4 ways to electrify speeches through storytelling
The platitudes you offer—or mission statements you regurgitate—will soon be forgotten. Make your point with a story, however, and audiences will long remember your message.
Boston’s literary Brahmin were dining sumptuously—seven courses washed down with Sauterne, sherry, Chablis, Champagne, claret and Burgundy—and by the time Mark Twain rose to speak, everyone was in a convivial mood.
Guests included America’s “trinomial of literary saints”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The fuddy-duddies settled in for what they apparently thought would be a harmless chuckle from the backcountry humorist.
Instead, Twain roasted them, telling a story about three Nevada prospectors—sharing the writers’ names, as it happens—who get drunk, cheat at cards and threaten to brawl, Humanities magazine relates. Twain described Emerson as “a seedy little bit of a chap,” Holmes as “fat as a balloon” and Longfellow as looking as if he wore “a wig made of hair-brushes.”
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today
Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.
