uppermost in our minds today.  That is the question I am going to try to answer in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion.

“This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication.  Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity.  Men’s hearts wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do.  Who shall live up to the great trust?  Who dares fail to try?  I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men to my side.  God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me.”

    WOODROW WILSON:  Inaugural, 1918

11.  Consider sentence length in the following:  Which words are significant?  How is concreteness secured?

“Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law.  No man is above it and no man is below it.  The crime of cunning, the crime of greed, the crime of violence, are all equally crimes, and against them all alike the law must set its face.  This is not and never shall be a government either of plutocracy or of a mob.  It is, it has been, and it will be a government of the people; including alike the people of great wealth, of moderate wealth, the people who employ others, the people who are employed, the wage worker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the banker, the farmer; including them all, protecting each and everyone if he acts decently and squarely, and discriminating against any one of them, no matter from what class he comes, if he does not act squarely and fairly, if he does not obey the law.  While all people are foolish if they violate or rail against the law, wicked as well as foolish, but all foolish—­yet the most foolish man in this Republic is the man of wealth who complains because the law is administered with impartial justice against or for him.  His folly is greater than the folly of any other man who so complains; for he lives and moves and has his being because the law does in fact protect him and his property.”

    THEODORE ROOSEVELT at Spokane, 1903

CHAPTER IV

BEGINNING THE SPEECH

Speech-making a Formal Matter.  Every speech is more or less a formal affair.  The speaker standing is separated from the other persons present by his prominence.  He is removed from them by standing while they sit, by being further away from them than in ordinary conversation.  The greater the distance between him and his listeners the more formal the proceeding becomes.  When a person speaks “from the floor” as it is called, that is, by simply rising at his seat and speaking, there is a marked difference in the manner of his delivery and also in the effect upon the audience.  In many gatherings, speeches and discussions “from the floor” are not allowed at all, in others this practice is the regular method of conducting business.  Even in the schoolroom when the student speaks from his place he feels less responsibility than when he stands at the front of the room before his classmates.  As all formal exercises have their regular rules of procedure it will be well to list the more usual formulas for beginnings of speeches.