Chapter 8
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 planned 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 will power. 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 labor 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 meager 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 buggy 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 filled today by the newspaper, the magazine, the radio, television, 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, television; 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 centered 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.
When Charles Schwab addressed the Pennsylvania Society of New York, he strode right into the heart of bis talk with his second sentence:
Uppermost in the minds of American citizens to-day is the question: What is the meaning of the existing slump in business and what of the future? Personally, I am an optimist…
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 men 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? The majority of untrained and unskilled speakers will begin in one of two ways—both of which are bad. Let us discuss them forthwith.
Beware 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 encyclopedia, 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 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 an audience that had paid for their seats, they would “boo” and shout “give him the hook.” 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 witnessed this kind of fiasco time after time?
In all the difficult realm of speech making, what is more difficult, more rare, than the ability to make an audience laugh? Humor is a hair trigger affair; it is so much a matter of individuality, of personality.
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 Eighth 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 traveler, 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 humor. If so, by all means, cultivate it. You will be thrice welcome wherever you speak. But if your 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 humor. It had to be relevant, had to illustrate a point. Humor ought to be merely the frosting on the cake, merely the chocolate between the layers, not the cake itself. Strickland Gillilan, one of the best humorous lecturers in these United States, made it a rule never to tell a story during the first three minutes of his talk. If he found that practice 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 risibilities, 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 humor 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 humor. 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 story 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 or 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 political 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 humor 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.)
Do Not Begin with an Apology
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.
Anway, 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 next 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 the 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.
Arouse Curiosity
Here is an opening used by Mr. Howell Healy in a talk given at the Penn Athletic Club, Philadelphia. 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 on 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 in New York City which he calls his library.
What is this world-famous book? Dickens’ 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 at tension 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 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 schoolhouse.
You smile. Is the speaker joking? How absurd. Was that actually done?.. Yes. The speaker went on to explain.
An article in The Saturday Evening Post, entitled “With
The Gangsters,” began:
Are gangsters really organized? As a rule they are. How?..
With ten words, you see, the writer of that article announced his subject, told you something about it, and aroused your curiosity as to how gangsters are organized. Very creditable. Every person 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?
We especially like to hear a speaker relate narratives from his own experience. Russell E. Con well delivered his lecture, “Acres of Diamonds,” over six thousand times, and received millions for it. And how does this marvellously popular lecture begin?
In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Personalise, Nineveh, and Babylon…
And he is off—with a story. That is what hooks the attention. That kind of opening is almost foolproof. It can hardly fail. It moves. It marches. We follow. We want to know what is going to happen.
The story-opening was used to launch Chapter III of this book.
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 speakers 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 the interest; then follow with your general remarks. If you wish an example of this technique, please turn to the opening of Chapter VI.
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 half-wits, and babes in the cradle and monkeys in a store window 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 ex ample, Mr. S. S. Ellis, of Philadelphia, 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 sidewalk? It announces that the fortunate finder will be given a lot free in such and such a real estate development. He has but to call and present this coin…” Mr. Ellis then proceeded 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 money and honors 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 us 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.
Tie Your Topic up to the
Vital Interests of Your Hearers
Begin on some note that goes straight to the personal interests of the audience. That is one of the best of all possible ways to start. It is sure to get attention. We are mightily interested in the things that touch us significantly, momentously.
That is only common sense, isn’t it? Yet the use of it is very uncommon. For example, I heard a speaker begin a talk on the necessity of periodic health examinations. How did he open? By telling the history of the Life Extension Institute, how it was organized and the service it was rendering. Absurd! Our hearers have not the foggiest, not the remotest, interest in how some company somewhere was formed; but they are stupendously and eternally interested in themselves.
Why not recognize that fundamental fact? Why not show how that company is of vital concern to them? Why not begin something like this? “Do you know how long you are expected to live according to life insurance tables? Your expectancy of life, as insurance statisticians phrase it, is two-thirds of the time between your present age and eighty. For example, if you are thirty-five now, the difference between your present age and eighty is forty-five; you can expect to live two-third of that amount, or another thirty years… Is that enough? No, no, we are all passionately eager for more. Yet those tables are based upon millions of records. May you and I, then, hope to beat them? Yes, with proper precaution, we may; but the very first step is to have a thorough physical examination…”
Then, if we explain in detail why the periodic health examination is necessary, the hearer might be interested in some company formed to render that service. But to begin talking about the company in an impersonal way. It is disastrous! Deadly!
Take another example: I heard a student begin a talk on the prime urgency of conserving our forests. He opened like this: “We, as Americans, ought to be proud of our national resources… From that sentence, he went on to show that we were wasting our timber at a shameless and indefensible pace. But the opening was bad, too general, too vague. He did not make his subject seem vital to us. There was a printer in that audience. The destruction of our forests will mean something very real to his business. There was a banker; it is going to affect him for it will affect our general prosperity … and so on. Why not begin, then, by saying: “The subject I am going to speak about affects your business, Mr. Appleby; and yours, Mr. Saul. In fact, it will, in some measure, affect the price of the food we eat and the rent that we pay. It touches the welfare and prosperity of us all.”
Is that exaggerating the importance of conserving our forests? No, I think not. It is only obeying Elbert Hub bard’s injunction to “paint the picture large and put the matter in a way that compels attention.”
The Attention Power of Shocking Facts
“A good magazine article,” said S. S. McClure, the founder of an important periodical, “is a series of shocks.”
They jar us out of our daydreams; they seize, they demand attention. Here are some illustrations: Mr. N. D. Ballantine, of Baltimore, began his address on The Marvels of Radio with this statement:
Do you realize that the sound of a fly walking across a pane of glass in New York can be broadcast by radio and made to roar away off in Central Africa like the falls of Niagara?
Mr. Harry G. Jones, president of Harry G. Jones Company, of New York City, began his talk on the Criminal Situation with these words:
“The administration of our criminal law,” declared William Howard Taft. then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, “is a disgrace to civilization.”
That has the double advantage of being not only a shocking opening, but the shocking statement is quoted from an authority on jurisprudence.
Mr. Paul Gibbons, former president of the Optimist Club of Philadelphia, opened an address on Crime with these arresting statements:
The American people are the worst criminals in the world. Astounding as that assertion is, it is true. Cleveland, Ohio, has six times as many murders as all London. It has one hundred and seventy times as many robberies, according to its population, as has London. More people are robbed every year, or assaulted with intent to rob, in Cleveland than in all England, Scotland and Wales combined. More people are murdered every year in St. Louis than in all England and Wales. There are more murders in New York City than in all France or German or Italy or the British Isles. The sad truth of the matter is that the criminal is not punished. If you commit a murder, there is less than one chance in a hundred that you will ever be executed for it. You, as a peaceful citizen, are ten times as liable to die from cancer as you would be to be hanged if you shot a man.
That opening was successful, for Mr. Gibbons put the requisite power and earnestness behind his words. They lived. They breathed. However, I have heard other students begin their talks on the crime situation with somewhat similar illustrations; yet their openings were mediocre. Why? Words. Words. Words. Their technique of construction was flawless, but their spirit was nil. Their manner vitiated and emaciated all they said.
The Value of the Seemingly Casual Opening
How do you like the following opening, and why? Mary E. Richmond is addressing the annual meeting of the New York League of Women Voters in the days before legislation against child marriages:
Yesterday, as the train passed through a city not far from here, I was reminded of a marriage that took place there a few years ago. Because many other marriages in this state have been just as hasty and disastrous as this one, I am going to begin what I have to say to-day with some of the details of this individual instance.
It was on December 12th that a high school girl of fifteen in that city met for the first time a junior in a nearby college who had just attained his majority. On December 15th, only three days later, they procured a marriage license by swearing that the girl was eighteen and was therefore free from the necessity of procuring parental consent. Leaving the city clerk’s office with their license, they applied at once to a priest (the girl was a Catholic), but very properly he refused to marry them. In some way, perhaps through this priest, the child’s mother received news of the attempted marriage. Before she could find her daughter, however, a justice of the peace had united the pair. The bridegroom then took his bride to a hotel where they spent two days and two nights, at the end of which time he abandoned her and never lived with her again.
Personally, I like that opening very much. The very first sentence is good. It forecasts an interesting reminiscence. We want to hear the details. We settle down to listen to a human interest story. In addition to that, it seems very natural. It does not smack of the study, it is not formal, it does not smell of the lamp… “Yesterday, as the train passed through a city not far from here, I was reminded of a marriage that took place there a few years ago.” Sounds natural, spontaneous, human. Sounds like one person relating an interesting story to another. An audience likes that. But it is very liable to shy at something too elaborate, something that reeks of preparation with malice aforethought. We want the art that conceals art.
Summary
- The opening of a talk is difficult. It is also highly important, for the minds of our hearers are fresh then and comparatively easy to impress. It is of too much consequence to be left to chance; it ought to be carefully worked out in advance.
- The introduction ought to be short, only a sentence or two. Often it can be dispensed with altogether. Wade right into the heart of your subject with the smallest possible number of words. No one objects to that.
- Novices are prone to begin either with attempting to tell a humorous story or by making an apology. Both of these are usually bad. Very few people—very, very, very few—can relate a humorous anecdote successfully. The attempt usually embarrasses the audience instead of entertaining them. Stories should be relevant, not dragged in just for the sake of the story. Humor should be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself… Never apologize. It is usually an insult to your audience; it bores them. Drive right into what you have to say, say it quickly and sit down.
- A speaker may be able to win the immediate attention of his audience by:
a. Arousing curiosity. (Illustration: Story of Dickens’ Christmas Carol.)
b. Relating a human interest story. (Illustration: “Acres of Diamonds” lecture.)
c. Beginning with a specific illustration. (See the opening of Chapter VI of this book.)
d. Using an exhibit. (Illustration: The coin that entitled the finder to a free lot.)
e. Asking a question. (Illustration: “Has any one here ever found a coin like this on the sidewalk?”)
f. Opening with a striking quotation. (Illustration: Elbert Hubbard on the Value of Initiative.)
g. Showing how the topic affects the vital interest of the audience. (Illustration: “Your expectancy of life is two thirds of the amount of time between your present age and eighty. You may be able to increase that by having periodic health examinations,” etc.)
h. Starting with shocking facts. (Illustration: “The American people are the worst criminals in the civilized world.”)
5. Don’t make your opening too formal. Don’t let the bones show. Make it appear free, casual, inevitable. This can be done by referring to something that has just happened, or something that has just been said. (Illustration: “Yesterday, as the train passed through a city not far from here, I was reminded…”)
