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

Our position is the most enviable, the most

      responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its

      duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we

      fail--if we fail--not only do we defraud our children of the

      inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the

      hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent,

      throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time.

      History is not without her examples of hard-fought fields, where

      the banner of liberty has floated triumphantly on the wildest

      storm of battle. She is without her examples of a people by whom

      the dear-bought treasure has been wisely employed and safely

      handed down. The eyes of the world are turned for that example

      to us....

      Let us, then, as we assemble on the birthday of the nation, as

      we gather upon the green turf, once wet with precious blood--let

      us devote ourselves to the sacred cause of constitutional

      liberty! Let us abjure the interests and passions which divide

      the great family of American freemen! Let the rage of party

      spirit sleep to-day! Let us resolve that our children shall have

      cause to bless the memory of their fathers, as we have cause to

      bless the memory of ours!

      --EDWARD EVERETT.

      CONCENTRATION IN DELIVERY

      Attention is the microscope of the mental eye. Its power may be

      high or low; its field of view narrow or broad. When high power

      is used attention is confined within very circumscribed limits,

      but its action is exceedingly intense and absorbing. It sees but

      few things, but these few are observed "through and through" ...

      Mental energy and activity, whether of perception or of thought,

      thus concentrated, act like the sun's rays concentrated by the

      burning glass. The object is illumined, heated, set on fire.

      Impressions are so deep that they can never be effaced.

      Attention of this sort is the prime condition of the most

      productive mental labor.

      --DANIEL PUTNAM, _Psychology_.

      Try to rub the top of your head forward and backward at the same time

      that you are patting your chest. Unless your powers of coördination are

      well developed you will find it confusing, if not impossible. The brain

      needs special training before it can do two or more things efficiently

      at the same instant. It may seem like splitting a hair between its north

      and northwest corner, but some psychologists argue that _no_ brain can

      think two distinct thoughts, absolutely simultaneously--that what seems

      to be simultaneous is really very rapid rotation from the first thought

      to the second and back again, just as in the above-cited experiment the

      attention must shift from one hand to the other until one or the other

      movement becomes partly or wholly automatic.

      Whatever is the psychological truth of this contention it is undeniable

      that the mind measurably loses grip on one idea the moment the attention

      is projected decidedly ahead to a second or a third idea.

      A fault in public speakers that is as pernicious as it is common is that

      they try to think of the succeeding sentence while still uttering the

      former, and in this way their concentration trails off; in consequence,

      they start their sentences strongly and end them weakly. In a

      well-prepared written speech the emphatic word usually comes at one end

      of the sentence. But an emphatic word needs emphatic expression, and

      this is precisely what it does not get when concentration flags by

      leaping too soon to that which is next to be uttered. Concentrate all

      your mental energies on the present sentence. Remember that the mind of

      your audience follows yours very closely, and if you withdraw your

      attention from what you are saying to what you are going to say, your

      audience will also withdraw theirs. They may not do so consciously and

      deliberately, but they will surely cease to give importance to the

      things that you yourself slight. It is fatal to either the actor or the

      speaker to cross his bridges too soon.

      Of course, all this is not to say that in the natural pauses of your

      speech you are not to take swift forward surveys--they are as important

      as the forward look in driving a motor car; the caution is of quite

      another sort: _while speaking one sentence do not think of the sentence

      to follow_. Let it come from its proper source--within yourself. You

      cannot deliver a broadside without concentrated force--that is what

      produces the explosion. In preparation you store and concentrate thought

      and feeling; in the pauses during delivery you swiftly look ahead and

      gather yourself for effective attack; during the moments of actual

      speech, _SPEAK--DON'T ANTICIPATE_. Divide your attention and you divide

      your power.

      This matter of the effect of the inner man upon the outer needs a

      further word here, particularly as touching concentration.

      "What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet replied, "Words. Words. Words." That

      is a world-old trouble. The mechanical calling of words is not

      expression, by a long stretch. Did you ever notice how hollow a

      memorized speech usually sounds? You have listened to the ranting,

      mechanical cadence of inefficient actors, lawyers and preachers. Their

      trouble is a mental one--they are not concentratedly thinking thoughts

      that cause words to issue with sincerity and conviction, but are merely

      enunciating word-sounds mechanically. Painful experience alike to

      audience and to speaker! A parrot is equally eloquent. Again let

      Shakespeare instruct us, this tune in the insincere prayer of the King,

      Hamlet's uncle. He laments thus pointedly:

      My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

      Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

      The truth is, that as a speaker