f my longest speech I finished a
somewhat difficult and elaborate peroration squarely on the last quarter
of the last second, Mr. Post's astonishment was so great that he burst
out with it to the audience. He said: "Mr. Lewis does not require a
chairman; without any help from me in any way he closed that speech
right to the moment. I don't know how he does it; it is a mystery to me;
I couldn't do it to save my life!"

In my debate with Clarence Darrow on "Non-resistance," at the close of
my long speech, when our excellent chairman, Mr. Herbert C. Duce,
thought I had lost all track of time and was going to need the gavel, to
his surprise, just as my last second expired I turned to Darrow and
asked a minute's grace to quote from Tennyson, which Darrow gave with a
promptness that scored heavily with the audience.

For some days before a debate I take care that my pocketbook is well
supplied with postage stamps.

Another matter of the very first importance is the taking of notes of
your opponent's speech and preparing to reply when your turn comes.
During the last few years I have met in debate, Henry George, Jr.,
Clarence Darrow, M. M. Mangasarian, Professor John Curtis Kennedy,
Eugene Chafin, John Z. White, W. F. Barnard, Bolton Hall, H. H.
Hardinge, Chas. A. Windle, editor of "The Iconoclast," and others, all
men with a national and many with an international reputation as
platform masters. But I have never been able to understand why almost
all of them, except Barnard and Kennedy, made almost no real use of
their time while I was speaking. The probable reason is that debating
has not been cultivated as an art in this country.

They sit quietly in a chair without table or note paper and are
satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some scrap of paper they
seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this
easy going method than any man I ever met.

With all deference to the names I have given I must insist that this is
no way to debate. It should be done thoroughly and systematically. For
my own purposes I have reduced this part of debating to an exact
science. I do not dread a debate now as I once did. My only care is to
see that I am master of the subject.

I will now give my latest method of note taking--the product of years of
experience and many long hours of careful planning. It works so simply
and perfectly that I do not see how it can be further improved. This
confidence in the per