Another simple exercise can be practiced anywhere, and will be of great benefit. Many persons injure themselves by speaking too much from the throat. This is caused by improper, short, and shallow breathing. To breathe properly is beneficial at any time, and does much to prevent or remedy throat and lung disease. But in the beginning of a speech it is doubly important: when once under way, there will be no time to think of either voice or breath: the only safe plan, then, is to have the right mode made habitual and instinctive. This will be greatly promoted if just before beginning we breathe deeply for a few minutes, inflating the lungs to their extremities and sending the warm blood to the very tips of the fingers.
Having now done all we can in advance, nothing remains but to rise and speak. Preparation and precaution are passed. Actual work—the most joyous, thrilling, and spiritual of all human tasks—is now to be entered upon.
CHAPTER VII.
The Introduction.
The time for the speech having arrived, we will now consider its separate parts. No division is better for our purpose than that employed in a previous part of this work—a three-fold division into introduction, discussion, and conclusion.
A good introduction is exceedingly valuable, and is to be sought for with great solicitude, if it does not spontaneously present itself. Some kind of an introduction is inevitable, for there will always be a first moment when silence is broken, and our thoughts introduced. The subsiding murmur of the audience tells the speaker that the time of his trial has come. If he is very sensitive, or if he has seldom, if ever, spoken before, his pulse beats fast, his face flushes, and an indescribable feeling of faintness and fear thrills every nerve. He may wish himself anywhere else, but there is now no help for him. He must arise, and for the time stand as the mark for all eyes and the subject of all thoughts.
There is a vast difference between reciting and extemporizing in these opening moments, and the advantage seems to be altogether on the side of recitation. Every word is in its proper place and the speaker may be perfectly calm and self-collected. He is sure that his memory will not fail him in the opening, and encouraged by that assurance, will usually throw his whole power into his first sentences, causing his voice to ring clear and loud over the house.
The extemporizer is in a far more difficult position. He is sure of nothing. The weight of the whole speech rests heavily upon his mind. He is glancing ahead, striving to forecast the coming sentences, as well as carrying forward those gliding over the tongue, and, distracted by this double labor, his first expressions may be feeble and ungraceful. Yet this modesty and timidity is no real loss: it goes far to conciliate an audience and secure their good-will. We can scarcely fail to distinguish memorized from extemporized discourses by the introduction alone.
To avoid the pain and hesitancy of an unelaborated beginning, some speakers write and memorize the opening passage. This may accomplish the immediate object, but it is apt to be at the expense of all the remainder of the discourse. The mind cannot pass easily from reciting to spontaneous origination; and the voice, being too freely used at first, loses its power. The hearers, having listened to highly polished language, are less disposed to relish the plain words that follow, and the whole speech, which, like the Alpine condor, may have pitched from the loftiest summits, falls fast and far, until the lowest level is reached. A written introduction may be modest and unpretending, but unless it very closely imitates unstudied speech, painful contrasts and disappointments are inevitable.
One mode of avoiding these difficulties is to make no formal introduction, but to plunge at once into the heart of the subject. Sometimes, when the minds of speaker and hearer are already absorbed by the same general topic, as in the midst of a heated political canvass, this mode is very good. Under such circumstances, an interest may soon be aroused which removes all embarrassment. But usually the speaker’s mind is full of a subject which is unfamiliar and indifferent to his hearers. It then behooves him to find some mode of gaining their attention and sympathy before he takes the risk of arousing a prejudice against his subject which he might afterward strive in vain to overcome. If something is found which can be made to bear some relation to his subject, without too violent straining, and which already excites interest in their minds, it will be far better to begin with that, and lead them to the proper theme when their attention has been thoroughly aroused.
The introduction should not be left to the chance of the moment. It may often, with great propriety, be prepared after all other parts of the speech are planned. But with even more care than is given to any other portion should the introduction be prearranged. When once the wings of eloquence are fully spread we may soar above all obstructions; but in starting it is well to be assured that the ground is clear about us.