It will be noticed, too, that the literary style in platform narration is likely

to be either less polished and more vigorously dramatic than in that intended

for publication, or else more fervid and elevated in tone. In this latter

respect, however, the best platform speaking of today differs from the models of

the preceding generation, wherein a highly dignified, and sometimes pompous,

style was thought the only fitting dress for a public deliverance. Great, noble

and stirring as these older masters were in their lofty and impassioned

eloquence, we are sometimes oppressed when we read their sounding periods for

any great length of time--even allowing for all that we lose by missing the

speaker's presence, voice, and fire. So let us model our platform narration, as

our other forms of speech, upon the effective addresses of the moderns, without

lessening our admiration for the older school.

 

_The Anecdote_

 

An anecdote is a short narrative of a single event, told as being striking

enough to bring out a point. The keener the point, the more condensed the form,

and the more suddenly the application strikes the hearer, the better the story.

 

To regard an anecdote as an illustration--an interpretive picture--will help to

hold us to its true purpose, for a purposeless story is of all offenses on the

platform the most asinine. A perfectly capital joke will fall flat when it is

dragged in by the nape without evident bearing on the subject under discussion.

On the other hand, an apposite anecdote has saved many a speech from failure.