The Overexalted Manner.-The inflated manner of speaking is common because the speaker, desiring to be a participant in a great occasion, uses the manner of greatness though his subject matter and the situation itself may allow only for the commonplace. The opposite mistake-that of using too slight a manner on an important occasion-is fully as disastrous. A speaker who is addressing an audience tense with excitement or charged with deep feeling makes as fatal a mistake if he uses the manner of calmness and unconcern. To go before a large gathering and use the manner of the drawing-room or the office is to invite failure. More often than otherwise this mistake in manner arises from simple incompetence, the speaker merely lacking power; he has not the physical machinery nor the experience in speaking which would enable him to adapt his manner to the occasion. The majority of students will find that what ineffectiveness they reveal lies in employing a private manner for situations that are public. Some, however, will be found who, imitating the champion criminal lawyer of the home county, or the preacher who conducted the latest revival, will be using an inflated, glorified manner for situations that are rather tame and ordinary.

The Academic Mode.-One especial warning may well be given to college and university students. There is a manner of speaking appropriate to the campus that may fairly be given a classification by itself under the title, "the academic manner." It is the manner of dispassionate, calm, judicious reasoning. It calls for no heat or excitement, and seldom is accompanied by any energetic movement of the hand or even by much facial expression. It is the manner nicely appropriate to the teacher, who above all things else must show a detached attitude toward his subject matter; for the teacher must present truth in the calm assurance that it can be nothing else. The advocate, on the other hand, before the bar or on the stump, is frequently called upon to defend his truth with a suspicion lurking in his mind that some one else is likely to be waiting to show that maybe it is not truth after all. Consequently he is likely to think and speak with heat

and enthusiasm. But the college lecturer never allows his matter to run away with his manner nor his manner with his matter. This academic manner exalts control, steadiness, deliberateness, serenity, and calm. Yet it is, after all, only one rather narrow kind in the whole field of speaking; and the student of expression who expects to address non-academic audiences will find it to his advantage to learn the manners necessary for other types of occasions.

Academic Mode Hardly a Model.-Academic lecturing is very far indeed from what must be regarded as typical public speaking. Note the points of difference: First, academic lecturing is ordinarily from a written document or set of notes, rather rigidly adhered to. The typical public address, however, while it may be delivered from notes and from carefully planned ideas, allows itself freer range and wider excursion. Whenever college lecturing is a frank reading from a paper, it is indeed far removed from communicative public address. It is public reading, not public speaking. Secondly, the audience, being compelled to attend, whether they like to or not, do not provide the speaker that feeling of responsibility which is given by ordinary audiences. Thirdly, the audience in a college lecture is typically more attentive to its notes than to the speaker. As a consequence it gives back little inspiration to the man on the platform, who speaks too much as in a void. Such a restriction even gets so far from typical public speaking as is suggested by the difference between frank faces in the one case and the tops of heads in the other. There is little inspiration for a man on the platform in viewing hats and hair. Fourthly, the college lecture is usually an adventure in new ideas, fifty minutes of the unknown and the unexperienced. This is against all experience of successful public speaking, for the best speeches contain only a few new ideas made thoroughly clear and impressive through the agency of numerous ideas that are old and well tried.

Other differences could be found, but these suffice to show that lecturing to enforced audiences of students does not give the speaker the incentive toward good speaking that

he would have elsewhere and that it does not compel him to exert himself as he must under other circumstances.

IV. THE PUBLIC MANNER AS IDEALIZATION

Art Involves Idealization.-The fundamental reason why careful account must be taken of the manner of speaking is that good speaking, like any other art, requires a certain measure of idealization. It is an accepted canon of art that all artistic endeavor must be in some degree idealized, otherwise it is not art. Music is an arbitrary-idealized-selection of intervals and time; sculpture is an idealized representation of different forms of life; painting is always a carefully selected-idealized-combination of colors, lines, and composition. So, then, speech must be a careful and painstaking selection that is, idealization-of the material of thoughtcarrying: ideas, images, concepts, vocal sounds, bodily postures, bodily movements, gestures, and facial changes. Unless there is this selection, this idealization, there is no art, no effectiveness.

Idealization as Amplification.-This need of idealization asserts itself in public address and public reading as a matter of exaltation, or maybe we had better say amplification. It can with propriety be defended as in reality a kind of exaggeration taking plain conversation as the norm. Now in using this term exaggeration there is something of danger for the student who will not comprehend it aright. Let us illustrate it by describing the speaking method of a certain type of man we have all heard. He is always magnificent and weighty; when he addresses us he makes us feel that we are a crowd of a thousand people; his voice is loud, his resonance full and booming; he almost spells out every word, and his whole manner suggests that the occasion is very, very important. When he says the simple words, "How do you do?" or, "It is a fine day today, brother," you feel that whatever is so is so most tremendously. As Queen Victoria said of Gladstone, "He always addressed me as if I were a public meeting." Such a mistake is in using for private speech a manner appropriate only to public address. The manner itself, properly used, is excellent for a large crowd, even

necessary; but when uttered on the street or in private affairs it reveals itself at once as a manner we can then rightly call exaggerated.

But this manner of public address, proper enough for large occasions and for the stage, is more than a mere matter of making more noise for a large crowd. It is a matter of changed personality. The man who assumes to lead a company of people sets himself up for the nonce as more animated and more important than the individuals in the crowd; by the very fact of assuming to command their thought he makes himself a different person from the individual member of the audience. Accordingly, being a different personage from the individual, his manner must take on a different cast. He must act his part as leader. Hence a public manner is a manner more important than a private manner; it is more deliberate, more imposing, more exalted, more elaborate, even more pretentious.

A Public Manner Necessary.-So let not the student of public speaking fear to cultivate a broader, more expanded manner than he and his set are used to in everyday affairs. Speaking in public must be idealized to the extent that the manner of it shall not be too slight, too delicate. Moreover, when trying to give adequate expression to intense literature one is simply compelled to depart from a commonplace manner and get into a manner large enough to fit the case. Imagine trying to read Macbeth in a parlor tone of voice or attempting to give the right meaning to Lear with dinnertable manners and action. Most students of speech must expect at the beginning of their study to see themselves depart rather widely from the manner and manners they have used most of their lives. Otherwise they will be unimpressive and ineffective. Many will have to forget advice of parents and teachers to make themselves inconspicuous in public places, and will have to learn their first lessons in assertiveness, aggressiveness, and dignity. At first they will find it hard; but as soon as they realize that public speaking operates under a code distinctly different from the code that governs the family dinner table or the social gathering, they

will learn the way to acquire effective speaking manners for the platform and the stage.

SPEAKING IN PUBLIC AND THE CONVERSATIONAL MANNER

Is Public Address merely conversation uttered a little louder to accommodate a larger room or to be audible to a large number of people? There are those who say it is. Start out talking to two or three, they say; then when five more come, talk a little louder; when fifty are added, just a little louder yet; and when the crowd swells to a few hundred or a thousand, get up on a higher place and talk loud enough to make the whole thousand hear distinctly. Just a matter of making oneself heard; everything else is the same. This sounds plausible, does it not? Yet this needs looking into, for it probably is not quite accurate.

It is nearer the truth to recognize that loudness or quietness is by no means the whole problem in speaking, privately or publicly. There are many more things to worry about than merely being heard. An entirely new psychological situation arises: a man speaking to one person alone is in a different mood and frame of mind from a man speaking to ten, and is in turn in quite a different mood from one speaking to hundreds. The man speaking to a large number sees things differently; he is disturbed emotionally in a different degree and kind; his dignity, importance, and self-esteem are all changed. He is an object of a new significance to others, the difference between a mere companion and the leader of a great cause. All these things, and more, enter to compel him to speak in a different manner to a large gathering from that he uses to a small group.

How does this pyschological difference affect speaking? The answer is found in the principle of idealization, stated in a simple form. It is this: cleave to the Conversational Mode, but when the audience gets larger and yet larger, WHATEVER YOU DO DO MORE SO. Whatsoever makes for good conversation, use that faithfully in public address and in oratory, but do more of it; we might almost add: Oratory is merely bigger and better conversation! If you use distinctness of enunciation in conversation, be more distinct for