better not to speak at all than to speak when entirely unprepared.

4. CONCLUSION

We hope that it has been made clear in this lesson that hard work is the foundation of success in speech-making as in other branches of human endeavor. There is no royal road, a lifetime must be given to general improvement, and for each speech the special preparation must be adequate. To be born with the "gift of gab" is no great blessing unless the "gift of capacity for hard work” goes with it. One who speaks readily but has no thoughts worth expressing is as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Furthermore, fatal facility has been the cause of more than one downfall. The empty word-maker may last for a short while, but truth lives forever; one cannot find the truth to give it voice, without effort in painstaking preparation.

ASSIGNMENT OF WORK

The written exercises in this entire lesson should be carefully worked out. Keep copies of the written exercises in your notebook.

First Day.-Select some well-known speech that appeals to you and write it out in full. Take such a speech as Patrick Henry's Appeal to Arms, Webster's Bunker Hill Oration, Wendell Phillips' Toussaint L'Ouverture, or Bryan's Cross of Gold. Then make a skeleton statement of its direct thought, thus separating the specially prepared matter from the general matter. When this is done, count the special references, and departments of information which appear in the general matter.

Second Day.-Turn to an encyclopedia and note the brief account of "The Battle of Bunker Hill, ""The Sinking of the Maine," "The Life of Lincoln," "Andrew Jackson," and other subjects which appeal to you. Select one of these,

and using the encyclopedia article as the material of your direct message, write out an interesting and readable speech on the subject. In doing this, do you find a wealth of general matter ready at hand to help you illuminate and embellish your message?

Third Day.-Carefully analyze your speech and determine the points of strength and weakness in your general preparation. Is your knowledge of one field the only thing you have to lean on? How may you enlarge and enrich your general stock of ideas?

Fourth Day.-Get the Eliot list of books or any other good list and check off those you have read. Then plan yourself a course of reading, seeking breadth rather than specialization in one line.

Fifth Day.-Start a record book of new things you learn by observation, conversation, and reading. This is not so much a storehouse for future reference as a means of informing you when you are falling behind and of encouraging you to systematic enrichment of your mind.

TEST QUESTIONS

These questions are for the student to use in testing his knowledge of the principles in this lesson. They are suggestive merely, dealing largely with the practical application of the principles, and are to be placed in the notebook for future reference.

1. What is meant by special matter or direct message? 2. What is meant by general matter?

3. What did ancient rhetoricians mean by the term "invention"?

4. How broad should the general information and interests of a public speaker be? Is there any relation between the width. of his intellectual view and the effectiveness he would have with many audiences of varying character?

5. Which would you rather have, general knowledge of many subjects or a thorough knowledge of one subject? Must you make a choice? Cannot the two go hand in hand? How

are they mutually helpful?

6. Can you make out a schedule of lines of improvement for general preparedness?

7. Have you ever heard of the five-foot bookshelf before? Have you seen the list of books included? Have you read any of the books?

be?

How useful would a card catalogue of general material

9. What would you call the index of thorough, general preparation?

10. Has a brief any relation to special material?

11. What are the three sources of special material mentioned in this lesson ?

12. What are the steps in concentrated reading up for the special material?

13. What is the best system of note-taking?

14. Is there any relation between hard work on subjectmatter and success in speech-making?

15. Who was William Wirt? Cromwell? Hayne? Eliot? Milton Toussaint L'Ouverture?

16. How would you go about it to gather material on the following subject: St. Helena? Labor Unions! Lockouts? Bunker Hill? Lincoln? June Apples?

17. What books do you like to read? Why? Do you keep a record of the books you read? Would it not be worth doing?

18. Do you know anyone with "the gift of gab"? Has he the "gift of capacity for hard work"?

LESSON 18

ATTENTION OF THE SPEAKER AND OF THE AUDIENCE

All who have endured dreary sermons will agree that it would be well for every speaker to study methods of holding the attention of the audience. But the need for the cultivation of the speaker's own attention to what he is doing, is not so obvious. Yet many faults of delivery, faults which irritate the audience and embarrass the speaker himself, are directly traceable to variations in his attitude toward different aspects of delivery. Ramblings and digressions are clearly the results of poorly regulated attention. So also are many parentheses and retracings of the line of thought. The inaccurate use of words as well as over-attention to words to the detriment of the development of the thought, reflect bad economy in the matter of attention. Indeed there are many things of this kind which may well be considered by a speaker, since they will reveal the necessity of organizing the attention along satisfactory and efficient lines.

1. GENERAL NATURE OF ATTENTION

No one has defined attention in a thoroughly satisfactory manner; yet all agree upon the existence of certain aspects. We shall not take time to settle the exact nature of this mental state from a psychological point of view, but we shall describe some of the undeniable aspects which are of vital importance to the speaker.

One cannot discuss the subject at all without first assuming a self and a non-self-that is, a person and