IMAGINATION
The ability to make vivid mental pictures of what one recites is of great value to both reader and hearer. Everyone has this faculty to some degree, but few develop it as it should be developed for use in speaking. The clearer the mental picture the speaker has in mind the more vivid will it be to the hearer. Practise making mental images with pictures that appeal strongly to you. Try to see everything in detail. If at first the impressions are obscure, persevere in your practise and substantial results will surely come. Dr. Silas Neff gives a splendid illustration of this kind that can be effectively used for practise:
"A woodman once lived with his family near a shallow stream which flowed between high banks and in the middle of which, opposite his house, was an island. Half a mile up the stream was a dam which supplied water for a saw-mill a hundred yards below. One morning after the father had gone to the mill to work, leaving his wife in the back yard washing some little garments, their two little boys clambered down the bank and waded through the water to the island where they had spent many happy hours in play. About the middle of the forenoon, from some unknown cause, the wall of the dam suddenly gave way, the water plunging through and nearly filling the banks of the stream. The father in the mill heard the noise and looking out saw what had happened. Immediately thinking of his boys he dashed out, hat and coat off, on an awful race down the creek to save their lives. The water after leaving the dam flowed rather slowly for some time and he was soon quite a distance ahead, but he knew that unless he gained very rapidly here, the descent being much greater farther down, the water would overtake his boys before he could reach them. His wife suddenly looked up as the agonizing cries of her husband fell upon her ear. She rushed to the front yard. In quick succession she distinguished the words, 'Get the boys!' The father was a few hundred yards from his home. The water had reached the rapid part of the stream but some distance behind the man. The wife on hearing the words, tho not knowing what was wrong, jumped down the bank and ran through the water, shrieking to the boys. Just as she reached the island they ran to her and, without uttering a word, she took one under each arm and started back as wildly as she came. When half way over she saw her husband dashing out from the edge of the woods and the water not twenty feet behind him. They met at the top of the bank, the father grasped wife and children in his arms and the water passed harmlessly by."[3]
[3] "Talks on Education and Oratory," by Silas S. Neff, Neff College of Oratory, Philadelphia, Pa.