THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY

your attention had

      been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first

      page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the

      "seventh day." You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your

      audience will likewise demand rest. Observe nature, study her laws, and

      obey them in your speaking.

      _3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_

      Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it

      will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of

      much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep

      guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of

      woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this

      principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a

      feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he

      arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like to be kept

      waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is a

      circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the

      back of a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed

      and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a

      great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once. We not only

      like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for. If fish bite too

      readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.

      It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock

      Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is

      solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins'

      receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em

      laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if

      they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.

      Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to

      arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:

      "It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience

      wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great

      evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he

      had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then

      he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and

      continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the

      audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr.

      Moody, then continued--"as the greatest preacher of his day." Let the

      dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following:

      "It was my privilege to hear--the great evangelist--Dwight L.

      Moody.--I came to regard him--as the greatest preacher of his

      day."

      The unskilled speaker would have rattled this off with neither pause nor

      suspense, and the sentences would have fallen flat upon the audience. It

      is precisely the application of these small things that makes much of

      the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful speaker.

      _4. Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate_

      Any Missouri farmer will tell you that a rain that falls too fast will

      run off into the creeks and do the crops but little good. A story is

      told of a country deacon praying for rain in this manner: "Lord, don't

      send us any chunk floater. Just give us a good old drizzle-drazzle." A

      speech, like a rain, will not do anybody much good if it comes too fast

      to soak in. The farmer's wife follows this same principle in doing her

      washing when she puts the clothes in water--and pauses for several hours

      that the water may soak in. The physician puts cocaine on your

      turbinates--and pauses to let it take hold before he removes them. Why

      do we use this principle everywhere except in the communication of

      ideas? If you have given the audience a big idea, pause for a second or

      two and let them turn it over. See what effect it has. After the smoke

      clears away you may have to fire another 14-inch shell on the same

      subject before you demolish the citadel of error that you are trying to

      destroy. Take time. Don't let your speech resemble those tourists who

      try "to do" New York in a day. They spend fifteen minutes looking at the

      masterpieces in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, ten minutes in the

      Museum of Natural History, take a peep into the Aquarium, hurry across

      the Brooklyn Bridge, rush up to the Zoo, and back by Grant's Tomb--and

      call that "Seeing New York." If you hasten by your important points

      without pausing, your audience will have just about as adequate an idea

      of what you have tried to convey.

      Take time, you have just as much of it as our richest multimillionaire.

      Your audience will wait for you. It is a sign of smallness to hurry. The

      great redwood trees of California had burst through the soil five

      hundred years before Socrates drank his cup of hemlock poison, and are

      only in their prime today. Nature shames us with our petty haste.

      Silence is one of the most eloquent things in the world. Master it, and

      use it through pause.

      * * * * *

      In the following selections dashes have been inserted where pauses may

      be used effectively. Naturally, you may omit some of these and insert

      others without going wrong--one speaker would interpret a passage in one

      way, one in another; it is largely a matter of personal preference. A

      dozen great actors have played Hamlet well, and yet each has played the

      part differently. Which comes the nearest to perfection is a question

      of opinion. You will succeed best by daring to follow your own

      course--if you are individual enough to blaze an original trail.

      A moment's halt--a momentary taste of being from the well amid

      the waste--and lo! the phantom caravan has reached--the nothing

      it set out from--Oh make haste!

      The worldly hope men set their hearts upon--turns ashes--or it

      prospers;--and