Use your abdominal muscles. Make yourself interesting. Be conversational. Conciliate your opponent. Be logical. Have your wits about you. Be considerate. Open your mouth. Speak authoritatively. Cultivate sincerity. Cultivate brevity. Cultivate tact. As POINTS FOR SPEAKERS S far as possible avoid the following hackneyed phrases: I rise with diffidence Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking By a happy stroke of fate It becomes my painful duty In the last analysis I am encouraged to go on I point with pride On the other hand (with gesture) The vox populi Be that as it may I shall not detain you As the hour is growing late Believe me We view with alarm As I was about to tell you I can say no more In the fluff and bloom I can say nothing I cannot find words The fact is To my mind I cannot sufficiently do justice All I can say is I shall not inflict a speech on you Rise phoenix-like from his ashes What more can I say? At this late period of the evening I cannot allow the opportunity to pass I have already taken up too much time I might talk to you for hours Looking back upon my childhood We can imagine the scene I haven't the time nor ability One more word and I have done I will now conclude I really must stop I have done. THE BIBLE ON SPEECH OW forcible are right words! How To every thing there is a season, a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying. Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. Be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you. Know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. THOUGHTS ON TALKING 10 make a good talker, genius and learn T keeg insuf ing, even wit and eloquence, are ficient; to these, in all or in part, must be added in some degree the talents of active life. The character has as much to do with colloquial power as has the intellect; the temperament, feelings, and animal spirits, even more, perhaps, than the mental gifts. "Napoleon said things which tell in history like his battles. Luther's Table-Talk glows with the fire that burnt the Pope's bull." Cæsar, Cicero, Themistocles, Lord Bacon, Selden, Talleyrand, and, in our own country, Aaron Burr, Jefferson, Webster, and Choate, were all, more or less, men of action. Sir Walter Scott tells us that, at a great dinner party, he thought the lawyers beat the Bishops as talkers, and the Bishops the wits. Nearly all great orators have been fine talkers. Lord Chatham, who could electrify the House of Lords by pronouncing the word "Sugar," but |