1. When the Subject is assigned.

2. When the choice of Subject is in part free. 3. When the choice is left entirely free.

The whole field is yours when you are assigned a subject and are the only speaker. You need only follow the directions of building your speech which are given here, and in Method Two, Section II.

If the topic of the Speech assigned to you is part of a program you should keep to the subject. Do not infringe upon the topic assigned to others. You must fit into the program. You must play your part so that the entire program may be carried on as designed by the Committee, or Toastmaster. If you fail to do this it will be a grievous error.

When the choice of Subject is in part free for instance, when you are to speak at a Lincoln's Day Dinner, and the Subject has been left for you to select, you should choose one in keeping with Lincoln's views and life.

Endeavor to present some new aspect of the relation of your subject to the present day. Avoid the old things which you have always heard. Recast them in a fresh mold, that of your own thinking. You can always speak your own thoughts in better fashion than you can the thoughts of others.

When you are entirely free to choose your subject, you must remember that you are still quite limited in your freedom. For you must choose your subject according to the purpose of the meeting which is to be assembled.

Again, always seek to be pertinent, try to produce broadening ideas, aim to leave your audience on a higher plane of thinking than when you began.

Awaken them to new paths which will lead to splendid realities. Choose a large theme, a theme of commanding interest, one which relates to the present, and about which men are thinking.

The speaker who choses a subject that is unfamiliar has a bad half-hour, unless he puts it so clearly and illustrates it so aptly that the audience cannot but give heed.

If one lacks subjects upon which to speak, a splendid place to find them is to search any page of Emerson's Essays, or of other authors who are suggestive.

I will choose a page from Emerson, at random, and will italicize the words which suggest topics to me.

ing institutions. They are not the best; they are not just; and in respect to you, personally, O brave young man! they cannot be justified. They have, it is most

true, left you no acre for your own, and no law but our law, to the ordaining of which you were no party. But they do answer the end, they are really friendly to the good; unfriendly to the bad; they second the industrious, and the kind; they foster genius. They really have so much flexibility as to afford your talent and character on the whole, the same chance of demonstration and success which they might have, if there was no law and no property.

It is trivial and merely superstitious to say that nothing is given you, no outfit, no exhibition; for in this institution of credit, which is as universal as honesty and promise in the human countenance, always some neighbor stands ready to be bread and land and tools and stock to the young adventurer. And if in any one respect they have come short, see what ample retribution of good they have made. They have lost no time and spared no expense to collect libraries, museums, galleries, colleges, palaces, hospitals, observatories, cities. The ages have not been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich niggardly. Have we not atoned for this small offense (which we could not help) of leaving you no right in the soil, by this splendid indemnity of ancestral and national wealth? Would you have been born like a gypsy in a hedge, and preferred your freedom on a heath, and the range of a planet which had no shed or boscage to cover you from sun and wind,-to this

Emerson is evidently speaking to a young Ameri

The first four lines italicized suggest to me the theme, "America and Young Men." The last four lines italicized suggest the theme, "What the America of Other Days has Bequeathed to the America of Today."

MATERIALS

In general the sources of material are three; your own thinking, conversation, and reading.

Your own ideas will be warmer and more vital to you than anything you can glean elsewhere. I should advise that you gather all your own thoughts first. Begin on a blank sheet of

paper.

A good supplementary source of material is conversation. Draw others to talk with you on any phase of a subject on which you are seeking light. Often by listening to others' conversations one gathers valuable suggestions. If the subject is of present day interest, the Day Coach often gives one the public pulse by overhearing the conversations of men.

Material is also gathered from reading. Here you have access to the thoughts of many minds, and the variety of material for speeches which has been compiled in Section IV of this book furnishes much that is thought provoking.

Many splendid

Keep a note-book handy. Many

thoughts will flash through your mind. Remember that thoughts are like birds of passage; they tarry

but for a moment and are gone, unless we cage them at once.

When arranging your material it is well to follow the plan of Emerson-write your thoughts immediately as they come to you, and then rearrange them under suitable headings.

In preparing a speech it is well to write on cards the thoughts which you gather. For convenient handling these cards should be of the same size, then you can arrange and rearrange your material without difficulty.

SPECIAL COUNSEL

A man can speak tiresomely and continuously by using the last word of what he has just been saying as a hinge upon which to swing out into other sayings. This kind of speaking is deplorable. There must be climactic construction in a speech. Otherwise it has no backbone.

The length of a speech must be suited to the occasion. If one is not the chief speaker he should not try to make the chief speech in length. If one has been given a lesser part to play he should play .it.