refers, and defers, to opinions that must be better than his can be,
his speech will have much more weight, and he will grow in strength of
character by always being true to himself. It is a question whether
students are not too often inspired to be bold and absolute, for the
sake of apparent strength in speaking, rather than modest and judicious
and sensible, for the sake of being strong as men.

In the form of delivering one's thought to an audience, it is of the
first importance that one should speak and not declaim. There is, of
course, a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively
good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There
should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any
necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over the
heads of an audience. A college president recently said, "Our boys
declaim a good deal, though they're not so bad as they used to be. It
seems to me," he added, "that the idea is to say something to your
audience." That is what a teacher must be continually insisting on,
that the student say something to somebody, not chant or declaim into
space. And the student should be continually testing himself on this
point, whether he is looking into the faces of his hearers and
speaking, though on a larger scale, yet in the usual way of
communicating ideas.

It is not desirable that men should become overready speakers. Methods
of training in extemporaneous discussion that require speaking without
thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are
likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact
thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice
for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and
produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may