Public Speaking | Page 6

movement of to-day in the right direction--the demand for a man of
high character and broad culture, specially skilled in the technical
subject he was to teach, and the providing of a worthy position.
One fact that needs to be impressed upon governing bodies of school
and college is that the cultivation of good speaking cannot but be
unsatisfactory when it is continued over only a very brief time. It may
only do mischief. A considerable period is necessary, as is the case
with other subjects, for reaching the student intelligence, for molding
the faculties, for maturing the powers, for adapting method to the
individual, and for bringing the personality out through the method, so
that method disappears. Senator George F. Hoar once gave very
sensible advice in an address to an audience of Harvard students. He
did not content himself with dwelling on the inevitable platitude, first
have something to say, and then say it; he said he had been, in all his
career, at a special disadvantage in public speaking, from the want of
early training in the use of his voice; and he urged that students would
do well not only to take advantage of such training in college, but to
have their teacher, if it were possible, follow them, for a time, into their
professional work. This idea was well exemplified in the case of
Phillips Brooks--a speaker of spontaneity, simplicity, and splendid
power. It is said that, in the period of his pulpit work, in the midst of
his absorbing church labors, he made it a duty to go from time to time
for a period of work with his teacher of voice, that he might be kept
from falling back into wrong ways. It is often said that, if a man has it
in him, he will speak well anyway. It is emphatically the man who has
it in him, the man of intense temperament, like that of Phillips Brooks,
who most needs the balance wheel, the sure reliance, of technique. That
this technique should not be too technical; that form should not be too
formal; that teaching should not be too good, or do too much, is one of
the principles of good teaching. The point insisted on is that a
considerable time is needed, as it is in other kinds of teaching, for
thoroughly working out a few essential principles; for overcoming a
few obstinate faults; for securing matured results by the right process of

gradual development.
There is much cause for gratification in the evidences of a growing
appreciation, in all quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a
study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. Much
progress has also been made toward making youthful platform
speaking, as well as youthful writing, more rational in form, more true
in spirit, more useful for its purpose. In good time written and spoken
English, conjoined with disciplinary training in thought and
imagination, will both become firmly established in their proper place
as subjects to be thoroughly and systematically taught. Good teaching
will become traditional, and good teachers not rare. And among the
specialized courses in public speaking an important place should
always be given to an exact training in voice and in the whole art of
effective delivery.

PART ONE
A DISCUSSION OF PRINCIPLES
TECHNICAL TRAINING
ESTABLISHING THE TONE
The common trouble in using the voice for the more vigorous or
intense forms of speaking is a contraction or straining of the throat.
This impedes the free flow of voice, causing impaired tone, poor
enunciation, and unhealthy physical conditions. Students should,
therefore, be constantly warned against the least beginnings of this fault.
The earlier indications of it may not be observed, or the nature of the
trouble may not be known, by the untrained speaker. But it ought to
have, from the first, the attention of a skilled teacher, for the more
deep-seated it becomes, the harder is its cure. So very common is the
"throaty" tone and so connected is throat pressure with every other
vocal imperfection, that the avoiding or the correcting of this one fault
demands constant watchfulness in all vigorous vocal work. The way to
avoid the faulty control of voice is, of course, to learn at the proper
time the general principles of what singers call voice production. These
principles are few and, in a sense, are very simple, but they are not
easily made perfectly clear in writing, and a perfect application of them,
even in the simpler forms of speaking, often requires persistent practice.
It will be the aim here to state only what the student is most likely to

understand and profit by, and to leave the rest to the personal guidance
of a teacher.
The control of the voice,