Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d"Anton's temples. "Put your fingers here,— he said. "Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here." He jabbed at d'Anton's face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. "I'll teach you like an actor," he said. "This city is our stage."Camille said: "Book of Ezekiel. "This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh' ..."Fabre turned. "This stutter,— he said. "You don't have to do it." Camille put his hands over his eyes. "Leave me alone," he said. "Even you." Fabre's face was incandescent. "Even you, I am going to teach." He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. "You're going to talk properly," Fabre said. "Even if it kills one of us." Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d'Anton was too tired to intervene.

Students of public speaking continually ask, How can I overcomeself-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before anaudience?Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that somehorses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at thethundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing afarmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse asthe train goes by?How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars— graze him in aback-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines orautomobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently seethe machines?Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness andfear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attainfreedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may giveyou excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in thewater, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangleand be half scared to death. There are a great many wetlessbathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swimin them. To plunge is the only way.

So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Oratory is just like prostitution: you must have little tricks.

All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform.

What orators lack in depth they make up to you in length.

It is true that despite occasional gleams of Churchillian eloquence he [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] usually spoke poorly. He was far more effective in conversations a deux. But those who dismiss him as shallow because his rhetoric was fustian err.

Speeches measured by the hour die with the hour.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does, he gets beyond his hearers.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do, because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end.

Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.