Читать книгу THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING - J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY - Страница 25

1. Illustrate, by repeating a sentence from memory, what is meant by

employing force in speaking.

2. Which in your opinion is the most important of the technical

principles of speaking that you have studied so far? Why?

3. What is the effect of too much force in a speech? Too little?

4. Note some uninteresting conversation or ineffective speech, and tell

why it failed.

5. Suggest how it might be improved.

6. Why do speeches have to be spoken with more force than do

conversations?

7. Read aloud the selection on page 84, using the technical principles

outlined in chapters III to VIII, but neglect to put any force behind

the interpretation. What is the result?

8. Reread several times, doing your best to achieve force.

9. Which parts of the selection on page 84 require the most force?

10. Write a five-minute speech not only discussing the errors of those

who exaggerate and those who minimize the use of force, but by imitation

show their weaknesses. Do not burlesque, but closely imitate.

11. Give a list of ten themes for public addresses, saying which seem

most likely to require the frequent use of force in delivery.

12. In your own opinion, do speakers usually err from the use of too

much or too little force?

13. Define (a) bombast; (b) bathos; (c) sentimentality; (d) squeamish.

14. Say how the foregoing words describe weaknesses in public speech.

15. Recast in twentieth-century English "Hamlet's Directions to the

Players," page 88.

16. Memorize the following extracts from Wendell Phillips' speeches, and

deliver them with the of Wendell Phillips' "silent lightning" delivery.

We are for a revolution! We say in behalf of these hunted

lyings, whom God created, and who law-abiding Webster and

Winthrop have sworn shall not find shelter in Massachusetts,--we

say that they may make their little motions, and pass their

little laws in Washington, but that Faneuil Hall repeals them in

the name of humanity and the old Bay State!

* * * * *

My advice to workingmen is this:

If you want power in this country; if you want to make

yourselves felt; if you do not want your children to wait long

years before they have the bread on the table they ought to

have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the

opportunities in life they ought to have; if you don't want to

wait yourselves,--write on your banner, so that every political

trimmer can read it, so that every politician, no matter how

short-sighted he may be, can read it, "_WE NEVER FORGET!_ If you

launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ If

there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the

wrong scale, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ You may go down on your knees,

and say, 'I am sorry I did the act'--but we will say '_IT WILL

AVAIL YOU IN HEAVEN TO BE SORRY, BUT ON THIS SIDE OF THE GRAVE,

NEVER!_'" So that a man in taking up the labor question will

know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, "I

am to be true to justice and to man; otherwise I am a dead

duck."

* * * * *

In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what

government does, no remonstrance allowed, no agitation of public

issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the summit of

Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described as "a

despotism tempered by assassination." Meanwhile, such despotism

has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled

power doubtless made some of the twelve Cæsars insane; a madman,

sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred millions of

men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled

roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into

exile for his opinions. The next week she is stripped naked and

flogged to death in the public square. No inquiry, no

explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead uniform silence, the

law of the tyrant. Where is there ground for any hope of

peaceful change? No, no! in such a land dynamite and the dagger

are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall.

Anything that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and

rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This

is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can

take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics

of our civilization.

Born within sight of Bunker Hill--son of Harvard, whose first

pledge was "Truth," citizen of a republic based on the claim

that no government is rightful unless resting on the consent of

the people, and which assumes to lead in asserting the rights of

humanity--I at least can say nothing else and nothing less--no

not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hooting my

words!

For practise on forceful selections, use "The Irrepressible Conflict,"

page 67; "Abraham Lincoln," page 76, "Pass Prosperity Around," page 470;

"A Plea for Cuba," page 50.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Those who sat in the pit or the parquet.]

[Footnote 3: _Hamlet_, Act III, Scene 2.]