The average audience, I
have come to believe, wants facts rather than generalities or
sermonizing. Most people, I think, are able to draw proper
conclusions if they are given the facts in an interesting form on
which to base them.
As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would
put at the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake,
business men, such, for example, as is found in Boston, New York,
Chicago, and Buffalo. I have found no other audience so quick to
see a point, and so responsive. Within the last few years I have
had the privilege of speaking before most of the leading
organizations of this kind in the large cities of the United
States. The best time to get hold of an organization of business
men is after a good dinner, although I think that one of the
worst instruments of torture that was ever invented is the custom
which makes it necessary for a speaker to sit through a
fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling sure
that his speech is going to prove a dismal failure and
disappointment.
I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not
wish that I could put myself back in the little cabin where I was
a slave boy, and again go through the experience there--one that
I shall never forget--of getting molasses to eat once a week from
the "big house.
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