Public Speaking by Clarence Stratton
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page 11 of 382 (02%)
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he was quite a grown man.
"I owe my success in life to one single fact, namely, at the age of twenty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the practice of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or scientific book. These offhand efforts were made sometimes in a corn field, at others in the forests, and not infrequently in some distant barn with the horse and ox for my auditors. It is to this early practice in the art of all arts that I am indebted to the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me forward, and shaped and molded my entire destiny." Abraham Lincoln never let pass any opportunity to try to make a speech. His early employers, when called upon after his fame was won to describe his habits as a young man, admitted that they might have been disposed to consider him an idle fellow. They explained that he was not only idle himself but the cause of idleness in others. Unless closely watched, he was likely to mount a stump and, to the intense delight of his fellow farm hands, deliver a side-splitting imitation of some itinerant preacher or a stirring political harangue. The American whose reputation for speech is the greatest won it more through training than by natural gift. "I could not speak before the school," said Daniel Webster. ... "Many a piece did I commit to memory and rehearse in my room over and over again, but when the day came, and the schoolmaster called my name, and I saw all eyes turned upon my seat, I could not raise myself from it.... Mr. Buckminster |
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