impressions of his thought. He can follow the speaker with less effort, consequently both his interest and pleasure are enhanced. Deliberateness does not mean a tedious drawing out of sounds or an exaggerated slowness of speech, but an orderly movement in which passes, both grammatical and rhetorical, find their natural and effective place.

The style of speaking insisted upon at our national political conventions offers many valuable suggestions. There the speaker must have something to say, and he must say it briefly. A tedious talker will not be tolerated. The speech must have tact, force, and substance, and it must bear the unmistakable marks of genuineness.

The final test of all public speaking is whether the listener is persuaded to act in accordance with the speaker's views. If, however, the listener's mental resolution to act upon the advice of the speaker evaporates as soon as he is beyond the speaker's voice and influence, the speaking has failed. The speaker must drive home the truth, reenforced by as many suggestions as he can possibly give to the hearer.

Then, again, as referred to in a preceding chapter, there is the personality of the speaker as a force in holding an audience. The greatest power in the world is personal, and as Doctor Bradford says: "Personal power culminates when wisdom and knowledge are married to goodness and love."

A powerful personality will be found then, where brain and heart have been trained in loyal service to others, where a man feels an eager enthusiasm in his work, and where his sympathies are so broad and so deep that they will lead him, if need be, to offer himself a living sacrifice in behalf of his cause.

To maintain his hold upon the people, and to touch them on all sides, the speaker must be all-round in his taste and development. Music, poetry, the drama, science and literature must all have their proper place in his life. How pathetic is this confession of Darwin:

"Up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure; and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable and music very great delight. But now for many years I can not endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I can not conceive. If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.'

A public speaker can not hope to be successful in holding an audience without a deep-seated and well-directed sympathetic nature. "The secret of lasting success," says a writer, "in social conversation, in platform speech, in pulpit sermon, is sympathy, sympathy, SYMPATHY. In the public speaker and the private speaker, there should ever be

sympathy for class or for mass, for the family or for the individual."

The speaker should have a definite purpose in view. There can be little power or satisfactory result in haphazard effort. He should know whether he is merely to entertain, or to instruct, convince, and persuade. Much will depend upon the occasion. A pulpit address will differ materially from an after-dinner speech, and what would be appropriate in a court of law, or in a scientific disquisition, might be uninteresting and out of place before a popular audience.

It is said that in a certain tribe of savages a man is allowed to speak at their councils only so long as he can stand on one foot. When the other toe touches the ground What a relief this would be at times to some of our own long-suffering audiences!

his time is up.

A public speaker should be careful not to exceed his time limit. Many an otherwise admirable address has been ruined by being too long drawn out. It is dangerous to be too discursive, to succumb to the temptation to add "one more story. The old-time "Finally," "Lastly," "In conclusion," "One word more and I have done" have proved a pitfall to many a public speaker. It is an art to know how to successfully end a speech, to finish well within the prescribed time, and to leave your audience before they leave you,

CHAPTER XIII

POWER IN PRAYER

There is an inexhaustible power and efficacy in prayer, known only to those who have faithfully practised it. The praying that is done in secret will materially affect the style of one's public prayer. But whatever the form may be, this is true: "Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered."

One

Spurgeon in one of his addresses to his students says that prayer should be marked by solemnity, humility, and reverence. He deprecates long prayers. Frequent repetition and hackneyed expressions are to be avoided. should cultivate a heavenly attitude of mind in prayer. God is to be entreated, not commanded. The eyes should be closed, that the Lord alone may be the object of prayer. Sickening superabundance of endearing words, and rhetorical display, have no place in earnest and effective

prayer.

Learning to pray is like learning to do anything else. It comes from diligent practise. The question is sometimes asked by divinity students to what extent public prayer should be prepared in advance. No general rule can be laid down for this, as so much depends upon circumstances. There should be, however, in every case, a preparation of the heart, in which actual words may not be committed to memory, but in which the general ideas of the prayer have been thought out and arranged in order in the mind.

Unseeming hesitation in public prayer, lack of appropriate words, and discursiveness, sometimes robs prayer of real effectiveness. Spontaneity, sincerity, tenderness, and Godwardness are some of the characteristics of devout and heartfelt prayer.

The great preachers of the world have recognized the supreme power of prayer. In speaking of Dr. Russell H. Conwell, the Baptist divine, of Philadelphia, a writer says: "He is a man of prayer and man of work. Loving, greathearted, unselfish, cheery, practical, hard-working, he yet draws his greatest inspiration from that silent inner communion with the Master he serves with such single-hearted, unfaltering devotion."

This is Dr. Conwell's own tribute to prayer: "There is planted in every human heart this knowledge, namely, that there is a power beyond our reach, a mysterious potency shaping the forces of life, which if we would win we must have in our favor. There come to us all events over which we have no control by physical or mental power. Is there any hope of guiding those mysterious forces? Yes, friends, there is a way of securing them in our favor or preventing them from going against us. How? It is by prayer. When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The only way he can reach that is by prayer.'

Prayer must be earnest, a thing of the heart. It should not be a thing of the lip, of formality, of a wandering mind. It should be real, soaring, confident-prayer such as this is a great force in personal power.

Thomas Guthrie, in his touching sermon, "The Necessity and Power of Prayer," says: "Child of God! pray on. By prayer thy hand can touch the stars, thy arm stretch up