state of servitude, an utter unimportance, and other things which it would be difficult to state off-hand. The average speaker may occasionally originate a telling simile or metaphor on the spur of the moment, but a little premeditation on three or four apt figures for any given address is advisable for the inexperienced. It is well to note, moreover, that some of the most effective figures used in speaking are borrowed, wholly or in part, from literature. The new relationship supplied by the speaker affords a positive touch of originality, as in the figure, "The promises of the honorable member are like the chaff which the wind driveth away." The student will do well to note for future use any especially happy figures which he meets in his reading, always avoiding those which are hackneyed, over-elaborate, or far-fetched.

II. Wit and Humor

Wit and humor is a more difficult subject to deal with, and in the present limited scope it is possible to attempt only the most general discussion. This may, nevertheless, be suggestive in helping the student to apply his own sense of wit and humor to speaking. In the first placeand this is often not realized-there is rarely a speech of such grave import that it does not gain by a touch of humor here and there. Even the

so-called "highbrow" audience relishes it, and no matter how serious the speaker's mission may be, he is wise if he serves his heavy courses with a little sauce. This may consist of a humorous anecdote or incident, a passage of clever dialogue, or a witty turn of expression. Such means of enlivening a speech afford what the writers of drama call "relief" or "comic relief"; and the average speech needs it quite as much as "Macbeth" needs the tipsy porter. "Relief" should never be long sustained for brevity is truly the soul of it. Furthermore, it might better be omitted altogether than to seem forced or dragged in for the mere sake of a laugh. This means that the humorous bit should always arise, or seem to arise, naturally in the course of the discussion. This does not mean that it must necessarily have a pertinent bearing on the topic. Notice, for example, how easily a touch of irrelevant humor is injected into the following passage from one of President Wilson's speeches.

"I have sometimes reflected on the lack of a body of public opinion in our cities, and once I contrasted the habits of the city man with those of the countryman in a way which got me into trouble. I described what a man in a city generally did when he got into a public vehicle or sat in a public place. He doesn't talk to anybody, but he plunges his head into a newspaper and

presently experiences a reaction which he calls his opinion, but which is not an opinion at all, being merely the impression that a piece of news or an editorial has made upon him. He cannot be said to be participating in public opinion at all until he has laid his mind alongside the minds of his neighbors and discussed with them the incidents of the day and the tendencies of the time.

"Where I got into trouble was, that I ventured on a comparison. I said that public opinion was not typified on the streets of a busy city, but was typified around the stove in a country store where men sat and probably chewed tobacco and spat into a sawdust box, and made up, before they got through, what was the neighborhood opinion both about persons and events; and then, inadvertently, I added this philosophical reflection, that, whatever might be said against the chewing of tobacco, this at least could be said for it: that it gave a man time to think between sentences. Ever since then I have been represented, particularly in the advertisements of tobacco firms, as in favor of the use of chewing tobacco!"

In the above passage, the foundation for the humorous sally is laid with the sentence, "Where I got into trouble was that I ventured on a comparison." After that, it is smooth going. From this suggestion the student of speaking may note that even purely humorous anecdotes or incidents

can usually be brought in gracefully by a little care in phrasing a transitional sentence which leads from the serious matter into the subject of the pleasantry.

A clever presentation of an idea, or a witty phrase or epithet serves much the same purpose as the touch of humor. For example, a recent speaker said, "Many nice things have been remarked of Christian Science, and I must confess that I have but two objections to it: first, that it is not Christian; and, second, that it is not science." Without venturing an opinion on the soundness of the objections, I can affirm that the audience was pleased by the neatness of the expression. In another recent address, condemning corporate wealth, the speaker referred to a board of directors as "an opulent and corpulent body of gentlemen." These two random illustrations serve merely to indicate the kind of expression which may be used occasionally, in addition to the humorous. anecdote or incident, to brighten the speaker's style. Without some such piquancy, a substantial speech is apt to fall flat-indeed, oftentimes. the more substantial it is, the greater is the fall thereof. The average audience can stand a considerable amount of fact, of logic, of the solid material which, as I have previously emphasized, must constitute the body of a speech with serious purpose. But it is human after all, and prone to

become weary, bored, inattentive or absent. If the great Burke had only injected some bits of pleasantry into that monumental "Conciliation Speech" perhaps history might have taken a different course.

structure.

III. Variety of Sentence Structure

A somewhat less striking, but highly desirable, means of attractiveness is variety of sentence The student will recall numerous ways of variation, but I shall suggest some of the most serviceable. First as to the order of parts; the usual sequence is subject-predicate-object or attribute, for the sake of clearness. But an address which proceeds thus from beginning to end becomes monotonous, just as if one were to speak without vocal inflections. Fortunately an occasional change of order does not confuse the listener; and it assuredly contributes, along with other variations, to his pleasure in hearing a speech. It is well, then, to begin sometimes with a phrase, sometimes with an adverb and again, with an adjective, object, attribute, or dependent clause. Furthermore, it is desirable to vary the declarative form now and then by an interrogation or exclamation. A third possibility of change is in the length of the sentences. The very long sentence will be generally avoided by the speaker,