why it failed.
5. Suggest how it might be improved.
6. Why do speeches have to be spoken with more force than do
conversations?
7. Read aloud the selection on page 84, using the technical principles
outlined in chapters III to VIII, but neglect to put any force behind
the interpretation. What is the result?
8. Reread several times, doing your best to achieve force.
9. Which parts of the selection on page 84 require the most force?
10. Write a five-minute speech not only discussing the errors of those
who exaggerate and those who minimize the use of force, but by imitation
show their weaknesses. Do not burlesque, but closely imitate.
11. Give a list of ten themes for public addresses, saying which seem
most likely to require the frequent use of force in delivery.
12. In your own opinion, do speakers usually err from the use of too
much or too little force?
13. Define (a) bombast; (b) bathos; (c) sentimentality; (d) squeamish.
14. Say how the foregoing words describe weaknesses in public speech.
15. Recast in twentieth-century English "Hamlet's Directions to the
Players," page 88.
16. Memorize the following extracts from Wendell Phillips' speeches, and
deliver them with the of Wendell Phillips' "silent lightning" delivery.
We are for a revolution! We say in behalf of these hunted
lyings, whom God created, and who law-abiding Webster and
Winthrop have sworn shall not find shelter in Massachusetts,--we
say that they may make their little motions, and pass their
little laws in Washington, but that Faneuil Hall repeals them in
the name of humanity and the old Bay State!
* * * * *
My advice to workingmen is this:
If you want power in this country; if you want to make
yourselves felt; if you do not want your children to wait long
years before they have the bread on the table they ought to
have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the
opportunities in life they ought to have; if you don't want to
wait yourselves,--write on your banner, so that every political
trimmer can read it, so that every politician, no matter how
short-sighted he may be, can read it, "_WE NEVER FORGET!_ If you
launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ If
there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the
wrong scale, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ You may go down on your knees,
and say, 'I am sorry I did the act'--but we will say '_IT WILL
AVAIL YOU IN HEAVEN TO BE SORRY, BUT ON THIS SIDE OF THE GRAVE,
NEVER!_'" So that a man in taking up the labor question will
know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, "I
am to be true to justice and to man; otherwise I am a dead
duck."
* * * * *
In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what
government does, no remonstrance allowed, no agitation of public
issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the summit of
Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described as "a
despotism tempered by assassination." Meanwhile, such despotism
has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled
power doubtless made some of the twelve Cæsars insane; a madman,
sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred millions of
men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled
roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into
exile for his opinions. The next week she is stripped naked and
flogged to death in the public square. No inquiry, no
explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead uniform silence, the
law of the tyrant. Where is there ground for any hope of
peaceful change? No, no! in such a land dynamite and the dagger
are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall.
Anything that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and
rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This
is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can
take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics
of our civilization.
Born within sight of Bunker Hill--son of Harvard, whose first
pledge was "Truth," citizen of a republic based on the claim
that no government is rightful unless resting on the consent of
the people, and which assumes to lead in asserting the rights of
humanity--I at least can say nothing else and nothing less--no
not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hooting my
words!
For practise on forceful selections, use "The Irrepressible Conflict,"
page 67; "Abraham Lincoln," page 76, "Pass Prosperity Around," page 470;
"A Plea for Cuba," page 50.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Those who sat in the pit or the parquet.]
[Footnote 3: _Hamlet_, Act III, Scene 2.]
FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit that hovers over
the production of genius.
--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character_.
If you are addressing a body of scientists on such a subject as the
veins in a butterfly's wings, or on road structure, naturally your theme
will not arouse much feeling in either you or your audience. These are
purely mental subjects. But if you want men to vote for a measure that
will abolish child labor, or if you would inspire them to take up arms
for freedom, you must strike straight at their feelings. We lie on soft
beds, sit near the radiator on a cold day, eat cherry pie, and devote
our attention to one of the opposite sex, not because we have reasoned
out