CHAPTER II. THE FOUR METHODS OF PUBLIC SPEECH—THEIR ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.

“WHAT SHALL I DO?” EXCLAIMS the young student who expects soon to face public audiences. “Shall I write out what I have to say, polish it as highly as possible, and then utter this finished product? Or must I take the risk of being able to say nothing at all, in hope of gaining the ease and naturalness of spontaneous speech?”

It must be admitted that the first course indicated above has many advantages, and seems in harmony with the marked tendency of civilization toward division of labor. It is hard to perform several different operations at the same moment. Look how heavily the extempore speaker is burdened. He must think of his subject; arrange his ideas, sentences, and words; remember quotations; originate proper tones and gestures; and keep his attention closely fixed upon his audience. All this he must do with the utmost promptness and regularity, or incur a fearful penalty—that of embarrassment and failure. Few men have the courage to stand long before an audience, waiting for a missing word or idea. To avoid this danger the mind of an extempore speaker must be accustomed to work with the rapidity and precision of a printing-press; otherwise, the appalling danger of failure and ridicule will constantly stare him in the face. It is not wonderful that such perils have made many speakers perpetual slaves of the pen.

But it may be noted that the public reader has an equal number of things to do at the same moment. He must look on the manuscript and recognize the words—a complicated process, which practice has made easy, but which does greatly distract attention. The whole discourse must be brought into mind as really as if extemporized with the difference that now, instead of arising from within, it is brought back from without—a much more difficult achievement. Tones and gestures are also increasingly difficult. The reader will usually wish to give some attention to the audience, which, with manuscript before him, will be far from easy. After he has done his best his hearers will think, “This man is reading, not speaking—giving us what he thought yesterday or last week, not what he is thinking now.” Possibly this will not diminish their pleasure, but the sentiment needs to be recognized.

The resource of memorizing the discourse after it has been prepared relieves the eye and lessens the physical distraction, but it throws an additional and very heavy burden upon the mind, and introduces new embarrassments peculiar to itself.

The advice enforced in these pages will be: “Extemporize; take the risk; fail, if necessary” though precautions will be given making failure well nigh impossible; “but in all cases when you speak to the people with the object of convincing or persuading, let it be seen that you speak directly the thoughts and feelings of that very moment.”

The two extremes of verbal communication between men are letters, books, or essays, on the one side, and desultory talk on the other. In the one, the pen is everything; in the other, it is not employed at all. Neither mode of address constitutes oratory, but the whole field of this art lies between them.

There are four principal methods of discourse distinguished in reference to the mode of delivery, which we may name as follows:

1.Reading.

2.Recitation.

3.Extemporizing.

4.The composite method.

Of these, the first two have the great advantage of allowing the speaker as much time as may be necessary for the arrangement of the speech down to the minutest detail. Words may be selected with the nicest care, and if the first effort is not satisfactory the speech may be written again and again, until the writer’s full power has been utilized. After delivery, the manuscript is at once available for publication or preservation. The first method gives the orator something to lean upon. Should he become embarrassed, he can fix his attention closely upon his writing until he recovers. Should his attention be distracted, and the thread of discourse be broken, it can be taken up again at any point.

In recitation more declamatory fervor is possible than in reading. Gesticulation is less restrained. The speaker need not be confined within the narrow limits of a circle, the centre of which is his manuscript, and the radius the distance at which he can read it.

As an offset, there is the effort, in some cases very considerable, of memorizing; the variable power of memory in different states of health; and the possibility of altogether forgetting the prepared words. It must also be admitted that few men can declaim well. Some have mastered the difficult art, and have won laurels in this way; but their number, especially in the modern world, is comparatively small.

Extemporizing does not exclude the most exhaustive study of a subject. It is easier, indeed, to write upon a subject only partially understood, than to address an audience directly upon the same topic. Neither does this method exclude the most careful pre-arrangement of the thoughts enunciated. The trained speaker will find it comparatively easy to make a plan at a moment’s notice which will serve as a basis for discourse; but he will usually be provided with a plan long before he begins to speak. He will aim to understand his subject, make the best arrangement of it in his power, select what is most fitting for his purpose, and then, face to face with his audience, will give them, in a manly way, the outflowing of his mind and heart. It is in this sense alone that the word “extempore” will be used in this volume. We maintain that, so far from being the refuge of ignorance and sloth, extempore speech is often the vehicle of the widest culture and the most extensive knowledge.

The increased attention paid to extempore speech within a few years indicates a hopeful improvement of taste among professional men. The majority of the people have always preferred it. They do not greatly desire of pulpit, platform, or bar, the verbal elaboration favored by written speech; but fervent manner, earnest conviction, and directness are highly prized. Readers and reciters imitate, as far as they can, the manner of spontaneous speech. It is well to remember that this tribute of imitation is never paid by the superior to the inferior.

One argument in favor of extempore delivery has never received due consideration: it is far more healthful than other forms of address. In the case of men who speak only at long intervals, this consideration may not be weighty; but to others, it involves years of added usefulness, or even life itself.

This superior healthfulness has often been observed, but what is its source? The answer will go far to show why true extempore speech is more persuasive and emotional than any other variety. In chemistry, a law of affinity has long been recognized, according to which substances just set free from combination have greater energy, and are more ready to form new combinations, than ever afterward. In the same way, voice and gesture readily respond to nascent emotion; that is, to emotion aroused for the first time. Every speaker who utters the thought of the moment, if not fettered by bad habits, or paralyzed by fear, will exhibit a perpetual change of position, a variety of muscular movement, and a play of expression which he can never afterward reproduce. The pitch, rate, and force of the voice are controlled in the same effective and almost automatic manner. An ordinary extemporizer, when thoroughly aroused, will employ as great a variety of tones and gestures as a highly trained elocutionist in his most elaborate recitations. Nothing is asserted as to the skill of the combinations, the melody of the voice, or the grace of the action; though even in these the advantage is not always on the side of the elocutionist. But in distributing the effort among all the organs, and in giving that alternate rest and action upon which health and strength depend, the elocutionist may strive in vain to equal the model set him by a good extempore speech. In Western and seaside camp-meetings, speakers who have never spent an hour in vocal drill will often address thousands of people in the open air with an energy of voice and manner that would, if employed over a manuscript by any other than the most accomplished elocutionist, speedily bring all efforts and the speaker himself to an end. But he easily endures the strain because there is that continual change which is the equivalent of rest. Notice some thoroughly excited speaker, trained only in the school of experience—possibly a mere demagogue or popular agitator—at his work. A word shot forth almost as piercing as a steam whistle is followed by a sentence far down the scale, and when emotion demands the same high key again, the organs in that position are fresh for a new ear-piercing effort. There is equal variation in the rate of speech. The whole body joins in the expression of emotion, without the slightest conscious effort, impelled only by the aroused nervous energy which seeks that mode of discharge. When the effort ends, the man is weary, indeed; but with a weariness distributed over the whole body, and without a trace of that exhaustion of brain, throat, or the upper part of the lungs, which has sent many manuscript speakers—clergymen, especially—to untimely graves.

What a difference there is between the preacher who languidly reads his manuscript for twenty-five minutes to a hundred people, and...