FOURTH SERIES--SPEAKING EXERCISES
Is it really necessary to point out what a weight readiness of speech has in bringing about the success of any undertaking?
The man who can make a clever and forceful speech will always convince his hearers, whatever may be the cause he pleads.
Do we not see criminals acquitted every day solely because of the eloquence of their lawyers?
Have we not often been witnesses to the defeat of entirely honest people who, from lack of ability to put up a good argument, allow themselves to be convicted of negligence or of carelessness, if of nothing worse?
Eloquence, or at least a certain facility of speech, is one of the gifts of the man of poise.
One reason for this is that his mind is always fixt upon the object he wishes to attain by his arguments, which eliminates all wandering of the thoughts.
But there is another reason, a purely physical one. The emotions experienced by the timid are quite unknown to him and he is not the victim of any of the physical inhibitions which, in affecting the clearness of their powers of speech, tend to reduce them to confusion.
Stammering, stuttering, and all the other ordinary disabilities of the speaker, can almost without exception be attributed to timidity and to the nervousness of which it is the cause.