fall into this error. In other
cases the fault is not so innocent. Many a person called upon to
introduce a speaker takes advantage of the chance to express his own
opinions. He drops into the discourtesy of using for his own ends a
condition of passive attention which was not created for him. One
large audience which had assembled to hear a lecturer was kept from
listening to him while for twenty minutes the introducer aired his own
pet theories. Of course members of the audience discussed among
themselves the inappropriateness of such remarks, but it is doubtful
whether any criticism reached the offender.

A newspaper recently had the courage to voice the feelings of
audiences.

It seems that a good deal of the time of the audience at the
Coliseum the other night was taken by those who introduced
the speakers of the evening. We are told in one account of
the meeting that the audience was at times impatient of
these preliminaries and even howled once or twice for those
it had come to hear.... We are informed that all those
introducing the speakers said something about not having
risen to speak at length, and that one of them protested his
inability to speak with any facility. Both these professions
are characteristic of those introducing speakers of the
evening. Yet, strangely enough, the same always happens.
That is, the preliminaries wear the audience out before the
people it came to hear can get at it.

In introducing a speaker never be too long-winded. Tactfully,
gracefully, courteously, put before the audience such facts as the
occasion, the reason for the topic of the speech, the fitness and
appropriateness of the choice of the speaker, then present the man or
woman. Be extremely careful of facts and names. A nominating speaker
at a great political convention ruined the effect of a speech by
confusedly giving several first names to a distinguished man. It is
embarrassing to a speaker to have to correct at the very beginning of
his remarks a misstatement made by the presiding officer. But a man
from one university cannot allow the audience to identify him with
another. The author of a book wants its title correctly given. A
public official desires to be associated in people's minds with the
department he actually controls.

The main purpose of a speech of introduction is to do for the
succeeding speaker what the chapter on beginning the speech