amusement, strange trials, offenses, accidents, escapes, exploits, experiments, contests, ventures. Oh, this curious, restless, clamorous, panting being which we call life! And is there to be no end to all this? Is there no object in it? It never has an end, it is forsooth its own object!

"God's Will the End of Life."

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

CHAPTER VI

HOW TO DEVELOP THE IMAGINATION

A public speaker should cultivate the habit of making vivid mental pictures of what he sees and reads. This is one of the best remedies for self-consciousness. It also develops the power of concentration, gives freshness and reality to a speaker's utterance, and greatly increases the interest of his audience. The attentive hearer keenly follows the operation of a speaker's mind, is inclined to see what he sees, and is quick to detect mental wandering away from the thought. The more vividly and accurately the speaker mentally pictures what he is saying, the more clearly and satisfactorily will his audience be imprest by his message.

Imagination, like any other faculty, can be cultivated by judicious practise. There is so much material on every hand that the public speaker will do well to choose subjects for practise such as he is likely to use. He should have special regard for mental pictures that embody harmony, beauty, and symmetry. He should endeavor to work out such pictures into the smallest detail, making them as complete as possible. This work of the imagination should become more and more selective, and less a thing of chance. Sir Benjamin Brodie says: "Physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to teach us the actual value and right use of the imagination-of that wondrous faculty which, when left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us

astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man, the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalis, nor would Columbus have found another continent."

Imagination may be defined as a mental image of something not present to the senses. When properly developed it enables a public speaker to summon before his mental vision experiences and observations of the past, and to live them over again. This imparts spontaneity and intensity to his words, and wins both the attention and the confidence of his audience. A well-developed imagination broadens the view of the speaker, quickens his sensibilities, and gives him a larger sympathy for mankind. If, as Carlyle says, "Man carries under his hat a private theater, wherein a greater drama is acted than is ever performed on the mimic stage, beginning and ending in eternity," how careful every one should be, and especially the public speaker, in choosing the scenes, characters, and plays to be presented there!

Begin your practise with a simple picture like the following:

1. The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation-the music of boisterous drums-the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they

love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses; divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms-standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves-she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.

R. G. INGERSOLL. "A Vision of War and a Vision of the Future."

Now close your eyes and recall the mental picture of what you saw and the order in which you saw it. Tell it aloud in your own words. What sounds did you hear? Describe the concourse of people you saw, the mother, the wife. Did you see the husband departing? Did you experience any feeling in reading this scene? Describe it.

Reread the extract and endeavor to get a more detailed mental impression of the picture. Again close your eyes and describe as minutely as you can just what you saw. Repeat the exercise with the following pictures:

2. Science and revelation concur in teaching that this ball of earth, which man inhabits, is not the only world; that millions of globes like ours roll in the immensity of space. The sun, the moon, "those seven nightly wandering fires," those twinkling stars, are worlds. There, doubtless, dwell other moral and intellectual natures, passing what man calls time, in one untired pursuit of truth and duty; still seeking, still exploring, never satisfying, never satiating, the ethereal, moral, intellectual thirst;

whose delightful task it is, as it should be ours, to learn the will of the Eternal Father-to seek the good, which to that end, for them and to us who seek, hides; and finding, to admire, adore, and praise, "Him first! Him last, Him midst and without end." Imagine one of these celestial spirits, bent on this great purpose, descending upon our globe, and led by chance to a European plain, at the point of some great battle; on which, to human eye, reckless and blind to overruling heaven, the fate of states and empires is suspended.

On a sudden, the field of combat opens on his astonished vision. It is a field which men call "glorious." A hundred thousand warriors stand in opposed ranks. Light gleams on their burnished steel. Their plumes and banners wave. Hill echoes to hill the noise of moving rank and squadron-the neigh and tramp of steedsthe trumpet, drum, and bugle call. There is a momentary pausea silence like that which precedes the fall of a thunderbolt— like that awful stillness, which is precursor to the desolating rage of the whirlwind. In an instant, flash succeeding flash, pours columns of smoke along the plain. The iron tempest sweeps, heaping man, horse, and car in undistinguished ruin. In shouts of rushing hosts-in shock of breasting steeds-in peals of musketry-in artillery's roar-in sabers' clash-in thick and gathering clouds of smoke and dust, all human eye and ear and sense are lost. Man sees naught but the sign of onset. Man hears naught but the cry of "onward."

Not so the celestial stranger. His spiritual eye, unobscured by artificial night, his spiritual ear, unaffected by mechanic noise, witness the real scene, naked in all its cruel horrors.

He sees lopped and bleeding limbs scattered; gashed, dismembered trunks, outspread, gore-clothed, lifeless; brains bursting from crushed skulls, blood gushing from sabered necks, severed heads, whose mouths mutter rage amidst the palsying of the last agony.

He hears the mingled cry of anguish and despair issuing from a thousand bosoms in which a thousand bayonets turn; the convulsive scream of anguish from heaps of mangled, half-expiring victims, over whom the heavy artillery wheels lumber and crush into one mass, bone and muscle and sinew, while the fet