The attention of your audience will act in quite the same way.  Recognize this law and prepare for it—­by pausing.  Let it be repeated:  the thought that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred.  What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep.  We are told on the first page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the “seventh day.”  You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your audience will likewise demand rest.  Observe nature, study her laws, and obey them in your speaking.

3.  Pause Creates Effective Suspense

Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it will be the same with your speech.  A play or a novel is often robbed of much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand.  We like to keep guessing as to the outcome.  The ability to create suspense is part of woman’s power to hold the other sex.  The circus acrobat employs this principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a feat, and then achieves it.  Even the deliberate manner in which he arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation—­we like to be kept waiting.  In the last act of the play, “Polly of the Circus,” there is a circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the back of a running pony.  One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed and worked with a long time before he would perform his feat he got a great deal more applause than when he did his trick at once.  We not only like to wait but we appreciate what we wait for.  If fish bite too readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.

It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock Holmes story—­you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished.  Wilkie Collins’ receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech:  “Make ’em laugh; make ’em weep; make ’em wait.”  Above all else make them wait; if they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.

Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to arouse and maintain suspense.  We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:  “It was my privilege to hear”—­and he paused, while the audience wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear—­“the great evangelist”—­and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then he concluded:  “Dwight L. Moody.”  Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and continued:  “I came to regard him”—­here he paused again and held the audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr. Moody, then continued—­“as the greatest preacher of his day.”  Let the dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following: 

    “It was my privilege to hear—­the great evangelist—­Dwight L.
    Moody.—­I came to regard him—­as the greatest preacher of his
    day.”