Lecturers learn by experience that the chairman question may become at times a very trying problem. Many a meeting has been spoiled by an impossible chairman, and the lecturer who wishes to have his work produce the best result will always keep a keen eye on the chair, though, of course, he should not appear to do so. The functions of the chairman are mainly two: To introduce the speaker, and to decide points of procedure. The latter function is only necessary in delegate gatherings where all present have the right to participate. The former applies where a speaker is visiting a town and is a stranger to many in his audience. In this case, when the chairman has told the audience who the speaker is, where he comes from, what his subject will be, the occasion and auspices of the meeting, his work is done, and the chairman who at this point leaves the platform and takes a seat in the front row, should be presented with a medal of unalloyed gold and his name should be recorded in the municipal How often has one seen a chairman during the lecture, conscious that he is in full view of the audience, crossing his legs, first one way, then the other, trying a dozen different ways of disposing of his hands with becoming grace, fumbling with his watch chain, looking at his watch as if the speaker had already overstepped his time, looking nervously at his program as if something of enormous importance had been forgotten, and doing a dozen similar things, most of them unconsciously, but none the less continuously diverting the attention of the audience from the speaker and his speech. How pleasantly do I recall the chairman who came to my hotel and asked me to write him a two-minute speech, which he committed to memory, but promptly forgot before a crowded opera house and substituted for it, “Mr. Lewis of San Francisco will now address you,” and disappeared in the wings. The fates be kind to him! He was the prince of chairmen. I spoke on one occasion in a large city to a good audience at a well advertised meeting on the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone question. I had for chairman a local speaker, who, fascinated by Another chairman I shall ever remember is the one who closed a rambling speech with the following terse remarks: “You have all heard of the speaker, you have seen his name in our papers; he has a national reputation. I will now call upon him to make good.” Fortunately, most inexperienced chairmen seek the speaker’s advice and follow it. |