The Art of Lecturing / Revised Edition

by Arthur M. Lewis

This difficulty hampered me terribly in many debates and the only consolation I could find was that it seemed to hamper my opponents about as much. But it never troubles me now owing to the following simple, but invaluable device: See that your watch is wound, take half a postage stamp, and, as the chairman calls you forth, stick the stamp across the face of your watch in such a position that when the large hand goes into eclipse your time is up. Then place it on the desk where it will be always visible, and the space between the hand and the line of eclipse always shows your remaining time.

On the occasion of my debate with Mr. Chafin, the last presidential candidate of the Prohibition party, on “Socialism versus Prohibition as a Solution of the Social Problem,” Mr. Louis Post, the well-known editor of “The Public,” was chairman. He courteously asked us how much warning we needed before the close of our several speeches. Mr. Post is no novice in debate and he looked much surprised when I told him not to warn me at all and that he would have no need of closing me with the gavel. He probably thought I had decided to use only part of the time allowed me. When, at the close of my longest speech I finished a somewhat difficult and elaborate peroration squarely on the last quarter of the last second, Mr. Post’s astonishment was so great that he burst out with it to the audience. He said: “Mr. Lewis does not require a chairman; without any help from me in any way he closed that speech right to the moment. I don’t know how he does it; it is a mystery to me; I couldn’t do it to save my life!”

In my debate with Clarence Darrow on “Non-resistance,” at the close of my long speech, when our excellent chairman, Mr. Herbert C. Duce, thought I had lost all track of time and was going to need the gavel, to his surprise, just as my last second expired I turned to Darrow and asked a minute’s grace to quote from Tennyson, which Darrow gave with a promptness that scored heavily with the audience.

For some days before a debate I take care that my pocketbook is well supplied with postage stamps.

Another matter of the very first importance is the taking of notes of your opponent’s speech and preparing to reply when your turn comes. During the last few years I have met in debate, Henry George, Jr., Clarence Darrow, M. M. Mangasarian, Professor John Curtis Kennedy, Eugene Chafin, John Z. White, W. F. Barnard, Bolton Hall, H. H. Hardinge, Chas. A. Windle, editor of “The Iconoclast,” and others, all men with a national and many with an international reputation as platform masters. But I have never been able to understand why almost all of them, except Barnard and Kennedy, made almost no real use of their time while I was speaking. The probable reason is that debating has not been cultivated as an art in this country.

They sit quietly in a chair without table or note paper and are satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some scrap of paper they seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this easy going method than any man I ever met.

With all deference to the names I have given I must insist that this is no way to debate. It should be done thoroughly and systematically. For my own purposes I have reduced this part of debating to an exact science. I do not dread a debate now as I once did. My only care is to see that I am master of the subject.

I will now give my latest method of note taking—the product of years of experience and many long hours of careful planning. It works so simply and perfectly that I do not see how it can be further improved. This confidence in the perfection of my methods is not usual with me. I have tried every method I could hear of or scheme out, and this is the only one that ever gave satisfaction. Now for the method.

Have a table on the platform. Never allow the chairman to open the debate until your table and chair have been provided. Next, a good supply of loose pages of blank white paper of reasonably good quality and fairly smooth surface. A good size is nine inches long and six wide. Any wholesale paper house will cut them for you. Remember, they must be loose; do not try to use a note book. Next, a good lead pencil, writing blue at one end and red at the other.

When your opponent makes his first point make a note of it in blue at the top of one of your loose pages. There is no need of numbering any of the pages. Keep that page exclusively for that one point. Leave the upper half of the page for the note of his point. If you have your answer ready, make a note of it half way down the page in red.