THE FOUR METHODS OF PUBLIC SPEECH—THEIR ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.
“What shall I do?” exclaims the young student who expects soon to face
public audiences. “Shall I write out what I have to say, polish it as
highly as possible, and then utter this finished product? Or must I take
the risk of being able to say nothing at all, in hope of gaining the
ease and naturalness of spontaneous speech?”
It must be admitted that the first course indicated above has many
advantages, and seems in harmony with the marked tendency of
civilization toward division of labor. It is hard to perform several
different operations at the same moment. Look how heavily the extempore
speaker is burdened. He must think of his subject; arrange his ideas,
sentences, and words; remember quotations; originate proper tones and
gestures; and keep his attention closely fixed upon his audience. All
this he must do with the utmost promptness and regularity, or incur a
fearful penalty—that of embarrassment and failure. Few men have the
courage to stand long before an audience, waiting for a missing word or
idea. To avoid this danger the mind of an extempore speaker must be
accustomed to work with the rapidity and precision of a printing-press;
otherwise, the appalling danger of failure and ridicule will constantly
stare him in the face. It is not wonderful that such perils have made
many speakers perpetual slaves of the pen.
But it may be noted that the public reader has an equal number of things
to do at the same moment. He must look on the manuscript and recognize
the words—a complicated process, which practice has made easy, but which
does greatly distract attention. The whole discourse must be brought
into mind as really as if extemporized with the difference that now,
instead of arising from within, it is brought back from without—a much
more difficult achievement. Tones and gestures are also increasingly
difficult. The reader will usually wish to give some attention to the
audience, which, with manuscript before him, will be far from easy.
After he has done his best his hearers will think, “This man is reading,
not speaking—giving us what he thought yesterday or last week, not what
he is thinking now.” Possibly this will not diminish their pleasure, but
the sentiment needs to be recognized.
The resource of memorizing the discourse after it has been prepared
relieves the eye and lessens the physical distraction, but it throws an
additional and very heavy burden upon the mind, and introduces new
embarrassments peculiar to itself.
The advice enforced in these pages will be: “Extemporize; take the risk;
fail, if necessary” though precautions will be given making failure well
nigh impossible; “but in all cases when you speak to the people with the
object of convincing or persuading, let it be seen that you speak
directly the thoughts and feelings of that very moment.”
The two extremes of verbal communication between men are letters, books,
or essays, on the one side, and desultory talk on the other. In the one,
the pen is everything; in the other, it is not employed at all. Neither
mode of address constitutes oratory, but the whole field of this art
lies between them.
There are four principal methods of discourse distinguished in reference
to the mode of delivery, which we may name as follows:
1. Reading.
2. Recitation.
3. Extemporizing.
4. The composite method.
Of these, the first two have the great advantage of allowing the speaker
as much time as may be necessary for the arrangement of the speech down
to the minutest detail. Words may be selected with the nicest care, and
if the first effort is not satisfactory the speech may be written again
and again, until the writer’s full power has been utilized. After
delivery, the manuscript is at once available for publication or
preservation. The first method gives the orator something to lean upon.
Should he become embarrassed, he can fix his attention closely upon his
writing until he recovers. Should his attention be distracted, and the
thread of discourse be broken, it can be taken up again at any point.
In recitation more declamatory fervor is possible than in reading.
Gesticulation is less restrained. The speaker need not be confined
within the narrow limits of a circle, the centre of which is his
manuscript, and the radius the distance at which he can read it.
As an offset, there is the effort, in some cases very considerable, of
memorizing; the variable power of memory in different states of health;
and the possibility of altogether forgetting the prepared words. It must
also be admitted that few men can declaim well. Some have mastered the
difficult art, and have won laurels in this way; but their number,
especially in the modern world, is comparatively small.
Extemporizing does not exclude the most exhaustive study of a subject.
It is easier, indeed, to write upon a subject only partially understood,
than to address an audience directly upon the same topic. Neither does
this method exclude the most careful pre-arrangement of the thoughts
enunciated. The trained speaker will find it comparatively easy to make
a plan at a moment’s notice which will serve as a basis for discourse;
but he will usually be provided with a plan long before he begins to
speak. He will aim to understand his subject, make the best arrangement
of it in his power, select what is most fitting for his purpose, and
then, face to face with his audience, will give them, in a manly way,
the outflowing of his mind and heart. It is in this sense alone that the
word “extempore” will be used in this volume. We maintain that, so far
from being the refuge of ignorance and sloth, extempore speech is often
the vehicle of the widest culture and the most extensive knowledge.
The increased attention paid to extempore speech within a few years
indicates a hopeful improvement of taste among professional men. The
majority of the people have always preferred it. They do not greatly
desire of pulpit, platform, or bar, the verbal elaboration favored by
written speech; but fervent manner, earnest conviction, and directness
are highly prized. Readers and reciters imitate, as far as they can, the
manner of spontaneous speech. It is well to remember that this tribute
of imitation is never paid by the superior to the inferior.
One argument in favor of extempore delivery has never received due
consideration: it is far more healthful than other forms of address. In
the case of men who speak only at long intervals, this consideration may
not be weighty; but to others, it involves years of added usefulness, or
even life itself.
This superior healthfulness has often been observed, but what is its
source? The answer will go far to show why true extempore speech is more
persuasive and emotional than any other variety. In chemistry, a law of
affinity has long been recognized, according to which substances just
set free from combination have greater energy, and are more ready to
form new combinations, than ever afterward. In the same way, voice and
gesture readily respond to _nascent_ emotion; that is, to emotion
aroused for the first time. Every speaker who utters the thought of the
moment, if not fettered by bad habits, or paralyzed by fear, will
exhibit a perpetual change of position, a variety of muscular movement,
and a play of expression which he can never afterward reproduce. The
pitch, rate, and force of the voice are controlled in the same effective
and almost automatic manner. An ordinary extemporizer, when thoroughly
aroused, will employ as great a variety of tones and gestures as a
highly trained elocutionist in his most elaborate recitations. Nothing
is asserted as to the skill of the combinations, the melody of the
voice, or the grace of the action; though even in these the advantage is
not always on the side of the elocutionist. But in distributing the
effort among all the organs, and in giving that alternate rest and
action upon which health and strength depend, the elocutionist may
strive in vain to equal the model set him by a good extempore speech. In
Western and seaside camp-meetings, speakers who have never spent an hour
in vocal drill will often address thousands of people in the open air
with an energy of voice and manner that would, if employed over a
manuscript by any other than the most accomplished elocutionist,
speedily bring all efforts and the speaker himself to an end. But he
easily endures the strain because there is that continual change which
is the equivalent of rest. Notice some thoroughly excited speaker,
trained only in the school of experience—possibly a mere demagogue or
popular agitator—at his work. A word shot forth almost as piercing as a
steam whistle is followed by a sentence far down the scale, and when
emotion demands the same high key again, the organs in that position are
fresh for a new ear-piercing effort. There is equal variation in the
rate of speech. The whole body joins in the expression of emotion,
without the slightest conscious effort, impelled only by the aroused
nervous energy which seeks that mode of discharge. When the effort ends,
the man is weary, indeed; but with a weariness distributed over the
whole body, and without a trace of that exhaustion of brain, throat, or
the upper part of the lungs, which has sent many manuscript
speakers—clergymen, especially—to untimely graves.
What a difference there is between the preacher who languidly reads his
manuscript for twenty-five minutes to a hundred people, and closes the
mighty effort with aching head, quivering nerves, and exhausted throat,
and the typical camp-meeting orator! The latter works hard, addressing
thousands of people for an hour and a half or two hours; but as the
stamping foot, the tense arm, the nodding head, the fully expanded
lungs, and the swaying body have all taken part, the blood and nervous
energy have been sent in due proportion to every organ, and there is no
want of balance. The man can repeat the same performances the next day,
and continue it, as many itinerants have done, for months together.
Similar examples of endurance have often been given in heated political
canvasses by orators of the very highest eminence, as well as by others
unknown to fame. Difference of cultivation or of earnestness will not
suffice to explain the contrast between the two classes of speakers.
The chemical analogy is instructive, and goes far to account for the
observed differences. When thought passes out of the mist and shadow of
general conceptions into the definite form of words, it has immeasurably
greater power to arouse and agitate the mind in which this
transformation is made, than it can have when the same words are merely
recalled in memory or read from a sheet of paper. When the whole process
of expression takes place at once:—the mental glance over the subject;
the coinage of thoughts into words and sentences; the utterance of the
words as they rise to the lips; the selection of key, inflection,
emphasis, gesture:—the man must have a very cold nature, or his theme be
very dull, if, with a sympathizing audience before him, the tides of
emotion do not begin to swell. But notice how other modes of delivery
squander this wealth of emotion. The writer carefully elaborates his
language. He is perfectly calm, or if there is any excitement, it is
purely intellectual, and the quickened flow of blood is directed only to
the brain. When the ardor of composition subsides, and he reviews his
pages, the fire seems to have died out of them. While memorizing, or
making himself familiar enough with what he has written to read it with
effect, he may recall some of the first ardor, but only to have it again
subside. When at last he stands up to speak, his production is a
thrice-told tale. In but few cases will he feel the full inspiration of
his message. If he recites, the effort of memory distracts his
attention, and he is probably reading from a page of manuscript
presented by his mental vision. If he reads directly, he must take a
position to see his paper, and at least part of the time keep his eye
fixed upon it. The address is felt to come, notwithstanding all the
artifice he can employ, at least as much from the paper as from the man.
The most profound culture in reading and declamation only suffices to
bring back part of the emotion with which the genuine extemporizer
starts.
As bearing upon the subject of the healthfulness of extempore speech, a
reference to the writer’s own experience may not be improper. Severe and
exceptional hardship in the civil war led to a complete break-down in
health. The hope of any kind of active work, or even of many months of
life, seemed very slight. The question was not so much how to speak
best, as how to speak at all. Fortunately, a long series of daily
lectures, involving no great intellectual effort, proved that mere
talking was not necessarily hurtful. Some elocutionary hints at the
right time were also of great value. When the pulpit was entered,
greater difficulty arose. A few trials of memorized preaching produced
alarming nervous exhaustion. Reading was equally deleterious to throat
and voice. One path alone seemed open; and entering upon that with
confidence, which eighteen years of experience has only deepened, the
writer found that extempore speech was, for him, probably the most
healthful of all forms of exercise. It is not likely that one-third of
this term of work would have been secured by any other kind of address.
Another important advantage is the saving of time afforded by this mode
of speech. The hours otherwise wasted in word-elaboration may be more
usefully employed in general studies. The field for an orator’s
improvement is boundless; but if obliged to fully write a large number
of discourses, he must either work very rapidly or very perseveringly to
enter far into that field. But if less preparation is given to
individual speeches, more time will be available for the improvement of
the speaker. Or if he uses the same length of preparation for each
discourse in the extempore mode, he can collect and classify a far
greater amount of material, and the mental element will thus gain far
more than the merely verbal loses.
Only the fourth or composite method of discourse remains for our
consideration. At first glance, it seems to combine the advantages of
all other methods, and for many minds it possesses great attraction. In
it the less important parts of the speech are given off-hand, while
passages of especial brilliancy or power are written fully, and either
read or recited. Added variety may be given by reading some of these,
and declaiming others from memory. A very brilliant and showy discourse
may thus be constructed. But the difficulties are also very great. Full
success requires a rare combination of desirable qualities. A good
verbal memory, the power of composing effective fragments, and of
declaiming or reading them well, are not often joined to all the
qualities that make a ready and impressive extemporizer. For this reason
it usually follows that in composite discourses one of the elements so
greatly predominates as to dwarf the others. A manuscript discourse in
which an extempore remark or two is interpolated must be classed with
written discourses. Neither does extemporizing lose its special
character, though some scattered quotations be read or repeated from
memory. To pick up a book, in the midst of a speech, and read a theme or
argument, or the statement of another’s position, does not make the
discourse composite in character, unless such reading be the principal
part of it. An eloquent speaker on one occasion occupied more than half
his time, and produced far more than half his effect, by reciting poems
of the author who was the nominal subject of his lecture. The
performance would have been more appropriately styled, “Recitations from
the poems of ——.” The few running comments introduced did not entitle it
to be classed as an original production, because they were obviously not
its governing motive.
How shall the advantages of extemporizing be secured, while avoiding its
dangers? No commendation can be given to those who simply _talk_ to an
audience, giving forth only what may happen to be in mind at the moment
of delivery. The most pedantic writing and lifeless reading would, as a
habit, be preferable to such recklessness. Unwritten speech does not
preclude the fullest preparation. The plans advocated in this volume
will enable a speaker to gather materials as widely, arrange them as
systematically, and hold them as firmly in hand, as if every word was
written; while at the same time he may have all the freedom and play of
thought, the rush of passion, and the energy of delivery that comes in
the happiest moment of out-gushing words. But those who are unwilling to
labor may as well lay down the book. We do not profess to teach a
process of labor-saving, though much labor will be changed from
mechanical to intellectual, and after long experience the total saving
may be great. But in the first stages those who have been accustomed to
write in full will find that the change involves an increase, rather
than a diminution, of work.