go straight back and begin all over, just as a golfer usually does when
he has gone on without instruction. The necessity of going back is
often not realized till later in life; then the process is much harder,
and perhaps can never be entirely effective. The teacher in the course
of his experience meets many, many such cases. The time to learn the
right way is at the beginning.

Among the selections here offered for forensic practice, examples in
debate serve for the cultivation of the aggressiveness that comes from
immediate opposition; examples in the political speech for acquiring
the abandon and enthusiasm of the so-called popular style; in the legal
plea for practice in suppressed force. In the case of the last of
these, it is well that the audience be near to the speaker, as is the
case in an address to a judge or jury. The idea is to be forcible
without being loud and high; to cultivate a subdued tone that shall, at
the same time, be vital and impressive. The importance of a manner of
speaking that is not only clear and effective, but also agreeable, easy
to listen to, is quite obvious when we consider the task of a judge or
a jury, who have to sit for hours and try to carry in their minds the
substance of all that has been said, weighing point against point,
balancing one body of facts against another. A student can arrange
nearly the same conditions as to space, and can, by exercise of
imagination, enter into the spirit of a legal conflict.


THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH


After-dinner speaking is another form that many men may have an
opportunity to engage in. It can also be practiced under conditions