will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of
much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep
guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of
woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this
principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a
feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he
arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like to be kept
waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is a
circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the
back of a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed
and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a
great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once. We not only
like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for. If fish bite too
readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.

It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock
Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is
solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins'
receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em
laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if
they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.

Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to
arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:
"It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience
wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great
evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he
had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then
he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and
continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the