CHAPTER I GENERAL OBSERVATIONS INTRODUCTION. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, in a recent address said: "The primary characteristic of an educated man is his ability to speak and to write his own language effectively. Never in the history of the country has there been a time when oral address has had so much use and influence as it has to-day." Two little children if reared alone in a forest would invent some means of communication. Their language, like the language of the savage, would be, for the most part, by means of vocal inflections and gestures; since these have always expressed sensations and emotions. Ideas are expressed by articulate words, and the savage does not have many ideas. We should master at least one language. Some men can write and speak sixty and even seventy languages; but, it is very doubtful if you have ever heard the names of these men. It is far more important that you learn to master one language so that you can write and speak it with clearness, force and elegance. DEFINITION. Public Speaking differs from Oral Reading in that the language of the speaker is his own. The arrangement of the thought expressed is also left to the speaker. The first essential is that the speaker acquire and maintain the right notion about speaking the right mental attitude toward the message and his audience. Remember that speaking is simply talking to an assembly of individuals. It is presumed that you have something to say to such an assembly. You must know clearly and understand thoroughly what you have to say and then you must convey your own thoughts and emotions to the minds of your hearers. In other words, the same principle that was laid down for reading applies to speaking: Get the thought, give the thought. GENERAL PREPARATION. The ability to get the thought and to give the thought most effectively does not come by a wish or the sway of a fairy's wand. It comes through “inspiration, respiration, and perspiration." Who has not listened to some eloquent speaker who mastered his audience, held them spell-bound by his knowledge and power, and has not said, "Oh, I would give almost anything if I could only speak like that!" But do not think for a moment that that man has not passed through years of preparation. Beecher, when once asked how long it took him to prepare a certain sermon, replied, "Twenty years." Knowledge. First of all have something to say. Who cares to listen to a man who does not know what he is talking about? Socrates struck a fundamental key-note in delivery when he said, "all men are sufficiently eloquent in that which they understand." Men everywhere listened to Christ. Wherever he went a multitude followed him, "for he spake as one having authority." The man who is the greatest bore in modern society is the walking phonograph. All that is necessary to start him going is to touch a spring, and lo, like Tennyson's brook Men may come and men may go, When he has once said all he knows, he starts all over again. Lowell suggested this addition to the Beatitudes, "Blessed is he who hath nothing to say-and cannot be persuaded to say it." Vocabulary. Secondly, an adequate vocabulary is absolutely essential so that this knowledge can be expressed clearly and adequately. Every workman must have good serviceable tools; every orator must, likewise, have his tools -good serviceable words. A large vocabulary is needed to enable the speaker to express shades of meaning and to insure variety and force in expression. Says Professor Palmer in his Self-Cultivation in English: We are Why, then, do we hesitate to swell our words to meet our needs? It is a nonsense question. There is no reason. simply lazy; too lazy to make ourselves comfortable. We let our vocabularies be limited, and get along rawly without the refinements of human intercourse, without refinements in our own thoughts; for thoughts are almost as dependent on words as words on thoughts. For example, all exasperation we lump together as "aggravating," not considering whether they may not rather be displeasing, annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating, or even maddening; and without observing, too, that in our reckless usage we have burned up a word which might be convenient when we should need to mark some shading of the word "increase." Like the bad cook, we seize the frying pan whenever we need to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we wonder why all our dishes taste alike while in the next house the food is appetizing. It is all unnecessary. Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any one who wants to see himself grow, resolve to adopt two new words each week. It will not be long before the endless and enchanting variety of the world will begin to reflect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. I know that when we use a word for the first time we are startled, as if a firecracker went off in our neighborhood. We look about hastily, to see if any one has noticed. But finding that no one has, we may be emboldened. A word used three times slips off the tongue with entire naturalness. Then it is ours forever, and with it some phase of life which had been lacking hitherto. Diction. The workman must have tools, but without a knowledge of the use of these tools he might do more harm than good. Many a man has wounded his friend by speaking a word which he did not know how to use properly; and many a political speaker has harmed his cause more than he helped it, by an improper use of words and combinations of words which were not understood as he intended. Read the best books and magazines; listen to good speeches; get the dictionary habit; study synonyms; write out carefully whatever you put on paper. Accuracy of expression comes only through careful, persistent practice. This is Benjamin Franklin's testimony: About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse, and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. Practice. Lose no opportunity to speak. Ease, accuracy, force are the result of practice. Whenever called upon, speak. But be sure you are well prepared and stop as soon as you are no longer interesting. Join some literary society and never neglect to carry out your part of the program. Let it be known in your school and community. that you are a man that can be depended upon to carry out his share of the program and you will soon have many |