Читать книгу The New Democracy: A handbook for Democratic speakers and workers - Walter Vrooman - Страница 11

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The outdoor campaigner should never fear repetition. The average outdoor listener is not averse to hearing something that he has heard before, but is averse to anything dull, statistical or requiring laborious mental effort. In fact, from the standpoint of economy, three or five addresses made on the same street corner for three or five successive days, will accomplish much more for the cause than the same number of addresses delivered each one in a different town or locality. The apostle of the New Democracy, traveling from place to place, should stop at least two or three days in each village, even if he has only one speech and must repeat it over with variations each time. If he is resourceful and has a few anecdotes and illustrations for each day, it will pay him to stay a week in each town, as it takes two or three days for new hearers to become familiar with his objects, aims and attitude of thought. The writer has often found that more real, direct converts are made to the people's cause on the sixth or seventh day in a town, than during all of the previous days combined.

Thought is like seed. Whatever be the soil, like all vegetable life, it must undergo three stages, planting, developing and fruit bearing. With the majority each stage of development requires a season; one speaker sows, another waters, and another gathers the ripe fruit. But a brain adjacent to an empty stomach, idle arms or a bankrupt business, offers a more fertile soil for new ideas, and there are some such minds in every town wherein all these processes can be carried on under the tutelage of one man; some such persons in despair at the beginning of the week, who can, by the close of the week, be brought to the light, their gloom dispelled, and a nobler civilization ever after clearly pictured before their eyes, the object of their life's endeavor. There are many persons who, by one series of meetings, are actually converted from ignorant participants in existing injustice to active workers for the true state yet to be. The whole tenor and ideals of their lives are transformed by knowledge vitalized by faith.

When a week's meetings are contemplated in country towns, experience suggests that the best time to start is on Monday and that the meetings all week should lead up to one or two grand demonstrations on Sunday, when the largest crowd of the week can be gotten together, and when, by the aid of a Scripture lesson, a prayer and a couple of patriotic songs, the enthusiasm can be carried highest.[3]