It is no longer necessary to argue for the recognition of vocal expression as a worthy and definite part of the curriculum of High School and College. Training in the spoken word is to-day, as never before, looked upon as a prerequisite to professional and business success. Henry Ward Beecher, speaking of the rightful place of speech culture, says:
A living force that brings to itself all the resources of the imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine thought and the divine arrangement ... and so regarded, it should take its place among the highest departments of education.
The majority of mankind, however, seems to feel that beautiful, powerful, and effective speech or the ability to read well and acceptably is the gift or attainment of the chosen few. Nothing can be further from the fact. Beauty is the normal condition in the universe in every realm of nature, and is attained by the simple effort of each thing to express itself in natural and spontaneous fashion. Likewise, clear, impressive, delight-giving, thought-provoking speech, and the power to read well are as easy to attain, and may be obtained in the same natural, spontaneous, unaffected manner.
Unfortunately in the past the teachers of these simple and natural arts befogged the whole subject by their artificialities, formalities, conventionalities and pretenses. Their text-books were filled with unnecessary and injurious rules, mandates, and requirements. And thus the pseudo-science of “Elocution,” with its stilted expressions, its fixed gestures, its artificial inflections, came into being. And the students who were eager to acquire the mastery of effective speech,—than which there is no greater accomplishment,—were intimidated, frightened away by the multiplicity of rules and theories.
Let us be thankful that the day is dawning when instruction in correct spoken language comes through the easy avenues of naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity and normal enthusiasm. Too long have we been discouraged by the glib aphorism that there is no easy road to learning. It is not true, if by learning we mean the attainment of the real intellectual things, instead of the sham, pretentious things that men in the past too often have called learning.
The authors of this book venture the affirmation that hardly one of the great readers, public speakers of power, or orators of influence have ever taken a lesson in the so-called art of “elocution” or heeded any of its straight-jacket rules. Daniel Webster has well expressed the difference between the man with a heart full of burning thoughts demanding utterance, and the one with a mouth full of carefully chosen words, and exquisitely modulated phrases, meaning little or nothing to the soul of him:
True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from afar. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,—they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is in vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, out-running the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence: it is action,—noble, sublime, God-like action.
The natively-eloquent learned to speak with power because they had a message, because they felt, were deeply moved, saw a vision, experienced a deep emotion, had a thought they strongly desired to communicate to others, and with a few fundamental, simple, readily-grasped principles before them, generally unconsciously exercised, they said their say, and convinced the world.
To state these basic principles with the simplicity and naturalness they call for, and to show the pleasure and power that come from their development is the purpose of the authors of this book.
By following these self-evident steps one who has something worth saying, whose heart is deeply stirred, will become a good reader, a fluent, convincing public speaker with little or no conscious effort. Just as a few simple exercises, regularly persisted in, produce glowing, radiant health and physical strength, so will these simple, enjoyable exercises, kept ever in mind and daily used, bring to one the glowing delight of reading to oneself with appreciation and intelligence, reading publicly with intelligibility and effectiveness, and speaking to a large or small audience with convincing power.