SPEECH FRIGHT.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 347, 22 March 1911, Page 3

SPEECH FRIGHT.

Sir John Byers sends some interesting particulars to the "British Medical Journal" on this subject. He quotes Lord Dufferin as saying that— No greater orator has ever lived who did not feel very nervous before rising to his feet. 1 have often seen the legs of one ot the most effective and heart-stirring speakers in the House of Lords, to whom that assembly never failed to listen, shake li'.ie sn aspen leaf during the delivery of the first few sentences of his speech. Lord .Dufferin told Sir John that this was Lord Derby. Lord Dufferin himself was always nervous about speaking, and in his later years the thought of having to speak lay heavy on his mind beforehand. In this respect. he resembled John Bright. PREPARATION. Lord Dufferin told Sir John that no very good speech was ever made without preparation ; at all events, until long practice had so cultivated the speaker's faculty as to render the art of thinking aloud with fervour and precision a second nature. Even so, he said, he had heard a Lord Chancellor break down and a Prime Minister lose the thread of his discourse. He explained that by preparation he did not mean learning a speech off by heart, hut the saturation of the mind with a knowledge of the subject and then the construction, not necessarily in writing, but in the mind, of a wellknit fekfleton of the argument or exposition ; finally, when out walking or in the solitude of one's own room, the language in which the ideas may most fitly be clothed should be considered. SIR J.AIIES PAGET AND HUXLEY Speakers differ greatly in regard to the manner of preparation. Some write out the whole speech and deliver it, like Sir James Paget, "yaragrapli by paragraph, sentence by s:nt.ence. word for word, commas and all," as Huslev once said in his presence. Others, like Huxley himself, will write out a speech and then deliver something which, in wording at least, is wholly different from the manuscript. Others, again, jot down a few headings and speak from these. The rule which the "British Medical Journal" impresses on speakers is to have a message to deliver, to do so as briefly and in words as simple and direct as possible, and to sit down. —"Westminster Gazette."