actions. When your closest friend dies you do not throw up your hands and talk

about your grief. You are more likely to sit and brood in dry-eyed silence. The

Hudson River does not make much noise on its way to the sea--it is not half so

loud as the little creek up in Bronx Park that a bullfrog could leap across. The

barking dog never tears your trousers--at least they say he doesn't. Do not fear

the man who waves his arms and shouts his anger, but the man who comes up

quietly with eyes flaming and face burning may knock you down. Fuss is not

force. Observe these principles in nature and practise them in your delivery.

 

The writer of this chapter once observed an instructor drilling a class in

gesture. They had come to the passage from Henry VIII in which the humbled

Cardinal says: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness." It is one of the

pathetic passages of literature. A man uttering such a sentiment would be

crushed, and the last thing on earth he would do would be to make flamboyant

movements. Yet this class had an elocutionary manual before them that gave an

appropriate gesture for every occasion, from paying the gas bill to death-bed

farewells. So they were instructed to throw their arms out at full length on

each side and say: "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness." Such a

gesture might possibly be used in an after-dinner speech at the convention of a

telephone company whose lines extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but to

think of Wolsey's using that movement would suggest that his fate was just.

 

_Posture_

 

The physical attitude to be taken before the audience really is included in