Public Speaking | Page 4

in the forests, and not infrequently in some distant barn
with the horse and ox for my auditors. It is to this early practice in the
art of all arts that I am indebted to the primary and leading impulses
that stimulated me forward, and shaped and molded my entire destiny."
Abraham 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