_1. Imaging in Speech-Preparation_

 

(a) _Set the image of your audience before you while you prepare._

Disappointment may lurk here, and you cannot be forearmed for every emergency,

but in the main you must meet your audience before you actually do--image its

probable mood and attitude toward the occasion, the theme, and the speaker.

 

(b) _Conceive your speech as a whole while you are preparing its parts_, else

can you not see--image--how its parts shall be fitly framed together.

 

(c) _Image the language you will use_, so far as written or extemporaneous

speech may dictate. The habit of imaging will give you choice of varied figures

of speech, for remember that an address without _fresh_ comparisons is like a

garden without blooms. Do not be content with the first hackneyed figure that

comes flowing to your pen-point, but dream on until the striking, the unusual,

yet the vividly real comparison points your thought like steel does the

arrow-tip.

 

Note the freshness and effectiveness of the following description from the

opening of O. Henry's story, "The Harbinger."

 

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does the city

man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her throne. He sits at his

breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens his morning paper and