Men ought not to smoke tobacco, because to do so is contrary to

best medical opinion. My physician has expressly condemned the

practise, and is a medical authority in this country.

7. Criticise this reasoning:

Men ought not to swear profanely, because it is wrong. It is

wrong for the reason that it is contrary to the Moral Law, and

it is contrary to the Moral Law because it is contrary to the

Scriptures. It is contrary to the Scriptures because it is

contrary to the will of God, and we know it is contrary to

God's will because it is wrong.

8. Criticise this syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE: All men who have no cares are happy.

MINOR PREMISE: Slovenly men are careless.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, slovenly men are happy.

9. Criticise the following major, or foundation, premises:

All is not gold that glitters.

All cold may be expelled by fire.

10. Criticise the following fallacy (_non sequitur_):

MAJOR PREMISE: All strong men admire strength.

MINOR PREMISE: This man is not strong.

CONCLUSION: Therefore this man does not admire strength.

11. Criticise these statements:

Sleep is beneficial on account of its soporific qualities.

Fiske's histories are authentic because they contain accurate

accounts of American history, and we know that they are true

accounts for otherwise they would not be contained in these

authentic works.

12. What do you understand from the terms "reasoning from effect to

cause" and "from cause to effect?" Give examples.

13. What principle did Richmond Pearson Hobson employ in the following?

What is the police power of the States? The police power of the

Federal Government or the State--any sovereign State--has been

defined. Take the definition given by Blackstone, which is:

The due regulation and domestic order of the Kingdom,

whereby the inhabitants of a State, like members

of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their

general behavior to the rules of propriety, of neighborhood

and good manners, and to be decent, industrious,

and inoffensive in their respective stations.

Would this amendment interfere with any State carrying on the

promotion of its domestic order?

Or you can take the definition in another form, in which it is

given by Mr. Tiedeman, when he says:

The object of government is to impose that degree of

restraint upon human actions which is necessary to a

uniform, reasonable enjoyment of private rights. The

power of the government to impose this restraint is

called the police power.

Judge Cooley says of the liquor traffic:

The business of manufacturing and selling liquor is one

that affects the public interests in many ways and leads

to many disorders. It has a tendency to increase

pauperism and crime. It renders a large force of peace

officers essential, and it adds to the expense of the

courts and of nearly all branches of civil administration.

Justice Bradley, of the United States Supreme Court, says:

Licenses may be properly required in the pursuit of

many professions and avocations, which require peculiar

skill and training or supervision for the public welfare.

The profession or avocation is open to all alike who will

prepare themselves with the requisite qualifications or

give the requisite security for preserving public order.

This is in harmony with the general proposition that the

ordinary pursuits of life, forming the greater per cent of

the industrial pursuits, are and ought to be free and

open to all, subject only to such general regulations,

applying equally to all, as the general good may demand.

All such regulations are entirely competent for the

legislature to make and are in no sense an abridgment

of the equal rights of citizens. But a license to do that

which is odious and against common right is necessarily

an outrage upon the equal rights of citizens.

14. What method did Jesus employ in the following:

Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his

savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for

nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they

reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth

them. Are ye not much better than they?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the

field; how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; And

yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not

arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass

of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the

oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he

give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a

serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts

unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in

heaven give good things to them that ask him?

15. Make five original syllogisms[26] on the following models:

MAJOR PREMISE: He who administers arsenic gives poison.

MINOR PREMISE: The prisoner administered arsenic to the victim.

CONCLUSION: Therefore the prisoner is a poisoner.

MAJOR PREMISE: All dogs are quadrupeds.

MINOR PREMISE: This animal is a biped.

CONCLUSION: Therefore this animal is not a dog.

16. Prepare either the positive or the negative side of the following

question for debate: _The recall of judges should be adopted as a

national principle_.

17. Is this question debatable? _Benedict Arnold was a gentleman._ Give

reasons for your answer.

18. Criticise any street or dinner-table argument you have heard

recently.

19. Test the reasoning of any of the speeches given in this volume.

20. Make a short speech arguing in favor of instruction in public

speaking in the public evening schools.

21. (_a_) Clip a newspaper editorial in which the reasoning is weak.

(_b_) Criticise it. (_c_) Correct it.

22. Make a list of three subjects for debate, selected from the monthly

magazines.

23. Do the same from the newspapers.

24. Choosing your own question and side, prepare a brief suitable for a

ten-minute debating argument. The following models of briefs may help

you:

DEBATE

RESOLVED: _That armed intervention is not justifiable on the part of any

nation to collect, on behalf of private individuals, financial claims

against any American nation._[27]

BRIEF OF AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENT

First speaker--Chafee

Armed intervention for collection of private claims from any American

nation is not justifiable, for

1. _It is wrong in principle_, because

(_a_) It violates the fundamental principles of international law for a

very slight cause

(_b_) It is contrary to the proper function of the State, and

(_c_) It is contrary to justice, since claims are exaggerated.

Second speaker--Hurley

2. _It is disastrous in its results_, because

(_a_) It incurs danger of grave international complications

(_b_) It tends to increase the burden of debt in the South American

republics

(_c_) It encourages a waste of the world's capital, and

(_d_) It disturbs peace and stability in South America.

Third speaker--Bruce

3. _It is unnecessary to collect in this way_, because

(_a_) Peaceful methods have succeeded

(_b_) If these should fail, claims should be settled by The Hague

Tribunal

(_c_) The fault has always been with European States when force has

been used, and

(_d_) In any case, force should not be used, for it counteracts the

movement towards peace.

BRIEF OF NEGATIVE ARGUMENT

First speaker--Branch

Armed intervention for the collection of private financial claims

against some American States is justifiable, for

1. _When other means of collection have failed, armed intervention

against any nation is essentially proper_, because

(_a_) Justice should always be secured

(_b_) Non-enforcement of payment puts a premium on dishonesty

(_c_) Intervention for this purpose is sanctioned by the best

international authority

(_d_) Danger of undue collection is slight and can be avoided

entirely by submission of claims to The Hague Tribunal before

intervening.

Second speaker--Stone

2. _Armed intervention is necessary to secure justice in tropical

America_, for

(_a_) The governments of this section constantly repudiate just debts

(_b_) They insist that the final decision about claims shall rest with

their own corrupt courts

(_c_) They refuse to arbitrate sometimes.

Third speaker--Dennett

3. _Armed intervention is beneficial in its results_, because

(_a_) It inspires responsibility

(_b_) In administering custom houses it removes temptation to

revolutions

(_c_) It gives confidence to desirable capital.

Among others, the following books were used in the preparation of the

arguments:

N. "The Monroe Doctrine," by T.B. Edgington. Chapters 22-28.

"Digest of International Law," by J.B. Moore. Report of Penfield of

proceedings before Hague Tribunal in 1903.

"Statesman's Year Book" (for statistics).

A. Minister Drago's appeal to the United States, in Foreign Relations of

United States, 1903.

President Roosevelt's Message, 1905, pp. 33-37.

And articles in the following magazines (among many others):

"Journal of Political Economy," December, 1906.

"Atlantic Monthly," October, 1906.

"North American Review," Vol. 183, p. 602.

All of these contain material valuable for both sides, except those

marked "N" and "A," which are useful only for the negative and

affirmative, respectively.

NOTE:--Practise in debating is most helpful to the public speaker, but

if possible each debate should be under the supervision of some person

whose word will be respected, so that the debaters might show regard for

courtesy, accuracy, effective reasoning, and the necessity for careful

preparation. The Appendix contains a list of questions for debate.

25. Are the following points well considered?

THE INHERITANCE TAX IS NOT A GOOD SOCIAL REFORM MEASURE

A. Does not strike at the root of the evil

1. _Fortunes not a menace in themselves_ A fortune of $500,000 may

be a greater social evil than one of $500,000,000

2. _Danger of wealth depends on its wrong accumulation and use_

3. _Inheritance tax will not prevent rebates, monopoly,

discrimination, bribery, etc._

4. _Laws aimed at unjust accumulation and use of wealth furnish the

true remedy._

B. It would be evaded

1. _Low rates are evaded_

2. _Rate must be high to result in distribution of great fortunes._

26. Class exercises: Mock Trial for (_a_) some serious political

offense; (_b_) a burlesque offense.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: McCosh's _Logic_ is a helpful volume, and not too

technical for the beginner. A brief digest of logical principles as

applied to public speaking is contained in _How to Attract and Hold an

Audience_, by J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 26: For those who would make a further study of the syllogism

the following rules are given: 1. In a syllogism there should be only

three terms. 2. Of these three only one can be the middle term. 3. One

premise must be affirmative. 4. The conclusion must be negative if

either premise is negative. 5. To prove a negative, one of the premises

must be negative.

_Summary of Regulating Principles_: 1. Terms which agree with the same

thing agree with each other; and when only one of two terms agrees with

a third term, the two terms disagree with each other. 2. "Whatever is

affirmed of a class may be affirmed of all the members of that class,"

and "Whatever is denied of a class may be denied of all the members of

that class."]

[Footnote 27: All the speakers were from Brown University. The

affirmative briefs were used in debate with the Dartmouth College team,

and the negative briefs were used in debate with the Williams College

team. From _The Speaker_, by permission.]

CHAPTER XXIV

INFLUENCING BY PERSUASION

She hath prosperous art

When she will play with reason and discourse,

And well she can persuade.

--SHAKESPEARE, _Measure for Measure_.

Him we call an artist who shall play on an assembly of men as a

master on the keys of a piano,--who seeing the people furious,

shall soften and compose them, shall draw them, when he will, to

laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, and, be they

who they may,--coarse or refined, pleased or displeased, sulky

or savage, with their opinions in the keeping of a confessor or

with their opinions in their bank safes,--he will have them

pleased and humored as he chooses; and they shall carry and

execute what he bids them.

--RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Essay on _Eloquence_.

More good and more ill have been effected by persuasion than by any

other form of speech. _It is an attempt to influence by means of appeal

to some particular interest held important by the hearer._ Its motive

may be high or low, fair or unfair, honest or dishonest, calm or

passionate, and hence its scope is unparalleled in public speaking.

This "instilment of conviction," to use Matthew Arnold's expression, is

naturally a complex process in that it usually includes argumentation

and often employs suggestion, as the next chapter will illustrate. In

fact, there is little public speaking worthy of the name that is not in

some part persuasive, for men rarely speak solely to alter men's

opinions--the ulterior purpose is almost always action.

The nature of persuasion is not solely intellectual, but is largely

emotional. It uses every principle of public speaking, and every "form

of discourse," to use a rhetorician's expression, but argument

supplemented by special appeal is its peculiar quality. This we may best

see by examining

_The Methods of Persuasion_

High-minded speakers often seek to move their hearers to action by an

appeal to their highest motives, such as love of liberty. Senator Hoar,

in pleading for action on the Philippine question, used this method:

What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your

ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted nearly six

hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten

thousand American lives--the flower of our youth. You have

devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the

people you desire to benefit. You have established

reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their

harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other

thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable

lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in

the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in

Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and

of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship

which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or

the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models,

has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I

believe--nay, I know--that in general our officers and soldiers

are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare

with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.

Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a

people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the

garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who

thronged after your men, when they landed on those islands, with

benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable

enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.

Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You may

struggle against it, you may try to escape it, you may persuade

yourself that your intentions are benevolent, that your yoke

will be easy and your burden will be light, but it will assert

itself again. Government without the consent of the

governed--authority which heaven never gave--can only be

supported by means which heaven never can sanction.

The American people have got this one question to answer. They

may answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or

a generation, or a century to think of it. But will not down.

They must answer it in the end: Can you lawfully buy with money,

or get by brute force of arms, the right to hold in subjugation

an unwilling people, and to impose on them such constitution as

you, and not they, think best for them?

Senator Hoar then went on to make another sort of appeal--the appeal to

fact and experience:

We have answered this question a good many times in the past.

The fathers answered it in 1776, and founded the Republic upon

their answer, which has been the corner-stone. John Quincy Adams

and James Monroe answered it again in the Monroe Doctrine, which

John Quincy Adams declared was only the doctrine of the consent

of the governed. The Republican party answered it when it took

possession of the force of government at the beginning of the

most brilliant period in all legislative history. Abraham

Lincoln answered it when, on that fatal journey to Washington in

1861, he announced that as the doctrine of his political creed,

and declared, with prophetic vision, that he was ready to be

assassinated for it if need be. You answered it again yourselves

when you said that Cuba, who had no more title than the people

of the Philippine Islands had to their independence, of right

ought to be free and independent.

--GEORGE F. HOAR.

Appeal to the things that man holds dear is another potent form of

persuasion.

Joseph Story, in his great Salem speech (1828) used this method most

dramatically:

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors--by

the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil--by all you

are, and all you hope to be--resist every object of disunion,

resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every

attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public

schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.

I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman,

the love of your offspring; teach them, as they climb your

knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear

them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to

their country, and never to forget or forsake her.

I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are;

whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short,

which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never

comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your

country.

I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and your prayers,

and your benedictions. May not your gray hairs go down in sorrow

to the grave, with the recollection that you have lived in vain.

May not your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of slaves.

No; I read in the destiny of my country far better hopes, far

brighter visions. We, who are now assembled here, must soon be

gathered to the congregation of other days. The time of our

departure is at hand, to make way for our children upon the

theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs. May he who, at

the distance of another century, shall stand here to celebrate

this day, still look round upon a free, happy, and virtuous

people. May he have reason to exult as we do. May he, with all

the enthusiasm of truth as well as of poetry, exclaim, that here

is still his country.

--JOSEPH STORY.

The appeal to prejudice is effective--though not often, if ever,

justifiable; yet so long as special pleading endures this sort of

persuasion will be resorted to. Rudyard Kipling uses this method--as

have many others on both sides--in discussing the great European war.

Mingled with the appeal to prejudice, Mr. Kipling uses the appeal to

self-interest; though not the highest, it is a powerful motive in all

our lives. Notice how at the last the pleader sweeps on to the highest

ground he can take. This is a notable example of progressive appeal,

beginning with a low motive and ending with a high one in such a way as

to carry all the force of prejudice yet gain all the value of patriotic

fervor.

Through no fault nor wish of ours we are at war with Germany,

the power which owes its existence to three well-thought-out

wars; the power which, for the last twenty years, has devoted

itself to organizing and preparing for this war; the power which

is now fighting to conquer the civilized world.

For the last two generations the Germans in their books,

lectures, speeches and schools have been carefully taught that

nothing less than this world-conquest was the object of their

preparations and their sacrifices. They have prepared carefully

and sacrificed greatly.

We must have men and men and men, if we, with our allies, are to

check the onrush of organized barbarism.

Have no illusions. We are dealing with a strong and

magnificently equipped enemy, whose avowed aim is our complete

destruction. The violation of Belgium, the attack on France and

the defense against Russia, are only steps by the way. The

German's real objective, as she always has told us, is England,

and England's wealth, trade and worldwide possessions.

If you assume, for an instant, that the attack will be

successful, England will not be reduced, as some people say, to

the rank of a second rate power, but we shall cease to exist as

a nation. We shall become an outlying province of Germany, to be

administered with that severity German safety and interest

require.

We are against such a fate. We enter into a new life in which

all the facts of war that we had put behind or forgotten for the

last hundred years, have returned to the front and test us as

they tested our fathers. It will be a long and a hard road,

beset with difficulties and discouragements, but we tread it

together and we will tread it together to the end.

Our petty social divisions and barriers have been swept away at

the outset of our mighty struggle. All the interests of our life

of six weeks ago are dead. We have but one interest now, and

that touches the naked heart of every man in this island and in

the empire.

If we are to win the right for ourselves and for freedom to

exist on earth, every man must offer himself for that service

and that sacrifice.

From these examples it will be seen that the particular way in which the

speakers appealed to their hearers was _by coming close home to their

interests, and by themselves showing emotion_--two very important

principles which you must keep constantly in mind.

To accomplish the former requires a deep knowledge of human motive in

general and an understanding of the particular audience addressed. What

are the motives that arouse men to action? Think of them earnestly, set

them down on the tablets of your mind, study how to appeal to them

worthily. Then, what motives would be likely to appeal to _your_

hearers? What are their ideals and interests in life? A mistake in your

estimate may cost you your case. To appeal to pride in appearance would

make one set of men merely laugh--to try to arouse sympathy for the Jews

in Palestine would be wasted effort among others. Study your audience,

feel your way, and when you have once raised a spark, fan it into a

flame by every honest resource you possess.

The larger your audience the more sure you are to find a universal basis

of appeal. A small audience of bachelors will not grow excited over the

importance of furniture insurance; most men can be roused to the defense

of the freedom of the press.

Patent medicine advertisement usually begins by talking about your

pains--they begin on your interests. If they first discussed the size

and rating of their establishment, or the efficacy of their remedy, you

would never read the "ad." If they can make you think you have nervous

troubles you will even plead for a remedy--they will not have to try to

sell it.

The patent medicine men are pleading--asking you to invest your money in

their commodity--yet they do not appear to be doing so. They get over on

your side of the fence, and arouse a desire for their nostrums by

appealing to your own interests.

Recently a book-salesman entered an attorney's office in New York and

inquired: "Do you want to buy a book?" Had the lawyer wanted a book he

would probably have bought one without waiting for a book-salesman to

call. The solicitor made the same mistake as the representative who made

his approach with: "I want to sell you a sewing machine." They both

talked only in terms of their own interests.

The successful pleader must convert his arguments into terms of his

hearers' advantage. Mankind are still selfish, are interested in what

will serve them. Expunge from your address your own personal concern

and present your appeal in terms of the general good, and to do this you

need not be insincere, for you had better not plead any cause that is

_not_ for the hearers' good. Notice how Senator Thurston in his plea for

intervention in Cuba and Mr. Bryan in his "Cross of Gold" speech

constituted themselves the apostles of humanity.

_Exhortation_ is a highly impassioned form of appeal frequently used by

the pulpit in efforts to arouse men to a sense of duty and induce them

to decide their personal courses, and by counsel in seeking to influence

a jury. The great preachers, like the great jury-lawyers, have always

been masters of persuasion.

Notice the difference among these four exhortations, and analyze the

motives appealed to:

Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor

live!

--SHAKESPEARE, _Julius Cæsar_.

Strike--till the last armed foe expires,

Strike--for your altars and your fires,

Strike--for the green graves of your sires,

God--and your native land!

--FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, _Marco Bozzaris_.

Believe, gentlemen, if it were not for those children, he would

not come here to-day to seek such remuneration; if it were not

that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent

defrauded wretches from becoming wandering beggars, as well as

orphans on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask

this verdict from your mercy; I need not extort it from your

compassion; I will receive it from your justice. I do conjure

you, not as fathers, but as husbands:--not as husbands, but as

citizens:--not as citizens, but as men:--not as men, but as

Christians:--by all your obligations, public, private, moral,

and religious; by the hearth profaned; by the home desolated; by

the canons of the living God foully spurned;--save, oh: save

your firesides from the contagion, your country from the crime,

and perhaps thousands, yet unborn, from the shame, and sin, and

sorrow of this example!

--CHARLES PHILLIPS, _Appeal to the jury in behalf of Guthrie._

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made

by slaves and called it freedom, from the men in bell-crown hats

who led Hester Prynne to her shame and called it religion, to

that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong

with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal

from the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England;

from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from

Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of

that common citizenship--of that common origin, back of both the

Puritan and the Cavalier, to which all of us owe our being. Let

the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by

its savage hatreds, darkened alike by kingcraft and

priestcraft--let the dead past bury its dead. Let the present

and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the

lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to

see, the light to reveal. Blessed be tolerance, sitting ever on

the right hand of God to guide the way with loving word, as

blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion,

true republicanism, and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords

and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and

ourselves. It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf

Whittier, who cried:

Dear God and Father of us all,

Forgive our faith in cruel lies,

Forgive the blindness that denies.

Cast down our idols--overturn

Our Bloody altars--make us see

Thyself in Thy humanity!

--HENRY WATTERSON, _Puritan and Cavalier_.

Goethe, on being reproached for not having written war songs against

the French, replied, "In my poetry I have never shammed. How could I

have written songs of hate without hatred?" Neither is it possible

to plead with full efficiency for a cause for which you do not feel

deeply. Feeling is contagious as belief is contagious. The speaker

who pleads with real feeling for his own convictions will instill

his feelings into his listeners. Sincerity, force, enthusiasm, and

above all, feeling--these are the qualities that move multitudes

and make appeals irresistible. They are of far greater importance

than technical principles of delivery, grace of gesture, or polished

enunciation--important as all these elements must doubtless be

considered. _Base_ your appeal on reason, but do not end in the

basement--let the building rise, full of deep emotion and noble

persuasion.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. (_a_) What elements of appeal do you find in the following? (_b_) Is it

too florid? (_c_) Is this style equally powerful today? (_d_) Are the

sentences too long and involved for clearness and force?

Oh, gentlemen, am I this day only the counsel of my client? No,

no; I am the advocate of humanity--of yourselves--your

homes--your wives--your families--your little children. I am

glad that this case exhibits such atrocity; unmarked as it is by

any mitigatory feature, it may stop the frightful advance of

this calamity; it will be met now, and marked with vengeance. If

it be not, farewell to the virtues of your country; farewell to

all confidence between man and man; farewell to that

unsuspicious and reciprocal tenderness, without which marriage

is but a consecrated curse. If oaths are to be violated, laws

disregarded, friendship betrayed, humanity trampled, national

and individual honor stained, and if a jury of fathers and of

husbands will give such miscreancy a passport to their homes,

and wives, and daughters,--farewell to all that yet remains of

Ireland! But I will not cast such a doubt upon the character of

my country. Against the sneer of the foe, and the skepticism of

the foreigner, I will still point to the domestic virtues, that

no perfidy could barter, and no bribery can purchase, that with

a Roman usage, at once embellish and consecrate households,

giving to the society of the hearth all the purity of the altar;

that lingering alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to

be found scattered over this land--the relic of what she

was--the source perhaps of what she may be--the lone, the

stately, and magnificent memorials, that rearing their majesty

amid surrounding ruins, serve at once as the landmarks of the

departed glory, and the models by which the future may be

erected.

Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark this day, by

your verdict, your horror of their profanation; and believe me,

when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and the

tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a happy home

will bless its consequences, and many a mother teach her little

child to hate the impious treason of adultery.

--CHARLES PHILLIPS.

2. Analyze and criticise the forms of appeal used in the selections from

Hoar, Story, and Kipling.

3. What is the type of persuasion used by Senator Thurston (page 50)?

4. Cite two examples each, from selections in this volume, in which

speakers sought to be persuasive by securing the hearers' (_a_) sympathy

for themselves; (_b_) sympathy with their subjects; (_c_) self-pity.

5. Make a short address using persuasion.

6. What other methods of persuasion than those here mentioned can you

name?

7. Is it easier to persuade men to change their course of conduct than

to persuade them to continue in a given course? Give examples to support

your belief.

8. In how far are we justified in making an appeal to self-interest in

order to lead men to adopt a given course?

9. Does the merit of the course have any bearing on the merit of the

methods used?

10. Illustrate an unworthy method of using persuasion.

11. Deliver a short speech on the value of skill in persuasion.

12. Does effective persuasion always produce conviction?

13. Does conviction always result in action?

14. Is it fair for counsel to appeal to the emotions of a jury in a

murder trial?

15. Ought the judge use persuasion in making his charge?

16. Say how self-consciousness may hinder the power of persuasion in a

speaker.

17. Is emotion without words ever persuasive? If so, illustrate.

18. Might gestures without words be persuasive? If so, illustrate.

19. Has posture in a speaker anything to do with persuasion? Discuss.

20. Has voice? Discuss.

21. Has manner? Discuss.

22. What effect does personal magnetism have in producing conviction?

23. Discuss the relation of persuasion to (_a_) description; (_b_)

narration; (_c_) exposition; (_d_) pure reason.

24. What is the effect of over-persuasion?

25. Make a short speech on the effect of the constant use of persuasion

on the sincerity of the speaker himself.

26. Show by example how a general statement is not as persuasive as a

concrete example illustrating the point being discussed.

27. Show by example how brevity is of value in persuasion.

28. Discuss the importance of avoiding an antagonistic attitude in

persuasion.

29. What is the most persuasive passage you have found in the selections

of this volume. On what do you base your decision?

30. Cite a persuasive passage from some other source. Read or recite it

aloud.

31. Make a list of the emotional bases of appeal, grading them from low

to high, according to your estimate.

32. Would circumstances make any difference in such grading? If so, give

examples.

33. Deliver a short, passionate appeal to a jury, pleading for justice

to a poor widow.

34. Deliver a short appeal to men to give up some evil way.

35. Criticise the structure of the sentence beginning with the last line

of page 296.

CHAPTER XXV

INFLUENCING THE CROWD

Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching

the imagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this

present generation are less successful in getting people to want

goodness than business men are in getting them to want motorcars,

hats, and pianolas, is that business men as a class are more

close and desperate students of human nature, and have boned down

harder to the art of touching the imaginations of the crowds.

--GERALD STANLEY LEE, _Crowds_.

In the early part of July, 1914, a collection of Frenchmen in Paris, or

Germans in Berlin, was not a crowd in a psychological sense. Each

individual had his own special interests and needs, and there was no

powerful common idea to unify them. A group then represented only a

collection of individuals. A month later, any collection of Frenchmen or

Germans formed a crowd: Patriotism, hate, a common fear, a pervasive

grief, had unified the individuals.

The psychology of the crowd is far different from the psychology of the

personal members that compose it. The crowd is a distinct entity.

Individuals restrain and subdue many of their impulses at the dictates

of reason. The crowd never reasons. It only feels. As persons there is a

sense of responsibility attached to our actions which checks many of our

incitements, but the sense of responsibility is lost in the crowd

because of its numbers. The crowd is exceedingly suggestible and will

act upon the wildest and most extreme ideas. The crowd-mind is

primitive and will cheer plans and perform actions which its members

would utterly repudiate.

A mob is only a highly-wrought crowd. Ruskin's description is fitting:

"You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be--usually are--on

the whole, generous and right, but it has no foundation for them, no

hold of them. You may tease or tickle it into anything at your pleasure.

It thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a

cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild

about, when the fit is on, nothing so great but it will forget in an

hour when the fit is past."[28]

History will show us how the crowd-mind works. The medieval mind was not

given to reasoning; the medieval man attached great weight to the

utterance of authority; his religion touched chiefly the emotions. These

conditions provided a rich soil for the propagation of the crowd-mind

when, in the eleventh century, flagellation, a voluntary self-scourging,

was preached by the monks. Substituting flagellation for reciting

penitential psalms was advocated by the reformers. A scale was drawn up,

making one thousand strokes equivalent to ten psalms, or fifteen

thousand to the entire psalter. This craze spread by leaps--and crowds.

Flagellant fraternities sprang up. Priests carrying banners led through

the streets great processions reciting prayers and whipping their bloody

bodies with leathern thongs fitted with four iron points. Pope Clement

denounced this practise and several of the leaders of these processions

had to be burned at the stake before the frenzy could be uprooted.

All western and central Europe was turned into a crowd by the preaching

of the crusaders, and millions of the followers of the Prince of Peace

rushed to the Holy Land to kill the heathen. Even the children started

on a crusade against the Saracens. The mob-spirit was so strong that

home affections and persuasion could not prevail against it and

thousands of mere babes died in their attempts to reach and redeem the

Sacred Sepulchre.

In the early part of the eighteenth century the South Sea Company was

formed in England. Britain became a speculative crowd. Stock in the

South Sea Company rose from 128-1/2 points in January to 550 in May, and

scored 1,000 in July. Five million shares were sold at this premium.

Speculation ran riot. Hundreds of companies were organized. One was

formed "for a wheel of perpetual motion." Another never troubled to give

any reason at all for taking the cash of its subscribers--it merely

announced that it was organized "for a design which will hereafter be

promulgated." Owners began to sell, the mob caught the suggestion, a

panic ensued, the South Sea Company stock fell 800 points in a few days,

and more than a billion dollars evaporated in this era of frenzied

speculation.

The burning of the witches at Salem, the Klondike gold craze, and the

forty-eight people who were killed by mobs in the United States in 1913,

are examples familiar to us in America.

_The Crowd Must Have a Leader_

The leader of the crowd or mob is its determining factor. He becomes

self-hynoptized with the idea that unifies its members, his enthusiasm

is contagious--and so is theirs. The crowd acts as he suggests. The

great mass of people do not have any very sharply-drawn conclusions on

any subject outside of their own little spheres, but when they become a

crowd they are perfectly willing to accept ready-made, hand-me-down

opinions. They will follow a leader at all costs--in labor troubles they

often follow a leader in preference to obeying their government, in war

they will throw self-preservation to the bushes and follow a leader in

the face of guns that fire fourteen times a second. The mob becomes

shorn of will-power and blindly obedient to its dictator. The Russian

Government, recognizing the menace of the crowd-mind to its autocracy,

formerly prohibited public gatherings. History is full of similar

instances.

_How the Crowd is Created_

Today the crowd is as real a factor in our socialized life as are

magnates and monopolies. It is too complex a problem merely to damn or

praise it--it must be reckoned with, and mastered. The present problem

is how to get the most and the best out of the crowd-spirit, and the

public speaker finds this to be peculiarly his own question. His

influence is multiplied if he can only transmute his audience into a

crowd. His affirmations must be their conclusions.

This can be accomplished by unifying the minds and needs of the audience

and arousing their emotions. Their feelings, not their reason, must be

played upon--_it is "up to" him to do this nobly_. Argument has its

place on the platform, but even its potencies must subserve the

speaker's plan of attack to _win possession_ of his audience.

Reread the chapter on "Feeling and Enthusiasm." It is impossible to make

an audience a crowd without appealing to their emotions. Can you imagine

the average group becoming a crowd while hearing a lecture on Dry Fly

Fishing, or on Egyptian Art? On the other hand, it would not have

required world-famous eloquence to have turned any audience in Ulster,

in 1914, into a crowd by discussing the Home Rule Act. The crowd-spirit

depends largely on the subject used to fuse their individualities into

one glowing whole.

Note how Antony played upon the feelings of his hearers in the famous

funeral oration given by Shakespeare in "Julius Cæsar." From murmuring

units the men became a unit--a mob.

_ANTONY'S ORATION OVER CÆSAR'S BODY_

Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears;

I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones:

So let it be with Cæsar! The Noble Brutus

Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.

Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest--

For Brutus is an honorable man,

So are they all, all honorable men--

Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honorable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept;

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honorable man.

You all did see, that, on the Lupercal,

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And sure, he is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause;

What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?

Oh, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason!--Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,

And I must pause till it come back to me. [_Weeps._

_1 Plebeian._ Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.

_2 Ple._ If thou consider rightly of the matter,

Cæsar has had great wrong.

_3 Ple._ Has he, masters?

I fear there will a worse come in his place.

_4 Ple._ Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the crown;

Therefore, 'tis certain, he was not ambitious.

_1 Ple._ If it be found so, some will dear abide it.

_2 Ple._ Poor soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping.

_3 Ple._ There's not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.

_4 Ple._ Now mark him, he begins again to speak.

_Ant._ But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world: now lies he there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.

Oh, masters! if I were dispos'd to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,

I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,

Who, you all know, are honorable men.

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,

Than I will wrong such honorable men.

But here's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar;

I found it in his closet; 'tis his will:

Let but the commons hear this testament--

Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read--

And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,

And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;

Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

And, dying, mention it within their wills,

Bequeathing it as a rich legacy

Unto their issue.

_4 Ple._ We'll hear the will: Read it, Mark Antony.

_All._ The will! the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.

_Ant._ Have patience, gentle friends: I must not read it;

It is not meet you know how Cæsar lov'd you.

You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;

And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,

It will inflame you, it will make you mad:

'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs;

For if you should, oh, what would come of it!

_4 Ple._ Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony!

You shall read us the will! Cæsar's will!

_Ant._ Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?

I have o'ershot myself, to tell you of it.

I fear I wrong the honorable men

Whose daggers have stab'd Cæsar; I do fear it.

_4 Ple._ They were traitors: Honorable men!

_All._ The will! the testament!

_2 Ple._ They were villains, murtherers! The will! Read the will!

_Ant._ You will compel me then to read the will?

Then, make a ring about the corpse of Cæsar,

And let me shew you him that made the will.

Shall I descend? And will you give me leave?

_All._ Come down.

_2 Ple._ Descend. [_He comes down from the Rostrum_.

_3 Ple._ You shall have leave.

_4 Ple._ A ring; stand round.

_1 Ple._ Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.

_2 Ple._ Room for Antony!--most noble Antony!

_Ant._ Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off.

_All._ Stand back! room! bear back!

_Ant._ If you have tears, prepare to shed them now;

You all do know this mantle: I remember

The first time ever Cæsar put it on;

'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,

That day he overcame the Nervii.

Look, in this place, ran Cassius' dagger through:

See, what a rent the envious Casca made:

Through this, the well-beloved Brutus stab'd;

And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,

Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it!--

As rushing out of doors, to be resolv'd

If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no;

For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel:

Judge, O you Gods, how Cæsar lov'd him!

This was the most unkindest cut of all!

For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,

Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,

Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart;

And in his mantle muffling up his face,

Even at the base of Pompey's statue,

Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.

Oh what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Then I and you, and all of us, fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.

Oh! now you weep; and I perceive you feel

The dint of pity; these are gracious drops.

Kind souls! what, weep you, when you but behold

Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here!

Here is himself, mar'd, as you see, by traitors.

_1 Ple._ Oh, piteous spectacle!

_2 Ple._ Oh, noble Cæsar!

_3 Ple._ Oh, woful day!

_4 Ple._ Oh, traitors, villains!

_1 Ple._ Oh, most bloody sight!

_2 Ple._ We will be reveng'd!

_All._ Revenge; about--seek--burn--fire--kill--day!--Let not

a traitor live!

_Ant._ Stay, countrymen.

_1 Ple._ Peace there! Hear the noble Antony.

_2 Ple._ We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him.

_Ant._ Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up

To such a sudden flood of mutiny:

They that have done this deed are honorable:

What private griefs they have, alas! I know not,

That made them do it; they are wise, and honorable,

And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts;

I am no orator, as Brutus is;

But as you know me all, a plain blunt man,

That love my friend, and that they know full well

That gave me public leave to speak of him:

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,

To stir men's blood. I only speak right on:

I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

Show your sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths,

And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,

And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony

Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue

In every wound of Cæsar, that should move

The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

_All._ We'll mutiny!

_1 Ple._ We'll burn the house of Brutus.

_3 Ple._ Away, then! Come, seek the conspirators.

_Ant._ Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.

_All._ Peace, ho! Hear Antony, most noble Antony.

_Ant._ Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.

Wherein hath Cæsar thus deserv'd your loves?

Alas! you know not!--I must tell you then.

You have forgot the will I told you of.

_Ple._ Most true;--the will!--let's stay, and hear the will.

_Ant._ Here is the will, and under Cæsar's seal.

To every Roman citizen he gives,

To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

_2 Ple._ Most noble Cæsar!--we'll revenge his death.

_3 Ple._ O royal Cæsar!

_Ant._ Hear me with patience.

_All._ Peace, ho!

_Ant._ Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,

His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,

On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,

And to your heirs forever, common pleasures,

To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.

Here was a Cæsar! When comes such another?

_1 Ple._ Never, never!--Come, away, away!

We'll burn his body in the holy place,

And with the brands fire the traitors' houses.

Take up the body.

_2 Ple._ Go, fetch fire.

_3 Ple._ Pluck down benches.

_4 Ple._ Pluck down forms, windows, anything.

[_Exeunt Citizens, with the body._

_Ant._ Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,

Take thou what course thou wilt!

To unify single, auditors into a crowd, express their common needs,

aspirations, dangers, and emotions, deliver your message so that the

interests of one shall appear to be the interests of all. The conviction

of one man is intensified in proportion as he finds others sharing his

belief--_and feeling_. Antony does not stop with telling the Roman

populace that Cæsar fell--he makes the tragedy universal:

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.

Applause, generally a sign of feeling, helps to unify an audience. The

nature of the crowd is illustrated by the contagion of applause.

Recently a throng in a New York moving-picture and vaudeville house had

been applauding several songs, and when an advertisement for tailored

skirts was thrown on the screen some one started the applause, and the

crowd, like sheep, blindly imitated--until someone saw the joke and

laughed; then the crowd again followed a leader and laughed at and

applauded its own stupidity.

Actors sometimes start applause for their lines by snapping their

fingers. Some one in the first few rows will mistake it for faint

applause, and the whole theatre will chime in.

An observant auditor will be interested in noticing the various devices

a monologist will use to get the first round of laughter and applause.

He works so hard because he knows an audience of units is an audience of

indifferent critics, but once get them to laughing together and each

single laugher sweeps a number of others with him, until the whole

theatre is aroar and the entertainer has scored. These are meretricious

schemes, to be sure, and do not savor in the least of inspiration, but

crowds have not changed in their nature in a thousand years and the one

law holds for the greatest preacher and the pettiest stump-speaker--you

must fuse your audience or they will not warm to your message. The

devices of the great orator may not be so obvious as those of the

vaudeville monologist, but the principle is the same: he tries to strike

some universal note that will have all his hearers feeling alike at the

same time.

The evangelist knows this when he has the soloist sing some touching

song just before the address. Or he will have the entire congregation

sing, and that is the psychology of "Now _every_body sing!" for he knows

that they who will not join in the song are as yet outside the crowd.

Many a time has the popular evangelist stopped in the middle of his

talk, when he felt that his hearers were units instead of a molten mass

(and a sensitive speaker can feel that condition most depressingly) and

suddenly demanded that everyone arise and sing, or repeat aloud a

familiar passage, or read in unison; or perhaps he has subtly left the

thread of his discourse to tell a story that, from long experience, he

knew would not fail to bring his hearers to a common feeling.

These things are important resources for the speaker, and happy is he

who uses them worthily and not as a despicable charlatan. The difference

between a demagogue and a leader is not so much a matter of method as of

principle. Even the most dignified speaker must recognize the eternal

laws of human nature. You are by no means urged to become a trickster on

the platform--far from it!--but don't kill your speech with dignity. To

be icily correct is as silly as to rant. Do neither, but appeal to those

world-old elements in your audience that have been recognized by all

great speakers from Demosthenes to Sam Small, and see to it that you

never debase your powers by arousing your hearers unworthily.

It is as hard to kindle enthusiasm in a scattered audience as to build a

fire with scattered sticks. An audience to be converted into a crowd

must be made to appear as a crowd. This cannot be done when they are

widely scattered over a large seating space or when many empty benches

separate the speaker from his hearers. Have your audience seated

compactly. How many a preacher has bemoaned the enormous edifice over

which what would normally be a large congregation has scattered in

chilled and chilling solitude Sunday after Sunday! Bishop Brooks himself

could not have inspired a congregation of one thousand souls seated in

the vastness of St. Peter's at Rome. In that colossal sanctuary it is

only on great occasions which bring out the multitudes that the service

is before the high altar--at other times the smaller side-chapels are

used.

Universal ideas surcharged with feeling help to create the

crowd-atmosphere. Examples: liberty, character, righteousness, courage,

fraternity, altruism, country, and national heroes. George Cohan was

making psychology practical and profitable when he introduced the flag

and flag-songs into his musical comedies. Cromwell's regiments prayed

before the battle and went into the fight singing hymns. The French

corps, singing the Marseillaise in 1914, charged the Germans as one man.

Such unifying devices arouse the feelings, make soldiers fanatical

mobs--and, alas, more efficient murderers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 28: _Sesame and Lilies_.]

CHAPTER XXVI

RIDING THE WINGED HORSE

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men

of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character of Men of Genius_.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

--SHAKESPEARE, _Midsummer-Night's Dream_.

It is common, among those who deal chiefly with life's practicalities,

to think of imagination as having little value in comparison with direct

thinking. They smile with tolerance when Emerson says that "Science does

not know its debt to the imagination," for these are the words of a

speculative essayist, a philosopher, a poet. But when Napoleon--the

indomitable welder of empires--declares that "The human race is governed

by its imagination," the authoritative word commands their respect.

Be it remembered, the faculty of forming _mental images_ is as efficient

a cog as may be found in the whole mind-machine. True, it must fit into

that other vital cog, pure thought, but when it does so it may be

questioned which is the more productive of important results for the

happiness and well-being of man. This should become more apparent as we

go on.

I. WHAT IS IMAGINATION?

Let us not seek for a definition, for a score of varying ones may be

found, but let us grasp this fact: By imagination we mean either the

faculty or the process of forming mental images.

The subject-matter of imagination may be really existent in nature, or

not at all real, or a combination of both; it may be physical or

spiritual, or both--the mental image is at once the most lawless and the

most law-abiding child that has ever been born of the mind.

First of all, as its name suggests, the process of imagination--for we

are thinking of it now as a process rather than as a faculty--is memory

at work. Therefore we must consider it primarily as

_1. Reproductive Imagination_

We see or hear or feel or taste or smell something and the sensation

passes away. Yet we are conscious of a greater or lesser ability to

reproduce such feelings at will. Two considerations, in general, will

govern the vividness of the image thus evoked--the strength of the

original impression, and the reproductive power of one mind as compared

with another. Yet every normal person will be able to evoke images with

some degree of clearness.

The fact that not all minds possess this imaging faculty in anything

like equal measure will have an important bearing on the public

speaker's study of this question. No man who does not feel at least some

poetic impulses is likely to aspire seriously to be a poet, yet many

whose imaging faculties are so dormant as to seem actually dead do

aspire to be public speakers. To all such we say most earnestly: Awaken

your image-making gift, for even in the most coldly logical discourse it

is sure to prove of great service. It is important that you find out at

once just how full and how trustworthy is your imagination, for it is

capable of cultivation--as well as of abuse.

Francis Galton[29] says: "The French appear to possess the visualizing

faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in

pre-arranging ceremonials and fêtes of all kinds and their undoubted

genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee

effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical

contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is

their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase _figurez-vous_, or

_picture to yourself_, seems to express their dominant mode of

perception. Our equivalent, of 'image,' is ambiguous."

But individuals differ in this respect just as markedly as, for

instance, the Dutch do from the French. And this is true not only of

those who are classified by their friends as being respectively

imaginative or unimaginative, but of those whose gifts or habits are not

well known.

Let us take for experiment six of the best-known types of imaging and

see in practise how they arise in our own minds.

By all odds the most common type is, (a) _the visual image_. Children

who more readily recall things seen than things heard are called by

psychologists "eye-minded," and most of us are bent in this direction.

Close your eyes now and re-call--the word thus hyphenated is more

suggestive--the scene around this morning's breakfast table. Possibly

there was nothing striking in the situation and the image is therefore

not striking. Then image any notable table scene in your experience--how

vividly it stands forth, because at the time you felt the impression

strongly. Just then you may not have been conscious of how strongly the

scene was laying hold upon you, for often we are so intent upon what we

see that we give no particular thought to the fact that it is impressing

us. It may surprise you to learn how accurately you are able to image a

scene when a long time has elapsed between the conscious focussing of

your attention on the image and the time when you saw the original.

(b) _The auditory image_ is probably the next most vivid of our recalled

experiences. Here association is potent to suggest similarities. Close

out all the world beside and listen to the peculiar wood-against-wood

sound of the sharp thunder among rocky mountains--the crash of ball

against ten-pins may suggest it. Or image (the word is imperfect, for it

seems to suggest only the eye) the sound of tearing ropes when some

precious weight hangs in danger. Or recall the bay of a hound almost

upon you in pursuit--choose your own sound, and see how pleasantly or

terribly real it becomes when imaged in your brain.

(c) _The motor image_ is a close competitor with the auditory for second

place. Have you ever awakened in the night, every muscle taut and

striving, to feel your self straining against the opposing football

line that held like a stone-wall--or as firmly as the headboard of your

bed? Or voluntarily recall the movement of the boat when you cried

inwardly, "It's all up with me!" The perilous lurch of a train, the

sudden sinking of an elevator, or the unexpected toppling of a

rocking-chair may serve as further experiments.

(d) _The gustatory image_ is common enough, as the idea of eating lemons

will testify. Sometimes the pleasurable recollection of a delightful

dinner will cause the mouth to water years afterward, or the "image" of

particularly atrocious medicine will wrinkle the nose long after it made

one day in boyhood wretched.

(e) _The olfactory image_ is even more delicate. Some there are who are

affected to illness by the memory of certain odors, while others

experience the most delectable sensations by the rise of pleasing

olfactory images.

(f) _The tactile image_, to name no others, is well nigh as potent. Do

you shudder at the thought of velvet rubbed by short-nailed finger tips?

Or were you ever "burned" by touching an ice-cold stove? Or, happier

memory, can you still feel the touch of a well-loved absent hand?

Be it remembered that few of these images are present in our minds

except in combination--the sight and sound of the crashing avalanche are

one; so are the flash and report of the huntman's gun that came so near

"doing for us."

Thus, imaging--especially conscious reproductive imagination--will

become a valuable part of our mental processes in proportion as we

direct and control it.

_2. Productive Imagination_

All of the foregoing examples, and doubtless also many of the

experiments you yourself may originate, are merely reproductive.

Pleasurable or horrific as these may be, they are far less important

than the images evoked by the productive imagination--though that does

not infer a separate faculty.

Recall, again for experiment, some scene whose beginning you once saw

enacted on a street corner but passed by before the dénouement was ready

to be disclosed. Recall it all--that far the image is reproductive. But

what followed? Let your fantasy roam at pleasure--the succeeding scenes

are productive, for you have more or less consciously invented the

unreal on the basis of the real.

And just here the fictionist, the poet, and the public speaker will see

the value of productive imagery. True, the feet of the idol you build

are on the ground, but its head pierces the clouds, it is a son of both

earth and heaven.

One fact it is important to note here: Imagery is a valuable mental

asset in proportion as it is controlled by the higher intellectual power

of pure reason. The untutored child of nature thinks largely in images

and therefore attaches to them undue importance. He readily confuses the

real with the unreal--to him they are of like value. But the man of

training readily distinguishes the one from the other and evaluates each

with some, if not with perfect, justice.

So we see that unrestrained imaging may produce a rudderless steamer,

while the trained faculty is the graceful sloop, skimming the seas at

her skipper's will, her course steadied by the helm of reason and her

lightsome wings catching every air of heaven.

The game of chess, the war-lord's tactical plan, the evolution of a

geometrical theorem, the devising of a great business campaign, the

elimination of waste in a factory, the dénouement of a powerful drama,

the overcoming of an economic obstacle, the scheme for a sublime poem,

and the convincing siege of an audience may--nay, indeed must--each be

conceived in an image and wrought to reality according to the plans and

specifications laid upon the trestle board by some modern imaginative

Hiram. The farmer who would be content with the seed he possesses would

have no harvest. Do not rest satisfied with the ability to recall

images, but cultivate your creative imagination by building "what might

be" upon the foundation of "what is."

II. THE USES OF IMAGING IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

By this time you will have already made some general application of

these ideas to the art of the platform, but to several specific uses we

must now refer.

_1. Imaging in Speech-Preparation_

(a) _Set the image of your audience before you while you prepare._

Disappointment may lurk here, and you cannot be forearmed for every

emergency, but in the main you must meet your audience before you

actually do--image its probable mood and attitude toward the occasion,

the theme, and the speaker.

(b) _Conceive your speech as a whole while you are preparing its parts_,

else can you not see--image--how its parts shall be fitly framed

together.

(c) _Image the language you will use_, so far as written or

extemporaneous speech may dictate. The habit of imaging will give you

choice of varied figures of speech, for remember that an address without

_fresh_ comparisons is like a garden without blooms. Do not be content

with the first hackneyed figure that comes flowing to your pen-point,

but dream on until the striking, the unusual, yet the vividly real

comparison points your thought like steel does the arrow-tip.

Note the freshness and effectiveness of the following description from

the opening of O. Henry's story, "The Harbinger."

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the

yokel does the city man know that the grass-green goddess is

upon her throne. He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt

by stone walls, opens his morning paper and sees journalism

leave vernalism at the post.

For whereas Spring's couriers were once the evidence of our

finer senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.

The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the

maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along

the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird,

the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St.

Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the

regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the

pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug

Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by

Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and

the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first

crack of the ice jamb in the Allegheny River, the finding of a

violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round

Corners--these are the advanced signs of the burgeoning season

that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing

but winter upon his dreary fields.

But these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart.

When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is

Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five foot rattler

killed in Squire Pettregrew's pasture confirmed.

A hackneyed writer would probably have said that the newspaper told the

city man about spring before the farmer could see any evidence of it,

but that the real harbinger of spring was love and that "In the Spring a

young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

_2. Imaging in Speech-Delivery_

When once the passion of speech is on you and you are "warmed

up"--perhaps by striking _till_ the iron is hot so that you may not fail

to strike _when_ it is hot--your mood will be one of vision.

Then (a) _Re-image past emotion_--of which more elsewhere. The actor

re-calls the old feelings every time he renders his telling lines.

(b) _Reconstruct in image the scenes you are to describe._

(c) _Image the objects in nature whose tone you are delineating_, so

that bearing and voice and movement (gesture) will picture forth the

whole convincingly. Instead of merely stating the fact that whiskey

ruins homes, the temperance speaker paints a drunkard coming home to

abuse his wife and strike his children. It is much more effective than

telling the truth in abstract terms. To depict the cruelness of war, do

not assert the fact abstractly--"War is cruel." Show the soldier, an arm

swept away by a bursting shell, lying on the battlefield pleading for

water; show the children with tear-stained faces pressed against the

window pane praying for their dead father to return. Avoid general and

prosaic terms. Paint pictures. Evolve images for the imagination of your

audience to construct into pictures of their own.

III. HOW TO ACQUIRE THE IMAGING HABIT

You remember the American statesman who asserted that "the way to resume

is to resume"? The application is obvious. Beginning with the first

simple analyses of this chapter, test your own qualities of

image-making. One by one practise the several kinds of images; then

add--even invent--others in combination, for many images come to us in

complex form, like the combined noise and shoving and hot odor of a

cheering crowd.

After practising on reproductive imaging, turn to the productive,

beginning with the reproductive and adding productive features for the

sake of cultivating invention.

Frequently, allow your originating gifts full swing by weaving complete

imaginary fabrics--sights, sounds, scenes; all the fine world of fantasy

lies open to the journeyings of your winged steed.

In like manner train yourself in the use of figurative language. Learn

first to distinguish and then to use its varied forms. _When used with

restraint_, nothing can be more effective than the trope; but once let

extravagance creep in by the window, and power will flee by the door.

All in all, master your images--let not them master you.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Give original examples of each kind of reproductive imagination.

2. Build two of these into imaginary incidents for platform use, using

your productive, or creative, imagination.

3. Define (_a_) phantasy; (_b_) vision; (_c_) fantastic; (_d_)

phantasmagoria; (_e_) transmogrify; (_f_) recollection.

4. What is a "figure of speech"?

5. Define and give two examples of each of the following figures of

speech[30]. At least one of the examples under each type would better be

original. (_a_) simile; (_b_) metaphor; (_c_) metonymy; (_d_)

synecdoche; (_e_) apostrophe; (_f_) vision; (_g_) personification; (_h_)

hyperbole; (_i_) irony.

6. (_a_) What is an allegory? (_b_) Name one example. (_c_) How could a

short allegory be used as part of a public address?

7. Write a short fable[31] for use in a speech. Follow either the

ancient form (Æsop) or the modern (George Ade, Josephine Dodge Daskam).

8. What do you understand by "the historical present?" Illustrate how it

may be used (_ONLY_ occasionally) in a public address.

9. Recall some disturbance on the street, (_a_) Describe it as you would

on the platform; (_b_) imagine what preceded the disturbance; (_c_)

imagine what followed it; (_d_) connect the whole in a terse, dramatic

narration for the platform and deliver it with careful attention to all

that you have learned of the public speaker's art.

10. Do the same with other incidents you have seen or heard of, or read

of in the newspapers.

NOTE: It is hoped that this exercise will be varied and expanded until

the pupil has gained considerable mastery of imaginative narration. (See

chapter on "Narration.")

11. Experiments have proved that the majority of people think most

vividly in terms of visual images. However, some think more readily in

terms of auditory and motor images. It is a good plan to mix all kinds

of images in the course of your address for you will doubtless have all

kinds of hearers. This plan will serve to give variety and strengthen

your effects by appealing to the several senses of each hearer, as well

as interesting many different auditors. For exercise, (_a_) give several

original examples of compound images, and (_b_) construct brief

descriptions of the scenes imagined. For example, the falling of a

bridge in process of building.

12. Read the following observantly:

The strikers suffered bitter poverty last winter in New York.

Last winter a woman visiting the East Side of New York City saw

another woman coming out of a tenement house wringing her hands.

Upon inquiry the visitor found that a child had fainted in one

of the apartments. She entered, and saw the child ill and in

rags, while the father, a striker, was too poor to provide

medical help. A physician was called and said the child had

fainted from lack of food. The only food in the home was dried

fish. The visitor provided groceries for the family and ordered

the milkman to leave milk for them daily. A month later she

returned. The father of the family knelt down before her, and

calling her an angel said that she had saved their lives, for

the milk she had provided was all the food they had had.

In the two preceding paragraphs we have substantially the same story,

told twice. In the first paragraph we have a fact stated in general

terms. In the second, we have an outline picture of a specific

happening. Now expand this outline into a dramatic recital, drawing

freely upon your imagination.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: _Inquiries into Human Faculty_.]

[Footnote 30: Consult any good rhetoric. An unabridged dictionary will

also be of help.]

[Footnote 31: For a full discussion of the form see, _The Art of

Story-Writing_, by J. Berg Esenwein and Mary D. Chambers.]

CHAPTER XXVII

GROWING A VOCABULARY

Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds;

You can't do that way when you're flying words.

"Careful with fire," is good advice we know,

"Careful with words," is ten times doubly so.

Thoughts unexpressed many sometimes fall back dead;

But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.

--WILL CARLETON, _The First Settler's Story_.

The term "vocabulary" has a special as well as a general meaning. True,

_all_ vocabularies are grounded in the everyday words of the language,

out of which grow the special vocabularies, but each such specialized

group possesses a number of words of peculiar value for its own objects.

These words may be used in other vocabularies also, but the fact that

they are suited to a unique order of expression marks them as of special

value to a particular craft or calling.

In this respect the public speaker differs not at all from the poet, the

novelist, the scientist, the traveler. He must add to his everyday

stock, words of value for the public presentation of thought. "A study

of the discourses of effective orators discloses the fact that they have

a fondness for words signifying power, largeness, speed, action, color,

light, and all their opposites. They frequently employ words expressive

of the various emotions. Descriptive words, adjectives used in _fresh_

relations with nouns, and apt epithets, are freely employed. Indeed,

the nature of public speech permits the use of mildly exaggerated words

which, by the time they have reached the hearer's judgment, will leave

only a just impression."[32]

_Form the Book-Note Habit_

To possess a word involves three things: To know its special and broader

meanings, to know its relation to other words, and to be able to use it.

When you see or hear a familiar word used in an unfamiliar sense, jot it

down, look it up, and master it. We have in mind a speaker of superior

attainments who acquired his vocabulary by noting all new words he heard

or read. These he mastered and _put into use_. Soon his vocabulary

became large, varied, and exact. Use a new word accurately five times

and it is yours. Professor Albert E. Hancock says: "An author's

vocabulary is of two kinds, latent and dynamic: latent--those words he

understands; dynamic--those he can readily use. Every intelligent man

_knows_ all the words he needs, but he may not have them all ready for

active service. The problem of literary diction consists in turning the

latent into the dynamic." Your dynamic vocabulary is the one you must

especially cultivate.

In his essay on "A College Magazine" in the volume, _Memories and

Portraits_, Stevenson shows how he rose from imitation to originality in

the use of words. He had particular reference to the formation of his

literary style, but words are the raw materials of style, and his

excellent example may well be followed judiciously by the public

speaker. Words _in their relations_ are vastly more important than words

considered singly.

Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased

me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with

propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or

some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and

set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew

it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always

unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts I got some

practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and coördination

of parts.

I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to

Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to

Montaigne.

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I

have profited or not, that is the way. It was the way Keats

learned, and there never was a finer temperament for literature

than Keats'.

It is the great point of these imitations that there still

shines beyond the student's reach, his inimitable model. Let him

try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is an old

and very true saying that failure is the only highroad to

success.

_Form the Reference-Book Habit_

Do not be content with your general knowledge of a word--press your

study until you have mastered its individual shades of meaning and

usage. Mere fluency is sure to become despicable, but accuracy never.

The dictionary contains the crystallized usage of intellectual giants.

No one who would write effectively dare despise its definitions and

discriminations. Think, for example, of the different meanings of

_mantle_, or _model_, or _quantity_. Any late edition of an unabridged

dictionary is good, and is worth making sacrifices to own.

Books of synonyms and antonyms--used cautiously, for there are few

_perfect_ synonyms in any language--will be found of great help.

Consider the shades of meanings among such word-groups as _thief,

peculator, defaulter, embezzler, burglar, yeggman, robber, bandit,

marauder, pirate_, and many more; or the distinctions among _Hebrew,

Jew, Israelite, and Semite_. Remember that no book of synonyms is

trustworthy unless used with a dictionary. "A Thesaurus of the English

Language," by Dr. Francis A. March, is expensive, but full and

authoritative. Of smaller books of synonyms and antonyms there are

plenty.[33]

Study the connectives of English speech. Fernald's book on this title is

a mine of gems. Unsuspected pitfalls lie in the loose use of _and, or,

for, while_, and a score of tricky little connectives.

Word derivations are rich in suggestiveness. Our English owes so much to

foreign tongues and has changed so much with the centuries that whole

addresses may grow out of a single root-idea hidden away in an ancient

word-origin. Translation, also, is excellent exercise in word-mastery

and consorts well with the study of derivations.

Phrase books that show the origins of familiar expressions will surprise

most of us by showing how carelessly everyday speech is used. Brewer's

"A Dictionary of Phrase, and Fable," Edwards' "Words, Facts, and

Phrases," and Thornton's "An American Glossary," are all good--the last,

an expensive work in three volumes.

A prefix or a suffix may essentially change the force of the stem, as

in _master-ful_ and _master-ly_, _contempt-ible_ and _contempt-uous,

envi-ous_ and _envi-able_. Thus to study words in groups, according to

their stems, prefixes, and suffixes is to gain a mastery over their

shades of meaning, and introduce us to other related words.

_Do not Favor one Set or Kind of Words more than Another_

"Sixty years and more ago, Lord Brougham, addressing the students of the

University of Glasgow, laid down the rule that the native (Anglo-Saxon)

part of our vocabulary was to be favored at the expense of that other

part which has come from the Latin and Greek. The rule was an impossible

one, and Lord Brougham himself never tried seriously to observe it; nor,

in truth, has any great writer made the attempt. Not only is our

language highly composite, but the component words have, in De Quincey's

phrase, 'happily coalesced.' It is easy to jest at words in _-osity_ and

_-ation_, as 'dictionary' words, and the like. But even Lord Brougham

would have found it difficult to dispense with _pomposity_ and

_imagination_."[34]

The short, vigorous Anglo-Saxon will always be preferred for passages of

special thrust and force, just as the Latin will continue to furnish us

with flowing and smooth expressions; to mingle all sorts, however, will

give variety--and that is most to be desired.

_Discuss Words With Those Who Know Them_

Since the language of the platform follows closely the diction of

everyday speech, many useful words may be acquired in conversation with

cultivated men, and when such discussion takes the form of disputation

as to the meanings and usages of words, it will prove doubly valuable.

The development of word-power marches with the growth of individuality.

_Search Faithfully for the Right Word_

Books of reference are tripled in value when their owner has a passion

for getting the kernels out of their shells. Ten minutes a day will do

wonders for the nut-cracker. "I am growing so peevish about my writing,"

says Flaubert. "I am like a man whose ear is true, but who plays falsely

on the violin: his fingers refuse to reproduce precisely those sounds of

which he has the inward sense. Then the tears come rolling down from the

poor scraper's eyes and the bow falls from his hand."

The same brilliant Frenchman sent this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de

Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is

but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one

adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for

this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to be

satisfied with nothing else."

Walter Savage Landor once wrote: "I hate false words, and seek with

care, difficulty, and moroseness those that fit the thing." So did

Sentimental Tommy, as related by James M. Barrie in his novel bearing

his hero's name as a title. No wonder T. Sandys became an author and a

lion!

Tommy, with another lad, is writing an essay on "A Day in Church," in

competition for a university scholarship. He gets on finely until he

pauses for lack of a word. For nearly an hour he searches for this

elusive thing, until suddenly he is told that the allotted time is up,

and he has lost! Barrie may tell the rest:

Essay! It was no more an essay than a twig is a tree, for the

gowk had stuck in the middle of his second page. Yes, stuck is

the right expression, as his chagrined teacher had to admit when

the boy was cross-examined. He had not been "up to some of his

tricks;" he had stuck, and his explanations, as you will admit,

merely emphasized his incapacity.

He had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What

word? they asked testily; but even now he could not tell. He had

wanted a Scotch word that would signify how many people were in

church, and it was on the tip of his tongue, but would come no

farther. Puckle was nearly the word, but it did not mean so many

people as he meant. The hour had gone by just like winking; he

had forgotten all about time while searching his mind for the

word.

* * * * *

The other five [examiners] were furious.... "You little tattie

doolie," Cathro roared, "were there not a dozen words to wile

from if you had an ill-will to puckle? What ailed you at manzy,

or--"

"I thought of manzy," replied Tommy, woefully, for he was

ashamed of himself, "but--but a manzy's a swarm. It would mean

that the folk in the kirk were buzzing thegither like bees,

instead of sitting still."

"Even if it does mean that," said Mr. Duthie, with impatience,

"what was the need of being so particular? Surely the art of

essay-writing consists in using the first word that comes and

hurrying on."

"That's how I did," said the proud McLauchlan [Tommy's

successful competitor]....

"I see," interposed Mr. Gloag, "that McLauchlan speaks of there

being a mask of people in the church. Mask is a fine Scotch

word."

"I thought of mask," whimpered Tommy, "but that would mean the

kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be middling full."

"Flow would have done," suggested Mr. Lonimer.

"Flow's but a handful," said Tommy.

"Curran, then, you jackanapes!"

"Curran's no enough."

Mr. Lorrimer flung up his hands in despair.

"I wanted something between curran and mask," said Tommy,

doggedly, yet almost at the crying.

Mr. Ogilvy, who had been hiding his admiration with difficulty,

spread a net for him. "You said you wanted a word that meant

middling full. Well, why did you not say middling full--or fell

mask?"

"Yes, why not?" demanded the ministers, unconsciously caught in

the net.

"I wanted one word," replied Tommy, unconsciously avoiding it.

"You jewel!" muttered Mr. Ogilvy under his breath, but Mr.

Cathro would have banged the boy's head had not the ministers

interfered.

"It is so easy, too, to find the right word," said Mr. Gloag.

"It's no; it's difficult as to hit a squirrel," cried Tommy, and

again Mr. Ogilvy nodded approval.

* * * * *

And then an odd thing happened. As they were preparing to leave

the school [Cathro having previously run Tommy out by the neck],

the door opened a little and there appeared in the aperture the

face of Tommy, tear-stained but excited. "I ken the word now,"

he cried, "it came to me a' at once; it is hantle!"

Mr. Ogilvy ... said in an ecstasy to himself, "He _had_ to think

of it till he got it--and he got it. The laddie is a genius!"

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What is the derivation of the word _vocabulary_?

2. Briefly discuss any complete speech given in this volume, with

reference to (_a_) exactness, (_b_) variety, and (_c_) charm, in the use

of words.

3. Give original examples of the kinds of word-studies referred to on

pages 337 and 338.

4. Deliver a short talk on any subject, using at least five words which

have not been previously in your "dynamic" vocabulary.

5. Make a list of the unfamiliar words found in any address you may

select.

6. Deliver a short extemporaneous speech giving your opinions on the

merits and demerits of the use of unusual words in public speaking.

7. Try to find an example of the over-use of unusual words in a speech.

8. Have you used reference books in word studies? If so, state with what

result.

9. Find as many synonyms and antonyms as possible for each of the

following words: Excess, Rare, Severe, Beautiful, Clear, Happy,

Difference, Care, Skillful, Involve, Enmity, Profit, Absurd, Evident,

Faint, Friendly, Harmony, Hatred, Honest, Inherent.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 33: A book of synonyms and antonyms is in preparation for this

series, "The Writer's Library."]

[Footnote 34: _Composition and Rhetoric_, J.M. Hart.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

MEMORY TRAINING

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,

Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain;

Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise!

Each stamps its image as the other flies!

* * * * *

Hail, memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine

From age to age unnumber'd treasures shine!

Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,

And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!

--SAMUEL ROGERS, _Pleasures of Memory_.

Many an orator, like Thackeray, has made the best part of his speech to

himself--on the way home from the lecture hall. Presence of mind--it

remained for Mark Twain to observe--is greatly promoted by absence of

body. A hole in the memory is no less a common complaint than a

distressing one.

Henry Ward Beecher was able to deliver one of the world's greatest

addresses at Liverpool because of his excellent memory. In speaking of

the occasion Mr. Beecher said that all the events, arguments and appeals

that he had ever heard or read or written seemed to pass before his mind

as oratorical weapons, and standing there he had but to reach forth his

hand and "seize the weapons as they went smoking by." Ben Jonson could

repeat all he had written. Scaliger memorized the Iliad in three weeks.

Locke says: "Without memory, man is a perpetual infant." Quintilian and

Aristotle regarded it as a measure of genius.

Now all this is very good. We all agree that a reliable memory is an

invaluable possession for the speaker. We never dissent for a moment

when we are solemnly told that his memory should be a storehouse from

which at pleasure he can draw facts, fancies, and illustrations. But can

the memory be trained to act as the warder for all the truths that we

have gained from thinking, reading, and experience? And if so, how? Let

us see.

Twenty years ago a poor immigrant boy, employed as a dish washer in New

York, wandered into the Cooper Union and began to read a copy of Henry

George's "Progress and Poverty." His passion for knowledge was awakened,

and he became a habitual reader. But he found that he was not able to

remember what he read, so he began to train his naturally poor memory

until he became the world's greatest memory expert. This man was the

late Mr. Felix Berol. Mr. Berol could tell the population of any town in

the world, of more than five thousand inhabitants. He could recall the

names of forty strangers who had just been introduced to him and was

able to tell which had been presented third, eighth, seventeenth, or in

any order. He knew the date of every important event in history, and

could not only recall an endless array of facts but could correlate them

perfectly.

To what extent Mr. Berol's remarkable memory was natural and required

only attention, for its development, seems impossible to determine with

exactness, but the evidence clearly indicates that, however useless were

many of his memory feats, a highly retentive memory was developed where

before only "a good forgettery" existed.

The freak memory is not worth striving for, but a good working memory

decidedly is. Your power as a speaker will depend to a large extent upon

your ability to retain impressions and call them forth when occasion

demands, and that sort of memory is like muscle--it responds to

training.

_What Not to Do_

It is sheer misdirected effort to begin to memorize by learning words by

rote, for that is beginning to build a pyramid at the apex. For years

our schools were cursed by this vicious system--vicious not only because

it is inefficient but for the more important reason that it hurts the

mind. True, some minds are natively endowed with a wonderful facility in

remembering strings of words, facts, and figures, but such are rarely

good reasoning minds; the normal person must belabor and force the

memory to acquire in this artificial way.

Again, it is hurtful to force the memory in hours of physical weakness

or mental weariness. Health is the basis of the best mental action and

the operation of memory is no exception.

Finally, do not become a slave to a system. Knowledge of a few simple

facts of mind and memory will set you to work at the right end of the

operation. Use these _principles_, whether included in a system or not,

but do not bind yourself to a method that tends to lay more stress on

the _way_ to remember than on the development of memory itself. It is

nothing short of ridiculous to memorize ten words in order to remember

one fact.

_The Natural Laws of Memory_

_Concentrated attention_ at the time when you wish to store the mind is

the first step in memorizing--and the most important one by far. You

forgot the fourth of the list of articles your wife asked you to bring

home chiefly because you allowed your attention to waver for an instant

when she was telling you. Attention may not be concentrated attention.

When a siphon is charged with gas it is sufficiently filled with the

carbonic acid vapor to make its influence felt; a mind charged with an

idea is charged to a degree sufficient to hold it. Too much charging

will make the siphon burst; too much attention to trifles leads to

insanity. Adequate attention, then, is the fundamental secret of

remembering.

Generally we do not give a fact adequate attention when it does not seem

important. Almost everyone has seen how the seeds in an apple point, and

has memorized the date of Washington's death. Most of us have--perhaps

wisely--forgotten both. The little nick in the bark of a tree is healed

over and obliterated in a season, but the gashes in the trees around

Gettysburg are still apparent after fifty years. Impressions that are

gathered lightly are soon obliterated. Only deep impressions can be

recalled at will. Henry Ward Beecher said: "One intense hour will do

more than dreamy years." To memorize ideas and words, concentrate on

them until they are fixed firmly and deeply in your mind and accord to

them their true importance. LISTEN with the mind and you will remember.

How shall you concentrate? How would you increase the

fighting-effectiveness of a man-of-war? One vital way would be to

increase the size and number of its guns. To strengthen your memory,

increase both the number and the force of your mental impressions by

attending to them intensely. Loose, skimming reading, and drifting

habits of reading destroy memory power. However, as most books and

newspapers do not warrant any other kind of attention, it will not do

altogether to condemn this method of reading; but avoid it when you are

trying to memorize.

Environment has a strong influence upon concentration, until you have

learned to be alone in a crowd and undisturbed by clamor. When you set

out to memorize a fact or a speech, you may find the task easier away

from all sounds and moving objects. All impressions foreign to the one

you desire to fix in your mind must be eliminated.

The next great step in memorizing is to _pick out the essentials of the

subject_, arrange them in order, and dwell upon them intently. Think

clearly of each essential, one after the other. _Thinking_ a thing--not

allowing the mind to wander to non-essentials--is really memorizing.

_Association of ideas_ is universally recognized as an essential in

memory work; indeed, whole systems of memory training have been founded

on this principle.

Many speakers memorize only the outlines of their addresses, filling in

the words at the moment of speaking. Some have found it helpful to

remember an outline by associating the different points with objects in

the room. Speaking on "Peace," you may wish to dwell on the cost the

cruelty, and the failure of war, and so lead to the justice of

arbitration. Before going on the platform if you will associate four

divisions of your outline with four objects in the room, this

association may help you to recall them. You may be prone to forget your

third point, but you remember that once when you were speaking the

electric lights failed, so arbitrarily the electric light globe will

help you to remember "failure." Such associations, being unique, tend to

stick in the mind. While recently speaking on the six kinds of

imagination the present writer formed them into an acrostic--_visual_,

_auditory_, _motor_, _gustatory_, _olfactory_, and _tactile_, furnished

the nonsense word _vamgot_, but the six points were easily remembered.

In the same way that children are taught to remember the spelling of

teasing words--_separate_ comes from _separ_--and as an automobile

driver remembers that two C's and then two H's lead him into Castor

Road, Cottman Street, Haynes Street and Henry Street, so important

points in your address may be fixed in mind by arbitrary symbols

invented by yourself. The very work of devising the scheme is a memory

action. The psychological process is simple: it is one of noting

intently the steps by which a fact, or a truth, or even a word, has come

to you. Take advantage of this tendency of the mind to remember by

association.

_Repetition_ is a powerful aid to memory. Thurlow Weed, the journalist

and political leader, was troubled because he so easily forgot the names

of persons he met from day to day. He corrected the weakness, relates

Professor William James, by forming the habit of attending carefully to

names he had heard during the day and then repeating them to his wife

every evening. Doubtless Mrs. Weed was heroically longsuffering, but the

device worked admirably.

After reading a passage you would remember, close the book, reflect, and

repeat the contents--aloud, if possible.

_Reading thoughtfully aloud_ has been found by many to be a helpful

memory practise.

_Write what you wish to remember._ This is simply one more way of

increasing the number and the strength of your mental impressions by

utilizing _all_ your avenues of impression. It will help to fix a speech

in your mind if you speak it aloud, listen to it, write it out, and look

at it intently. You have then impressed it on your mind by means of

vocal, auditory, muscular and visual impressions.

Some folk have peculiarly distinct auditory memories; they are able to

recall things heard much better than things seen. Others have the visual

memory; they are best able to recall sight-impressions. As you recall a

walk you have taken, are you able to remember better the sights or the

sounds? Find out what kinds of impressions your memory retains best, and

use them the most. To fix an idea in mind, use _every_ possible kind of

impression.

_Daily habit_ is a great memory cultivator. Learn a lesson from the

Marathon runner. Regular exercise, though never so little daily, will

strengthen your memory in a surprising measure. Try to describe in

detail the dress, looks and manner of the people you pass on the

street. Observe the room you are in, close your eyes, and describe its

contents. View closely the landscape, and write out a detailed

description of it. How much did you miss? Notice the contents of the

show windows on the street; how many features are you able to recall?

Continual practise in this feat may develop in you as remarkable

proficiency as it did in Robert Houdin and his son.

The daily memorizing of a beautiful passage in literature will not only

lend strength to the memory, but will store the mind with gems for

quotation. But whether by little or much add daily to your memory power

by practise.

_Memorize out of doors._ The buoyancy of the wood, the shore, or the

stormy night on deserted streets may freshen your mind as it does the

minds of countless others.

Lastly, _cast out fear_. Tell yourself that you _can_ and _will_ and

_do_ remember. By pure exercise of selfism assert your mastery. Be

obsessed with the fear of forgetting and you cannot remember. Practise

the reverse. Throw aside your manuscript crutches--you may tumble once

or twice, but what matters that, for you are going to learn to walk and

leap and run.

_Memorizing a Speech_

Now let us try to put into practise the foregoing suggestions. First,

reread this chapter, noting the nine ways by which memorizing may be

helped.

Then read over the following selection from Beecher, applying so many of

the suggestions as are practicable. Get the spirit of the selection

firmly in your mind. Make mental note of--write down, if you must--the

_succession_ of ideas. Now memorize the thought. Then memorize the

outline, the order in which the different ideas are expressed. Finally,

memorize the exact wording.

No, when you have done all this, with the most faithful attention to

directions, you will not find memorizing easy, unless you have

previously trained your memory, or it is naturally retentive. Only by

constant practise will memory become strong and only by continually

observing these same principles will it remain strong. You will,

however, have made a beginning, and that is no mean matter.

_THE REIGN OF THE COMMON PEOPLE_

I do not suppose that if you were to go and look upon the

experiment of self-government in America you would have a very

high opinion of it. I have not either, if I just look upon the

surface of things. Why, men will say: "It stands to reason that

60,000,000 ignorant of law, ignorant of constitutional history,

ignorant of jurisprudence, of finance, and taxes and tariffs and

forms of currency--60,000,000 people that never studied these

things--are not fit to rule." Your diplomacy is as complicated

as ours, and it is the most complicated on earth, for all things

grow in complexity as they develop toward a higher condition.

What fitness is there in these people? Well, it is not democracy

merely; it is a representative democracy. Our people do not vote

in mass for anything; they pick out captains of thought, they

pick out the men that do know, and they send them to the

Legislature to think for them, and then the people afterward

ratify or disallow them.

But when you come to the Legislature I am bound to confess that

the thing does not look very much more cheering on the outside.

Do they really select the best men? Yes; in times of danger they

do very generally, but in ordinary time, "kissing goes by

favor." You know what the duty of a regular Republican-Democratic

legislator is. It is to get back again next winter. His second

duty is what? His second duty is to put himself under that

extraordinary providence that takes care of legislators'

salaries. The old miracle of the prophet and the meal and the

oil is outdone immeasurably in our days, for they go there poor

one year, and go home rich; in four years they become

moneylenders, all by a trust in that gracious providence that

takes care of legislators' salaries. Their next duty after

that is to serve the party that sent them up, and then, if there

is anything left of them, it belongs to the commonwealth.

Someone has said very wisely, that if a man traveling wishes to

relish his dinner he had better not go into the kitchen to see

where it is cooked; if a man wishes to respect and obey the law,

he had better not go to the Legislature to see where that is

cooked.

--HENRY WARD BEECHER.

From a lecture delivered in Exeter Hall, London, 1886, when making

his last tour of Great Britain.

_In Case of Trouble_

But what are you to do if, notwithstanding all your efforts, you should

forget your points, and your mind, for the minute, becomes blank? This

is a deplorable condition that sometimes arises and must be dealt with.

Obviously, you can sit down and admit defeat. Such a consummation is

devoutly to be shunned.

Walking slowly across the platform may give you time to grip yourself,

compose your thoughts, and stave off disaster. Perhaps the surest and

most practical method is to begin a new sentence with your last

important word. This is not advocated as a method of composing a

speech--it is merely an extreme measure which may save you in tight

circumstances. It is like the fire department--the less you must use it

the better. If this method is followed very long you are likely to find

yourself talking about plum pudding or Chinese Gordon in the most

unexpected manner, so of course you will get back to your lines the

earliest moment that your feet have hit the platform.

Let us see how this plan works--obviously, your extemporized words will

lack somewhat of polish, but in such a pass crudity is better than

failure.

Now you have come to a dead wall after saying: "Joan of Arc fought for

liberty." By this method you might get something like this:

"Liberty is a sacred privilege for which mankind always had to fight.

These struggles [Platitude--but push on] fill the pages of history.

History records the gradual triumph of the serf over the lord, the slave

over the master. The master has continually tried to usurp unlimited

powers. Power during the medieval ages accrued to the owner of the land

with a spear and a strong castle; but the strong castle and spear were

of little avail after the discovery of gunpowder. Gunpowder was the

greatest boon that liberty had ever known."

Thus far you have linked one idea with another rather obviously, but you

are getting your second wind now and may venture to relax your grip on

the too-evident chain; and so you say:

"With gunpowder the humblest serf in all the land could put an end to

the life of the tyrannical baron behind the castle walls. The struggle

for liberty, with gunpowder as its aid, wrecked empires, and built up a

new era for all mankind."

In a moment more you have gotten back to your outline and the day is

saved.

Practising exercises like the above will not only fortify you against

the death of your speech when your memory misses fire, but it will also

provide an excellent training for fluency in speaking. _Stock up with

ideas._

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Pick out and state briefly the nine helps to memorizing suggested in

this chapter.

2. Report on whatever success you may have had with any of the plans for

memory culture suggested in this chapter. Have any been less successful

than others?

3. Freely criticise any of the suggested methods.

4. Give an original example of memory by association of ideas.

5. List in order the chief ideas of any speech in this volume.