PUBLIC SPEAKERS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21865, 19 August 1936, Page 7

PUBLIC SPEAKERS

TO THE EDIT OB OT THE PEKBS. Sir, —Is there anything more trying than having to listen to a passion being worn (even torn) to tatters? Recently it has been my misfortune to hear two addresses —one by a man and one by a woman —in which a theme was very much overworked. Both have positions in influential associations and are much travelled. The man, finding that a harmless little joke about the language difficulty went down, worked it for far more than it ' was worth. Audiences generally are easily amused, too easily, very often, and this weakness is exploited to the full. The man’s mannerisms and cant phrases were painful and some of his pronunciation decidedly choice: “ahr” .our''; “pahnd” (pound); “worhld” (world); and frequent “ha, ha, has” and snapping of fingers completed the artistic performance. . Repeatedly, the lady “raiahly didn t know what she was going to saih ’ and prefaced most of her remarks with a silly giggle which the ladies in the audience felt in duty bound to imitate. These lecturers tried to get a laugh cut of nearly -everything* they said, though their observations were quite*, commonplace, there being a totial absence of wit or even respectable hum- °. U “Though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve. “O, there be players that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it profanely, that, having neither the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.”—Yours, etc., b. r. McLaren. August 13, 1936,