The Art of Lecturing Part 6

Liberty exiled, we have heard of before, but economic equality ostracised, is new. The idea that the multiplicity of living forms exist for man's edification, is ancient to the point of being moldy, but we must concede originality to "myriad tongued voices" issuing from a "purse." The concluding remarks about the "flas.h.i.+ng phrases of the orator" are peculiarly well taken--unless that gentleman should be mean enough to say, "you're another."

Of course there is no objection to real eloquence and one's sentences should always be smooth and rhythmical. One great source of smoothness and rhythm is alliteration. Tennyson says:

"The distant dearness of the hill The sacred sweetness of the stream."

Here the smooth movement comes from the alliteration on d in the first line and the tripling of the initial s in the second.

"With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe."

gets its music from the alliteration on f. In revising the MS. of my lecture on "Weismann's Theory of Heredity" for publication, I found the following sentence, referring to Johannes Mueller.

"He failed to fill the gap his destructive criticism had created."

This sentence gives to the ear a sense of rhythm that is somewhere interrupted and disturbed. Examination shows that the rhythm comes from the alliterations "failed to fill" and "criticism had created," and the disturbance arises from the interjection between them of the word "destructive." Destructive is a good word here, but not essential to the sense and not worth the interruption it makes in the smoothness of the sentence. So it had to go.

Avoid long words wherever possible, and never use a word you do not understand. As an example of the vast picture which half a dozen short words of Saxon English will conjure up, take these lines from "The Ancient Mariner":

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea."

The power of expression in a single word, appears in Keats' description of Ruth, in his "Ode to the Nightingale."

"The voice I hear this pa.s.sing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown; Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn."

What a master-stroke is the use of "alien," this time a Latin derivative, in the last line quoted. What a picture of that old time drama, with its theme of love and sorrow co-eval with the human race.

First get your idea, then express it in words that give it forth clearly. No verbiage, no fog or clouds, no jargon, but simplicity, lucidity, vividness, and power.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE AUDIENCE

A lecturer should realize his grave responsibility to his audience.

Nothing but absolute physical impossibility is a sufficient excuse for disappointing an a.s.sembly. Have it thoroughly understood that when your name appears on a program, you will be at your post.

Never allow, if you can possibly prevent, anybody to announce you to speak without consulting you and getting your consent. In some cities the method of announcing a speaker, when it is not known whether or not he can be present and, in some cases, even when it is known he cannot, has prevailed in the Socialist party. The temptation to do this consists in the possibility of using a prominent name to attract a large audience and then, with some lame excuse, put forward somebody else.

This succeeds for a time; then comes disaster. In such a city a good meeting becomes almost impossible. With the public it is, once bit, twice shy. For myself, if when I am announced to speak and I am not there and there is no message in the hands of the chairman reporting my death or some other almost equally good reason, it is almost safe to say my name has been used without my consent.

Any lecturer who treats his audience lightly has no reason to expect it will take him seriously. There is no lecturing future ahead of the man who says to some disappointed auditor he meets afterward on the street: "Well, the weather was so bad I didn't think anybody would turn out."

Suppose only ten people turned out, is not their combined inconvenience ten times as great as that of the speaker? At least you could go and thank those who did come, as they surely deserved, and feel that you did your duty in the matter.

I well remember one night in San Francisco, about the twenty-first lecture of a course in the Academy of Sciences, when it rained as only Californians ever see it rain; it seemed to fall in a solid ma.s.s. From 6 to 7:30 it continued with no sign of let-up, and the streets began to look like rivers.

"No meeting tonight, that's sure," I concluded as I ruefully pocketed the notes of my lecture. But my rule compelled me to turn out and see.

To my very great astonishment the Academy was full and the admission receipts were equal to the average. Never again, if I can help it, will weather alone keep me from appearing at a meeting.

Another matter in which speakers should consider the feelings of their hearers is--"don't make excuses." The audience wants to know what you have to say about the subject, and not, why you are not better prepared.

The audience will know whether you have a cold without you taking up time telling about it.

If you allow yourself to drift into the habit of making excuses, you will never be able to speak without doing so, and even your best prepared effort will be unable to get by without a stupid preamble of meaningless apologies.

It is safe to conclude that the good impression a lecture should make is not increased by the lecturer condemning it in advance; this is usually done to disarm criticism, secure indulgence, and give the audience a great notion of what you could do if you had a fair chance. But the audience wants to see what you can do now, and not what you might possibly have done, under other circ.u.mstances. If your lecture cannot bear open criticism and really needs to be apologized for, then it ought not to be delivered, and you should be sitting in the audience listening to somebody else.

Boasting is, of course, very irritating to an audience and should be avoided, but want of courage and self-confidence is almost as deplorable. Of course there is no merit in self-confidence that is not well founded in sterling ability.

Somebody said, "The man who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is ignorant, avoid him; the man who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple, teach him; the man who knows, and knows not that he knows, is timid, encourage him; the man who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him."

CHAPTER XIX

STREET SPEAKING

THE PLACE

In traveling through the country on a street-speaking tour about the first thing a speaker observes is the poor judgement shown by the local comrades in the selection of street corners for their meetings. The chosen corner is usually where the down-and-outs and drunks congregate and is hemmed about by cheap noisy saloons. If a speaker is to be in a town one or two nights he can hardly show the local comrades their error. If I am to be in a town any longer I look through the town during the day and early evening and pick out a down-town corner where there is a steady flow of average citizens and n.o.body will stop unless they stop to listen. Then the night after making the announcement at the old stand I begin a revolution in the method of running street meetings. I have no hard feelings against drunks but they are useless and worse in a street meeting. There are two reasons for the present bad selection of corners in so many cities. First, it is easier for a poor speaker to get an audience where there are hangers-out waiting to be entertained. Second, the city authorities like to have Socialist speaking done where it will not reach the live members of the community. A change of corners sometimes means a hard fight with the police but if the proper methods are used victory is sure and the result is always worth the labor spent.

THE STYLE

Street speaking is widely different from hall lecturing and this the reason so many speakers succeed at one and fail at the other. The hall lecturer opens easily and paves the way for the treatment of his theme, but the street speaker would get no crowd or a small one by such a method.

He must plunge at once into the heart of his talk and put as much energy into addressing the first dozen as when his crowd grows larger. As soon as he adapts his voice and manner to the size of his crowd the crowd will stop growing. The only way to add another hundred is to talk as if they were already there.

A hall lecture should have one subject and stick to it because the audience is the same in its composition throughout. At a street meeting about half the audience is constantly changing, and hopping from one question to another has many advantages. A street speaker must be interesting or he will lose his crowd, and the better his crowd the sooner he will lose it. If he is talking to "b.u.ms" they will stay whether he talks or not, but if he has an audience of people who have other things awaiting their attention they will pa.s.s on the moment the speaker loses his grip.

This is why telling stories at street meetings is not so good a thing as some un.o.bserving speakers suppose. No matter how good a story is, it has a tendency to break up a crowd. I noticed it often before I caught the reason. A story always carries its own conclusion and it thereby makes a sort of a breaking off place in a speech like the end of a chapter in a book. At the end of a good story the audience will laugh and take a moments rest. For about a minute your spell is broken and men whom you might of held the rest of the evening remember during that minute that they have stayed too long already. Of course this does not apply to a story of two or three sentences thrust into the middle of an argument without breaking or closing it. Longer stories may be used to advantage but they are not very useful to a speaker who has much to say and knows how to say it. Of course wit is a valuable factor but wit shows itself in a lightning dart, not in a long story.

The street speaker should use short sentences of simple words. He should avoid oratory and talk as if he were telling something to another man and in dead earnest about it. I have watched a man talk to another man on the street forgetting the outside world completely and using forceful language and eloquent gestures. If such a man could only talk like that to an audience he would be surprised at his own success. Put him before an audience and his natural manner disappears, he shuffles his feet, does not know what to do with his hands, and brings forth a voice n.o.body ever heard him use before.

DISTURBERS

As to people who disturb your meeting, if you are speaking in hobo-dom you may well despair. There are so many drunks, that interruptions are constant and irrepressible, and every interruption breaks your grip on the audience. Moral: Don't speak there.

On a corner where you get an audience of typical working men disturbances are rare and in a majority of cases if they are not easily suppressed it is lack of tact on the part of the speaker. A speaker should never try to be smart at the expense of a man in the audience, even when he speaks out of his turn. A courteous explanation of why you wish him to keep his questions until after your speech is much better.

If he persists after that, he is either an ignoramus or drunk. If drunk ask two or three of your supporters in the audience to lead him off down the street. If he is a natural fool the problem is not so easy. But if you keep unbroken courtesy and he keeps up his unprovoked interruptions some indignant person standing near will abate the nuisance with a punch in the eye--which is the most effectual method in such cases.

POLICE INTERFERENCE