indescribable fervor, that unaffected earnestness of manner which always
captivates the hearers, and wins the highest marks at an exhibition for
prizes. There will always be one speaker in a school who excels all the
rest in this quality. The teacher should point out the peculiar excellence
of this speaker, and show wherein it differs from loudness of voice, and
violence of actions and affected passion. Let it be remembered that the
perfection of declamation consists in delivering the piece as though it
were real speaking. The speaker must "put himself in imagination, so
completely into the situation of him whom he personages, and adopt for the
moment, so perfectly, all the sentiments and views of that character, as to
express himself exactly as such a person would have done, in the supposed
situation." Give the speaker every other quality--let his enunciation, his
modulation of voice, and his action be faultless, and yet without
earnestness, real earnestness,--not the semblance of it, not boisterous
vociferation, not convulsive gesticulation, but genuine emotion felt in the
heart, carrying the conviction to the hearers that the sentiments uttered
are real, the spontaneous, irrepressible outpouring of the thought and
feeling of the speaker,--without this sovereign, crowning quality, he
cannot be said to speak with eloquence. To bring out and develop this
highest quality of delivery, requires the highest skill in the teacher.
Unless the teacher possesses some degree of this quality himself he cannot
develop it in his pupils.

The best immediate preparation for speaking is rest. I have often noticed
that speakers at exhibitions have in many cases failed to do themselves
justice from sheer exhaustion. A day or two of repose previous to speaking,
enables the speaker to bring to the performance that vigor of the faculties
which is indispensable to the highest success, Webster told the Senate, and
truly, no doubt, that he slept soundly on the night previous to the
delivery of his second speech on Foote's resolution, which is considered