He said: "I advise you to go on the platform every evening with cold
feet."
John and Charles Wesley were going along a street in London when they
came upon two market women engaged in a wordy war. John Wesley said:
"Hold up, Charles, and let's learn how to preach. See how these women
put earnestness and even eloquence into their street quarrel. Can't we
be just as earnest and eloquent in dealing out the truth?" No wonder
John Wesley gave such impetus to the platform.
It is said what John Wesley and George Whitefield were to the
religious platform, Fox and Burke became later on to the political
platform. They saw the platform was fast becoming the voice of public
sentiment and dared to indorse it.
When Mr. Fox made his first platform address he said: "This is the
first time I ever had the privilege of addressing an uncorrupted
assembly." Going back into Parliament he said: "Let's put an end to a
policy that separates us from the people. Let's cut all cables, snap
all chains that bind us to an unfriendly shore and enter the peaceful
harbor of public confidence."
When Mr. Burke made his platform debut, he was so inspired by the
enthusiasm of the people, it is said, he made the greatest speech ever
made in the English language up to that time. When he appeared in
Parliament next evening a leader of the government took occasion to
denounce the platform as a disturber of public peace, directing his
remarks to Mr. Burke. The great orator was ready with the reply: "Yes,
and the firebell at midnight disturbs public peace, but it keeps you
from burning in your beds."
It would seem after years of fruitless effort to silence the platform,
Parliament would accept it as a power for good and give it wise
direction. Yet we are informed that in face of its growing popularity
when Henry Hunt attempted to address an audience in a grove in
England, a regiment of cavalry charged the grove. Eleven were killed
and several hundred wounded. Henry Hunt was thrown into prison, but
when released later one hundred thousand people welcomed him to the
streets of London.
As well now had Parliament attempted to prevent a London fog as to
prohibit platform meetings. John Bright said: "When I consider these
meetings of the people, so sublime in their vastness and resolution, I
see coming over the hilltops of time the dawning of a nobler and
better day for my country."
It is our privilege to live in the good day of which John Bright
spoke. Yet while a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or
imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not
without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while
babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do
their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and
milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between speaker and
audience.
Here let me give a bit of advice to my own sex. Gentlemen, when you
purchase a new hat, no matter if a ten dollar silk, or a twenty dollar
panama, do not attend a lecture, and taking a seat in front of some
intelligent lady forget to remove your hat. The lady may want to see
the speaker's face, and he may need the inspiration of her
countenance, while you are interfering with both. "A hint to the wise
is sufficient." This hint may not be in accord with the advice of
Paul, but Paul never saw a twentieth century "Merry Widow" hat. Then
too, Paul was already inspired and didn't need the inspiration of
human countenances. I am speaking for the uninspired, to whom an
audience of hatless heads is an inspiration.
But few persons realize how a public speaker is affected by little
influences. The flitting of a blind bat over a church audience on a
summer evening, will mar the most fascinating flight of eloquence ever
plumed from a pulpit.
When Nancy Hanks broke the world's trotting record at Independence,
Iowa, some years ago, her former owner, Mr. Hart Boswell, of
Lexington, who raised and trained her, was asked if Nancy would ever
lower that record. He replied: "Well, if the time comes that the track
is just right, the atmosphere just right, the driver just right and
Nancy just right, I believe she will." See the combination. Break it
anywhere and the brave little mare would fail.
Just so speakers are affected by conditions, by acoustics, atmosphere,
size and temper of the audience, and the speaker's own mental and
physical condition. Many a good sermon has been killed by a poor
sexton. Many a grand thought has perished in foul air.
Charles Spurgeon was preaching to a large audience in a mission church
in London, when want of ventilation affected speaker and audience. Mr.
Spurgeon said to a member of the church: "Brother, lift that window
near you."
"It won't lift," replied the brother.
"Then smash the glass and I'll pay the bill to-morrow," said Spurgeon.
Suppose the great horse Uhlan should be announced to trot against his
record; suppose at the appointed time, with the grandstand crowded and
every condition favorable, as the great trotting wonder reached the
first quarter pole, some one were to run across the track just ahead
of the horse, then another and another; what kind of a record would be
made?
What management would allow a horse to be thus handicapped? Where is
the man who would be so inconsiderate as to thus hinder a horse? Yet
when a minister has worked while the world slept, that he not only
might sustain his record but gather souls into the kingdom; when the
opening exercises have given sufficient time for all to be present;
when the text is announced and the preacher is reaching out after the
attention and sympathy of his audience some one enters the door, walks
nearly the full length of the aisle; then another and then two more,
each one crossing the track of the preacher and yet he is expected to
keep up his record and make good. If you are a friend of your pastor
be present when he announces his text; give him your attention and
thus cheer him on as you would your favorite horse.
An eminent minister said: "There, I had a good thought for you, but
the creaking of the new boots of that brother coming down the aisle
knocked it quite out of my head."
One who had heard me many times said: "Why do you do better at Ocean
Grove than anywhere else I hear you?" My answer was: "Because of
conditions. The great auditorium seats ten thousand, the atmosphere is
invigorated by salt sea breezes; a choir of five hundred sing the
audience into a receptive mood and the speaker is borne from climax to
climax on wings of applause."
I would not have you infer from this that a large audience is always
necessary to success. Indeed the most successful and satisfactory
address I ever made was to an audience of one. If I can make as
favorable an impression upon you as I did upon that young lady I shall
be gratified.
In Pauling, New York, Chauncey M. Depew by his attention and applause
inspired me more than the whole audience beside; while time and again
have I been helped to do my best by the presence of that matchless
queen of the platform, Frances E. Willard.
The very opposite of greatness has had the same effect upon me. At the
Pontiac, Illinois, Chautauqua after lecturing to a great audience, I
was invited by the superintendent of the State Reformatory to address
the inmates of the prison. At the close of a thirty minutes' talk the
superintendent said: "Your address to my boys exceeded the one you
gave at the Chautauqua."
Why was it better? At the Chautauqua I was trying to entertain and
instruct an intelligent audience. Within the grey walls of that prison
I was reaching down to the very depths, endeavoring to lift up human
beings, marred and scarred by sin and crime, but dear to the mothers
who bore them and the Savior who died for them.
If I were a preacher in New York City and were announced to preach a
sermon on home missionary work I would not go to the church by way of
the mansions of the rich where children, shod in satin slippers dance
and play over velvet tapestry, but by way of the slums where I would
meet the children of misery, where,
"To stand at night 'mid the city's throng,
And scan the faces that pass along,
Is to read a book whose every leaf
Is a history of woe and want and grief.
As in tears of sorrow and sin and shame,
You read a story of blight and blame,
Your heart goes further than hand can reach
And you feel a sermon you cannot preach."
Whoever would prove worthy of the platform must have a message and
give to it the devotion of mind, heart and conscience, no matter
whether his purpose is to convince by reasoning, convert by appeal,
delight by rhetoric, or cure melancholy by humor. Each has its useful
influence on the platform.
Some persons have an impression that the student deals in logic, while
the orator simply starts his tongue to running, and goes off and
leaves it to work automatically.
Bishop Robert McIntyre was one of the greatest pulpit orators of his
age, yet I dare say this gifted man gave as much time and thought to
his famous word painting of the Chicago fire, as Joseph Cook ever gave
to mining any treasure of thought he laid upon the altar of education.
I know many teachers of oratory say: "Study your subject, analyze it
well, and leave words to the inspiration of the occasion." But suppose
when the occasion comes, instead of inspiration one has indigestion,
then what?
While a speaker should not be so confined to composition that he
cannot reach out after, and cage any passing bird of thought, yet as
the leaf of the mulberry tree must go through the stomach of a
silk-worm, before it can become silk, so climaxes should be warped and
woofed into language before they can be forceful and beautiful.
At the Lincoln, Nebraska, Assembly some years ago a noted humorist
gave an address on the "Philosophy of Wit." He called oratory a lost
art, and to prove his contention he quoted from William Jennings
Bryan's famous Chicago convention speech. He said: "What would a young
woman think of her lover who would say 'My darling, the crown of
thorns shall never be pressed down upon your fair brow?'" The humorist
expected applause but it failed to materialize, for Mr. Bryan is
highly respected in his state and his oratory is a charm wherever he
is heard.
The speaker not only exhibited poor taste, but his wit was pointless,
for when a man can go before a convention of fourteen hundred
delegates and by one burst of eloquence capture the convention, secure
the nomination for the presidency, and then with the press and the
leaders of his party against him go up and down the country, and from
the rear of a railroad train, almost capture the White House, the day
of oratory is not gone by.
Schriner, the great animal painter, painted the picture of a bony mule
eating a tuft of hay. That picture sold in Petersburg, Russia, for
fifteen thousand dollars, while the original mule sold for one dollar
and thirty cents. If the painting of Schriner made in the price of
that mule, a difference of fourteen thousand, nine hundred,
ninety-eight dollars and seventy cents why is not word painting worth
something?
Listen, while I give you a short extract from the address of James G.
Blaine at the memorial service of our martyr President Garfield. With
the audience wrought up to the greatest sympathy by his tribute he
said:
"Surely if happiness can come from robust health, ideal domestic life
and honors of the world James A. Garfield was a happy man that July
morning. One moment strong, erect with promise of peaceful, useful
years of life before him: The next moment wounded, bleeding, helpless.
"Through the days and weeks of agony that followed, he saw his sun
slowly sinking, the plans and purposes of his life broken and the
sweetest of household ties soon to be severed.
"Masterful in mortal weakness he became the center of a nation's love,
and enshrined in the prayers of the Christian world.
"As the end drew near, his youthful yearning for the sea returned. The
White House palace of power became a hospital of pain. He begged to be
taken from its prison walls and stifling air.
"Silently, tenderly the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer
to the longed-for healing of the sea. There with wan face lifted to
the cooling breeze, he looked wistfully out upon the changing wonders
of the ocean; its far-off sails white in the morning light; its
restless waves rolling shoreward to break in the noon-day sun; the red
clouds of evening arching low, kissing the blue lips of the sea, and
above the serene, silent pathway to the stars.
"Let us believe his dying eyes read a mystic meaning only the parting
soul can know; that he heard the waves of the ebbing tide of life
breaking on the far-off shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow
the calm, sweet breath of heaven's morning."
Place behind these utterances the rich voice and magnetic manner of
the "Plumed Knight" of the platform, and you can realize what oratory
means.
If you will here pardon me for going from the sublime to the
ridiculous, I will show you how a bit of a school boy rhetoric may win
its way over solid argument. In the country school I attended, there
was a debating society. Parents as well as their sons were admitted to
the society and the public was invited to the debates. On one occasion
the question for debate was: "Which is the more attractive, the works
of nature or the works of art?"
There had been an appeal from a general debate and this time one
speaker was chosen from each side. My father was chosen to represent
the negative and I the affirmative. My father was a good speaker but
so fond of facts he had no use for rhetoric. I had the opening address
of thirty minutes, my father had forty-five minutes and I had fifteen
minutes to close the debate.
As father talked I wondered how he ever got hold of so many facts. He
piled them up until my first address was swept away by the triumphs of
art. The only hope I had for the affirmative was in the closing
fifteen minutes. Fortunately for me, the judge was a bachelor and very
much in love with a golden-haired, accomplished young woman who lived
in a country home very near the schoolhouse, and was then in the
audience. In closing the debate I referred to father's address in a
complimentary manner, and then asked the judge to be seated in
imagination on a knoll nearby. On one side of that knoll I placed all
my father had claimed for art, withholding nothing. On the other side
was the home of this Blue Grass belle. I began a description of her
home and personality. I pictured "the orchard, the meadow, the deep
tangled wild-wood and every loved spot" the judge well knew. I
pictured the brook that ran through the meadow into the woodland and
on down the valley, singing as it ran,
"I wind about and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing;
Here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grey-ling."
When my time was half gone I felt I was gone too unless I could get a
little nearer the heart of the judge. Opening the door art had made to
shut in the flowers of a lovely family I brought out the golden-haired
girl.
Taking off the sun-bonnet of art, that the good-night kisses of the
sinking sun might enrich her rosy cheeks and golden tresses, I sent
her strolling down the winding walk hedged in by hawthorn and hyacinth
to the water's brink. Here I gave her a cushion of blue-grass, and
with the rising moon pouring its shimmering sheen upon the ripples at
her feet, I sent her voice floating away on the evening air singing:
"Roll on silver moon, guide the traveler on his way." Here the
audience cheered, the judge smiled and I felt encouraged.
With but two minutes left I had the shapely fingers of nature, take
out the hair-pins of art and the golden tresses fall about the snowy
neck of nature. Then came the untying of the shoe-strings of art; off
came the shoes and stockings of art, and the pretty feet of nature
were dipping in the limpid stream. I said, "Judge, the question is,
which is the more attractive, the works of nature or the works of art?
With my father's picture of steam engines, stage coaches, reapers,
binders, mowing machines and every known triumph of art on one side;
on the other the highest type of the world's creation, a beautiful
woman, the stars of nature stooping to kiss her brow, and laughing
waters of nature leaping to kiss her feet; where your eyes would rest
there let your decision be given."
After the debate a friend said to me: "It was that last home picture
that saved you." My father who heard the remark said, "Yes, a picture
of a red-headed girl washing her feet in a goose branch." I may add, I
was careful after the contest not to get very near the young lady with
whom I had taken such platform liberty.
Reason, rhetoric, pathos, poetry, diction, gesture, wit and humor,
each has its place on the platform. While logic sounds the depths of
thought, humor ripples its surface with laughing wavelets. While
reason cultivates the cornfields of the mind, rhetoric beautifies the
pleasure gardens.
John B. Gough was the most popular platform orator of his day. He
began lecturing at from two to five dollars an evening. He grew in
popularity until he was in demand at five hundred dollars a lecture,
and no one before or since more successfully used all the arts of the
platform, from the comic that drew the very rabble of the streets, to
flights of eloquence that captured college culture. It has been well
said: "While Gough was a great preacher of righteousness, he was a
whole theatre in dramatic delivery." Lecturers, like preachers, are
fishers of men, and there are as many kinds of people in an average
audience as there are kinds of fish in the sea. It requires variety of
bait for humanity as well as for fish.
Sam Jones used slang as one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats
all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua.
Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang,
satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before time for his lecture
the people were hurrying to the auditorium. When presented to the
great audience he said: "Record! Record! Record!" I remember the
sermon as one of the sweetest and most powerful I ever heard. Its
influence will not cease this side the eternal morning.
Rowland Hill, the popular London preacher, used quaint humor to draw
the people, and powerful appeal to sweep them into the kingdom.
It is said the fountain of laughter and fountain of tears lie very
close together. My experience has been, that often the best way to the
fountain of tears is by the way of the fountain of laughter. Some
years ago at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I was to lecture on the subject,
"Boys and Girls, Nice and Naughty." A wealthy widow and her only son
were there from New York, where the young boy had been leading a "gay
life." Ocean Grove with its quiet, moral atmosphere was a dull place
for this young man. He happened to read the subject for the lecture on
the bulletin board, and thinking it suggestive of humor he went to
hear the lecture. He had what he went for, as the lecture did deal
with the fountain of laughter, but it also dealt with the fountain of
tears. It swung the red lantern of danger athwart the pathway of the
wayward young man. Following a story of mother love, I said: "Young
man, let the cares and burdens of life press you down to the very
earth, let the great waves of sorrow roll over your soul, but let no
act of yours ever roll a clod upon the coffin of her, whose image,
enshrined upon the inner walls of your memory, white winters and long
bright summers can never wash away."
A minister told me after, that in a young people's meeting this young
man arose and said: "I attended a lecture at Ocean Grove, thinking I
would have a humorous entertainment. I left the auditorium the saddest
soul in the great audience. Going down to the beach I tried to drive
away the spell, but it grew upon me. I could see how I had grieved my
mother, and the past came rolling up like the waves of the ocean. I
shuddered as they broke on my awakened conscience and quickened
memory. Behind me was an unhallowed past, and before me the brink of
an awful eternity. There and then I resolved to change my course.
Alone under the stars I made my resolve and then started to my mother.
She was waiting for me, and said: 'My son, I wished for you at the
lecture this evening. I think you would have enjoyed it.' I then told
her I was determined to lead a new life and had come to seal my vow
with her kiss."
That young man went to the lecture to laugh, he left to walk alone
with God under the stars by the ocean deep, there to decide to lead a
righteous life, and seal the vow with a loving mother's kiss.
So while in my humble way I have endeavored to use the arts that
entertain I have cherished the purpose to better human lives.
I have referred to the platform as being baited for humanity. Have you
ever considered how it is baited to resist the forces of evil?
The day was when Satan had an attraction trust that controlled about
the whole output of entertainment. The platform now is a picture
gallery where is to be had all beauty in nature, from our own land to
the land of the midnight sun.
In moving pictures it presents to those who never saw ship, sail or
sea, the landing of a great steamer, with splashing of spray as real
as if seen from the dock. To those who enjoy music it furnishes band
concerts, orchestra, bell-ringing, quartettes, solos, plantation
melodies, rag-time tunes and women whistlers.
The platform today beats the devil in output of entertainment. It has
scoured field and forest, trained birds and dogs to round out the
program of a chautauqua.
Its breadth takes in all creeds and kinds. While it greets with waving
lilies Bishop Vincent, leader of the great chautauqua movement, it
cordially welcomes the priest, the Jew, the Chinaman, the negro,
republican, democrat, progressive, prohibitionist, socialist and
suffragist.
The platform has grown to be a great university, a musical festival, a
zoological garden, an art institute, an agricultural college and a
domestic science school.
Do you ask has the platform any blemishes? I answer yes. All
enterprises have their blemishes. The press is a potent power for good
and yet many bad things get into print. Sometimes from the platform
come voices without the ring of sincerity, entertainments without
uplifting influence and anecdotes without respect to public decency.
When attending platform entertainments one should discriminate as when
eating fish, enjoy the meat and discard the bones. With good taste in
selection one rarely ever need go away hungry.