It was as simple as it was sincere. And it was as conversational as it
was quiet. Before he had finished, his audience had gathered into
itself every pedestrian who passed during his discourse--business man,
professional man, working man, or what not.
The fight above described suggests the key to the matter as well as
the manner of speaking. The American audience properly demands, above
everything else, that the speaker get to the point. Our lives are so
rapid; the telephone, telegraph, and all the instantaneous agencies of
our neurotically swift civilization have made us so quick in seeing
through propositions; a hundred years of universal education have
produced a mentality so electric in its rapidity, that effective
oratory has been revolutionized within a decade.
Burke would not be tolerated now. It is doubtful, even, if Webster
would. The public has already tired of the lilt of Ingersoll's
redundant rhetoric, pleasing as was its music. The effective speech
to-day is a statement of conclusions.
The listeners, with a celerity inconceivable, sum up the argument on
either side of the proposition you announce, and accept or reject it
by a process of unconscious mental cerebration.
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