Thinking before You Speak.  While students may feel that the steps outlined here demand a great deal of preparation before the final speech is delivered, the explanation may be given that after all, this careful preparation merely carries out the homely adage—­think before you speak.  If there were more thinking there would be at once better speaking.  Anybody can talk.  The purpose of studying is to make one a better speaker.  The anticipation of some relief may be entertained, for it is comforting to know that after one has followed the processes here explained, they move more rapidly, so that after a time they may become almost simultaneous up to the completion of the one just discussed—­planning the speech.  It is also worth knowing that none of this preliminary work is actually lost.  Nor is it unseen.  It appears in the speech itself.  The reward for all its apparent slowness and exacting deliberation is in the clearness, the significance of the speech, its reception by the audience, its effect upon them, and the knowledge by the speaker himself that his efforts are producing results in his accomplishments.

All speakers plan carefully for speeches long in advance.

A famous alumnus of Yale was invited to attend a banquet of Harvard graduates.  Warned that he must “speak for his dinner” he prepared more than a dozen possible beginnings not knowing of course, in what manner the toastmaster would call upon him.  The remainder of his speech was as carefully planned, although not with so many possible choices.  Note that from each possible opening to the body of the speech he had to evolve a graceful transition.

Edmund Burke, in his great speech on conciliation with the American colonies, related that some time before, a friend had urged him to speak upon this matter, but he had hesitated.  True, he had gone so far as to throw “my thoughts into a sort of parliamentary form”—­that is, he made a plan or an outline, but the passage of a certain bill by the House of Commons seemed to have taken away forever the chance of his using the material.  The bill, however, was returned from the House of Lords with an amendment and in the resulting debate he delivered the speech he had already planned.

Daniel Webster said that his reply to Hayne had been lying in his desk for months already planned, merely waiting the opportunity or need for its delivery.

Henry Ward Beecher, whose need for preliminary preparation was reduced to its lowest terms, and who himself was almost an instantaneous extemporizer, recognized the need for careful planning by young speakers and warned them against “the temptation to slovenliness in workmanship, to careless and inaccurate statement, to repetition, to violation of good taste.”

Slovenliness in planning is as bad as slovenliness in expression.

EXERCISES

Choose any topic suggested in this book.  Make a short preliminary plan of a speech upon it.  Present it to the class.  Consider it from the following requirements: