, until they have read
more history and more literature, until they have gained a little more
culture and ease of manner.

The way to acquire grace, ease, facility, the way to get poise and
balance so that you will not feel disturbed in public gatherings, is to
get the experience. Do the thing so many times that it will become
second nature to you. If you have an invitation to speak, no matter
how much you may shrink from it, or how timid or shy you may be,
resolve that you will not let this opportunity for self-enlargement
slip by you.

We know of a young man who has a great deal of natural ability for
public speaking, and yet he is so timid that he always shrinks from
accepting invitations to speak at banquets or in public because he is
so afraid that he has not had experience enough. He lacks confidence
in himself. He is so proud, and so afraid that he will make some slip
which will mortify him, that he has waited and waited and waited until
now he is discouraged and thinks that he will never be able to do
anything in public speaking at all. He would give anything in the
world if he had only accepted all of the invitations he has had,
because then he would have profited by experience. It would have been
a thousand times better for him to have made a mistake, or even to have
broken down entirely a few times, than to have missed the scores of
opportunities which would undoubtedly have made a strong public speaker
of him.

What is technically called "stage fright" is very common. A college
boy recited an address "to the conscript fathers." His professor
asked,--"Is that the way Caesar would have spoken it?" "Yes," he
replied, "if Caesar had been scared half to death, and as nervous as a
cat."

An almost fatal timidity seizes on an inexperienced person, when he
knows that all eyes are watching him, that everybody in his audience is
trying to measure and weigh him, studying him, scrutinizing him to see
how much there is in him; what he stands for, and making up their minds
whether he measures more or less than they expected.

Some are constitutionally sensitive, and so afraid of being gazed at
that they don't dare to open their mouths, even when a question in
which they are deeply interested and on which they have strong views is
being discussed. At debating clubs, meetings of literary societies, or
gatherings of any kind, they sit dumb, longing, yet fearing to speak.
The sound of their own voices, if the