The larger your audience the more sure you are to find a universal basis of appeal.  A small audience of bachelors will not grow excited over the importance of furniture insurance; most men can be roused to the defense of the freedom of the press.

Patent medicine advertisement usually begins by talking about your pains—­they begin on your interests.  If they first discussed the size and rating of their establishment, or the efficacy of their remedy, you would never read the “ad.”  If they can make you think you have nervous troubles you will even plead for a remedy—­they will not have to try to sell it.

The patent medicine men are pleading—­asking you to invest your money in their commodity—­yet they do not appear to be doing so.  They get over on your side of the fence, and arouse a desire for their nostrums by appealing to your own interests.

Recently a book-salesman entered an attorney’s office in New York and inquired:  “Do you want to buy a book?” Had the lawyer wanted a book he would probably have bought one without waiting for a book-salesman to call.  The solicitor made the same mistake as the representative who made his approach with:  “I want to sell you a sewing machine.”  They both talked only in terms of their own interests.

The successful pleader must convert his arguments into terms of his hearers’ advantage.  Mankind are still selfish, are interested in what will serve them.  Expunge from your address your own personal concern and present your appeal in terms of the general good, and to do this you need not be insincere, for you had better not plead any cause that is not for the hearers’ good.  Notice how Senator Thurston in his plea for intervention in Cuba and Mr. Bryan in his “Cross of Gold” speech constituted themselves the apostles of humanity.

Exhortation is a highly impassioned form of appeal frequently used by the pulpit in efforts to arouse men to a sense of duty and induce them to decide their personal courses, and by counsel in seeking to influence a jury.  The great preachers, like the great jury-lawyers, have always been masters of persuasion.

Notice the difference among these four exhortations, and analyze the motives appealed to: 

    Revenge!  About!  Seek!  Burn!  Fire!  Kill!  Slay!  Let not a traitor
    live!

    —­SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar.

        Strike—­till the last armed foe expires,
    Strike—­for your altars and your fires,
    Strike—­for the green graves of your sires,
        God—­and your native land!

    —­FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, Marco Bozzaris.