a New York moving-picture and vaudeville house had
been applauding several songs, and when an advertisement for tailored
skirts was thrown on the screen some one started the applause, and the
crowd, like sheep, blindly imitated--until someone saw the joke and
laughed; then the crowd again followed a leader and laughed at and
applauded its own stupidity.

Actors sometimes start applause for their lines by snapping their
fingers. Some one in the first few rows will mistake it for faint
applause, and the whole theatre will chime in.

An observant auditor will be interested in noticing the various devices
a monologist will use to get the first round of laughter and applause.
He works so hard because he knows an audience of units is an audience of
indifferent critics, but once get them to laughing together and each
single laugher sweeps a number of others with him, until the whole
theatre is aroar and the entertainer has scored. These are meretricious
schemes, to be sure, and do not savor in the least of inspiration, but
crowds have not changed in their nature in a thousand years and the one
law holds for the greatest preacher and the pettiest stump-speaker--you
must fuse your audience or they will not warm to your message. The
devices of the great orator may not be so obvious as those of the
vaudeville monologist, but the principle is the same: he tries to strike
some universal note that will have all his hearers feeling alike at the
same time.

The evangelist knows this when he has the soloist sing some touching
song just before the address. Or he will have the entire congregation
sing, and that is the psychology of "Now _every_body sing!" for he knows
that they who will not join in the song are as yet outside the crowd.
Many a time has the popular evangelist stopped in the middle of his
talk, when he felt that his hearers were units instead of a molten mass
(and a sensitive speaker can feel that condition most depressingly) and
suddenly demanded that everyone arise and sing, or repeat aloud a
familiar passage, or read in unison; or perhaps he has subtly left the
thread of his discourse to tell a story that, from long experience, he
knew would not fail to bring his hearers to a common feeling.

These things are important resources for the speaker, and happy is he
who uses them worthily and not as a despicable charlatan. The difference
between a demagogue and a leader is not so much a matter of method as of
principle.