fittingly end the discourse. Happy are you if it shall be said of you, in the words of "rare Ben Jonson," "The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." How often is the fear quite of an opposite sort. Few speakers discern that length does not indicate depth. Better stop before you are through than go on after you have finished. Only makers of short speeches are invited to speak again. We have all heard speakers who were manifestly in the predicament of the lad who, having unwisely grabbed a dog by the tail, was afraid of the consequences should he relax his grip, so he called out to his comrades, "Some one o' youse fellers come out here and help me let go!"

Uncommon sense will be found the best teacher in all such difficulties.

Matthew Arnold, in many aspects of his mind a modern Greek, used to emphasize the Greek idea of unity of effect. He complained that many writers were so engrossed with perfecting the sentence, the figure of speech, the detached idea, that they lost out of their sight the object of leaving upon the mind a single, compact effect of the whole. Quite the same is true of orators. If the progress of the discourse has in any wise failed — oh, sad failure! —to keep clearly before the auditor the grand movement of thought, by no means neglect leaving in the conclusion a final compact impression by summary and enforced teaching.

To thine own self be true.

SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, Act I. Scene 3.

Speak with such simplicity that your humblest auditor must understand you. Winston Churchill declares in The Crisis: "The importance of plain talk can't be overestimated. Any thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or negro can grasp.'

Be explicit; speak things that mean something, and mean them when you speak.

Be brief. Pope wrote of his great master:

If you are in doubt as to the clearness of a thought, write it out and read it to the hired girl.

If you would convince your hearers, pin them down to your view of the question.

Don't leave the highway of your thought to chase a butterfly, be it never so beautiful. Macaulay said of Burke that he "almost always deserted his subject before he was abandoned by his audience."

Henry Ward Beecher said that "The secret of eloquence is truth."

If you would be eloquent, study the tastes of your hearers. To Juliet,

66 Every tongue that speaks But Romeo's name, speaks heavenly eloquence."

- Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Scene 2.

Don't be carried away by applause, it is "the spur of able minds, and the aim of weak ones."

Don't be disconcerted if an American audience is cold. With Theseus confidently say:

"Out of this silence, yet, I pick'd a welcome."

When the object of your discourse is emotional, use different means to attain it than when your object is intellectual.

your auditors — which you are unable to direct.

Don't mistake bathos for pathos.

To stand erect, grasp your scalp lock and pull straight up, drawing your chin in.

Don't bow as though you had hinges in your neck.

Look in the direction of a locative gesture, but not in the direction of a gesture for emphasis.

Don't let your voice become inaudible toward the close of a word or of a sentence.

Nathan Sheppard gives this advice for the care of the throat: "If you awake in the night and find your mouth open, get up and shut it."

Don't seek after novelty.

Carlyle says:—

"The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity."

The Hero as a Priest.

Don't permit the skeleton of your address to parade its bones. Clothe it with flesh so vital that it would bleed at the prick of a needle.

Don't think that any amount of talent can atone for habitual lack of preparation. Milton conceived Paradise Lost at thirty-two, but did not compose it until he had added, by twenty years of further preparation, to his already well-stored mind.

In A Summer Hymnal, John Trotwood Moore says: "If brain-workers would only do like cows, gather up their material as they walk around in the fields and woods and assimilate it while resting, they would have more brains."

Learn to think in good English and practice your vocabulary in conversation.

Rarely permit yourself to indulge in impromptu speech. Lowell makes one of his characters say:

"I made the follerin' observation

Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience."
- Biglow Papers.

Don't wait to dive for pearls of thought until you mount the platform. It might be painful to the audience.

Don't write too soon after getting a new thought; let it work.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson thus advises speakers: "Plan for one good fact and one good illustration under each head of your subject."

Don't be afraid to apologize if you must.

Shenstone compared long sentences in a short address to large rooms in a small house.

Don't let your words be bigger than your ideas.

Don't let your personality overtop the importance of your subject.