23rd Nov.
Tz winter season is close at hand when, what with the meetings of societies and companies, with balls and banquets, and the varied festivities of social life, our local speakers will find their opportunities follow each other in rapid succession. Healths by the hundred will have been proposed, drunk, and replied to before the annual Parliament of the early spring. A few of these will have been worded with that grace and ease which comes of knowledge and experience, but the majority will have had to be content with the well-known halting, you-know-what-I-mean sort of style which has to pass for oratory at most of our festive gatherings. Even the best of our local speakers would probably endorse Mark Autony's well-known declaration "I am no orator as Brutus is", and like him immediately proceed, perhaps, to disprove the statement by making an excellent speech. But these are not common. Local conditions do not tend to improve-iment in elocution, much less in oratory, here are very few meetings in which people are called upon for sustained local effort. We must, of course, except from this statement all professors of the Jaw and the gospel, but even in their.case, however eloquent they may be, tradition does not allow of satirical effect asarule. Our clergy will utter the sublimest of truths, threaten the direst of punishments, and promise the richest. of rewards in the same matter of fact style as the lawyer employs to enlarge upon the iniquities of his learned friend's client on the other side. Most English speakers seem to have a sort of school-boy.contempt for gesture, 'I'hey prefer to ape the unimpassioned speech of Fenimore Cooper's Red Indian, without aiming at his Inconic qualities, It is accounted bad form to evince such an amount of, interest or earnestness require gesture to emphasise it, Whether this comes, as a distinguished foreigner once said, from life in such crowded rooms that the Britisher has never been able to stretch out his arm for fear of knocking something over, or whether it is indeed a constitutional dislike for display, we need not pause to consider. One thing is certain, that oratory without appropriate action is robbed of half its effect. Allied to a persuasive tongue the arm that sways the sceptre may with equal ease. move the multitude.
Subjects whose discussion really stirs the pulse are of rare occurrence in Shanghai. Now and again at a special meeting of ratepayers—such for example as those in connection with the Wheelbarrow Riots—we get a glimpse of what our best men might do were they in the regular habit of discussing vital questions. But our annual meeting is asa rule as purely a matter of fact as the weekly meetings of a London vestry, with the additional guarantee that good taste will prevent squabbling.. It is difficult for any man to wax eloquent over items of income, expenditure, debts, and debentures, In fact many residents whose opinion from insight and experience would be most valuable never open their lips at all, and good advice is lost because acute thinking is preferred to halting speech. Our local statistician with his Chancellor-of-the-Exchequer-like grasp of figures may raise a little less languid interest than usual in the Council's accounts, but no mau can invest a few thousand taels with the dignity pertaining to hundreds of millions sterling. He has, however, more than once done excellent service when, after our desultory fashion, ex-traneens matter has entangled a simple subject in such a mass of verbiage that even the Chairman scarcely knows the point at issue. On such occasions he has, by afew lucid sentences, straightened the tangled thread of the discourse and shown clearly what was and what was not germane to the proposition before the meeting. Occasional flashes of humour lighten the duluess of our. debates and now and again an apt quotation, or'a bit of sparkling banter will enliven the pro-fan comes from: slips in oratory. 'The: speaker in his confusion commits himself to statements' which in his sober senses he refuses: to endorse, and then more often than not abuses the short hand-writer for not reporting him verbal tim. Veiled personal reference is usually effective, as when professional man criticises some public act in connection with which he-has not been consulted, and declares that" respect for ' opinion' in Shanghai varies directly as the square of the distance from which it comes,"
There are two disses of speakers those who have something to say, and those. who have. not. Both of them may be sub-divided into the competent and the incompetent. Of the. four categories thus formed, the, competent speaker: of. the first class is surpassed. by the equally competent one of the® second, and by him alone. Chere is more art in saying graceful nothings than in uttering the weightiest facts, At local meetings it frequently happens that the man with something to say is the man "who wants to know." Nui-sauce as he sometimes is, there is little art needed-for his purpose." Knowing exactly what he wants, itis not difficult to put it into terse and sometimes forcible English. 'I'he man who seeks to persuade, on the other hand, needs every: art which rhetoric and oratory can "supply. "He wants what' Lord Clarendon. called "the strange power of making himself believed." ''o him a dull delivery is fatal. Even such an elementary fault as deficient clearness in articulation may ruin his best efforts. We have heard. admire ably written. speeches at ratepayers' meetings delivered so after the style of the General Confession that nobody knew anything of their excellence till they appeared in print. For one' of the best speeches we can remember memory takes us back to a meeting many years ago, when in the old board-room forty or fifty men constituted the ratepayers. A proposition of widespread interest was to be brought: forward. It was known that very poworful opposition would be marshalled against it, and a hard fight was expected. The previous business being: disposed of, the Chairman called upon the mover of the "proposition in question' for his speech. In response to the challenge the proposer rose to his feet, slipped off his light overcoat, and settled to. work. Whether taking off the: coat was a bit of studied or unstudied dramatic " business" matters little. "It had its immediate effect. ''here wasa smile on all faces, everybody was' iuterested; the first" point was wou? and the result of: good fighting speech was that the proposition'was carried.
As we have said,: the art' of: speaking gracefully when: there -is: nothing to say is not ensy. The ordinary speaker can bat envy the power which some: practised orators have in this respect Airy nothings, light us-gossamer;' aiid sometimes-as beautiful,-come from their
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.