"What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet replied, "Words. Words. Words." That is a

world-old trouble. The mechanical calling of words is not expression, by a long

stretch. Did you ever notice how hollow a memorized speech usually sounds? You

have listened to the ranting, mechanical cadence of inefficient actors, lawyers

and preachers. Their trouble is a mental one--they are not concentratedly

thinking thoughts that cause words to issue with sincerity and conviction, but

are merely enunciating word-sounds mechanically. Painful experience alike to

audience and to speaker! A parrot is equally eloquent. Again let Shakespeare

instruct us, this tune in the insincere prayer of the King, Hamlet's uncle. He

laments thus pointedly:

 

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to

heaven go.

 

The truth is, that as a speaker your words must be born again every time they

are spoken, then they will not suffer in their utterance, even though perforce

committed to memory and repeated, like Dr. Russell Conwell's lecture, "Acres of

Diamonds," five thousand times. Such speeches lose nothing by repetition for the

perfectly patent reason that they arise from concentrated thought and feeling

and not a mere necessity for saying something--which usually means anything, and

that, in turn, is tantamount to nothing. If the thought beneath your words is

warm, fresh, spontaneous, a part of your _self_, your utterance will have breath

and life. Words are only a result. Do not try to get the result without

stimulating the cause.