_Question_. What advice would you give to a young man who was
ambitious to become a successful public speaker or orator?
_Answer_. In the first place, I would advise him to have something
to say--something worth saying--something that people would be glad
to hear. This is the important thing. Back of the art of speaking
must be the power to think. Without thoughts words are empty
purses. Most people imagine that almost any words uttered in a
loud voice and accompanied by appropriate gestures, constitute an
oration. I would advise the young man to study his subject, to
find what others had thought, to look at it from all sides. Then
I would tell him to write out his thoughts or to arrange them in
his mind, so that he would know exactly what he was going to say.
Waste no time on the how until you are satisfied with the what.
After you know what you are to say, then you can think of how it
should be said. Then you can think about tone, emphasis, and
gesture; but if you really understand what you say, emphasis, tone,
and gesture will take care of themselves. All these should come
from the inside. They should be in perfect harmony with the
feelings. Voice and gesture should be governed by the emotions.
They should unconsciously be in perfect agreement with the sentiments.
The orator should be true to his subject, should avoid any reference
to himself.
The great column of his argument should be unbroken. He can adorn
it with vines and flowers, but they should not be in such profusion
as to hide the column. He should give variety of episode by
illustrations, but they should be used only for the purpose of
adding strength to the argument. The man who wishes to become an
orator should study language. He should know the deeper meaning
of words. He should understand the vigor and velocity of verbs
and the color of adjectives. He should know how to sketch a scene,
to paint a picture, to give life and action. He should be a poet
and a dramatist, a painter and an actor. He should cultivate his
imagination. He should become familiar with the great poetry and
fiction, with splendid and heroic deeds. He should be a student
of Shakespeare. He should read and devour the great plays. From
Shakespeare he could learn the art of expression, of compression,
and all the secrets of the head and heart.
The great orator is full of variety--of surprises. Like a juggler,
he keeps the colored balls in the air. He expresses himself in
pictures. His speech is a panorama. By continued change he holds
the attention. The interest does not flag. He does not allow
himself to be anticipated. A picture is shown but once. So, an
orator should avoid the commonplace. There should be no stuffing,
no filling. He should put no cotton with his silk, no common metals
with his gold. He should remember that "gilded dust is not as good
as dusted gold." The great orator is honest, sincere. He does
not pretend. His brain and heart go together. Every drop of his
blood is convinced. Nothing is forced. He knows exactly what he
wishes to do--knows when he has finished it, and stops.
Only a great orator knows when and how to close. Most speakers go
on after they are through. They are satisfied only with a "lame
and impotent conclusion." Most speakers lack variety. They travel
a straight and dusty road. The great orator is full of episode.
He convinces and charms by indirection. He leaves the road, visits
the fields, wanders in the woods, listens to the murmurs of springs,
the songs of birds. He gathers flowers, scales the crags and comes
back to the highway refreshed, invigorated. He does not move in
a straight line. He wanders and winds like a stream.
Of course, no one can tell a man what to do to become an orator.
The great orator has that wonderful thing called presence. He has
that strange something known as magnetism. He must have a flexible,
musical voice, capable of expressing the pathetic, the humorous,
the heroic. His body must move in unison with his thought. He
must be a reasoner, a logician. He must have a keen sense of humor
--of the laughable. He must have wit, sharp and quick. He must
have sympathy. His smiles should be the neighbors of his tears.
He must have imagination. He should give eagles to the air, and
painted moths should flutter in the sunlight.
While I cannot tell a man what to do to become an orator, I can
tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction
to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There
should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He
should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by
his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works
the form begins to appear. When the statue is finished the workman
stops. Nothing is more difficult than a perfect close. Few poems,
few pieces of music, few novels end well. A good story, a great
speech, a perfect poem should end just at the proper point. The
bud, the blossom, the fruit. No delay. A great speech is a
crystallization in its logic, an efflorescence in its poetry.
I have not heard many speeches. Most of the great speakers in our
country were before my time. I heard Beecher, and he was an orator.
He had imagination, humor and intensity. His brain was as fertile
as the valleys of the tropics. He was too broad, too philosophic,
too poetic for the pulpit. Now and then, he broke the fetters of
his creed, escaped from his orthodox prison, and became sublime.
Theodore Parker was an orator. He preached great sermons. His
sermons on "Old Age" and "Webster," and his address on "Liberty"
were filled with great thoughts, marvelously expressed. When he
dealt with human events, with realities, with things he knew, he
was superb. When he spoke of freedom, of duty, of living to the
ideal, of mental integrity, he seemed inspired.
Webster I never heard. He had great qualities; force, dignity,
clearness, grandeur; but, after all, he worshiped the past. He
kept his back to the sunrise. There was no dawn in his brain. He
was not creative. He had no spirit of prophecy. He lighted no
torch. He was not true to his ideal. He talked sometimes as though
his head was among the stars, but he stood in the gutter. In the
name of religion he tried to break the will of Stephen Girard--to
destroy the greatest charity in all the world; and in the name of
the same religion he defended the Fugitive Slave Law. His purpose
was the same in both cases. He wanted office. Yet he uttered a
few very great paragraphs, rich with thought, perfectly expressed.
Clay I never heard, but he must have had a commanding presence, a
chivalric bearing, an heroic voice. He cared little for the past.
He was a natural leader, a wonderful talker--forcible, persuasive,
convincing. He was not a poet, not a master of metaphor, but he
was practical. He kept in view the end to be accomplished. He
was the opposite of Webster. Clay was the morning, Webster the
evening. Clay had large views, a wide horizon. He was ample,
vigorous, and a little tyrannical.
Benton was thoroughly commonplace. He never uttered an inspired
word. He was an intense egoist. No subject was great enough to
make him forget himself. Calhoun was a political Calvinist--narrow,
logical, dogmatic. He was not an orator. He delivered essays,
not orations. I think it was in 1851 that Kossuth visited this
country. He was an orator. There was no man, at that time, under
our flag, who could speak English as well as he. In the first
speech I read of Kossuth's was this line: "Russia is the rock
against which the sigh for freedom breaks." In this you see the
poet, the painter, the orator.
S. S. Prentiss was an orator, but, with the recklessness of a
gamester, he threw his life away. He said profound and beautiful
things, but he lacked application. He was uneven, disproportioned,
saying ordinary things on great occasions, and now and then, without
the slightest provocation, uttering the sublimest and most beautiful
thoughts.
In my judgment, Corwin was the greatest orator of them all. He
had more arrows in his quiver. He had genius. He was full of
humor, pathos, wit, and logic. He was an actor. His body talked.
His meaning was in his eyes and lips. Gov. O. P. Morton of Indiana
had the greatest power of statement of any man I ever heard. All
the argument was in his statement. The facts were perfectly grouped.
The conclusion was a necessity.
The best political speech I ever heard was made by Gov. Richard J.
Oglesby of Illinois. It had every element of greatness--reason,
humor, wit, pathos, imagination, and perfect naturalness. That
was in the grand years, long ago. Lincoln had reason, wonderful
humor, and wit, but his presence was not good. His voice was poor,
his gestures awkward--but his thoughts were profound. His speech
at Gettysburg is one of the masterpieces of the world. The word
"here" is used four or five times too often. Leave the "heres"
out, and the speech is perfect.
Of course, I have heard a great many talkers, but orators are few
and far between. They are produced by victorious nations--born in
the midst of great events, of marvelous achievements. They utter
the thoughts, the aspirations of their age. They clothe the children
of the people in the gorgeous robes of giants. The interpret the
dreams. With the poets, they prophesy. They fill the future with
heroic forms, with lofty deeds. They keep their faces toward the
dawn--toward the ever-coming day.
--_New York Sun_, April, 1898.