Even the most dignified speaker must recognize the eternal
laws of human nature. You are by no means urged to become a trickster on
the platform--far from it!--but don't kill your speech with dignity. To
be icily correct is as silly as to rant. Do neither, but appeal to those
world-old elements in your audience that have been recognized by all
great speakers from Demosthenes to Sam Small, and see to it that you
never debase your powers by arousing your hearers unworthily.

It is as hard to kindle enthusiasm in a scattered audience as to build a
fire with scattered sticks. An audience to be converted into a crowd
must be made to appear as a crowd. This cannot be done when they are
widely scattered over a large seating space or when many empty benches
separate the speaker from his hearers. Have your audience seated
compactly. How many a preacher has bemoaned the enormous edifice over
which what would normally be a large congregation has scattered in
chilled and chilling solitude Sunday after Sunday! Bishop Brooks himself
could not have inspired a congregation of one thousand souls seated in
the vastness of St. Peter's at Rome. In that colossal sanctuary it is
only on great occasions which bring out the multitudes that the service
is before the high altar--at other times the smaller side-chapels are
used.

Universal ideas surcharged with feeling help to create the
crowd-atmosphere. Examples: liberty, character, righteousness, courage,
fraternity, altruism, country, and national heroes. George Cohan was
making psychology practical and profitable when he introduced the flag
and flag-songs into his musical comedies. Cromwell's regiments prayed
before the battle and went into the fight singing hymns. The French
corps, singing the Marseillaise in 1914, charged the Germans as one man.
Such unifying devices arouse the feelings, make soldiers fanatical
mobs--and, alas, more efficient murderers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 28: _Sesame and Lilies_.]

CHAPTER XXVI

RIDING THE WINGED HORSE

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men
of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

--ISAAC DISRAELI, _Literary Character of Men of Genius_.

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

--SHAKESPEARE, _Midsummer-Night's Dream_.

It is common, among those