publicspeaking

A resourceful self-reliance is necessary to complete confidence. Emerson says, “Knowledge is the antidote to fear.” A man must train himself to be equal to any emergency. He should examine himself, thoroughly prepare himself and make up his mind to take the risk of failure if necessary. Successive failures should be an incentive to greater effort. Above all he should do his work under the immediate inspiration of duty. The habit of clear and deliberate utterance should be cultivated both in conversation and public address. He should be bold, but not too bold. More failures in public speaking are due to egotism than to anything else. The first possession of every man should be self-possession, and this can best be acquired through the practise of concentration, modesty of manner, thorough preparation, and physical earnestness.

EXAMPLES

1. What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediate minister, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed, in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it? I, who fear not to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my short life,—am I to be appalled here, before a mere remnant of mortality?—by you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have caused to be shed, in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it!

“On Being Found Guilty        ROBERT EMMET.

of High Treason.”

2. With conscience satisfied with the discharge of duty, no consequences can harm you. There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or for our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us whenever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.

“The Knapp Murder Trial.”     WEBSTER.

3.  But this I will avow, that I have scorned,

And still do scorn, to hide my sense of wrong!

Who brands me on the forehead, breaks my sword,

Or lays the bloody scourge upon my back,

Wrongs me not half so much as he who shuts

The gates of honor on me,—turning out

The Roman from his birthright; and, for what?

To fling your offices to every slave!

Vipers, that creep where man disdains to climb,

And, having wound their loathsome track to the top,

Of this huge, mouldering monument of Rome,

Hang hissing at the nobler man below!

“Catiline’s Defiance.”  GEORGE CROLY.

Climax is the artistic building up of a dramatic effect by means of increased force and intensity.

Here are some excerpts to help you practice your climax:

1.
We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne.

PATRICK HENRY.

2.
I not only did not say this, but did not even write it; I not only did not write it, but took no part in the embassy; I not only took no part in the embassy, but used no persuasion with the Thebans.

“On the Crown.” DEMOSTHENES.

3.
It is coming fast upon you; already it is near at hand—yet
a few short weeks, and we may be in the midst of those unspeak
able miseries the recollection of which now rends your souls
asunder.

LORD BROUGHAM.

4.
They must be repealed. You will repeal them. I pledge
myself for it that you will in the end repeal them: I stake my
reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they
are not finally repealed.

CHATHAM.

5.
Ay, is it so?
Then wakes the power which in the age of iron
Bursts forth to curb the great, and raise the low.
Mark, where she stand: around her form I draw
The awful circle of our solemn Church!
Set but a foot within that holy ground,
And on thy head—yea, tho it wore a crown—
I launch the curse of Rome!

“Richelieu.” EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.

6.
I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.
I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.
I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.
I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.
I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.
I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation and condition of life.

“Impeachment of Warren Hastings.” EDMUND BURKE.

7.
Look to your hearths, my lords!
For there, henceforth, shall sit, for household gods,
Shapes hot from Tartarus; all shames and crimes;
Wan Treachery, with his thirsty dagger drawn;
Suspicion, poisoning his brother’s cup;
Naked Rebellion, with the torch and axe,
Making his wild sport of your blazing thrones;
Till Anarchy comes down on you like night,
And massacre seals Rome’s eternal grave.

“Catiline’s Defiance.” GEORGE CROLY.

8.
Then soon he rose; the prayer was strong; The Psalm was warrior David’s song; The text, a few short words of might— “The Lord of hosts shall arm the right!” He spoke of wrongs too long endured, Of sacred rights to be secured; Then from his patriot tongue of flame The startling words for Freedom came.
The stirring sentences he spake Compelled the heart to glow or quake, And, rising on the theme’s broad wing, And grasping in his nervous hand The imaginary battle-brand, In face of death he dared to fling Defiance to a tyrant king.

“The Revolutionary Rising.” THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

9.
King Henry. What’s he,that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland?—No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honor.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold;
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honor
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, ‘faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honor,
As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more.
Bather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called—the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tiptoe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say,—”To-morrow is Saint Crispian”:
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words,—
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloster,—
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon SAINT CRISPIN’S DAY.

In all successful oratory there must be a clearly defined aim and purpose. The speaker should endeavor to find out where his special power lies and work in that direction, always remembering that the loftier the aim the greater the possible achievement. Beecher said: “Let no man who is a sneak try to be an orator.” There must be intrinsic worth. A man must be and not seem. An audience can not long be deceived. The speaker will shortly be estimated at his true value. The development of the sympathetic nature should not be neglected. The transforming power of deep affection is described by Balzac, when he says of Père Goriot, “Père Goriot was stirred out of himself. Never till now had Eugene seen him thus lighted up by the passion of paternity. We may here remark on the infiltrating, transforming power of an over-mastering emotion. However coarse the fiber of the individual, let him be held by a strong and genuine affection, and he exhales, as it were, an essence which illuminates his features, inspires his gestures, and gives cadence to his voice.”

EXAMPLES

1. And, since the thoughts and reasonings of an author have, as I have said, a personal character, no wonder that his style is not only the image of his subject, but of his mind.   That pomp of language, that full and tuneful diction, that felicitousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing else but the mere habit and way of a lofty intellect.   Aristotle, in his sketch of the magnanimous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his motions slow, and his stature commanding.   In like manner, the elocution of a great intellect is great.   

His language expresses, not only his great thoughts, but his great self.   

Certainly he might use fewer words than he uses; but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates into a multitude of details, and prolongs the march of his sentences, and sweeps round to the full diapason of his harmony, rejoicing in his own vigor and richness of resource.

CARDINAL “NEWMAN.

2.       I have no light or knowledge not common to my country men.  

I do not prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot bound my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and whose children and children’s children shall for ages hence bless the American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland and set them in the pathway of the world’s best civilization.