is termed
reading style as usually taught in schools. When you practise in this
way it would be well to imagine an audience before you and to render the
speech as if emanating from your own mind. The student of public
speaking will wisely guard himself against acquiring an artificial style
or other mannerism.

Another good plan is to make short mental speeches while walking. When
possible it is well to choose a country road for this purpose, or a
park, or some other place where one's mind is not likely to be often
diverted by passers-by. Lord Dufferin, the eminent British orator, was
accustomed to prepare most of his speeches while riding on horseback.
The habit of forming mental speeches is a great aid to actual
speech-making, as it tends to give the mind a power and an adaptability
which it would not otherwise have.

The painter, the musician, the sculptor, the architect, and other
craftsmen search out models for study and inspiration. The public
speaker should do likewise, and history shows that the great orators of
the world have followed this practise. You can not do better than take
as your model the greatest short speech in all history, the Gettysburg
Address.

An authority on English style has critically examined this speech and
acknowledges that he cannot suggest a single change in it which would
add to its power and perfection.

You recall the circumstances under which it was written. On the morning
of November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln was travelling from Washington to
take part next day in the consecration of the national cemetery at
Gettysburg. He wrote his speech on a scrap of wrapping-paper, carefully
fitting word to word, changing and correcting it in minutest detail as
best he could until it was finished.

The next day after the speech had been delivered, Edward Everett, the
trained and polished orator, said that he would have been content to
have made in his oration of two hours the impression which Lincoln had
made in that many minutes.

It will repay you to study this speech closely and to wrest from it its
innermost secrets of power and effectiveness. The greatest underlying
quality of this speech is its rare simplicity--simplicity of thought,
simplicity of language, simplicity of purpose, and shining through it
all, the simplicity of the great emancipator himself.

This simplicity is one of the great distinguishing qualities of
effective public speaking. It is characteristic of all true a