of expression, an appropriateness of illustration, and a simplicity of
reasoning that made one feel that the other man had committed an
impertinence in presenting his side at all. Of course he won his case.
Respect yourself. A man may lose his money, his reputation--may even
lose everything; and yet he has not lost everything if he retains his
self-respect. Be a gentleman at the outset of your career and forever.
Do not move among men like a beggar for favors. Do not wear poor
clothes. Apparel yourself like a gentleman.
No client worth having respects you for advertising your poverty. Do
not fear that your community will not know that you are poor. They
know it, and sympathize with you. But every one of our race likes to
see a man "game." Therefore, dress well. Bear yourself like a man who
has prosperous potentialities if not prosperous assets.
Keep your office in as perfect condition as yourself. Remember that it
is your workshop. Put all your extra money into books. There is no
adornment of an office equal to a library, just as there is no
adornment of a mechanic's shop equal to his tools. You know what you
think of a doctor when you find his office equipped with the latest
appliances.
Do not permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow
lawyers. You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the
expense of the discipline of your office. It is nothing to your client
that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the
felicity of your conversation even in your office. Or, rather, it _is_
something to your client--he wants his case won and he thinks _that_
will take all your time. And so it will.
Be very careful of the places you frequent. Remember that Pericles was
never seen except upon the street leading to the Senate House. Don't
imitate anybody--be yourself. Still, if you must have the stimulus of
imitation, pick out a man like Pericles for your model.
Depend upon yourself; do not call into council another attorney. This
is a point on which most lawyers will disagree with me. Nevertheless,
if you are not competent to handle your case, you have done wrong to
open an independent office. If you call in another attorney, every
probability is that you will suggest all the solutions yourself and in
reality win the case; but your old and distinguished associate will
get all the credit. But you need all the credit for work which you
really do.
See well to your evidence before you go into the trial of a cause. Be
very cautious on cross-examination. It is the most powerful but most
delicate and dangerous instrument known to the surgery of the law. Do
not bluster, "bull-doze," or browbeat a witness; there is nothing in
it. You only make the jury sympathize with the person abused. Remember
that an American loves nothing so much as fair play. When on a jury,
he is apt to regard you and the witness as adversaries, you the
stronger and with immense advantage.
Ask few questions on cross-examination. Employ the Socratic method
always. Ask only those questions the logical conclusion of which is
irresistible, and _stop there_. Don't press the _conclusion_ on the
witness. It is your province to show that in your argument.
A timid witness, whom you know to be telling the truth, may often be
confused by cross-examination and made to make a false statement; but
this you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do. A
just judge ought to stop you if you try it. To confuse a witness whom
you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a
very miserable trick, whose performance requires neither real ability
nor learning.
Think what a tremendous intellectual effort the properly conducted
lawsuit is. You must know your case; you must know your evidence; you
must know each witness as a person and each item of his testimony; you
must know the law applicable to your general proposition, and the
general law upon its various ramifications; you must study the
witnesses of the other side; and, almost more important than any of
these, you must study that wonderful combination of intellect,
prejudice, and passion called the jury.
When the time comes for you to address that jury you must thoroughly
understand each man. This is not that you may influence him, or "play
upon" him, or resort to any of the devices of the baser sort. It is
that you may know how best to get the truth of your case to him. How
to get your theory, your cause, before each juror should be your only
concern.
Never try to be "eloquent." Never be funny. Wit may cause laughter, it
never produces conviction. A joke may divert, it never persuades. It
is unnecessary even to arouse a jury's sympathies. _Forget everything
except making the juror understand your case._ The result will be that
he will understand your case, and if he understands it, and it is a
case you ought to win, his understanding of it means that you will win
it.
Take at least one excellent legal periodical. There are four or five
"law" magazines published in America, some of them very good indeed.
Do not pay any attention to the digests of cases with which some of
these periodicals burden their pages, except to see if there is a
recent decision on some case you are trying. You cannot remember them,
and the effort to do so will only confuse. But you will usually find
in each number one serious and profitable article, and possibly more,
on matters of real interest to the profession. Read such articles very
carefully.
The methods of scientific scholarship are now invading the law, and
many of these legal essays are superb pieces of work. Now and then you
will find a monograph of monumental worth. Such is the remarkable
introduction to Stephens' admirable work on "Pleading," to which I
have already called your attention.
That author's demonstration of the value of forms, and his comparison
of the Roman civil law with the English common law, is the most
carefully thought out and learned piece of legal writing I can think
of at this moment. It is as great as it is brief.
Take part in politics. I know that it is an ordinary saying that a
lawyer should leave politics alone. It is not true. What right have
you, a member of the great profession which, more than all other
forces combined, has established and defended liberty, to withdraw
yourself from active participation in the sacred function of
self-government? You have no such right.
Of course you should not make politics your profession. That is fatal
to your success in the profession of the law. It is one profession or
the other, one love or the other. But take part in your party's
primaries. Make yourself so wise and useful that you will be an
indispensable party counselor. By all means be a "factor" in your
party.
As you value life itself, do not permit yourself ever to be made a
lobbyist under the guise of general employment by a corporation or any
other interest concerned in legislation. It is no doubt proper for a
lawyer to make a legal argument before a legislative committee in
behalf of clients. Nevertheless, I advise you not to do it. It is the
first step toward the disreputable form of lobbying. There is, of
course, perfectly proper and even necessary lobbying. But then _you_
are a lawyer, are you not?
We all know instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have
thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much
you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any
corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your
active service, but in that manner is purchasing your silence.
Accept no employment except real, genuine employment for actual,
tangible, and honest work. Money obtained from any other kind of
employment is a loss to you in every way, even financially.
Think daily of the nobility and dignity of your profession. Remember
the great men that have adorned it and established the pillars of its
glory. They were gentlemen, men of learning, of breeding, of honor as
delicate as a woman's blush. Be you such, or leave the profession.
Keep in mind the lords of the bar. Resolve each morning when you awake
that, to the utmost of your efforts, you will strive to be one of
them--in learning full and thorough, in courtesy delicate, in courage
fearless, in character spotless, in all things and at all seasons the
true knight of Justice.
Finally, preserve your health, preserve your health, preserve your
health. Work, work, work. Cling to the loftiest ideals of your
profession which your mind can conceive. Do these; keep up your nerve;
never despair; and success is certain, distinction probable, and
greatness possible, according to your natural abilities.
VI
PUBLIC SPEAKING
"And the common people heard him gladly," for "he taught them as one
having authority." These sentences reveal the very heart of effective
speaking. Considered from the human view-point alone, the Son of Mary
was the prince of speakers. He alone has delivered a perfect
address--the Sermon on the Mount.
The two other speeches that approach it are Paul's appeal to the
Athenians on Mars Hill, and the speech of Abraham Lincoln at
Gettysburg. These have no tricks, no devices, no tinsel gilt. They do
not attempt to "split the ears of the groundlings," and yet they are
addressed to the commonest of the world's common people.
Imagination, reason, and that peculiar human quality in speech which
defies analysis as much as the perfume of the rose, but which touches
the heart and reaches the mind, are blended in each of these
utterances in perfect proportion.
But, above all, each of these model speeches which the world has thus
far produced teaches. They instruct. And, in doing this, they assert.
The men who spoke them did not weaken them by suggesting a doubt of
what they said. This is common to all great speeches.
Not one immortal utterance can be produced which contains such
expressions as, "I may be wrong," or, "In my humble opinion," or, "In
my judgment." The great speakers, in their highest moments, have
always been so charged with aggressive conviction that they have
announced their conclusions as ultimate truths. They have spoken as
persons "having authority," and therefore "the common people have
heard them gladly."
All of this means that the two indispensable requisites of speaking
are, first, to have something to say, and, second, to say it as though
you mean it. Of course one cannot have something really to say--a
lesson to teach, a message to deliver--every fifteen minutes. Very
well, then; until one does have something to say, let one hold one's
peace.
Carlyle's idea is correct. He thought that no man has the right to
speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season
for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in
a deed--a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old
Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no room for anything but deeds.
If such instruction is needed; if a great movement requires the
forming and constructive word to interpret it and give it direction;
if a movement in a wrong direction needs halting and turning to its
proper course; if a cause needs pleading; if a law needs
interpretation; if anything really _needs to be said_--the occasion
for the orator, in the large sense of that word, has arrived.
Therefore when he speaks "the common people will hear him gladly";
they will hear him because he teaches, and does it "as one having
authority."
Whenever a speaker fails to make his audience forget voice, gesture,
and even the speaker himself; whenever he fails to make the listeners
conscious only of the living truth he utters, he has failed in his
speech itself, which then has no other reason for having been
delivered than a play or any other form of entertainment.
Very few of the great orators have had loud voices, or, if they did
have them, they did not employ them. I am told that Wendell Phillips
always spoke in a conversational tone, and yet he was able to make an
audience of many thousands hear distinctly; and Phillips was one of
the greatest speakers America has produced.
It is probable that no man ever lived who had a more sensuous effect
upon his hearers than Ingersoll. In a literal and a physical sense he
charmed them. I never heard him talk in a loud voice. There was no
"bell-like" quality. It was not an "organ-like" voice.
The greatest feat of modern speech, in its immediate effect, was Henry
Ward Beecher's speech to the Liverpool mob. A gentleman who heard that
speech told me that, notwithstanding the pandemonium that reigned
around him, Beecher did not shout, nor speak at the top of his voice,
a single time during that terrible four hours.
It is true that Æschines spoke of Demosthenes' delivery of his
"Oration on the Crown" as having the ferocity of a wild beast. I do
not see how that can be, however, because Demosthenes selected Isæus
as his teacher for the reason that Isæus was "business-like" in
method.
This, however, is common to the voices of nearly all great speakers;
they have a peculiar power of penetration that carries them much
farther than the shout and halloo of the loudest-voiced person. They
have, too, a singularly touching and tender quality, which, in a
sensuous way, captivates and holds the hearers. James Whitcomb Riley
has this quality in his voice when reciting. Edwin Booth had it. All
great actors have it. Every true orator has it. It touches you
strangely, thrills you, affects you much as music does.
It is a remarkable thing that there _is neither wit nor humor in any
of the immortal speeches_ that have fallen from the lips of man. To
find a joke in Webster would be an offense. The only things which
Ingersoll wrote that will live are his oration at his brother's grave
and his famous "The Past Rises before Me like a Dream." But in neither
of these productions of this genius of jesters is there a single trace
of wit.
There is not a funny sally in all Burke's speeches. Lincoln's
Gettysburg address, his first and second inaugurals, his speech
beginning the Douglas campaign, and his Cooper Union address in New
York, are perhaps the only utterances of his that will endure.
Yet this greatest of story-tellers since Æsop did not deface one of
these great deliverances with story or any form of humor.
The reason for this is found in the whole tendency of human thought
and feeling--in the whole melancholy history of the race--where tears
and grief, the hard seriousness of life and the terrible and speedy
certainty of our common fate of suffering and of death, make somber
the master-cord of existence. And the great orator must reflect the
deeper soul of his hearers.
So all the immortal things are serious, even sad.
It is so with speech--I mean the speech that affects the convictions
and understanding of men. I am excluding now that form of speech which
belongs to the same class, though not of so high an order, as the
theatrical exhibition.
Excepting only Lincoln, the Middle West has produced no greater man
than Oliver P. Morton; and few men in our history have had greater
power upon an audience both in the immediate and permanent effect of
his speeches than did Indiana's great Senator. It is related of him
that while a very young man he made a speech so rich in humor and
scintillant of wit that it attracted the attention of the whole
commonwealth.
Morton, however, was not pleased or flattered. He was alarmed. He
feared that what he knew to be his weighty abilities would be held
lightly by his fellow citizens. From that time on this Cromwell of the
forum never "told a story" or attempted to amuse his hearers in any
way.
Of course, if your mental armory is naturally heavily stocked with the
various forms of fun, you are not to be blamed for employing the
weapons with which Nature has equipped you and which Nature has
peculiarly fitted you to use--although Morton deliberately let them
rust. But, generally speaking, it is a distinct descent from the high
plane of your address to excite the laughter of your audience. When
you do so, you confess that you are not able to hold the attention of
your hearers by the sustained and unbroken strength of your argument.
You admit that you are either so dull in your thought or indifferent
in your convictions that you know you are wearying your auditors and
must rest them by some mental diversion.
Where there is an earnestness of thought (and earnestness is only
another name for seriousness) there will always be the same quality in
manner--an impressiveness in bearing and delivery. This is
inconsistent with merriment of delivery, which robs speech of a
certain weight and intrinsic worth. It is also inconsistent with the
voice of storm and the hurricane manner.
And men in deadly earnest do not talk loudly. It has been my fortune
to see men angry and aroused to the point of killing; they were
intense, but quiet. I have also seen that bravado and drunken
boisterousness which thought it imitated, and meant to imitate,
genuine rage; it was always strident and violent, never dangerous,
never sincere. The same thing is true in speech.
There have only been two or three roarers in effective
oratory--Mirabeau, by all accounts (though anything can be forgiven a
man who can make such speeches as the great Frenchman made), and
Demosthenes, if Æschines is to be believed, which I think he is not to
be in this particular. He was only excusing his own defeat, and he had
to attribute it to delivery. (I think any unprejudiced mind will agree
that Æschines made the better argument.) All the other great speakers
have, even in their most intense passages, and in situations where
life and death were involved, been comparatively quiet so far as mere
volume of sound is concerned.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first great speaker I ever
heard. It was Robert G. Ingersoll, delivering a lecture in Des Moines,
Iowa, in 1884. He had an audience which would have inspired eloquence
in almost any breast. He came on the stage alone, and was very
carefully, even elegantly attired, to the smallest item of his
grooming.
His address was in manuscript, and imperfectly committed to memory. He
laid it down on a little table at the back of the stage (returning to
it occasionally to refresh his memory), and then, in a very natural
and matter-of-fact way, walked to the footlights, and, looking the
audience frankly in the eyes, began without an instant's hesitation,
and in a voice precisely as if he were talking to a friend.
But he was as dramatic at his climaxes as Edwin Booth ever was in
Hamlet. His face paled, or seemed to pale; his hands clinched with a
desperate energy, and the whole attitude of the man was that of one in
awful wrath. Yet his voice was not raised above the common current of
the evening's address--if anything, it was lower. While the mature
mind cannot endure Ingersoll's rhetoric, it must be acknowledged that
his manner of delivery (except when his levity made him coarse) was
nearly equal to that of Wendell Phillips. Still, in his intense
passages Ingersoll was almost fiercely earnest. And Plutarch tells us
that Cicero's friends feared he would kill himself by bursting a
blood-vessel, with such intense energy did he speak.
Both of these men had that instinctive taste of the great speaker
which Shakespeare has described better than any one else in
literature, when he makes Hamlet tell the players not to "mouth it, as
many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Nor do not saw the air too much--your hand thus: but use all gently:
for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it
smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig
pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the
ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I could have such a
fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you,
avoid it."
When I was a very young boy I saw a fist-fight which impressed me as
powerfully as any lesson I ever learned at school. An overtall and
powerful man, about forty years old, had become angry at a
medium-sized but very compact man of about the same age. As his
passion increased his violence grew, until finally he was shouting his
denunciations. The little man stood quietly alert.
Finally, with a great volume of sound, the big man rushed upon the
little one with arms swinging in the air, and I looked with interest
and curiosity to see the smaller man either run or be demolished. He
did neither. His fists were raised quickly but intensely before him,
and when the big man was almost upon him, it seemed to me that his
right hand did not shoot out farther than ten or twelve inches; but it
did shoot out, and the result was as if the big man had been shot,
sure enough.
He fell like a slaughtered ox, but rose and came on again, only again
to be knocked down. This continued for three or four times, for the
giant was "game"; but finally he was "thrashed to a standstill," as
the expression has it.
It was a great lesson in life and a great lesson in speaking, which is
only a phase of life. The victor came to the point. He did not
dissipate his energies. It is so in the manner of speaking. The
greatest contrast to the perfect method of Ingersoll which I ever
beheld in a man of equal eminence was in the delivery of a lecture by
Joseph Cook.
He came on the stage with ostentatious impressiveness. He sat some
time before he was introduced, seeming vast and overpowering--a very
Matterhorn of consequence. After introduction he stood with one hand
thrust in the breast of his tightly buttoned frock coat, and looked
tremendously all over the audience for perhaps an entire minute.
Everybody was awed; he looked so great. We all said to ourselves,
"What a mighty man this is!"
And when that effect had been produced upon us, the first and great
point of effectiveness had been destroyed: the speaker had made us
think about himself, his manner, his appearance, his personality. All
the evening we had to wade through that slough, trying to follow his
thought. And this reminds me of a saying of one of the most astute
politicians and most capable public men of recent development:
"The surest sign that a man is not great is that he strives to look
great."
I think that the best speech I ever heard for obedience to the rules
of art was an address of about ten minutes by a young Salvation Army
officer on the streets of Chicago. I listened with amazement. He was
perhaps twenty-three years of age, with delicate, clear-cut features,
sensitive mouth, and marvelously intelligent eyes. I was just passing
the group as he stepped into the circle that always surrounds these
noisy but sincere enthusiasts.
He took off his cap, and in a low, perfectly natural, and very sweet
voice, speaking exactly as though he were having a conversation with
his most confidential friend, he began: "You will admit, my friends,
that human happiness is the problem of human life." And from this
striking sentence he went on to another equally moving, showing, of
course, that happiness could not be secured by traveling any of the
usual roads, but only the straight and narrow path which the Master
has marked out.
It was as simple as it was sincere. And it was as conversational as it
was quiet. Before he had finished, his audience had gathered into
itself every pedestrian who passed during his discourse--business man,
professional man, working man, or what not.
The fight above described suggests the key to the matter as well as
the manner of speaking. The American audience properly demands, above
everything else, that the speaker get to the point. Our lives are so
rapid; the telephone, telegraph, and all the instantaneous agencies of
our neurotically swift civilization have made us so quick in seeing
through propositions; a hundred years of universal education have
produced a mentality so electric in its rapidity, that effective
oratory has been revolutionized within a decade.
Burke would not be tolerated now. It is doubtful, even, if Webster
would. The public has already tired of the lilt of Ingersoll's
redundant rhetoric, pleasing as was its music. The effective speech
to-day is a statement of conclusions.