Without the reenforcement of such thorough preparation, your enthusiasm will vanish and your earnestness will give way to doubt and confusion. Prepare yourself well, then speak to win. TEST QUESTIONS These questions are for the student to use in testing his knowledge of the principles in this lesson. They are suggestive merely, dealing largely with the practical application of the principles, and are to be placed in the notebook for future reference. 1. What are the three major parts in the organization of a speech? 2. In your own writing and speaking, do you use the terms "first," "second," etc., for the main divisions of your thought? 3. Recall some speaker whose thought seems confused. Recall the speakers to whom it is easy to listen. Is not the important difference between them in clearness of outline? 4. Remember an audience that was hostile to a speaker. What was the hostility? 5. How did the speaker endeavor to overcome the hostility? Did he succeed? 6. When may a speaker plunge into his topic without an introduction? 7. Recall without consulting the text the main divisions of Conkling's speech nominating Grant. 8. What was the greatest objection to the nomination of Grant? 9. Why does Conkling leave that point until well toward the end of his address? 10. Do you recall a recent national convention in which a nominating speaker faced practically the same objection as Conkling did? 11. Conkling's speech seems rather florid (flowery). When is this style justifiable? In what kinds of addresses is it entirely out of place? 12. Reproduce from memory the general outline suitable for most nominating speeches. 13. Recall some nominating speech you have heard. How does it compare with Conkling's? LESSON 3 THE PURPOSE OF THE INTRODUCTION We have seen that a speech has for its central purpose, the delivery of a certain body of information—the expression of a message in which the speaker believes and with which he hopes to influence his hearers. That message constitutes the body of the speech. It may have many parts or subdivisions, but all of them, taken together, round out the message the speaker has to deliver. We have briefly suggested that it is often wise to smooth the way for this message by some introductory remarks. It will be the aim of this lesson and the following one to show some of the obstacles which must be smoothed away by the introduction and to indicate the proper methods of doing this. We shall consider the purpose of the introduction under three heads: (A) To put the audience in a state of favorable feeling; (B) to arouse interest and secure attention; and (C) to prepare the audience to understand the message. One caution must be given: While planning the introduction and making a detailed study of its particular functions, the whole speech must be kept in mind all the time. All other parts merely set the scenes, as it were, or throw a stronger light upon the central theme. (A) TO PUT THE AUDIENCE IN A STATE OF FAVORABLE FEELING If the audience is well disposed to the speaker and his subject, and if it is in a favorable emotional state-one of good will or enthusiasm, then one of the services of an introduction is unnecessary. That service is to render the audience favorable, from an emotional or feeling standpoint, to the reception of the message. But if there is the slightest ill will, bad temper, or even indifference, something must be done to remove it before the main business of the speech is taken up. We all know that our enemies condemn our views before they are stated. Ill feeling is transferred from the man to his ideas. Not only are strong feelings of hatred a bar to a fair hearing, but even a slight indifference is sufficient to stand in the way of an unbiased reception. Then also, the delivery of a speech may be surrounded by special circumstances which will make the auditors inclined away from rather than toward the speaker and his cause. Later in this lesson we shall enumerate various unfavorable emotional states, discuss the circumstances which give rise to them, and indicate methods of offsetting them. Just now, while Conkling's nomination of Grant is fresh in your mind, we shall show how Garfield undertook to counteract the enthusiasm it aroused, in order that he might present the name of another candidate. How GARFIELD WON A HEARING Imagine the high excitement which reigned in the convention when Conkling finished and had been ably seconded by Bradley of Kentucky. To stem this tide of feeling was Garfield's first necessity. He wanted to nominate Sherman of Ohio. It would have been foolish to advance a single thought in the line of his purpose until he had brought his hearers to a state of calm and had them forget, for a time at least, the words of Conkling. Notice how he did it. I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this convention with deep solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates, waiting to cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of the Republic, but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts,-there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work tonight. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want? * Bear with me for a moment. "Hear me for my cause,' for a moment "be silent that you may hear." " and Twenty-five years ago, this Republic was bearing and wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the conscience of a majority of our people; the narrowing and disintegrating doctrine of State sovereignty had shackled and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the national government; and the grasping power of slavery was seizing upon the virgin territories of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis, the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from the fire of liberty which God had lighted in every human heart, and which all the powers of tyranny and ignorance could not wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and to save. It entered the arena where the beleaguered and assailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free forever. Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of the great man who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its chief, entered the national Capitol, and assumed the high duties of government. The light which shone from its banner illumined its pathway to power. Every slave-pen and the shackles of every slave within the shadow of the Capitol were consumed in the rekindled fire of freedom. Our great national industries by cruel and calculating neglect had been prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well-nigh empty. The money of the people consisted mainly of the wretched notes of two thousand uncontrolled and irresponsible state banking corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned, rather than sustained, the life of business. The Republican party changed all this. It abolished a babel of confusion, and gave to the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and |