SELF-IMPROVEMENT THROUGH PUBLIC SPEAKING
It does not matter whether you want to be a public speaker or not,
everybody should have such complete control of himself, should be so
self-centered and self-posed that he can get up in any audience, no
matter how large or formidable, and express his thoughts clearly and
distinctly.
Self-expression in some manner is the only means of developing mental
power. It may be in music; it may be on canvas: it may be through
oratory; it may come through selling goods or writing a book; but it
must come through self-expression.
Self-expression in any legitimate form tends to call out what is in a
man, his resourcefulness, inventiveness; but no other form of
self-expression develops a man so thoroughly and so effectively, and so
quickly unfolds all of his powers, as expression before an audience.
It is doubtful whether anyone can reach the highest standard of culture
without studying the art of expression, especially public vocal
expression. In all ages oratory has been regarded as the highest
expression of human achievement. Young people, no matter what they
intend to be, whether blacksmith or farmer, merchant or physician,
should make it a study.
Nothing else will call out what is in a man so quickly and so
effectively as the constant effort to do his best in speaking before an
audience. When one undertakes to think on his feet and speak
extemporaneously before the public, the power and the skill of the
entire man are put to a severe test.
The writer has the advantage of being able to wait for his moods. He
can write when he feels like it; and he knows that he can burn his
manuscript again and again if it does not suit him. There are not a
thousand eyes upon him. He does not have a great audience criticizing
every sentence, weighing every thought. He does not have to step upon
the scales of every listener's judgment to be weighed, as does the
orator. A man may write as listlessly as he pleases, use much or
little of his brain or energy, just as he chooses or feels like doing.
No one is watching him. His pride and vanity are not touched, and what
he writes may never be seen by anyone. Then, there is always a chance
for revision. In conversation, we do not feel that so much depends
upon our words; only a few persons hear them, and perhaps no one will
ever think of them again. In music, whether vocal or instrumental,
what one gives out is only partially one's own; the rest is the
composer's.
Yet anyone who lays any claim to culture, should train himself to think
on his feet, so that he can at a moment's notice rise and express
himself intelligently. The occasions for little speaking are
increasing enormously. A great many questions which used to be settled
in the office are now discussed and settled at dinners. All sorts of
business deals are now carried through at dinners. There was never
before any such demand for dinner oratory as to-day.
We know men who have, by the dint of hard work and persistent grit,
lifted themselves into positions of prominence, and yet they are not
able to stand on their feet in public, even to make a few remarks, or
scarcely to put a motion without trembling like an aspen leaf. They
had plenty of opportunities when they were young, at school, in
debating clubs to get rid of their self-consciousness and to acquire
ease and facility in public speaking, but they always shrank from every
opportunity, because they were timid, or felt that somebody else could
handle the debate or questions better.
There are plenty of business men to-day who would give a great deal of
money if they could only go back and improve the early opportunities
for learning to think and speak on their feet which they threw away.
Now they have money, they have position, but they are nobodies when
called upon to speak in public. All they can do is to look foolish,
blush, stammer out an apology and sit down.
Some time ago I was at a public meeting when a man who stands very high
in the community, who is king in his specialty, was called upon to give
his opinion upon the matter under consideration, and he got up and
trembled and stammered and could scarcely say his soul was his own. He
could not even make a decent appearance. He had power and a great deal
of experience, but there he stood, as helpless as a child, and he felt
cheap, mortified, embarrassed, and probably would have given anything
if he had early in life trained himself to get himself in hand so that
he could think on his feet and say with power and effectiveness that
which he knew.
At the very meeting where this strong man who had the respect and
confidence of everybody who knew him, and who made such a miserable
failure of his attempt to give his opinion upon an important public
matter on which he was well posted, being so confused and
self-conscious and "stage struck" that he could say scarcely anything,
a shallow-brained business man, in the same city, who hadn't a
hundredth part of the other man's practical power in affairs, got up
and made a brilliant speech, and strangers no doubt thought that he was
much the stronger man. He had simply cultivated the ability to say his
best thing on his feet, and the other man had not, and was placed at a
tremendous disadvantage.
A very brilliant young man in New York who has climbed to a responsible
position in a very short time, tells me that he has been surprised on
several occasions when he has been called upon to speak at banquets, or
on other public occasions, at the new discoveries he has made of
himself of power which he never before dreamed he possessed, and he now
regrets more than anything else that he has allowed so many
opportunities for calling himself out to go by in the past.
The effort to express one's ideas in lucid, clean-cut, concise, telling
English tends to make one's everyday language choicer and more direct,
and improves one's diction generally. In this and other ways
speech-making develops mental power and character. This explains the
rapidity with which a young man develops in school or college when he
begins to take part in public debates or in debating societies.
Every man, says Lord Chesterfield, may choose good words instead of bad
ones and speak properly instead of improperly; he may have grace in his
motions and gestures, and may be a very agreeable instead of
disagreeable speaker if he will take care and pains.
It is a matter of painstaking and preparation. There is everything in
learning what you wish to know. Your vocal culture, manner, and mental
furnishing, are to be made a matter for thought and careful training.
Nothing will tire an audience more quickly than monotony, everything
expressed on the same dead level. There must be variety; the human
mind tires very quickly without it.
This is especially true of a monotonous tone. It is a great art to be
able to raise and lower the voice with sweet flowing cadences which
please the ear.
Gladstone said, "Ninety-nine men in every hundred never rise above
mediocrity because the training of the voice is entirely neglected and
considered of no importance."
It was indeed said of a certain Duke of Devonshire that he was the only
English statesman who ever took a nap during the progress of his own
speech. He was a perfect genius for dry uninteresting oratory, moving
forward with a monotonous droning, and pausing now and then as if
refreshing himself by slumber.
In thinking on one's feet before an audience, one must think quickly,
vigorously, effectively. At the same time he must speak effectively
through a properly modulated voice, with proper facial and bodily
expression and gesture. This requires practise in early life.
In youth the would-be orator must cultivate robust health, since force,
enthusiasm, conviction, will-power are greatly affected by physical
condition. One, too, must cultivate bodily posture, and have good
habits at easy command. What would have been the result of Webster's
reply to Hayne, the greatest oratorical effort ever made on this
continent, if he had sat down in the Senate and put his feet on his
desk? Think of a great singer like Nordica attempting to electrify an
audience while lounging on a sofa or sitting in a slouchy position.
An early training for effective speaking will make one careful to
secure a good vocabulary by good reading and a dictionary. One must
know words.
There is no class of people put to such a severe test of showing what
is in them as public speakers; no other men who run such a risk of
exposing their weak spots, or making fools of themselves in the
estimation of others, as do orators. Public speaking--thinking on
one's feet--is a powerful educator except to the thick-skinned man, the
man who has no sensitiveness, or who does not care for what others
think of him. Nothing else so thoroughly discloses a man's weaknesses
or shows up his limitations of thought, his poverty of speech, his
narrow vocabulary. Nothing else is such a touchstone of the character
and the extent of one's reading, the carefulness or carelessness of his
observation.
Close, compact statement must be had. Learn to stop when you get
through. Do not keep stringing out conversation or argument after you
have made your point. You only weaken your case and prejudice people
against you for your lack of tact, good judgment, or sense of
proportion. Do not neutralize all the good impression you have made by
talking on and on long after you have made your point.
The attempt to become a good public speaker is a great awakener of all
the mental faculties. The sense of power that comes from holding
attention, stirring the emotions or convincing the reason of an
audience, gives self-confidence, assurance, self-reliance, arouses
ambition, and tends to make one more effective in every particular.
One's manhood, character, learning, judgment of his opinions--all
things that go to make him what he is--are being unrolled like a
panorama. Every mental faculty is quickened, every power of thought
and expression spurred. Thoughts rush for utterance, words press for
choice. The speaker summons all his reserves of education, of
experience, of natural or acquired ability, and masses all his forces
in the endeavor to capture the approval and applause of the audience.
Such an effort takes hold of the entire nature, beads the brow, fires
the eye, flushes the cheek, and sends the blood surging through the
veins. Dormant impulses are stirred, half-forgotten memories revived,
the imagination quickened to see figures and similes that would never
come to calm thought.
This forced awakening of the whole personality has effects reaching
much further than the oratorical occasion. The effort to marshal all
one's reserves in a logical and orderly manner, to bring to the front
all the power one possesses, leaves these reserves permanently better
in hand, more readily in reach.
The Debating Club is the nursery of orators. No matter how far you
have to go to attend it, or how much trouble it is, or how difficult it
is to get the time, the drill you will get by it is the turning point.
Lincoln, Wilson, Webster, Choate, Clay, and Patrick Henry got their
training in the old-fashioned Debating Society.
Do not think that because you do not know anything about parliamentary
law that you should not accept the presidency of your club or debating
society. This is just the place to learn, and when you have accepted
the position you can post yourself on the rules, and the chances are
that you will never know the rules until you are thrust into the chair
where you will be obliged to give rulings. Join just as many young
people's organizations--especially self-improvement organizations--as
you can, and force yourself to speak every time you get a chance. If
the chance does not come to you, make it. Jump to your feet and say
something upon every question that is up for discussion. Do not be
afraid to rise to put a motion or to second it or give your opinion
upon it. Do not wait until you are better prepared. You never will be.
Every time you rise to your feet will increase your confidence, and
after awhile you will form the habit of speaking until it will be as
easy as anything else, and there is no one thing which will develop
young people so rapidly and effectively as the debating clubs and
discussions of all sorts. A vast number of our public men have owed
their advance more to the old-fashioned debating societies than
anything else. Here they learned confidence, self-reliance; they
discovered themselves. It was here they learned not to be afraid of
themselves, to express their opinions with force and independence.
Nothing will call a young man out more than the struggle in a debate to
hold his own. It is strong, vigorous exercise for the mind as
wrestling is for the body.
Do not remain way back on the back seat. Go up front. Do not be
afraid to show yourself. This shrinking into a corner and getting out
of sight and avoiding publicity is fatal to self-confidence.
It is so easy and seductive, especially for boys and girls in school or
college, to shrink from the public debates or speaking, on the ground
that they are not quite well enough educated at present. They want to
wait until they can use a little better grammar, until they have read
more history and more literature, until they have gained a little more
culture and ease of manner.
The way to acquire grace, ease, facility, the way to get poise and
balance so that you will not feel disturbed in public gatherings, is to
get the experience. Do the thing so many times that it will become
second nature to you. If you have an invitation to speak, no matter
how much you may shrink from it, or how timid or shy you may be,
resolve that you will not let this opportunity for self-enlargement
slip by you.
We know of a young man who has a great deal of natural ability for
public speaking, and yet he is so timid that he always shrinks from
accepting invitations to speak at banquets or in public because he is
so afraid that he has not had experience enough. He lacks confidence
in himself. He is so proud, and so afraid that he will make some slip
which will mortify him, that he has waited and waited and waited until
now he is discouraged and thinks that he will never be able to do
anything in public speaking at all. He would give anything in the
world if he had only accepted all of the invitations he has had,
because then he would have profited by experience. It would have been
a thousand times better for him to have made a mistake, or even to have
broken down entirely a few times, than to have missed the scores of
opportunities which would undoubtedly have made a strong public speaker
of him.
What is technically called "stage fright" is very common. A college
boy recited an address "to the conscript fathers." His professor
asked,--"Is that the way Caesar would have spoken it?" "Yes," he
replied, "if Caesar had been scared half to death, and as nervous as a
cat."
An almost fatal timidity seizes on an inexperienced person, when he
knows that all eyes are watching him, that everybody in his audience is
trying to measure and weigh him, studying him, scrutinizing him to see
how much there is in him; what he stands for, and making up their minds
whether he measures more or less than they expected.
Some are constitutionally sensitive, and so afraid of being gazed at
that they don't dare to open their mouths, even when a question in
which they are deeply interested and on which they have strong views is
being discussed. At debating clubs, meetings of literary societies, or
gatherings of any kind, they sit dumb, longing, yet fearing to speak.
The sound of their own voices, if they should get on their feet to make
a motion or to speak in a public gathering, would paralyze them. The
mere thought of asserting themselves, of putting forward their views or
opinions on any subject as being worthy of attention, or as valuable as
those of their companions, makes them blush and shrink more into
themselves.
This timidity is often, however, not so much the fear of one's
audience, as the fear lest one can make no suitable expression of his
thought.
The hardest thing for the public speaker to overcome is
self-consciousness. Those terrible eyes which pierce him through and
through, which are measuring him, criticizing him, are very difficult
to get out of one's consciousness.
But no orator can make a great impression until he gets rid of himself,
until he can absolutely annihilate his self-consciousness, forget
himself in his speech. While he is wondering what kind of an
impression he is making, what people think of him, his power is
crippled, and his speech to that extent will be mechanical, wooden.
Even a partial failure on the platform has good results, for it often
arouses a determination to conquer the next time, which never leaves
one. Demosthenes' heroic efforts, and Disraeli's "The time will come
when you will hear me," are historic examples.
It is not the speech, but the man behind the speech, that wins a way to
the front.
One man carries weight because he is himself the embodiment of power,
he is himself convinced of what he says. There is nothing of the
negative, the doubtful, the uncertain in his nature. He not only knows
a thing, but he knows that he knows it. His opinion carries with it
the entire weight of his being. The whole man gives consent to his
judgment. He himself is in his conviction, in his act.
One of the most entrancing speakers I have ever listened to--a man to
hear whom people would go long distances and stand for hours to get
admission to the hall where he spoke--never was able to get the
confidence of his audience because he lacked character. People liked
to be swayed by his eloquence. There was a great charm in the cadences
of his perfect sentences. But somehow they could not believe what he
said.
The orator must be sincere. The public is very quick to see through
shams. If the audience sees mud at the bottom of your eye, that you
are not honest yourself, that you are acting, they will not take any
stock in you.
It is not enough to say a pleasing thing, an interesting thing, the
orator must be able to convince; and to convince others he must have
strong convictions.
Great speeches have become the beacon lights of history. Those who are
prepared acquire a world-wide influence when the fit occasion comes.
Very few people ever rise to their greatest possibilities or ever know
their entire power unless confronted by some great occasion. We are as
much amazed as others are when, in some great emergency, we out-do
ourselves. Somehow the power that stands behind us in the silence, in
the depths of our natures, comes to our relief, intensifies our
faculties a thousandfold and enables us to do things which before we
thought impossible.
It would be difficult to estimate the great part which practical drill
in oratory may play in one's life.
Great occasions, when nations have been in peril, have developed and
brought out some of the greatest orators of the world. Cicero,
Mirabeau, Patrick Henry, Webster, and John Bright might all be called
to witness to this fact.
The occasion had much to do with the greatest speech delivered in the
United States Senate--Webster's reply to Hayne. Webster had no time
for immediate preparation, but the occasion brought all the reserves in
this giant, and he towered so far above his opponent that Hayne looked
like a pygmy in comparison.
The pen has discovered many a genius, but the process is slower and
less effective than the great occasion that discovers the orator.
Every crisis calls out ability, previously undeveloped, and perhaps
unexpected.
No orator living was ever great enough to give out the same power and
force and magnetism to an empty hall, to empty seats, that he could
give to an audience capable of being fired by his theme.
In the presence of the audience lies a fascination, an indefinable
magnetism that stimulates all the mental faculties, and acts as a tonic
and vitalizer. An orator can say before an audience what he could not
possibly say before he went on the platform, just as we can often say
to a friend in animated conversation things which we could not possibly
say when alone. As when two chemicals are united, a new substance is
formed from the combination, which did not exist in either alone, he
feels surging through his brain the combined force of his audience,
which he calls inspiration, a mighty power which did not exist in his
own personality.
Actors tell us that there is an indescribable inspiration which comes
from the orchestra, the footlights, the audience, which it is
impossible to feel at a cold mechanical rehearsal. There is something
in a great sea of expectant faces which awakens the ambition and
arouses the reserve of power which can never be felt except before an
audience. The power was there just the same before, but it was not
aroused.
In the presence of the orator, the audience is absolutely in his power
to do as he will. They laugh or cry as he pleases, or rise and fall at
his bidding, until he releases them from the magic spell.
What is oratory but to stir the blood of all hearers, to so arouse
their emotions that they can not control themselves a moment longer
without taking the action to which they are impelled?
"His words are laws" may be well said of the statesmen whose orations
sway the world. What art is greater than that of changing the minds of
men?
Wendell Phillips so played upon the emotions, so changed the
convictions of Southerners who hated him, but who were curious to
listen to his oratory, that, for the time being he almost persuaded
them that they were in the wrong. I have seen him when it seemed to me
that he was almost godlike in his power. With the ease of a master he
swayed his audience. Some who hated him in the slavery days were
there, and they could not resist cheering him. He warped their own
judgment and for the time took away their prejudice.
When James Russell Lowell was a student, said Wetmore Story, he and
Story went to Faneuil Hall to hear Webster. They meant to hoot him for
his remaining in Tyler's cabinet. It would be easy, they reasoned, to
get the three thousand people to join them. When he begun, Lowell
turned pale, and Story livid. His great eyes, they thought, were fixed
on them. His opening words changed their scorn to admiration, and
their contempt to approbation.
"He gave us a glimpse into the Holy of Holies," said another student,
in relating his experience in listening to a great preacher.
Is not oratory a fine art? The well-spring of eloquence, when
up-gushing as the very water of life, quenches the thirst of myriads of
men, like the smitten rock of the wilderness reviving the life of
desert wanderers.