Chapter 1 : Increase Courage and Self-Confidence
“Courage is one step ahead of fear.”
Coleman Young
More than eighteen thousand businesspersons, since 1912, have been members of the various public speaking courses conducted by me. Most of them have, at my request, written stating why they had enrolled for this training and what they hoped to obtain from it. Naturally, the phraseology varied; but the central desire in these letters, the basic want in the vast majority, remained surprisingly the same: “When I am called upon to stand up and speak,” man after man wrote, “I become so self-conscious, so frightened, that I can’t think clearly, can’t concentrate, can’t remember what I had intended to say. I want to gain self-confidence, poise, and the ability to think on my feet. I want to get my thoughts together in logical order and I want to be able to say my say clearly and convincingly before a business group or audience.” Thousands of their confessions sounded about like that. Years ago, a gentleman here called D.W. Ghent joined my public speaking course in Philadelphia. Shortly after the opening session, he invited me to lunch with him in the Manufacturers’ Club. He was a man of middle age and had always led an active life; was head of his own manufacturing establishment, a leader in church work and civic activities. While we were having lunch that day, he leaned across the table and said: “I have been asked many times to talk before various gatherings but I have never been able to do so. I get so fussed, my mind becomes an utter blank: so I have... See more
Chapter 1 : Increase Courage and Self-Confidence
“Courage is one step ahead of fear.”
Coleman Young
More than eighteen thousand businesspersons, since 1912, have been members of the various public speaking courses conducted by me. Most of them have, at my request, written stating why they had enrolled for this training and what they hoped to obtain from it. Naturally, the phraseology varied; but the central desire in these letters, the basic want in the vast majority, remained surprisingly the same: “When I am called upon to stand up and speak,” man after man wrote, “I become so self-conscious, so frightened, that I can’t think clearly, can’t concentrate, can’t remember what I had intended to say. I want to gain self-confidence, poise, and the ability to think on my feet. I want to get my thoughts together in logical order and I want to be able to say my say clearly and convincingly before a business group or audience.” Thousands of their confessions sounded about like that. Years ago, a gentleman here called D.W. Ghent joined my public speaking course in Philadelphia. Shortly after the opening session, he invited me to lunch with him in the Manufacturers’ Club. He was a man of middle age and had always led an active life; was head of his own manufacturing establishment, a leader in church work and civic activities. While we were having lunch that day, he leaned across the table and said: “I have been asked many times to talk before various gatherings but I have never been able to do so. I get so fussed, my mind becomes an utter blank: so I have side-stepped it all my life. But I am chairman now of a board of college trustees. I must preside at their meetings. Do you think it will be possible for me to learn to speak at this late date in my life?”
“Do I think, Mr. Ghent?” I replied. “It is not a question of my thinking. I know you can, and I know you will if you will only practice and follow the directions and instructions.”
After he had completed his training, we lost touch with each other for a while. In 1921, we met and lunched together again at the Manufacturers’ Club. We sat in the same corner and occupied the same table that we had had on the first occasion. Reminding him of our former conversation, I asked him if I had been too sanguine then. He took a little red-backed notebook out of his pocket and showed me a list of talks and dates for which he was booked. “And the ability to make these,” he confessed, “the pleasure I get in doing it, the additional service I can render to the community—these are among the most gratifying things in my life.”
The International Conference for the Limitation of Armaments had been held in Washington shortly before that. When it was known that Lloyd George was planning to attend it, the Baptists of Philadelphia cabled, inviting him to speak at a great mass meeting to be held in their city. Lloyd George cabled back that if he came to Washington he would accept their invitation. And Mr. Ghent informed me that he himself had been chosen, from among all the Baptists of that city, to introduce England’s premier to the audience.
And this was the man who had sat at that same table less than three years before and solemnly asked me if I thought he would ever be able to talk in public!
Was the rapidity with which he forged ahead in his speaking ability unusual? Not at all. There have been hundreds of similar cases. For example—to quote one more specific instance—years ago, a Brooklyn physician, whom we will call Dr. Curtis, spent the winter in Florida near the training grounds of the Giants. Being an enthusiastic baseball fan, he often went to see them practise. In time, he became quite friendly with the team, and was invited to attend a banquet given in their honour.
After the coffee and nuts were served, several prominent guests were called upon to “say a few words”. Suddenly with the abruptness and unexpectedness of an explosion, he heard the toast-master remark: “We have a physician with us tonight, and I am going to ask Dr. Curtis to talk on a baseball player’s health.”
Was he prepared? Of course. He had had the best preparation in the world; he had been studying hygiene and practising medicine for almost a third of a century. He could have sat in his chair and talked about this subject all night to the man seated on his right or left. But to get up and say the same things to even a small audience—that was another matter. That was a paralyzing matter. His heart doubled its pace and skipped beats at the very contemplation of it. He had never made a public speech in his life, and every thought he had had now took wings.
What was he to do? The audience was applauding. Everyone was looking at him. He shook his head. But that served only to heighten the applause, to increase the demand. The cries of “Dr. Curtis! Speech! Speech!” grew louder and more insistent.
He was in positive misery. He knew that if he got up he would fail, that he would be unable to utter half a dozen sentences. So he arose and, without saying a word, turned his back on his friends and walked silently out of the room, a deeply embarrassed and humiliated man.
Small wonder that one of the first things he did after getting back to Brooklyn was to come to the Central Y.M.C.A. and enrol in the course in Public Speaking. He didn’t propose to be put to the blush and be stricken dumb a second time.
He was the kind of student that delights an instructor: he was in dead earnest. He wanted to be able to talk, and there was no half-heartedness about his desires. He prepared his talks thoroughly, he practised them with a will, and he never missed a single session of the course.
He did precisely what such a student always does: he progressed at a rate that surprised him, that surpassed his fondest hopes. After the first few sessions his nervousness subsided, and his confidence mounted higher and higher. In two months he had become the star speaker of the group. He was soon accepting invitations to speak elsewhere; he now loved the feel and exhilaration of it, the distinction and the additional friends it brought him.
The gaining of self-confidence and courage and the ability to think calmly and clearly while talking to a group is not one-tenth as difficult as most men imagine. It is not a gift bestowed by providence on only a few rarely endowed individuals. It is like the ability to play golf. Any man can develop his own latent capacity if he has sufficient desire to do so.
Is there the faintest shadow of a reason why you should not be able to think as well in a perpendicular position before an audience as you can when sitting down? Surely, you know there is not. In fact, you ought to think better when facing a group of men. Their presence ought to stir you and lift you. A great many speakers will tell you that the presence of an audience is a stimulus, an inspiration, that drives their brains to function more clearly, more keenly. At such times, thoughts, facts, ideas, that they did not know they possessed, drift smoking by, as Henry Ward Beecher said; and they have but to reach out and lay their hands hot upon them. They ought to be your experience. It probably will be if you practise and persevere.
Of this much, however, you may be absolutely sure: training and practise will wear away your audience-fright and give you self-confidence and an abiding courage.
Do not imagine that your case is unusually difficult. Even those who afterwards became the most eloquent representatives of their generation were, at the outset of their careers, afflicted by this blinding fear and self-consciousness.
Mark Twain, the first time he stood up to lecture, felt as if his mouth were filled with cotton and his pulse were speeding for some prize cup.
The late Jean Jaurès, the most powerful political speaker that France produced during his generation, sat, for a year, tongue-tied in the Chamber of Deputies before he could summon of the courage to make his initial speech.
John Bright, the illustrious Englishman who, during the civil war, defended in England the cause of union and emancipation, made his maiden speech before a group of countryfolk gathered in a school building. He was so frightened on the way to the place, so fearful that he would fail, that he implored his companion to start applause to bolster him up whenever he showed signs of giving way to his nervousness.
Charles Stewart Parnell, the great Irish leader, at the outset of his speaking career, was so nervous, according to the testimony of his brother, that he frequently clenched his fists until his nails sank into his flesh and his palms bled.
Disraeli admitted that he would rather have led a cavalry charge than have faced the House of Commons for the first time. His opening speech there was a ghastly failure. So was Sheridan’s.
In fact, so many of the famous speakers of England have made poor showings at first that there is now a feeling in Parliament that it is rather an inauspicious omen for a young man’s initial talk to be a decided success. So take heart.
After watching the careers and aiding somewhat in the development of so many speakers, the author is always glad when a student has, at the outset, a certain amount of flutter and nervous agitation.
There is a certain responsibility in making a talk, even if it is to only two dozen men in a business conference—a certain strain, a certain shock, a certain excitement. The speaker ought to be keyed up like a thoroughbred straining of the bit. The immortal Cicero said, two thousand years ago, that all public speaking of real merit was characterized by nervousness.
Speakers often experience this same feeling even when they are talking over the radio. “Microphone fright”, it is called. When Charlie Chaplin went “on the air”, he had his speech all written out. Surely he was used to audiences. He toured America back in 1912 with a vaudeville sketch entitled “A Night in a Music Hall”. Before that he was on the legitimate stage in England. Yet, when he went into the padded room and faced the microphone, he had a feeling in the stomach not unlike the sensation one gets when he crosses the Atlantic during a stormy February.
James Kirkwood, a famous motion picture actor and director, had a similar experience. He used to be a star on the speaking stage; but when he came out of the sending room after addressing the invisible audience, he was mopping perspiration from his brow. “An opening night on Broadway,” he confessed, “is nothing in comparison to that.”
Some men, no matter how often they speak, always experience this self-consciousness just before they commence; but in a few seconds after they have got on their feet, it disappears.
Even Lincoln felt shy for the few opening moments. In a few moments he gained composure and warmth and earnestness, and his real speech began.
Your experience may be similar to his.
In order to get the most out of this training, and to get it with rapidity and dispatch, four things are essential:
First : Start with a Strong and Persistent Desire
This is of far more importance than you probably realize. If your instructor could look into your mind and heart now and ascertain the depth of your desires, he could foretell, almost with certainty, the swiftness of the progress you will make. If your desire is pale and flabby, your achievements will also take on that hue and consistency. But, if you go after this subject with persistence, and with the energy of a bulldog after a cat, nothing underneath the Milky Way will defeat you.
Therefore, arouse your enthusiasm for this study. Enumerate its benefits. Think of what additional self-confidence and the ability to talk more convincingly in business will mean to you. Think of what it may mean to you socially; of the friends it will bring, of the increase of your personal influence, of the leadership it will give you. And it will give you leadership more rapidly than almost any other activity you can think of or imagine.
It is an attainment that almost every person of education longs for. After Andrew Carnegie’s death there was found, among his papers, a plan for his life drawn up when he was thirty-three years of age. He then felt that in two more years he could so arrange his business as to have an annual income of fifty thousand dollars; so he proposed to retire at thirty-five, go to Oxford and get a thorough education, and “pay special attention to speaking in public.”
Think of the glow of satisfaction and pleasure that will accrue from the exercise of this new power. The author has travelled round over no small part of this terrestrial ball; and has had many and varied experiences; but for downright, and lasting inward satisfaction, he knows of few things that will compare to standing before an audience and making men think your thoughts after you. It will give you a sense of strength, a feeling of power. It will appeal to your pride of personal accomplishment. It will set you off from and raise you above your fellowmen. There is magic in it and a never-to-be-forgotten thrill. “Two minutes before I begin,” a speaker confessed, “I would rather be whipped than start; but two minutes before I finish, I would rather be shot than stop.”
In every course, some men grow faint-hearted and fall by the wayside; so you should keep thinking of what this course will mean to you until your desire is white hot. You should start this programme with an enthusiasm that will carry you through every session, triumphant to the end. Tell your friends that you have joined this course. Set aside one certain night of the week for the reading of these lessons and the preparation of your talks. In short, make it as easy as possible to go ahead. Make it as difficult as possible to retreat.
When Julius Ceasar sailed over the channel from Gaul and landed with his legions on what is now England, what did he do to insure the success of his arms? A very clever thing: he halted his soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover, and, looking down over the waves two hundred feet below, they saw red tongues of fire consume every ship in which they had crossed. In the enemy’s country, with the last link with the Continent gone, the last means of retreating burned, there was but one thing left for them to do: to advance, to conquer. That is precisely what they did.
Such was the spirit of the immortal Caesar. Why not make it yours, too, in this war to exterminate your foolish fear of audiences.
Second : Act Confidently
To develop courage when you are facing an audience, act as if you already have it. Of course, unless you are prepared, all the acting in the world will avail but little. But granted that you know what you are going to talk about, step out briskly and take a deep breath. In fact, breathe deeply for thirty seconds before you ever face your audience. The increased supply of oxygen will buoy you up and give you courage. The great tenor, Jean de Reszke, used to say that when you had your breath so you “could sit on it”, nervousness vanished.
When a youth of the Peuhl tribe in Central Africa attains manhood and wishes to take unto himself a wife, he is compelled to undergo the ceremony of flagellation. The women of the tribe foregather, singing and clapping their hands to the rhythm of tom-toms. The candidate strides forth stripped naked to the waist. Suddenly a man armed with a cruel whip sets upon the lad, beating his bare skin, lashing him, flogging him like a fiend. Welts appear; often the skin is cut, blood flows; scars are made that last a lifetime. During this scourging, a venerable judge of the tribe crouches at the feet of the victim to see if he moves or exhibits the slightest evidence of pain. To pass the test successfully the tortured aspirant must not only endure the ordeal, but, as he endures it, he must sing a paean of praise.
In every age, in every clime, men have always admired courage; so, no matter how your heart may be pounding inside, stride forth bravely, stop, stand still like the scourged youth of Central Africa, and like him, act as if you loved it.
Draw yourself up to your full height and look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as confidently as if every one of them owed you money. Imagine that they do. Imagine that they have assembled there to bet you for an extension of credit. The psychological effect on you will be beneficial.
Do not nervously button and unbutton your coat, and fumble with your hands. If you must make nervous movements, place your hands behind your back and twist your fingers there where no one can see the performance—or wiggle your toes.
As a general rule, it is bed for a speaker to hide behind furniture, but it may give you a little courage the first few times to stand behind a table or chair and to grip them tightly—or hold a coin firmly in the palm of your hand.
How did Theodore Roosevelt develop his characteristic courage and self-reliance? Was he endowed by nature with a venturesome and daring spirit? Not at all. “Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy,” he confesses in his Autobiography. “I was, as a young man, at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit.”
Fortunately, he has told us how he achieved the transformation: “When a boy,” he writes, “I read a passage in one of Marryat’s books which always impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just if he were not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretence to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practising fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat’s.)
“This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.”
So take the offensive against your fears. Go out to meet them, battle them, conquer them by sheer boldness at every opportunity.
Have a massage, and then think of yourself as a courier boy instructed to deliver it. We pay slight attention to the boy. It is the courier that we want. The message—that is the thing. Keep your mind on it. Keep your heart in it. Know it like the back of your hand. Believe it feelingly. Then talk as if you were determined to say it. Do that, and the chances are ten to one that you will soon be master of the occasion and master of yourself.
Third : Know Thoroughly What You are Going to Talk About
Unless a man has thought out and planned his talk and knows what he is going to say, he can’t feel very comfortable when he faces his auditors. He is like the blind leading the blind. Under such circumstances, your speaker ought to be self-conscious, ought to feel repentant, ought to be ashamed of his negligence.
“I was elected to the Legislature in the autumn of 1881,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his Autobiography, “and found myself the youngest man in that body. Like all young men and inexperienced members, I had considerable difficulty in teaching myself to speak. I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed old countryman—who was unconsciously paraphrasing the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody else. The advice ran: ‘Don’t speak until you are sure you have something to say, and know just what it is; then say it, and sit down.’”
This “hard-headed old countryman” ought to have told Roosevelt of another aid in overcoming nervousness. He ought to have added: “It will help you to throw off your embarrassment if you can find something to do before an audience—if you can exhibit something, write a word on the blackboard or point out a spot on the map, or move a table or throw open a window, or shift some books and papers—any physical action with a purpose behind it may help you to feel more at home.”
True it is not always easy to find an excuse for doing such things, but there is the suggestion. Use it if you can, but use it the first few times only. A baby does not cling to chairs after it learns to walk.
Fourth : Practise! Practise! Practise!
The last point we have to make here is emphatically the most important. Even though you forget everything you have read so far, do remember this: the first way, the last way, the never-failing way to develop self-confidence in speaking is—to speak. Really the whole matter finally simmers down to but one essential: practise, practise, practise. That is the sine qua non of it all, “the without which not”.
“Any beginner,” warned Roosevelt, “is apt to have ‘buck fever’. ‘Buck fever’ means a state of intense nervous excitement which may be entirely divorced from timidity. It may affect a man the first time he has to speak to a large audience just as it may affect him the first time he sees a buck-deer or goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage, but nerve control and cool-headedness. This he can get only by actual practice. He must, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery, get his nerves thoroughly under control. This is largely a matter of habit; in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of willpower. If the man has the tight stuff in him, he will grow stronger and stronger with each exercise of it.”
So, persevere. Don’t remain away from any session of the course because the business duties of the week have rendered it impossible for you to prepare something. Prepared or unprepared, come. Let the instructor, the class, suggest a topic for you after you have come before them.
You want to get rid of your audience fear? Let us see what causes it.
Fear is the result of a lack of confidence and what causes that? It is the result of not knowing what you can really do. And not knowing what you can do is caused by a lack of experience. When you get a record of successful experience behind you, your fears will vanish; they will melt like night mists under the glare of a July sun.
One thing is certain: the accepted way to learn to swim is to plunge into the water. You have been reading this book long enough. Let as toss it aside now, and get busy with the real work in hand.
Choose your subject, preferably one on which you have some knowledge, and construct at three-minute talk. Practise the talk by yourself a number of times. Then give it, if possible, to the group for whom it is intended, or before your class, putting into the effort all your force and power.
“It is never easy to keep reaching for dreams. Strength and courage can sometimes be lonely friends. But those who reach, walk in stardust.”
Anonymous
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
Tori Amos
Chapter 2 : How to Open a Talk
“You have to care. And that care has to come from your soul Public speaking is the art of having everybody thinking you are talking to them.”
Dennis Van Gerven
I once asked Dr. Lynn Harold Hough, formerly president of Northwestern University, what was the most important fact that his long experience as a speaker had taught him. After pondering for a minute, he replied, “To get an arresting opening, something that will seize the attention immediately.” He plans in advance almost the precise words of both his opening and closing. John Bright did the same thing. Gladstone did it. Webster did it. Lincoln did it. Practically every speaker with common sense and experience does it.
But does the beginner? Seldom. Planning takes time, requires thought, demands willpower. Cerebration is a painful process. Thomas Edison had this quotation from Sir Joshua Reynolds nailed on the walls of his plants:
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking.”
The tyro usually trusts to the inspiration of the moment with the consequence that he finds:
“Beset with pitfall and with gin,
The road he is to wander in.”
The late Lord Northcliffe, who fought his way up from a meagre weekly salary to being the richest and most influential newspaper owner in the British Empire, said that these five words from Pascal had done more to help him succeed than anything else he had ever read:
“To foresee is to rule.”
That is also a most excellent motto to have on your desk when you are planning your talk. Foresee how you are going to begin when the mind is fresh to grasp every word you utter. Foresee what impression you are going to leave last—when nothing else follows to obliterate it.
Ever since the days of Aristotle, books on this subject have divided the speech into three sections: the introduction, the body, the conclusion. Until comparatively recently, the introduction often was, and could really afford to be, as leisurely as a cart ride. The speaker then was both a bringer of news and an entertainer. A hundred years ago he often filled the niche in the community that is usurped today by the newspaper, the radio, the telephone, the movie theatre.
But conditions have altered amazingly. The world has been made over. Inventions have speeded up life more in the last hundred years than they had formerly in all the ages since Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar. Automobiles, aeroplanes, radio; we are moving with increasing speed. And the speaker must fall in line with the impatient tempo of the times. If you are going to use an introduction, believe me, it ought to be short as a billboard advertisement. This is about the temper of the average modern audience: “Got anything to say? All right, let’s have it quickly and with very little trimmings. No oratory! Give us the facts quickly and sit down.”
When Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress on such a momentous question as an ultimatum on submarine warfare, he announced his topic and centred the audience’s attention on the subject with just twenty-three words:
“A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly.”
The salesmanager for the National Cash Register Company opened one of his talks to his men in this fashion. Only three sentences in this introduction; and they are all easy to listen to, they all have vigour and drive:
“You man who get the orders are the chaps who are supposed to keep the smoke coming out of the factory chimney. The volume of smoke emitted from our chimney during the past two summer months hasn’t been large enough to darken the landscape to any great extent. Now that the dog days are over and the business-revival season has begun, we are addressing to you a short, sharp request on this subject: We want more smoke.”
But do inexperienced speakers usually achieve such commendable swiftness and succinctness in their openings? Strict veracity compels us to record that they do not. The majority of untrained and unskilled speakers will begin in one of two ways—both of which are bed. Let us discuss them forthwith.
The Pitfalls Of Opening With A So-Called Humorous Story
For some lamentable reason, the novice often feels that he ought to be funny as a speaker. He may, by nature, mind you, be as solemn as the encyclopædia, utterly devoid of the lighter touch, yet the moment he stands up to talk he imagines he feels, or ought to feel, the spirit of Mark Twain descending upon him. So he is inclined to open with a humorous story, especially if the occasion is an after-dinner affair. What happens? The chances are twenty to one that the narration, the manner of this hardware merchant newly-turned raconteur, is as heavy as the dictionary. The chances are his stories don’t “click”. In the immortal language of the immortal Hamlet, they prove “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”.
If an entertainer were to misfire a few times like that before a vaudeville audience that had paid for their seats, they would “boo” and shout “give him the bird”. But the average group listening to a speaker is very sympathetic; so, out of sheer charity, they will do their best to manufacture a few chuckles while, deep in their hearts, they pity the would-be humorous speaker for his failure! They themselves feel uncomfortable. Haven’t you, my dear reader, witnessed this kind of fiasco time after time? The write has. In all the difficult realm of speech-making what is more difficult, more rare, than the ability to make an audience laugh? Humour is a hair-trigger affair; it is so much a matter of individuality, of personality. You are either born with the predilection for being humorous or you are not—much as you are born with or without brown eyes. Not much can be done about either.
Remember, it is seldom the story that is funny of, by, and in itself. It is the way it is told that makes it a success. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred will fail woefully with the identical stories that made Mark Twain famous. Read the stories that Lincoln repeated in the taverns of the English Judicial District of Illinois, stories that men drove miles to hear, stories that men sat up all night to hear, stories that, according to an eye witness, sometimes caused the natives to “whoop and roll off their chairs”. Read those stories aloud to your family and see if you conjure up a smile. Here is one Lincoln used to tell with roaring success. Why not try it? Privately, please—not before an audience. A late traveller, trying to reach home over the muddy roads of the Illinois prairies, was overtaken by a storm. The night was black as ink, the rain descended as if some dam in the heavens had broken, thunder rent the angry clouds like the explosion of dynamite. Chain lightning showed trees falling around. The roar of it was very nearly deafening. Finally a crash more terrific, more terrible than any the helpless man had ever heard in his life, brought him to his knees. He was not given to praying usually, but “Oh, Lord,” he gasped, “if it is all the same to you, please give us a little more light and a little less noise.”
You may be one of those fortunately endowed individuals who has the rare gift of humour. If so, by all means, cultivate it. You will be thrice welcome wherever you speak. But if you talent lies in other directions, it is folly—and it ought to be high treason—for you to attempt to wear the mantle of Chauncey M. Depew.
Were you to study his speeches, and Lincoln’s, and job Hedges’, you would probably be surprised at the few stories they told, especially in their openings. Edwin James Cattell confided to me that he had never told a funny story for the mere sake of humour. It had to be relevant, had to illustrate a point. Humour ought to be merely the frosting on the cake, merely the chocolate between the layers, not the cake itself. Strickland Gillilan, the best humorous lecturer, makes it a rule never to tell a story during the first three minutes of his talk. If he finds that practise advisable, I wonder if you and I would not also.
Must the opening then be heavy-footed, elephantine and excessively solemn? Not at all. Tickle our visibilities, if you can, by some local reference, something anent the occasion or the remarks of some other speaker. Observe some incongruity. Exaggerate it. That brand of humour is forty times more likely to succeed than stale jokes about Pat and Mike, or a mother-in-law, or a goat.
Perhaps the easiest way to create merriment is to tell a joke on yourself. Depict yourself in some ridiculous and embarrassing situation. That gets down to the very essence of much humour. The Eskimos laugh even at a chap who has broken his leg. The Chinese chuckle over the dog that has fallen out of a second storey window and killed himself. We are a bit more sympathetic than that, but don’t we smile at the fellow chasing his hat, or slipping on a banana skin?
Almost anyone can make an audience laugh by grouping incongruous ideas of qualities as, for example, the statement of a newspaper writer that he “hated children, tripe, and Democrats”.
Note how cleverly Rudyard Kipling raised laughs in this opening to one of his talks in England. He is retailing here, not manufactured anecdotes, but some of his own experiences and playfully stressing their incongruities:
My Lords. Ladies and Gentlemen: When I was a young man in India I used to report criminal cases for the newspaper that employed me. It was interesting work because it introduced me to forgers and embezzlers and murderers and enterprising sportsmen of that kind. (Laughter.) Sometimes, after I had reported their trials, I used to visit my friends in jail when they were doing their sentences. (Laughter.) I remember one man who got off with a life sentence for murder. He was a clever, smooth-speaking chap, and he told me what he called the story of his life. He said: “Take it from me that when a man gets crooked, one thing leads to another until he finds himself in such a position that he has to put somebody out of the way to get straight again.” (Laughter.) Well, that exactly describes the present position of the cabinet. (Laughter and cheers.)
This is the way William Howard Taft managed a bit of humour at the annual banquet of the superintendents of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The beautiful part of it is this: he is humorous and pays his audience a gracious compliment at the same time:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company:
I was out in my old home about nine months ago, and I heard an after-dinner speech there by a gentleman who had some trepidation in making it; and he said he had consulted a friend of his, who had had a great deal of experience in making after-dinner speeches, which friend advised him that the best kind of audience to address, as an after-dinner speaker, was an audience intelligent and well-educated but half-tight. (Laughter and applause.) Now, all I can say is that this audience is one of the best audiences I ever saw for an after-dinner speaker. Something has made up for the absence of that element that the remark implied (applause), and I must think it is the spirit of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. (Prolonged applause.)
Don’t Be Apologetic
The second egregious blunder that the beginner is wont to make in his opening, is this: he apologizes. “I am no speaker… I am not prepared to talk…. I have nothing to say…?
Don’t! Don’t! The opening words of a poem by Kipling are: “There’s no use in going further.” That is precisely the way an audience feels when a speaker opens in that fashion.
Anyway, if you are not prepared, some of us will discover it without your assistance. Others will not. Why call their attention to it? Why insult your audience by suggesting that you did not think them worth preparing for, that just any old thing you happened to have on the fire would be good enough to serve them? No. No. We don’t want to hear your apologies. We are there to be informed and interested, to be interested, remember that.
The moment you come before the audience, you have our attention naturally, inevitably. It is not difficult to get it for the first five seconds, but it is difficult to hold it for the next five minutes. If you once lose it, it will be doubly difficult to win it back. So begin with something interesting in your very first sentence. Not the second. Not this third. The first! F-I-R-S-T. First!
“How?” you ask. Rather a large order, I admit. And in attempting to harvest the material to fill it, we must tread our way down devious and dubious paths, for so much depends upon you, upon your audience, your subject, your material, the occasion, and so on. However, we hope that the tentative suggestions discussed and Illustrated in the remainder of this chapter will yield something usable and of value.
Curiosity Wins Over the Cat
Here is an opening used by Mr. Howell Healy in a talk given before a session of this course. Do you like it? Does it get your interest immediately?
Eighty-two years ago, and just about this time of year, there was published in London a little volume, a story, which was destined to become immortal. Many people have called it “the greatest little book in the world”. When it first appeared, friends meeting one another in the Strand or Pall Mall, asked the question, “Have you read it?” The answer invariably was: “Yes, God bless him, I have.”
The day it was published a thousand copies were sold. Within a fortnight, the demand had consumed fifteen thousand. Since then it has run into countless editions, and has been translated into every language under heaven. A few years ago, J.P. Morgan purchased the original manuscript for a fabulous sum; it now reposes among his other priceless treasures in that magnificent art gallery which he called his library.
What is this world-famous book? Dickens’ A Christmas Carol….
Do you consider that a successful opening? Did it hold your attention, heighten your interest as it progressed? Why? Was it not because it aroused your curiosity, held you in suspense?
Curiosity! Who is not susceptible to it?
I have seen birds in the woods fly about by the hour watching me out of sheer curiosity. I know a hunter in the high Alps who lures chamois by throwing a bed sheet around him and crawling about and arousing their curiosity. Dogs have curiosity, and so have kittens, and all manner of animals including the well-known genus homo.
So arouse your audience’s curiosity with your first sentence, and you have their interested attention.
The writer used to begin his lecture on Colonel Thomas Lawrence’s adventures in Arabia in this fashion:
“Lloyd George says that he regards Colonel Lawrence as one of the most romantic and picturesque characters of modern times.”
That opening had two advantages. In the first place, a quotation from an eminent man always has a lot of attention value. Second, it aroused curiosity: “Why romantic?” was the natural question, and “why picturesque?” “I never heard about him before…. What did he do?”
Lowell Thomas began his lecture on Colonel Thomas Lawrence with this statement:
“I was going down Christian Street in Jerusalem one day when I met a man clad in the gorgeous robes of an oriental potentate: and, at his side, hung the curved gold sword worn only by the descendants of the prophet Mohammed. But this man had none of the appearances of an Arab. He had blue eyes; and the Arabs’ eyes are always black or brown.”
That piques your curiosity, doesn’t it? You want to hear more. Who was he? Why was he posing as an Arab? What did he do? What became of him?
The student who opened his talk with this question: “Do you know that slavery exists in seventeen nations of the world today?” not only aroused curiosity, but in addition, he shocked his auditors. “Slavery? Today? Seventeen countries? Seems incredible. What nations? Where are they?”
One can often arouse curiosity by beginning with an effect, and making people anxious to hear the cause. For example, one student began with this striking statement: “A member of one of our state legislatures recently stood up in his legislative assembly and proposed the passage of a law prohibiting tadpoles from becoming frogs within two miles of any school house.”
You smile. Is the speaker joking? How absurd. Was that actually done? Yes. The speaker went on to explain:
Every man who aspires to speak in public ought to study the technique that magazine writers employ to hook the reader’s interest immediately. You can learn far more from them about how to open a speech than you can by studying collections of printed speeches.
Why Not Begin with a Story
Harold Bell Wright has admitted in an interview that his novels brought him more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Booth Tarkington and Robert W. Chambers earned similar amounts. For seventeen years Doubleday Page and Company had one large press, which did nothing in all that time but turn out a ceaseless flood of the novels by the late Gene Stratton Porter. Over seventeen million copies of her books were sold, and they brought her more than three million dollars in royalties. Do people like to hear stories? Those figures sound like it, don’t they?
We especially like to hear a man relate narrative from his own experience. The late Russell E. Conwell delivered his lecture, “Acres of Diamonds”, over six thousand times, and received millions for it.
Here are opening sentences taken from two stories that appeared in a single issue of The Saturday Evening Post:
“The sharp crack of a revolver punctuated the silence.”
“An incident, trivial in itself but not at all trivial in its possible consequences, occurred at the Montview Hotel, Denver, during the first week of July. It so aroused the curiosity of Goebel, the resident manager, that he referred it to Steve Faraday, owner of the Montview and half a dozen other Faraday hotels, when Steve made his regular visit a few days later on his midsummer swing of inspection.”
Note that those openings have action. They start something. They arouse your curiosity. You want to read on, you want to know more, you want to find out what it is all about.
Even the unpractised beginner can usually manage a successful opening if he employs the story technique and arouses our curiosity.
Begin with a Specific Illustration
It is difficult, it is arduous, for the average audience to follow abstract statements very long, Illustrations are easier to listen to, far easier. Then why not start with one? It is hard to get men to do that. I know. I have tried. They feel somehow that they must first make a few general statements. Not at all. Open with your Illustration, arouse then interest, then fellow with your general remarks.
What technique was employed to open this chapter you are now reading?
Use An Exhibit
Perhaps the easiest way in the world to gain attention is to hold up something for people to look at. Even savages and halfwits, and babes in the cradle and monkeys in a zoo and dogs on the street will give heed to that kind of stimulus. It can be used sometimes with effectiveness before the most dignified audience. For example, Mr. S.S. Ellis opened one of his talks by holding a coin between his thumb and forefinger, and high above his shoulder. Naturally everyone looked. Then he inquired: “Has anyone here ever found a coin like this on the pavement? It announces that the fortunate finder will be given a lot free in such and such an estate development. He has but to call and present this coin….” Mr. Ellis then proceeded to reveal the coloured man in the cordwood and to condemn the misleading and unethical practices involved.
Ask A Question
Mr. Ellis’ opening has another commendable feature. It begins by asking a question, by getting the audience thinking with the speaker, cooperating with him. Note that the Saturday Evening Post article on gangsters opens with two questions in the first three sentences: “Are gangsters really organized?... How?” The use of this question-key is really one of the simplest, surest ways to unlock the minds of your audience and let yourself in. When other tools prove useless, you can always fall back on it.
Why Not Open with a Question from Some Famous Man
The words of a prominent man always have attention power; so a suitable quotation is one of the very best ways of launching a harangue. Do you like the following opening of a discussion on business success?
“The world bestows its big prizes both in honours and money for but one thing,” says Elbert Hubbard. “And that is initiative. And what is initiative? I’ll tell you: it is doing the right thing without being told.”
As a starter, that has several commendable features. The initial sentence arouses curiosity; it carries us forward, we want to hear more. If the speaker pauses skillfully after the words. “Elbert Hubbard,” it arouses suspense. “What does the world bestow its big prizes for?” we ask. Quick. Tell us. We may not agree with you, but give us your opinion anyway… The second sentence leads up right into the heart of the subject. The third sentence, a question, invites the audience to get in on the discussion, to think, to do a little something. And how audiences like to do things. They love it! The fourth sentence defines initiative… After this opening, the speaker led off with a human interest story illustrating that quality. As far as construction is concerned. Moody might have rated the stock of that talk Aaa.
