One of the more serious dangers confronting the platform speaker is the
presumption that his audience will not prove sufficiently intelligent to
grasp him when he is at what he thinks is his best. I use the word
"presumption" advisedly; for it is sheer presumption and nothing else,
and I may add that if my experience has taught me anything, it is that
it does not pay to be so presuming. If there is trouble anywhere in
"getting one's stuff over," as the saying is, the fault will be found in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred to be with the lecturer, and not with
his audience.
My most earnest advice to those platform speakers who feel it necessary
to "get _down_ to the level" of an audience, instead of feeling an
inward urge to climb _up_ to it, is that they give up the platform
altogether, and take up some other occupation where conscious
superiority really counts; say that of head waiter in a New York
restaurant, for instance, or possibly that of literary critic on the
staff of a periodical, whose chief concern is pink socks, lavender
neckties, and the mysteries of lingerie. In these occupations conscious
superiority is an essential of success; but on the lecture platform the
consciously superior person cannot in the very nature of things last
very long: not in this country, anyhow; for, as I have studied the
American people face to face for the past ten years in every State of
the Union, I have learned that their capacity for pricking a bubble of
pretense on sight is surpassed only by their high appreciation of a
speaker who immediately gets into the atmosphere of the special occasion
confronting him.
For my own part, I have come to believe that each occasion establishes
its own "best," and that the chief duty confronting me is to measure up
to the "best" demanded by that occasion if I can. For this reason one's
lecture should be a moderately flexible affair, which can be so adjusted
to each and every occasion that it fits an audience as nicely as a
tailor-made garment. A lecture written out beforehand and committed to
memory can never quite fulfil these requirements. It becomes not a
lecture, but an essay; not platform work, but literary work; should be
read, not heard; and in its delivery becomes not a sympathetic talk, man
to man, but a mere recitation.
No one would be so foolish as to deny, however, that audiences do vary
materially in their capacity to take in the subtler points of a lecture
"fired" at them from the platform. I should not think of using the same
phrases in a talk before a gathering in an East Side settlement house in
New York that I would use before the ladies of a Browning Club in the
vicinity of Boston, or before a body of college professors, or vice
versa. But if I were fortunate enough to be asked to address all three,
I should endeavor to vary the wording of my discourse according to the
several needs of each, and base my notion of my "best" upon the demands
of those particular needs. I confess also that if in one single audience
all three classes of listeners were represented, I should not hesitate
to put my thought into the language required by the capacity of the East
Siders to understand, and be fairly assured of pleasing everybody; for
it is my observation of the ways of ladies addicted to Browning, and of
gentlemen of the academic kind, that they are after all very human, and
enjoy simplicity of discourse quite as much as the other sort.
[Illustration: "The consciously superior person cannot last long on the
lecture platform."]
There is greater sincerity in "playing to the gallery" than most of the
critics of that habit dream of, and personally I would rather fall short
of the expectations of the boxes than fail in the eyes of the gallery,
where reticence in the expression of critical opinion is not exactly a
conspicuous virtue. To put it more plainly, I should infinitely prefer
the humiliation of seeing a highborn lady falling asleep in an orchestra
chair because of the bromidic quality of my talk, than be reminded of
the same by flying vegetable matter consigned to me by some dissatisfied
individual sitting up among the "gods."
An amusing, if somewhat radical, contrast in audiences befell my lot
several years ago in the brief space of sixteen hours. In that time I
successively addressed the Harvard Union at Cambridge on a Tuesday
evening, and the ladies of a Woman's Club in a Boston suburb the
following morning. The audience at the Union was gathered in the
wonderfully beautiful auditorium of Memorial Hall, and contained not
less than twelve hundred particularly live wires, undergraduates mostly,
almost fresh from the football field, or at least still under the
influence of its system of expressing approval.
As I mounted the rostrum bedlam broke loose: not necessarily as a
tribute to myself, but because frenzy is the modern collegiate way of
making a visitor feel welcome. Thunderous noises never yet classified
shook the rafters--noises ranging from the hoarse clamor of an excited
populace at the finish of some great Olympian event, to the somewhat
uncertain cackle of a freshman voice changing from soprano to bass.
Pandemonium did not reign: it poured. Not since I visited the London Zoo
and witnessed there a fight between two caged lions to the excited,
clamorous interest of all the other beasts imprisoned there, have I
heard such a variegated din as greeted me on that occasion, and I
realized sympathetically for the first time perhaps the true
significance of Theodore Roosevelt's "dee-lighted" smile when as
President of the United States he took his annual stroll across the
football field at a Harvard and Yale game, and listened to the "voice of
the people." So contagious was it that I had all I could do to keep from
joining in myself and only the necessity of saving my voice for my
lecture prevented me from being myself heard above the din.
That noise was the keynote of the evening. I think I may say with due
modesty that my lecture had one or two touches of humor in it--three or
four, in fact--varying in character from the "scarcely perceptible
subtle" to the "inevitably obvious," with other sorts sandwiched in
between, and none of them was lost; although I was not permitted to
finish many of my sentences. The audience seemed to get in ahead of me
every time.
The situation reminded me in a way of the grandstand finish of a poor
paralyzed old darky named Joe, of whom I was once told by a Pullman car
porter on my way through Montana. Joe had been a famous sportsman in his
day; but now misfortune had overtaken him, and he lay bedridden, wholly
unable to use his legs, and awaiting the end. Several of his friends,
taking pity on him, resolved to give him the joy of one last glorious
coon hunt.
They put him on a stretcher and carried him out into the country where
that luscious creature "abounded and abutted." The dogs were let loose,
and finally showed unusual activity at the base of a tall tree; but, to
the dismay of all, the game turned out to be no coon, but a particularly
hungry, sore-headed, old she-bear.
As the roaring beast clambered down after her tormentors, Joe's litter
bearers, terrified, dropped their burden and made off down the road in
coward flight, and it was not until an hour after they had reached home
in safety that they thought of the possible fate of their paralytic
friend. Conscience-stricken, they resolved to go to Joe's home and
break the news of their cowardly behavior to the presumable widow. The
good woman met them at the door.
"What yo' niggahs want round here dis time o' night?" she demanded.
"We come to tell yo' 'bout Joe, Mis' Johnsing," said the embarrassed
spokesman.
"Yo' kain't tell me nothin' 'bout Joe what Ah don' know a'ready,"
replied Mrs. Johnson coldly.
"Yas'm; but yo' don' know whar Joe is, Mis' Johnsing," persisted the
speaker. "We done--"
"Yas, Ah do know whar Joe is," retorted the lady. "He's upstairs in he
bed."
"In he bed?" echoed the astonished visitors.
"Yass," said Mrs. Johnson. "Joe come in ovah an hour ago hollerin' like
a bullgine fohty yahds ahead o' de dawgs."
I think I may say without exaggeration that that Harvard Union audience
even beat Joe's record; for they were twice "fohty yahds ahead o' de
dawgs" all the way through, and as for "hollerin'" they were not so much
like one single "bullgine" as like a whole roundhouse full of them,
aided and abetted by a couple of boiler factories in full blast.
And then, only sixteen hours later, came the address at the Woman's Club
ten miles out of Boston; the same lecture, in a quiet drawing room,
before forty ladies who embroidered and crocheted while I talked, and
here the point that had raised the roof and shaken the foundations of
the Harvard Union was greeted by the _tapping of a thimble against the
wooden frame of an embroidery hoop_!
I cannot say which of the two varieties of approval pleased me more; but
I will say that no idea of talking "up" or "down" to my audience
occurred to me on either occasion: it was rather a matter of "getting
across."
One never can tell save by the "feel" of things in the hour of action
how they are going to turn out. Only this last season I found myself,
through a misapprehension of the character of my engagement, standing
before an audience in a New England amusement park on a Sunday
afternoon. I will say frankly that if I had known that I was to be a
sideshow to a Ferris Wheel and a scenic railway, with pink lemonade on
tap everywhere, and "all for ten cents," I should not have accepted the
engagement. While I have admired them at a respectful distance, I have
never envied the wild man of Borneo or the bearded lady their
opportunities for personal enrichment; but on this occasion in some way
or other I had gained an impression that my date had been arranged by,
and was to be under the auspices of, a combination of church interests,
designed to offset the evils of Sunday afternoon idleness in a
manufacturing town. It was a misunderstanding, however, that I now
rejoice in; for, amusement park or not, sideshow or main ring, I found
it an enjoyable and educating experience.
I approached it in fear and trembling, especially when I noticed as I
was awaiting my "turn" the vast quantities of chewing gum that were
being sold to my audience by the inevitable boy with the basket. There
is always something disconcerting to a public speaker in the constant,
simultaneous, and automatic movement of other jaws than his own, and in
the face of a collective jaw, made up of sixteen hundred lowers that
chewed as one, I feared that mine, singly and alone, would find the odds
against it overpowering. Strange to say, however, my real fear on this
occasion was not on the score of my audience, but whether I should be
able to acquit myself creditably before them. I have fondly hoped that
my little talk contained a message, and as I observed these seekers
after pleasure slowly gathering, and taking their places on tiers of
pine benches under the kindly shade of a row of noble pines, it occurred
to me that if there was any fruitful soil for my message anywhere it was
in the hearts of just such people as sat before me--toilers, the humbler
folk, the men and women whose lives had been too busy with
bread-and-butter problems for the acquirement of culture, and whose sole
opportunity for amusement, uplifting or otherwise, came on these very
Sunday afternoons.
There were men and boys there who under other conditions might have been
idling on street corners. I counted three Chinese, several Japanese, and
a half-dozen Negroes in my audience. A dozen women had their babies with
them, and many a small kiddie, too young to chew gum without exposure to
the peril of swallowing it, nibbled and absorbed ginger cookies as I
watched them. The question became _not_ were they good enough for me,
but could I convince them that I was good enough for them. It was not a
question of "getting down to their level," but of my own ability to
climb up to the level of my opportunity. For the time being whatever
superiority there was was altogether on their side, and the point was
how I could prove myself the real thing, and not the artificial; how I
could find the common denominator which would enable us to get on "like
a house afire" together.
As I was speaking the solution came--and a mighty simple one it turned
out to be; for it lay wholly in the simplest possible use of the English
language. "Cut out the big words," I said to myself. "Cut out all
unfamiliar terms. Get right down to good old Anglo-Saxon. Drop such
jawbreakers as _differentiate_, _terminology_, _intimations_,
_implications_, and _psychological_." My chief hope became that I might
once more at least measure up to that condition which was clearly set
forth a great many years ago by a Western chairman, at a time when I was
too much of a novice to do my work even passably well, who said to me as
we walked to my hotel after the lecture was over:
"We don't care so much for your lecture, Mr. Bangs; but we like you, and
we're going to have you back."
Whether or not my plan was successful I shall not attempt to say; but I
may be pardoned, perhaps, for recording here one of the most delightful
compliments I have ever had, paid me by a threadbare workingman who came
up behind me as I was leaving the park that afternoon, and put his arm
through mine as he spoke.
"Are you goin' to speak here to-night, Brother?" he said.
"No," said I. "I am hurrying off to Boston on the five o'clock train."
"Well, I'm sorry," said he. "I wanted to come out and hear ye again."
Bearing upon the cultivation, or lack of it, of the average American
audience, I recall a remark made to me several years ago by a well-known
poet from the shores of Britain, who had come here to lecture on the
Celtic Renaissance.
"I have had a most delightful surprise," said he, "in the wonderful
amount of real culture that I have found in the United States, and
especially in the smaller communities. Why, do you know," he added,
"when I first started in on my work I supposed that I should have to
spend at least half of my time explaining to my audiences just what a
Renaissance was, and the rest in consideration of the Irish movement;
but I hadn't been here a week before I discovered that for the most part
the people I was to talk to knew quite as much as I did about the
history of the movement, and I had all I could do to shed any new light
on it whatsoever."
He had, fortunately for himself, made the discovery at a critical part
of the "lecture game," as some people delight to call it, that it was up
to him to keep climbing, and not waste any of his valuable time trying
to descend to a lower level, if he wished his discourse to be favorably
regarded in this country--a discovery that I devoutly wish some of our
modern editors and theatrical managers, who think they must cater
exclusively to a "lowbrow" audience, as they call it, a clientele made
up out of the whole cloth of their own imaginings, might make.
Our wonderful West frequently affords illuminating incidents
demonstrating the real truth, as discovered by our distinguished
visitor. I remember going a few years ago into a small community in
Iowa, where possibly the English lecturer would have looked for very
little in the way of what he would consider learning. When sitting in
the office of the chairman of the lecture committee, a particularly
alert young man, a lawyer, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, the
door opened, and a splendid specimen of physical manhood, a typical
pioneer in appearance, stalked in. The chairman introduced me to him.
"Mr. Bangs," said he, "I want you to know my father."
The caller gave my hand a grip that even now makes my fingers ache every
time I think of it. He then led me to a comfortable, leather-covered arm
chair, and, after almost shoving me into its capacious depths, seated
himself directly in front of me.
"Sit down, young man," said he. "I want to talk to you."
"Fire ahead!" said I. "And thank you for calling me a young man. I've
been feeling a trifle old for a couple of days."
"Well, you are young compared to me," he said. "I'm eighty."
"Good Lord!" said I. "You don't look over sixty, anyhow."
"No," he smiled, "I don't--but that's Ioway. I've been farmin' out here
for nigh onto seventy years, and we're all too busy to grow old. We live
forever in Ioway. It's the grandest country on the footstool."
I didn't feel at all inclined to dispute him, considering his more than
six feet of towering height, the fresh, healthful hardness of his
weather-beaten face, the breadth of his shoulders, and depth of his
chest. I contented myself with agreeing with him. And I didn't have to
work hard to do that, either; for I have known magnificent Iowa as a
most salubrious State for many years.
"Well, you see, sir," I said, "we can't all pick out our birthplaces. I
was born in New York through no choice of my own. Some are born at
birthplaces, some achieve birthplaces, and others have birthplaces
thrust upon them--which last was my case."
"Same here," said he. "I was born in Ohier; but my folks moved out here
when I was a babby. I've lived here ever since--and I'm glad of it. Of
course I hain't had your advantages in gettin' an eddication--most o'
mine's in my wife's name--but I've got some, and I've had to work so dam
hard to get it that sometimes I think I appreciate it just a leetle more
than you Eastern boys do who have it served to you on a silver platter.
I didn't know how to read till I was twenty-five."
"I congratulate you," said I. "Considering the sort of things the
greater part of our young people are reading to-day, I wish that
condition might prevail a little more widely than it does."
"That's it," said he. "When a thing comes too easy we're not likely to
make the best of it. When I think of how I had to sweat to learn to read
you don't ketch me wastin' any o' my talents in that direction on
trash."
"Then," I put in, "the chances are you've never read any of my books."
"Not many of 'em," he answered; "but one or two folks I know has read
'em, and they tell me there's nothin' deelyterious about 'em. But I tell
ye it was some work for me to get the knack o' readin'; but when it come
it come! Ye see, when I first come out here they wasn't any schools, and
they wasn't any too much help around in those days, either. What with
farmin', and diggin' food out o' the ground, and fightin' Injuns, they
wasn't much spare time for children to spend in schools, even if we'd a
had 'em. But along about the time I was twenty-three years old we
started one. We built a little schoolhouse, and then we sent East for a
schoolmarm, and when she come she boarded up at our house, and I
celebrated by fallin' head over heels in love with her."
"Good work!" said I.
"You bet it was good work!" he blurted out, with an admiring glance at
his son. "It was the best work I ever done, and the best part of it was
she liked me, and the first thing we knew we got married. Well, sir, do
you know what happened then? You're a smart man, and you won't need many
guesses. It was the very thing we might ha' foreseen. The idee o' me,
the husband o' the schoolmarm, not knowin' how to read--why,
it--was--simply--pree--posterous!"
I don't believe Colonel Roosevelt ever put more syrupy electricity into
the first syllable of his famous "dee-lighted" than that old gentleman
got into the _pre_ of his "preeposterous."
"Yes, sir," he ran on, "and there was no way out of it but that she
should teach me to read. _And she did!_ It was a tough proposition for
that wonderful teacher of mine; but her patience finally pulled us
through, and at the end of about a year I was ready to tackle 'most any
kind of stunt in the way of a printed page. And then the burning
question arose. Now that I know how, what in Dothan shall I read? That's
a big problem, my friend, to a young feller that has earned his right to
literature by the sweat of his brow. I wasn't goin' to waste any of my
new gift on flashy stuff. What I wanted was the real thing, and one
mornin' the problem was solved. A copy of a weekly paper come to the
house, with an advertisement in it of a book called 'The Origin of the
Species,' by a feller named Darwin, costin' two dollars and a half. That
was some money in those days; but somehow or other that title sounded
good and hefty, and I sent my little two-fifty by mail to the publisher,
and within a week or two 'The Origin of the Species' was duly received,
and I went at it."
"And what did you make out of it?" I asked, my interest truly aroused.
"Nothin'--not the first dam thing at first," said the old gentleman;
"except it made me wonder if I hadn't lost my mind, or something. I sat
down to read the thing, and by thunder, sir, I couldn't make head nor
tail out of it! I'd always thought I knew something about the English
language; but this time I was stumped, and it made me mad.
"'There's something happened to me,' I said to my wife. 'I've read this
darned first page here over five times, and I'm blest if I can get a
glimmer of anythin' out of it.' She smiled and advised me to try
something easier; but, '_Not--on--your--life!_' says I. 'I've been
through fire and famine and wind and blizzard in my day. I've seen the
roof over my head burnt to a cinder by savages, and I've fit Injuns, and
come nigh bein' scalped by 'em, and in all my life, my dear,' says I, 'I
hain't never been stumped yit, and I don't preepose to begin now,
specially by a page o' printed words, said to be writ in the English
language--_not--on--your--life!_'
"So I went at it again. I read it, and I reread it. I wrastled with
every page, paragraph, and sentence in that book. Sometimes I had to put
as much as five days on one page--but by Gorry, son, _when_ I got it I
got it good, and when it come it come with a rush--and _now_--"
The old man paused, drew himself up very straight, and squaring his
shoulders he leaned forward and put his hands on my knees.
[Illustration: "If there's anything you want to know about Darwin's
Origin of Species, you ask me!"]
"And _now_, my friend," he said, his eye flashing with the joy of
victory, "_if there's anything you want to know about Darwin's Origin of
the Species--you--just--ask--me!_"