d a play fill a theater if the actors held
their cue-books in hand and read their parts? Imagine Patrick Henry
reading his famous speech; Peter-the-Hermit, manuscript in hand,
exhorting the crusaders; Napoleon, constantly looking at his papers,
addressing the army at the Pyramids; or Jesus reading the Sermon on the
Mount! These speakers were so full of their subjects, their general
preparation had been so richly adequate, that there was no necessity for
a manuscript, either to refer to or to serve as "an outward and visible
sign" of their preparedness. No event was ever so dignified that it
required an _artificial_ attempt at speech making. Call an essay by its
right name, but never call it a speech. Perhaps the most dignified of
events is a supplication to the Creator. If you ever listened to the
reading of an original prayer you must have felt its superficiality.

Regardless of what the theories may be about manuscript delivery, the
fact remains that it does not work out with efficiency. _Avoid it
whenever at all possible._

_Committing the Written Speech and Speaking from Memory_

This method has certain points in its favor. If you have time and
leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are
expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in
perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material
for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although
you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should
take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a
sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches, like plays, are
not written; they are rewritten. The National Cash Register Company
follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization: they
require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk. They
maintain that there is one best way of putting their selling arguments,
and they insist that each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ
any haphazard phrases that may come into his mind at the moment.

The method of writing and committing has been adopted by many noted
speakers; Julius Caesar, Robert Ingersoll, and, on some occasions,
Wendell Phillips, were distinguished examples. The wonderful effects
achieved by famous actors were, of course, accomplished through the
delivery of memorized lines.

The inexperienced speaker must be warned before attempting this method
of