Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1884 — PUBLIC SPEAKING. [ARTICLE]

PUBLIC SPEAKING.

Why an Orator Must Understand Gesticulation. Gesticulation is foreign to our nation; and yet the man who would be an orator must learn what to do, as well as what to avoid doing, with his arms and 1 hands. The word is but an echo, the ambassador of thought All energetic passion, all deep sentiment, must be heralded by expression, or by outward and visible sign of some sort; otherwise the words will fall coldly, as emanating from the intellectual* machine, and not springing, warm and irrepreasible, from the heart. Talma, in his treatise on the art of acting, says: “The gesture, the attitude, the look, should precede the words, as the flash of lightning precedes the thunder.” Yet, if you watch any uncultivated speaker, you will find that his action never indicates the path he is traveling, but follows it. Observe the itineran preacher, whose apoplectic eloquence suggests that he is suffering from a determination of words to the mouth; you will see that the flinging of his arms to and fro is an effort to add force to his words, not the outcome of strong feeling before it lias broken into speech. The true orator’s movements must appear so spontaneous that they pass unnoticed, and yet, insensibly, they will affect his audience. The most powerful speakers are always, more or less, actors, who identify themselves with the cause they advocate. Cold rhetoricians who have mot this capacity may bring conviction to our reason when we read their speeches in the papers the morning after they are delivered; but, lacking the passionate persuasiveness of men whose voice and frame vibrate with the emotion their words evoke, they will never touch the hearts or rouse the enthusiasm of an audience. In public speaking, as in - reading, it is of primary importance that the voice be not pitched too high or too low, but that the keynote be struck in the middle of the register. Many persons become exhausted in reading, or in addressing an audience, from ignorance of the art of respiration, and from an erroneous notion that it is necessary to employ some.non-natural tone. Neither is it essential to shout that the speaker’s words may be carried to the furthest extremity of a large hall. There can be no greater mistakes than these. As in singing, so in oratory, the most natural emission of the voice, if combined with distinct articulation, will “tell” more at a great distance than all the bellowing in the world. Actors are especially liable to forget that violence is not power, and that loudness is indicative of hysterical and feminine impotence than of manlwiorce. I sat beside a great actress at the theater lately, when a scene that should have torn our very heart-strings was being enacted. “Why do they talk so loud?” she whispered to me. “They would produce twice the effqct if they did not scream at each other. ” — Nineteenth Century.