speak on that subject than on a more popular one concerning which he has only hearsay information.

CHOOSING A THEME.

Choosing a theme is of such importance that much attention should be given to it, both by those who arrange the toasts and those who are asked to respond. Committees generally allow a freedom of choice, and in this they should be encouraged. The speaker should see to it that the toast assigned him is one on which he can speak with conviction.

The subject being known, the speaker must give himself to careful preparation. Though he may be asked to make only a "few informal remarks," he should nevertheless be ready. The informal remarks which are most appreciated and which do credit to the speaker are those which are formally prepared. He who trusts to the inspiration of the moment for something to say is likely to disappoint both himself and his audience.

One is not justified in taking the time of the audience unless he knows what he is to say and how he will say it.

Whether the preparation be memoriter, part memoriter and part extemporaneous, or entirely extemporaneous, the preparation must be thorough. He who writes out his speech and commits it will be stiffer and lack some of the inspiration of the moment, but he will probably not exceed his time limit, and what he says will be more direct and coherent. He who commits parts of his speech and carefully thinks out the rest is certain to have something which is written the best he can write it, while in his extemporaneous part he can take advantage of such inspiration as may come to him. He who uses the extemporaneous method may not speak so well in his earlier attempts, but with a little experience he will probably be more effective than in training by the other methods. The extemporaneous speaker needs as much time for preparation as any other. His attention is given to developing his ideas, arranging them logically, committing his outline, and practicing his speech in his room It will not be said twice alike, but from repetition it wik settle into a somewhat definite form, into which he can

inject any impromptu idea. The extemporaneous method is most to be commended.

WHAT TO LEAVE UNSAID.

What Lowell said of writing, "the art consists in knowing what to leave in the ink pot," is even truer of speaking. The art is quite as much in knowing what not to say as in knowing what to say. The requirements of after-dinner speaking make especially important the art of knowing what to leave unsaid. The audience is the least critical any speaker has to address: it will applaud almost any sentiment, and it gives its noisiest approval to that which is jolliest or most entertaining. The evident approval of an after-dinner audience, however, is not always the judgment of next morning.

BE BRIEF.

Most after-dinner speeches are too long, both for the patience of the audience and the presentation of the theme. A half-hour speech should seldom be allowed. Speeches of ten or twelve minutes should prevail. It is said that the secret of Senator's Hoar's perennial popularity at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner was that his speeches contained one original idea, clearly stated, and one fresh story, well told.

The after-dinner speech should, no doubt, contain more stories than any other form of speech. But the stories should be fresh, at least authentic. That which becomes most wearisome in after-dinner speaking is to listen to the same old stories. A personal experience is often the best form of story to use; but to tell an old story as a personal experience is not only bad ethics, but is calculated to disgust the audience. Let authentic stories be told; historic incidents, or anecdotes of persons whose names are given, will fix the story and give it double significance.

AGREEABLE IN MANNER.

Turning from the matter of the speech let us consider the manner of presentation. It is to be borne constantly in mind that the chief characteristic of after-dinner speaking is felicity. To the agreeable matter one must add an agreeable manner. The audience is to be won easiest by charm of manner. The speaker is usually the

guest of the company, and to his host he will be gracious. At the beginning he will say some words of cordial greeting, or he will counter the pleasantry or return the compliment of the toastmaster. No palaver should be indulged. Praise should never contain adulation.

Such a beginning not only meets the amenities of the occasion, but it insures a simple, direct manner of speaking, which is the chief charm of after-dinner oratory. Whatever makes the speech seem informal adds much to its effectiveness.

If the Athenian orators feared to mispronounce a word lest they be hissed by the people, the American orators should have slovenliness shamed out of them. It is only fitting that with the beautiful decorations, sumptuous menu and perfection of service, which characterize our dinners, there should be elegance of speech. In after-dinner speaking fitness is effectiveness. Elegance of speech is always charming, but at a banquet it is peculiarly so. He who would be effective must strive for elegance. This quality adds not only to the effectiveness of the manner, but of the matter as well. As Thomas Wentworth Higginson says in a letter to a young contributor, "Half a life may be concentrated in a sentence. There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure houses to explore: a single word may be a window from which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Sometimes a word will speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter."

Such an injunction is no justification for the overornate oratory one sometimes hears at after-dinner occasions, which is a mere fury of words. No attention to form can take the place of a mastery of the substance; but in any effective after-dinner speaking there must be added to a mastery of the subject matter a careful regard for the right words.

To sum up: an after-dinner speaker is under no compulsion to attempt the role of a humorist. He is to be himself, discussing in his own most effective way a subject with which he is familiar. Stories should be used only to enforce points made. Second: an after-dinner

speaker should strive to say the fitting thing. To do so requires that in subject-matter and in manner he should be agreeable.

Public Speaking for Private

Citizens

BY ALLAN DAVIS.

(An address delivered at the Conference of Instructors in Public Speaking, at Swarthmore College, April 16, 1910.)

CAME here with a set of notes for a speech,

but yesterday's discussion was so fruitful

in suggestions that it has diversified my views and opinions, even though it has not changed them, and I am, therefore, obliged to speak without any notes at all. First of all, in order that I may not draw upon me the fire of objection which Prof. Kay innocently brought down upon his head yesterday, let me say that I thoroughly believe in technical instruction in public speaking; that I value very highly the lessons that may be derived from elocution and declamation; and that we, in the University of Pittsburg, have been doing all in our power to aid in the cultivation of the voice, in the placing of tone, and in training for symmetry of gesture. In short, we endeavor to do all that we possibly can do to enable the student to acquire facility in the details of the art which he is to practice.

Let me say, too, that I do not share the general ill opinions that have been so often expressed here about the so-called "old school." I do not know exactly what that old school is. I suppose that the young bloods of the times of Demosthenes called the generation immediately preceding theirs "the old school," just as young men of to-day look back upon the time of Webster and of Wendell Phillips, and, coming still nearer, to that of Robert Ingersoll as the "old school." If the term be meant to designate that period of oratory in our country between the Mexican and Civil Wars, let me say that he shall do well to speak not only with respect, but with reverence of an era with the names that we shall find there. Clay, Calhoun and Webster; Beecher, Seward and Lincoln are not names to be trifled with. That this old school had faults does not impair the general high

excellence of its achievement in speech. The orators. of that time may have erred, with the exception of Lincoln, a little too much, perhaps, in the direction of over elaboration; some of the minor men tried to make their little fishes speak like big whales; and there was a stateliness and formality at that time-an outgrowth, of course, of the manners and customs of the epoch-that would be out of key with the laconic strenuousness of to-day. Let us not forget, however, that if those orators erred in the direction of over-expression, we to-day may perhaps be erring just as badly in the direction of overrepression; that if they overcharged their periods with figures of speech and multiplied words for the sake of rhythm, we may perhaps be frowning imagination entirely out of our oratory, and building sentences utterly devoid of music.

To take up a kindred art of speech-acting. The few surviving members of the old school, Mr. Skinner and Mr. Dodson, for example, to mention no others, have histrionic virtues, the lack of which in the younger generation of actors is only too often deplored by the discriminating critic. If the acting of these two gentlemen is sometimes rhetorical, it is at all times clear; if it lack the fine shades and shadows of high fantasy and supreme intellectual conception, it always projects the character in vivid and unmistakable detail across the footlights. The enunciation and diction of these men is exquisite; and there is a charm in their presence which comes not only from the free play of fine personality upon the lines of the prompt-book, but also from a long schooling and exacting discipline in the technic of their art.

CONDITIONS IN OUR COLLEGES.

You see, therefore, that I am no blind antagonist of technic as such. But, on the other hand, I wish to call to your notice to-day a condition of affairs which has grown up in our universities and which I think must cause us to bring about some adaptation in our methods of teaching public speaking if that art is to take the place that it should take in a republic of intelligent citizens. The number of students in a university who expect to enter the professions of which public speaking