J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY - THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

troubled in the beginning to find words. Know your subject better than

your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.

_After Preparing for Success, Expect It_

Let your bearing be modestly confident, but most of all be modestly

confident within. Over-confidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions

of failure is worse, for a bold man may win attention by his very

bearing, while a rabbit-hearted coward invites disaster.

Humility is not the personal discount that we must offer in the presence

of others--against this old interpretation there has been a most healthy

modern reaction. True humility any man who thoroughly knows himself must

feel; but it is not a humility that assumes a worm-like meekness; it is

rather a strong, vibrant prayer for greater power for service--a prayer

that Uriah Heep could never have uttered.

Washington Irving once introduced Charles Dickens at a dinner given in

the latter's honor. In the middle of his speech Irving hesitated, became

embarrassed, and sat down awkwardly. Turning to a friend beside him he

remarked, "There, I told you I would fail, and I did."

If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.

Rid yourself of this I-am-a-poor-worm-in-the-dust idea. You are a god,

with infinite capabilities. "All things are ready if the mind be so."

The eagle looks the cloudless sun in the face.

In public speech, as in electricity, there is a positive and a negative

force. Either you or your audience are going to possess the positive

factor. If you assume it you can almost invariably make it yours. If you

assume the negative you are sure to be negative. Assuming a virtue or a

vice vitalizes it. Summon all your power of self-direction, and remember

that though your audience is infinitely more important than you, the

truth is more important than both of you, because it is eternal. If your

mind falters in its leadership the sword will drop from your hands. Your

assumption of being able to instruct or lead or inspire a multitude or

even a small group of people may appall you as being colossal

impudence--as indeed it may be; but having once essayed to speak, be

courageous. _BE_ courageous--it lies within you to be what you will.

_MAKE_ yourself be calm and confident.

Reflect that your audience will not hurt you. If Beecher in Liverpool

had spoken behind a wire screen he would have invited the audience to

throw the over-ripe missiles with which they were loaded; but he was a

man, confronted his hostile hearers fearlessly--and won them.

In facing your audience, pause a moment and look them over--a hundred

chances to one they want you to succeed, for what man is so foolish as

to spend his time, perhaps his money, in the hope that you will waste

his investment by talking dully?

_Concluding Hints_

Do not make haste to begin--haste shows lack of control.

Do not apologize. It ought not to be necessary; and if it is, it will

not help. Go straight ahead.

Take a deep breath, relax, and begin in a quiet conversational tone as

though you were speaking to one large friend. You will not find it half

so bad as you imagined; really, it is like taking a cold plunge: after

you are in, the water is fine. In fact, having spoken a few times you

will even anticipate the plunge with exhilaration. To stand before an

audience and make them think your thoughts after you is one of the

greatest pleasures you can ever know. Instead of fearing it, you ought

to be as anxious as the fox hounds straining at their leashes, or the

race horses tugging at their reins.

So cast out fear, for fear is cowardly--when it is not mastered. The

bravest know fear, but they do not yield to it. Face your audience

pluckily--if your knees quake, _MAKE_ them stop. In your audience lies

some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go win it. Suppose

Charles Martell had been afraid to hammer the Saracen at Tours; suppose

Columbus had feared to venture out into the unknown West; suppose our

forefathers had been too timid to oppose the tyranny of George the

Third; suppose that any man who ever did anything worth while had been a

coward! The world owes its progress to the men who have dared, and you

must dare to speak the effective word that is in your heart to

speak--for often it requires courage to utter a single sentence. But

remember that men erect no monuments and weave no laurels for those who

fear to do what they can.

Is all this unsympathetic, do you say?

Man, what you need is not sympathy, but a push. No one doubts that

temperament and nerves and illness and even praiseworthy modesty may,

singly or combined, cause the speaker's cheek to blanch before an

audience, but neither can any one doubt that coddling will magnify this

weakness. The victory lies in a fearless frame of mind. Prof. Walter

Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by

mental attitude even than by mental capacity." Banish the fear-attitude;

acquire the confident attitude. And remember that the only way to

acquire it is--_to acquire it_.

In this foundation chapter we have tried to strike the tone of much that

is to follow. Many of these ideas will be amplified and enforced in a

more specific way; but through all these chapters on an art which Mr.

Gladstone believed to be more powerful than the public press, the note

of _justifiable self-confidence_ must sound again and again.

1. What is the cause of self-consciousness?

2. Why are animals free from it?

3. What is your observation regarding self-consciousness in children?

4. Why are you free from it under the stress of unusual excitement?

5. How does moderate excitement affect you?

6. What are the two fundamental requisites for the acquiring of

self-confidence? Which is the more important?

7. What effect does confidence on the part of the speaker have on the

audience?

8. Write out a two-minute speech on "Confidence and Cowardice."

9. What effect do habits of thought have on confidence? In this

connection read the chapter on "Right Thinking and Personality."

10. Write out very briefly any experience you may have had involving the

teachings of this chapter.

11. Give a three-minute talk on "Stage-Fright," including a (kindly)

imitation of two or more victims.

One day Ennui was born from Uniformity.

--MOTTE.

Our English has changed with the years so that many words now connote

more than they did originally. This is true of the word _monotonous_.

From "having but one tone," it has come to mean more broadly, "lack of

variation."

The monotonous speaker not only drones along in the same volume and

pitch of tone but uses always the same emphasis, the same speed, the

same thoughts--or dispenses with thought altogether.

Monotony, the cardinal and most common sin of the public speaker, is not

a transgression--it is rather a sin of omission, for it consists in

living up to the confession of the Prayer Book: "We have left undone

those things we ought to have done."

Emerson says, "The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one

object from the embarrassing variety." That is just what the monotonous

speaker fails to do--he does _not_ detach one thought or phrase from

another, they are all expressed in the same manner.