ntain some good-natured bantering,
together with compliment, but always without sting. Those taking part
may "get back" at the toastmaster, but always in a manner to leave no
hard feeling anywhere. The toastmaster should strive to make his
speakers feel at ease, to give them good standing with their hearers
without overpraising them and making it hard to live up to what is
expected of them. In short, let everybody boost good naturedly for
everybody else.

The toastmaster, and for that matter everyone taking part, should be
carefully prepared. It may be safely said that those who are successful
after-dinner speakers have learned the need of careful forethought. A
practised speaker may appear to speak extemporaneously by putting
together on one occasion thoughts and expressions previously prepared
for other occasions, but the neophyte may well consider it necessary to
think out carefully the matter of what to say and how to say it. Cicero
said of Antonius, "All his speeches were, _in appearance_, the
unpremeditated effusion of an honest heart; and yet, in reality, they
were _preconceived with so much skill_ that the judges were not so well
prepared as they should have been to withstand the force of them!"

After considering the nature of the occasion and getting himself in
harmony with it, the speaker should next consider the relation of his
particular subject to the occasion and to the subjects of the other
speakers. He should be careful to hold closely to the subject allotted
to him so that he will not encroach upon the ground of other speakers.
He should be careful, too, not to appropriate to himself any of their
time. And he should consider, without vanity and without humility, his
own relative importance and govern himself accordingly. We have all had
the painful experience of waiting in impatience for the speech of the
evening to begin while some humble citizen made "a few introductory
remarks."

In planning his speech and in getting it into finished form, the toaster
will do well to remember those three essentials to all good composition
with which he struggled in school and college days, Unity, Mass and
Coherence. The first means that his talk must have a central thought, on
which all his stories, anecdotes and jokes will have a bearing; the
second that there will be a proper balance between the parts, that it
will not be all introduction and conclusion; the third, that it will
hang together, without awkward tr