Public Speaking: Principles and Practice Part 22

THE EXECUTION OF RODRIGUEZ

From "Cuba in War Time," with the author's permission

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer. When the revolution broke out, young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken by the Spanish, was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before sunrise. His execution took place a half mile distant from the city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years.

There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched out from town, it was still shining brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high gra.s.s and with bunches of cactus and palmetto.

The execution was quickly finished with rough, and, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it came to the square of soldiery, and the condemned man, the priests, and the firing squad of six young volunteers pa.s.sed in and the lines closed behind them.

Rodriguez bent and kissed the cross which the priest held up before him. He then walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and turned his back to the square and faced the hills and the road across them which led to his father's farm. As the officer gave the first command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light which had just begun to show above the hills.

The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently--the firing squad were so placed that when they fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme end of the square.

Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked across the gra.s.s and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner. It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been.

The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets in the back.

He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the locks caught--and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear.

You would expect that any man who had been s.n.a.t.c.hed back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded his head gravely, and with his shoulders squared, took up a new position, straightened his back again, and once more held himself erect. As an exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew, with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but that which lay within himself.

The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men once more leveled their rifles, the sword rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet gra.s.s without a struggle or sound, and did not move again.

At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light.

THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION

THE FLOOD OF BOOKS

From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, publishers.

BY HENRY VAN d.y.k.e

There is the highest authority for believing that a man's life, even though he be an author, consists not in the abundance of things that he possesses. Rather is its real value to be sought in the quality of the ideas and feelings that possess him, and in the effort to embody them in his work.

The work is the great thing. The delight of clear and steady thought, of free and vivid imagination, of pure and strong emotion; the fascination of searching for the right words, which sometimes come in shoals like herring, so that the net can hardly contain them, and at other times are more shy and fugacious than the wary trout which refuse to be lured from their hiding places; the pleasure of putting the fit phrase in the proper place, of making a conception stand out plain and firm with no more and no less than is needed for its expression, of doing justice to an imaginary character so that it shall have its own life and significance in the world of fiction, of working a plot or an argument clean through to its inevitable close: these inward and unpurchasable joys are the best wages of the men and women who write.

What more will they get? Well, unless history forgets to repeat itself, their additional wages, their personal dividends under the profit- sharing system, so to speak, will be various. Some will probably get more than they deserve, others less.

The next best thing to the joy of work is the winning of gentle readers and friends who find some good in your book, and are grateful for it, and think kindly of you for writing it.

The next best thing to that is the recognition, on the part of people who know, that your work is well done, and of fine quality. That is called fame, or glory, and the writer who professes to care nothing for it is probably deceiving himself, or else his liver is out of order.

Real reputation, even of a modest kind and of a brief duration, is a good thing; an author ought to be able to be happy without it, but happier with it.

EFFECTIVENESS IN SPEAKING

From the Introduction to "The World's Famous Orations," with the permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York and London, publishers.

BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

While it is absolutely necessary for the orator to master his subject and to speak with earnestness, his speech can be made more effective by the addition of clearness, brevity and apt ill.u.s.trations.

Clearness of statement is of very great importance. It is not sufficient to say that there are certain self-evident truths; it is more accurate to say that all truth is self-evident. Because truth is self-evident, the best service that one can render a truth is to state it so clearly that it can be comprehended, needs no argument in its support. In debate, therefore, one's first effort should be to state his own side so clearly and concisely as to make the principles involved easily understood. His second object should be so to divest his opponent's argument of useless verbiage as to make it stand forth clearly; for as truth is self-evident, so error bears upon its face its own condemnation. Error needs only to be exposed to be overthrown.

Brevity of statement also contributes to the force of a speaker. It is possible so to enfold a truth in long-drawn-out sentences as practically to conceal it. The epigram is powerful because it is full of meat and short enough to be remembered. To know when to stop is almost as important as to know where to begin and how to proceed. The ability to condense great thoughts into small words and brief sentences is an attribute of genius. Often one lays down a book with the feeling that the author has "said nothing with elaboration," while in perusing another book one finds a whole sermon in a single sentence, or an unanswerable argument couched in a well-turned phrase.

The interrogatory is frequently employed by the orator, and when wisely used is irresistible. What dynamic power for instance, there is in that question propounded by Christ, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Volumes could not have presented so effectively the truth that he sought to impress upon his hearers.

The ill.u.s.tration has no unimportant place in the equipment of the orator. We understand a thing more easily when we know that it is like something which we have already seen. Ill.u.s.trations may be drawn from two sources--nature and literature--and of the two, those from nature have the greater weight. All learning is valuable; all history is useful. By knowing what has been we can better judge the future; by knowing how men have acted heretofore we can understand how they will act again in similar circ.u.mstances. But people know nature better than they know books, and the ill.u.s.trations drawn from everyday life are the most effective.

If the orator can seize upon something within the sight or hearing of his audience,--something that comes to his notice at the moment and as if not thought of before,--it will add to the effectiveness of the ill.u.s.tration. For instance, Paul's speech to the Athenians derived a large part of its strength from the fact that he called attention to an altar near by, erected "to the Unknown G.o.d," and then proceeded to declare unto them the G.o.d whom they ignorantly worshiped.

Abraham Lincoln used scripture quotations very frequently and very powerfully. Probably no Bible quotation, or, for that matter, no quotation from any book ever has had more influence upon a people than the famous quotation made by Lincoln in his Springfield speech of 1858,--"A house divided against itself cannot stand." It is said that he had searched for some time for a phrase which would present in the strongest possible way the proposition he intended to advance--namely, that the nation could not endure half slave and half free.

It is a compliment to a public speaker that the audience should discuss what he says rather than his manner of saying it; more complimentary that they should remember his arguments, than that they should praise his rhetoric. The orator should seek to conceal himself behind his subject. If he presents himself in every speech he is sure to become monotonous, if not offensive. If, however, he focuses attention upon his subject, he can find an infinite number of themes and, therefore, give variety to his speech.

BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE

From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, publishers.

BY HENRY VAN d.y.k.e

Every one knows what books are. But what is literature? It is the ark on the flood. It is the light on the candlestick. It is the flower among the leaves; the consummation of the plant's vitality, the crown of its beauty, and the treasure house of its seeds. It is hard to define, easy to describe.

Literature is made up of those writings which translate the inner meanings of nature and life, in language of distinction and charm, touched with the personality of the author, into artistic forms of permanent interest. The best literature, then, is that which has the deepest significance, the most lucid style, the most vivid individuality, and the most enduring form.

On the last point contemporary judgment is but guess-work, but on the three other points it should not be impossible to form, nor improper to express, a definite opinion.

Literature has its permanent marks. It is a connected growth, and its life history is unbroken. Masterpieces have never been produced by men who have had no masters. Reverence for good work is the foundation of literary character. The refusal to praise bad work, or to imitate it, is an author's personal chast.i.ty.

Good work is the most honorable and lasting thing in the world. Four elements enter into good work in literature:--An original impulse--not necessarily a new idea, but a new sense of the value of an idea. A first-hand study of the subject and the material. A patient, joyful, unsparing labor for the perfection of form. A human aim--to cheer, console, purify, or enn.o.ble the life of the people. Without this aim literature has never sent an arrow close to the mark. It is only by good work that men of letters can justify their right to a place in the world. The father of Thomas Carlyle was a stonemason, whose walls stood true and needed no rebuilding. Carlyle's prayer was, "Let me write my books as he built his houses."

EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS

From an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce, 1890

BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

Before we can talk together to advantage about the value of education in business, we ought to come to a common understanding about the sort of education we mean and the sort of business.

We must not think of the liberal education of to-day as dealing with a dead past--with dead languages, buried peoples, exploded philosophies; on the contrary, everything which universities now teach is quick with life and capable of application to modern uses. They teach indeed the languages and literature of Judea, Greece, and Rome; but it is because those literatures are instinct with eternal life. They teach mathematics, but it is mathematics mostly created within the lifetime of the older men here present. In teaching English, French, and German, they are teaching the modern vehicles of all learning--just what Latin was in medieval times. As to history, political science, and natural science, the subjects, and all the methods by which they are taught, may properly be said to be new within a century. Liberal education is not to be justly regarded as something dry, withered, and effete; it is as full of sap as the cedars of Lebanon.