A Treatise on Delivery WITH SELECTIONS FOR DECLAIMING BY EDWIN DUBOIS SHURTER ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ORATORY IN THE ALLYN AND BACON Boston and Ghicago COLLEGE 24253 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY EDWIN DUBOIS SHURTER. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE. THIS book is intended to help those who would speak well in public. It deals not so much with What to Say as How To Say It; and is designed to prepare students for subsequent training in formal oratory, debate, and extempore speaking. Most of the books that deal with the art of delivery belong to one of two general classes: (1) those containing generalizations that are all very good, but of no practical utility to the student of speaking; (2) those that are full of elocutionary directions and rules, that lean toward dramatic reading rather than public speaking, and stress mechanics rather than mentality. The treatment in this volume aims to be more specific than the one and less technical than the other. The mental requirements for speaking are emphasized throughout. Experience has shown that students should, at the outset, be put on thought-analysis, as is outlined in Chapter I; that the idea of thought-expression should be firmly fixed before the consideration of technique. Since public speaking is largely an art, no book of this nature can wholly supply a method or supplant a teacher. A few rules are given in the text, but these are rather principles to be grasped than rules to be memorized; and even then, perhaps, the able teacher can often make an example more effective without any rule. The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Professor Brainard G. Smith, for the use made of his Reading and Speaking; to Messrs. Lee and Shepard, for permission to adapt, in Chapter I of this volume, portions of Kirby's exposition on "The Mental Content of Language," Part II, Chapter I, of his Public Speaking and Reading, and also for permission to use the selections from Phillips's orations and lectures; to Professor Hiram Corson, for permission to quote from his The Voice and Spiritual Education; to Harper and Brothers, for the selections from Curtis's Orations and Addresses; to Funk and Wagnalls Co., for the extracts from Sheppard's Before an Audience; to Longmans, Green and Co., for the quotations from Higginson's Hints on Writing and Speech-making; to Houghton, Mifflin and Co., for the quotations from Emerson's Essays; to Mr. Elbert Hubbard, for the selections from his writings; to The Gammel Book Co., of Austin, Texas, for permission to reprint several selections from the author's The Modern American Speaker. If this book shall stimulate the young speaker to work, or make the method of working plainer and easier, or shall help dispel from his mind any erroneous and fanciful notions often associated with the art of public speaking, the author's object will be fulfilled. E. D. S. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, September, 1903. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE AND BASIS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING Public Speaking defined - Tests of the Best Public Speak- ing-What Public Speaking is not - The Basis of Public Speaking-Processes in the Preparation of an Address for Delivery Selections for Practice: Conservatism; The PAGE The Importance and the Possibility of Voice Culture How Speech is effected-Breathing - Pure Tone - Exercises Definition of Terms - Importance of Correct Pronun- ciation - Faults of Pronunciation - Tests of Good Pro- nunciation List of Words frequently mispronounced- Importance of Distinct Enunciation - The Need of an Exaggerated Enunciation in Public Speech - Faults in |