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PAUSE AND POWER

The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave

his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence,

by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and

then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear

itself.

--GEORGE SAINTSBURY, on _English Prose Style_, in _Miscellaneous

Essays_.

... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in

other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the

movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and

compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we

must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no

compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense

of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.

--JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.

Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made

designedly eloquent.

When a man says: "I-uh-it is with profound-ah-pleasure that-er-I have

been permitted to speak to you tonight and-uh-uh-I should say-er"--that

is not pausing; that is stumbling. It is conceivable that a speaker may

be effective in spite of stumbling--but never because of it.

On the other hand, one of the most important means of developing power

in public speaking is to pause either before or after, or both before

and after, an important word or phrase. No one who would be a forceful

speaker can afford to neglect this principle--one of the most

significant that has ever been inferred from listening to great orators.

Study this potential device until you have absorbed and assimilated it.

It would seem that this principle of rhetorical pause ought to be easily

grasped and applied, but a long experience in training both college men

and maturer speakers has demonstrated that the device is no more readily

understood by the average man when it is first explained to him than if

it were spoken in Hindoostani. Perhaps this is because we do not eagerly

devour the fruit of experience when it is impressively set before us on

the platter of authority; we like to pluck fruit for ourselves--it not

only tastes better, but we never forget that tree! Fortunately, this is

no difficult task, in this instance, for the trees stand thick all about

us.

One man is pleading the cause of another:

"This man, my friends, has made this wonderful sacrifice--for

you and me."

Did not the pause surprisingly enhance the power of this statement? See

how he gathered up reserve force and impressiveness to deliver the words

"for you and me." Repeat this passage without making a pause. Did it

lose in effectiveness?

Naturally enough, during a premeditated pause of this kind the mind of

the speaker is concentrated on the thought to which he is about to give

expression. He will not dare to allow his thoughts to wander for an

instant--he will rather supremely center his thought and his emotion

upon the sacrifice whose service, sweetness and divinity he is

enforcing by his appeal.

_Concentration_, then, is the big word here--no pause without it can

perfectly hit the mark.

Efficient pausing accomplishes one or all of four results:

_1. Pause Enables the Mind of the Speaker to Gather His Forces Before

Delivering the Final Volley_

It is often dangerous to rush into battle without pausing for

preparation or waiting for recruits. Consider Custer's massacre as an

instance.

You can light a match by holding it beneath a lens and concentrating the

sun's rays. You would not expect the match to flame if you jerked the

lens back and forth quickly. Pause, and the lens gathers the heat. Your

thoughts will not set fire to the minds of your hearers unless you pause

to gather the force that comes by a second or two of concentration.

Maple trees and gas wells are rarely tapped continually; when a stronger

flow is wanted, a pause is made, nature has time to gather her reserve

forces, and when the tree or the well is reopened, a stronger flow is

the result.

Use the same common sense with your mind. If you would make a thought

particularly effective, pause just before its utterance, concentrate

your mind-energies, and then give it expression with renewed vigor.

Carlyle was right: "Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy

thought has silently matured itself. Out of silence comes thy strength.

Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech is human, Silence is

divine."

Silence has been called the father of speech. It should be. Too many of

our public speeches have no fathers. They ramble along without pause or

break. Like Tennyson's brook, they run on forever. Listen to little

children, the policeman on the corner, the family conversation around

the table, and see how many pauses they naturally use, for they are

unconscious of effects. When we get before an audience, we throw most of

our natural methods of expression to the wind, and strive after

artificial effects. Get back to the methods of nature--and pause.

_2. Pause Prepares the Mind of the Auditor to Receive Your

Message_

Herbert Spencer said that all the universe is in motion. So it

is--and all perfect motion is rhythm. Part of rhythm is rest.

Rest follows activity all through nature. Instances: day and night;

spring--summer--autumn--winter; a period of rest between breaths; an

instant of complete rest between heart beats. Pause, and give the

attention-powers of your audience a rest. What you say after such

a silence will then have a great deal more effect.

When your country cousins come to town, the noise of a passing car will

awaken them, though it seldom affects a seasoned city dweller. By the

continual passing of cars his attention-power has become deadened. In

one who visits the city but seldom, attention-value is insistent. To him

the noise comes after a long pause; hence its power. To you, dweller in

the city, there is no pause; hence the low attention-value. After riding

on a train several hours you will become so accustomed to its roar that

it will lose its attention-value, unless the train should stop for a

while and start again. If you attempt to listen to a clock-tick that is

so far away that you can barely hear it, you will find that at times you

are unable to distinguish it, but in a few moments the sound becomes

distinct again. Your mind will pause for rest whether you desire it to

do so or not.

The attention of your audience will act in quite the same way. Recognize

this law and prepare for it--by pausing. Let it be repeated: the thought

that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred.

What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your

mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had

been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first

page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the

"seventh day." You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your

audience will likewise demand rest. Observe nature, study her laws, and

obey them in your speaking.

_3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_

Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it

will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of

much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep

guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of

woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this

principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a

feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he

arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like to be kept

waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is a

circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the

back of a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed

and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a

great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once. We not only

like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for. If fish bite too

readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.

It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock

Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is

solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins'

receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em

laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if

they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.

Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to

arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:

"It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience

wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great

evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he

had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then

he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and

continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the

audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr.

Moody, then continued--"as the greatest preacher of his day." Let the

dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following:

"It was my privilege to hear--the great evangelist--Dwight L.

Moody.--I came to regard him--as the greatest preacher of his

day."

The unskilled speaker would have rattled this off with neither pause nor

suspense, and the sentences would have fallen flat upon the audience. It

is precisely the application of these small things that makes much of

the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful speaker.

_4. Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate_

Any Missouri farmer will tell you that a rain that falls too fast will

run off into the creeks and do the crops but little good. A story is

told of a country deacon praying for rain in this manner: "Lord, don't

send us any chunk floater. Just give us a good old drizzle-drazzle." A

speech, like a rain, will not do anybody much good if it comes too fast

to soak in. The farmer's wife follows this same principle in doing her

washing when she puts the clothes in water--and pauses for several hours

that the water may soak in. The physician puts cocaine on your

turbinates--and pauses to let it take hold before he removes them. Why

do we use this principle everywhere except in the communication of

ideas? If you have given the audience a big idea, pause for a second or

two and let them turn it over. See what effect it has. After the smoke

clears away you may have to fire another 14-inch shell on the same

subject before you demolish the citadel of error that you are trying to

destroy. Take time. Don't let your speech resemble those tourists who

try "to do" New York in a day. They spend fifteen minutes looking at the

masterpieces in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, ten minutes in the

Museum of Natural History, take a peep into the Aquarium, hurry across

the Brooklyn Bridge, rush up to the Zoo, and back by Grant's Tomb--and

call that "Seeing New York." If you hasten by your important points

without pausing, your audience will have just about as adequate an idea

of what you have tried to convey.

Take time, you have just as much of it as our richest multimillionaire.

Your audience will wait for you. It is a sign of smallness to hurry. The

great redwood trees of California had burst through the soil five

hundred years before Socrates drank his cup of hemlock poison, and are

only in their prime today. Nature shames us with our petty haste.

Silence is one of the most eloquent things in the world. Master it, and

use it through pause.

* * * * *

In the following selections dashes have been inserted where pauses may

be used effectively. Naturally, you may omit some of these and insert

others without going wrong--one speaker would interpret a passage in one

way, one in another; it is largely a matter of personal preference. A

dozen great actors have played Hamlet well, and yet each has played the

part differently. Which comes the nearest to perfection is a question

of opinion. You will succeed best by daring to follow your own

course--if you are individual enough to blaze an original trail.

A moment's halt--a momentary taste of being from the well amid

the waste--and lo! the phantom caravan has reached--the nothing

it set out from--Oh make haste!

The worldly hope men set their hearts upon--turns ashes--or it

prospers;--and anon like snow upon the desert's dusty

face--lighting a little hour or two--is gone.

The bird of time has but a little way to flutter,--and the bird

is on the wing.

You will note that the punctuation marks have nothing to do with the

pausing. You may run by a period very quickly and make a long pause

where there is no kind of punctuation. Thought is greater than

punctuation. It must guide you in your pauses.

A book of verses underneath the bough,--a jug of wine, a loaf of

bread--and thou beside me singing in the

wilderness--Oh--wilderness were paradise enow.

You must not confuse the pause for emphasis with the natural pauses that

come through taking breath and phrasing. For example, note the pauses

indicated in this selection from Byron:

But _hush!_--_hark!_--that deep sound breaks in once more,

And _nearer!_--_clearer!_--_deadlier_ than before.

_Arm_, ARM!--it is--it is the cannon's opening roar!

It is not necessary to dwell at length upon these obvious distinctions.

You will observe that in natural conversation our words are gathered

into clusters or phrases, and we often pause to take breath between

them. So in public speech, breathe naturally and do not talk until you

must gasp for breath; nor until the audience is equally winded.

A serious word of caution must here be uttered: do not overwork the

pause. To do so will make your speech heavy and stilted. And do not

think that pause can transmute commonplace thoughts into great and

dignified utterance. A grand manner combined with insignificant ideas is

like harnessing a Hambletonian with an ass. You remember the farcical

old school declamation, "A Midnight Murder," that proceeded in grandiose

manner to a thrilling climax, and ended--"and relentlessly murdered--a

mosquito!"

The pause, dramatically handled, always drew a laugh from the tolerant

hearers. This is all very well in farce, but such anti-climax becomes

painful when the speaker falls from the sublime to the ridiculous quite

unintentionally. The pause, to be effective in some other manner than in

that of the boomerang, must precede or follow a thought that is really

worth while, or at least an idea whose bearing upon the rest of the

speech is important.

William Pittenger relates in his volume, "Extempore Speech," an instance

of the unconsciously farcical use of the pause by a really great

American statesman and orator. "He had visited Niagara Falls and was to

make an oration at Buffalo the same day, but, unfortunately, he sat too

long over the wine after dinner. When he arose to speak, the oratorical

instinct struggled with difficulties, as he declared, 'Gentlemen, I have

been to look upon your mag--mag--magnificent cataract, one hundred--and

forty--seven--feet high! Gentlemen, Greece and Rome in their palmiest

days never had a cataract one hundred--and forty--seven--feet high!'"