Conventional pulpit oratory. Not long ago I attended a church service in a small country village. The delivery of the preacher was entirely unnatural; partaking of the nature of a wailing, melancholy tone that lent to the service an almost funereal atmosphere. A few weeks later I attended the services of a prominent church in one of our large cities. A comparison of the two services from the standpoint of the melody of speech proved exceedingly interesting. While the atmosphere created by the tones of the city preacher was less sanctimonious than that of the country preacher, the delivery was but very little better. The sermon was delivered in a distinctly ministerial tone, seasoned throughout with the conventional preacher's cadences and decidedly lacking in anything that might be said to be of the nature of direct, conversational speaking. The entire service was the same so far as the tone elements were concerned. There was no variation from the method; even the hymns and church notices were announced with exactly the same intonation as the reading of the scripture and the delivery of the sermon. All the time the preacher was speaking one could not refrain from thinking what a relief it would be if he would only lay aside his assumed tone and speak in a simple, direct way that would carry his message straight to the minds and hearts of his hearers.

Anyone who knows the difference between good speaking and poor realizes how rare a thing it is to hear in the pulpit at the present time a sermon delivered in a really straightforward manner. The mode of delivery that has become conventional-one that is employed only on certain occasions where it is considered appropriate

is well illustrated by the following incident: A minister of my acquaintance precedes his Sunday morning sermon with a short sermon to the children, who are usually seated apart from the regular congregation at one side of the church and are dismissed as soon as his address to them is finished. His children's sermon is always direct, earnest, and entirely conversational. But as soon as he goes behind his pulpit to address his adult congregation, his delivery changes. He no longer speaks in the same direct, personal manner in which he spoke to the children. His tone can best be characterized as distinctly "ministerial." The voice is raised above that of his former speaking; it is sonorous and somewhat pompous; he does not speak to his congregation as though he were saying, "This message is vital and it is for you." It seems rather to be a sermon that has been carefully prepared and is merely spoken before his congregation in a manner that partakes of the nature of a kind of soliloquy, as though he were not speaking to anyone in particular.

Now, surely, we cannot say it is any lack of sincerity on the part of this minister that makes the delivery of his children's sermon seem thoroughly vital and that to his regular congregation merely perfunctory. There can 'be no doubt that he has the same earnestness of purpose in both instances. The explanation is clearly to be found in the fact that he never thinks of his address to the children as anything more than a friendly little talk, while to him the regular sermon is not a mere talk but a formal speech. This difference in his conception of the two explains the difference in the mode of his delivery in the two instances. In addressing the children

he sometimes calls them by name and asks them questions to which they reply. He has probably never stopped to think that the sermon to his congregation is as truly a conversation with them as is his talk to the children, except that the response of the audience to his words is mental, and not verbal as in the case of the children.

Please understand that I do not mean to suggest that this clergyman's delivery might not be less colloquial in addressing his adult congregation than in talking to the children, and very properly so, but there is no well-justified reason why it should be less conversational. Whenever a speaker comes to appreciate the fact that in the delivery of a speech, of any kind whatsoever, he is merely carrying on a conversation with his audience (their part in the conversation usually being merely a mental response to his words, but no less a genuine response than if they were to express their thoughts aloud), he will then understand the real significance of true conversational speaking. His mode of conversation may be very colloquial or it may have a marked degree of formality about it, as will be better understood after reading the latter part of this discussion; but in either instance there is no reason why it may not be genuinely and fundamentally conversational, that is, a real conversation carried on with the audience and not a mere "giving forth" of ideas and high-sounding tones.

But there are evidences that the clergy are awakening to their shortcomings in speech. At a ministerial conference in Chicago not long ago the Reverend Hanson Pulsford of Chicago addressed his fellow clergymen upon the theme, "Sunday Voices Must Go." The following

X

significant statement, made during the course of the address, gives promise of a change in the style of pulpit speaking for the future: "If church members would demand that ministers get rid of their Sunday voices and language and speak in everyday terms, it would be one of the most helpful things for the churches of the present day."

The evils of political oratory. The clergyman is by no means the only transgressor, however. The political orator is probably more at fault, for he often has many of the bad habits of the preacher in addition to others peculiar to the politician. Not only does he employ the ministerial tone and the preacher's cadence but he soars, and, listening to his bombastic lauding of the glorious Stars and Stripes, you wonder whether such a thing remains as sanity in speech, and pray for the day when men can keep below the clouds and give you their convictions in just plain talk.

Is it any wonder, then, that the boy of high-school or college age, who takes as his ideal the minister or the political orator, usually has a false idea of what good delivery is! To him it appears to be something that is chiefly for purposes of display-tone for tone's sake and gesture for gesture's sake, rather than tone and gesture used always as instruments of effective expression. And as a result we find him substituting sound for sense and "orating" instead of conversing.

The foundation of all good delivery. The first principle of delivery that the young speaker has to learn is that sonorous tones and spectacular gestures do not constitute effective speaking and that voice and gesture are not ends in themselves, but are merely means for the sincere expression of one's thoughts and feelings. To be sure,

there was a time when public speaking savored much of the sonorous and pompous, but that time is past. The extravagant style of Patrick Henry's time would not be tolerated to-day. The demand of the present day is for speaking of a conversational, businesslike type without display or fustian, that carries a message straight to the hearers in the most unaffected manner possible.

The important thing for the learner to keep in mind constantly is that effective public speaking, as we regard it to-day, does not consist in speaking forth ideas in finesounding style so as to make audiences listen with openmouthed wonder. No doubt this was a conception common among the spellbinders of twenty-five years ago, but it will not do to-day. We have little use at the present time for the orator whose chief appeal is that of rhetorical bombast and sonorous pomposity. We demand in these days, first of all that the public speaker have something to say that is worth while, and in the second place that he be able to say it in a manner that appeals to our understanding without offending our ear.

The essentially conversational in delivery. Wendell Phillips was the first orator of note to employ the mode of delivery which is commonly characterized to-day as the conversational. Thomas Wentworth Higginson comments upon Phillips's speaking as follows:

The keynote of the oratory of Wendell Phillips lay in this: that it was essentially conversational the conversational raised to its highest power. Perhaps no orator ever spoke with so little apparent effort or began so entirely on the plane of his average hearers. It was as if he repeated in a little louder tone what he had just been saying to some familiar friend at his elbow.