It was pleasantly exciting, too, to be surrounded, after school, by a group of interested schoolmates, each with a suggestion.
"Just keep your hands tight behind your back," offered one.
"I 'most choked to death in one debate," recalled Peggy Lee, laughing. "I had a cough-drop in my mouth to make my voice smooth and when it came my turn I was so scared I couldn't swallow it and there I had to talk with that thing in my cheek, and every minute or two it'd get out and 'most strangle me! Oh, it was dreadful. I don't believe that story about Demosthenes and the pebble."
"I'd get some famous orator's speeches and practice 'em. It makes what you say sound grand!"
"Don't look at anybody—just keep your eyes way up," declared Pat Everett, whose experience went no farther than reciting four French verses before a room full of fond parents, at Miss Prindle's boarding-school.
All of this advice Jerry took solemnly to heart. Gyp volunteered to help her. Gyp was far more concerned that she should practice the arts of oratory than that she should build up convincing arguments for her side of the question. From the Westley library Gyp dug out a volume of "Famous Speeches by Famous Men." Curled in the deep rocker in Jerry's room she searched its pages.
"Listen, Jerry—isn't this grand? 'Let us pause, friends, let us feel the fluttering of the heart that preceded the battle, let us hear the order to advance, let us behold the wild charge, the glistening bayonets, the rushing horses, the blinding——'"
"But, Gyp, that's nothing about the Philippine Islands!"
"Of course not—at least all that about the horses and the bayonets—but you could say, 'Let us pause——' and wave your hand—like this! Here, he's used it again," her finger traced another line, "it sounds splendid; so—so sort of—calm."
Jerry pounced upon anything that might sound "calm." So, after she had compiled arguments that must convince her listeners that the Philippine Islands should be given their independence, she tried them out behind carefully-closed doors, with Gyp as a stern and relentless critic.