y this several times on different windows and report
the result.

2. What effect does reserve power have on an audience?

3. What are the best methods for acquiring reserve power?

4. What is the danger of too much reading?

5. Analyze some speech that you have read or heard and notice how much
real information there is in it. Compare it with Dr. Hillis's speech on
"Brave Little Belgium," page 394.

6. Write out a three-minute speech on any subject you choose. How much
information, and what new ideas, does it contain? Compare your speech
with the extract on page 191 from Dr. Hillis's "The Uses of Books and
Reading."

7. Have you ever read a book on the practise of thinking? If so, give
your impressions of its value.

NOTE: There are a number of excellent books on the subject of thought
and the management of thought. The following are recommended as being
especially helpful: "Thinking and Learning to Think," Nathan C.
Schaeffer; "Talks to Students on the Art of Study," Cramer; "As a Man
Thinketh," Allen.

8. Define (_a_) logic; (_b_) mental philosophy (or mental science);
(_c_) psychology; (_d_) abstract.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: _How to Attract and Hold an Audience_, J. Berg Esenwein.]

[Footnote 9: Used by permission.]

CHAPTER XVIII

SUBJECT AND PREPARATION

Suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

--BYRON, _Hints from Horace_.

Look to this day, for it is life--the very life of life. In its
brief course lie all the verities and realities of your
existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the
splendor of beauty. For yesterday is already a dream and
tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every
yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of
hope. Look well, therefore, to this day. Such is the salutation
of the dawn.

--_From the Sanskrit_.

In the chapter preceding we have seen the influence of "Thought and
Reserve Power" on general preparedness for public speech. But
preparation consists in something more definite than the cultivation of
thought-power, whether from original or from borrowed sources--it
involves a _specifically_ acquisitive attitude of the whole life. If you
would become a full soul you must constantly take in and assimilate, for
in t