Be careful in regulating your tempo not to get your movement too fast.  This is a common fault with amateur speakers.  Mrs. Siddons rule was, “Take time.”  A hundred years ago there was used in medical circles a preparation known as “the shot gun remedy;” it was a mixture of about fifty different ingredients, and was given to the patient in the hope that at least one of them would prove efficacious!  That seems a rather poor scheme for medical practice, but it is good to use “shot gun” tempo for most speeches, as it gives a variety.  Tempo, like diet, is best when mixed.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1.  Define tempo.

2.  What words come from the same root?

3.  What is meant by a change of tempo?

4.  What effects are gained by it?

5.  Name three methods of destroying monotony and gaining force in speaking.

6.  Note the changes of tempo in a conversation or speech that you hear.  Were they well made?  Why?  Illustrate.

7.  Read selections on pages 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38, paying careful attention to change of tempo.

8.  As a rule, excitement, joy, or intense anger take a fast tempo, while sorrow, and sentiments of great dignity or solemnity tend to a slow tempo.  Try to deliver Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech (page 50), in a fast tempo, or Patrick Henry’s speech (page 110), in a slow tempo, and note how ridiculous the effect will be.

Practise the following selections, noting carefully where the tempo may be changed to advantage.  Experiment, making numerous changes.  Which one do you like best?

    DEDICATION OF GETTYSBURG CEMETERY

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation—­or any nation so conceived and so dedicated—­can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who have given their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or to detract.  The world will very little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us:  that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    —­ABRAHAM LINCOLN.