QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1.  Give a short speech describing the conversational bore.

2.  In a few words give your idea of a charming converser.

3.  What qualities of the orator should not be used in conversation.

4.  Give a short humorous delineation of the conversational “oracle.”

5.  Give an account of your first day at observing conversation around you.

6.  Give an account of one day’s effort to improve your own conversation.

7.  Give a list of subjects you heard discussed during any recent period you may select.

8.  What is meant by “elastic touch” in conversation?

9.  Make a list of “Bromides,” as Gellett Burgess calls those threadbare expressions which “bore us to extinction”—­itself a Bromide.

10.  What causes a phrase to become hackneyed?

11.  Define the words, (a) trite; (b) solecism; (c) colloquialism; (d) slang; (e) vulgarism; (f) neologism.

12.  What constitutes pretentious talk?

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

FIFTY QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE

1.  Has Labor Unionism justified its existence?

2.  Should all church printing be brought out under the Union Label?

3.  Is the Open Shop a benefit to the community?

4.  Should arbitration of industrial disputes be made compulsory?

5.  Is Profit-Sharing a solution of the wage problem?

6.  Is a minimum wage law desirable?

7.  Should the eight-hour day be made universal in America?

8.  Should the state compensate those who sustain irreparable business loss because of the enactment of laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks?

9.  Should public utilities be owned by the municipality?

10.  Should marginal trading in stocks be prohibited?

11.  Should the national government establish a compulsory system of old-age insurance by taxing the incomes of those to be benefited?

12.  Would the triumph of socialistic principles result in deadening personal ambition?

13.  Is the Presidential System a better form of government for the United States than the Parliamental System?

14.  Should our legislation be shaped toward the gradual abandonment of the protective tariff?

15.  Should the government of the larger cities be vested solely in a commission of not more than nine men elected by the voters at large?

16.  Should national banks be permitted to issue, subject to tax and government supervision, notes based on their general assets?

17.  Should woman be given the ballot on the present basis of suffrage for men?

18.  Should the present basis of suffrage be restricted?