LESSON 5

GENERAL BASES FOR THE ARRANGEMENT OF MATTER

IN THE BODY OF THE SPEECH

By this time, no doubt, the student has inferred that a speech is always planned with the probable mental state of the audience as a guide. If it is foreseen that the audience is likely to be unfriendly or insufficiently informed, the speaker casts about for the means of remedying these deficiencies. Furthermore, if he discovers any unforeseen barriers to the most favorable reception of his message, when he faces the audience or during actual delivery, he readjusts himself and modifies his statements so as to mould the auditors' minds to a state of favorable feeling, acute attention, and intelligent insight.

Since it is most generally probable that such efforts must come at the very beginning, we have considered them as natural parts of an introduction. Yet it is possible that the speaker cannot always prepare for every portion of his entire address at the outset. He may have to make many little or subordinate introductions to new points as they arise during the course of the speech. Still, even though scattered throughout the discourse, these efforts are introductory in character, for they seek to prepare the way for something which would not be received without them. Understanding, then, that the formal introduction, when used, may be re-enforced throughout the body of the speech, let us leave the intro

duction in order to consider the arrangement of the body.

GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE BODY OF THE SPEECH

Naturally enough, the body of a speech differs with every occasion and theme. It is extremely difficult to lay down any but the most general rules for the arrangement of the divisions of the message proper. In a later lesson, we shall give directions concerning the details of the body of the speech; just now only the larger matters of general arrangement will be taken up.

If the address be very short, the problem is not a serious one; but if it be long, much depends upon the order in which the various points are presented. The introduction may promote the most favorable emotional response and prepare for the easiest intellectual grasp, but the arrangement of the body must be depended upon to preserve these desired ends. Therefore, in determining the sequence of material in the body of the speech, be guided by some plan which will dovetail with the efforts of the introduction. Two principles for general guidance suggest themselves:

(1) Follow the natural divisions of the subject which exist because of the way things hang together in nature. (2) Modify or adapt this order to meet the peculiarities of the particular audience to be addressed.

The first of these, if it can be followed, insures a clear grasp of the matter just as it is, irrespective of anyone's bias. The second takes account of the truth that all men are biased and must have their peculiar shortcomings made up by the skill of the speaker.

(a) Natural Sequence in the Body of the Speech

All the things which a speaker may wish to include in the body of his speech have a natural relationship; this relationship should help to determine the order of presentation. Typical relationships are those of time, Let us make this

place, magnitude, and causation.

clear.

Relationship of time is the most simple. If we wish to narrate a series of events which followed one after the other, then the simplest arrangement of details is to present them in the order of actual occurrence. Suppose your speech to be a eulogy: A man's life is to be reviewed and appreciated. There are two kinds of ideas to be presented to the audience-the concrete facts of the life and the abstract qualities or characteristics which are to be appraised. Evidently the easiest order in which to offer these things is to begin with the man's ancestry, then tell of his birth, his childhood, his early education, his young manhood, and his later career, and then close with his death. This is simple, chronological

sequence.

The following extract from Carl Schurz's eulogy of Charles Sumner, delivered in Boston Music Hall, April 29, 1874,1 will illustrate. After an introduction in which he spoke of the nation's loss in the death of one of its great senators, the orator mentioned his own friendship for Sumner. Then, remarking that Americans usually liked to speak of their heroes as self-made men, he said: He was

But not such a life was that of Charles Sumner. descended from good old Kentish yeomanry stock, men stalwart of frame, stout of heart, who used to stand in the front of the 1 In a memorial volume published by order of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1874.

fierce battles of Old England; and the first of the name who came to America had certainly not been exempt from the rough struggles of the early settlements. But already from the year 1723 a long line of Sumners appears on the records of Harvard College, and it is evident that the love of study had long been hereditary in the family. Charles Pickney Sumner, the Senator's father, was a graduate of Harvard, a lawyer by profession, for fourteen years high sheriff of Suffolk County. His literary tastes and acquirements, and his stately politeness are still remembered. He was altogether a man of high respectability. He was not rich, but in good circumstances, and well able to give his children the best opportunities to study, without working for their daily bread.

Charles Sumner was born in Boston, on the sixth of January, 1811. At the age of ten, he had received his rudimentary training; at fifteen, after having gone through the Boston Latin School, he entered Harvard College and plunged at once with fervor into the classics, polite literature, and history. Graduated in 1830, he entered the Cambridge Law School. Now life began to open for him. Judge Story, his most distinguished teacher, soon recognized in him a young man of uncommon stamp; and an intimate friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil, which was severed only by death.

He began to distinguish himself not only by the most arduous industry and application, pushing his researches far beyond the text-books-indeed, text-books never satisfied him-but by a striking earnestness and faculty to master the original principles of the science, and to trace them through its development.

His productive labor began, and I find it stated that already then, while he was yet a pupil, his essays, published in the 'American Jurist," were "always characterized by a breadth of view and accuracy of learning, and sometimes by remarkably subtle and ingenious investigation.

Leaving the law school, he entered the office of a lawyer in Boston, to acquire a knowledge of practice, never much to his taste. Then he visited Washington for the first time, little dreaming what a theatre of action, struggle, triumph, and suffering the national city was to become for him; for then he

came only as a studious, deeply interested looker-on, who merely desired to form the acquaintance of the justices and practicing lawyers at the bar of the Supreme Court. He was received with marked kindness by Chief Justice Marshall, and in later years he loved to tell his friends how he had sat at the feet of that great magistrate, and learned there what a judge should be.

Having been admitted to the bar in Worcester in 1834, when twenty-three years old, he opened an office in Boston; was soon appointed reporter of the United States Circuit Court; published three volumes containing Judge Story's decisions, known as "Sumner's Reports"; took Judge Story's place from time to time as lecturer in Harvard Law School; also Professor Greenleaf's, who was absent, and edited during the years 1835 and 1836 Andrew Dunlap's Treatise on "Admiralty Practice." Beyond this, his studies, arduous, incessant, and thorough, ranged far and wide.

Truly a studious and laborious young man who took the business of life earnestly in hand, determined to know something, and to be useful to his time and country.

But what he had learned and could learn at home did not satisfy his craving. In 1837 he went to Europe, armed with a letter from Judge Story's hand to the law magnates of England, to whom his patron introduced him as "a young lawyer giving promise of the most eminent distinction in his profession, with truly extraordinary attainments, literary and judicial, and a gentleman of the highest purity and propriety of character."

This was not a mere complimentary introduction; it was the conscientious testimony of a great judge who well knew his responsibility, and who afterwards, when his death approached, adding to that testimony, was frequently heard to say, "I shall die content, as far as my professorship is concerned, if Charles Sumner is to succeed me.

In England, young Sumner, only feeling himself standing on the threshold of life, was received like a man of already achieved distinction. Every circle of a society, ordinarily so exclusive, was open to him. Often, by invitation, he sat with the judges in Westminster Hall. Renowned statesmen introduced him upon the floor of Parliament. Eagerly he followed