2. Current Events.
3. Local Allusion.
4. Citations.
5. Things seen, heard, or imagined.
A great calamity may come to a speaker from a bad introduction. Speakers who are great in everything else often fail at this point. Some make their introductions too complicated, and thus defeat their own end, as surely as the engineer who gives his railroad such steep grades that no train can pass over it. Others deliver a string of mere platitudes and weary their audience from the beginning.
When from these or other causes our address is mis-begun, the consequences may be serious. The thought settles upon the speaker with icy weight that he is failing. This conviction paralyzes all his faculties. He talks on, but grows more and more embarrassed. Incoherent sentences are stammered out which require painful explanation to prevent them from degenerating into perfect nonsense. The outline of his plan dissolves into mist. The points he intended to make which seemed strong and important now look trivial. With little hope ahead he blunders on. The room grows dark before him, and in the excess of his misery he longs for the time when he can close without absolute disgrace. But alas! the end seems far off, and he searches in vain for some avenue of escape. There is none. His throat becomes dry and parched, and command of voice is lost. The audience grow restive, for they are tortured as well as the speaker, and if he were malicious and had time to think about it, he might find some alleviation in that. No one can help him. At length, in sheer desperation, he does what he ought to have done long before—simply stops and sits down—perhaps hurling some swelling morsel of common-place, as a parting volley, at the audience—bathed in sweat, and feeling that he is disgraced forever! If he is very weak or foolish, he resolves never to speak again without having every word written out before him; if wiser, he only resolves, not only to understand his speech, but how to begin it.
CHAPTER VIII.
Progress of the Speech.
The passage from the introduction to the discussion should be made smoothly and gradually. To accomplish this, and to strike the subject at just the right angle, continuing all the interest previously excited, is a most important achievement. A definite object is a great assistance in this part of the work. If the object is clearly in view, we go right up to it with no wasted words, and the people follow our guidance because they see that we are not proceeding at random. But with no strong purpose we are apt to steer about our subject without ever being quite ready to enter upon it. The more brilliant the introduction the more difficult this transition will be. But all these difficulties may be overcome with the aid of a well-constructed plan, and then all the triumphs of oratory are before us.
There is great pleasure in speaking well. An assembly hanging on the words and thinking the thoughts of a single man, gives to him the most subtle kind of flattery. But he must not inhale its fragrance heedlessly, or his fall will be speedy and disastrous. The triumphs of oratory are very fascinating—the ability to sway our fellows at pleasure, to bind them willing captives with the strong chain of our thought—produces a delirious and intoxicating sense of power. But in the best of instances such achievements are very transient, and unless taken advantage of at the moment to work our cherished purposes, the opportunity is lost. Even during a single address it is hard to maintain the influence of a happy moment. Speakers sometimes utter a great and noble thought and the nameless thrill of eloquence is felt, but some irrelevant phrase or common-place sentiment dissolves the charm. To avoid this, the whole discourse must be animated with some controlling purpose, and in its general character, tend upward, until its close.
The law of climax ought to be carefully considered by the speaker. There may be more than one culmination of interest in an address, separated by an interval less absorbing and powerful, but this decline should only be allowed in order to prepare a second or third climax grander than all before. To violate this rule and have a speech “flatten out” toward its close, is a fearful error. Better reduce the length of the whole by one-half or three-fourths, and maintain interest and attention to the end.