The Art of Lecturing Part 1

The Art of Lecturing.

by Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

For some time I have been besieged with requests to open a "Speakers'

Cla.s.s" or "A School of Oratory," or, as one ingenious correspondent puts it, a "Forensic Club." With these requests it is impossible to comply for sheer lack of time.

I have decided, however, to embody in these pages the results of my own experience, and the best I have learned from the experience of others.

There are some things required in a good lecturer which cannot be imparted to a pupil by any teacher, and we may as well dispose of these.

One is a good voice. Modern methods, however, have done much to make the improvement of the voice possible. While it is probably impossible in the great majority of cases to make a very fine voice out of a very poor one, no one, with an average voice, need be afraid of the platform, for time and training will greatly increase its range and resonance. It is said that the great Greek orator, Demosthenes, developed his magnificent voice by shouting above the roar of the sea near which he lived, but it is probable that he had a better voice to begin with than the tradition represents. In the absence of sea waves, one's voice may be tested and strengthened by trying to drown the noise of the electric cars at a street meeting. Most poor voices are produced in the upper part of the throat or, still worse, in the roof of the mouth, while deep and thrilling tones can only be obtained from further down. The transition from the upper throat or palate to the deeper tones is not nearly so difficult as might be supposed. Placing the hand across the chest during practice will help to locate the origin of the sounds produced.

The one thing, however, which no training seems to create, but which is wholly indispensable in a good speaker, is that elusive, but potential something which has been named personal magnetism. This is probably only another way of saying that the great orator must also be a great man.

His imagination and sympathy must be great enough to take possession of him and make him the mere instrument of their outpouring.

If nature has omitted these great qualities, no amount of training will create them. This is why, among the great number who wish to be speakers, only a few scale the heights.

But men with small personal magnetism and good training have done quite well, while others with large personal magnetism and no methods, have made a complete failure, and herein lies the justification for this volume.

CHAPTER II

EXORDIUM

The part of a lecture which consumes the first ten or fifteen minutes is called the exordium, from the Latin word exordiri--to begin a web.

The invariable rule as to the manner of this part of a lecture is--begin easy. Any speaker who breaks this rule invites almost certain disaster.

This rule has the universal endors.e.m.e.nt of experienced speakers.

Sometimes a green speaker, bent on making a hit at once, will begin with a burst, and in a high voice. Once begun, he feels that the pace must be maintained or increased.

Listeners who have the misfortune to be present at such a commencement and who do not wish to have their pity excited, had better retire at once, for when such a speaker has been at work fifteen minutes and should be gradually gathering strength like a broadening river, he is really beginning to decline. From then on the lecture dies a lingering death and the audience welcomes its demise with a sigh of relief. Such performances are not common, as no one can make that blunder twice before the same audience. He may try it, but if the people who heard him before see his name on the program they will be absent.

At the beginning, the voice should be pitched barely high enough for everybody to hear. This will bring that "hush" which should mark the commencement of every speech. When all are quiet and settled, raise the voice so as to be clearly heard by everybody, but no higher. Hold your energies in reserve; if you really have a lecture, you will need them later.

As to the matter of the exordium, it should be preparatory to the lecture. Here the lecturer "clears the ground" or "paves the way" for the main question.

If the lecture is biographical and deals with the life and work of some great man, the exordium naturally tells about his parents, birthplace and early surroundings, etc. If some theory in science or philosophy is the subject, the lecturer naturally uses the exordium to explain the theory which previously occupied that ground and how it came to be overthrown by the theory now to be discussed.

Here the way is cleared of popular misunderstandings of the question and, if the theory is to be defended, all those criticisms that do not really touch the question are easily and gracefully annihilated.

Here, if Darwin is to be defended, it may be shown that those witticisms, aimed at him, about the giraffe getting its long neck by continually stretching it, or the whale getting its tail by holding its hind legs too close in swimming, do not apply to Darwinism, but to the exploded theory of his great predecessor, Lamarck.

If Scientific Socialism is the question, it may be appropriately shown in the exordium that nearly all the objections which are still urged against it apply only to the Utopian Socialism which Socialist literature abandoned half a century ago.

In short, the lecturer usually does in the exordium what a family party does when, having decided to waltz a little in the parlor, they push the table into a corner and set back the chairs--he clears a s.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER III

BEGIN WELL

The Shakespearian saying that "all's well that ends well" is only a half truth. A good lecture must not only end well; it must begin well.

The value of first impressions is universally recognized, and an audience will be much more lenient with flaws that may come later if its appreciation and confidence have been aroused at the commencement.

It is almost impossible to drive a nail properly if it was started wrong, and the skillful workman will draw it out and start it over again. But such a blunder in lecturing cannot be remedied--at least for that occasion. A stale or confused beginning haunts and depresses the mind of the speaker and makes his best work impossible. It also destroys the confidence of the audience, so that what comes later is likely to be underestimated.

This necessity is recognized not only by lecturers, but by all the great masters of poetry, fiction and music. Wilhelm Tell is best known by its overture and what could be more solemn and impressive than the opening bars of "El Miserere" in Verdi's "Il Trovatore."

The genius of d.i.c.kens s.h.i.+nes most clearly in his opening pages, and his right to be ranked with Juvenal as a satirist could be easily established by the first chapter of "Martin Chuzzlewit." Sir Walter Scott would rank as one of the world's greatest wits if he had never written anything but the exploits of "d.i.c.k Pinto," which serve as an introduction to "The Bride of Lammermoor."

The opening lines of Keats' first long poem, "Endymion," are immortal, and the first line of that pa.s.sage has become an integral part of the English language:

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pa.s.s into nothingness, but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of deep peace and health and quiet breathing."

The first stanza of the first canto of Scott's "Marmion" gives a picture of Norham castle that never leaves the memory. Milton's greatest poem, "Paradise Lost," a poem which fascinated the imagination of the great utopian, Robert Owen, at the age of seven, has nothing in all its sonorous music that lingers in the mind like its magnificent opening lines, and one searches in vain through the interminable length of Wordsworth's "Excursion" for a pa.s.sage equal to the first.

No lecturer who aims high should go upon a platform and confront an audience, except in cases of great emergency, without having worked out his opening sentences.

Floundering is fatal, but many an otherwise capable speaker "flounders around" and "hems" and "haws" for the first ten or fifteen minutes, as a matter of course.

If his auditors are strange, they get restless and disgusted, and some of them go out. If they know him, they smile at one another and the ceiling and wait with more or less patience until he "gets started." If it is a meeting where others are to speak, by the time he "gets started"

the chairman is anxiously looking at his watch and wondering if he will have as much trouble to "get done."

A lecturer should remember that an audience resents having its time wasted by a long, floundering, meaningless preamble, and it is sure to get even. Next time it will come late to avoid that preliminary "catch as catch can" performance or--it will stay away.

CHAPTER IV

SPEAK DELIBERATELY

William Ewart Gladstone, one of the most generally admired orators the English house of commons ever listened to, spoke at an average of 100 words a minute. Phillips Brooks, the brilliant American preacher, maintained a rate of 215 words a minute and was a terror to the stenographers engaged to report him.