THE PUBLIC LECTURE


In the public lecture the element of entertainment enters prominently.
The audience, at first in a passive state, must be awakened, and taken
on with the speaker. Probably it must be instructed, perhaps amused.
The speaker must make his own occasion. He has no help from the
circumstance of predisposition among his auditors. He must compel, or
he must win; he must charm or thrill; or he must do each in turn.
Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are
the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of
the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic
illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the
imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or
incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of
these, gesture of course has an important place.

The lecture platform is perhaps the only field, with possibly the
exception of what is properly the after-dinner speech, wherein public
speaking may be viewed as strictly an art, something to be taken for
its own sake, wherein excellence in the doing is principally the end in
view. This means, generally, that individual talent, and training in
all artistic requirements, count for more than the subject or any
"accidents of office," in holding the auditor's interest. An animated
and versatile style can be cultivated by striving to make effective the
public lecture.


THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION