After these little mnemotechnical games we turn again to the sober realities of life. There are few things more important for the practical man of affairs than the ability to make a speech to a large gathering of his fellows.

You know from your own experience that people with the so-called gift of speech usually are leaders in their clubs and lodges and, most important of all, in business gatherings. There are many professions, indeed, based largely or entirely on speech-making abilities, such as the law or politics. With the growth in importance of the radio in influencing public opinion, the ability to make effective public speeches has become more and more desirable. Throughout our history the words of great speeches go echoing, words which swayed and influenced those who heard them, such as Patrick Henry's challenging, "If this be treason, make the most of it."

The first demand made of a speaker is that he be able to make his address extemporaneously, without manuscript. It is not too much to say that it is impossible to make a good speech if one has his eyes glued on a manuscript. The verbatim reading of a typed manuscript can never equal an extemporaneous address.

The speech read from script lacks the living quality of the extemporaneous address. In the latter the audience follows the speaker in his thought-processes and searches with him for the exact, apt word. The natural sentence structure is entirely different in speaking from that in writing, and the written speech has longer sentences than the address.

A listener can understand the trend of thought more easily when he has helped, as it were, in its formation. It is more difficult for him when he merely listens to sentences styled, beforehand, away from an actual audience.

In fact, the influence of the audience on the speaker should not be underrated. Even without interruptions or spontaneous applause or signs of disapproval, the speaker can read from the countenances of the audience how far they understand his address and agree or disagree with him. And he will be able to shape the rest of his speech according to their reaction. But if he wishes to get a reaction from his audience, two basic principles must be established: First, he must not be hampered by a set speech prepared beforehand, for then there is no chance for him to make changes and he cannot introduce a new thought because he cannot stray from his manuscript. Second, a speaker must look at his audience occasionally, to get the play of expression on their countenances. His eyes must be free to look at his public, not riveted on his manuscript. The speaker should realize that his eyes are as important as his voice, and that expressive eyes augment the impression made by his voice, or even replace it. The listener, who has to keep his eyes fastened on the mouth of the speaker, can also demand that the latter, in turn, occasionally look at his public, instead of merely reading from manuscript.

If the speaker is able to answer heckling without losing the thread of his discourse, he shows presence of mind and ready wit. For example, this little story is told about a certain eloquent American politician:

He was constantly interrupted by a man in the crowd who kept shouting, "Liar!" After about the twentieth repetition, the speaker paused and fixed his eye on the heckler. "If the gentleman who persists in interrupting," he said, "will be good enough to tell us his name instead of merely shouting out his profession, I am sure we shall all be pleased to make his acquaintance."

Such ready wit in answering, combined with the immediate resumption of a speech, is possible only for extemporaneous speakers who are not fettered by a manuscript. But the good speaker should catch and turn to his own advantage not only heckling but even the inarticulate responses of his audience.

The speaker who pays attention to the expressions on his auditors' faces very soon notices whether he is being completely understood or whether he need elaborate a part of his speech. From their countenances he can also see whether he is boring them by going into too many details, or whether, on the contrary, he has condensed a certain passage too much and should amplify it. But all this is possible only if he keeps his eyes on his public. So the man who merely reads an address in public has really no right to be called a "speaker."

The very same thing holds true for the man who has learned his address verbatim. There is nothing so devastating for the speaker as to lose his place. And the ever-present fear of getting stuck is bound to affect his speech. With a partially learned address, the speaker suffers the additional fear of perhaps not being able to find his place when his memory fails him.
There are many other reasons why the extemporaneous speech is to be preferred to the written manuscript. But let this aspect of the matter suffice:

In the extemporaneous address, the speaker always seems to be drawing from a great reservoir of learning. While he is framing his sentences freely as he goes along, he unconsciously gives the impression of having an inexhaustible store of knowledge, of which he has tapped but a small portion of what he really has at his disposal. Exactly the opposite impression is created by the manuscript reader. When a man reads a prepared speech, the listener unconsciously assumes that he has written down every little thing he knows about his subject—especially since the listener of course is no judge of the length of time he spent on it. The extemporaneous speaker therefore always seems to draw from wide knowledge, while the manuscript reader seems to have exhausted his information in preparing his talk. A good speaker should never confine himself to a manuscript.

When a speaker prepares and uses a manuscript, it is because he is afraid of getting stuck in his speech. This fear may be caused by sheer stage fright, or by apprehension of forgetting the speech with a consequent total loss of memory. I shall come back to stage fright in another connection later. For the present I would like to deal with the second possibility—fear of having one's memory go blank—and try to help the speaker who does not trust his memory.

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