THE MAKING OF THE SPEECH
Although the use of selected speeches is best for effective drill in delivery, yet a student's training for public speaking is of course not complete until he has had experience in applying his acquired skill to the presenting of his own thought. Thinking and speaking should be made one operation. The principles of composition for the public speech belong to a separate work. A few hints only can be given here, and these will be concerned with the informal, offhand speech rather than with the formal address.
The usual directions regarding the choosing of the subject, the collecting of material, and the arranging of it in the most effective order, with exceptions and variations, hold in all forms of the speech. The subject chosen should be one of special interest to the speaker, one on which it is known he can speak with some degree of authority, because of his personal study of it, or because of his having had exceptional personal relations with it. It must also be, because of the nature of it, or because of some special treatment, of particular interest to the audience to be addressed. Either new, out-of-the-way subjects, or new, fresh phases of old subjects are usually interesting. The subject must be limited in its comprehensiveness to suit the time allowed for speaking, and the title of the speech should be so phrased as to indicate exactly what the subject, or the part of a subject, is to be. To this carefully limited and defined subject, the speaker should rigidly adhere.
How to find a subject is generally a topic on which students are advised. Though it is often a necessity to hunt for a suitable special topic on which to speak, the student should know that when he gets outside the classroom, he will find that he will not be invited to speak because he is ready at finding subjects and clever in speech. It is not strange, in view of the many advertisements that reach young men, offering methods of home training, or promising sure success from this or that special method of schooling, that they may come to believe that any one has only to learn to stand up boldly on a platform, and with voice and gesture exercise some mysterious sort of magical control over an audience, and his success as an orator is secure. They will find that their time and money have been wasted, so far as public speaking is concerned, unless, having at the start some native ability, they have secured, in addition, a kind of training that is fundamental. A man is wanted as a speaker primarily because he stands for something; because he has done some noteworthy work. His subjects for discussion arise out of his personal interests, and, to a large extent, his method of treatment will be determined by his relation to these subjects. A young man may well be advised, then, not simply how to choose and how to present a subject, but first to secure a good mental training, and then to find for himself an all-absorbing work to do. The wisdom that comes from a concentrated intellectual activity, and an interest in men's affairs, both directed to some unselfish end, is the essential qualification of the speaker.
In considering the arrangement of a speech, the student will do well to ask himself first, not what is to be the beginning of it, but what is to be the end of it; what is the purpose of it; and what shall be the central idea; what impression, or what principal thought or thoughts, shall be left with the audience. When this is determined, then a way of working out this central idea or of working up to it—in a short speech, by a few points only—must be carefully and thoroughly planned. Extemporaneous speaking is putting spontaneously into words what has previously been well thought out and well arranged. Without this state of preparation, the way of wisdom is silence.
The language of a speech is largely determined by the man's habit of mind, the nature of his subject, and the character of his audience. Students often err in one of two directions, either by being too bookish in language or by allowing the other extreme of looseness, weak colloquialism in words, and formless monotony of sentence, with the endless repetition of the connective "and." Language should be fresh, vital, varied. It should have some dignity. Much reading, writing, and speaking are necessary to secure an adequate vocabulary, and a readiness in putting in firm form a variety of sentences. Concreteness of expression and occasional illustration are more needed in speech than in writing, and the brief anecdote or story is welcome and useful if there is room for it, and if it comes unbidden, by virtue of its fitness and spontaneity, and is not drawn in by the ears for half- hearted service. The inevitable story at the opening of an after-dinner speech might often be spared. Although a good story is in itself enjoyable, yet when a speaker feels that he must make one fit into the speech, whether or no, by applying it to himself or his subject or the occasion, the effect is often very unhappy. A man is best guided in these things simply by being true, by being sincere rather than artful. On this same principle, a student may need some advice with regard to his spirit and manner in giving expression to his own ideas before an audience. He need not, as students often seem to think they must, appear to have full knowledge or final judgment on the largest of subjects. It is more fitting that he should speak as a student, an inquirer, not as an authority. If his statements are guarded and qualified; if he speaks as one only inclined to an opinion when finality of judgment is obviously beyond his reach; if he directly refers, and defers, to opinions that must be better than his can be, his speech will have much more weight, and he will grow in strength of character by always being true to himself. It is a question whether students are not too often inspired to be bold and absolute, for the sake of apparent strength in speaking, rather than modest and judicious and sensible, for the sake of being strong as men.
In the form of delivering one's thought to an audience, it is of the first importance that one should speak and not declaim. There is, of course, a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over the heads of an audience. A college president recently said, "Our boys declaim a good deal, though they're not so bad as they used to be. It seems to me," he added, "that the idea is to say something to your audience." That is what a teacher must be continually insisting on, that the student say something to somebody, not chant or declaim into space. And the student should be continually testing himself on this point, whether he is looking into the faces of his hearers and speaking, though on a larger scale, yet in the usual way of communicating ideas.
It is not desirable that men should become overready speakers. Methods of training in extemporaneous discussion that require speaking without thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches are spoiled by the last third or quarter of them, when a point well made has lost its effect by being overenforced or obscured by a wordy conclusion. Let the student study for rare thought and economy of speech.
Books on speaking have repeatedly insisted that after all