Wild is thy lay, and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,--

Love gives it energy; love gave it birth.

Where, on thy dewy wing

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven; thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day;

Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!

Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place.

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

--JAMES HOGG.

In joyous conversation there is an elastic touch, a delicate stroke,

upon the central ideas, generally following a pause. This elastic touch

adds vivacity to the voice. If you try repeatedly, it can be sensed by

feeling the tongue strike the teeth. The entire absence of elastic touch

in the voice can be observed in the thick tongue of the intoxicated man.

Try to talk with the tongue lying still in the bottom of the mouth, and

you will obtain largely the same effect. Vivacity of utterance is gained

by using the tongue to strike off the emphatic idea with a decisive,

elastic touch.

Deliver the following with decisive strokes on the emphatic ideas.

Deliver it in a vivacious manner, noting the elastic touch-action of the

tongue. A flexible, responsive tongue is absolutely essential to good

voice work.

_FROM NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO THE DIRECTORY ON HIS RETURN FROM EGYPT_

What have you done with that brilliant France which I left you?

I left you at peace, and I find you at war. I left you

victorious and I find you defeated. I left you the millions of

Italy, and I find only spoliation and poverty. What have you

done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen, my companions in

glory? They are dead!... This state of affairs cannot last long;

in less than three years it would plunge us into despotism.

Practise the following selection, for the development of elastic touch;

say it in a joyous spirit, using the exercise to develop voice charm in

_all_ the ways suggested in this chapter.

_THE BROOK_

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges;

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret,

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery water-break

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers,

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows,

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses,

I linger by my shingly bars,

I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

--ALFRED TENNYSON.

The children at play on the street, glad from sheer physical vitality,

display a resonance and charm in their voices quite different from the

voices that float through the silent halls of the hospitals. A skilled

physician can tell much about his patient's condition from the mere

sound of the voice. Failing health, or even physical weariness, tells

through the voice. It is always well to rest and be entirely refreshed

before attempting to deliver a public address. As to health, neither

scope nor space permits us to discuss here the laws of hygiene. There

are many excellent books on this subject. In the reign of the Roman

emperor Tiberius, one senator wrote to another: "To the wise, a word is

sufficient."

"The apparel oft proclaims the man;" the voice always does--it is one of

the greatest revealers of character. The superficial woman, the brutish

man, the reprobate, the person of culture, often discloses inner nature

in the voice, for even the cleverest dissembler cannot entirely prevent

its tones and qualities being affected by the slightest change of

thought or emotion. In anger it becomes high, harsh, and unpleasant; in

love low, soft, and melodious--the variations are as limitless as they

are fascinating to observe. Visit a theatrical hotel in a large city,

and listen to the buzz-saw voices of the chorus girls from some

burlesque "attraction." The explanation is simple--buzz-saw lives.

Emerson said: "When a man lives with God his voice shall be as sweet as

the murmur of the brook or the rustle of the corn." It is impossible to

think selfish thoughts and have either an attractive personality, a

lovely character, or a charming voice. If you want to possess voice

charm, cultivate a deep, sincere sympathy for mankind. Love will shine

out through your eyes and proclaim itself in your tones. One secret of

the sweetness of the canary's song may be his freedom from tainted

thoughts. Your character beautifies or mars your voice. As a man

thinketh in his heart so is his voice.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Define (_a_) charm; (_b_) joy; (_c_) beauty.

2. Make a list of all the words related to _joy_.

3. Write a three-minute eulogy of "The Joyful Man."

4. Deliver it without the use of notes. Have you carefully considered

all the qualities that go to make up voice-charm in its delivery?

5. Tell briefly in your own words what means may be employed to develop

a charming voice.

6. Discuss the effect of voice on character.

7. Discuss the effect of character on voice.

8. Analyze the voice charm of any speaker or singer you choose.

9. Analyze the defects of any given voice.

10. Make a short humorous speech imitating certain voice defects,

pointing out reasons.

11. Commit the following stanza and interpret each phase of delight

suggested or expressed by the poet.

An infant when it gazes on a light,

A child the moment when it drains the breast,

A devotee when soars the Host in sight,

An Arab with a stranger for a guest,

A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,

A miser filling his most hoarded chest,

Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping

As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.

--BYRON, _Don Juan_.

CHAPTER XIV

DISTINCTNESS AND PRECISION OF UTTERANCE

In man speaks God.

--HESIOD, _Words and Days_.

And endless are the modes of speech, and far

Extends from side to side the field of words.

--HOMER, _Iliad_.

In popular usage the terms "pronunciation," "enunciation," and

"articulation" are synonymous, but real pronunciation includes three

distinct processes, and may therefore be defined as, _the utterance of a

syllable or a group of syllables with regard to articulation,

accentuation, and enunciation_.

Distinct and precise utterance is one of the most important

considerations of public speech. How preposterous it is to hear a

speaker making sounds of "inarticulate earnestness" under the contented

delusion that he is telling something to his audience! Telling? Telling

means communicating, and how can he actually communicate without making

every word distinct?

Slovenly pronunciation results from either physical deformity or habit.

A surgeon or a surgeon dentist may correct a deformity, but your own

will, working by self-observation and resolution in drill, will break a

habit. All depends upon whether you think it worth while.

Defective speech is so widespread that freedom from it is the exception.

It is painfully common to hear public speakers mutilate the king's

English. If they do not actually murder it, as Curran once said, they

often knock an _i_ out.

A Canadian clergyman, writing in the _Homiletic Review_, relates that in

his student days "a classmate who was an Englishman supplied a country

church for a Sunday. On the following Monday he conducted a missionary

meeting. In the course of his address he said some farmers thought they

were doing their duty toward missions when they gave their 'hodds and

hends' to the work, but the Lord required more. At the close of the

meeting a young woman seriously said to a friend: 'I am sure the farmers

do well if they give their hogs and hens to missions. It is more than

most people can afford.'"

It is insufferable effrontery for any man to appear before an audience

who persists in driving the _h_ out of happiness, home and heaven, and,

to paraphrase Waldo Messaros, will not let it rest in hell. He who does

not show enough self-knowledge to see in himself such glaring faults,

nor enough self-mastery to correct them, has no business to instruct

others. If he _can_ do no better, he should be silent. If he _will_ do

no better, he should also be silent.

Barring incurable physical defects--and few are incurable nowadays--the

whole matter is one of will. The catalogue of those who have done the

impossible by faithful work is as inspiring as a roll-call of warriors.

"The less there is of you," says Nathan Sheppard, "the more need for you

to make the most of what there is of you."

_Articulation_

Articulation is the forming and joining of the elementary sounds of

speech. It seems an appalling task to utter articulately the third-of-a

million words that go to make up our English vocabulary, but the way to

make a beginning is really simple: _learn to utter correctly, and with

easy change from one to the other, each of the forty-four elementary

sounds in our language_.

The reasons why articulation is so painfully slurred by a great many

public speakers are four: ignorance of the elemental sounds; failure to

discriminate between sounds nearly alike; a slovenly, lazy use of the

vocal organs; and a torpid will. Anyone who is still master of himself

will know how to handle each of these defects.

The vowel sounds are the most vexing source of errors, especially where

diphthongs are found. Who has not heard such errors as are hit off in

this inimitable verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope

The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for s[=o]ap;

Her edict exiles from her fair abode

The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for r[=o]ad;

Less stern to him who calls his c[=o]at, a c[)o]at

And steers his b[=o]at believing it a b[)o]at.

She pardoned one, our classic city's boast.

Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of m[=o]st,

But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot

To hear a Teacher call a r[=oo]t a r[)oo]t.

The foregoing examples are all monosyllables, but bad articulation is

frequently the result of joining sounds that do not belong together.

For example, no one finds it difficult to say _beauty_, but many persist

in pronouncing _duty_ as though it were spelled either _dooty_ or

_juty_. It is not only from untaught speakers that we hear such slovenly

articulations as _colyum_ for _column_, and _pritty_ for _pretty_, but

even great orators occasionally offend quite as unblushingly as less

noted mortals.

Nearly all such are errors of carelessness, not of pure ignorance--of

carelessness because the ear never tries to hear what the lips

articulate. It must be exasperating to a foreigner to find that the

elemental sound _ou_ gives him no hint for the pronunciation of _bough_,

_cough_, _rough_, _thorough_, and _through_, and we can well forgive

even a man of culture who occasionally loses his way amidst the

intricacies of English articulation, but there can be no excuse for the

slovenly utterance of the simple vowel sounds which form at once the

life and the beauty of our language. He who is too lazy to speak

distinctly should hold his tongue.

The consonant sounds occasion serious trouble only for those who do not

look with care at the spelling of words about to be pronounced. Nothing

but carelessness can account for saying _Jacop_, _Babtist_, _sevem_,

_alwus_, or _sadisfy_.

"He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw," is the rendering which an

Anglophobiac clergyman gave of the familiar scripture, "He that hath

ears to hear, let him hear." After hearing the name of Sir Humphry Davy

pronounced, a Frenchman who wished to write to the eminent Englishman

thus addressed the letter: "Serum Fridavi."

_Accentuation_

Accentuation is the stressing of the proper syllables in words. This it

is that is popularly called _pronunciation_. For instance, we properly

say that a word is mispronounced when it is accented _in'-vite_instead

of _in-vite'_, though it is really an offense against only one form of

pronunciation--accentuation.

It is the work of a lifetime to learn the accents of a large vocabulary

and to keep pace with changing usage; but an alert ear, the study of

word-origins, and the dictionary habit, will prove to be mighty helpers

in a task that can never be finally completed.

_Enunciation_

Correct enunciation is the complete utterance of all the sounds of a

syllable or a word. Wrong articulation gives the wrong sound to the

vowel or vowels of a word or a syllable, as _doo_ for _dew_; or unites

two sounds improperly, as _hully_ for _wholly_. Wrong enunciation is the

_incomplete_ utterance of a syllable or a word, the sound omitted or

added being usually consonantal. To say _needcessity_ instead of

_necessity_ is a wrong articulation; to say _doin_ for _doing_ is

improper enunciation. The one articulates--that is, joints--two sounds

that should not be joined, and thus gives the word a positively wrong

sound; the other fails to touch all the sounds in the word, and _in that

particular way_ also sounds the word incorrectly.

"My tex' may be foun' in the fif' and six' verses of the secon' chapter

of Titus; and the subjec' of my discourse is 'The Gover'ment of ar

Homes.'"[6]

What did this preacher do with his final consonants? This slovenly

dropping of essential sounds is as offensive as the common habit of

running words together so that they lose their individuality and

distinctness. _Lighten dark_, _uppen down_, _doncher know_,

_partic'lar_, _zamination_, are all too common to need comment.

Imperfect enunciation is due to lack of attention and to lazy lips. It

can be corrected by resolutely attending to the formation of syllables

as they are uttered. Flexible lips will enunciate difficult combinations

of sounds without slighting any of them, but such flexibility cannot be

attained except by habitually uttering words with distinctness and

accuracy. A daily exercise in enunciating a series of sounds will in a

short time give flexibility to the lips and alertness to the mind, so

that no word will be uttered without receiving its due complement of

sound.

Returning to our definition, we see that when the sounds of a word are

properly articulated, the right syllables accented, and full value given

to each sound in its enunciation, we have correct pronunciation. Perhaps

one word of caution is needed here, lest any one, anxious to bring out

clearly every sound, should overdo the matter and neglect the unity and

smoothness of pronunciation. Be careful not to bring syllables into so

much prominence as to make words seem long and angular. The joints must

be kept decently dressed.

Before delivery, do not fail to go over your manuscript and note every

sound that may possibly be mispronounced. Consult the dictionary and

make assurance doubly sure. If the arrangement of words is unfavorable

to clear enunciation, change either words or order and do not rest until

you can follow Hamlet's directions to the players.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Practise repeating the following rapidly, paying particular attention

to the consonants.

"Foolish Flavius, flushing feverishly, fiercely found fault with

Flora's frivolity.[7]"

Mary's matchless mimicry makes much mischief.

Seated on shining shale she sells sea shells.

You youngsters yielded your youthful yule-tide yearnings

yesterday.

2. Sound the _l_ in each of the following words, repeated in sequence:

Blue black blinkers blocked Black Blondin's eyes.

3. Do you say a _bloo_ sky or a _blue_ sky?

4. Compare the _u_ sound in _few_ and in _new_. Say each aloud, and

decide which is correct, _Noo York_, _New Yawk_, or _New York_?

5. Pay careful heed to the directions of this chapter in reading the

following, from Hamlet. After the interview with the ghost of his

father, Hamlet tells his friends Horatio and Marcellus that he intends

to act a part:

_Horatio_. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

_Hamlet_. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

But come;

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,

How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,--

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on,--

That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,

With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would,"

Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if there might,"

Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note

That you know aught of me: this not to do,

So grace and mercy at your most need help you,

Swear.

--_Act I. Scene V._

6. Make a list of common errors of pronunciation, saying which are due

to faulty articulation, wrong accentuation, and incomplete enunciation.

In each case make the correction.

7. Criticise any speech you may have heard which displayed these faults.

8. Explain how the false shame of seeming to be too precise may hinder

us from cultivating perfect verbal utterance.

9. Over-precision is likewise a fault. To bring out any syllable unduly

is to caricature the word. Be _moderate_ in reading the following:

_THE LAST SPEECH OF MAXIMILIAN DE ROBESPIERRE_

The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such they

would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should

grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be

grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from

denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support;

there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have

tools. But the enemies of tyranny,--whither does their path

tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my

protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What

faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and

annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the people,--our

principles--are that faction--a faction to which I am devoted,

and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded!

The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know

that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis

of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred

principles, the league is formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon

without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the

future. What friend of this country would wish to survive the

moment when he could no longer serve it,--when he could no

longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I

continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally

triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the

most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred

interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices

which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid

communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have

sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of

posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who

had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends

of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my

country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line

of demarcation between themselves and all true men.

Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in

all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers

died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;

but in very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen!

Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade

your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death

is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that

motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all

nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its

support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death!

Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement

of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a

terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence

befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful

truth--"Thou shalt die!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]

[Footnote 7: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]

CHAPTER XV

THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE

When Whitefield acted an old blind man advancing by slow steps

toward the edge of the precipice, Lord Chesterfield started up

and cried: "Good God, he is gone!"

--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.

Gesture is really a simple matter that requires observation and common

sense rather than a book of rules. Gesture is an outward expression of

an inward condition. It is merely an effect--the effect of a mental or

an emotional impulse struggling for expression through physical avenues.

You must not, however, begin at the wrong end: if you are troubled by

your gestures, or a lack of gestures, attend to the cause, not the

effect. It will not in the least help matters to tack on to your

delivery a few mechanical movements. If the tree in your front yard is

not growing to suit you, fertilize and water the soil and let the tree

have sunshine. Obviously it will not help your tree to nail on a few

branches. If your cistern is dry, wait until it rains; or bore a well.

Why plunge a pump into a dry hole?

The speaker whose thoughts and emotions are welling within him like a

mountain spring will not have much trouble to make gestures; it will be

merely a question of properly directing them. If his enthusiasm for his

subject is not such as to give him a natural impulse for dramatic

action, it will avail nothing to furnish him with a long list of rules.

He may tack on some movements, but they will look like the wilted

branches nailed to a tree to simulate life. Gestures must be born, not

built. A wooden horse may amuse the children, but it takes a live one to

go somewhere.

It is not only impossible to lay down definite rules on this subject,

but it would be silly to try, for everything depends on the speech, the

occasion, the personality and feelings of the speaker, and the attitude

of the audience. It is easy enough to forecast the result of multiplying

seven by six, but it is impossible to tell any man what kind of gestures

he will be impelled to use when he wishes to show his earnestness. We

may tell him that many speakers close the hand, with the exception of

the forefinger, and pointing that finger straight at the audience pour

out their thoughts like a volley; or that others stamp one foot for

emphasis; or that Mr. Bryan often slaps his hands together for great

force, holding one palm upward in an easy manner; or that Gladstone

would sometimes make a rush at the clerk's table in Parliament and smite

it with his hand so forcefully that D'israeli once brought down the

house by grimly congratulating himself that such a barrier stood between

himself and "the honorable gentleman."

All these things, and a bookful more, may we tell the speaker, but we

cannot know whether he can use these gestures or not, any more than we

can decide whether he could wear Mr. Bryan's clothes. The best that can

be done on this subject is to offer a few practical suggestions, and let

personal good taste decide as to where effective dramatic action ends

and extravagant motion begins.

_Any Gesture That Merely Calls Attention to Itself Is Bad_

The purpose of a gesture is to carry your thought and feeling into the

minds and hearts of your hearers; this it does by emphasizing your

message, by interpreting it, by expressing it in action, by striking its

tone in either a physically descriptive, a suggestive, or a typical

gesture--and let it be remembered all the time that gesture includes

_all_ physical movement, from facial expression and the tossing of the

head to the expressive movements of hand and foot. A shifting of the

pose may be a most effective gesture.

What is true of gesture is true of all life. If the people on the street

turn around and watch your walk, your walk is more important than you

are--change it. If the attention of your audience is called to your

gestures, they are not convincing, because they _appear_ to be--what

they have a doubtful right to be in reality--studied. Have you ever seen

a speaker use such grotesque gesticulations that you were fascinated by

their frenzy of oddity, but could not follow his thought? Do not smother

ideas with gymnastics. Savonarola would rush down from the high pulpit

among the congregation in the _duomo_ at Florence and carry the fire of

conviction to his hearers; Billy Sunday slides to base on the platform

carpet in dramatizing one of his baseball illustrations. Yet in both

instances the message has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture--it

is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the _form_ of

dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as

"Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious

hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time,

every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this

gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, and discuss its

realistic power.

Only when gesture is subordinated to the absorbing importance of the

idea--a spontaneous, living expression of living truth--is it

justifiable at all; and when it is remembered for itself--as a piece of

unusual physical energy or as a poem of grace--it is a dead failure as

dramatic expression. There is a place for a unique style of walking--it

is the circus or the cake-walk; there is a place for surprisingly

rhythmical evolutions of arms and legs--it is on the dance floor or the

stage. Don't let your agility and grace put your thoughts out of

business.

One of the present writers took his first lessons in gesture from a

certain college president who knew far more about what had happened at

the Diet of Worms than he did about how to express himself in action.

His instructions were to start the movement on a certain word, continue

it on a precise curve, and unfold the fingers at the conclusion, ending

with the forefinger--just so. Plenty, and more than plenty, has been

published on this subject, giving just such silly directions. Gesture is

a thing of mentality and feeling--not a matter of geometry. Remember,

whenever a pair of shoes, a method of pronunciation, or a gesture calls

attention to itself, it is bad. When you have made really good gestures

in a good speech your hearers will not go away saying, "What beautiful

gestures he made!" but they will say, "I'll vote for that measure." "He

is right--I believe in that."

_Gestures Should Be Born of the Moment_

The best actors and public speakers rarely know in advance what gestures

they are going to make. They make one gesture on certain words tonight,

and none at all tomorrow night at the same point--their various moods

and interpretations govern their gestures. It is all a matter of impulse

and intelligent feeling with them--don't overlook that word

_intelligent_. Nature does not always provide the same kind of sunsets

or snow flakes, and the movements of a good speaker vary almost as much

as the creations of nature.

Now all this is not to say that you must not take some thought for your

gestures. If that were meant, why this chapter? When the sergeant

despairingly besought the recruit in the awkward squad to step out and

look at himself, he gave splendid advice--and worthy of personal

application. Particularly while you are in the learning days of public

speaking you must learn to criticise your own gestures. Recall them--see

where they were useless, crude, awkward, what not, and do better next

time. There is a vast deal of difference between being conscious of self

and being self-conscious.

It will require your nice discrimination in order to cultivate

spontaneous gestures and yet give due attention to practise. While you

depend upon the moment it is vital to remember that only a dramatic

genius can effectively accomplish such feats as we have related of

Whitefield, Savonarola, and others: and doubtless the first time they

were used they came in a burst of spontaneous feeling, yet Whitefield

declared that not until he had delivered a sermon forty times was its

delivery perfected. What spontaneity initiates let practise complete.

Every effective speaker and every vivid actor has observed, considered

and practised gesture until his dramatic actions are a sub-conscious

possession, just like his ability to pronounce correctly without

especially concentrating his thought. Every able platform man has

possessed himself of a dozen ways in which he might depict in gesture

any given emotion; in fact, the means for such expression are

endless--and this is precisely why it is both useless and harmful to

make a chart of gestures and enforce them as the ideals of what may be

used to express this or that feeling. Practise descriptive, suggestive,

and typical movements until they come as naturally as a good

articulation; and rarely forecast the gestures you will use at a given

moment: leave something to that moment.

_Avoid Monotony in Gesture_

Roast beef is an excellent dish, but it would be terrible as an

exclusive diet. No matter how effective one gesture is, do not overwork

it. Put variety in your actions. Monotony will destroy all beauty and

power. The pump handle makes one effective gesture, and on hot days that

one is very eloquent, but it has its limitations.

_Any Movement that is not Significant, Weakens_

Do not forget that. Restlessness is not expression. A great many useless

movements will only take the attention of the audience from what you are

saying. A widely-noted man introduced the speaker of the evening one

Sunday lately to a New York audience. The only thing remembered about

that introductory speech is that the speaker played nervously with the

covering of the table as he talked. We naturally watch moving objects. A

janitor putting down a window can take the attention of the hearers from

Mr. Roosevelt. By making a few movements at one side of the stage a

chorus girl may draw the interest of the spectators from a big scene

between the "leads." When our forefathers lived in caves they had to

watch moving objects, for movements meant danger. We have not yet

overcome the habit. Advertisers have taken advantage of it--witness the

moving electric light signs in any city. A shrewd speaker will respect

this law and conserve the attention of his audience by eliminating all

unnecessary movements.

_Gesture Should either be Simultaneous with or Precede the Words--not

Follow Them_

Lady Macbeth says: "Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue."

Reverse this order and you get comedy. Say, "There he goes," pointing at

him after you have finished your words, and see if the result is not

comical.

_Do Not Make Short, Jerky Movements_

Some speakers seem to be imitating a waiter who has failed to get a tip.

Let your movements be easy, and from the shoulder, as a rule, rather

than from the elbow. But do not go to the other extreme and make too

many flowing motions--that savors of the lackadaisical.

Put a little "punch" and life into your gestures. You can not, however,

do this mechanically. The audience will detect it if you do. They may

not know just what is wrong, but the gesture will have a false

appearance to them.

_Facial Expression is Important_

Have you ever stopped in front of a Broadway theater and looked at the

photographs of the cast? Notice the row of chorus girls who are supposed

to be expressing fear. Their attitudes are so mechanical that the

attempt is ridiculous. Notice the picture of the "star" expressing the

same emotion: his muscles are drawn, his eyebrows lifted, he shrinks,

and fear shines through his eyes. That actor _felt_ fear when the

photograph was taken. The chorus girls felt that it was time for a

rarebit, and more nearly expressed that emotion than they did fear.

Incidentally, that is one reason why they _stay_ in the chorus.

The movements of the facial muscles may mean a great deal more than the

movements of the hand. The man who sits in a dejected heap with a look

of despair on his face is expressing his thoughts and feelings just as

effectively as the man who is waving his arms and shouting from the

back of a dray wagon. The eye has been called the window of the soul.

Through it shines the light of our thoughts and feelings.

_Do Not Use Too Much Gesture_

As a matter of fact, in the big crises of life we do not go through many

actions. When your closest friend dies you do not throw up your hands

and talk about your grief. You are more likely to sit and brood in

dry-eyed silence. The Hudson River does not make much noise on its way

to the sea--it is not half so loud as the little creek up in Bronx Park

that a bullfrog could leap across. The barking dog never tears your

trousers--at least they say he doesn't. Do not fear the man who waves

his arms and shouts his anger, but the man who comes up quietly with

eyes flaming and face burning may knock you down. Fuss is not force.

Observe these principles in nature and practise them in your delivery.

The writer of this chapter once observed an instructor drilling a class

in gesture. They had come to the passage from Henry VIII in which the

humbled Cardinal says: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness."

It is one of the pathetic passages of literature. A man uttering such a

sentiment would be crushed, and the last thing on earth he would do

would be to make flamboyant movements. Yet this class had an

elocutionary manual before them that gave an appropriate gesture for

every occasion, from paying the gas bill to death-bed farewells. So they

were instructed to throw their arms out at full length on each side and

say: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness." Such a gesture

might possibly be used in an after-dinner speech at the convention of a

telephone company whose lines extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific,

but to think of Wolsey's using that movement would suggest that his fate

was just.

_Posture_

The physical attitude to be taken before the audience really is included

in gesture. Just what that attitude should be depends, not on rules, but

on the spirit of the speech and the occasion. Senator La Follette stood

for three hours with his weight thrown on his forward foot as he leaned

out over the footlights, ran his fingers through his hair, and flamed

out a denunciation of the trusts. It was very effective. But imagine a

speaker taking that kind of position to discourse on the development of

road-making machinery. If you have a fiery, aggressive message, and will

let yourself go, nature will naturally pull your weight to your forward

foot. A man in a hot political argument or a street brawl never has to

stop to think upon which foot he should throw his weight. You may

sometimes place your weight on your back foot if you have a restful and

calm message--but don't worry about it: just stand like a man who

genuinely feels what he is saying. Do not stand with your heels close

together, like a soldier or a butler. No more should you stand with them

wide apart like a traffic policeman. Use simple good manners and common

sense.

Here a word of caution is needed. We have advised you to allow your

gestures and postures to be spontaneous and not woodenly prepared

beforehand, but do not go to the extreme of ignoring the importance of

acquiring mastery of your physical movements. A muscular hand made

flexible by free movement, is far more likely to be an effective

instrument in gesture than a stiff, pudgy bunch of fingers. If your

shoulders are lithe and carried well, while your chest does not retreat

from association with your chin, the chances of using good

extemporaneous gestures are so much the better. Learn to keep the _back_

of your neck touching your collar, hold your chest high, and keep down

your waist measure.

So attention to strength, poise, flexibility, and grace of body are the

foundations of good gesture, for they are expressions of vitality, and

without vitality no speaker can enter the kingdom of power. When an

awkward giant like Abraham Lincoln rose to the sublimest heights of

oratory he did so because of the greatness of his soul--his very

ruggedness of spirit and artless honesty were properly expressed in his

gnarly body. The fire of character, of earnestness, and of message swept

his hearers before him when the tepid words of an insincere Apollo would

have left no effect. But be sure you are a second Lincoln before you

despise the handicap of physical awkwardness.

"Ty" Cobb has confided to the public that when he is in a batting slump

he even stands before a mirror, bat in hand, to observe the "swing" and

"follow through" of his batting form. If you would learn to stand well

before an audience, look at yourself in a mirror--but not too often.

Practise walking and standing before the mirror so as to conquer

awkwardness--not to cultivate a pose. Stand on the platform in the same

easy manner that you would use before guests in a drawing-room. If your

position is not graceful, make it so by dancing, gymnasium work, and _by

getting grace and poise in your mind_.

Do not continually hold the same position. Any big change of thought

necessitates a change of position. Be at home. There are no rules--it is

all a matter of taste. While on the platform forget that you have any

hands until you desire to use them--then remember them effectively.

Gravity will take care of them. Of course, if you want to put them

behind you, or fold them once in awhile, it is not going to ruin your

speech. Thought and feeling are the big things in speaking--not the

position of a foot or a hand. Simply _put_ your limbs where you want

them to be--you have a will, so do not neglect to use it.

Let us reiterate, do not despise practise. Your gestures and movements

may be spontaneous and still be wrong. No matter how natural they are,

it is possible to improve them.

It is impossible for anyone--even yourself--to criticise your gestures

until after they are made. You can't prune a peach tree until it comes

up; therefore speak much, and observe your own speech. While you are

examining yourself, do not forget to study statuary and paintings to see

how the great portrayers of nature have made their subjects express

ideas through action. Notice the gestures of the best speakers and

actors. Observe the physical expression of life everywhere. The leaves

on the tree respond to the slightest breeze. The muscles of your face,

the light of your eyes, should respond to the slightest change of

feeling. Emerson says: "Every man that I meet is my superior in some

way. In that I learn of him." Illiterate Italians make gestures so

wonderful and beautiful that Booth or Barrett might have sat at their

feet and been instructed. Open your eyes. Emerson says again: "We are

immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision." Toss this book

to one side; go out and watch one child plead with another for a bite of

apple; see a street brawl; observe life in action. Do you want to know

how to express victory? Watch the victors' hands go high on election

night. Do you want to plead a cause? Make a composite photograph of all

the pleaders in daily life you constantly see. Beg, borrow, and steal

the best you can get, _BUT DON'T GIVE IT OUT AS THEFT_. Assimilate it

until it becomes a part of you--then _let_ the expression come out.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. From what source do you intend to study gesture?

2. What is the first requisite of good gestures? Why?

3. Why is it impossible to lay down steel-clad rules for gesturing?

4. Describe (_a_) a graceful gesture that you have observed; (_b_) a

forceful one; (_c_) an extravagant one; (_d_) an inappropriate one.

5. What gestures do you use for emphasis? Why?

6. How can grace of movement be acquired?

7. When in doubt about a gesture what would you do?

8. What, according to your observations before a mirror, are your faults

in gesturing?

9. How do you intend to correct them?

10. What are some of the gestures, if any, that you might use in

delivering Thurston's speech, page 50; Grady's speech, page 36? Be

specific.

11. Describe some particularly appropriate gesture that you have

observed. Why was it appropriate?

12. Cite at least three movements in nature that might well be imitated

in gesture.

13. What would you gather from the expressions: _descriptive_ gesture,

_suggestive_ gesture, and _typical_ gesture?

14. Select any elemental emotion, such as fear, and try, by picturing in

your mind at least five different situations that might call forth this

emotion, to express its several phases by gesture--including posture,

movement, and facial expression.

15. Do the same thing for such other emotions as you may select.

16. Select three passages from any source, only being sure that they are

suitable for public delivery, memorize each, and then devise gestures

suitable for each. Say why.

17. Criticise the gestures in any speech you have heard recently.

18. Practise flexible movement of the hand. What exercises did you find

useful?

19. Carefully observe some animal; then devise several typical gestures.

20. Write a brief dialogue between any two animals; read it aloud and

invent expressive gestures.

21. Deliver, with appropriate gestures, the quotation that heads this

chapter.

22. Read aloud the following incident, using dramatic gestures:

When Voltaire was preparing a young actress to appear in one of

his tragedies, he tied her hands to her sides with pack thread

in order to check her tendency toward exuberant gesticulation.

Under this condition of compulsory immobility she commenced to

rehearse, and for some time she bore herself calmly enough; but

at last, completely carried away by her feelings, she burst her

bonds and flung up her arms. Alarmed at her supposed neglect of

his instructions, she began to apologize to the poet; he

smilingly reassured her, however; the gesture was _then_

admirable, because it was irrepressible.

--REDWAY, _The Actor's Art_.

23. Render the following with suitable gestures:

One day, while preaching, Whitefield "suddenly assumed a

nautical air and manner that were irresistible with him," and

broke forth in these words: "Well, my boys, we have a clear sky,

and are making fine headway over a smooth sea before a light

breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land. But what means

this sudden lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud arising

from beneath the western horizon? Hark! Don't you hear distant

thunder? Don't you see those flashes of lightning? There is a

storm gathering! Every man to his duty! The air is dark!--the

tempest rages!--our masts are gone!--the ship is on her beam

ends! What next?" At this a number of sailors in the

congregation, utterly swept away by the dramatic description,

leaped to their feet and cried: "The longboat!--take to the

longboat!"

--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.

CHAPTER XVI

METHODS OF DELIVERY

The crown, the consummation, of the discourse is its delivery.

Toward it all preparation looks, for it the audience waits, by

it the speaker is judged.... All the forces of the orator's life

converge in his oratory. The logical acuteness with which he

marshals the facts around his theme, the rhetorical facility

with which he orders his language, the control to which he has

attained in the use of his body as a single organ of expression,

whatever richness of acquisition and experience are his--these

all are now incidents; _the fact_ is the sending of his message

home to his hearers.... The hour of delivery is the "supreme,

inevitable hour" for the orator. It is this fact that makes lack

of adequate preparation such an impertinence. And it is this

that sends such thrills of indescribable joy through the

orator's whole being when he has achieved a success--it is like

the mother forgetting her pangs for the joy of bringing a son

into the world.

--J.B.E., _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_.

There are four fundamental methods of delivering an address; all others

are modifications of one or more of these: reading from manuscript,

committing the written speech and speaking from memory, speaking from

notes, and extemporaneous speech. It is impossible to say which form of

delivery is best for all speakers in all circumstances--in deciding for

yourself you should consider the occasion, the nature of the audience,

the character of your subject, and your own limitations of time and

ability. However, it is worth while warning you not to be lenient in

self-exaction. Say to yourself courageously: What others can do, I can

attempt. A bold spirit conquers where others flinch, and a trying task

challenges pluck.

_Reading from Manuscript_

This method really deserves short shrift in a book on public speaking,

for, delude yourself as you may, public reading is not public speaking.

Yet there are so many who grasp this broken reed for support that we

must here discuss the "read speech"--apologetic misnomer as it is.

Certainly there are occasions--among them, the opening of Congress, the

presentation of a sore question before a deliberative body, or a

historical commemoration--when it may seem not alone to the "orator" but

to all those interested that the chief thing is to express certain

thoughts in precise language--in language that _must_ not be either

misunderstood or misquoted. At such times oratory is unhappily elbowed

to a back bench, the manuscript is solemnly withdrawn from the capacious

inner pocket of the new frock coat, and everyone settles himself

resignedly, with only a feeble flicker of hope that the so-called speech

may not be as long as it is thick. The words may be golden, but the

hearers' (?) eyes are prone to be leaden, and in about one instance out

of a hundred does the perpetrator really deliver an impressive address.

His excuse is his apology--he is not to be blamed, as a rule, for some

one decreed that it would be dangerous to cut loose from manuscript

moorings and take his audience with him on a really delightful sail.

One great trouble on such "great occasions" is that the essayist--for

such he is--has been chosen not because of his speaking ability but

because his grandfather fought in a certain battle, or his constituents

sent him to Congress, or his gifts in some line of endeavor other than

speaking have distinguished him.

As well choose a surgeon from his ability to play golf. To be sure, it

always interests an audience to see a great man; because of his eminence

they are likely to listen to his words with respect, perhaps with

interest, even when droned from a manuscript. But how much more

effective such a deliverance would be if the papers were cast aside!

Nowhere is the read-address so common as in the pulpit--the pulpit, that

in these days least of all can afford to invite a handicap. Doubtless

many clergymen prefer finish to fervor--let them choose: they are rarely

men who sway the masses to acceptance of their message. What they gain

in precision and elegance of language they lose in force.

There are just four motives that can move a man to read his address or

sermon:

1. Laziness is the commonest. Enough said. Even Heaven cannot make a

lazy man efficient.

2. A memory so defective that he really cannot speak without reading.

Alas, he is not speaking when he is reading, so his dilemma is

painful--and not to himself alone. But no man has a right to assume that

his memory is utterly bad until he has buckled down to memory

culture--and failed. A weak memory is oftener an excuse than a reason.

3. A genuine lack of time to do more than write the speech. There are

such instances--but they do not occur every week! The disposition of

your time allows more flexibility than you realize. Motive 3 too often

harnesses up with Motive 1.

4. A conviction that the speech is too important to risk forsaking the

manuscript. But, if it is vital that every word should be so precise,

the style so polished, and the thoughts so logical, that the preacher

must write the sermon entire, is not the message important enough to

warrant extra effort in perfecting its delivery? It is an insult to a

congregation and disrespectful to Almighty God to put the phrasing of a

message above the message itself. To reach the hearts of the hearers the

sermon must be delivered--it is only half delivered when the speaker

cannot utter it with original fire and force, when he merely repeats

words that were conceived hours or weeks before and hence are like

champagne that has lost its fizz. The reading preacher's eyes are tied

down to his manuscript; he cannot give the audience the benefit of his

expression. How long would a play fill a theater if the actors held

their cue-books in hand and read their parts? Imagine Patrick Henry

reading his famous speech; Peter-the-Hermit, manuscript in hand,

exhorting the crusaders; Napoleon, constantly looking at his papers,

addressing the army at the Pyramids; or Jesus reading the Sermon on the

Mount! These speakers were so full of their subjects, their general

preparation had been so richly adequate, that there was no necessity for

a manuscript, either to refer to or to serve as "an outward and visible

sign" of their preparedness. No event was ever so dignified that it

required an _artificial_ attempt at speech making. Call an essay by its

right name, but never call it a speech. Perhaps the most dignified of

events is a supplication to the Creator. If you ever listened to the

reading of an original prayer you must have felt its superficiality.

Regardless of what the theories may be about manuscript delivery, the

fact remains that it does not work out with efficiency. _Avoid it

whenever at all possible._

_Committing the Written Speech and Speaking from Memory_

This method has certain points in its favor. If you have time and

leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are

expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in

perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material

for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although

you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should

take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a

sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches, like plays, are

not written; they are rewritten. The National Cash Register Company

follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization: they

require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk. They

maintain that there is one best way of putting their selling arguments,

and they insist that each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ

any haphazard phrases that may come into his mind at the moment.

The method of writing and committing has been adopted by many noted

speakers; Julius Cæsar, Robert Ingersoll, and, on some occasions,

Wendell Phillips, were distinguished examples. The wonderful effects

achieved by famous actors were, of course, accomplished through the

delivery of memorized lines.

The inexperienced speaker must be warned before attempting this method

of delivery that it is difficult and trying. It requires much skill to

make it efficient. The memorized lines of the young speaker will usually

_sound_ like memorized words, and repel.

If you want to hear an example, listen to a department store

demonstrator repeat her memorized lingo about the newest furniture

polish or breakfast food. It requires training to make a memorized

speech sound fresh and spontaneous, and, unless you have a fine native

memory, in each instance the finished product necessitates much labor.

Should you forget a part of your speech or miss a few words, you are

liable to be so confused that, like Mark Twain's guide in Rome, you will

be compelled to repeat your lines from the beginning.

On the other hand, you may be so taken up with trying to recall your

written words that you will not abandon yourself to the spirit of your

address, and so fail to deliver it with that spontaneity which is so

vital to forceful delivery.

But do not let these difficulties frighten you. If committing seems best

to you, give it a faithful trial. Do not be deterred by its pitfalls,

but by resolute practise avoid them.

One of the best ways to rise superior to these difficulties is to do as

Dr. Wallace Radcliffe often does: commit without writing the speech,

making practically all the preparation mentally, without putting pen to

paper--a laborious but effective way of cultivating both mind and

memory.

You will find it excellent practise, both for memory and delivery, to

commit the specimen speeches found in this volume and declaim them, with

all attention to the principles we have put before you. William Ellery

Channing, himself a distinguished speaker, years ago had this to say of

practise in declamation:

"Is there not an amusement, having an affinity with the drama, which

might be usefully introduced among us? I mean, Recitation. A work of

genius, recited by a man of fine taste, enthusiasm, and powers of

elocution, is a very pure and high gratification. Were this art

cultivated and encouraged, great numbers, now insensible to the most

beautiful compositions, might be waked up to their excellence and

power."

_Speaking from Notes_

The third, and the most popular method of delivery, is probably also the

best one for the beginner. Speaking from notes is not ideal delivery,

but we learn to swim in shallow water before going out beyond the ropes.

Make a definite plan for your discourse (for a fuller discussion see

Chapter XVIII) and set down the points somewhat in the fashion of a

lawyer's brief, or a preacher's outline. Here is a sample of very simple

notes:

ATTENTION

I. INTRODUCTION.

Attention indispensable to the performance of any

great work. _Anecdote_.

II. DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED.

1. From common observation.

2. From the lives of great men {Carlyle, Robert E. Lee.}

III. ITS RELATION TO OTHER MENTAL POWERS.

1. Reason.

2. Imagination.

3. Memory.

4. Will. _Anecdote_.

IV. ATTENTION MAY BE CULTIVATED.

1. Involuntary attention.

2. Voluntary attention. _Examples_.

V. CONCLUSION.

The consequences of inattention and of attention.

Few briefs would be so precise as this one, for with experience a

speaker learns to use little tricks to attract his eye--he may

underscore a catch-word heavily, draw a red circle around a pivotal

idea, enclose the key-word of an anecdote in a wavy-lined box, and so on

indefinitely. These points are worth remembering, for nothing so eludes

the swift-glancing eye of the speaker as the sameness of typewriting, or

even a regular pen-script. So unintentional a thing as a blot on the

page may help you to remember a big "point" in your brief--perhaps by

association of ideas.

An inexperienced speaker would probably require fuller notes than the

specimen given. Yet that way lies danger, for the complete manuscript is

but a short remove from the copious outline. Use as few notes as

possible.

They may be necessary for the time being, but do not fail to look upon

them as a necessary evil; and even when you lay them before you, refer

to them only when compelled to do so. Make your notes as full as you

please in preparation, but by all means condense them for platform use.

_Extemporaneous Speech_

Surely this is the ideal method of delivery. It is far and away the most

popular with the audience, and the favorite method of the most efficient

speakers.

"Extemporaneous speech" has sometimes been made to mean unprepared

speech, and indeed it is too often precisely that; but in no such sense

do we recommend it strongly to speakers old and young. On the contrary,

to speak well without notes requires all the preparation which we

discussed so fully in the chapter on "Fluency," while yet relying upon

the "inspiration of the hour" for some of your thoughts and much of your

language. You had better remember, however, that the most effective

inspiration of the hour is the inspiration you yourself bring to it,

bottled up in your spirit and ready to infuse itself into the audience.

If you extemporize you can get much closer to your audience. In a sense,

they appreciate the task you have before you and send out their

sympathy. Extemporize, and you will not have to stop and fumble around

amidst your notes--you can keep your eye afire with your message and

hold your audience with your very glance. You yourself will feel their

response as you read the effects of your warm, spontaneous words,

written on their countenances.

Sentences written out in the study are liable to be dead and cold when

resurrected before the audience. When you create as you speak you

conserve all the native fire of your thought. You can enlarge on one

point or omit another, just as the occasion or the mood of the audience

may demand. It is not possible for every speaker to use this, the most

difficult of all methods of delivery, and least of all can it be used

successfully without much practise, but it is the ideal towards which

all should strive.

One danger in this method is that you may be led aside from your subject

into by-paths. To avoid this peril, firmly stick to your mental outline.

Practise speaking from a memorized brief until you gain control. Join a

debating society--talk, _talk_, _TALK_, and always extemporize. You may

"make a fool of yourself" once or twice, but is that too great a price

to pay for success?

Notes, like crutches, are only a sign of weakness. Remember that the

power of your speech depends to some extent upon the view your audience

holds of you. General Grant's words as president were more powerful than

his words as a Missouri farmer. If you would appear in the light of an

authority, be one. Make notes on your brain instead of on paper.

_Joint Methods of Delivery_

A modification of the second method has been adopted by many great

speakers, particularly lecturers who are compelled to speak on a wide

variety of subjects day after day; such speakers often commit their

addresses to memory but keep their manuscripts in flexible book form

before them, turning several pages at a time. They feel safer for having

a sheet-anchor to windward--but it is an anchor, nevertheless, and

hinders rapid, free sailing, though it drag never so lightly.

Other speakers throw out a still lighter anchor by keeping before them a

rather full outline of their written and committed speech.

Others again write and commit a few important parts of the address--the

introduction, the conclusion, some vital argument, some pat

illustration--and depend on the hour for the language of the rest. This

method is well adapted to speaking either with or without notes.

Some speakers read from manuscript the most important parts of their

speeches and utter the rest extemporaneously.

Thus, what we have called "joint methods of delivery" are open to much

personal variation. You must decide for yourself which is best for you,

for the occasion, for your subject, for your audience--for these four

factors all have their individual claims.

Whatever form you choose, do not be so weakly indifferent as to prefer

the easy way--choose the _best_ way, whatever it cost you in time and

effort. And of this be assured: only the practised speaker can hope to

gain _both_ conciseness of argument and conviction in manner, polish of

language and power in delivery, finish of style and fire in utterance.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Which in your judgment is the most suitable of delivery for you? Why?

2. What objections can you offer to, (_a_) memorizing the entire speech;

(_b_) reading from manuscript; (_c_) using notes; (_d_) speaking from

memorized outline or notes; (_e_e) any of the "joint methods"?

3. What is there to commend in delivering a speech in any of the

foregoing methods?

4. Can you suggest any combination of methods that you have found

efficacious?

5. What methods, according to your observation, do most successful

speakers use?

6. Select some topic from the list on page 123, narrow the theme so as

to make it specific (see page 122), and deliver a short address,

utilizing the four methods mentioned, in four different deliveries of

the speech.

7. Select one of the joint methods and apply it to the delivery of the

same address.

8. Which method do you prefer, and why?

9. From the list of subjects in the Appendix select a theme and deliver

a five-minute address without notes, but make careful preparation

without putting your thoughts on paper.

NOTE: It is earnestly hoped that instructors will not pass this stage of

the work without requiring of their students much practise in the

delivery of original speeches, in the manner that seems, after some

experiment, to be best suited to the student's gifts. Students who are

studying alone should be equally exacting in demand upon themselves.

One point is most important: It is easy to learn to read a speech,

therefore it is much more urgent that the pupil should have much

practise in speaking from notes and speaking without notes. At this

stage, pay more attention to manner than to matter--the succeeding

chapters take up the composition of the address. Be particularly

insistent upon _frequent_ and _thorough_ review of the principles of

delivery discussed in the preceding chapters.

CHAPTER XVII

THOUGHT AND RESERVE POWER

Providence is always on the side of the last reserve.

--NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed,

And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!

--BARRY CORNWALL, _The Sea in Calm_.

What would happen if you should overdraw your bank account? As a rule

the check would be protested; but if you were on friendly terms with the

bank, your check might be honored, and you would be called upon to make

good the overdraft.

Nature has no such favorites, therefore extends no credits. She is as

relentless as a gasoline tank--when the "gas" is all used the machine

stops. It is as reckless for a speaker to risk going before an audience

without having something in reserve as it is for the motorist to essay a

long journey in the wilds without enough gasoline in sight.

But in what does a speaker's reserve power consist? In a well-founded

reliance on his general and particular grasp of his subject; in the

quality of being alert and resourceful in thought--particularly in the

ability to think while on his feet; and in that self-possession which

makes one the captain of all his own forces, bodily and mental.

The first of these elements, adequate preparation, and the last,

self-reliance, were discussed fully in the chapters on "Self-Confidence"

and "Fluency," so they will be touched only incidentally here; besides,

the next chapter will take up specific methods of preparation for public

speaking. Therefore the central theme of this chapter is the second of

the elements of reserve power--Thought.

_The Mental Storehouse_

An empty mind, like an empty larder, may be a serious matter or not--all

will depend on the available resources. If there is no food in the

cupboard the housewife does not nervously rattle the empty dishes; she

telephones the grocer. If you have no ideas, do not rattle your empty

_ers_ and _ahs_, but _get_ some ideas, and don't speak until you do get

them.

This, however, is not being what the old New England housekeeper used to

call "forehanded." The real solution of the problem of what to do with

an empty head is never to let it become empty. In the artesian wells of

Dakota the water rushes to the surface and leaps a score of feet above

the ground. The secret of this exuberant flow is of course the great

supply below, crowding to get out.

What is the use of stopping to prime a mental pump when you can fill

your life with the resources for an artesian well? It is not enough to

have merely enough; you must have more than enough. Then the pressure of

your mass of thought and feeling will maintain your flow of speech and

give you the confidence and poise that denote reserve power. To be away

from home with only the exact return fare leaves a great deal to

circumstances!

Reserve power is magnetic. It does not consist in giving the idea that

you are holding something in reserve, but rather in the suggestion that

the audience is getting the cream of your observation, reading,

experience, feeling, thought. To have reserve power, therefore, you must

have enough milk of material on hand to supply sufficient cream.

But how shall we get the milk? There are two ways: the one is

first-hand--from the cow; the other is second-hand--from the milkman.

_The Seeing Eye_

Some sage has said: "For a thousand men who can speak, there is only one

who can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one who

can see." To see and to think is to get your milk from your own cow.

When the one man in a million who can see comes along, we call him

Master. Old Mr. Holbrook, of "Cranford," asked his guest what color

ash-buds were in March; she confessed she did not know, to which the old

gentleman answered: "I knew you didn't. No more did I--an old fool that

I am!--till this young man comes and tells me. 'Black as ash-buds in

March.' And I've lived all my life in the country. More shame for me not

to know. Black; they are jet-black, madam."

"This young man" referred to by Mr. Holbrook was Tennyson.

Henry Ward Beecher said: "I do not believe that I have ever met a man

on the street that I did not get from him some element for a sermon. I

never see anything in nature which does not work towards that for which

I give the strength of my life. The material for my sermons is all the

time following me and swarming up around me."

Instead of saying only one man in a million can see, it would strike

nearer the truth to say that none of us sees with perfect understanding

more than a fraction of what passes before our eyes, yet this faculty of

acute and accurate observation is so important that no man ambitious to

lead can neglect it. The next time you are in a car, look at those who

sit opposite you and see what you can discover of their habits,

occupations, ideals, nationalities, environments, education, and so on.

You may not see a great deal the first time, but practise will reveal

astonishing results. Transmute every incident of your day into a subject

for a speech or an illustration. Translate all that you see into terms

of speech. When you can describe all that you have seen in definite

words, you are seeing clearly. You are becoming the millionth man.

De Maupassant's description of an author should also fit the

public-speaker: "His eye is like a suction pump, absorbing everything;

like a pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is

constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures,

intentions, everything that goes on in his presence--the slightest look,

the least act, the merest trifle." De Maupassant was himself a millionth

man, a Master.

"Ruskin took a common rock-crystal and saw hidden within its stolid

heart lessons which have not yet ceased to move men's lives. Beecher

stood for hours before the window of a jewelry store thinking out

analogies between jewels and the souls of men. Gough saw in a single

drop of water enough truth wherewith to quench the thirst of five

thousand souls. Thoreau sat so still in the shadowy woods that birds and

insects came and opened up their secret lives to his eye. Emerson

observed the soul of a man so long that at length he could say, 'I

cannot hear what you say, for seeing what you are.' Preyer for three

years studied the life of his babe and so became an authority upon the

child mind. Observation! Most men are blind. There are a thousand times

as many hidden truths and undiscovered facts about us to-day as have

made discoverers famous--facts waiting for some one to 'pluck out the

heart of their mystery.' But so long as men go about the search with

eyes that see not, so long will these hidden pearls lie in their shells.

Not an orator but who could more effectively point and feather his

shafts were he to search nature rather than libraries. Too few can see

'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running brooks,' because they are

so used to seeing merely sermons in books and only stones in running

brooks. Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, 'Look in thy heart and write;'

Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying,

'I learned it by studying myself;' Byron says of John Locke that 'all

his knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his

own mind.' Since multiform nature is all about us, originality ought not

to be so rare."[8]

_The Thinking Mind_

Thinking is doing mental arithmetic with facts. Add this fact to that

and you reach a certain conclusion. Subtract this truth from another and

you have a definite result. Multiply this fact by another and have a

precise product. See how many times this occurrence happens in that

space of time and you have reached a calculable dividend. In

thought-processes you perform every known problem of arithmetic and

algebra. That is why mathematics are such excellent mental gymnastics.

But by the same token, thinking is work. Thinking takes energy. Thinking

requires time, and patience, and broad information, and clearheadedness.

Beyond a miserable little surface-scratching, few people really think at

all--only one in a thousand, according to the pundit already quoted. So

long as the present system of education prevails and children are taught

through the ear rather than through the eye, so long as they are

expected to remember thoughts of others rather than think for

themselves, this proportion will continue--one man in a million will be

able to see, and one in a thousand to think.

But, however thought-less a mind has been, there is promise of better

things so soon as the mind detects its own lack of thought-power. The

first step is to stop regarding thought as "the magic of the mind," to

use Byron's expression, and see it as thought truly is--_a weighing of

ideas and a placing of them in relationships to each other_. Ponder this

definition and see if you have learned to think efficiently.

Habitual thinking is just that--a habit. Habit comes of doing a thing

repeatedly. The lower habits are acquired easily, the higher ones

require deeper grooves if they are to persist. So we find that the

thought-habit comes only with resolute practise; yet no effort will

yield richer dividends. Persist in practise, and whereas you have been

able to think only an inch-deep into a subject, you will soon find that

you can penetrate it a foot.

Perhaps this homely metaphor will suggest how to begin the practise of

consecutive thinking, by which we mean _welding a number of separate

thought-links into a chain that will hold_. Take one link at a time, see

that each naturally belongs with the ones you link to it, and remember

that a single missing link means _no chain_.

Thinking is the most fascinating and exhilarating of all mental

exercises. Once realize that your opinion on a subject does not

represent the choice you have made between what Dr. Cerebrum has written

and Professor Cerebellum has said, but is the result of your own

earnestly-applied brain-energy, and you will gain a confidence in your

ability to speak on that subject that nothing will be able to shake.

Your thought will have given you both power and reserve power.

Someone has condensed the relation of thought to knowledge in these

pungent, homely lines:

"Don't give me the man who thinks he thinks,

Don't give me the man who thinks he knows,

But give me the man who knows he thinks,

And I have the man who knows he knows!"

_Reading As a Stimulus to Thought_

No matter how dry the cow, however, nor how poor our ability to milk,

there is still the milkman--we can read what others have seen and felt

and thought. Often, indeed, such records will kindle within us that

pre-essential and vital spark, the _desire_ to be a thinker.

The following selection is taken from one of Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis's

lectures, as given in "A Man's Value to Society." Dr. Hillis is a most

fluent speaker--he never refers to notes. He has reserve power. His mind

is a veritable treasure-house of facts and ideas. See how he draws from

a knowledge of fifteen different general or special subjects: geology,

plant life, Palestine, chemistry, Eskimos, mythology, literature, The

Nile, history, law, wit, evolution, religion, biography, and

electricity. Surely, it needs no sage to discover that the secret of

this man's reserve power is the old secret of our artesian well whose

abundance surges from unseen depths.

_THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING[9]_

Each Kingsley approaches a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to

unlock the hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll

the juicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until

the bit of carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That

little book of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees

and shrubs as eating, drinking and marrying. We see certain date

groves in Palestine, and other date groves in the desert a hundred

miles away, and the pollen of the one carried upon the trade winds

to the branches of the other. We see the tree with its strange

system of water-works, pumping the sap up through pipes and mains;

we see the chemical laboratory in the branches mixing flavor for the

orange in one bough, mixing the juices of the pineapple in another;

we behold the tree as a mother making each infant acorn ready

against the long winter, rolling it in swaths soft and warm as wool

blankets, wrapping it around with garments impervious to the rain,

and finally slipping the infant acorn into a sleeping bag, like

those the Eskimos gave Dr. Kane.

At length we come to feel that the Greeks were not far wrong in

thinking each tree had a dryad in it, animating it, protecting it

against destruction, dying when the tree withered. Some Faraday

shows us that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces

sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from

Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how

hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars

will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book

opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus

books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous glass that showed

its owner all things distant and all things hidden. Through books

our world becomes as "a bud from the bower of God's beauty; the

sun as a spark from the light of His wisdom; the sky as a bubble

on the sea of His Power." Therefore Mrs. Browning's words, "No

child can be called fatherless who has God and his mother; no

youth can be called friendless who has God and the companionship

of good books."

Books also advantage us in that they exhibit the unity of

progress, the solidarity of the race, and the continuity of

history. Authors lead us back along the pathway of law, of

liberty or religion, and set us down in front of the great man in

whose brain the principle had its rise. As the discoverer leads

us from the mouth of the Nile back to the headwaters of Nyanza,

so books exhibit great ideas and institutions, as they move

forward, ever widening and deepening, like some Nile feeding many

civilizations. For all the reforms of to-day go back to some

reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes.

Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and

plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked

stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march

forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington.

Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and

Cromwell. The great Puritans lock hands with Luther and

Savonarola.

The unbroken procession brings us at length to Him whose Sermon

on the Mount was the very charter of liberty. It puts us under a

divine spell to perceive that we are all coworkers with the great

men, and yet single threads in the warp and woof of civilization.

And when books have related us to our own age, and related all

the epochs to God, whose providence is the gulf stream of

history, these teachers go on to stimulate us to new and greater

achievements. Alone, man is an unlighted candle. The mind needs

some book to kindle its faculties. Before Byron began to write he

used to give half an hour to reading some favorite passage. The

thought of some great writer never failed to kindle Byron into a

creative glow, even as a match lights the kindlings upon the

grate. In these burning, luminous moods Byron's mind did its best

work. The true book stimulates the mind as no wine can ever

quicken the blood. It is reading that brings us to our best, and

rouses each faculty to its most vigorous life.

We recognize this as pure cream, and if it seems at first to have its

secondary source in the friendly milkman, let us not forget that the

theme is "The Uses of Books and Reading." Dr. Hillis both sees and

thinks.

It is fashionable just now to decry the value of reading. We read, we

are told, to avoid the necessity of thinking for ourselves. Books are

for the mentally lazy.

Though this is only a half-truth, the element of truth it contains

is large enough to make us pause. Put yourself through a good

old Presbyterian soul-searching self-examination, and if

reading-from-thought-laziness is one of your sins, confess it. No one

can shrive you of it--but yourself. Do penance for it by using your

own brains, for it is a transgression that dwarfs the growth of thought

and destroys mental freedom. At first the penance will be trying--but

at the last you will be glad in it.

Reading should entertain, give information, or stimulate thought. Here,

however, we are chiefly concerned with information, and stimulation of

thought.

What shall I read for information?

The ample page of knowledge, as Grey tells us, is "rich with the spoils

of time," and these are ours for the price of a theatre ticket. You may

command Socrates and Marcus Aurelius to sit beside you and discourse of

their choicest, hear Lincoln at Gettysburg and Pericles at Athens, storm

the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may

explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with

Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle

Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the

inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and

experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was right: "The

true university of these days is a collection of books."

To master a worth-while book is to master much else besides; few of us,

however, make perfect conquest of a volume without first owning it

physically. To read a borrowed book may be a joy, but to assign your own

book a place of its own on your own shelves--be they few or many--to

love the book and feel of its worn cover, to thumb it over slowly, page

by page, to pencil its margins in agreement or in protest, to smile or

thrill with its remembered pungencies--no mere book borrower could ever

sense all that delight.

The reader who possesses books in this double sense finds also that his

books possess him, and the volumes which most firmly grip his life are

likely to be those it has cost him some sacrifice to own. These

lightly-come-by titles, which Mr. Fatpurse selects, perhaps by proxy,

can scarcely play the guide, philosopher and friend in crucial moments

as do the books--long coveted, joyously attained--that are welcomed into

the lives, and not merely the libraries, of us others who are at once

poorer and richer.

So it is scarcely too much to say that of all the many ways in which an

owned--a mastered--book is like to a human friend, the truest ways are

these: A friend is worth making sacrifices for, both to gain and to

keep; and our loves go out most dearly to those into whose inmost lives

we have sincerely entered.

When you have not the advantage of the test of time by which to judge

books, investigate as thoroughly as possible the authority of the books

you read. Much that is printed and passes current is counterfeit. "I

read it in a book" is to many a sufficient warranty of truth, but not to

the thinker. "What book?" asks the careful mind. "Who wrote it? What

does he know about the subject and what right has he to speak on it? Who

recognizes him as authority? With what other recognized authorities does

he agree or disagree?" Being caught trying to pass counterfeit money,

even unintentionally, is an unpleasant situation. Beware lest you

circulate spurious coin.

Above all, seek reading that makes you use your own brains. Such reading

must be alive with fresh points of view, packed with special knowledge,

and deal with subjects of vital interest. Do not confine your reading to

what you already know you will agree with. Opposition wakes one up. The

other road may be the better, but you will never know it unless you

"give it the once over." Do not do all your thinking and investigating

in front of given "Q.E.D.'s;" merely assembling reasons to fill in

between your theorem and what you want to prove will get you nowhere.

Approach each subject with an open mind and--once sure that you have

thought it out thoroughly and honestly--have the courage to abide by the

decision of your own thought. But don't brag about it afterward.

No book on public speaking will enable you to discourse on the tariff if

you know nothing about the tariff. Knowing more about it than the other

man will be your only hope for making the other man listen to you.

Take a group of men discussing a governmental policy of which some one

says: "It is socialistic." That will commend the policy to Mr. A., who

believes in socialism, but condemn it to Mr. B., who does not. It may be

that neither had considered the policy beyond noticing that its

surface-color was socialistic. The chances are, furthermore, that

neither Mr. A. nor Mr. B. has a definite idea of what socialism really

is, for as Robert Louis Stevenson says, "Man lives not by bread alone

but chiefly by catch words." If you are of this group of men, and have

observed this proposed government policy, and investigated it, and

thought about it, what you have to say cannot fail to command their

respect and approval, for you will have shown them that you possess a

grasp of your subject and--to adopt an exceedingly expressive bit of

slang--_then_ some.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Robert Houdin trained his son to give one swift glance at a shop

window in passing and be able to report accurately a surprising number

of its contents. Try this several times on different windows and report

the result.

2. What effect does reserve power have on an audience?

3. What are the best methods for acquiring reserve power?

4. What is the danger of too much reading?

5. Analyze some speech that you have read or heard and notice how much

real information there is in it. Compare it with Dr. Hillis's speech on

"Brave Little Belgium," page 394.

6. Write out a three-minute speech on any subject you choose. How much

information, and what new ideas, does it contain? Compare your speech

with the extract on page 191 from Dr. Hillis's "The Uses of Books and

Reading."

7. Have you ever read a book on the practise of thinking? If so, give

your impressions of its value.

NOTE: There are a number of excellent books on the subject of thought

and the management of thought. The following are recommended as being

especially helpful: "Thinking and Learning to Think," Nathan C.

Schaeffer; "Talks to Students on the Art of Study," Cramer; "As a Man

Thinketh," Allen.

8. Define (_a_) logic; (_b_) mental philosophy (or mental science);

(_c_) psychology; (_d_) abstract.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 9: Used by permission.]

CHAPTER XVIII

SUBJECT AND PREPARATION

Suit your topics to your strength,

And ponder well your subject, and its length;

Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware

What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

--BYRON, _Hints from Horace_.

Look to this day, for it is life--the very life of life. In its

brief course lie all the verities and realities of your

existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the

splendor of beauty. For yesterday is already a dream and

tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every

yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of

hope. Look well, therefore, to this day. Such is the salutation

of the dawn.

--_From the Sanskrit_.

In the chapter preceding we have seen the influence of "Thought and

Reserve Power" on general preparedness for public speech. But

preparation consists in something more definite than the cultivation of

thought-power, whether from original or from borrowed sources--it

involves a _specifically_ acquisitive attitude of the whole life. If you

would become a full soul you must constantly take in and assimilate, for

in that way only may you hope to give out that which is worth the

hearing; but do not confuse the acquisition of general information with

the mastery of specific knowledge. Information consists of a fact or a

group of facts; knowledge is _organized_ information--knowledge knows a

fact in relation to other facts.

Now the important thing here is that you should set all your faculties

to take in the things about you with the particular object of

correlating them and storing them for use in public speech. You must

hear with the speaker's ear, see with the speaker's eye, and choose

books and companions and sights and sounds with the speaker's purpose in

view. At the same time, be ready to receive unplanned-for knowledge. One

of the fascinating elements in your life as a public speaker will be the

conscious growth in power that casual daily experiences bring. If your

eyes are alert you will be constantly discovering facts, illustrations,

and ideas without having set out in search of them. These all may be

turned to account on the platform; even the leaden events of hum-drum

daily life may be melted into bullets for future battles.

_Conservation of Time in Preparation_

But, you say, I have so little time for preparation--my mind must be

absorbed by other matters. Daniel Webster never let an opportunity pass

to gather material for his speeches. When he was a boy working in a

sawmill he read out of a book in one hand and busied himself at some

mechanical task with the other. In youth Patrick Henry roamed the fields

and woods in solitude for days at a time unconsciously gathering

material and impressions for his later service as a speaker. Dr. Russell

H. Conwell, the man who, the late Charles A. Dana said, had addressed

more hearers than any living man, used to memorize long passages from

Milton while tending the boiling syrup-pans in the silent New England

woods at night. The modern employer would discharge a Webster of today

for inattention to duty, and doubtless he would be justified, and

Patrick Henry seemed only an idle chap even in those easy-going days;

but the truth remains: those who take in power and have the purpose to

use it efficiently will some day win to the place in which that

stored-up power will revolve great wheels of influence.

Napoleon said that quarter hours decide the destinies of nations. How

many quarter hours do we let drift by aimlessly! Robert Louis Stevenson

conserved _all_ his time; _every_ experience became capital for his

work--for capital may be defined as "the results of labor stored up to

assist future production." He continually tried to put into suitable

language the scenes and actions that were in evidence about him. Emerson

says: "Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself whilst we are

preparing to live."

Why wait for a more convenient season for this broad, general

preparation? The fifteen minutes that we spend on the car could be

profitably turned into speech-capital.

Procure a cheap edition of modern speeches, and by cutting out a few

pages each day, and reading them during the idle minute here and there,

note how soon you can make yourself familiar with the world's best

speeches. If you do not wish to mutilate your book, take it with

you--most of the epoch-making books are now printed in small volumes.

The daily waste of natural gas in the Oklahoma fields is equal to ten

thousand tons of coal. Only about three per cent of the power of the

coal that enters the furnace ever diffuses itself from your electric

bulb as light--the other ninety-seven per cent is wasted. Yet these

wastes are no larger, nor more to be lamented than the tremendous waste

of time which, if conserved would increase the speaker's powers to their

_nth_ degree. Scientists are making three ears of corn grow where one

grew before; efficiency engineers are eliminating useless motions and

products from our factories: catch the spirit of the age and apply

efficiency to the use of the most valuable asset you possess--time. What

do you do mentally with the time you spend in dressing or in shaving?

Take some subject and concentrate your energies on it for a week by

utilizing just the spare moments that would otherwise be wasted. You

will be amazed at the result. One passage a day from the Book of Books,

one golden ingot from some master mind, one fully-possessed thought of

your own might thus be added to the treasury of your life. Do not waste

your time in ways that profit you nothing. Fill "the unforgiving minute"

with "sixty seconds' worth of distance run" and on the platform you will

be immeasurably the gainer.

Let no word of this, however, seem to decry the value of recreation.

Nothing is more vital to a worker than rest--yet nothing is so vitiating

to the shirker. Be sure that your recreation re-creates. A pause in the

midst of labors gathers strength for new effort. The mistake is to pause

too long, or to fill your pauses with ideas that make life flabby.

_Choosing a Subject_

Subject and materials tremendously influence each other.

"This arises from the fact that there are two distinct ways in which a

subject may be chosen: by arbitrary choice, or by development from

thought and reading.

"Arbitrary choice ... of one subject from among a number involves so

many important considerations that no speaker ever fails to appreciate

the tone of satisfaction in him who triumphantly announces: 'I have a

subject!'

"'Do give me a subject!' How often the weary school teacher hears that

cry. Then a list of themes is suggested, gone over, considered, and, in

most instances, rejected, because the teacher can know but imperfectly

what is in the pupil's mind. To suggest a subject in this way is like

trying to discover the street on which a lost child lives, by naming

over a number of streets until one strikes the little one's ear as

sounding familiar.

"Choice by development is a very different process. It does not ask,

What shall I say? It turns the mind in upon itself and asks, What do I

think? Thus, the subject may be said to choose itself, for in the

process of thought or of reading one theme rises into prominence and

becomes a living germ, soon to grow into the discourse. He who has not

learned to reflect is not really acquainted with his own thoughts;

hence, his thoughts are not productive. Habits of reading and reflection

will supply the speaker's mind with an abundance of subjects of which he

already knows something from the very reading and reflection which gave

birth to his theme. This is not a paradox, but sober truth.

"It must be already apparent that the choice of a subject by development

savors more of collection than of conscious selection. The subject

'pops into the mind.' ... In the intellect of the trained thinker it

concentrates--by a process which we have seen to be induction--the facts

and truths of which he has been reading and thinking. This is most often

a gradual process. The scattered ideas may be but vaguely connected at

first, but more and more they concentrate and take on a single form

until at length one strong idea seems to grasp the soul with

irresistible force, and to cry aloud, 'Arise, I am your _theme_!

Henceforth, until you transmute me by the alchemy of your inward fire

into vital speech, you shall know no rest!' Happy, then, is that

speaker, for he has found a subject that grips him.

"Of course, experienced speakers use both methods of selection. Even a

reading and reflective man is sometimes compelled to hunt for a theme

from Dan to Beersheba, and then the task of gathering materials becomes

a serious one. But even in such a case there is a sense in which the

selection comes by development, because no careful speaker settles upon

a theme which does not represent at least some matured thought."[10]

_Deciding on the Subject Matter_

Even when your theme has been chosen for you by someone else, there

remains to you a considerable field for choice of subject matter. The

same considerations, in fact, that would govern you in choosing a theme

must guide in the selection of the material. Ask yourself--or someone

else--such questions as these:

What is the precise nature of the occasion? How large an audience may be

expected? From what walks of life do they come? What is their probable

attitude toward the theme? Who else will speak? Do I speak first, last,

or where, on the program? What are the other speakers going to talk

about? What is the nature of the auditorium? Is there a desk? Could the

subject be more effectively handled if somewhat modified? Precisely how

much time am I to fill?

It is evident that many speech-misfits of subject, speaker, occasion and

place are due to failure to ask just such pertinent questions. _What_

should be said, by _whom_, and _in what circumstances_, constitute

ninety per cent of efficiency in public address. No matter who asks you,

refuse to be a square peg in a round hole.

_Questions of Proportion_

Proportion in a speech is attained by a nice adjustment of time. How

fully you may treat your subject it is not always for you to say. Let

ten minutes mean neither nine nor eleven--though better nine than

eleven, at all events. You wouldn't steal a man's watch; no more should

you steal the time of the succeeding speaker, or that of the audience.

There is no need to overstep time-limits if you make your preparation

adequate and divide your subject so as to give each thought its due

proportion of attention--and no more. Blessed is the man that maketh

short speeches, for he shall be invited to speak again.

Another matter of prime importance is, what part of your address

demands the most emphasis. This once decided, you will know where to

place that pivotal section so as to give it the greatest strategic

value, and what degree of preparation must be given to that central

thought so that the vital part may not be submerged by non-essentials.

Many a speaker has awakened to find that he has burnt up eight minutes

of a ten-minute speech in merely getting up steam. That is like spending

eighty percent of your building-money on the vestibule of the house.

The same sense of proportion must tell you to stop precisely when you

are through--and it is to be hoped that you will discover the arrival of

that period before your audience does.

_Tapping Original Sources_

The surest way to give life to speech-material is to gather your facts

at first hand. Your words come with the weight of authority when you can

say, "I have examined the employment rolls of every mill in this

district and find that thirty-two per cent of the children employed are

under the legal age." No citation of authorities can equal that. You

must adopt the methods of the reporter and find out the facts underlying

your argument or appeal. To do so may prove laborious, but it should not

be irksome, for the great world of fact teems with interest, and over

and above all is the sense of power that will come to you from original

investigation. To see and feel the facts you are discussing will react

upon you much more powerfully than if you were to secure the facts at

second hand.

Live an active life among people who are doing worth-while things, keep

eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of

the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the

world loves nothing so much as real life.

_How to Use a Library_

Unsuspected treasures lie in the smallest library. Even when the owner

has read every last page of his books it is only in rare instances that

he has full indexes to all of them, either in his mind or on paper, so

as to make available the vast number of varied subjects touched upon or

treated in volumes whose titles would never suggest such topics.

For this reason it is a good thing to take an odd hour now and then to

browse. Take down one volume after another and look over its table of

contents and its index. (It is a reproach to any author of a serious

book not to have provided a full index, with cross references.) Then

glance over the pages, making notes, mental or physical, of material

that looks interesting and usable. Most libraries contain volumes that

the owner is "going to read some day." A familiarity with even the

contents of such books on your own shelves will enable you to refer to

them when you want help. Writings read long ago should be treated in the

same way--in every chapter some surprise lurks to delight you.

In looking up a subject do not be discouraged if you do not find it

indexed or outlined in the table of contents--you are pretty sure to

discover some material under a related title.

Suppose you set to work somewhat in this way to gather references on

"Thinking:" First you look over your book titles, and there is

Schaeffer's "Thinking and Learning to Think." Near it is Kramer's "Talks

to Students on the Art of Study"--that seems likely to provide some

material, and it does. Naturally you think next of your book on

psychology, and there is help there. If you have a volume on the human

intellect you will have already turned to it. Suddenly you remember your

encyclopedia and your dictionary of quotations--and now material fairly

rains upon you; the problem is what _not_ to use. In the encyclopedia

you turn to every reference that includes or touches or even suggests

"thinking;" and in the dictionary of quotations you do the same. The

latter volume you find peculiarly helpful because it suggests several

volumes to you that are on your own shelves--you never would have

thought to look in them for references on this subject. Even fiction

will supply help, but especially books of essays and biography. Be aware

of your own resources.

To make a general index to your library does away with the necessity for

indexing individual volumes that are not already indexed.

To begin with, keep a note-book by you; or small cards and paper

cuttings in your pocket and on your desk will serve as well. The same

note-book that records the impressions of your own experiences and

thoughts will be enriched by the ideas of others.

To be sure, this note-book habit means labor, but remember that more

speeches have been spoiled by half-hearted preparation than by lack of

talent. Laziness is an own-brother to Over-confidence, and both are your

inveterate enemies, though they pretend to be soothing friends.

Conserve your material by indexing every good idea on cards, thus:

[HW:

_Socialism_

Progress of S., Env. 16

S. a fallacy, 96/210

General article on S., Howells', Dec. 1913

"Socialism and the Franchise," Forbes

"Socialism in Ancient Life," Original Ms.,

Env. 102

]

On the card illustrated above, clippings are indexed by giving the

number of the envelope in which they are filed. The envelopes may be of

any size desired and kept in any convenient receptacle. On the foregoing

example, "Progress of S., Envelope 16," will represent a clipping, filed

in Envelope 16, which is, of course, numbered arbitrarily.

The fractions refer to books in your library--the numerator being the

book-number, the denominator referring to the page. Thus, "S. a fallacy,

96/210," refers to page 210 of volume 96 in your library. By some

arbitrary sign--say red ink--you may even index a reference in a public

library book.

If you preserve your magazines, important articles may be indexed by

month and year. An entire volume on a subject may be indicated like the

imaginary book by "Forbes." If you clip the articles, it is better to

index them according to the envelope system.

Your own writings and notes may be filed in envelopes with the clippings

or in a separate series.

Another good indexing system combines the library index with the

"scrap," or clipping, system by making the outside of the envelope serve

the same purpose as the card for the indexing of books, magazines,

clippings and manuscripts, the latter two classes of material being

enclosed in the envelopes that index them, and all filed alphabetically.

When your cards accumulate so as to make ready reference difficult under

a single alphabet, you may subdivide each letter by subordinate guide

cards marked by the vowels, A, E, I, O, U. Thus, "Antiquities" would be

filed under _i_ in A, because A begins the word, and the second letter,

_n_, comes after the vowel _i_ in the alphabet, but before _o_. In the

same manner, "Beecher" would be filed under _e_ in B; and "Hydrogen"

would come under _u_ in H.

_Outlining the Address_

No one can advise you how to prepare the notes for an address. Some

speakers get the best results while walking out and ruminating, jotting

down notes as they pause in their walk. Others never put pen to paper

until the whole speech has been thought out. The great majority,

however, will take notes, classify their notes, write a hasty first

draft, and then revise the speech. Try each of these methods and choose

the one that is best--_for you_. Do not allow any man to force you to

work in _his_ way; but do not neglect to consider his way, for it may be

better than your own.

For those who make notes and with their aid write out the speech, these

suggestions may prove helpful:

After having read and thought enough, classify your notes by setting

down the big, central thoughts of your material on separate cards or

slips of paper. These will stand in the same relation to your subject as

chapters do to a book.

Then arrange these main ideas or heads in such an order that they will

lead effectively to the result you have in mind, so that the speech may

rise in argument, in interest, in power, by piling one fact or appeal

upon another until the climax--the highest point of influence on your

audience--has been reached.

Next group all your ideas, facts, anecdotes, and illustrations under the

foregoing main heads, each where it naturally belongs.

You now have a skeleton or outline of your address that in its polished

form might serve either as the brief, or manuscript notes, for the

speech or as the guide-outline which you will expand into the written

address, if written it is to be.

Imagine each of the main ideas in the brief on page 213 as being

separate; then picture your mind as sorting them out and placing them in

order; finally, conceive of how you would fill in the facts and examples

under each head, giving special prominence to those you wish to

emphasize and subduing those of less moment. In the end, you have the

outline complete. The simplest form of outline--not very suitable for

use on the platform, however--is the following:

_WHY PROSPERITY IS COMING_

What prosperity means.--The real tests of prosperity.--Its basis in the

soil.--American agricultural progress.--New interest in

farming.--Enormous value of our agricultural products.--Reciprocal

effect on trade.--Foreign countries affected.--Effects of our new

internal economy--the regulation of banking and "big business"--on

prosperity.--Effects of our revised attitude toward foreign markets,

including our merchant marine.--Summary.

Obviously, this very simple outline is capable of considerable expansion

under each head by the addition of facts, arguments, inferences and

examples.

Here is an outline arranged with more regard for argument:

FOREIGN IMMIGRATION SHOULD BE RESTRICTED[11]

I. FACT AS CAUSE: Many immigrants are practically paupers.

(Proofs involving statistics or statements of authorities.)

II. FACT AS EFFECT: They sooner or later fill our alms-houses

and become public charges. (Proofs involving statistics or

statements of authorities.)

III. FACT AS CAUSE: Some of them are criminals. (Examples of

recent cases.)

IV. FACT AS EFFECT: They reënforce the criminal classes.

(Effects on our civic life.)

V. FACT AS CAUSE: Many of them know nothing of the duties of

free citizenship. (Examples.)

VI.FACT AS EFFECT: Such immigrants recruit the worst element in

our politics. (Proofs.)

A more highly ordered grouping of topics and subtopics is shown in the

following:

OURS A CHRISTIAN NATION

I. INTRODUCTION: Why the subject is timely. Influences

operative against this contention today.

II. CHRISTIANITY PRESIDED OVER THE EARLY HISTORY OF

AMERICA.

1. First practical discovery by a Christian explorer. Columbus

worshiped God on the new soil.

2. The Cavaliers.

3. The French Catholic settlers.

4. The Huguenots.

5. The Puritans.

III. THE BIRTH OF OUR NATION WAS UNDER CHRISTIAN AUSPICES.

1. Christian character of Washington.

2. Other Christian patriots.

3. The Church in our Revolutionary struggle. Muhlenberg.

IV. OUR LATER HISTORY HAS ONLY EMPHASIZED OUR NATIONAL

ATTITUDE. Examples of dealings with foreign nations show

Christian magnanimity. Returning the Chinese Indemnity;

fostering the Red Cross; attitude toward Belgium.

V. OUR GOVERNMENTAL FORMS AND MANY OF OUR LAWS ARE OF A

CHRISTIAN TEMPER.

1. The use of the Bible in public ways, oaths, etc.

2. The Bible in our schools.

3. Christian chaplains minister to our law-making bodies, to our

army, and to our navy.

4. The Christian Sabbath is officially and generally recognized.

5. The Christian family and the Christian system of morality are

at the basis of our laws.

VI. THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE TESTIFIES OF THE POWER OF

CHRISTIANITY. Charities, education, etc., have Christian

tone.

VII. OTHER NATIONS REGARD US AS A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE.

VIII. CONCLUSION: The attitude which may reasonably be

expected of all good citizens toward questions touching the

preservation of our standing as a Christian nation.

_Writing and Revision_

After the outline has been perfected comes the time to write the speech,

if write it you must. Then, whatever you do, write it at white heat,

with not _too_ much thought of anything but the strong, appealing

expression of your ideas.

The final stage is the paring down, the re-vision--the seeing again, as

the word implies--when all the parts of the speech must be impartially

scrutinized for clearness, precision, force, effectiveness, suitability,

proportion, logical climax; and in all this you must _imagine yourself

to be before your audience_, for a speech is not an essay and what will

convince and arouse in the one will not prevail in the other.

_The Title_

Often last of all will come that which in a sense is first of all--the

title, the name by which the speech is known. Sometimes it will be the

simple theme of the address, as "The New Americanism," by Henry

Watterson; or it may be a bit of symbolism typifying the spirit of the

address, as "Acres of Diamonds," by Russell H. Conwell; or it may be a

fine phrase taken from the body of the address, as "Pass Prosperity

Around," by Albert J. Beveridge. All in all, from whatever motive it be

chosen, let the title be fresh, short, suited to the subject, and likely

to excite interest.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Define (_a_) introduction; (_b_) climax; (_c_) peroration.

2. If a thirty-minute speech would require three hours for specific

preparation, would you expect to be able to do equal justice to a speech

one-third as long in one-third the time for preparation? Give reasons.

3. Relate briefly any personal experience you may have had in conserving

time for reading and thought.

4. In the manner of a reporter or investigator, go out and get

first-hand information on some subject of interest to the public.

Arrange the results of your research in the form of an outline, or

brief.

5. From a private or a public library gather enough authoritative

material on one of the following questions to build an outline for a

twenty-minute address. Take one definite side of the question, (_a_)

"The Housing of the Poor;" (_b_) "The Commission Form of Government for

Cities as a Remedy for Political Graft;" (_c_) "The Test of Woman's

Suffrage in the West;" (_d_) "Present Trends of Public Taste in

Reading;" (_e_) "Municipal Art;" (_f_) "Is the Theatre Becoming more

Elevated in Tone?" (_g_) "The Effects of the Magazine on Literature;"

(_h_) "Does Modern Life Destroy Ideals?" (_i_) "Is Competition 'the Life

of Trade?'" (_j_) "Baseball is too Absorbing to be a Wholesome National

Game;" (_k_) "Summer Baseball and Amateur Standing;" (_l_) "Does College

Training Unfit a Woman for Domestic Life?" (_m_) "Does Woman's

Competition with Man in Business Dull the Spirit of Chivalry?" (_n_)

"Are Elective Studies Suited to High School Courses?" (_o_) "Does the

Modern College Prepare Men for Preeminent Leadership?" (_p_) "The

Y.M.C.A. in Its Relation to the Labor Problem;" (_q_) "Public Speaking

as Training in Citizenship."

6. Construct the outline, examining it carefully for interest,

convincing character, proportion, and climax of arrangement.

NOTE:--This exercise should be repeated until the student shows facility

in synthetic arrangement.

7. Deliver the address, if possible before an audience.

8. Make a three-hundred word report on the results, as best you are able

to estimate them.

9. Tell something of the benefits of using a periodical (or cumulative)

index.

10. Give a number of quotations, suitable for a speaker's use, that you

have memorized in off moments.

11. In the manner of the outline on page 213, analyze the address on

pages 78-79, "The History of Liberty."

12. Give an outline analysis, from notes or memory, of an address or

sermon to which you have listened for this purpose.

13. Criticise the address from a structural point of view.

14. Invent titles for any five of the themes in Exercise 5.

15. Criticise the titles of any five chapters of this book, suggesting

better ones.

16. Criticise the title of any lecture or address of which you know.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 11: Adapted from _Competition-Rhetoric_, Scott and Denny, p.

241.]

CHAPTER XIX

INFLUENCING BY EXPOSITION

Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak;

care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with

undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.

--THOMAS CARLYLE, Essay on _Biography_.

A complete discussion of the rhetorical structure of public speeches

requires a fuller treatise than can be undertaken in a work of this

nature, yet in this chapter, and in the succeeding ones on

"Description," "Narration," "Argument," and "Pleading," the underlying

principles are given and explained as fully as need be for a working

knowledge, and adequate book references are given for those who would

perfect themselves in rhetorical art.

_The Nature of Exposition_