Two young people were passing out of a building where they had just
listened to a speaker of note.
"What a wonderful talk that was!" said one who found it a heavy cross to
make the simplest address in public. "I wish I had such a gift of
speech."
"It isn't a gift in his case; it is an acquirement," was the response.
"If you had known that man five years ago, you would agree with me. When
I first knew him he could not get up in a public meeting and make the
simplest statement without floundering and stammering in a most pitiful
manner. But he had made up his mind to be a public speaker, and he put
himself through a severe course of discipline. To-day you see the
result."
The biography of Dr. Herrick Johnson tells of courageous conquest of
difficulties that seemed to block the way to success: "Hamilton College
has always given great attention to public speaking and class orations.
The high standard was set by a remarkably gifted man, Professor
Mandeville, who instituted a system in the study of oratory and public
speaking which has been known ever since, with some modification, as the
'Mandeville System.'"
"In 1853, Dr. Anson J. Upson was in the Mandevillian chair, and had
lifted up to still greater height the standard of public speaking, and
had awakened a great, inextinguishable enthusiasm for it. Not one of the
boys who entered that year, and who were at that prize-speaking contest,
could fail to be seized with the public-speaking craze. It especially
met Herrick Johnson's taste and trend and gifts, and fired his highest
aim. Probably there was nothing he wanted so much as the prize in his
class at the next commencement. But unfortunately his standards and
ideals of public speaking were just then as far as possible from the
Mandevillian standard. He had acquired what was called a ministerial
tone, and other faults fatal to any success, unless eradicated. The best
speakers of the upper classes were the recognized and accepted
'drillers' of the new boys, who at once put themselves under their care
and criticism. Every spring and fall a certain valley with a grove,
north of the college, was the resort of the aspirants for success at
this time. The woods would ring with their 'exercises' and strenuous
declamation, and I presume it is the same to-day.
"Herrick Johnson had a magnificent voice, well-nigh ruined by his sins
against the right method of using it. He soon saw that it was going to
be essential for him to go down to the foundation of his wrong methods
and break them all up and absolutely eradicate his 'tone.' It was no
easy thing to do, but the young man was intensely ambitious, and so he
worked with the greatest energy. He failed of an appointment on the
'best four' of his Freshman class. But he worked away throughout his
Sophomore year and failed again. The upperclassmen saw his pluck, they
recognized his grand voice, and they worked with him during his Junior
year, until he had mastered the Mandevillian style, wholly eradicated
his 'tone,' corrected all defects, and got his appointment for one of
the best four speakers of the Junior year; and on the prize-speaking
night of that commencement, he went on the platform conscious of his
power and swept everything before him as the Junior prize speaker. It
set the standard for that young man. Voice, manner, address, were all
masterful and accounted easily for his great success as a public speaker
through all his subsequent prominent and successful career in his
profession."
A part of the good of "speaking a piece" is to try again, determined to
retrieve failure. Success is not always a good thing for a boy or a
girl, any more than for a man or a woman. The discipline of failure is
sometimes needed. To fail is not always a calamity, if the failure leads
to the correction of the faults that lead to failure. Whether it be
speaking a piece or learning a lesson or facing a trying situation in
business, no matter how many times one has failed, he needs to take to
heart the message of Macbeth:
We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-point,
And we'll not fail.
Always there is a reward for those who fight against difficulties, who
persist in their struggle even when failure follows failure. Everyday
the glad story of the sequel to such persistent struggles is recorded.
The records of commercial life, of school life, of home life are full of
these.