The speech thrilled and electrified the audience.  It thrills yet as we recall it.  The high-sounding phrases, the historical knowledge, the philosophical treatment, of the other speakers largely failed to arouse any deep interest, while the genuine conviction and feeling of the modest clerk, speaking on a subject that lay deep in his heart, not only electrified his audience but won their personal sympathy for the cause he advocated.

As Webster said, it is of no use to try to pretend to sympathy or feelings.  It cannot be done successfully.  “Nature is forever putting a premium on reality.”  What is false is soon detected as such.  The thoughts and feelings that create and mould the speech in the study must be born again when the speech is delivered from the platform.  Do not let your words say one thing, and your voice and attitude another.  There is no room here for half-hearted, nonchalant methods of delivery.  Sincerity is the very soul of eloquence.  Carlyle was right:  “No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man.  I should say sincerity, a great, deep, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.  Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed; a shallow braggart, conscious sincerity, oftenest self-conceit mainly.  The great man’s sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of—­is not conscious of.”

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

It is one thing to convince the would-be speaker that he ought to put feeling into his speeches; often it is quite another thing for him to do it.  The average speaker is afraid to let himself go, and continually suppresses his emotions.  When you put enough feeling into your speeches they will sound overdone to you, unless you are an experienced speaker.  They will sound too strong, if you are not used to enlarging for platform or stage, for the delineation of the emotions must be enlarged for public delivery.

1.  Study the following speech, going back in your imagination to the time and circumstances that brought it forth.  Make it not a memorized historical document, but feel the emotions that gave it birth.  The speech is only an effect; live over in your own heart the causes that produced it and try to deliver it at white heat.  It is not possible for you to put too much real feeling into it, though of course it would be quite easy to rant and fill it with false emotion.  This speech, according to Thomas Jefferson, started the ball of the Revolution rolling.  Men were then willing to go out and die for liberty.

    PATRICK HENRY’S SPEECH

    BEFORE THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF DELEGATES