Part 14 (1/2)

Anything that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilism Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of our civilization

Born within sight of Bunker Hill--son of Harvard, whose first pledge was ”Truth,” citizen of a republic based on the clai on the consent of the people, and which assuhts of hu less--no not if every tile on Ca my words!

For practise on forceful selections, use ”The Irrepressible Conflict,”

page 67; ”Abrahae 470; ”A Plea for Cuba,” page 50

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Those who sat in the pit or the parquet]

[Footnote 3: _Hamlet_, Act III, Scene 2]

CHAPTER X

FEELING AND ENTHUSIASM

Enthusiasm is that secret and harenius

--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character_

If you are addressing a body of scientists on such a subject as the veins in a butterfly's wings, or on road structure, naturally your the in either you or your audience These are purely mental subjects But if you want men to vote for a measure that will abolish child labor, or if you would inspire theht at their feelings We lie on soft beds, sit near the radiator on a cold day, eat cherry pie, and devote our attention to one of the opposite sex, not because we have reasoned out that it is the right thing to do, but because it feels right No one but a dyspeptic chooses his diet froenerally hoe shall act Man is a feeling animal, hence the public speaker's ability to arouse men to action depends alrotheir children sold away from the speeches True, the , but she had soreater than all technique, reat speeches of the world have not been delivered on tariff reductions or post-office appropriations

The speeches that will live have been charged with emotional force

Prosperity and peace are poor developers of eloquence When great wrongs are to be righted, when the public heart is fla with passion, that is the occasion forPatrick Henry made an immortal address, for in an epochal crisis he pleaded for liberty He had roused himself to the point where he could honestly and passionately exclaiive me death” His faued for the recall of judges

_The Power of Enthusiasm_

Political parties hire bands, and pay for applause--they argue that, for vote-getting, to stir up enthusiasht depends on the hearers, but there can be no doubt about the contagious nature of enthusiasm A watch manufacturer in New York tried out two series of watch advertiseued the superior construction, workuarantee offered with the watch; the other was headed, ”A Watch to be Proud of,” and dwelt upon the pleasure and pride of ownershi+p The latter series sold twice as many as the former A sales railroad engines eument based on mechanical excellence

Illustrations without nuht be cited to show that in all our actions we are es The speaker ould speak efficiently reat debater that he was, knew that the real secret of a speaker's poas an emotional one He eloquently says of eloquence:

”Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreak of a fountain fro forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force

”The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate oratory conteenius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent The clear conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firue, bea the whole ht onward to his subject--this, this is eloquence; or rather, it is soher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublih the Northwest soe street after dinner and noticed a crowd listening to a ”faker” speaking on a corner fro E from every man we meet, the observer stopped to listen to this speaker's appeal He was selling a hair tonic, which he claimed to have discovered in Arizona He removed his hat to shohat this remedy had done for him, washed his face in it to deed on its merits in such an enthusiastic manner that the half-dollars poured in on him in a silver flood When he had supplied the audience with hair tonic, he asked why a greater proportion of men than women were bald No one knew He explained that it was because woood electrical connection with mother earth, while men wore thick, dry-soled shoes that did not transmit the earth's electricity to the body Men's hair, not having a proper amount of electrical food, died and fell out Of course he had a remedy--a little copper plate that should be nailed on the bottom of the shoe He pictured in enthusiastic and vivid ter baldness--and paid tributes to his copper plates Strange as it may seem when the story is told in cold print, the speaker's enthusiasm had swept his audience with him, and they crushed around his stand with outstretched ”quarters” in their anxiety to be the possessors of these estion had been well taken--the observer had seen again the wonderful, persuasive power of enthusias into the Holy Land to redeeed Europe into a thirty years' war over religion Enthusias the unknown sea to the shores of a neorld When Napoleon's ared in their ascent of the Alps, the Little Corporal stopped them and ordered the bands to play the Marseillaise Under its soul-stirring strains there were no Alps

Listen! Ereat was ever achieved without enthusiasreat movement in the annals of history has been the triuious as measles Eloquence is half inspiration Sweep your audience with you in a pulsation of enthusiaso ”A h as when he knows not whither he is going”