Читать книгу HOW TO SPEAK IN PUBLIC - Henry Dickson - Страница 7

“Think of a sledge-hammer, a steam-roller, a slow-moving, stone-walling batsman;” then, “think of a combination of all three,” and you have some idea of Mr. Roosevelt’s oratory, says “One Who Has Heard Him,” in the London Daily Mail. An orator must first of all make himself heard. Nobody ever found fault with Mr. Roosevelt on this score, we are told.

He speaks slowly and very clearly. Every word, every syllable even, is sep-ar-ate and dis-tinct. His one gesture is tremendous. He raises his right arm. He holds it threateningly above his head. It trembles with emphasis. It grips the hearers tight. They watch it as one watches a thunder-cloud ready to burst or a great tree about to fall. Then with a piston-like movement he brings it down. The clenched right fist thuds into the left palm. His point is rammed home. The tension is relaxed.

Then, for a change—oratory mus. be well varied—Mr. Roosevelt will turn to humor. His features, which have been almost convulsed with strenuousness, relax and grow mild. His teeth are no longer terrible. A smile—almost a grin—broadens out his cheeks and jaws. His eyes gleam with enjoyment. Up goes his voice—up, up, into a falsetto. The audience lean forward not to miss the joke. The point comes on the high G. In the perfect stillness even a whisper could be heard. It is almost in a whisper that he ends. Then, as a roar of laughter checks him, he stands triumphant, smiling benevolently, watching the effect that he has made.

His humor, which is always announced by the falsetto, is large and hearty, never ill-natured, never very subtle. It consists largely of dressing up familiar maxims in some quaint and arresting form of words.

Those who only read Mr. Roosevelt’s speeches can not understand their spell. “He says nothing which is not familiar,” they complain. “What is the secret which compels audiences to listen to him and to come away loud in his praise?” The secret is personality, which really means vitality, abounding, overflowing life and vigor, setting in motion a current of energy which it is impossible to resist. Mr. Roosevelt is a hypnotist. He “puts the ’fluence” on every one who comes into touch with him. He makes an ordinary remark with such force of emphasis that you are carried away. “What a profound thought!” you murmur. “Why has that never occurred to me before?” Yet upon reflection you cannot for the life of you explain where the profundity came in.

The following is the introduction to his address delivered at Lincoln’s birth-place on Feb. 12, 1909:

“We have met here to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the two greatest Americans; of one of the two or three greatest men of the nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in the world’s history. This rail-splitter, this boy who passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a struggle from which the nation emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to a loftier life.”

The speaker then traced the likeness in the character of the two greatest of our public men—Washington and Lincoln—stating that though they differed widely in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, in the great qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render.

The following is the summing-up and ending of the address:

“He lived in days that were great and terrible, when brother fought against brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so grim the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes to all, even to the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the hearts that were hurt. But to Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did not hate the man from whom he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same high qualities, the same courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice, and devotion to the right as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as all of us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the mightiest of the mighty men who mastered the mighty days; the lover of his country and of all mankind; the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the freedom of a race, Abraham Lincoln.”

Wendell Phillips was known in his day as the silver-tongued orator and was a master of invective. At Fan-euil Hall, Boston, the people began to shout “Phillips! Phillips!” Very soon he was addressing the audience and endeavored to conciliate and pacify his hearers.

“In all cases where great peril existed to citizens,’ he said, “it was the duty of the government to protect them.” No sooner had he finished the sentence than a number of men began to hiss.

The great orator paused a moment, and then an inspired wrath took hold of him, his great eyes gleamed, and in a blast of irony he exclaimed:

“Truth thrown into the cauldron of hell would make a noise like that.”

Wendell Phillips referred to Sargent S. Prentiss, of Mississippi, as the most eloquent of all the southern orators. Prentiss possessed a memory of boundless capacity. His achievements were all the more extraordinary when it is remembered that he is pitifully lame and his gait peculiarly ungraceful. His own judgment was that he owed more to the practice of debate than to any other form of discipline, and in a letter to his brother he said: “Let me particularly recommend you to cultivate the faculty of debating; of expressing your own ideas in the best and most effective manner. There are thousands of men in the United States who exceed Henry Clay in information on all subjects, but his superiority consists in the power and adroitness with which he brings his information to bear. This faculty of expression can be attained best in debating societies.”

Gladstone was the people’s orator; he stood for the people and could never fawn upon royalty. His voice has been described as round, rolling and rich, monotonous indeed, but so dignified that it is forgotten in the intellectual action that the voice revealed. It rises gradually and you are not aware that the thunder is going to roar until you find yourself in the center of the storm. He was the great advocate of Home Rule and stood above when all others deserted him. In one of his speeches he said:

“If the leaders withdraw, then the people will lead the way. That is an American idea. No aristocracy can really understand the people. I don’t blame the aristocrats, they were born so. They are reared to believe that the land is theirs, whereas it is given to all mankind.”

In reply to his opponents he used the following anecdote:

“The Liberal Unionists are a curious kind of inexpressible middle quantity. Are they repenting ? I will answer by an anecdote. An American lady, in retrenching expenses in the household, conceived the notion of beginning the operation by making that part of her little boy’s garments which is known in some parts of America by the euphonious and pleasant name of pants. She made them alike before and behind, and some relative of the lady asked how she succeeded. The lady said ‘Very nicely; but they are so made that at a short distance off I can’t tell whether Johnnie is coming home or going away.’ Some relative of the lady must have made the political pants of the Liberal Unionists.”

Patrick Henry, one of the world’s greatest orators, never wrote a line of his speeches. His early education was most limited. At sixteen he left, school and prepared himself for a lawyer by reading and studying human nature while conversing with those who frequented the store where he was clerking. After practicing law for a few years with some success he leaped into fame by a single speech in which his eloquence was magical.

His speech in the first Continental Congress won for him the position of the foremost orator in the western world. In that Congress he overthrew a plan of reconcilation between the mother country and the colonies which would have left them in the relation to each other that later was established between England and Canada. He was the only man who in debate opposed the scheme advocated by many of the foremost members. His eloquence was felt equally by the learned and unlearned. According to Thomas Jefferson he possessed practical fame, sublime imagination and an overwhelming diction. He was also declared a Shakespeare and Garrick combiner". His personal appearance was unfavorable. He never had a lesson in oratory, and yet stands before the world as a speaker who wrought as overwhelming effects as were attributed to Demosthenes. He owed his success to practice in conversation and public speaking and courage to meet a crisis, and his influence was greatly enhanced by his high Christian character and spotless reputation.