to furnish helpful training for bright and dull student alike that this text is offered. It aims to provide a wide range of teaching methods; enough for all kinds of classes and for every member of each class. It aims, above all, to meet the problem of the large mixed class. Acknowledgments are clearly due to the host of writers who have helped clarify the issues involved in this study. Special mention can in fairness be made to such original contributors as Rush, Curry, Cumnock, Fulton and Trueblood, Clark and Chamberlain, Phillips, and Winans. These have each contributed something new to the problems of speech-training which cannot be left out of a text-book that aims to be comprehensive of the whole field. Special acknowledgments are due to Prof. James M. O'Neill of the University of Wisconsin for reading the manuscript minutely and offering full and invaluable criticism. To my colleague, Lew R. Sarett, I owe a very special acknowledgment for criticisms and helpful advice during five years of intimate and constant coöperation in our jointly shared course, called Oral Expression, at Illinois. Many of the ideas here presented must be credited to his thought, inventiveness, and wide experience on the platform; many more are joint products, the fruit of scores of discussions concerning the problem of a first course in speech-training for college students. This book is, in fact, the fourth writing under the same title; three previous editions have been printed locally for the use of Course One in Public Speaking at the University of Illinois, the third being in use at this time also at Knox College. The first writing was printed in 1915, the second in 1916, and the third in 1919. URBANA, ILLINOIS, February, 1920. CALIFORNIA THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SPEECH INTRODUCTION THE SPOKEN WORD A DIGEST THE spoken word is still supreme. Writers abound and wield great influence, and the educated world, indulging in much reading and some writing, gives to reading and writing high rank in the scale of educational attainment. Yet both of these are learned through the spoken word: always speech must precede. When men seek light in a crisis, when the issues of life are keen, they resort to speech. Writing may well be a distinct mark of schooling, and the ability to read wisely a valuable test of the educated man; but men speak twenty times to once that they write. Many who speak much and often, do not write at all, while they read but little. Most of what is read, besides, is either accepted inertly or, if questioned for authenticity, affords no easy measures for resolving doubt. When man listens to speaking, however, he has a definite guide for his reaction: he can look the speaker in the eye, study his face, watch his actions and bearing, analyze his voice, penetrate into the man himself, and then know whether or not he finds him worthy of credence. This is the reason why, when men really care, when an issue is deeply at stake, when the crisis impends, |