in a hat; and may thus have always at
your elbow a collection of satisfactory themes from which you may take one
at random. Or you may invest in language of your own selection the
substance of an address or sermon you have heard, or give the burden of
some important conversation in which you have participated, or explain the
tenor of an article you have read. You should of course try to interest
your hearers, and above all, you should impart to what you say complete
clarity.

In analyzing you should select as your topic a process fairly obscure, the
implications of a certain statement or argument, the results to be
expected from some action or policy that has been advocated, or the exact
matter at issue between two disputants. Any topic for discussion,
explanation, or argument may be treated analytically. Your analysis in its
final form should be so carefully considered that its soundness cannot be
impeached.

In arguing you may take any subject under the sun, from baseball to
Bolshevism, for all of them are debated with vehemence. Any topic for
discussion or explanation becomes, when approached from some particular
angle, material for argument. Thus the initial topic in the exercise that
follows is "The aeroplane's future as a carrier of mail." You may convert
it into a question for debate by making it read: "The aeroplane is
destined to supplant the railroad as a carrier of mail," or "The aeroplane
is destined to be used increasingly as a carrier of transcontinental
mail." In arguing you may propose for ourself either of two objectives:
(1) to silence your opponent, (2) to refute, persuade, and win him over
fairly. The achievement of the first end calls for bluster and perhaps a
grim, barbaric strength; you must do as Johnson did according to
Goldsmith's famous dictum--if your pistol misses fire, you must knock your
adversary down with the butt end of it. This procedure, though inartistic
to be sure, is in some contingencies the only kind that will serve. But
you should cultivate procedure of a type more urbane. Let your very
reasonableness be the most potent weapon you wield. To this end you should
form the habit of looking for good points on both sides of a question. As
a still further precaution against contentiousness you should uphold the
two sides successively.

In narrating you should, as a rule, stick to simple occurrences, though
you may occasionally vary your work by summarizing the plot of a novel or
giv