The Art of Public Speaking
"Paul Revere's Ride," varies the biographical recital in other parts of
his famous oration:
That evening, at ten o'clock, eight hundred British troops,
under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, took boat at the foot of the
Common and crossed to the Cambridge shore. Gage thought his
secret had been kept, but Lord Percy, who had heard the people
say on the Common that the troops would miss their aim,
undeceived him. Gage instantly ordered that no one should leave
the town. But as the troops crossed the river, Ebenezer Dorr,
with a message to Hancock and Adams, was riding over the Neck to
Roxbury, and Paul Revere was rowing over the river to
Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert Newman, to
show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North Church--"One if
by land, and two if by sea"--as a signal of the march of the
British.
The following, from the same oration, beautifully mingles description
with narration:
It was a brilliant night. The winter had been unusually mild,
and the spring very forward. The hills were already green. The
early grain waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with the
blossoming orchards. Already the robins whistled, the bluebirds
sang, and the benediction of peace rested upon the landscape.
Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul
Revere swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West
Cambridge, rousing every house as he went spurring for Lexington
and Hancock and Adams, and evading the British patrols who had
been sent out to stop the news.
In the succeeding extract from another of Mr. Curtis's addresses, we
have a free use of allegory as illustration:
_THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN_
There is a modern English picture which the genius of Hawthorne
might have inspired. The painter calls it, "How they met
themselves." A man and a woman, haggard and weary, wandering
lost in a somber wood, suddenly meet the shadowy figures of a
youth and a maid. Some mysterious fascination fixes the gaze and
stills the hearts of the wanderers, and their amazement deepens
into awe as they gradually recognize themselves as once they
were; the soft bloom of youth upon their rounded cheeks, the
dewy light of hope in their trusting eyes, exulting confidence
in their springing step, themselves blithe and radiant with the
glory of the dawn. Today, and here, we meet ourselves. Not to
these familiar scenes alone--yonder college-green with its
reverend traditions; the halcyon cove of the Seekonk, upon which
the memory of Roger Williams broods like a bird of calm; the
historic bay, beating forever with the muffled oars of Barton
and of Abraham Whipple; here, the humming city of the living;
there, the peaceful city of the dead;--not to these only or
chiefly do we return, but to ourselves as we once were. It is
not the smiling freshmen of the year, it is your own beardless
and unwrinkled faces, that are looking from the windows of
University Hall and of Hope College. Under the trees upon the
hill it is yourselves whom you see walking, full of hopes and
dreams, glowing with conscious power, and "nourishing a youth
sublime;" and in this familiar temple, which surely has never
echoed with eloquence so fervid and inspiring as that of your
commencement orations, it is not yonder youths in the galleries
who, as they fondly believe, are whispering to yonder maids; it
is your younger selves who, in the days that are no more, are
murmuring to the fairest mothers and grandmothers of those
maids.
Happy the worn and weary man and woman in the picture could they
have felt their older eyes still glistening with that earlier
light, and their hearts yet beating with undiminished sympathy
and aspiration. Happy we, brethren, whatever may have been
achieved, whatever left undone, if, returning to the home of our
earlier years, we bring with us the illimitable hope, the
unchilled resolution, the inextinguishable faith of youth.
--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Clip from any source ten anecdotes and state what truths they may be
used to illustrate.
2. Deliver five of these in your own language, without making any
application.
3. From the ten, deliver one so as to make the application before
telling the anecdote.
4. Deliver another so as to split the application.
5. Deliver another so as to make the application after the narration.
6. Deliver another in such a way as to make a specific application
needless.
7. Give three ways of introducing an anecdote, by saying where you heard
it, etc.
8. Deliver an illustration that is not strictly an anecdote, in the
style of Curtis's speech on page 259.
9. Deliver an address on any public character, using the forms
illustrated in this chapter.
10. Deliver an address on some historical event in the same manner.
11. Explain how the sympathies and viewpoint of the speaker will color
an anecdote, a biography, or a historical account.
12. Illustrate how the same anecdote, or a section of a historical
address, may be given two different effects by personal prejudice.
13. What would be the effect of shifting the viewpoint in the midst of a
narration?
14. What is the danger of using too much humor in an address? Too much
pathos?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]
CHAPTER XXII
INFLUENCING BY SUGGESTION
Sometimes the feeling that a given way of looking at things is
undoubtedly correct prevents the mind from thinking at all....
In view of the hindrances which certain kinds or degrees of
feeling throw into the way of thinking, it might be inferred
that the thinker must suppress the element of feeling in the
inner life. No greater mistake could be made. If the Creator
endowed man with the power to think, to feel, and to will, these
several activities of the mind are not designed to be in
conflict, and so long as any one of them is not perverted or
allowed to run to excess, it necessarily aids and strengthens
the others in their normal functions.
--NATHAN C. SCHAEFFER, _Thinking and Learning to Think_.
When we weigh, compare, and decide upon the value of any given ideas, we
reason; when an idea produces in us an opinion or an action, without
first being subjected to deliberation, we are moved by suggestion.
Man was formerly thought to be a reasoning animal, basing his actions on
the conclusions of natural logic. It was supposed that before forming an
opinion or deciding on a course of conduct he weighed at least some of
the reasons for and against the matter, and performed a more or less
simple process of reasoning. But modern research has shown that quite
the opposite is true. Most of our opinions and actions are not based
upon conscious reasoning, but are the result of suggestion. In fact,
some authorities declare that an act of pure reasoning is very rare in
the average mind. Momentous decisions are made, far-reaching actions
are determined upon, primarily by the force of suggestion.
Notice that word "primarily," for simple thought, and even mature
reasoning, often follows a suggestion accepted in the mind, and the
thinker fondly supposes that his conclusion is from first to last based
on cold logic.
_The Basis of Suggestion_
We must think of suggestion both as an effect and as a cause. Considered
as an effect, or objectively, there must be something in the hearer that
predisposes him to receive suggestion; considered as a cause, or
subjectively, there must be some methods by which the speaker can move
upon that particularly susceptible attitude of the hearer. How to do
this honestly and fairly is our problem--to do it dishonestly and
trickily, to use suggestion to bring about conviction and action without
a basis of right and truth and in a bad cause, is to assume the terrible
responsibility that must fall on the champion of error. Jesus scorned
not to use suggestion so that he might move men to their benefit, but
every vicious trickster has adopted the same means to reach base ends.
Therefore honest men will examine well into their motives and into the
truth of their cause, before seeking to influence men by suggestion.
Three fundamental conditions make us all susceptive to suggestion:
_We naturally respect authority._ In every mind this is only a question
of degree, ranging from the subject who is easily hypnotized to the
stubborn mind that fortifies itself the more strongly with every
assault upon its opinion. The latter type is almost immune to
suggestion.
One of the singular things about suggestion is that it is rarely a fixed
quantity. The mind that is receptive to the authority of a certain
person may prove inflexible to another; moods and environments that
produce hypnosis readily in one instance may be entirely inoperative in
another; and some minds can scarcely ever be thus moved. We do know,
however, that the feeling of the subject that authority--influence,
power, domination, control, whatever you wish to call it--lies in the
person of the suggester, is the basis of all suggestion.
The extreme force of this influence is demonstrated in hypnotism. The
hypnotic subject is told that he is in the water; he accepts the
statement as true and makes swimming motions. He is told that a band is
marching down the street, playing "The Star Spangled Banner;" he
declares he hears the music, arises and stands with head bared.
In the same way some speakers are able to achieve a modified hypnotic
effect upon their audiences. The hearers will applaud measures and ideas
which, after individual reflection, they will repudiate unless such
reflection brings the conviction that the first impression is correct.
A second important principle is that _our feelings, thoughts and wills
tend to follow the line of least resistance_. Once open the mind to the
sway of one feeling and it requires a greater power of feeling, thought,
or will--or even all three--to unseat it. Our feelings influence our
judgments and volitions much more than we care to admit. So true is this
that it is a superhuman task to get an audience to reason fairly on a
subject on which it feels deeply, and when this result is accomplished
the success becomes noteworthy, as in the case of Henry Ward Beecher's
Liverpool speech. Emotional ideas once accepted are soon cherished, and
finally become our very inmost selves. Attitudes based on feelings alone
are prejudices.
What is true of our feelings, in this respect, applies to our ideas: All
thoughts that enter the mind tend to be accepted as truth unless a
stronger and contradictory thought arises.
The speaker skilled in moving men to action manages to dominate the
minds of his audience with his thoughts by subtly prohibiting the
entertaining of ideas hostile to his own. Most of us are captured by the
latest strong attack, and if we can be induced to act while under the
stress of that last insistent thought, we lose sight of counter
influences. The fact is that almost all our decisions--if they involve
thought at all--are of this sort: At the moment of decision the course
of action then under contemplation usurps the attention, and conflicting
ideas are dropped out of consideration.
The head of a large publishing house remarked only recently that ninety
per cent of the people who bought books by subscription never read them.
They buy because the salesman presents his wares so skillfully that
every consideration but the attractiveness of the book drops out of the