possible._

 

_Committing the Written Speech and Speaking from Memory_

 

This method has certain points in its favor. If you have time and leisure, it is

possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are expressed in clear,

concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in perfecting one couplet.

Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material for and rewriting the "Decline

and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although you cannot devote such painstaking

preparation to a speech, you should take time to eliminate useless words, crowd

whole paragraphs into a sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches,

like plays, are not written; they are rewritten. The National Cash Register

Company follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization: they

require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk. They maintain that

there is one best way of putting their selling arguments, and they insist that

each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ any haphazard phrases that

may come into his mind at the moment.

 

The method of writing and committing has been adopted by many noted speakers;

Julius Caesar, Robert Ingersoll, and, on some occasions, Wendell Phillips, were

distinguished examples. The wonderful effects achieved by famous actors were, of

course, accomplished through the delivery of memorized lines.

 

The inexperienced speaker must be warned before attempting this method of

delivery that it is difficult and trying. It requires much skill to make it