Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over

us.

 

Applause, generally a sign of feeling, helps to unify an audience. The nature of

the crowd is illustrated by the contagion of applause. Recently a throng in a

New York moving-picture and vaudeville house had been applauding several songs,

and when an advertisement for tailored skirts was thrown on the screen some one

started the applause, and the crowd, like sheep, blindly imitated--until someone

saw the joke and laughed; then the crowd again followed a leader and laughed at

and applauded its own stupidity.

 

Actors sometimes start applause for their lines by snapping their fingers. Some

one in the first few rows will mistake it for faint applause, and the whole

theatre will chime in.

 

An observant auditor will be interested in noticing the various devices a

monologist will use to get the first round of laughter and applause. He works so

hard because he knows an audience of units is an audience of indifferent

critics, but once get them to laughing together and each single laugher sweeps a

number of others with him, until the whole theatre is aroar and the entertainer

has scored. These are meretricious schemes, to be sure, and do not savor in the

least of inspiration, but crowds have not changed in their nature in a thousand

years and the one law holds for the greatest preacher and the pettiest

stump-speaker--you must fuse your audience or they will not warm to your

message. The devices of the great orator may not be so obvious as those of the