How may that boldness and confidence which is indispensable to an orator best be acquired? On your success in this direction, hinges all other kinds of improvement. So long as a nervous dread hangs about you, it will make the practice of extemporaneous speech painful and repulsive, paralyzing all your faculties in the moment of utterance.

You must acquire confidence in your own powers and be willing to trust to their guidance.

But it is not necessary that you should exhibit or even feel this confidence at the beginning of a speech, for it may then appear like boastfulness or egotism. It is enough if you then have confidence in your subject, and in the fullness of your preparation. You may then without injury wish that some one, that you imagine more worthy, stood in your place. But if this feeling continues all through the address, failure is inevitable. Many a man begins while trembling in every limb, especially if the occasion be of unusual character, but soon becomes inspired with his theme and forgets all anxiety. If your fear be greater and more persistent, keeping you in perpetual terror, it will destroy all liberty and eloquence. When laboring under such an influence, you lose self-possession, become confused, all interest evaporates from your most carefully prepared thoughts, and you sit down at length, convinced that you have failed. It is but little consolation to believe that you had all the time in your brain the necessary power and material to achieve splendid success, if you had but possessed the courage to use it aright.

There is no remedy for fear more effectual than to do all our work under the immediate inspiration of duty. This feeling is not the privilege of the minister alone, but of each one who is conscious that he occupies the place where he stands because it is his right to be there, because he has some information to give, some cause to advocate, or some important task to do. With such consciousness we can speak our best, and finish with the satisfaction of having done our work as truly as if we had performed duty placed upon us in any other department of labor. But if we aim simply at making an exhibition of self and of showing our own skill and eloquence, then the smiles and frowns of the audience becomes a matter of overwhelming importance, and if we fail we are deeply mortified and bewail our foolishness in exposing ourselves to such needless risk.

The lack of proper confidence is the great reason for using manuscript in the moment of speech. The speaker makes one effort to extemporize and fails. This is not wonderful, for the path to success usually lies through failure from the time that we master the wonderful art of walking through many failures; but instead of copying the schoolboy motto, “try, try again,” and reaping wisdom and experience from past efforts, he loses all hope—concludes that he is disqualified for that kind of work, and thus sinks to mediocrity and tameness, when he might have been brilliant in the fields of true oratory.

The exhibition of confidence and resolution by the speaker is a draft drawn on the respect of an audience which is nearly always honored, while the opposite qualities hide the possession of real talent. Hearers readily pardon timidity at the beginning of an address, for then attention is fixed upon the speaker himself, and his shrinking seems a graceful exhibition of modesty. But when he has fully placed his subject before them they associate him with it. If he is dignified and assured, they listen in pleased attention and acknowledge the weight of his words. These qualities are very different from bluster and bravado, which injure the cause advocated and excite disgust toward the speaker. The first appears to arise from a sense of the dignity of the subject; the second, from an assumption of personal superiority—an opinion no speaker has a right to entertain, for in the very act of addressing an audience he constitutes them his judges.

An orator needs confidence in his own powers in order to avail himself fully of the suggestions of the moment. Some of the best thoughts he will ever think flash upon him while speaking, and are out of the line of his preparation. There is no time to carefully weigh them. He must reject them immediately or begin to follow, not knowing whither they lead, and this in audible words, with the risk that he may be landed in some absurdity. He cannot pause for a moment, as the least hesitation breaks the spell he has woven around his hearers, while if he rejects the offered idea he may lose a genuine inspiration. One searching glance that will not allow time for his own feelings or those of his auditors to cool, and then—decision to reject, or to follow the new track with the same assurance as if the end were clearly in view—this is all that is possible. It requires some boldness to pursue the latter course, and yet every speaker knows that his highest efforts—efforts that have seemed beyond his normal power, and which have done more in a minute to gain the object for which he spoke than all the remainder of the discourse—have been of this character.

It also requires a good degree of confidence to firmly begin a sentence, even when the general idea is plain, without knowing just how it will end. This difficulty is experienced sometimes even by the most fluent. A man may learn to cast sentences very rapidly, but it will take a little time to pass them through his mind, and when one is finished, the next may not yet have fully condensed itself into words. To begin to utter a partially constructed sentence, uncertain how it will end, and press on without letting the people see any hesitation, demands no small confidence in one’s power of commanding words and framing sentences. Yet a bold and confident speaker need feel no uneasiness. He may prolong a pause while he is thinking of a needed word, or throw in something extraneous to fill up the time till the right term and construction are found. Yet the perfect remedy for these dangers is to learn the difficult art of standing before an audience with nothing to say and making the pause as effective as any phase of speech. This can be done, dangerous as it seems. It does require far more of courage to face an audience when the mouth is empty than when we are talking; the mettle of troops is never so severely tried as when their cartridge-boxes are empty; but all the resources of eloquence are not at command until this test can be calmly and successfully endured. An eminent speaker once said to a friend after a very successful effort, “What part of the address you have been praising most impressed you?” “It was not anything you said,” was the reply, “but the thrilling pause you made of nearly half a minute after a bold assertion, as if you were challenging any one to rise and deny what you had asserted.” “Oh! I remember,” returned the other; “I could not get the next sentence fixed quite right, and was fully determined not to say it at all unless it came into the proper shape.”

This necessary confidence can be cultivated by striving to exercise it, and by assuming its appearance where the reality is not. The raw recruit is transformed into a veteran soldier by meeting and overcoming danger. All the drill in the world will not supply the want of actual experience on the battle-field. So the extempore speaker must make up his mind to accept all the risk, and patiently endure all the failures and perils that result. If he fully decides that the reward is worthy of the effort he will be greatly aided in the attempt, as he will thus avoid the wavering and shrinking and questioning that would otherwise distress him and paralyze his powers. A failure will but lead to stronger and more persistent effort, made with added experience. Success will be an argument for future confidence, and thus any result will forward him on his course.

In regard to the difficulty of framing sentences in the moment of utterance, the experienced speaker will become so expert, having found his way through so many difficulties of that kind, that the greatest danger experienced will be that of carelessly allowing his words to flow on without unity or polish. It does require a determined effort, not merely to express meaning, but to pack and compress the greatest possible amount into striking and crystalline words. Experience also gives him such a knowledge of the working of his own thoughts that he will be able to decide at the first suggestion what unbidden ideas should be accepted and what ones should be rejected. If these new thoughts, however far outside of his preparation, seem worthy, he will give them instant expression; if not, he will dismiss them and continue unchecked along his intended route.

It is hoped that the reading of this treatise will increase the confidence of extempore speakers in two ways; first, by producing in the mind of each one perfect conviction that for him the better way is to adopt unwritten speech without reserve; and second, by pointing out a mode of preparation which will give as good ground for confidence as a fully written manuscript could possibly supply. To gain confidence which is not warranted by the event would only provoke a hurtful reaction; but confidence which is justified by experience grows ever stronger.

We have thus glanced at a few of the qualities which need to be cultivated and strengthened for the purposes of public speech. The survey does not cover the whole field of desirable qualities, for this would be to give a treatise on general education. Perfect speech requires every faculty of the mind to be brought to the highest state of efficiency. There is no mental power which will not contribute to success. The whole limits of possible education are comprised in the two branches already mentioned as concerning the orator—those relating to the reception of knowledge and those to its communication. The harmonious combination and perfect development of these two is the ideal of excellence—an ideal so high that it can only be approached. All knowledge is of use to the orator. He may not have occasion to employ it in a particular speech, but it contributes to give certainty, breadth, and scope to his views, and assures him that what he does put into his speeches is the best that can be selected. If he is ignorant, he is obliged to use for a discourse on any subject not that material which is the best in itself, but simply the best that may happen to be known to him, and he cannot be sure that something far more suitable is not overlooked.

The communicating faculties are, if possible, still more important. A great part of the value even of a diamond depends upon its polish and setting, and the richest and wisest thoughts fail to reach the heart or captivate the intellect unless they are cast into the proper form, and given external beauty.

Let the speaker, then, have no fear of knowing too much. Neither need he despair if he does not now know a great deal. He cannot be perfect at once, but must build for future years. If he wishes a sudden and local celebrity that will never widen, but will probably molder away even in his own lifetime, he may possibly gain it in another way. Let him learn a few of the externals of elocution, and then, with great care, or by the free use of the materials of others, prepare a few finely worded discourses, and recite or declaim them over and over again as often as he can find a new audience. He may not gain as much applause as he desires by this method, but it will be sufficiently evanescent. He will not grow up to the measure of real greatness, but become daily more dwarfed and stereotyped in intellect.

The following quotation contains a good example of the seductive but misleading methods sometimes held up before the young orator: “They talk,” said Tom Marshall to an intimate friend, “of my astonishing bursts of eloquence, and doubtless imagine it is my genius bubbling over. It is nothing of the sort. I’ll tell you how I do it: I select a subject and study it from the ground up. When I have mastered it fully, I write a speech on it. Then I take a walk and come back, and revise and correct. In a few days I subject it to another pruning, and then recopy it. Next I add the finishing touches, round it off with graceful periods, and commit it to memory. Then I speak it in the fields, in my father’s lawn, and before my mirror, until gesture and delivery are perfect. It sometimes takes me six weeks or two months to get up a speech. When I am prepared I come to town. I generally select a court day, when there is sure to be a crowd. I am called on for a speech, and am permitted to select my own subject. I speak my piece. It astonishes the people, as I intended it should, and they go away marveling at my power of oratory. They call it genius, but it is the hardest kind of work.”

No objection is made to the quantity of work thus described, but might not the same amount be expended in more profitable directions? A speech thus prepared was a mere trick intended to astonish the people. Sometimes the great Daniel Webster took equal pains in the verbal expression of some worthy thought, which was afterward held in the grasp of a powerful memory until a fitting place was found for it in some masterly speech. The difference between the two processes is greater than seems at first glance. Marshall’s plan was like a beautiful garment thrown over a clothes dummy in a shop window; Webster’s, like the same garment, worn for comfort and ornament by a living man.

It is better that the speaker should “intermeddle with all knowledge,” and make the means of communicating his thoughts as perfect as possible. Then out of the fullness of his treasure, let him talk to the people with an adequate purpose in view, and if no sudden acclaim greets him, he will be weighty and influential from the first, and each passing year will add to his power.