Once in the street, he will not forget to carry his head erect, without exaggerating the pose, and will always walk with a firm step without looking directly ahead of him.

If this attitude is a difficult one for him when commencing, he can, at the start, assign a certain time for observing this position, and gradually increase its length, until he feels no further inconvenience.

The feeling of obvious awkwardness is a large factor in the lack of poise.

It is then a matter of great importance to modify one’s outward carriage, while at the same time applying oneself to the conquest of one’s soul, so as to achieve the object not only of actually becoming a man who must be reckoned with, but of impressing every one with what one is, and what one is worth.

FOURTH SERIES—­SPEAKING EXERCISES

Is it really necessary to point out what a weight readiness of speech has in bringing about the success of any undertaking?

The man who can make a clever and forceful speech will always convince his hearers, whatever may be the cause he pleads.

Do we not see criminals acquitted every day solely because of the eloquence of their lawyers?

Have we not often been witnesses to the defeat of entirely honest people who, from lack of ability to put up a good argument, allow themselves to be convicted of negligence or of carelessness, if of nothing worse?

Eloquence, or at least a certain facility of speech, is one of the gifts of the man of poise.

One reason for this is that his mind is always fixt upon the object he wishes to attain by his arguments, which eliminates all wandering of the thoughts.

But there is another reason, a purely physical one.  The emotions experienced by the timid are quite unknown to him and he is not the victim of any of the physical inhibitions which, in affecting the clearness of their powers of speech, tend to reduce them to confusion.

Stammering, stuttering, and all the other ordinary disabilities of the speaker, can almost without exception be attributed to timidity and to the nervousness of which it is the cause.

We shall see in the next chapter how these defects can be cured.

In this, which is devoted specially to physical exercises, we will give the mechanical means for overcoming these grave defects.

Just as soon as the difficulties of utterance have been overcome, and one is no longer in terror of falling into a laughable blunder, and thus has no further reason to fear, when undertaking to speak, that one will be made fun of because the object of disconcerting mockery, one’s ideas will cease to be dammed up by this haunting dread and can take shape in one’s brain just as fast as one expresses them.

Clearness of conception will be reflected in that of what we say, and poise will soon manifest itself in the manner of the man who no longer feels himself to be the object of ill-natured laughter.