Acquire the habit of listening critically to the best speakers, noting the words particularly when the climax is reached and the speaker’s emotions are deeply stirred; afterward try to reproduce the speech in your own words.
CHAPTER II
Wit, Humor, Pathos, Climaxes and Methods of Great Orators and Lecturers
The following account of successful speakers should be carefully studied. Every speech, however short, should contain, beside the introductory, a short story illustrating the subject, the climax or summing up, and the close.
It has been well said that an anecdote, if well told, will prove more interesting and potential than the most eloquent utterance or the most elaborate argument. Large audiences have frequently been convulsed with laughter or bowed down with grief by its mighty influence. They are also rich treasures to the man of the world who knows how to introduce them in fit places in conversation. No speech is complete either at a public gathering, at the banquet table, social session, or even small home gathering, without an appropriate story.
Henry Ward Beecher, though dead, still lives in the heart of humanity. He was a mighty power in the land, and his work was a living work, and its results can never be known until the books of heaven are balanced. While he never cared to be called a humorist, his wit and humor were as keen as his logic. When a humorous idea presented itself, he seized upon it at once to illustrate his thoughts and frequently changed the tears of his audience instantly to laughter.
“Humor,” said Beecher, “is everywhere. Humor is truth. Even John Bunyan was a humorist. It was humor when Bunyan made Christian meet one ‘Atheist’ trudging along with his back to the Celestial City.
“‘Where are you going?’ asked the Atheist, laughing at Christian.”
“‘To the Celestial City,’ replied Christian, his face all aglow with the heavenly light.
“‘You fool!’ said Atheist, laughing, as he trudged on into the darkness. ‘I’ve been hunting for that place for twenty years and have seen nothing of it yet. Plainly it does not exist.’
“Heaven was behind him,” said Beecher, seriously.
He never betrayed fear or grew angry even when his audience jeered and hurled all kinds of epithets at him, and when, at times, it looked as if he were going to be stoned or trampled to death. He quietly remarked: “I do not blame them, for they know not what they do.” Before an audience, inimical and prepared to hiss, Mr. Beecher won one of the greatest triumphs of his life. He pulled off his overcoat, and, without even a look of anger, threw it aside. Throwing back his long, snow-white locks, revealing a high forehead and a frank, determined face, he walked upon the platform. The chairman coldly said: “Mr. Beecher, ladies and gentlemen.” The orator stepped to the front of the platform and began his speech in a clear, ringing voice that instantly hushed the suppressed murmur and jeers. From that time until he closed the great audience was with him. Such flights of oratory, bursts of eloquence and keen, irresistible humor I never heard from his lips before. Tears, laughter and round after round of applause greeted him, and when he ceased the audience remained, as if it could not depart. The peroration that the great orator delivered brought the people to their feet. He walked behind the scene and picked up his overcoat. The audience would not go, but lingered to catch a glimpse of him. Throwing down his overcoat, he stepped into the auditorium. Women and men shook him by the hand; some wanted to touch his garments, if nothing else, and for an hour he talked to them socially, and they reluctantly parted from him.
Upon one occasion Andrew Carnegie introduced Miss Ingersoll, daughter of the great orator and Atheist, to Mr. Beecher, saying: “This is the daughter of Colonel Ingersoll; she has just heard you speak. This is the first sermon she has ever heard, and the first church she has ever attended.”
Mr. Beecher’s arms were outstretched at once, and grasping hers, he said, as he looked into her fair face: “Well, you are the most beautiful heathen I ever saw. How is your father? He and I have spoken from the same platform for a good cause, and wasn’t it lucky for me I was on the same side with him? Remember me to him.”
The youthful speaker must not be afraid of grammatical errors. A stenographer once proposed to Henry Ward Beecher that he be allowed extra pay for reporting Mr. Beecher’s sermons in consideration of correcting the grammatical errors. “And how many errors did you find in this discourse of mine?” asked the great preacher. “Just two hundred and sixteen.” “Young man,” said Mr. Beecher solemnly, “when the English language gets in my way it doesn’t stand a chance.” It is a fact that Mr. Beecher in impassioned speech uttered many unparsable expressions, and this is the case with nearly every great orator who speaks in any way extemporaneously. So the amateur orator need not despair.
Of Ingersoll a writer says: “Ingersoll was the John the Baptist of Agnosticism—an eloquent voice crying in the wilderness. In writing about the eloquence and humor of the century, you could no more leave out Ingersoll than the scientists could leave out Huxley, Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Even Gladstone, who stood on the pinnacle of England’s intelligence, had to come out and measure swords with the witty Agnostic. We may all differ from Inger-soll’s theology, but we must love him for being the Apostle of Freedom—‘freedom for man, woman and child.’
“Ingersoll was one of the most charming conversers of his age, and his house was constantly filled with the brainiest people of the city. There he sat evening after evening, in the bosom of his family, charming with his wit and wisdom his delighted guests.
“The comparisons of the great orator were so mirth-provoking that you broke into laughter while you were being convinced.
“One night, when Ingersoll was telling what the Republican party had done—how it had freed eight million slaves and saved the republic—he was interrupted by Daniel Voorhees, who said: ‘Oh, bury the past, Colonel; talk about to-day. We Democrats are not always boasting of the past.’
“‘I will tell you,’ said Ingersoll, ‘why the Democratic party wants us to bury the past. Now why should we do so? If the Democratic party had a glorious past, it would not wish to forget it. If it were not for the Republican party there would be no United States now on the map of the world. The Democratic party wishes to make a bargain with us to say nothing about the past and nothing about character. It reminds me of the contract that the rooster proposed to make with the horse: Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.’” Ingersoll paid this tribute to Henry Ward Beecher: “As in the leafless woods some tree, aflame with life, stands like a rapt poet in the heedless crowd, so stood this man among his fellow men. All there is of leaf and bud, of flower and fruit, of painted insect life, and all the winged and happy children of the air that Summer holds beneath her dome of blue, were known and loved by him. He loved the yellow Autumn fields, the golden stacks, the happy homes of men, the orchard’s bending bows, the sumach’s flags of flame, the maples with transfigured leaves, the tender yellow of the beech, the wondrous harmonies of brown and gold—the vines where hang the clustered spheres of wit and mirth. He loved the winter days, the whirl and drift of snow—all forms of frost—the rage and fury of the storm, when in the forest, desolate and stript, the brave old pine towers green and grand—a prophecy of Spring.”
In another part of this book will be found several of Ingersoll’s famous addresses.
Chauncey Depew, in his prime, was one of the best after dinner and extemporaneous speakers of his age. The following, “On the Blarney Stone,” is taken from one of his most popular lectures:
“Ladies and