be submerged by non-essentials. Many a speaker has awakened to find that he has

burnt up eight minutes of a ten-minute speech in merely getting up steam. That

is like spending eighty percent of your building-money on the vestibule of the

house.

 

The same sense of proportion must tell you to stop precisely when you are

through--and it is to be hoped that you will discover the arrival of that period

before your audience does.

 

_Tapping Original Sources_

 

The surest way to give life to speech-material is to gather your facts at first

hand. Your words come with the weight of authority when you can say, "I have

examined the employment rolls of every mill in this district and find that

thirty-two per cent of the children employed are under the legal age." No

citation of authorities can equal that. You must adopt the methods of the

reporter and find out the facts underlying your argument or appeal. To do so may

prove laborious, but it should not be irksome, for the great world of fact teems

with interest, and over and above all is the sense of power that will come to

you from original investigation. To see and feel the facts you are discussing

will react upon you much more powerfully than if you were to secure the facts at

second hand.

 

Live an active life among people who are doing worth-while things, keep eyes and

ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you