boys, we have a clear sky, and are making fine headway over a smooth sea before

a light breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land. But what means this sudden

lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud arising from beneath the western

horizon? Hark! Don't you hear distant thunder? Don't you see those flashes of

lightning? There is a storm gathering! Every man to his duty! The air is

dark!--the tempest rages!--our masts are gone!--the ship is on her beam ends!

What next?" At this a number of sailors in the congregation, utterly swept away

by the dramatic description, leaped to their feet and cried: "The

longboat!--take to the longboat!"

 

--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.

 

CHAPTER XVI

 

METHODS OF DELIVERY

 

The crown, the consummation, of the discourse is its delivery. Toward it all

preparation looks, for it the audience waits, by it the speaker is judged....

All the forces of the orator's life converge in his oratory. The logical

acuteness with which he marshals the facts around his theme, the rhetorical

facility with which he orders his language, the control to which he has attained

in the use of his body as a single organ of expression, whatever richness of

acquisition and experience are his--these all are now incidents; _the fact_ is

the sending of his message home to his hearers.... The hour of delivery is the

"supreme, inevitable hour" for the orator. It is this fact that makes lack of