u 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 sees journalism
leave vernalism at the post.

For whereas Spring's couriers were once the evidence of our
finer senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.

The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the
maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along
the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird,
the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St.
Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the
regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the
pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug
Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by
Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and
the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first
crack of the ice jamb in the Allegheny River, the finding of a
violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round
Corners--these are the advanced signs of the burgeoning season
that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing
but winter upon his dreary fields.

But these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart.
When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is
Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the fi