“Practise, practise, PRACTISE in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practise in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water.
You must learn to speak by speaking.
Blacksmiths sometimes twist a rope tight around the nose of a horse, and by thus inflicting a little pain they distract his attention from the shoeing process.
One way to get air out of a glass is to pour in water.
Be Absorbed by Your Subject.
Have the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be troubled in the beginning to find words.
. Know your subject better than your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.
Do not make haste to begin--haste shows lack of control.
Do not apologize.
It ought not to be necessary; and if it is, it will not help.
Go straight ahead.
The world owes its progress to the men who have dared, and you must dare to speak the effective word that is in your heart to speak--for often it requires courage to utter a single sentence.
But remember that men erect no monuments and weave no laurels for those who fear to do what they can.
Prof. Walter Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude even than by mental capacity."
Banish the fear-attitude; acquire the confident attitude.
And remember that the only way to acquire it is--to acquire it.
. Monotony is poverty, whether in speech or in life.
Strive to increase the variety of your speech as the business man labors to augment his wealth.
The gun that scatters too much does not bag the birds.
The same principle applies to speech.
The speaker that fires his force and emphasis at random into a sentence will not get results.
Not every word is of special importance--therefore only certain words demand emphasis.
You say MassaCHUsetts and MinneAPolis, you do not emphasize each syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over the unimportant ones.
Now why do you not apply this principle in speaking a sentence?
To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do you in public discourse?
It is there that monotony caused by lack of emphasis is so painfully apparent.
"Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice."
Charles Dana, the famous editor of The New York Sun, told one of his reporters that if he went up the street and saw a dog bite a man, to pay no attention to it.
The Sun could not afford to waste the time and attention of its readers on such unimportant happenings.
"But," said Mr. Dana, "if you see a man bite a dog, hurry back to the office and write the story."
Of course that is news; that is unusual.
From all this we may deduce this important principle: EMPHASIS is a matter of CONTRAST and COMPARISON.
To make a word emphatic, deliver it differently from the manner in which the words surrounding it are delivered.
If you have been talking loudly, utter the emphatic word in a concentrated whisper--and you have intense emphasis.
If you have been going fast, go very slow on the emphatic word.
If you have been talking on a low pitch, jump to a high one on the emphatic word.
If you have been talking on a high pitch, take a low one on your emphatic ideas.
Read the chapters on "Inflection," "Feeling," "Pause," "Change of Pitch," "Change of Tempo."
Each of these will explain in detail how to get emphasis through the use of a certain principle.
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