The Art of Lecturing Revised Edition

We are by this time agreed that the sale of the proper books at lecture meetings is greatly to be desired. In this article we shall consider the chief instrument by which this i...

Really great debaters, like the animal reconstructed, as Bret Harte relates, before "The Society on the Stanislaw," are "extremely rare." This is because the great debater must...

In traveling through the country on a street-speaking tour about the first thing a speaker observes is the poor judgement shown by the local comrades in the selection of street...

The tones of the speaker's voice fade away and are forever lost. Too often the ideas which the voice proclaimed drift into the background and presently disappear. This is the cr...

The English Parliamentarian, Gladstone, had the reputation of being able to say less in more time than any man who ever lived. The difference between a good and a bad use of wor...

The first in importance of these is to be "a full man." The lecturer should not deliver himself on any subject unless he has read about all there is of value on that question.

There are a great number of tricks that may be practiced in debate. They should be avoided by the serious man who is debating to defend a great cause. It is well to know the bes...

The platform has no greater nuisance than that interminable bore--the speaker who cannot stop. Of all platform vices this is about the worst. The speaker who acquires a reputati...

A trained capacity for classification is wholly indispensable in a course lecturer. We all know the speaker who announces his subject and then rambles off all over the universe....

A lecturer should realize his grave responsibility to his audience. Nothing but absolute physical impossibility is a sufficient excuse for disappointing an assembly. Have it tho...

The very first essential to successful course lecturing is--no chairman. On three different occasions I have tried to deliver a long course of lectures with a chairman, as a con...

Gestures should be carefully watched, especially at the beginning, when future habits are in the process of formation. They should not be affected or mechanical like those of th...

I had just concluded a lecture in Grand Junction, Colo., over a year ago, when a burly railroad man stepped forward and introduced himself. I forget his name, but remember well...

The value of first impressions is universally recognized, and an audience will be much more lenient with flaws that may come later if its appreciation and confidence have been a...

I met him at Napa, Cal., after the meeting. His name was Mueller; a tall, fine old German. He had been through the Bismarck "exception law" persecution and was well informed in...

A great lecture must have a great theme. One of the supreme tests of a lecturer's judgment presents itself when he is called upon to choose his subject. Look over the list of su...

The invariable rule as to the manner of this part of a lecture is--begin easy. Any speaker who breaks this rule invites almost certain disaster. This rule has the universal endo...

"The memory," said the quaint old Fuller, "must be located in the back of the head, because there men dig for it." Some speakers appear to imagine it can be found in the links o...

Many a meeting has been spoiled by an impossible chairman, and the lecturer who wishes to have his work produce the best result will always keep a keen eye on the chair, though,...

William Ewart Gladstone, one of the most generally admired orators the English house of commons ever listened to, spoke at an average of 100 words a minute. Phillips Brooks, the...

The close of a lecture is called the peroration--the word oration prefixed by the Latin preposition "per." "Per" has several meanings, one of them being "to the utmost extent" a...

For some time I have been besieged with requests to open a "Speakers' Class" or "A School of Oratory," or, as one ingenious correspondent puts it, a "Forensic Club." With these...