CONFIDENCE.
How may that boldness and confidence which is indispensable to an orator
best be acquired? On your success in this direction, hinges all other
kinds of improvement. So long as a nervous dread hangs about you, it
will make the practice of extemporaneous speech painful and repulsive,
paralyzing all your faculties in the moment of utterance.
You must acquire confidence in your own powers and be willing to trust
to their guidance.
But it is not necessary that you should exhibit or even feel this
confidence at the beginning of a speech, for it may then appear like
boastfulness or egotism. It is enough if you then have confidence in
your subject, and in the fullness of your preparation. You may then
without injury wish that some one, that you imagine more worthy, stood
in your place. But if this feeling continues all through the address,
failure is inevitable. Many a man begins while trembling in every limb,
especially if the occasion be of unusual character, but soon becomes
inspired with his theme and forgets all anxiety. If your fear be greater
and more persistent, keeping you in perpetual terror, it will destroy
all liberty and eloquence. When laboring under such an influence, you
lose self-possession, become confused, all interest evaporates from your
most carefully prepared thoughts, and you sit down at length, convinced
that you have failed. It is but little consolation to believe that you
had all the time in your brain the necessary power and material to
achieve splendid success, if you had but possessed the courage to use it
aright.
There is no remedy for fear more effectual than to do all our work under
the immediate inspiration of duty. This feeling is not the privilege of
the minister alone, but of each one who is conscious that he occupies
the place where he stands because it is his right to be there, because
he has some information to give, some cause to advocate, or some
important task to do. With such consciousness we can speak our best, and
finish with the satisfaction of having done our work as truly as if we
had performed duty placed upon us in any other department of labor. But
if we aim simply at making an exhibition of self and of showing our own
skill and eloquence, then the smiles and frowns of the audience becomes
a matter of overwhelming importance, and if we fail we are deeply
mortified and bewail our foolishness in exposing ourselves to such
needless risk.
The lack of proper confidence is the great reason for using manuscript
in the moment of speech. The speaker makes one effort to extemporize and
fails. This is not wonderful, for the path to success usually lies
through failure from the time that we master the wonderful art of
walking through many failures; but instead of copying the schoolboy
motto, “try, try again,” and reaping wisdom and experience from past
efforts, he loses all hope—concludes that he is disqualified for that
kind of work, and thus sinks to mediocrity and tameness, when he might
have been brilliant in the fields of true oratory.
The exhibition of confidence and resolution by the speaker is a draft
drawn on the respect of an audience which is nearly always honored,
while the opposite qualities hide the possession of real talent. Hearers
readily pardon timidity at the beginning of an address, for then
attention is fixed upon the speaker himself, and his shrinking seems a
graceful exhibition of modesty. But when he has fully placed his subject
before them they associate him with it. If he is dignified and assured,
they listen in pleased attention and acknowledge the weight of his
words. These qualities are very different from bluster and bravado,
which injure the cause advocated and excite disgust toward the speaker.
The first appears to arise from a sense of the dignity of the subject;
the second, from an assumption of personal superiority—an opinion no
speaker has a right to entertain, for in the very act of addressing an
audience he constitutes them his judges.
An orator needs confidence in his own powers in order to avail himself
fully of the suggestions of the moment. Some of the best thoughts he
will ever think flash upon him while speaking, and are out of the line
of his preparation. There is no time to carefully weigh them. He must
reject them immediately or begin to follow, not knowing whither they
lead, and this in audible words, with the risk that he may be landed in
some absurdity. He cannot pause for a moment, as the least hesitation
breaks the spell he has woven around his hearers, while if he rejects
the offered idea he may lose a genuine inspiration. One searching glance
that will not allow time for his own feelings or those of his auditors
to cool, and then—decision to reject, or to follow the new track with
the same assurance as if the end were clearly in view—this is all that
is possible. It requires some boldness to pursue the latter course, and
yet every speaker knows that his highest efforts—efforts that have
seemed beyond his normal power, and which have done more in a minute to
gain the object for which he spoke than all the remainder of the
discourse—have been of this character.
It also requires a good degree of confidence to firmly begin a sentence,
even when the general idea is plain, without knowing just how it will
end. This difficulty is experienced sometimes even by the most fluent. A
man may learn to cast sentences very rapidly, but it will take a little
time to pass them through his mind, and when one is finished, the next
may not yet have fully condensed itself into words. To begin to utter a
partially constructed sentence, uncertain how it will end, and press on
without letting the people see any hesitation, demands no small
confidence in one’s power of commanding words and framing sentences. Yet
a bold and confident speaker need feel no uneasiness. He may prolong a
pause while he is thinking of a needed word, or throw in something
extraneous to fill up the time till the right term and construction are
found. Yet the perfect remedy for these dangers is to learn the
difficult art of standing before an audience with nothing to say and
making the pause as effective as any phase of speech. This can be done,
dangerous as it seems. It does require far more of courage to face an
audience when the mouth is empty than when we are talking; the mettle of
troops is never so severely tried as when their cartridge-boxes are
empty; but all the resources of eloquence are not at command until this
test can be calmly and successfully endured. An eminent speaker once
said to a friend after a very successful effort, “What part of the
address you have been praising most impressed you?” “It was not anything
you _said_,” was the reply, “but the thrilling _pause_ you made of
nearly half a minute after a bold assertion, as if you were challenging
any one to rise and deny what you had asserted.” “Oh! I remember,”
returned the other; “I could not get the next sentence fixed quite
right, and was fully determined not to say it at all unless it came into
the proper shape.”
This necessary confidence can be cultivated by striving to exercise it,
and by assuming its appearance where the reality is not. The raw recruit
is transformed into a veteran soldier by meeting and overcoming danger.
All the drill in the world will not supply the want of actual experience
on the battle-field. So the extempore speaker must make up his mind to
accept all the risk, and patiently endure all the failures and perils
that result. If he fully decides that the reward is worthy of the effort
he will be greatly aided in the attempt, as he will thus avoid the
wavering and shrinking and questioning that would otherwise distress him
and paralyze his powers. A failure will but lead to stronger and more
persistent effort, made with added experience. Success will be an
argument for future confidence, and thus any result will forward him on
his course.
In regard to the difficulty of framing sentences in the moment of
utterance, the experienced speaker will become so expert, having found
his way through so many difficulties of that kind, that the greatest
danger experienced will be that of carelessly allowing his words to flow
on without unity or polish. It does require a determined effort, not
merely to _express_ meaning, but to pack and _compress_ the greatest
possible amount into striking and crystalline words. Experience also
gives him such a knowledge of the working of his own thoughts that he
will be able to decide at the first suggestion what unbidden ideas
should be accepted and what ones should be rejected. If these new
thoughts, however far outside of his preparation, seem worthy, he will
give them instant expression; if not, he will dismiss them and continue
unchecked along his intended route.
It is hoped that the reading of this treatise will increase the
confidence of extempore speakers in two ways; first, by producing in the
mind of each one perfect conviction that for him the better way is to
adopt unwritten speech without reserve; and second, by pointing out a
mode of preparation which will give as good ground for confidence as a
fully written manuscript could possibly supply. To gain confidence which
is not warranted by the event would only provoke a hurtful reaction; but
confidence which is justified by experience grows ever stronger.
We have thus glanced at a few of the qualities which need to be
cultivated and strengthened for the purposes of public speech. The
survey does not cover the whole field of desirable qualities, for this
would be to give a treatise on general education. Perfect speech
requires every faculty of the mind to be brought to the highest state of
efficiency. There is no mental power which will not contribute to
success. The whole limits of possible education are comprised in the two
branches already mentioned as concerning the orator—those relating to
the _reception_ of knowledge and those to its _communication_. The
harmonious combination and perfect development of these two is the ideal
of excellence—an ideal so high that it can only be approached. All
knowledge is of use to the orator. He may not have occasion to employ it
in a particular speech, but it contributes to give certainty, breadth,
and scope to his views, and assures him that what he does put into his
speeches is the best that can be selected. If he is ignorant, he is
obliged to use for a discourse on any subject not that material which is
the best in itself, but simply the best that may happen to be known to
him, and he cannot be sure that something far more suitable is not
overlooked.
The communicating faculties are, if possible, still more important. A
great part of the value even of a diamond depends upon its polish and
setting, and the richest and wisest thoughts fail to reach the heart or
captivate the intellect unless they are cast into the proper form, and
given external beauty.
Let the speaker, then, have no fear of knowing too much. Neither need he
despair if he does not now know a great deal. He cannot be perfect at
once, but must build for future years. If he wishes a sudden and local
celebrity that will never widen, but will probably molder away even in
his own lifetime, he may possibly gain it in another way. Let him learn
a few of the externals of elocution, and then, with great care, or by
the free use of the materials of others, prepare a few finely worded
discourses, and recite or declaim them over and over again as often as
he can find a new audience. He may not gain as much applause as he
desires by this method, but it will be sufficiently evanescent. He will
not grow up to the measure of real greatness, but become daily more
dwarfed and stereotyped in intellect.
The following quotation contains a good example of the seductive but
misleading methods sometimes held up before the young orator: “They
talk,” said Tom Marshall to an intimate friend, “of my astonishing
bursts of eloquence, and doubtless imagine it is my genius bubbling
over. It is nothing of the sort. I’ll tell you how I do it: I select a
subject and study it from the ground up. When I have mastered it fully,
I write a speech on it. Then I take a walk and come back, and revise and
correct. In a few days I subject it to another pruning, and then recopy
it. Next I add the finishing touches, round it off with graceful
periods, and commit it to memory. Then I speak it in the fields, in my
father’s lawn, and before my mirror, until gesture and delivery are
perfect. It sometimes takes me six weeks or two months to get up a
speech. When I am prepared I come to town. I generally select a court
day, when there is sure to be a crowd. I am called on for a speech, and
am permitted to select my own subject. I speak my piece. It astonishes
the people, as I intended it should, and they go away marveling at my
power of oratory. They call it genius, but it is the hardest kind of
work.”
No objection is made to the quantity of work thus described, but might
not the same amount be expended in more profitable directions? A speech
thus prepared was a mere trick intended to astonish the people.
Sometimes the great Daniel Webster took equal pains in the verbal
expression of some worthy thought, which was afterward held in the grasp
of a powerful memory until a fitting place was found for it in some
masterly speech. The difference between the two processes is greater
than seems at first glance. Marshall’s plan was like a beautiful garment
thrown over a clothes dummy in a shop window; Webster’s, like the same
garment, worn for comfort and ornament by a living man.
It is better that the speaker should “intermeddle with all knowledge,”
and make the means of communicating his thoughts as perfect as possible.
Then out of the fullness of his treasure, let him talk to the people
with an adequate purpose in view, and if no sudden acclaim greets him,
he will be weighty and influential from the first, and each passing year
will add to his power.