Successful Methods of Public Speaking | Page 9

his ultimate object.
Carefully note any special means employed--story, illustration, appeal, or climax,--to
increase the effectiveness of the speech.
John Stuart Mill
Read the following speech delivered by John Stuart Mill, in his tribute to Garrison. Note
the clear-cut English of the speaker. Observe how promptly he goes to his subject, and
how steadily he keeps to it. Particularly note the high level of thought maintained
throughout. This is an excellent model of dignified, well-reasoned, convincing speech.
"Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen,--The speakers who have preceded me have, with
an eloquence far beyond anything which I can command, laid before our honored guest
the homage of admiration and gratitude which we all feel due to his heroic life. Instead of
idly expatiating upon things which have been far better said than I could say them, I
would rather endeavor to recall one or two lessons applicable to ourselves, which may be
drawn from his career. A noble work nobly done always contains in itself not one but
many lessons; and in the case of him whose character and deeds we are here to
commemorate, two may be singled out specially deserving to be laid to heart by all who
would wish to leave the world better than they found it.
"The first lesson is,--Aim at something great; aim at things which are difficult; and there
is no great thing which is not difficult. Do not pare down your undertaking to what you
can hope to see successful in the next few years, or in the years of your own life. Fear not
the reproach of Quixotism or of fanaticism; but after you have well weighed what you
undertake, if you see your way clearly, and are convinced that you are right, go forward,
even tho you, like Mr. Garrison, do it at the risk of being torn to pieces by the very men
through whose changed hearts your purpose will one day be accomplished. Fight on with
all your strength against whatever odds and with however small a band of supporters. If
you are right, the time will come when that small band will swell into a multitude; you
will at least lay the foundations of something memorable, and you may, like Mr.
Garrison--tho you ought not to need or expect so great a reward--be spared to see that
work completed which, when you began it, you only hoped it might be given to you to
help forward a few stages on its way.
"The other lesson which it appears to me important to enforce, amongst the many that
may be drawn from our friend's life, is this: If you aim at something noble and succeed in
it, you will generally find that you have succeeded not in that alone. A hundred other
good and noble things which you never dreamed of will have been accomplished by the
way, and the more certainly, the sharper and more agonizing has been the struggle which
preceded the victory. The heart and mind of a nation are never stirred from their
foundations without manifold good fruits. In the case of the great American contest these
fruits have been already great, and are daily becoming greater. The prejudices which
beset every form of society--and of which there was a plentiful crop in America--are
rapidly melting away. The chains of prescription have been broken; it is not only the

slave who has been freed--the mind of America has been emancipated. The whole
intellect of the country has been set thinking about the fundamental questions of society
and government; and the new problems which have to be solved and the new difficulties
which have to be encountered are calling forth new activity of thought, and that great
nation is saved probably for a long time to come, from the most formidable danger of a
completely settled state of society and opinion--intellectual and moral stagnation. This,
then, is an additional item of the debt which America and mankind owe to Mr. Garrison
and his noble associates; and it is well calculated to deepen our sense of the truth which
his whole career most strikingly illustrates--that tho our best directed efforts may often
seem wasted and lost, nothing coming of them that can be pointed to and distinctly
identified as a definite gain to humanity, tho this may happen ninety-nine times in every
hundred, the hundredth time the result may be so great and dazzling that we had never
dared to hope for it, and should have regarded him who had predicted it to us as sanguine
beyond the bounds of mental sanity. So has it been with Mr. Garrison."
It will be beneficial for your all-round development in speaking to choose for earnest
study several speeches of widely different character. As you compare one speech with
another, you