Chapter 9 - Picturing

Examples | Concentration | Examples | Spontaneity | Examples

This is the image-making faculty. The ability to call to mind vivid and varied pictures, appropriate to the thought, is a powerful element in good speaking. What the speaker sees in his imagination is likely to be shared by his auditors. This is well described by Dr. Conwell when he says:

"Oh! the power of words! With them we sway men's minds at will. Let me call your attention to the sea. The Sea! Close your eyes and look at it as you saw it last summer. Think of its waves away, away out yonder see that ripple of white running along on the crest of the nearer one see it now as it sheens and advances in wreaths of delicate foam almost to your feet, and then rolls playfully back in beautiful sheets to be lost in the next incoming tide. See the old mast out there and the sails that dot the horizon. You see them all now! Why ? Words only words!"

To test what you really saw in reading the foregoing, answer questions like the following: Did you see the sea? What color was it? How high were the waves? Was there any breeze? Was it day or night? Did you see any boats? How many? Sailboats or otherwise? How far away were they ? Where were you ?

"Home! Now you think of your old homestead. Let me go through it with you as you roam about the dear old familiar scenes. Tell me where your mother sat and where your father used to read the paper. Show me the place where your sister played and where you studied in those dear old days. You see it all again! Why? I have uttered one word. A word only a word!"

Did you see the old home? "Was it indoors? Describe it. Did you see your mother ? Describe her. Describe your father and sister. What more did you see?

The image-making faculty can be surprisingly developed by such aids as endeavoring to see pictures of what one reads, to describe it orally to another, to write about it in one's own words. The aim should be to secure vivid impressions. For practise write from memory a description of a storm, a landscape, a battle, the sky at night, a fire.

EXAMPLES

1. Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice; and, the fat boy and Mr. Weller having shoveled and swept away the snow which had fallen on it during the night, Mr. Bob Sawyer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvelous, and described circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight, and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies; which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions which they called a reel. "Pickwick Papers." DICKENS.
   
   
2. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night the sky was without a cloud the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east. . . . Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn. EDWARD EVERETT.
   
   
3. The circumstances now clearly in evidence spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet; the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he plies the dagger, tho it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. "The White Murder Case." WEBSTER.
   
   
4. From the workshop of the Golden Key there issued forth a tinkling sound, so merry and good-humored that it suggested the idea of some one working blithely, and made quite pleasant music. No man who hammered on at a dull monotonous duty could have brought such cheerful notes from steel and iron; none but a chirping, healthy, honest-hearted fellow, who made the best of everything, and felt kindly towards everybody, could have done it for an instant. He might have been a coppersmith, and still been musical. If he had sat in a jolting wagon, full of rods of iron, it seemed as if he would have brought some harmony out of it. Tink, tink, tink clear as a silver bell, and audible at every pause of the street's harsher noises, as tho it said, "I don't care; nothing puts me out; I am resolved to be happy." Women scolded, children squalled, heavy carts went rumbling by, horrible cries proceeded from the lungs of hawkers; still it struck in again, no higher, no lower, no louder, no softer; not thrusting itself on people's notice a bit the more for having been outdone by louder sounds tink, tink, tink, tink, tink. It was a perfect embodiment of the still, small voice, free from all cold, hoarseness, huskiness, or unhealthiness of any kind; foot-passengers slackened their pace, and were disposed to linger near it; neighbors who had got up splenetic that morning, felt good-humor stealing on them as they heard it, and by degrees became quite sprightly; mothers danced their babies to its ringing; still the same magical tink, tink, tink, came gaily from the workshop of the Golden Key. CHARLES DICKENS.
   
   
5. The little square that surrounds it is deplorably narrow, and you flatten your back against the opposite houses in the vain attempt to stand off and survey the towers. The proper way to look at them would be to go up in a balloon and hang poised, face to face with them, in the blue air. There is, however, perhaps an advantage in being forced to stand so directly under them, for this position gives you an overwhelming impression of their height. I have seen, I suppose, churches as beautiful as this one, but I do not remember ever to have been so fascinated by superpositions and vertical effects. "Chartres Cathedral." HENRY JAMES.
   
   
6. 'Twas an autumn eve: the splendor
   Of the day was gone, And the
   twilight, soft and tender,
   Stole so gently on That the eye
   could scarce discover How the
   shadows, spreading over,
   Like a veil of silvery gray, Toned
   the golden clouds, sun painted, Till
   they paled, and paled, and fainted
   From the face of heaven away.
   And a dim light rising slowly
   O'er the welkin spread, Till the
   blue sky, calm and holy,
   Gleamed above our head.
   "The Spanish Duel."
   J. F. WALLER.
   
7. Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z! A monster of iron, steel and brass, standing on the slim iron rails which shoot away from the station for half a mile and then lose themselves in a green forest.

Puff-puff! The driving wheels slowly turn, the monster breathes great clouds of steam and seems anxious for the race.

A grizzly-haired engineer looks down from the cab window, while his fireman pulls back the iron door and heaves in more wood, more breath and muscle for the grim giant of the track.

The fire roars and crackles the steam hisses and growls; every breath is drawn as fiercely as if the giant was burning to revenge an insult.

Up up up! The pointer on the steam-gauge moves faster than the minute-hand on a clock. The breathing becomes louder, the hiss rises to a scream, the iron rails tremble and quiver.

"Climb up!"

It is going to be a race against time and the telegraph.

S-s-s-sh!

The engineer rose up, I looked ahead, glanced at the dial, and as his fingers clasped the throttle he asked the station-agent:

"Are you sure that the track is clear?"

"All clear!" was the answer.

The throttle feels the pull, the giant utters a fierce scream, and we are off, I on the fireman's seat, the fireman on the wood. The rails slide under us slowly faster, and the giant screams again and dashes into the forest.

This isn't fast. The telegraph poles dance past as if not over thirty feet apart, and the board fence seems to rise from the ground, but it's only thirty-five miles an hour.

"Wood!"

The engineer takes his eyes off the track and turns just long enough to speak the word to his fireman. The iron door swings back, and there is an awful rush and roar of flame. The firebox appears full, but stick after stick is dropped into the roaring pit until a quarter of a cord has disappeared.

"This is forty miles an hour!" shouts the fireman in my ear as he rubs the moisture from his heated face.

Yes, this is faster. The fence posts seem to leap from the ground as we dash along, and the telegraph poles bend and nod to us. A house a field a farm we get but one glance. A dozen houses a hundred faces that was a station.

Houses faces a yell! That was another station. We made the last five miles in six minutes.

Like a bird like an arrow like a bullet almost, we speed forward.

Scream! Hiss! Roar! Shake quiver bound!

Now a mile a minute! Fences ? No only a black line, hardly larger than my pencil! Trees? No only one tree, all merged into one single tree, which was out of sight in a flash. Fields? Yes one broad field, broken for an instant by a highway, a gray thread lying on the ground!

It is terrible! If we should leave the rails! If but don't think of it! Hold fast!

Eight miles in eight minutes, not a second more or less! Four and a half miles to go, four minutes to make it! We must run a mile every fifty-three seconds.

Scream! Sway! Tremble!
We are making time, but this is awful, this roar, this oscillation !

One mile! Two miles! I dare not open my eyes! Three miles! Can I ever hear again? Will I ever get this deafening roar out of my ears? Will the seconds ever go by?

Scream!

The engineer shuts off steam, the fireman hurrahs. I open my eyes we are at the station! The lightning express is not two seconds away!

"I told you!" says the engineer, "and didn't I do it?"

He did, but he carried three lives in the palm of the hand that grasped the throttle.

"As the Pigeon Flies."    C. B. LEWIS.

8. Observing the wide and general devastation, and all the horrors of the scene of plains unclothed and brown; of vegetables burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry he would naturally inquire, what war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country? SHERIDAN.

CONCENTRATION

The practise of being interested is recommended as the best means of developing concentration. We are most interested in those subjects that give us pleasure, arouse our expectation, or possess some degree of familiarity. To be able to focus the attention upon a single subject and single objects belonging to it, is a rare accomplishment and of great advantage to a public speaker. It can be acquired only through long and patient study and exercise. No great mental achievement is possible without this power of continued attention. There is an inseparable connection between attention and memory, it being impossible to develop one without the other.

Professor James says: “There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time. What is called sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of successive efforts which bring back the topic to the mind. The topic once brought back, if a congenial one, develops; and if its development is interesting it engages the attention passively for a time. This passive interest may be short or long. As soon as it flags, the attention is diverted by some irrelevant thing, and then a voluntary effort may bring it back to the topic again; and so on, under favorable conditions, for hours together. During all this time, however, note that it is not an identical object in the psychical sense, but a succession of mutually related objects forming an identical topic only, upon which the attention is fixed. No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change."

The subject of attention is well illustrated by Professor Loisette in his system for cultivating the memory. He says: “You may have seen a shoemaker putting nails into the sole pf a boot. With his left thumb and finger he pricks the point of the nail into the leather just far enough to make the nail stand upright. It is so feebly attached that at the least shake it falls on the floor. Then down comes the hammer and drives the nail up to the head. Now the sensations that are continually pouring in upon us by all the avenues of sense by the eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin as well as the ideas streaming into our minds, are on their first arrival attached as feebly as the nails to the boot. But then down comes the attention like a hammer, and drives them into consciousness, so that their record remains forever."

The degree of attention that we can give to an object will depend upon our habitual methods of study and thought. Professor Joseph Stewart offers the following suggestions:

"The habits of thought should be rational. Vagaries should be avoided. The mind must be trained to hold its concepts clearly without obliquity or blur. Therefore, innuendo, indirectness, and slackness of thought and expression should be guarded against. The processes of the mind should be carried on logically. Avoid irrelevancy. The habit of the mind should be selective. Choose the order and kind of thought you put into your mental house."

Rule a square of cardboard in columns and place therein a series of symbols or characters, with each of which there is to be associated in the mind a particular thought. Place the board where it may be conveniently seen, and, beginning with the first symbol, go over the series in regular order, holding in mind for a particular time the special concept or thought, and that alone, associated with each symbol. The student may elaborate this plan as to symbols, the associated concepts, or the order of viewing them, and make it as complex as he desires. The principle of concentration is the persistent but gentle calling back of the mind to the original thought, and is effected by merely substituting it for the intrusive one.

Concentrate without using muscular force. The clearest mind dwells in the healthiest body, and this is the best condition for concentration.

EXAMPLES

1. On a sudden the field of combat opens on his astonished vision. It is a field which men call "glorious." A hundred thousand warriors stand in opposed ranks. Light gleams on their burnished steel. Their plumes and banners wave. Hill echoes to hill the noise of moving rank and squadron, the neigh and tramp of steeds, the trumpet, drum, and bugle call. There is a momentary pause, a silence like that which precedes the fall of a thunder-bolt, like that awful stillness, which is precursor to the desolating rage of the whirlwind. In an instant, flash succeeding flash, pours columns of smoke along the plain. The iron tempest sweeps, heaping man, horse, and car, in undistinguished ruin. In shouts of rushing hosts, in shock of breasting steeds, in peals of musketry, in artillery's roar, in sabres' clash, in thick and gathering clouds of smoke and dust, all human eye, and ear, and sense, are lost. Man sees not, but the sign of onset. Man hears not, but the cry of "Onward!" "The Field of Battle." HALT
   
   
2. The gray sea and the long black land;
   And the yellow half-moon, large and low;
   And the startled little waves that leap
   In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I
   gain the cove with pushing prow, And
   quench its speed in the slushy sand.
   
   Then a mile of warm, sea-scented beach;
   Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
   A tap at the pane, the quick, sharp scratch
   And blue spurt of a lighted match,
   And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
   Then the two hearts beating each to each!
   "Meeting at Night." BROWNING.
   
   
3. When the mind loses hold of its object, whether devotional I or intellectual as it will do, time after time it must be brought I back, and again directed to the object. Often at first it wilL wander away without the wandering being noticed, and the student suddenly awakes to the fact that he is thinking about something quite other than the proper object of thought. This will happen again and again, and he must patiently bring it back a wearisome and tiring process, but there is no other way by which concentration can be gained. "Thought Power." ANNIE BESANT.
   
   
4. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honor, the liberties, the religion the Protestant religion of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of popery and the Inquisition, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practises are let loose among us to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connections, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! to send forth the infidel savage against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war hell-hounds, I say, of savage war!
   
   My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. "On American Affairs," LORD CHATHAM.
   

SPONTANEITY

"All art must be preceded by a certain mechanical ex-pertness," says Goethe, and this is particularly applicable to the subject of elocution. There should be long and patient practise of mechanical exercises for developing accuracy, flexibility, and facility in the use of the voice and vehicles of expression. The highest art is to conceal art, however, and a time comes when the student should abandon his "rules" and "exercises" and yield himself wholly to the thought and feeling to be expressed. If he has been well-trained, the members of expression will perform their work promptly and correctly with little conscious effort on his part. The speaker must test and criticize over and over again the work of his voice, gesture, and expression, until he is thoroughly satisfied as to its accuracy and de-pendableness. To produce his effects spontaneously there must be freedom from restraint and external force, tho the will should so dominate as to promptly check any violations of harmony or naturalness.

The essential qualities of spontaneity are expression instead of repression, freedom rather than restraint, unity, earnestness, concentration, and naturalness.

EXAMPLES

1. Give us, oh, give us, the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, he will do it better, he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation in its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous, a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright. CARLYLB.
   
   
2. A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
   
   A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And
   beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck
   out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
   That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
   The fate of a nation was riding that night;
   And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
   Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
   "Paul Revere's Ride." LONGFELLOW.
   
   
3. The sea, the sea, the open sea,
   
   The blue, the fresh, the ever free;
   Without a mark, without a bound,
   It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
   It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
   Or like a cradled creature lies.
   I'm on the sea, I'm on the sea,
   I am where I would ever be,
   With the blue above and the blue below,
   And silence wheresoever I go.
   If a storm should come and awake the deep,
   What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
   "The Sea." BARRY CORNWALL.
   
   
4. "Yo-ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig; "no more work to-night, Christmas Eve, Dick! Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up before a man can say Jack Robinson! Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here!"

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have done, or couldn't have done, with old Fezziwig standing by. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. The floor was swept and watered, lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire, and the warehouse was as snug and warm and dry and bright a ball-room as you could desire to see upon a winter night. In came a fiddler with a music-book and walked up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile. In came the two Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and amiable. In came the six young followers, whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In they all came anyhow and everyhow! Away they all went, twenty couples at once, hands half round and back again the other way, up the middle and down again, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up at the wrong place, new top couple starting off again as soon as they got there, all top couple at last with not a bottom one to help them.
When this result was brought about old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, specially provided for that purpose. And there were more dances, and then there were forfeits, and then there were more dances, and there was cake and there was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there was great piece of cold boiled, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley!" Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig, top couple too with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them, three or four and twenty pairs of partners, people who were not to be trifled with, people who would dance and had no notion of walking.

But if there had been twice as many, or four times as many, old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As for her, she was worthy of being his partner in every sense of the term. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves, they shone in every part of the dance. You couldn't have predicted at any given moment where they would have turned up next, and when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had been all through the dance, advance and retire, turn your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread the needle and back again to your own place, Fezziwig cut, cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs. At eleven o'clock the domestic ball broke up. Then old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig stood one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with each of their guests individually as he or she went out wished him or her "A Merry Christmas!" DICKENS.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here….