the exercises try to make
your speeches sound natural. Talk as real people talk. Make the
remarks conversational, or colloquial, as this style is also termed.
What things will make conversation realistic? In actual talk, people
anticipate. Speakers do not wait for others to finish. They interrupt.
They indicate opinions and impressions by facial expression and slight
bodily movements. Tone changes as feelings change.

Try to make your remarks convey to the audience the circumstances
surrounding the dialogue. Let the conversation make some point clear.
Before you begin, determine in your own mind the characterization you
intend to present.

Situation. A girl buys some fruit from the keeper of a stand at a
street corner.

What kind of girl? Age? Manner of speaking? Courteous? Flippant?
Well-bred? Slangy? Working girl? Visitor to town?

What kind of man? Age? American? Foreigner? From what country?
Dialect? Disposition? Suspicious? Sympathetic?

Weather? Season of year? Do they talk about that? About themselves?
Does the heat make her long for her home in the country? Does the cold
make him think of his native Italy or Greece? Will her remarks change
his short, gruff answers to interested questions about her home? Will
his enthusiasm for his native land change her flippancy to interest in
far-off romantic countries? How would the last detail impress the
change, if you decide to have one? Might he call her back and force
her to take a gift? Might she deliver an impressive phrase, then dash
away as though startled by her exhibition of sympathetic feeling?

These are mere suggestions. Two pupils might present the scene as
indicated by these questions. Two others might show it as broadly
comic, and end by having the girl--at a safe distance--triumphantly
show that she had stolen a second fruit. That might give him the cue
to end in a tirade of almost inarticulate abuse, or he might stand in
silence, expressing by his face the emotions surging over him. And his
feeling need not be entirely anger, either. It might border on
admiration for her amazing audacity, or pathetic helplessness, or
comic despair, or determination to "get even" next time.

Before you attempt to present any of the following suggestive
exercises you should consider every possibility carefully and decide
definitely and consistently all the questions that may arise
concerning every detail.

EXERCISES

1. Let a boy come into the room and try to in