Chapter 3
I was present once at a luncheon of the New York Rotary Club when the principal speaker was a prominent government official. The high position that he occupied gave him prestige, and we were looking forward with pleasure to hearing him. He had promised to tell us about the activities of his own department; and it was one in which almost every New York business man was interested.
He knew his subject thoroughly, knew far more about it than he could possibly use; but he had not planned his speech. He had not selected his material. He had not armed it in orderly fashion. Nevertheless, with a courage in of inexperience, he plunged heedlessly, blindly, into speech. He did not know where he was going, but he as on his way.
His mind was, in short, a mere hodgepodge, and so was mental feast he served us. He brought on the ice cream first, and then placed the soup before us. Fish and nuts came next. And, on top of that there was something that seemed be a mixture of soup and ice-cream and good red herring have never, anywhere or at any time, seen a speaker more utterly confused.
He had been trying to talk impromptu; but, in desperation now, he drew a bundle of notes out of his pocket, confessing that his secretary had compiled them for him—and no one questioned the veracity of his assertion. The notes themselves evidently had no more order than a flatcar full of scrap iron. He fumbled through them nervously, glancing from one page to another, trying to orient himself, trying to find a way out of the wilderness, and he attempted to talk as he did so. lt was impossible. He apologized and, calling for water, took a drink with a trembling hand, uttered a few more scattering sentences, repeated himself, dug into his notes again… Minute by minute he grew more helpless, more lost, more bewildered, more embarrassed. Nervous perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his handkerchief shook as he wiped it away. We in the audience sat watching the fiasco, our sympathies stirred, our feelings harrowed. We suffered positive and vicarious embarrassment. But with more doggedness than discretion, the speaker continued, floundering, studying his notes, apologizing and drinking. Everyone except him felt that the spectacle was rapidly approaching total disaster, and it was a relief to us all when he sat down and ceased his death struggles. It was one of the most uncomfortable audiences have ever been in; and he was the most ashamed and humiliated speaker I have ever seen. He had made his talk as Rousseau said a love letter should be written: he had begun without knowing what he was going to say, and he had finished without knowing what he had uttered.
The moral of the tale is just this: “When a man’s knowledge is not in order,” said Herbert Spencer, “the more of it he has, the greater will be his confusion of thought.”
No sane man would start to build a house without some sort of plan; but why will he begin to deliver a speech without the vaguest kind of outline or program?
A speech is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The person who starts nowhere, generally gets there.
I wish that I could paint this saying of Napoleon’s in flaming letters of red a foot high over every doorway on the globe where students of public speaking foregather: “The art of war is a science in which nothing succeeds which has 10th been calculated and not thought out.”
That is just as true of speaking as of shooting. But do speakers realize it—or, if they do—do they always act on? They do not. Most emphatically they do not. Many a talk las just a trifle more plan and arrangement than a bowl of is stew.
What is the best and most effective arrangement for a given set of ideas? No one can say until he has studied them. It is always a new problem, an eternal question that every speaker must ask and answer again and again. No infallible rules can be given; but we can, at any rate, illustrate briefly there, with a concrete case, just what we mean by orderly arrangements.
How a Prize-Winning Speech was Constructed
Here is a speech that was delivered some years go before the National Association of Real Estate Boards. It won first prize in competition with twenty-seven other speeches on various cities—and would do so today! This speech is well constructed, full of facts stated clearly, vividly, interestingly. It has spirit. It marches. It will merit fading and study.
Mr. Chairman and Friends:
Back 144 years ago, this great nation, the United States of America, was born in my City of Philadelphia, and so it is quite natural that a city having such an his topical record should have that strong American spirit that has not only made it the greatest industrial center in this country, but also one of the largest and most beautiful cities in the whole world.
Philadelphia has a population close to two millions of people, and our city has an area that is equal to the combined size of Milwaukee and Boston, Paris and Berlin, and out of our 130 square miles of territory we have given up nearly 8,000 acres of our best land for beautiful parks, squares and boulevards, so that our people would have the proper places for recreation and pleasure, and the right kind of environment that belongs to every decent American.
Philadelphia, friends, is not only a large, clean and beautiful city, but it is also known everywhere as the great workshop of the world, and the reason it is called the workshop of the world is because we have a vast army of over 400,000 people employed in 9,200 industrial establishments that turn out one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of useful commodities every ten minutes of the working day, and according to a well-known statistician, there is no city in this country that equals Philadelphia in the production of woolen goods, leather goods, knit goods, textiles, felt hats, hardware, tools, storage batteries, steel ships and a great many other things. We build a railroad locomotive every two hours day and night, and more than one-half the people in this great country ride in street cars made in the City of Philadelphia. We manufacture a thousand cigars every minute, and last year, in our 115 hosiery mills, we made two pairs of stockings for every man, woman and child in this country. We make more carpets and rugs than all of Great Britain and Ireland combined, and, in fact, our total commercial and industrial business is so stupendous that our bank clearings last year, amounting to thirty-seven billions of dollars, would have paid for every Liberty Bond in the entire country.
But, friends, while we are very proud of our wonderful industrial progress, and while we are also very proud of being one of the largest medical, art and educational centers in this country, yet, we feel a still greater pride in the fact that we have more individual homes in the City of Philadelphia than there are in any other city in the whole world. In Philadelphia we have 397,000 separate homes, and if these homes were placed on twenty-five-foot lots, side by side, in one single row, that row would reach all the way from Philadelphia clear through to this Convention Hall, at Kansas City, and then on to Denver, a distance of 1,881 miles.
But, what I want to call your special attention to is the significance of the fact that tens of thousands of these homes are owned and occupied by the working people of our city, and when a man owns the ground upon which he stands and the roof over his head, there is no argument ever presented that would infect that man with those imported diseases, known as Socialism and Bolshevism.
Philadelphia is not a fertile soil for European anarchy, because our homes, our educational institutions and our gigantic industry have been produced by that true American spirit that was born in our city, and is a heritage from our forefathers. Philadelphia is the mother city of this great country, and the very fountain-head of American liberty. It is the city where the first American flag was made; it is the city where the first Congress of the United States met; it is the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed; it is the city where that best loved relic in America, the Liberty Bell, has inspired tens of thousands of our men, women and children, so that we believe we have a sacred mission, which is not to worship the golden calf, but to spread the American spirit, and to keep the fires of freedom burning, so that with God’s permission, the Government of Washington, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt may be an inspiration to all humanity.
Let us analyze that speech. Let us see how it is constructed, how it gets its effects. In the first place, it has a beginning and an ending. That is a rare virtue—more rare than you may be inclined to think. It starts somewhere. It Des there straight as wild geese on the wing. It doesn’t dawdle. It loses no time.
It has freshness, individuality. The speaker opens by saying to something about his city that the other speakers could not possibly say about theirs: he points out that his city is le birthplace of the entire nation.
He states that it is one of the largest and most beautiful cities in the world. But that claim is general, trite; standing by itself, it would not impress anyone very much. The weaker knew that; so he helped his audience visualize the magnitude of Philadelphia by stating it “has an area equal I the combined size of Milwaukee, Boston, Paris and Berlin.” That is definite, concrete. It is interesting. It is surprising. It makes a mark. It drives home the idea better than a whole page of statistics would have done.
Next he declares that Philadelphia is “known everywhere as the great workshop of the world.” Sounds exaggerated, doesn’t it? Like propaganda. Had he proceeded immediately to the next point no one would have been convinced. But he doesn’t. He pauses to enumerate the products in which Philadelphia leads the world: “woollen goods, leather goods, knit goods, textiles, felt hats, hardware, tools, storage batteries, steel ships.”
Doesn’t sound so much like propaganda now, does it?
Philadelphia ‘’builds a railroad locomotive every two hours day and night, and more than one-half the people in this great country ride in street cars made in the city of Philadelphia.”
“Well, I never knew that,” we muse. “Perhaps I rode down town yesterday in one of those street cars. I’ll look to-morrow and see where my town buys its cars.”
“A thousand cigars every minute…two pairs of stockings for every man, woman and child in this country.”
We are still more impressed…“Maybe my favourite cigar is made in Philadelphia…and these socks I have on…”
What does the speaker do next? Jump back to the subject of the size of Philadelphia that he covered first and give us some fact that he forgot then? No, not at all. He sticks to a point until he finishes it, has done with it, and need never return to it again. For that we are duly grateful, Mr. Speaker. For what is more confusing and muddling than to have a speaker darting from one thing to another and back again as erratic as a bat in the twilight? Yet many a speaker does just that. Instead of covering his points in order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, he covers them as a football captain calls out signals—27, 34, 19, 2. No, he is worse than that. He covers them like this—27, 34, 27, 19, 2, 34, 19.
But this speaker, however, steams straight ahead on schedule time, never idling, never turning back, swerving neither to the right nor left, like one of those locomotives he has been talking about.
But, he makes now the weakest point of his entire speech: Philadelphia, he declares, is “one of the largest medical, art and educational centers in this country.” He merely announces that; then speeds on to something else—only twelve words to animate that fact, to make it vivid, to engrave it on the memory. Only twelve words lost, submerged, in a sentence containing a total of sixty-five. It doesn’t work. Of course not. The human mind docs not erate like a string of steel traps. He devotes so little time this point, is so general, so vague, seems so unimpressed himself that the effect on the hearer is almost nil. What would be have done? He realized that he could establish his point with the self-same technique that he just employed to establish the fact that Philadelphia is the workshop of the world. He knew that. He also knew that he would ave a stop watch held on him during the contest, that he would have five minutes, not a second more; so he had to slur over this point or slight others.
There are “more individual homes in the city of Philadelphia than there are in any other city in the world.” How does he make this phase of his topic impressive and convincing? First, he gives the number: 397,000. Second, he visualizes the number: “If these homes were placed on twenty-five-foot lots, side by side, in one single row, that row would reach all the way from Philadelphia clear through this Convention Hall at Kansas City, and then on Denver, a distance of 1,881 miles.”
His audience probably forgot the number he gave before le had finished the sentence. But forget that picture? That would have been well nigh impossible.
So much for cold material facts. But they are not the stuff out of which eloquence is fashioned. This speaker aspired to build up to a climax, to touch the heart, to stir he feelings. So now on the home stretch, he deals with emotional material. He tells what the ownership of those homes means to the spirit of the city. He denounces “those imported diseases, known as Socialism and Bolshevism.” He eulogizes Philadelphia as “the very fountain-head of American liberty.” Liberty! A magic word, a word full of feeling, a sentiment for which millions have laid down their lives. That he phrase in itself is good, but it is a thousand times better when he backs it up with concrete references to historic events and documents, dear, sacred, to the hearts of his hearers… “It is the city where the first American Flag was made; it is the city where the first Congress of the United States met; it is the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed… Liberty Bell a sacred mission, to spread the American spirit to keep the fires of freedom burning, so that with God’s permission, the Government of Washington, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt may be an inspiration to all humanity.” That is a real climax!
So much for the composition of this talk. But admirable as it is from the standpoint of construction, this speech could come to grief, could easily have been brought to naught, had it been expressed in a calm manner devoid of all spirit and vitality. But the speaker delivered it as he composed it, with a feeling and enthusiasm born of the deepest sincerity. Small wonder that it won first prize, that it was awarded the Chicago cup.
The Way Doctor Conwell Planned His Speeches
There are not, as I have already said, any infallible rules that will solve the question of the best arrangement. There are no designs or schemes or charts that will fit all or even a majority of speeches; yet here are a few speech plans that will prove usable in some instances. The late Dr. Russell H. Conwell, the author of the famous “Acres of Diamonds,” once informed me that he had built many of his innumerable speeches on this outline:
- State your facts.
- Argue from them.
- Appeal for action.
Many people have found this plan very helpful and stimulating:
- Show something that is wrong.
- Show how to remedy it.
- Ask for cooperation.
Or, to put it in another way:
Here is a situation that ought to be remedied.
We ought to do so and so about the matter.
You ought to help for these reasons.
This outline is briefly still another speech plan:
- Secure interested attention.
- Win confidence.
- State your facts; educate people regarding the merits of your proposition.
- Appeal to the motives that make men act.
How Famous Men Have Built a Talk
Former Senator Albert J. Beveridge wrote a very short and very practical book entitled The Art of Public Speaking. “The speaker must be master of his subject,” said this noted political campaigner. “That means that all the facts must be collected, arranged, studied, digested—not only data on one side, but material on the other side and on every side—all of it. And be sure that they are facts, not mere assumptions or unproven assertions. Take nothing for granted.
“Therefore check up and verify every item. This means painstaking research, to be sure, but what of it?—are you not proposing to inform, instruct, and advise your fellow citizens? Are you not setting yourself up as an authority?
“Having assembled and marshalled the facts of any problem, think out for yourself the solution those faces compel. Thus your speech will have originality and personal force—it will be vital and compelling. There will be you in it. Then write out your ideas as clearly and logically as you can.”
In other words, present the facts on both sides, and then present the conclusion that those facts make clear and definite.
“I begin,” said Woodrow Wilson when asked to explain his methods, “with a list of the topics I want to cover, arranging them in my mind in their natural relations—that is, I fit the bones of the thing together; then I write it out in shorthand. I have always been accustomed to writing in shorthand, finding it a great saver of time. This done, I copy it on my own typewriter, clanging phrases, correcting sentences, and adding material as I go along.”
Theodore Roosevelt prepared his talks in the characteristic Roosevelt manner: he dug up all the facts, reviewed them, appraised them, determined their findings, arrived at his conclusions, arrived with a feeling of certainty that was unshakable. Then, with a pad of notes before him, he started dictating and he dictated his speech very rapidly so that it would have rush and spontaneity and the spirit of life. Then he went over this typewritten copy, revised it, inserted,
deleted, filled it with pencil marks, and then dictated it all over again. “I never won anything,” said he, “without hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in advance.”
Often he called in critics to listen to him as he dictated or read his speech to them. He refused to debate with them the wisdom of what he had said. His mind was already made up on that point, and made up irrevocably. He wanted to be told, not what to say, but how to say it. Again and again he went over his typewritten copies, cutting, correcting, improving. That was the speech that the newspapers printed. Of course, he did not memorize it. He spoke extemporaneously. So the talk actually delivered often differed somewhat from the published and polished one. But the task of dictating and revising was excellent preparation. It made him familiar with his material, with the order of his points. It gave him a smoothness and sureness and polish that he could hardly have obtained in any other fashion.
Sir Oliver Lodge told me that dictating his talks—dictating them rapidly and with substance, dictating them just as if he were actually talking to an audience—he had discovered to be an excellent means of preparation and practice.
Many students of speech have found it illuminating to dictate their talks to the dictaphone, and then to listen to themselves. Illuminating? Yes, and sometimes disillusioning and chastening also, I fear. It is a most wholesome exercise. I recommend it.
This practice of actually writing out what you are going to say, will force you to think. It will clarify your ideas. It will hook them in your memory. It will reduce your mental wandering to a minimum. It will improve your diction.
Benjamin Franklin tells in his Autobiography how he improved his diction, how he developed readiness in using words, and how he taught himself method in arranging his thoughts. This story of his life is a literary classic, and, unlike most classics, it is easy to read and thoroughly enjoyable. It is almost a model of plain, straightforward English. Every would-be speaker and writer can peruse it with pleasure and profit. I think you will like the selection refer to; here it is:
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, try 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 a stock of words, and a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I 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 sounds 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 back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
Play Solitaire with Your Notes
You were advised in the last chapter to make notes. Having gotten your various ideas and illustrations down on scraps of paper, play solitaire with them—toss them into series of related piles. These main piles ought to represent, approximately, the main points of your talk. Subdivide them into smaller lots. Throw out the chaff until there is nothing but number one wheat left—and even some of the wheat will probably have to be put aside and not used. No one, if he works right, is ever able to use but a percentage of the material he gathers.
One ought never to cease this process of revision until the speech has been made—even then he is very likely to think of points and improvements and refinements that ought to have been made.
A good speaker usually finds when he finishes that there have been four versions of his speech: the one that he pre– pared, the one that he delivered, the one that the newspapers said that he delivered, and the one that he wishes, on his way home, that he had delivered.
“Shall I Use Notes While Speaking?”
Although he was an excellent impromptu speaker, Lincoln, after he reached the White House, never made any address, not even an informal talk to his cabinet, untitled had carefully put until he it all down in writing beforehand. Of course, he was obliged to read his inaugural addresses. The exact phraseology of historical state papers of that character is too important to be left to extemporizing. But, back in Illinois, Lincoln never used even notes in his speaking. ‘They always tend to tire and confuse the listener,” he said.
And who of us, pray, would contradict him? Don’t notes destroy about fifty per cent of your interest in a talk? Don’t they prevent, or at least render difficult, a very precious contact and intimacy that ought to exist between the speaker and the audience? Don’t they create an air of artificiality? Don’t they restrain an audience from feeling that the speaker has the confidence and reserve power that he or she ought to have?
Make notes, I repeat, during the preparation—elaborate ones, profuse ones. You may wish to refer to them when you are practicing your talk alone. You may possibly feel more comfortable if you have them stored away in your socket when you are facing an audience; but, like the hammer and saw and axe in a Pullman coach, they should emergency tools, only for use in the case of a smash-up, I total wreck, and threatening death and disaster.
If you must use notes, make them extremely brief and write them in large letters on an ample sheet of paper. Then arrive early at the place where you are to speak and hide four notes behind some books on a table. Glance at them then you must, but endeavour to screen your weakness from the audience.
However, in spite of all that has been said there may be times when it is the part of wisdom to use notes. For example, some people during their first few talks, are so nervous and self-conscious that they are utterly unable to remember their prepared speeches. The result? They shoot of at a tangent; they forget the material they had so carefully rehearsed; they drift off the high road and flounder about in a morass. Why should not such persons hold a few tyre condensed notes in their hands during their maiden efforts? A child clutches the furniture when it is first at attempting to walk; but it does not continue it very long.
Do Not Memorize Verbatim
Don’t read, and don’t attempt to memorize your talk word for word. That consumes time, and courts disaster. Yet, in spite of this warning, some people reading these lines will try it; if they do, when they stand up to speak they will be thinking of what? Of their messages? No, they will be attempting to recall their exact phraseology. They will be thinking backward, not forward, reversing the usual processes of the human mind. The whole exhibition will be stiff and cold and colorless and inhuman. Do not, I beg of you, waste hours and energy in such futility.
When you have an important business interview, do you sit down and memorize, verbatim, what you are going to say? Do you? Of course not. You reflect until you get your main ideas clearly in mind. You may make a few notes and consult some records. You say to yourself: “I shall bring out this point and that. I am going to say that a certain thing ought to be done for these reasons…” Then you enumerate the reasons to yourself and illustrate them with concrete cases. Isn’t that the way you prepare for a business interview? Why not use the same common sense method in preparing a talk?
Grant at Appomattox
When Lee asked Grant to write down the terms of surrender, the leader of the Union forces turned to General Parker, asking for writing material. “When I put my pen to paper,” Grant records in his Memoirs, “I did not know the first word I should make use of in writing the terms. I only knew what was in my mind, and I wished to express it clearly, so there could be no mistaking it.”
General Grant, you did not need to know the first word. You had ideas. You had convictions. You had something that you very much wanted to say and to say clearly. The result was that your habitual phraseology came tumbling out without conscious effort. The same holds good for any man. If you doubt it, knock a man down; when he gets up, he will discover that he is hardly at a loss to find words to express himself.
Two thousand years ago, Horace wrote:
Seek not for words, seek only fact and thought,
And crowding in will come the words unsought.
After you have your ideas firmly in mind, then rehearse your talk from beginning to end. Do it silently, mentally, as you watch for the teakettle to boil, as you walk the street, as you wait for the elevator. Get off in a room by yourself and go over it aloud, gesturing, saying it with life and energy. Canon Knox Little, of Canterbury, used to say a preacher never got the real message out of a sermon until he had preached it half a dozen times. Can you hope, then, to get the real message out of your talk unless you have at least rehearsed it that many times? As you practice, imagine there is a real audience before you. Imagine it so strongly that when there is one, it will seem like an old experience.
Why the Farmers Thought Lincoln
“Awfully Lazy”
If you practice your talks in this fashion, you will be faithfully following the examples of many famous speakers. Lloyd George, when he was a member of a debating society in his home town in Wales, often strolled along the country lanes, talking and gesturing to the trees and fence posts.
Lincoln, in his younger days, often walked a round trip of thirty or forty miles to hear a famous speaker like Breckenridge. He came home from these scenes so stirred, so determined to be a speaker that be gathered the other hired workers about him in the fields and, mounting a stump, he made speeches and told them stories. His employers grew angry, declaring that this country Cicero was “awfully lazy,” that his jokes and his oratory were ruining the rest of the workers.
Asquith gained his first facility by becoming an active worker in the Union Debating Society in Oxford. Later he organized one of his own. Woodrow Wilson learned to speak in a debating society. So did Henry Ward Beecher. So did the mighty Burke. So did Antoinette Blackwell and Lucy Stone. Elihu Root practiced before a literary society in the Twenty-Third Street YMCA in New York.
Study the careers of famous speakers and you will find one fact that is true of them all: they practiced. THEY PRACTICED. And the men who make the most rapid progress in this course are those who practice most.
No time for all this? Then do what Joseph Choate used to do. He bought a newspaper of a morning and buried his head in it as he rode to work so no one would bother him. Then, instead of reading the ephemeral scandals and gossip of the day, he thought out and planned his talks.
Chancery M. Depew led a fairly active life as a railroad president and a United States Senator. Yet, during it all, he made speeches almost every night. “l did not let them interfere with my business,” he says. “They were all prepared after I had arrived home from my office late in the afternoon.”
We all have several hours a day that we can do with as we please. That was all Darwin had to work with, as he had poor health. Three hours out of twenty-four, wisely used, made him famous.
Theodore Roosevelt, when he was in the White House, often had an entire forenoon given over to a series of five– minute interviews. Yet he kept a book by his side to utilize even the few spare seconds that came between his engagements.
If you are very busy and pushed for time, read Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. Rip out a hundred pages, put them in your hip pocket, read them during your spare seconds. I got through the book in two days in that fashion. It will show you how to save time, how to get more out of the day.
You must have relaxation and a change from your regular work. That is what the practicing of your talks ought to be. Play the game of extemporaneous speaking in your own home with your own family.
Summary
- “The art of war,” said Napoleon, “is a science in which nothing succeeds which has not been calculated and thought out.” That is as true of speaking as of shooting. A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.
- No infallible, ironclad rules can be given for the arrangement of ideas and the construction of all talks. Each address presents it own particular problems.
- The speaker should cover a point thoroughly while he is on it, and then not refer to it again. As an illustration, see the prize-winning address on Philadelphia. There should be no darting from one thing to another and then back again as aimlessly as a bat in the twilight.
- The late Dr. Conwell built many of his talks on this plan:
a. State your facts.
b. Argue from them.
c. Appeal for action.
- You will probably find this plan very helpful
a. Show something that is wrong.
b. Show how to remedy it.
c. Appeal for action.
- Here is an excellent speech plan:
a. Secure interested attention.
b. Win confidence.
c. State your facts.
d. Appeal to the motives that make men act.
- “All the facts on both sides of your subject,” advised former Senator Albert J. Beveridge, “must be collected, ar ranged, studied, digested. Prove them; be sure they are facts; then think out for yourself the solution those facts compel.”
- Before speaking, Lincoln thought out his conclusions with mathematical exactness. When he was forty years of age, and after he had been a member of Congress, he studied Euclid so that he could detect sophistry and demon state his conclusions.
- When Theodore Roosevelt was preparing a speech, he dug up all the facts, appraised them, then dictated his speech very rapidly, corrected the typewritten copy, and finally dictated it all over again.
- If possible, dictate your talk to a dictaphone and listen to it.
- Notes destroy about fifty percent of the interest in your talk. Avoid them. Above all, do not read your talk. An audience can hardly be brought to endure listening to a read speech.
- After you have thought out and arranged your talk, then practice it silently as you walk along the street. Also get off somewhere by yourself and go over it from beginning to end, using gestures, letting yourself go. Imagine that you are addressing a real audience. The more of this you do, the more comfortable you will feel when the time comes for you to make your talk.
