Part 13 (1/2)
TALKING AND TAKING
Every time a woman does anything original or remarkable,--inventing a rat-trap, let us say, or carving thirty-six heads on a walnut-sh.e.l.l,--all observers shout applause. ”There's a woman for you, indeed! Instead of talking about her rights, she takes them. That's the way to do it. What a lesson to these declaimers upon the platform!”
It does not seem to occur to these wise people that the right to talk is itself one of the chief rights in America, and the way to reach all the others. To talk is to make a beginning, at any rate. To catch people with your ideas is more than to contrive a rat-trap; and Isotta Nogarola, carving thirty-six empty heads, was not working in so practical a fas.h.i.+on as Mary Livermore when she instructs thirty-six hundred full ones.
It shows the good sense of the woman-suffrage agitators, that they have decided to begin with talk. In the first place, talking is the most lucrative of all professions in America; and therefore it is the duty of American women to secure their share of it. Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble used to say that she read Shakespeare in public ”for her bread;” and when, after melting all hearts by a course of farewell readings, she decided to begin reading again, she said she was doing it ”for her b.u.t.ter.” So long as women are often obliged to support themselves and their children, and perhaps their husbands, by their own labor, they have no right to work cheaply, unless driven to it. Anna d.i.c.kinson had no right to make fifteen dollars a week by sewing, if, by stepping out of the ranks of needle-women into the ranks of the talkers, she could make a hundred dollars a day. Theorize as we may, the fact is that there is no kind of work in America which brings such sure profits as public speaking. If women are unfitted for it, or if they ”know the value of peace and quietness,” as the hand-organ man says, and can afford to hold their tongues, let them do so. But if they have tongues, and like to use them, they certainly ought to make some money by the performance.
This is the utilitarian view. And when we bring in higher objects, it is plain that the way to get anything in America is to talk about it. Silence is golden, no doubt, and like other gold remains in the bank-vaults, and does not just now circulate very freely as currency. Even literature in America is utterly second to oratory as a means of immediate influence. Of all sway, that of the orator is the most potent and most perishable; and the student and the artist are apt to hold themselves aloof from it, for this reason. But it is the one means in America to accomplish immediate results, and women who would take their rights must take them through talking. It is the appointed way.
Under a good old-fas.h.i.+oned monarchy, if a woman wished to secure anything for her s.e.x, she must cajole a court, or become the mistress of a monarch.
That epoch ended with the French Revolution. When Bonaparte wished to silence Madame de Stael, he said, ”What does that woman want? Does she want the money the government owes to her father?” When Madame de Stael heard of it, she said, ”The question is not what I want, but what I think.”
Henceforth women, like men, are to say what they think. For all that flattery and seduction and sin, we have subst.i.tuted the simple weapon of talk. If women wish education, they must talk; if better laws, they must talk. The one chief argument against woman suffrage, with men, is that so few women even talk about it.
As long as the human voice can effect anything, it is the duty of women to use it; and in America, where it effects everything, they should talk all the time. When they have obtained, as a cla.s.s, absolute equality of rights with men, their appeals on this subject may cease, and they may accept, if they please, that naughty masculine definition of a happy marriage,--the union of a deaf man with a dumb woman.
HOW TO SPEAK IN PUBLIC
There are other things that women wish to do, it seems, beside studying and voting. There are a good many--if I may judge from letters that occasionally come to me--who are taking, or wish to take, their first lessons in public speaking. Not necessarily very much in public, or before mixed audiences, but perhaps merely to say to a roomful of ladies, or before the committee of a Christian Union, what they desire to say. ”How shall I make myself heard? How shall I learn to express myself? How shall I keep my head clear? Is there any school for debate?” And so on. My dear young lady, it does not take much wisdom, but only a little experience, to answer some of these questions. So I am not afraid to try.
The best school for debate is debating. So far as mere confidence and comfort are concerned, the great thing is to gain the habit of speech, even if one speaks badly. And the practice of an ordinary debating society has also this advantage, that it teaches you to talk sense (lest you be laughed at), to speak with some animation (lest your hearers go to sleep), to think out some good arguments (because you are trying to convince somebody), and to guard against weak reasoning or unfounded a.s.sertion (lest your opponent trip you up). Speaking in a debating society thus gives you the same advantage that a lawyer derives from the presence of an opposing counsel: you learn to guard yourself at all points. It is the absence of this check which is the great intellectual disadvantage of the pulpit When a lawyer says a foolish thing in an argument, he is pretty sure to find it out; but a clergyman may go on repeating his foolish thing for fifty years without discovering it, for want of an opponent.
For the art of making your voice heard, I must refer you to an elocutionist. Yet one thing at least you might acquire for yourself,--a thing that lies at the foundation of all good speaking,--the complete and thorough enunciation of every syllable. So great is the delight, to my ear at least, of a perfectly distinct and clear-cut utterance, that I fear I should rather listen for an hour to the merest nonsense, so uttered, than to the very wisdom of angels if given in a confused or nasal or slovenly way. If you wish to know what I mean by a clear and satisfactory utterance, go to a woman-suffrage convention, and hear Miss Mary F. Eastman.
As to your employment of language, the great aim is to be simple, and, in a measure, conversational; and then let eloquence come of itself. If most people talked as well in public as in private, public meetings would be more interesting. To acquire a conversational tone, there is good sense in Edward Everett Hale's suggestion, that every person who is called on to speak,--let us say, at a public dinner,--instead of standing up and talking about his surprise at being called on, should simply make his last remark to his neighbor at the table the starting-point for what he says to the whole company. He will thus make sure of a perfectly natural key, to begin with; and can go on from this quiet ”As I was just saying to Mr. Smith,” to discuss the gravest question of Church or State. It breaks the ice for him, like the remark upon the weather by which we open our interview with the person whom we have longed for years to meet. Beginning in this way at the level of the earth's surface, we can join hands and rise to the clouds.
Begin in the clouds,--as some of my most esteemed friends are wont to do,-- and you have to sit down before reaching the earth.
And, to come last to what is first in importance, I am taking it for granted that you have something to say, and a strong desire to say it.
Perhaps you can say it better for writing it out in full beforehand. But whether you do this or not, remember that the more simple and consecutive your thought, the easier it will be both to keep it in mind and to utter it. The more orderly your plan, the less likely you will be to ”get bewildered,” or to ”lose the thread.” Think it out so clearly that the successive parts lead to one another, and then there will be little strain upon your memory. For each point you make, provide at least one good argument and one good ill.u.s.tration, and you can, after a little practice, safely leave the rest to the suggestion of the moment. But so much as this you must have, to be secure. Methods of preparation of course vary extremely; yet I suppose the secret of the composure of an experienced speaker to lie usually in this, that he has made sure beforehand of a sufficient number of good points to carry him through, even if nothing good should occur to him on the spot. Thus wise people, in going on a fis.h.i.+ng excursion, take with them not merely their fis.h.i.+ng tackle, but a few fish; and then, if they are not sure of their luck, they will be sure of their chowder.
These are some of the simple hints that might be given, in answer to inquiring friends. I can remember when they would have saved me some anguish of spirit; and they may be of some use to others now. I write, then, not to induce any one to talk for the sake of talking,--Heaven forbid!--but that those who are longing to say something should not fancy the obstacles insurmountable, when they are really slight.
VII
PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
”That liberty, or freedom, consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace; for the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another, and the poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, and to their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, in Sparks's Franklin, ii. 372.
WE THE PEOPLE
I remember that when I went to school I used to look with wonder on the t.i.tle of a now forgotten newspaper of those days which was then often in the hands of one of the older scholars. I remember nothing else about the newspaper, or about the boy, except that the t.i.tle of the sheet he used to unfold was ”We the People;” and that he derived from it his school nickname, by a characteristic boyish parody, and was usually mentioned as ”Us the Folks.”