produce moving-pictures, or music on the Victrola, would
have worked just as well then as they do today. It was ignorance of law
that for ages deprived humanity of our modern conveniences. Many
speakers still use ox-cart methods in their speech instead of employing
automobile or overland-express methods. They are ignorant of laws that
make for efficiency in speaking. Just to the extent that you regard and
use the laws that we are about to examine and learn how to use will you
have efficiency and force in your speaking; and just to the extent that
you disregard them will your speaking be feeble and ineffective. We
cannot impress too thoroughly upon you the necessity for a real working
mastery of these principles. They are the very foundations of successful
speaking. "Get your principles right," said Napoleon, "and the rest is a
matter of detail."

It is useless to shoe a dead horse, and all the sound principles in
Christendom will never make a live speech out of a dead one. So let it
be understood that public speaking is not a matter of mastering a few
dead rules; the most important law of public speech is the necessity for
truth, force, feeling, and life. Forget all else, but not this.

When you have mastered the mechanics of speech outlined in the next few
chapters you will no longer be troubled with monotony. The complete
knowledge of these principles and the ability to apply them will give
you great variety in your powers of expression. But they cannot be
mastered and applied by thinking or reading about them--you must
practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_. If no one else will listen to you,
listen to yourself--you must always be your own best critic, and the
severest one of all.

The technical principles that we lay down in the following chapters are
not arbitrary creations of our own. They are all founded on the
practices that good speakers and actors adopt--either naturally and
unconsciously or under instruction--in getting their effects.

It is useless to warn the student that he must be natural. To be natural
may be to be monotonous. The little strawberry up in the arctics with a
few tiny seeds and an acid tang is a natural berry, but it is not to be
compared with the improved variety that we enjoy here. The dwarfed oak
on the rocky hillside is natural, but a poor thing compared with the
beautiful tree found in the rich, moist bottom lands. Be natural--but
improve your natural gifts until you have approached the