What is the precise nature of the occasion?  How large an audience may be expected?  From what walks of life do they come?  What is their probable attitude toward the theme?  Who else will speak?  Do I speak first, last, or where, on the program?  What are the other speakers going to talk about?  What is the nature of the auditorium?  Is there a desk?  Could the subject be more effectively handled if somewhat modified?  Precisely how much time am I to fill?

It is evident that many speech-misfits of subject, speaker, occasion and place are due to failure to ask just such pertinent questions. What should be said, by whom, and in what circumstances, constitute ninety per cent of efficiency in public address.  No matter who asks you, refuse to be a square peg in a round hole.

Questions of Proportion

Proportion in a speech is attained by a nice adjustment of time.  How fully you may treat your subject it is not always for you to say.  Let ten minutes mean neither nine nor eleven—­though better nine than eleven, at all events.  You wouldn’t steal a man’s watch; no more should you steal the time of the succeeding speaker, or that of the audience.  There is no need to overstep time-limits if you make your preparation adequate and divide your subject so as to give each thought its due proportion of attention—­and no more.  Blessed is the man that maketh short speeches, for he shall be invited to speak again.

Another matter of prime importance is, what part of your address demands the most emphasis.  This once decided, you will know where to place that pivotal section so as to give it the greatest strategic value, and what degree of preparation must be given to that central thought so that the vital part may not be submerged by non-essentials.  Many a speaker has awakened to find that he has burnt up eight minutes of a ten-minute speech in merely getting up steam.  That is like spending eighty percent of your building-money on the vestibule of the house.

The same sense of proportion must tell you to stop precisely when you are through—­and it is to be hoped that you will discover the arrival of that period before your audience does.

Tapping Original Sources

The surest way to give life to speech-material is to gather your facts at first hand.  Your words come with the weight of authority when you can say, “I have examined the employment rolls of every mill in this district and find that thirty-two per cent of the children employed are under the legal age.”  No citation of authorities can equal that.  You must adopt the methods of the reporter and find out the facts underlying your argument or appeal.  To do so may prove laborious, but it should not be irksome, for the great world of fact teems with interest, and over and above all is the sense of power that will come to you from original investigation.  To see and feel the facts you are discussing will react upon you much more powerfully than if you were to secure the facts at second hand.