LADY MACBETH.

Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 't is the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil.

LADY MACBETH. My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white.

EXERCISE III. Read with strict attention to the thought, as in Exercise II, the following passages from the Bible:

I. From the book of Proverbs.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom.
She is more precious than rubies:

And all the things thou canst desire

Are not to be compared unto her.

Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction :
But he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured.

The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge:
But the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes:
But he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.

Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished :
But he that gathereth by labour shall increase.

Righteousness exalteth a nation:

But sin is a reproach to any people.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is,
Than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop,
Than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold;
Therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.
Iron sharpeneth iron;

So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

2. From the book of Job:

But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof;
Neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith, It is not in me:

And the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold,

Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir,

With the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

The gold and the crystal cannot equal it:

And the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls:
For the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it,
Neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

EXERCISE IV. Read with careful attention, both to the thought and the emotion of the speaker, the address of Lincoln at Gettysburg. Note the subtle contrasts throughout by which the meaning is made clear.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,

can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

consecrate

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate we cannot we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

EXERCISE V. Read with careful discrimination, and with very close attention to each new idea presented, Hamlet's Advice to the Players. Keep fully in mind the context and the central idea of the speaker.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated

fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

APPENDIX I

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

To the teachers into whose hands this book perchance may fall I wish to offer a few suggestions which I trust will correct any misunderstanding that may arise in regard to my purpose in offering to schools and colleges a volume treating of the elements of public speaking.

The aim that I have had in mind in the preparation of this work and the need in the field of public speaking which it is designed to meet are: fully set forth in the Preface. A word more, however, seems to me necessary, addressed to the teachers who may make use of the principles which this book contains. What I shall say has to do with two things:

First, the material that goes to make up this volume.
Second, the use that may be made of this material.

In regard to the first, I should perhaps repeat what is made very clear in the Preface; namely, that this is not a conventional book of speeches. Such books have their place, and as already suggested, I have in preparation a book, “Practical Selections for Declamation," which aims to meet the present need for a compilation of speeches that are thoroughly practical for declamatory purposes. But in the present volume I have carefully avoided making a book with one per cent of principles and ninety-nine per cent of illustration. Twelve important principles have been treated in as many distinct chapters, the aim being to give the reader a clear and comprehensive understanding of each principle treated. At the close of the discussion in each chapter (with the exception of