In the word "expose"--_to lay bare, to uncover, to show the true

inwardness of_--we see the foundation-idea of "Exposition." It is the

clear and precise setting forth of what the subject really is--it is

explanation.

Exposition does not draw a picture, for that would be description. To

tell in exact terms what the automobile is, to name its characteristic

parts and explain their workings, would be exposition; so would an

explanation of the nature of "fear." But to create a mental image of a

particular automobile, with its glistening body, graceful lines, and

great speed, would be description; and so would a picturing of fear

acting on the emotions of a child at night. Exposition and description

often intermingle and overlap, but fundamentally they are distinct.

Their differences will be touched upon again in the chapter on

"Description."

Exposition furthermore does not include an account of how events

happened--that is narration. When Peary lectured on his polar

discoveries he explained the instruments used for determining latitude

and longitude--that was exposition. In picturing his equipment he used

description. In telling of his adventures day by day he employed

narration. In supporting some of his contentions he used argument. Yet

he mingled all these forms throughout the lecture.

Neither does exposition deal with reasons and inferences--that is the

field of argument. A series of connected statements intended to convince

a prospective buyer that one automobile is better than another, or

proofs that the appeal to fear is a wrong method of discipline, would

not be exposition. The plain facts as set forth in expository speaking

or writing are nearly always the basis of argument, yet the processes

are not one. True, the statement of a single significant fact without

the addition of one other word may be convincing, but a moment's thought

will show that the inference, which completes a chain of reasoning, is

made in the mind of the hearer and presupposes other facts held in

consideration.[12]

In like manner, it is obvious that the field of persuasion is not open

to exposition, for exposition is entirely an intellectual process, with

no emotional element.

_The Importance of Exposition_

The importance of exposition in public speech is precisely the

importance of setting forth a matter so plainly that it cannot be

misunderstood.

"To master the process of exposition is to become a clear

thinker. 'I know, when you do not ask me,'[13] replied a

gentleman upon being requested to define a highly complex idea.

Now some large concepts defy explicit definition; but no mind

should take refuge behind such exceptions, for where definition

fails, other forms succeed. Sometimes we feel confident that we

have perfect mastery of an idea, but when the time comes to

express it, the clearness becomes a haze. Exposition, then, is

the test of clear understanding. To speak effectively you must

be able to see your subject clearly and comprehensively, and to

make your audience see it as you do."[14]

There are pitfalls on both sides of this path. To explain too little

will leave your audience in doubt as to what you mean. It is useless to

argue a question if it is not perfectly clear just what is meant by the

question. Have you never come to a blind lane in conversation by finding

that you were talking of one aspect of a matter while your friend was

thinking of another? If two do not agree in their definitions of a

Musician, it is useless to dispute over a certain man's right to claim

the title.

On the other side of the path lies the abyss of tediously explaining too

much. That offends because it impresses the hearers that you either do

not respect their intelligence or are trying to blow a breeze into a

tornado. Carefully estimate the probable knowledge of your audience,

both in general and of the particular point you are explaining. In

trying to simplify, it is fatal to "sillify." To explain more than is

needed for the purposes of your argument or appeal is to waste energy

all around. In your efforts to be explicit do not press exposition to

the extent of dulness--the confines are not far distant and you may

arrive before you know it.

_Some Purposes of Exposition_

From what has been said it ought to be clear that, primarily, exposition

weaves a cord of understanding between you and your audience. It lays,

furthermore, a foundation of fact on which to build later statements,

arguments, and appeals. In scientific and purely "information" speeches

exposition may exist by itself and for itself, as in a lecture on

biology, or on psychology; but in the vast majority of cases it is used

to accompany and prepare the way for the other forms of discourse.

Clearness, precision, accuracy, unity, truth, and necessity--these must

be the _constant_ standards by which you test the efficiency of your

expositions, and, indeed, that of every explanatory statement. This

dictum should be written on your brain in letters most plain. And let

this apply not alone to the _purposes_ of exposition but in equal

measure to your use of the

_Methods of Exposition_

The various ways along which a speaker may proceed in exposition are

likely to touch each other now and then, and even when they do not meet

and actually overlap they run so nearly parallel that the roads are

sometimes distinct rather in theory than in any more practical respect.

=Definition=, the primary expository method, is a statement of precise

limits.[15] Obviously, here the greatest care must be exercised that the

terms of definition should not themselves demand too much definition;

that the language should be concise and clear; and that the definition

should neither exclude nor include too much. The following is a simple

example:

To expound is to set forth the nature, the significance, the

characteristics, and the bearing of an idea or a group of ideas.

--ARLO BATES, _Talks on Writing English_.

=Contrast and Antithesis= are often used effectively to amplify

definition, as in this sentence, which immediately follows the

above-cited definition:

Exposition therefore differs from Description in that it deals

directly with the meaning or intent of its subject instead of

with its appearance.

This antithesis forms an expansion of the definition, and as such it

might have been still further extended. In fact, this is a frequent

practise in public speech, where the minds of the hearers often ask for

reiteration and expanded statement to help them grasp a subject in its

several aspects. This is the very heart of exposition--to amplify and

clarify all the terms by which a matter is defined.

=Example= is another method of amplifying a definition or of expounding

an idea more fully. The following sentences immediately succeed Mr.

Bates's definition and contrast just quoted:

A good deal which we are accustomed inexactly to call

description is really exposition. Suppose that your small boy

wishes to know how an engine works, and should say: "Please

describe the steam-engine to me." If you insist on taking his

words literally--and are willing to run the risk of his

indignation at being wilfully misunderstood--you will to the

best of your ability picture to him this familiarly wonderful

machine. If you explain it to him, you are not describing but

expounding it.

The chief value of example is that it makes clear the unknown by

referring the mind to the known. Readiness of mind to make illuminating,

apt comparisons for the sake of clearness is one of the speaker's chief

resources on the platform--it is the greatest of all teaching gifts. It

is a gift, moreover, that responds to cultivation. Read the three

extracts from Arlo Bates as their author delivered them, as one passage,

and see how they melt into one, each part supplementing the other most

helpfully.

=Analogy=, which calls attention to similar relationships in objects not

otherwise similar, is one of the most useful methods of exposition. The

following striking specimen is from Beecher's Liverpool speech:

A savage is a man of one story, and that one story a cellar.

When a man begins to be civilized he raises another story. When

you christianize and civilize the man, you put story upon story,

for you develop faculty after faculty; and you have to supply

every story with your productions.

=Discarding= is a less common form of platform explanation. It consists

in clearing away associated ideas so that the attention may be centered

on the main thought to be discussed. Really, it is a negative factor in

exposition though a most important one, for it is fundamental to the

consideration of an intricately related matter that subordinate and side

questions should be set aside in order to bring out the main issue. Here

is an example of the method:

I cannot allow myself to be led aside from the only issue before

this jury. It is not pertinent to consider that this prisoner is

the husband of a heartbroken woman and that his babes will go

through the world under the shadow of the law's extremest

penalty worked upon their father. We must forget the venerable

father and the mother whom Heaven in pity took before she

learned of her son's disgrace. What have these matters of heart,

what have the blenched faces of his friends, what have the

prisoner's long and honorable career to say before this bar when

you are sworn to weigh only the direct evidence before you? The

one and only question for you to decide on the evidence is

whether this man did with revengeful intent commit the murder

that every impartial witness has solemnly laid at his door.

=Classification= assigns a subject to its class. By an allowable extension

of the definition it may be said to assign it also to its order, genus,

and species. Classification is useful in public speech in narrowing the

issue to a desired phase. It is equally valuable for showing a thing in

its relation to other things, or in correlation. Classification is

closely akin to Definition and Division.

This question of the liquor traffic, sirs, takes its place

beside the grave moral issues of all times. Whatever be its

economic significance--and who is there to question

it--whatever vital bearing it has upon our political system--and

is there one who will deny it?--the question of the licensed

saloon must quickly be settled as the world in its advancement

has settled the questions of constitutional government for the

masses, of the opium traffic, of the serf, and of the slave--not

as matters of economic and political expediency but as questions

of right and wrong.

=Analysis= separates a subject into its essential parts. This it may do by

various principles; for example, analysis may follow the order of time

(geologic eras), order of place (geographic facts), logical order (a

sermon outline), order of increasing interest, or procession to a climax

(a lecture on 20th century poets); and so on. A classic example of

analytical exposition is the following:

In philosophy the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto

God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted

upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise

three knowledges: divine philosophy, natural philosophy, and

human philosophy or humanity. For all things are marked and

stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the

difference of nature, and the use of man.

--LORD BACON, _The Advancement of Learning_.[16]

=Division= differs only from analysis in that analysis follows the

inherent divisions of a subject, as illustrated in the foregoing

passage, while division arbitrarily separates the subject for

convenience of treatment, as in the following none-too-logical example:

For civil history, it is of three kinds; not unfitly to be

compared with the three kinds of pictures or images. For of

pictures or images, we see some are unfinished, some are

perfect, and some are defaced. So of histories we may find three

kinds, memorials, perfect histories, and antiquities; for

memorials are history unfinished, or the first or rough drafts

of history; and antiquities are history defaced, or some

remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of

time.

--LORD BACON, _The Advancement of Learning_.[16A]

=Generalization= states a broad principle, or a general truth, derived

from examination of a considerable number of individual facts. This

synthetic exposition is not the same as argumentative generalization,

which supports a general contention by citing instances in proof.

Observe how Holmes begins with one fact, and by adding another and

another reaches a complete whole. This is one of the most effective

devices in the public speaker's repertory.

Take a hollow cylinder, the bottom closed while the top remains

open, and pour in water to the height of a few inches. Next

cover the water with a flat plate or piston, which fits the

interior of the cylinder perfectly; then apply heat to the

water, and we shall witness the following phenomena. After the

lapse of some minutes the water will begin to boil, and the

steam accumulating at the upper surface will make room for

itself by raising the piston slightly. As the boiling continues,

more and more steam will be formed, and raise the piston higher

and higher, till all the water is boiled away, and nothing but

steam is left in the cylinder. Now this machine, consisting of

cylinder, piston, water, and fire, is the steam-engine in its

most elementary form. For a steam-engine may be defined as an

apparatus for doing work by means of heat applied to water; and

since raising such a weight as the piston is a form of doing

work, this apparatus, clumsy and inconvenient though it may be,

answers the definition precisely.[17]

=Reference to Experience= is one of the most vital principles in

exposition--as in every other form of discourse.

"Reference to experience, as here used, means reference to the known.

The known is that which the listener has seen, heard, read, felt,

believed or done, and which still exists in his consciousness--his stock

of knowledge. It embraces all those thoughts, feelings and happenings

which are to him real. Reference to Experience, then, means _coming into

the listener's life_.[18]

The vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical

faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are

practised by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs

of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the

marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that

by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from

fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and

deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a particular kind

upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand

thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and

Leverrier discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact,

simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all

habitually, and at every moment, use carelessly.

--THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, _Lay Sermons_.

Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are

written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a

moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a

decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken?

your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every

part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call

yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

--SHAKESPEARE, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.

Finally, in preparing expository material ask yourself these questions

regarding your subject:

What is it, and what is it not?

What is it like, and unlike?

What are its causes, and effects?

How shall it be divided?

With what subjects is it correlated?

What experiences does it recall?

What examples illustrate it?

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What would be the effect of adhering to any one of the forms of

discourse in a public address?

2. Have you ever heard such an address?

3. Invent a series of examples illustrative of the distinctions made on

pages 232 and 233.

4. Make a list of ten subjects that might be treated largely, if not

entirely, by exposition.

5. Name the six standards by which expository writing should be tried.

6. Define any one of the following: (_a_) storage battery; (_b_) "a free

hand;" (_c_) sail boat; (_d_) "The Big Stick;" (_e_) nonsense; (_f_) "a

good sport;" (_g_) short-story; (_h_) novel; (_i_) newspaper; (_j_)

politician; (_k_) jealousy; (_l_) truth; (_m_) matinée girl; (_n_)

college honor system; (_o_) modish; (_p_) slum; (_q_) settlement work;

(_r_) forensic.

7. Amplify the definition by antithesis.

8. Invent two examples to illustrate the definition (question 6).

9. Invent two analogies for the same subject (question 6).

10. Make a short speech based on one of the following: (_a_) wages and

salary; (_b_) master and man; (_c_) war and peace; (_d_) home and the

boarding house; (_e_) struggle and victory; (_f_) ignorance and

ambition.

11. Make a ten-minute speech on any of the topics named in question 6,

using all the methods of exposition already named.

12. Explain what is meant by discarding topics collateral and

subordinate to a subject.

13. Rewrite the jury-speech on page 224.

14. Define correlation.

15. Write an example of "classification," on any political, social,

economic, or moral issue of the day.

16. Make a brief analytical statement of Henry W. Grady's "The Race

Problem," page 36.

17. By what analytical principle did you proceed? (See page 225.)

18. Write a short, carefully generalized speech from a large amount of

data on one of the following subjects: (_a_) The servant girl problem;

(_b_) cats; (_c_) the baseball craze; (_d_) reform administrations;

(_e_) sewing societies; (_f_) coeducation; (_g_) the traveling salesman.

19. Observe this passage from Newton's "Effective Speaking:"

"That man is a cynic. He sees goodness nowhere. He sneers at

virtue, sneers at love; to him the maiden plighting her troth is

an artful schemer, and he sees even in the mother's kiss nothing

but an empty conventionality."

Write, commit and deliver two similar passages based on your choice from

this list: (_a_) "the egotist;" (_b_) "the sensualist;" (_c_) "the

hypocrite;" (_d_) "the timid man;" (_e_) "the joker;" (_f_) "the flirt;"

(_g_) "the ungrateful woman;" (_h_) "the mournful man." In both cases

use the principle of "Reference to Experience."

20. Write a passage on any of the foregoing characters in imitation of

the style of Shakespeare's characterization of Sir John Falstaff, page

227.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Argumentation will be outlined fully in subsequent

chapter.]

[Footnote 13: _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F. Genung.]

[Footnote 14: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 15: On the various types of definition see any college manual

of Rhetoric.]

[Footnote 16: Quoted in _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F.

Genung.]

[Footnote 16A: Quoted in _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_, J.F.

Genung.]

[Footnote 17: G.C.V. Holmes, quoted in _Specimens of Exposition_, H.

Lamont.]

[Footnote 18: _Effective Speaking_, Arthur Edward Phillips. This work

covers the preparation of public speech in a very helpful way.]

CHAPTER XX

INFLUENCING BY DESCRIPTION

The groves of Eden vanish'd now so long,

Live in description, and look green in song.

--ALEXANDER POPE, _Windsor Forest_.

The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar

facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it

clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he

watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a

material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind,

contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment

of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the

blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It

is proper creation.

--RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Nature_.

Like other valuable resources in public speaking, description loses its

power when carried to an extreme. Over-ornamentation makes the subject

ridiculous. A dust-cloth is a very useful thing, but why embroider it?

Whether description shall be restrained within its proper and important

limits, or be encouraged to run riot, is the personal choice that comes

before every speaker, for man's earliest literary tendency is to depict.

_The Nature of Description_

To describe is to call up a picture in the mind of the hearer. "In

talking of description we naturally speak of portraying, delineating,

coloring, and all the devices of the picture painter. To describe is to

visualize, hence we must look at description as a pictorial process,

whether the writer deals with material or with spiritual objects."[19]

If you were asked to describe the rapid-fire gun you might go about it

in either of two ways: give a cold technical account of its mechanism,

in whole and in detail, or else describe it as a terrible engine of

slaughter, dwelling upon its effects rather than upon its structure.

The former of these processes is exposition, the latter is true

description. Exposition deals more with the _general_, while description

must deal with the _particular_. Exposition elucidates _ideas_,

description treats of _things_. Exposition deals with the _abstract_,

description with the _concrete_. Exposition is concerned with the

_internal_, description with the _external_. Exposition is

_enumerative_, description _literary_. Exposition is _intellectual_,

description _sensory_. Exposition is _impersonal_, description

_personal_.

If description is a visualizing process for the hearer, it is first of

all such for the speaker--he cannot describe what he has never seen,

either physically or in fancy. It is this personal quality--this

question of the personal eye which sees the things later to be

described--that makes description so interesting in public speech. Given

a speaker of personality, and we are interested in his personal

view--his view adds to the natural interest of the scene, and may even

be the sole source of that interest to his auditors.

The seeing eye has been praised in an earlier chapter (on "Subject and

Preparation") and the imagination will be treated in a subsequent one

(on "Riding the Winged Horse"), but here we must consider the

_picturing mind_: the mind that forms the double habit of seeing things

clearly--for we see more with the mind than we do with the physical

eye--and then of re-imaging these things for the purpose of getting them

before the minds' eyes of the hearers. No habit is more useful than that

of visualizing clearly the object, the scene, the situation, the action,

the person, about to be described. Unless that primary process is

carried out clearly, the picture will be blurred for the

hearer-beholder.

In a work of this nature we are concerned with the rhetorical analysis

of description, and with its methods, only so far as may be needed for

the practical purposes of the speaker.[20] The following grouping,

therefore, will not be regarded as complete, nor will it here be

necessary to add more than a word of explanation:

_Description for Public Speakers_

Objects { Still

" " { In motion

Scenes { Still

" " { Including action

Situations { Preceding change

" " { During change

" " { After change

Actions { Mental

" " { Physical

Persons { Internal

" " { External

Some of the foregoing processes will overlap, in certain instances, and

all are more likely to be found in combination than singly.

When description is intended solely to give accurate information--as to

delineate the appearance, not the technical construction, of the latest

Zeppelin airship--it is called "scientific description," and is akin to

exposition. When it is intended to present a free picture for the

purpose of making a vivid impression, it is called "artistic

description." With both of these the public speaker has to deal, but

more frequently with the latter form. Rhetoricians make still further

distinctions.

_Methods of Description_

In public speaking, _description should be mainly by suggestion_, not

only because suggestive description is so much more compact and

time-saving but because it is so vivid. Suggestive expressions connote

more than they literally say--they suggest ideas and pictures to the

mind of the hearer which supplement the direct words of the speaker.

When Dickens, in his "Christmas Carol," says: "In came Mrs. Fezziwig,

one vast substantial smile," our minds complete the picture so deftly

begun--a much more effective process than that of a minutely detailed

description because it leaves a unified, vivid impression, and that is

what we need. Here is a present-day bit of suggestion: "General Trinkle

was a gnarly oak of a man--rough, solid, and safe; you always knew where

to find him." Dickens presents Miss Peecher as: "A little pin-cushion, a

little housewife, a little book, a little work-box, a little set of

tables and weights and measures, and a little woman all in one." In his

"Knickerbocker's" "History of New York," Irving portrays Wouter van

Twiller as "a robustious beer-barrel, standing on skids."

Whatever forms of description you neglect, be sure to master the art of

suggestion.

_Description may be by simple hint._ Lowell notes a happy instance of

this sort of picturing by intimation when he says of Chaucer: "Sometimes

he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before

setting himself down, drives away the cat. We know without need of more

words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."

_Description may depict a thing by its effects._ "When the spectator's

eye is dazzled, and he shades it," says Mozley in his "Essays," "we form

the idea of a splendid object; when his face turns pale, of a horrible

one; from his quick wonder and admiration we form the idea of great

beauty; from his silent awe, of great majesty."

_Brief description may be by epithet._ "Blue-eyed," "white-armed,"

"laughter-loving," are now conventional compounds, but they were fresh

enough when Homer first conjoined them. The centuries have not yet

improved upon "Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked," or "Shields smooth,

beautiful, brazen, well-hammered." Observe the effective use of epithet

in Will Levington Comfort's "The Fighting Death," when he speaks of

soldiers in a Philippine skirmish as being "leeched against a rock."

_Description uses figures of speech._ Any advanced rhetoric will discuss

their forms and give examples for guidance.[21] This matter is most

important, be assured. A brilliant yet carefully restrained figurative

style, a style marked by brief, pungent, witty, and humorous comparisons

and characterizations, is a wonderful resource for all kinds of platform

work.

_Description may be direct._ This statement is plain enough without

exposition. Use your own judgment as to whether in picturing you had

better proceed from a general view to the details, or first give the

details and thus build up the general picture, but by all means BE

BRIEF.

Note the vivid compactness of these delineations from Washington

Irving's "Knickerbocker:"

He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double

chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was

supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the

constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.

He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five

inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of

such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature, with all her sex's

ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable

of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and

settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the

shoulders. His body was of an oblong form, particularly

capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence,

seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to

the idle labor of walking.

The foregoing is too long for the platform, but it is so good-humored,

so full of delightful exaggeration, that it may well serve as a model

of humorous character picturing, for here one inevitably sees the inner

man in the outer.

Direct description for platform use may be made vivid by the _sparing_

use of the "historical present." The following dramatic passage,

accompanied by the most lively action, has lingered in the mind for

thirty years after hearing Dr. T. De Witt Talmage lecture on "Big

Blunders." The crack of the bat sounds clear even today:

Get ready the bats and take your positions. Now, give us the

ball. Too low. Don't strike. Too high. Don't strike. There it

comes like lightning. Strike! Away it soars! Higher! Higher!

Run! Another base! Faster! Faster! Good! All around at one

stroke!

Observe the remarkable way in which the lecturer fused speaker,

audience, spectators, and players into one excited, ecstatic whole--just

as you have found yourself starting forward in your seat at the delivery

of the ball with "three on and two down" in the ninth inning. Notice,

too, how--perhaps unconsciously--Talmage painted the scene in Homer's

characteristic style: not as having already happened, but as happening

before your eyes.

If you have attended many travel talks you must have been impressed by

the painful extremes to which the lecturers go--with a few notable

exceptions, their language is either over-ornate or crude. If you would

learn the power of words to make scenery, yes, even houses, palpitate

with poetry and human appeal, read Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Louis

Stevenson, Pierre Loti, and Edmondo De Amicis.

Blue-distant, a mountain of carven stone appeared before

them,--the Temple, lifting to heaven its wilderness of chiseled

pinnacles, flinging to the sky the golden spray of its

decoration.

--LAFCADIO HEARN, _Chinese Ghosts_.

The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A

faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the

black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness

of the pack-saddle I could see Modestine walking round and round

at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching

at the sward; but there was not another sound save the

indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, _Travels with a Donkey_.

It was full autumn now, late autumn--with the nightfalls gloomy,

and all things growing dark early in the old cottage, and all

the Breton land looking sombre, too. The very days seemed but

twilight; immeasurable clouds, slowly passing, would suddenly

bring darkness at broad noon. The wind moaned constantly--it was

like the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but

playing profane airs, or despairing dirges; at other times it

would come close to the door, and lift up a howl like wild

beasts.

--PIERRE LOTI, _An Iceland Fisherman_.

I see the great refectory,[22] where a battalion might have

drilled; I see the long tables, the five hundred heads bent

above the plates, the rapid motion of five hundred forks, of a

thousand hands, and sixteen thousand teeth; the swarm of

servants running here and there, called to, scolded, hurried, on

every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the deafening

noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread--bread!"

and I feel once more the formidable appetite, the herculean

strength of jaw, the exuberant life and spirits of those far-off

days.[23]

--EDMONDO DE AMICIS, _College Friends_.

_Suggestions for the Use of Description_

Decide, on beginning a description, what point of view you wish your

hearers to take. One cannot see either a mountain or a man on all sides

at once. Establish a view-point, and do not shift without giving notice.

Choose an attitude toward your subject--shall it be idealized?

caricatured? ridiculed? exaggerated? defended? or described impartially?

Be sure of your mood, too, for it will color the subject to be

described. Melancholy will make a rose-garden look gray.

Adopt an order in which you will proceed--do not shift backward and

forward from near to far, remote to close in time, general to

particular, large to small, important to unimportant, concrete to

abstract, physical to mental; but follow your chosen order. Scattered

and shifting observations produce hazy impressions just as a moving

camera spoils the time-exposure.

Do not go into needless minutiæ. Some details identify a thing with its

class, while other details differentiate it from its class. Choose only

the significant, suggestive characteristics and bring those out with

terse vividness. Learn a lesson from the few strokes used by the poster

artist.

In determining what to describe and what merely to name, seek to read

the knowledge of your audience. The difference to them between the

unknown and the known is a vital one also to you.

Relentlessly cut out all ideas and words not necessary to produce the

effect you desire. Each element in a mental picture either helps or

hinders. Be sure they do not hinder, for they cannot be passively

present in any discourse.

Interruptions of the description to make side-remarks are as powerful to

destroy unity as are scattered descriptive phrases. The only visual

impression that can be effective is one that is unified.

In describing, try to call up the emotions you felt when first you saw

the scene, and then try to reproduce those emotions in your hearers.

Description is primarily emotional in its appeal; nothing can be more

deadly dull than a cold, unemotional outline, while nothing leaves a

warmer impression than a glowing, spirited description.

Give a swift and vivid general view at the close of the portrayal. First

and final impressions remain the longest. The mind may be trained to

take in the characteristic points of a subject, so as to view in a

single scene, action, experience, or character, a unified impression of

the whole. To describe a thing as a whole you must first see it as a

whole. Master that art and you have mastered description to the last

degree.

SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE

_THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE_

I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol

Hill; my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of

my country's Capitol and the mist gathered in my eyes as I

thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the

treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and

the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the

sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than

that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its

best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and

justice abided therein, the world would at last owe to that

great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is

lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.

Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a

modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple,

unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in

meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest. The fragrance

of the pink and hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the

aroma of the orchard and of the gardens, and resonant with the

cluck of poultry and the hum of bees.

Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. There was

the old clock that had welcomed, in steady measure, every

newcomer to the family, that had ticked the solemn requiem of

the dead, and had kept company with the watcher at the bedside.

There were the big, restful beds and the old, open fireplace,

and the old family Bible, thumbed with the fingers of hands long

since still, and wet with the tears of eyes long since closed,

holding the simple annals of the family and the heart and the

conscience of the home.

Outside, there stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright

man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops,

master of his land and master of himself. There was his old

father, an aged, trembling man, but happy in the heart and home

of his son. And as they started to their home, the hands of the

old man went down on the young man's shoulder, laying there the

unspeakable blessing of the honored and grateful father and

ennobling it with the knighthood of the fifth commandment.

And as they reached the door the old mother came with the sunset

falling fair on her face, and lighting up her deep, patient

eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of her

heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond

was the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart

and conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down

the lane came the children, trooping home after the cows,

seeking as truant birds do the quiet of their home nest.

And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as

the wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled

bird called from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the

cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky--got the

family around him, and, taking the old Bible from the table,

called them to their knees, the little baby hiding in the folds

of its mother's dress, while he closed the record of that

simple day by calling down God's benediction on that family and

that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble Capitol

faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty and I said,

"Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last

the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope

and the promise of this republic."

--HENRY W. GRADY.

_SUGGESTIVE SCENES_

One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in

events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbor puts it in our

mind to sit there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a

third early rising and long rambles in the dew. The effect of

night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of

day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army

of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should

happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And

many of the happiest hours in life fleet by us in this vain

attendance on the genius of the place and moment. It is thus

that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep

soundings, particularly delight and torture me. Something must

have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members

of my race; and when I was a child I tried to invent appropriate

games for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with

the proper story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank

gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be

haunted; certain coasts are set aside for shipwreck. Other spots

again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable,

"miching mallecho." The inn at Burford Bridge, with its arbours

and green garden and silent, eddying river--though it is known

already as the place where Keats wrote some of his _Endymion_

and Nelson parted from his Emma--still seems to wait the coming

of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied walls, behind

these old green shutters, some further business smoulders,

waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's ferry

makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from

the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland,

half marine--in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the

guard-ship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with

the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and

Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of the _Antiquary_.

But you need not tell me--that is not all; there is some story,

unrecorded or not yet complete, which must express the meaning

of that inn more fully.... I have lived both at the Hawes and

Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heel, as it seemed, of

some adventure that should justify the place; but though the

feeling had me to bed at night and called me again at morning in

one unbroken round of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me

in either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come;

but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's

ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a

horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the

green shutters at the inn at Burford.

--R.L. STEVENSON, _A Gossip on Romance_.

_FROM "MIDNIGHT IN LONDON"_

Clang! Clang! Clang! the fire-bells! Bing! Bing! Bing! the

alarm! In an instant quiet turns to uproar--an outburst of

noise, excitement, clamor--bedlam broke loose; Bing! Bing! Bing!

Rattle, clash and clatter. Open fly the doors; brave men mount

their boxes. Bing! Bing! Bing! They're off! The horses tear down

the street like mad. Bing! Bing! Bing! goes the gong!

"Get out of the track! The engines are coming! For God's sake,

snatch that child from the road!"

On, on, wildly, resolutely, madly fly the steeds. Bing! Bing!

the gong. Away dash the horses on the wings of fevered fury. On

whirls the machine, down streets, around corners, up this avenue

and across that one, out into the very bowels of darkness,

whiffing, wheezing, shooting a million sparks from the stack,

paving the path of startled night with a galaxy of stars. Over

the house-tops to the north, a volcanic burst of flame shoots

out, belching with blinding effect. The sky is ablaze. A

tenement house is burning. Five hundred souls are in peril.

Merciful Heaven! Spare the victims! Are the engines coming? Yes,

here they are, dashing down the street. Look! the horses ride

upon the wind; eyes bulging like balls of fire; nostrils wide

open. A palpitating billow of fire, rolling, plunging, bounding

rising, falling, swelling, heaving, and with mad passion

bursting its red-hot sides asunder, reaching out its arms,

encircling, squeezing, grabbing up, swallowing everything before

it with the hot, greedy mouth of an appalling monster.

How the horses dash around the corner! Animal instinct say you?

Aye, more. Brute reason.

"Up the ladders, men!"

The towering building is buried in bloated banks of savage,

biting elements. Forked tongues dart out and in, dodge here and

there, up and down, and wind their cutting edges around every

object. A crash, a dull, explosive sound, and a puff of smoke

leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark

figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures,

the arms swinging wildly--and then the body shoots off into

frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting

thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The

crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and

horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. One woman

swoons away.

"Poor fellow! Dead!" exclaims a laborer, as he looks upon the

man's body.

"Aye, Joe, and I knew him well, too! He lived next door to me,

five flights back. He leaves a widowed mother and two wee bits

of orphans. I helped him bury his wife a fortnight ago. Ah, Joe!

but it's hard lines for the orphans."

A ghastly hour moves on, dragging its regiment of panic in its

trail and leaving crimson blotches of cruelty along the path of

night.

"Are they all out, firemen?"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"No, they're not! There's a woman in the top window holding a

child in her arms--over yonder in the right-hand corner! The

ladders, there! A hundred pounds to the man who makes the

rescue!"

A dozen start. One man more supple than the others, and reckless

in his bravery, clambers to the top rung of the ladder.

"Too short!" he cries. "Hoist another!"

Up it goes. He mounts to the window, fastens the rope, lashes

mother and babe, swings them off into ugly emptiness, and lets

them down to be rescued by his comrades.

"Bravo, fireman!" shouts the crowd.

A crash breaks through the uproar of crackling timbers.

"Look alive, up there! Great God! The roof has fallen!"

The walls sway, rock, and tumble in with a deafening roar. The

spectators cease to breathe. The cold truth reveals itself. The

fireman has been carried into the seething furnace. An old

woman, bent with the weight of age, rushes through the fire

line, shrieking, raving, and wringing her hands and opening her

heart of grief.

"Poor John! He was all I had! And a brave lad he was, too! But

he's gone now. He lost his own life in savin' two more, and

now--now he's there, away in there!" she repeats, pointing to

the cruel oven.

The engines do their work. The flames die out. An eerie gloom

hangs over the ruins like a formidable, blackened pall.

And the noon of night is passed.

--ARDENNES JONES-FOSTER.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. Write two paragraphs on one of these: the race horse, the motor boat,

golfing, tennis; let the first be pure exposition and the second pure

description.

2. Select your own theme and do the same in two short extemporaneous

speeches.

3. Deliver a short original address in the over-ornamented style.

4. (_a_) Point out its defects; (_b_) recast it in a more effective

style; (_c_) show how the one surpasses the other.

5. Make a list of ten subjects which lend themselves to description in

the style you prefer.

6. Deliver a two-minute speech on any one of them, using chiefly, but

not solely, description.

7. For one minute, look at any object, scene, action, picture, or

person you choose, take two minutes to arrange your thoughts, and then

deliver a short description--all without making written notes.

8. In what sense is description more _personal_ than exposition?

9. Explain the difference between a scientific and an artistic

description.

10. In the style of Dickens and Irving (pages 234, 235), write five

separate sentences describing five characters by means of

suggestion--one sentence to each.

11. Describe a character by means of a hint, after the manner of Chaucer

(p. 235).

12. Read aloud the following with special attention to gesture:

His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal of it. You looked

over a very low fence of white cravat (whereof no man had ever

beheld the tie, for he fastened it behind), and there it lay, a

valley between two jutting heights of collar, serene and

whiskerless before you. It seemed to say, on the part of Mr.

Pecksniff, "There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen, all is

peace, a holy calm pervades me." So did his hair, just grizzled

with an iron gray, which was all brushed off his forehead, and

stood bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with

his heavy eyelids. So did his person, which was sleek though

free from corpulency. So did his manner, which was soft and

oily. In a word, even his plain black suit, and state of

widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all tended to the same

purpose, and cried aloud, "Behold the moral Pecksniff!"

--CHARLES DICKENS, _Martin Chuzzlewit_.

13. Which of the following do you prefer, and why?

She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge,

ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's

peaches.

--IRVING.

She was a splendidly feminine girl, as wholesome as a November

pippin, and no more mysterious than a window-pane.

--O. HENRY.

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher;

cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice.

--DICKENS.

14. Invent five epithets, and apply them as you choose (p. 235).

15. (_a_) Make a list of five figures of speech; (_b_) define them;

(_c_) give an example--preferably original--under each.

16. Pick out the figures of speech in the address by Grady, on page 240.

17. Invent an original figure to take the place of any one in Grady's

speech.

18. What sort of figures do you find in the selection from Stevenson, on

page 242?

19. What methods of description does he seem to prefer?

20. Write and deliver, without notes and with descriptive gestures, a

description in imitation of any of the authors quoted in this chapter.

21. Reëxamine one of your past speeches and improve the descriptive

work. Report on what faults you found to exist.

22. Deliver an extemporaneous speech describing any dramatic scene in

the style of "Midnight in London."

23. Describe an event in your favorite sport in the style of Dr.

Talmage. Be careful to make the delivery effective.

24. Criticise, favorably or unfavorably, the descriptions of any travel

talk you may have heard recently.

25. Deliver a brief original travel talk, as though you were showing

pictures.

26. Recast the talk and deliver it "without pictures."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: _Writing the Short-Story_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 20: For fuller treatment of Description see Genung's _Working

Principles of Rhetoric_, Albright's _Descriptive Writing_, Bates' _Talks

on Writing English_, first and second series, and any advanced

rhetoric.]

[Footnote 21: See also _The Art of Versification_, J. Berg Esenwein and

Mary Eleanor Roberts, pp. 28-35; and _Writing the Short-Story_, J. Berg

Esenwein, pp. 152-162; 231-240.]

[Footnote 22: In the Military College of Modena.]

[Footnote 23: This figure of speech is known as "Vision."]

CHAPTER XXI

INFLUENCING BY NARRATION

The art of narration is the art of writing in hooks and eyes.

The principle consists in making the appropriate thought follow

the appropriate thought, the proper fact the proper fact; in

first preparing the mind for what is to come, and then letting

it come.

--WALTER BAGEHOT, _Literary Studies_.

Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men, you may

observe, speak only to narrate; not in imparting what they have

thought, which indeed were often a very small matter, but in

exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite

unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how

would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest,

languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly

evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but enact History, we say

little but recite it.

--THOMAS CARLYLE, _On History_.

Only a small segment of the great field of narration offers its

resources to the public speaker, and that includes the anecdote,

biographical facts, and the narration of events in general.

Narration--more easily defined than mastered--is the recital of an

incident, or a group of facts and occurrences, in such a manner as to

produce a desired effect.

The laws of narration are few, but its successful practise involves more

of art than would at first appear--so much, indeed, that we cannot even

touch upon its technique here, but must content ourselves with an

examination of a few examples of narration as used in public speech.

In a preliminary way, notice how radically the public speaker's use of

narrative differs from that of the story-writer in the more limited

scope, absence of extended dialogue and character drawing, and freedom

from elaboration of detail, which characterize platform narrative. On

the other hand, there are several similarities of method: the frequent

combination of narration with exposition, description, argumentation,

and pleading; the care exercised in the arrangement of material so as to

produce a strong effect at the close (climax); the very general practise

of concealing the "point" (dénouement) of a story until the effective

moment; and the careful suppression of needless, and therefore hurtful,

details.

So we see that, whether for magazine or platform, the art of narration

involves far more than the recital of annals; the succession of events

recorded requires a _plan_ in order to bring them out with real effect.

It will be noticed, too, that the literary style in platform narration

is likely to be either less polished and more vigorously dramatic than

in that intended for publication, or else more fervid and elevated in

tone. In this latter respect, however, the best platform speaking of

today differs from the models of the preceding generation, wherein a

highly dignified, and sometimes pompous, style was thought the only

fitting dress for a public deliverance. Great, noble and stirring as

these older masters were in their lofty and impassioned eloquence, we

are sometimes oppressed when we read their sounding periods for any

great length of time--even allowing for all that we lose by missing the

speaker's presence, voice, and fire. So let us model our platform

narration, as our other forms of speech, upon the effective addresses of

the moderns, without lessening our admiration for the older school.

_The Anecdote_

An anecdote is a short narrative of a single event, told as being

striking enough to bring out a point. The keener the point, the more

condensed the form, and the more suddenly the application strikes the

hearer, the better the story.

To regard an anecdote as an illustration--an interpretive picture--will

help to hold us to its true purpose, for a purposeless story is of all

offenses on the platform the most asinine. A perfectly capital joke will

fall flat when it is dragged in by the nape without evident bearing on

the subject under discussion. On the other hand, an apposite anecdote

has saved many a speech from failure.

"There is no finer opportunity for the display of tact than in the

introduction of witty or humorous stories into a discourse. Wit is keen

and like a rapier, piercing deeply, sometimes even to the heart. Humor

is good-natured, and does not wound. Wit is founded upon the sudden

discovery of an unsuspected relation existing between two ideas. Humor

deals with things out of relation--with the incongruous. It was wit in

Douglass Jerrold to retort upon the scowl of a stranger whose shoulder

he had familiarly slapped, mistaking him for a friend: 'I beg your

pardon, I thought I knew you--but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the

Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an

evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in

winter, cracking hailstones between his teeth."[24]

The foregoing quotation has been introduced chiefly to illustrate the

first and simplest form of anecdote--the single sentence embodying a

pungent saying.

Another simple form is that which conveys its meaning without need of

"application," as the old preachers used to say. George Ade has quoted

this one as the best joke he ever heard:

Two solemn-looking gentlemen were riding together in a railway

carriage. One gentleman said to the other: "Is your wife

entertaining this summer?" Whereupon the other gentleman

replied: "Not very."

Other anecdotes need harnessing to the particular truth the speaker

wishes to carry along in his talk. Sometimes the application is made

before the story is told and the audience is prepared to make the

comparison, point by point, as the illustration is told. Henry W. Grady

used this method in one of the anecdotes he told while delivering his

great extemporaneous address, "The New South."

Age does not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are

all new things to be despised. The shoemaker who put over his

door, "John Smith's shop, founded 1760," was more than matched

by his young rival across the street who hung out this sign:

"Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this shop."

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 Cæsar 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

"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

mind, and that thought prompts action. _Every_ idea that enters the

mind will result in action unless a contradictory thought arises to

prohibit it. Think of singing the musical scale and it will result in

your singing it unless the counter-thought of its futility or absurdity

inhibits your action. If you bandage and "doctor" a horse's foot, he

will go lame. You cannot think of swallowing, without the muscles used

in that process being affected. You cannot think of saying "hello,"

without a slight movement of the muscles of speech. To warn children

that they should not put beans up their noses is the surest method of

getting them to do it. Every thought called up in the mind of your

audience will work either for or against you. Thoughts are not dead

matter; they radiate dynamic energy--the thoughts all tend to pass into

action. "Thought is another name for fate." Dominate your hearers'

thoughts, allay all contradictory ideas, and you will sway them as you

wish.

Volitions as well as feelings and thoughts tend to follow the line of

least resistance. That is what makes habit. Suggest to a man that it is

impossible to change his mind and in most cases it becomes more

difficult to do so--the exception is the man who naturally jumps to the

contrary. Counter suggestion is the only way to reach him. Suggest

subtly and persistently that the opinions of those in the audience who

are opposed to your views are changing, and it requires an effort of the

will--in fact, a summoning of the forces of feeling, thought and

will--to stem the tide of change that has subconsciously set in.

But, not only are we moved by authority, and tend toward channels of

least resistance: _We are all influenced by our environments_. It is

difficult to rise above the sway of a crowd--its enthusiasms and its

fears are contagious because they are suggestive. What so many feel, we

say to ourselves, must have some basis in truth. Ten times ten makes

more than one hundred. Set ten men to speaking to ten audiences of ten

men each, and compare the aggregate power of those ten speakers with

that of one man addressing one hundred men. The ten speakers may be more

logically convincing than the single orator, but the chances are

strongly in favor of the one man's reaching a greater total effect, for

the hundred men will radiate conviction and resolution as ten small

groups could not. We all know the truism about the enthusiasm of

numbers. (See the chapter on "Influencing the Crowd.")

Environment controls us unless the contrary is strongly suggested. A

gloomy day, in a drab room, sparsely tenanted by listeners, invites

platform disaster. Everyone feels it in the air. But let the speaker

walk squarely up to the issue and suggest by all his feeling, manner and

words that this is going to be a great gathering in every vital sense,

and see how the suggestive power of environment recedes before the

advance of a more potent suggestion--if such the speaker is able to make

it.

Now these three factors--respect for authority, tendency to follow lines

of least resistance, and susceptibility to environment--all help to

bring the auditor into a state of mind favorable to suggestive

influences, but they also react on the speaker, and now we must consider

those personally causative, or subjective, forces which enable him to

use suggestion effectively.

_How the Speaker Can Make Suggestion Effective_

We have seen that under the influence of authoritative suggestion the

audience is inclined to accept the speaker's assertion without argument

and criticism. But the audience is not in this state of mind unless it

has implicit confidence in the speaker. If they lack faith in him,

question his motives or knowledge, or even object to his manner they

will not be moved by his most logical conclusion and will fail to give

him a just hearing. _It is all a matter of their confidence in him._

Whether the speaker finds it already in the warm, expectant look of his

hearers, or must win to it against opposition or coldness, he must gain

that one great vantage point before his suggestions take on power in the

hearts of his listeners. Confidence is the mother of Conviction.

Note in the opening of Henry W. Grady's after-dinner speech how he

attempted to secure the confidence of his audience. He created a

receptive atmosphere by a humorous story; expressed his desire to speak

with earnestness and sincerity; acknowledged "the vast interests

involved;" deprecated his "untried arm," and professed his humility.

Would not such an introduction give you confidence in the speaker,

unless you were strongly opposed to him? And even then, would it not

partly disarm your antagonism?

Mr. President:--Bidden by your invitation to a discussion of the

race problem--forbidden by occasion to make a political

speech--I appreciate, in trying to reconcile orders with

propriety, the perplexity of the little maid, who, bidden to

learn to swim, was yet adjured, "Now, go, my darling; hang your

clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the water."

The stoutest apostle of the Church, they say, is the missionary,

and the missionary, wherever he unfurls his flag, will never

find himself in deeper need of unction and address than I,

bidden tonight to plant the standard of a Southern Democrat in

Boston's banquet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races

in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if a

purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if earnest

understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating

sense of what disaster may follow further misunderstanding and

estrangement; if these may be counted to steady undisciplined

speech and to strengthen an untried arm--then, sir, I shall find

the courage to proceed.

Note also Mr. Bryan's attempt to secure the confidence of his audience

in the following introduction to his "Cross of Gold" speech delivered

before the National Democratic Convention in Chicago, 1896. He asserts

his own inability to oppose the "distinguished gentleman;" he maintains

the holiness of his cause; and he declares that he will speak in the

interest of humanity--well knowing that humanity is likely to have

confidence in the champion of their rights. This introduction completely

dominated the audience, and the speech made Mr. Bryan famous.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: I would be

presumptuous indeed to present myself against the distinguished

gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere

measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between

persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the

armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of

error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as

the cause of liberty--the cause of humanity.

Some speakers are able to beget confidence by their very manner, while

others can not.

_To secure confidence, be confident._ How can you expect others to

accept a message in which you lack, or seem to lack, faith yourself?

Confidence is as contagious as disease. Napoleon rebuked an officer for

using the word "impossible" in his presence. The speaker who will

entertain no idea of defeat begets in his hearers the idea of his

victory. Lady Macbeth was so confident of success that Macbeth changed

his mind about undertaking the assassination. Columbus was so certain in

his mission that Queen Isabella pawned her jewels to finance his

expedition. Assert your message with implicit assurance, and your own

belief will act as so much gunpowder to drive it home.

Advertisers have long utilized this principle. "The machine you will

eventually buy," "Ask the man who owns one," "Has the strength of

Gibraltar," are publicity slogans so full of confidence that they give

birth to confidence in the mind of the reader.

It should--but may not!--go without saying that confidence must have a

solid ground of merit or there will be a ridiculous crash. It is all

very well for the "spellbinder" to claim all the precincts--the official

count is just ahead. The reaction against over-confidence and

over-suggestion ought to warn those whose chief asset is mere bluff.

A short time ago a speaker arose in a public-speaking club and asserted

that grass would spring from wood-ashes sprinkled over the soil, without

the aid of seed. This idea was greeted with a laugh, but the speaker was

so sure of his position that he reiterated the statement forcefully

several times and cited his own personal experience as proof. One of

the most intelligent men in the audience, who at first had derided the

idea, at length came to believe in it. When asked the reason for his

sudden change of attitude, he replied: "Because the speaker is so

confident." In fact, he was so confident that it took a letter from the

U.S. Department of Agriculture to dislodge his error.

If by a speaker's confidence, intelligent men can be made to believe

such preposterous theories as this where will the power of self-reliance

cease when plausible propositions are under consideration, advanced with

all the power of convincing speech?

Note the utter assurance in these selections:

I know not what course others may take, but as for me give me

liberty or give me death.

--PATRICK HENRY.

I ne'er will ask ye quarter, and I ne'er will be your slave;

But I'll swim the sea of slaughter, till I sink beneath its wave.

--PATTEN.

Come one, come all. This rock shall fly

From its firm base as soon as I.

--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

_INVICTUS_

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever Gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud;

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

--WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.

_Authority is a factor in suggestion._ We generally accept as truth, and

without criticism, the words of an authority. When he speaks,

contradictory ideas rarely arise in the mind to inhibit the action he

suggests. A judge of the Supreme Court has the power of his words

multiplied by the virtue of his position. The ideas of the U.S.

Commissioner of Immigration on his subject are much more effective and

powerful than those of a soap manufacturer, though the latter may be an

able economist.

This principle also has been used in advertising. We are told that the

physicians to two Kings have recommended Sanatogen. We are informed that

the largest bank in America, Tiffany and Co., and The State, War, and

Navy Departments, all use the Encyclopedia Britannica. The shrewd

promoter gives stock in his company to influential bankers or business

men in the community in order that he may use their examples as a

selling argument.

If you wish to influence your audience through suggestion, if you would

have your statements accepted without criticism or argument, you should

appear in the light of an authority--and _be_ one. Ignorance and

credulity will remain unchanged unless the suggestion of authority be

followed promptly by facts. Don't claim authority unless you carry your

license in your pocket. Let reason support the position that suggestion

has assumed.

Advertising will help to establish your reputation--it is "up to you" to

maintain it. One speaker found that his reputation as a magazine writer

was a splendid asset as a speaker. Mr. Bryan's publicity, gained by

three nominations for the presidency and his position as Secretary of

State, helps him to command large sums as a speaker. But--back of it

all, he _is_ a great speaker. Newspaper announcements, all kinds of

advertising, formality, impressive introductions, all have a capital

effect on the attitude of the audience. But how ridiculous are all these

if a toy pistol is advertised as a sixteen-inch gun!

Note how authority is used in the following to support the strength of

the speaker's appeal:

Professor Alfred Russell Wallace has just celebrated his 90th

birthday. Sharing with Charles Darwin the honor of discovering

evolution, Professor Wallace has lately received many and signal

honors from scientific societies. At the dinner given him in

London his address was largely made up of reminiscences. He

reviewed the progress of civilization during the last century

and made a series of brilliant and startling contrasts between

the England of 1813 and the world of 1913. He affirmed that our

progress is only seeming and not real. Professor Wallace insists

that the painters, the sculptors, the architects of Athens and

Rome were so superior to the modern men that the very fragments

of their marbles and temples are the despair of the present day

artists. He tells us that man has improved his telescope and

spectacles, but that he is losing his eyesight; that man is

improving his looms, but stiffening his fingers; improving his

automobile and his locomotive, but losing his legs; improving

his foods, but losing his digestion. He adds that the modern

white slave traffic, orphan asylums, and tenement house life in

factory towns, make a black page in the history of the twentieth

century.

Professor Wallace's views are reinforced by the report of the

commission of Parliament on the causes of the deterioration of

the factory-class people. In our own country Professor Jordan

warns us against war, intemperance, overworking, underfeeding of

poor children, and disturbs our contentment with his "Harvest of

Blood." Professor Jenks is more pessimistic. He thinks that the

pace, the climate, and the stress of city life, have broken down

the Puritan stock, that in another century our old families will

be extinct, and that the flood of immigration means a Niagara of

muddy waters fouling the pure springs of American life. In his

address in New Haven Professor Kellogg calls the roll of the

signs of race degeneracy and tells us that this deterioration

even indicates a trend toward race extinction.

--NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

From every side come warnings to the American people. Our

medical journals are filled with danger signals; new books and

magazines, fresh from the press, tell us plainly that our people

are fronting a social crisis. Mr. Jefferson, who was once

regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have differed in

opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of

the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us

that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and

that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I

stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he

did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and

that the banks ought to go out of the governing business.

--WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.

Authority is the great weapon against doubt, but even its force can

rarely prevail against prejudice and persistent wrong-headedness. If any

speaker has been able to forge a sword that is warranted to piece such

armor, let him bless humanity by sharing his secret with his platform

brethren everywhere, for thus far he is alone in his glory.

There is a middle-ground between the suggestion of authority and the

confession of weakness that offers a wide range for tact in the speaker.

No one can advise you when to throw your "hat in the ring" and say

defiantly at the outstart, "Gentlemen, I am here to fight!" Theodore

Roosevelt can do that--Beecher would have been mobbed if he had begun in

that style at Liverpool. It is for your own tact to decide whether you

will use the disarming grace of Henry W. Grady's introduction just

quoted (even the time-worn joke was ingenuous and seemed to say,

"Gentlemen, I come to you with no carefully-palmed coins"), or whether

the solemn gravity of Mr. Bryan before the Convention will prove to be

more effective. Only be sure that your opening attitude is well thought

out, and if it change as you warm up to your subject, let not the change

lay you open to a revulsion of feeling in your audience.

_Example is a powerful means of suggestion._ As we saw while thinking of

environment in its effects on an audience, we do, without the usual

amount of hesitation and criticism, what others are doing. Paris wears

certain hats and gowns; the rest of the world imitates. The child mimics

the actions, accents and intonations of the parent. Were a child never

to hear anyone speak, he would never acquire the power of speech, unless

under most arduous training, and even then only imperfectly. One of the

biggest department stores in the United States spends fortunes on one

advertising slogan: "Everybody is going to the big store." That makes

everybody want to go.

You can reinforce the power of your message by showing that it has been

widely accepted. Political organizations subsidize applause to create

the impression that their speakers' ideas are warmly received and

approved by the audience. The advocates of the commission-form of

government of cities, the champions of votes for women, reserve as their

strongest arguments the fact that a number of cities and states have

already successfully accepted their plans. Advertisements use the

testimonial for its power of suggestion.

Observe how this principle has been applied in the following selections,

and utilize it on every occasion possible in your attempts to influence

through suggestion:

The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the

North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our

brethren are already in the field. Why stand ye here idle?

--PATRICK HENRY.

With a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the Crusaders

who followed Peter the Hermit, our silver Democrats went forth

from victory unto victory until they are now assembled, not to

discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment already

rendered by the plain people of this country. In this contest

brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son.

The warmest ties of love, acquaintance, and association have

been disregarded; old leaders have been cast aside when they

refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they

would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to

this cause of truth. Thus has the contest been waged, and we

have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as

were ever imposed upon representatives of the people.

--WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.

_Figurative and indirect language has suggestive force_, because it does

not make statements that can be directly disputed. It arouses no

contradictory ideas in the minds of the audience, thereby fulfilling one

of the basic requisites of suggestion. By _implying_ a conclusion in

indirect or figurative language it is often asserted most forcefully.

Note that in the following Mr. Bryan did not say that Mr. McKinley would

be defeated. He implied it in a much more effective manner:

Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform which

declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it can

be changed into bimetallism by international agreement. Mr.

McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans, and

three months ago everybody in the Republican party prophesied

his election. How is it today? Why, the man who was once pleased

to think that he looked like Napoleon--that man shudders today

when he remembers that he was nominated on the anniversary of

the battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can

hear with ever-increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as

they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.

Had Thomas Carlyle said: "A false man cannot found a religion," his

words would have been neither so suggestive nor so powerful, nor so long

remembered as his implication in these striking words:

A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a

brick house! If he does not know and follow truly the properties

of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in, it is no house

that he makes, but a rubbish heap. It will not stand for twelve

centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall

straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, be

verily in communion with Nature and the truth of things, or

Nature will answer him, No, not at all!

Observe how the picture that Webster draws here is much more emphatic

and forceful than any mere assertion could be:

Sir, I know not how others may feel, but as for myself when I

see my _alma mater_ surrounded, like Cæsar in the senate house,

by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not for

this right hand have her turn to me and say, "And thou, too, my

son!"

--WEBSTER.

A speech should be built on sound logical foundations, and no man should

dare to speak in behalf of a fallacy. Arguing a subject, however, will

necessarily arouse contradictory ideas in the mind of your audience.

When immediate action or persuasion is desired, suggestion is more

efficacious than argument--when both are judiciously mixed, the effect

is irresistible.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Make an outline, or brief, of the contents of this chapter.

2. Revise the introduction to any of your written addresses, with the

teachings of this chapter in mind.

3. Give two original examples of the power of suggestion as you have

observed it in each of these fields: (_a_) advertising; (=b=) politics;

(_c_) public sentiment.

4. Give original examples of suggestive speech, illustrating two of the

principles set forth in this chapter.

5. What reasons can you give that disprove the general contention of

this chapter?

6. What reasons not already given seem to you to support it?

7. What effect do his own suggestions have on the speaker himself?

8. Can suggestion arise from the audience? If so, show how.

9. Select two instances of suggestion in the speeches found in the

Appendix.

10. Change any two passages in the same, or other, speeches so as to use

suggestion more effectively.

11. Deliver those passages in the revised form.

12. Choosing your own subject, prepare and deliver a short speech

largely in the suggestive style.

CHAPTER XXIII

INFLUENCING BY ARGUMENT

Common sense is the common sense of mankind. It is the product

of common observation and experience. It is modest, plain, and

unsophisticated. It sees with everybody's eyes, and hears with

everybody's ears. It has no capricious distinctions, no

perplexities, and no mysteries. It never equivocates, and never

trifles. Its language is always intelligible. It is known by

clearness of speech and singleness of purpose.

--GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, _Public Speaking and Debate_.

The very name of logic is awesome to most young speakers, but so soon as

they come to realize that its processes, even when most intricate, are

merely technical statements of the truths enforced by common sense, it

will lose its terrors. In fact, logic[25] is a fascinating subject, well

worth the public speaker's study, for it explains the principles that

govern the use of argument and proof.

Argumentation is the process of producing conviction by means of

reasoning. Other ways of producing conviction there are, notably

suggestion, as we have just shown, but no means is so high, so worthy of

respect, as the adducing of sound reasons in support of a contention.

Since more than one side of a subject must be considered before we can

claim to have deliberated upon it fairly, we ought to think of

argumentation under two aspects: building up an argument, and tearing

down an argument; that is, you must not only examine into the stability

of your structure of argument so that it may both support the

proposition you intend to probe and yet be so sound that it cannot be

overthrown by opponents, but you must also be so keen to detect defects

in argument that you will be able to demolish the weaker arguments of

those who argue against you.

We can consider argumentation only generally, leaving minute and

technical discussions to such excellent works as George P. Baker's "The

Principles of Argumentation," and George Jacob Holyoake's "Public

Speaking and Debate." Any good college rhetoric also will give help on

the subject, especially the works of John Franklin Genung and Adams

Sherman Hill. The student is urged to familiarize himself with at least

one of these texts.

The following series of questions will, it is hoped, serve a triple

purpose: that of suggesting the forms of proof together with the ways in

which they may be used; that of helping the speaker to test the strength

of his arguments; and that of enabling the speaker to attack his

opponent's arguments with both keenness and justice.

TESTING AN ARGUMENT

I. THE QUESTION UNDER DISCUSSION

1. _Is it clearly stated?_

(_a_) Do the terms of statement mean the same to each

disputant? (For example, the meaning of the term "gentleman" may not

be mutually agreed upon.)

(_b_) Is confusion likely to arise as to its purpose?

2. _Is it fairly stated?_

(_a_) Does it include enough?

(_b_) Does it include too much?

(_c_) Is it stated so as to contain a trap?

3. _Is it a debatable question?_

4. _What is the pivotal point in the whole question?_

5. _What are the subordinate points?_

II. THE EVIDENCE

1. _The witnesses as to facts_

(_a_) Is each witness impartial? What is his relation to the

subject at issue?

(_b_) Is he mentally competent?

(_c_) Is he morally credible?

(_d_) Is he in a position to know the facts? Is he an

eye-witness?

(_e_) Is he a willing witness?

(_f_) Is his testimony contradicted?

(_g_) Is his testimony corroborated?

(_h_) Is his testimony contrary to well-known facts or general

principles?

(_i_) Is it probable?

2. _The authorities cited as evidence_

(_a_) Is the authority well-recognized as such?

(_b_) What constitutes him an authority?

(_c_) Is his interest in the case an impartial one?

(_d_) Does he state his opinion positively and clearly?

(_e_) Are the non-personal authorities cited (books, etc.)

reliable and unprejudiced?

3. _The facts adduced as evidence_

(_a_) Are they sufficient in number to constitute proof?

(_b_) Are they weighty enough in character?

(_c_) Are they in harmony with reason?

(_d_) Are they mutually harmonious or contradictory?

(_e_) Are they admitted, doubted, or disputed?

4. _The principles adduced as evidence_

(_a_) Are they axiomatic?

(_b_) Are they truths of general experience?

(_c_) Are they truths of special experience?

(_d_) Are they truths arrived at by experiment?

Were such experiments special or general?

Were the experiments authoritative and conclusive?

III. THE REASONING

1. _Inductions_

(_a_) Are the facts numerous enough to warrant accepting the

generalization as being conclusive?

(_b_) Do the facts agree _only_ when considered in the

light of this explanation as a conclusion?

(_c_) Have you overlooked any contradictory facts?

(_d_) Are the contradictory facts sufficiently explained when

this inference is accepted as true?

(_e_) Are all contrary positions shown to be relatively

untenable?

(_f_) Have you accepted mere opinions as facts?

2. _Deductions_

(_a_) Is the law or general principle a well-established one?

(_b_) Does the law or principle clearly include the fact you

wish to deduce from it, or have you strained the inference?

(_c_) Does the importance of the law or principle warrant so

important an inference?

(_d_) Can the deduction be shown to prove too much?

3. _Parallel cases_

(_a_) Are the cases parallel at enough points to warrant an

inference of similar cause or effect?

(_b_) Are the cases parallel at the vital point at issue?

(_c_) Has the parallelism been strained?

(_d_) Are there no other parallels that would point to a

stronger contrary conclusion?

4. _Inferences_

(_a_) Are the antecedent conditions such as would make the

allegation probable? (Character and opportunities of the accused, for

example.)

(_b_) Are the signs that point to the inference either clear

or numerous enough to warrant its acceptance as fact?

(_c_) Are the signs cumulative, and agreeable one with the other?

(_d_) Could the signs be made to point to a contrary conclusion?

5. _Syllogisms_

(_a_) Have any steps been omitted in the syllogisms?

(Such as in a syllogism _in enthymeme_.) If so, test any such by

filling out the syllogisms.

(_b_) Have you been guilty of stating a conclusion that really

does not follow? (A _non sequitur_.)

(_c_) Can your syllogism be reduced to an absurdity?

(_Reductio ad absurdum._)

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Show why an unsupported assertion is not an argument.

2. Illustrate how an irrelevant fact may be made to seem to support an

argument.

3. What inferences may justly be made from the following?

During the Boer War it was found that the average Englishman did

not measure up to the standards of recruiting and the average

soldier in the field manifested a low plane of vitality and

endurance. Parliament, alarmed by the disastrous consequences,

instituted an investigation. The commission appointed brought in

a finding that alcoholic poisoning was the great cause of the

national degeneracy. The investigations of the commission have

been supplemented by investigations of scientific bodies and

individual scientists, all arriving at the same conclusion. As a

consequence, the British Government has placarded the streets

of a hundred cities with billboards setting forth the

destructive and degenerating nature of alcohol and appealing to

the people in the name of the nation to desist from drinking

alcoholic beverages. Under efforts directed by the Government

the British Army is fast becoming an army of total abstainers.

The Governments of continental Europe followed the lead of the

British Government. The French Government has placarded France

with appeals to the people, attributing the decline of the birth

rate and increase in the death rate to the widespread use of

alcoholic beverages. The experience of the German Government has

been the same. The German Emperor has clearly stated that

leadership in war and in peace will be held by the nation that

roots out alcohol. He has undertaken to eliminate even the

drinking of beer, so far as possible, from the German Army and

Navy.

--RICHMOND PEARSON HOBSON, _Before the U.S. Congress_.

4. Since the burden of proof lies on him who attacks a position, or

argues for a change in affairs, how would his opponent be likely to

conduct his own part of a debate?

5. Define (_a_) syllogism; (_b_) rebuttal; (_c_) "begging the question;"

(_d_) premise; (_e_) rejoinder; (_f_) sur-rejoinder; (_g_) dilemma;

(_h_) induction; (_i_) deduction; (_j_) _a priori_; (_k_) _a

posteriori_; (_l_) inference.

6. Criticise this reasoning: