HOW TO SPEAK IN PUBLIC


There are other things that women wish to do, it seems, beside studying and
voting. There are a good many--if I may judge from letters that
occasionally come to me--who are taking, or wish to take, their first
lessons in public speaking. Not necessarily very much in public, or before
mixed audiences, but perhaps merely to say to a roomful of ladies, or
before the committee of a Christian Union, what they desire to say. "How
shall I make myself heard? How shall I learn to express myself? How shall I
keep my head clear? Is there any school for debate?" And so on. My dear
young lady, it does not take much wisdom, but only a little experience, to
answer some of these questions. So I am not afraid to try.

The best school for debate is debating. So far as mere confidence and
comfort are concerned, the great thing is to gain the habit of speech, even
if one speaks badly. And the practice of an ordinary debating society has
also this advantage, that it teaches you to talk sense (lest you be laughed
at), to speak with some animation (lest your hearers go to sleep), to think
out some good arguments (because you are trying to convince somebody), and
to guard against weak reasoning or unfounded assertion (lest your opponent
trip you up). Speaking in a debating society thus gives you the same
advantage that a lawyer derives from the presence of an opposing counsel:
you learn to guard yourself at all points. It is the absence of this check
which is the great intellectual disadvantage of the pulpit When a lawyer
says a foolish thing in an argument, he is pretty sure to find it out; but
a clergyman may go on repeating his foolish thing for fifty years without
discovering it, for want of an opponent.