Yet all of these may enunciate and pronounce their words well. Besides developing distinctness, we must gain control and adaptability of speech. It is strange, yet true, that many speakers never increase the force or volume of their voices when addressing a large assembly. They use the same quiet, even tone appropriate in addressing a single person. What is the result? They generally bore the audience, even though their thoughts may be brilliant. There is no excuse for this, as a few hours’ study and practice will change it. Above all things one who attempts public speaking must speak so that he can be heard. It is essential, therefore, to give ourselves actual practice exercises which demand force of utterance. Each student should demand of himself daily oral drill upon certain exercises until he has mastered his own particular difficulty.
The best means of accomplishing this is to use material from good literature. In the following pages, under several heads, is a variety of splendid exercises for practice. Commit all, or at least a part, to memory. Thus, while developing your speaking power, you will be cultivating a taste for the best that our literature affords.
To Develop Rapid Speech
Note: In developing rapid speech be careful to retain clearness and precision of utterance.
Now clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, like hail-stones,
Short words fall from his lips fast as the first of a shower,
Now in two-fold column Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee,
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling along,—
Now with a sprightlier springingness, bounding in triplicate syllables,