The Art of Public Speaking
Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation;
force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile
and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly
crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and
marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force
held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at
Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force
marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the
valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made
"niggers" men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the
impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the
song:--
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea.
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on."
Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead
for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay; but for
me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to
answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.
--JAMES MELLEN THURSTON.
CHAPTER VI
PAUSE AND POWER
The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave
his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence,
by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and
then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear
itself.
--GEORGE SAINTSBURY, on _English Prose Style_, in _Miscellaneous
Essays_.
... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in
other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the
movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and
compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we
must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no
compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense
of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.
--JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.
Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made
designedly eloquent.
When a man says: "I-uh-it is with profound-ah-pleasure that-er-I have
been permitted to speak to you tonight and-uh-uh-I should say-er"--that
is not pausing; that is stumbling. It is conceivable that a speaker may
be effective in spite of stumbling--but never because of it.
On the other hand, one of the most important means of developing power
in public speaking is to pause either before or after, or both before
and after, an important word or phrase. No one who would be a forceful
speaker can afford to neglect this principle--one of the most
significant that has ever been inferred from listening to great orators.
Study this potential device until you have absorbed and assimilated it.
It would seem that this principle of rhetorical pause ought to be easily
grasped and applied, but a long experience in training both college men
and maturer speakers has demonstrated that the device is no more readily
understood by the average man when it is first explained to him than if
it were spoken in Hindoostani. Perhaps this is because we do not eagerly
devour the fruit of experience when it is impressively set before us on
the platter of authority; we like to pluck fruit for ourselves--it not
only tastes better, but we never forget that tree! Fortunately, this is
no difficult task, in this instance, for the trees stand thick all about
us.
One man is pleading the cause of another:
"This man, my friends, has made this wonderful sacrifice--for
you and me."
Did not the pause surprisingly enhance the power of this statement? See
how he gathered up reserve force and impressiveness to deliver the words
"for you and me." Repeat this passage without making a pause. Did it
lose in effectiveness?
Naturally enough, during a premeditated pause of this kind the mind of
the speaker is concentrated on the thought to which he is about to give
expression. He will not dare to allow his thoughts to wander for an
instant--he will rather supremely center his thought and his emotion
upon the sacrifice whose service, sweetness and divinity he is
enforcing by his appeal.
_Concentration_, then, is the big word here--no pause without it can
perfectly hit the mark.
Efficient pausing accomplishes one or all of four results:
_1. Pause Enables the Mind of the Speaker to Gather His Forces Before
Delivering the Final Volley_
It is often dangerous to rush into battle without pausing for
preparation or waiting for recruits. Consider Custer's massacre as an
instance.
You can light a match by holding it beneath a lens and concentrating the
sun's rays. You would not expect the match to flame if you jerked the
lens back and forth quickly. Pause, and the lens gathers the heat. Your
thoughts will not set fire to the minds of your hearers unless you pause
to gather the force that comes by a second or two of concentration.
Maple trees and gas wells are rarely tapped continually; when a stronger
flow is wanted, a pause is made, nature has time to gather her reserve
forces, and when the tree or the well is reopened, a stronger flow is
the result.
Use the same common sense with your mind. If you would make a thought
particularly effective, pause just before its utterance, concentrate
your mind-energies, and then give it expression with renewed vigor.
Carlyle was right: "Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy
thought has silently matured itself. Out of silence comes thy strength.
Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech is human, Silence is
divine."
Silence has been called the father of speech. It should be. Too many of
our public speeches have no fathers. They ramble along without pause or
break. Like Tennyson's brook, they run on forever. Listen to little
children, the policeman on the corner, the family conversation around
the table, and see how many pauses they naturally use, for they are
unconscious of effects. When we get before an audience, we throw most of
our natural methods of expression to the wind, and strive after
artificial effects. Get back to the methods of nature--and pause.
_2. Pause Prepares the Mind of the Auditor to Receive Your
Message_
Herbert Spencer said that all the universe is in motion. So it
is--and all perfect motion is rhythm. Part of rhythm is rest.
Rest follows activity all through nature. Instances: day and night;
spring--summer--autumn--winter; a period of rest between breaths; an
instant of complete rest between heart beats. Pause, and give the
attention-powers of your audience a rest. What you say after such
a silence will then have a great deal more effect.
When your country cousins come to town, the noise of a passing car will
awaken them, though it seldom affects a seasoned city dweller. By the
continual passing of cars his attention-power has become deadened. In
one who visits the city but seldom, attention-value is insistent. To him
the noise comes after a long pause; hence its power. To you, dweller in
the city, there is no pause; hence the low attention-value. After riding
on a train several hours you will become so accustomed to its roar that
it will lose its attention-value, unless the train should stop for a
while and start again. If you attempt to listen to a clock-tick that is
so far away that you can barely hear it, you will find that at times you
are unable to distinguish it, but in a few moments the sound becomes
distinct again. Your mind will pause for rest whether you desire it to
do so or not.
The attention of your audience will act in quite the same way. Recognize
this law and prepare for it--by pausing. Let it be repeated: the thought
that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred.
What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your
mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had
been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first
page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the
"seventh day." You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your
audience will likewise demand rest. Observe nature, study her laws, and
obey them in your speaking.
_3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_
Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it
will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of
much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep
guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of
woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this
principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a
feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he
arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like to be kept
waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is a
circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the
back of a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed
and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a
great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once. We not only
like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for. If fish bite too
readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.
It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock
Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is
solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins'
receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em
laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if
they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.
Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to
arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:
"It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience
wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great
evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he
had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then
he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and
continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the
audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr.
Moody, then continued--"as the greatest preacher of his day." Let the
dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following:
"It was my privilege to hear--the great evangelist--Dwight L.
Moody.--I came to regard him--as the greatest preacher of his
day."
The unskilled speaker would have rattled this off with neither pause nor
suspense, and the sentences would have fallen flat upon the audience. It
is precisely the application of these small things that makes much of
the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful speaker.
_4. Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate_
Any Missouri farmer will tell you that a rain that falls too fast will
run off into the creeks and do the crops but little good. A story is
told of a country deacon praying for rain in this manner: "Lord, don't
send us any chunk floater. Just give us a good old drizzle-drazzle." A
speech, like a rain, will not do anybody much good if it comes too fast
to soak in. The farmer's wife follows this same principle in doing her
washing when she puts the clothes in water--and pauses for several hours
that the water may soak in. The physician puts cocaine on your