FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   >>  
n which they were presented--seriatim. This is easy but not most effective. This opponent, whom I heard debate with someone else before I was engaged to try conclusions with him, was limited, as I saw, to the seriatim method of reply. When we met, I completely destroyed his influence on the audience by the following trick: Having the affirmative, I had to open and close, which gave me three speeches to his two. In my first speech instead of taking five to ten good points only, I added a good number of other points, stating them briefly and just giving him time to get them down. These extra points cost me about one minute each to state, and I knew they would cost him at least four or five to reply. Then just before closing I very seriously advanced the heaviest objection to my opponent's position. I especially called the attention of my audience to this point and declared it to be unanswerable and hoped my opponent would not forget to make a note of it. Then I paused long enough for the audience to see that I gave him full opportunity to get it down--as he did. Then I gathered my threads together and entered on my peroration. It worked out precisely as I had anticipated. My opponent began at the beginning, as he saw it, and all his time went over those decoy points and the chairman rapped him down long before he reached that special point. I then repeated the same tactics only I loaded him more heavily with decoys than before. I called upon the audience to witness that in spite of my begging him to do so, he had never so much as mentioned the main difficulty in his position. In his second and last speech, he saw the necessity of getting to that point but, alas, although he hustled through the column of stumbling blocks so rapidly that the audience hardly knew what he was talking about, just as he was about to reply to this much-paraded difficulty of mine--and it really was the main weakness of his position--down came the chairman's gavel. Then I lashed him unmercifully. I called the attention of the audience to the fact that twice I had especially begged him to answer this question and he had repeatedly failed to do so. The audience, of course, drew the inference that he was unable to answer, and he was considered to be hopelessly defeated. He should, by all means, have given that point his first consideration before dealing with the rest of my speech. This gentleman had humiliated quite a number of you
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   >>  



Top keywords:

audience

 

points

 

opponent

 

position

 

called

 

speech

 
seriatim
 

number

 
chairman
 
difficulty

attention

 
answer
 
witness
 

gentleman

 
begging
 

mentioned

 
consideration
 

dealing

 
heavily
 

rapped


reached

 
special
 

repeated

 

defeated

 

humiliated

 

decoys

 

tactics

 

loaded

 

paraded

 

repeatedly


talking

 

failed

 

question

 
lashed
 
weakness
 

begged

 

necessity

 

unmercifully

 

considered

 

unable


hustled

 

blocks

 
rapidly
 

stumbling

 
column
 
inference
 

hopelessly

 
speeches
 
affirmative
 

taking