monumental line I ever saw--"Sacred to
Liberty and the Rights of Mankind."
Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and
Rome, in many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks have
read what was written before the Eternal raised up Moses to lead
Israel out of Egypt; but no chiseled stone has ever stirred me
to such emotion as these rustic names of men who fell "In the
Sacred Cause of God and their Country."
Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, were
early fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. That monument
covers the bones of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which
reddened the long, green grass at Lexington. It was my own name
which stands chiseled on that stone; the tall captain who
marshalled his fellow farmers and mechanics into stern array,
and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of
American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my
father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a
musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned another
religious lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to
God." I keep them both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of
Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of God and my
Country."
--THEODORE PARKER.
_Narration of Events in General_
In this wider, emancipated narration we find much mingling of other
forms of discourse, greatly to the advantage of the speech, for this
truth cannot be too strongly emphasized: The efficient speaker cuts
loose from form for the sake of a big, free effect. The present analyses
are for no other purpose than to _acquaint_ you with form--do not allow
any such models to hang as a weight about your neck.
The following pure narration of events, from George William Curtis's