Public Speaking | Page 4

Lincoln never let pass any opportunity to try to make a speech. His early employers, when called upon after his fame was won to describe his habits as a young man, admitted that they might have been disposed to consider him an idle fellow. They explained that he was not only idle himself but the cause of idleness in others. Unless closely watched, he was likely to mount a stump and, to the intense delight of his fellow farm hands, deliver a side-splitting imitation of some itinerant preacher or a stirring political harangue.
The American whose reputation for speech is the greatest won it more through training than by natural gift.
"I could not speak before the school," said Daniel Webster. ... "Many a piece did I commit to memory and rehearse in my room over and over again, but when the day came, and the schoolmaster called my name, and I saw all eyes turned upon my seat, I could not raise myself from it.... Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification."
Results of Training. The significance of all these illustrations is that no great speaker has come by his ability without careful and persistent training. No molder of the world's destinies springs fully equipped from the welter of promiscuous events. He has been training for a long time. On the other hand the much more practical lesson to be derived from these biographical excerpts is that these men started from ordinary conditions to make themselves into forceful thinkers with powers of convincing expression. They overcame handicaps. They strengthened their voices. They learned how to prepare and arrange material. They made themselves able to explain topics to others. They knew so well the reasons for their own belief that they could convince others.
In a smaller way, to a lesser degree, any person can do the same thing, and by the same or similar methods. Barring some people who have physical defects or nervous diseases, any person who has enough brains to grasp an idea, to form an opinion, or to produce a thought, can be made to speak well. The preceding sentence says "barring some people who have physical defects" because not all so handicapped at the beginning need despair of learning to improve in speaking ability. By systems in which the results appear almost miraculous the dumb are now taught to speak. Stutterers and stammerers become excellent deliverers of speeches in public. Weak voices are strengthened. Hesitant expressions are made coherent. Such marvels of modern science belong, however, to special classes and institutions. They are cited here to prove that in language training today practically nothing is impossible to the teacher with knowledge and patience in educating students with alertness and persistence.
Practical Help. This book attempts to provide a guide for such teachers and students. It aims to be eminently practical. It is intended to help students to improve in speech. It assumes that those who use it are able to speak their language with some facility--at least they can pronounce its usual words. That and the realization that one is alive, as indicated by a mental openness to ideas and an intellectual alertness about most things in the universe, are all that are absolutely required of a beginner who tries to improve in speaking. Practically all else can be added unto him.
As this volume has a definite aim it has a simple practical basis. It will not soar too far above the essentials. It tries not to offer an elaborate explanation of an enthymeme when the embryonic speaker's knees are knocking together so loudly that he can not hear the instructor's correcting pronunciation of the name. It takes into account that when a beginner stands before an audience--and this is true not only the first time--even his body is not under his control. Lips grow cold and dry; perspiration gushes from every pore of the brow and runs down the face; legs grow weak; eyes see nothing; hands swell to enormous proportions; violent pains shoot across the chest; the breath is confined within the lungs; from the clapper-like tongue comes only a faint click. Is it any wonder that under such physical agonies the mind refuses to respond--rather, is incapable of any action whatever?
Speech Based on Thought and Language. Every speech is a result of the combination of thought and language, of material and expression. It would be quite possible to begin with considerations of the thought content of speeches--the material; but this book begins with the other;--the language, the expression. If this order have no other advantage, it does possess this one;--that during the informal discussions and expressions of opinion occasioned by the