Kleiser's Complete Guide to Public Speaking; Comprising Extracts from the World's Great Authorities Upon Public Speaking, Oratory, Preaching, Platform and Pulpit Delivery, Voice Building and Management, Argumentation, Debate, Reading, Rhetoric, Expression (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...will be invaluable. I know a public speaker about my own age who has never employed a note of any kind. But while this is a counsel for which, if you will follow it. you will thank me as long as you live, I am pretty sure you have not courage and selfdenial to make the venture. And I admit that some great preachers have been less vigorous. The late Mr. Wirt, himself one of the most classical and brilliant extempore orators of America, used to speak in admiration of his pastor, the beloved Nevins, of Baltimore. Now, having often counseled with this eloquent clergyman, I happen to know that while his morning discourses were committed to memory, his afternoon discourses Objection were from a "brief." A greater orator than either, who was at the same time a friend of both, thus advised a young preacher: "In your case," said Summerfield, "I would recommend the choice of a companion or two, with whom you could accustom yourself to open and amplify your thoughts on a portion of the Word of God in the way of lecture. Choose a copious subject, and be not anxious to say all that might be said. Let your efforts be aimed at giving a strong outline; the filling up will be much more easily attained. Prepare a skeleton of your leading ideas, branching them off into their secondary relations. This you may have before you. Digest well the subject, but be not careful to choose your words previous to your delivery. Follow out the idea with such language as may offer at the moment. Don't be discouraged if you fall down a hundred times; for, tho you fall, you shall rise again; and cheer yourself with the prophet's challenge, 'Who hath despised the day of small things?"' If any words of mine could be needed to reinforce the opinion of the most encha...