INTRODUCTION HINTS ON SPEECH MAKING THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON THE number of graduates going forth each year from our American colleges must be several thousand, since the number of undergraduates is more than twenty thousand. If we add those who are graduates of academies-those who have, as Mr. Poore generally puts it in his "Congressional Record," "received an academical education"-the figures will be greatly swelled. The majority of all these graduates will be called upon, at some time or other during their lives, to make a speech, as will also thousands of young Americans who have never seen the inside of college or academy. Perhaps a few hints on speech making may not be unavailing, when addressed to this large class by a man much older-one who has made so many speeches that the process has almost ceased to have terror to him, whatever dismay it may sometimes cause to his hearers. Certainly there are a few suggestions to be made which are not to be found in the elocutionary manuals, and which would have saved the present writer much trouble and some anguish, had any one thought of offering them to him when he left college. The first requisite of speech making is, of course, to have something to say. But this does not merely mean something that may be said; it means something that must be said that presses on the mind uncomfortably until uttered. Kinglake, in his "History of the Crimean War," declares it to be essential to a general that he should have some taste for fighting; for, he says, there are almost always as many good reasons for postponing an engagement as for risking it, and unless Reprinted with the kind Copyright 1898, Longmans, Green & Co. permission of the publishers. |