it a rule not to have more than a very few "by-the-bys " in your speech.

If you are always by-the-bying and by-the-waying the audience are apt to miss the point.

Mention of "by-the-by" brings us to the most important point of clearness. It is best not to talk with your hands, for if you say "about as big as this " and stretch out your hands, the class will not remember half as well as if you said "about two feet six inches long," or something like that.

Speak slowly. There is no hurry. Pronounce every word clearly and distinctly. Speak according to sense-groups, that is, do not gulp out your phrases in inarticulate gasps, but pause at the right places. Remember it is better to speak too loudly than not to speak loud enough. It is very irritating for the people at the back to see the misters enjoying a speech in all other ways good, and not be able to hear a word. Do not flourish about, and if the other side are shouting at you, wait till they have stopped.

This last remark of course applies to committee-matter speeches only, but if there is any disturbance the best way to put a stop to it is to be perfectly quiet and motionless yourself until there is silence again.

For the most part keep your eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the back wall about a foot above the head of the middle boy. Occasionally glance round the class and see how your remarks are catching on. If the audience are getting bored, conclude.

If you are simply lecturing, your object ought to be to please your audience; if you are speaking on committee matters ram your point home through anything. Though if you are clever enough to "hold" the class, a quiet bringing home of the point is often more effective than any amount of roaring. Mind by ramming a point home, I do not mean creating a species of thunderstorm on the platform, but speaking with great force and weight.

Always stand still when you speak. Never run about and stamp. That does not force home your point at all. It is best to stand with your hands behind your back and not fidget at all. If you have apparatus arrange it all neatly on the desk or table in

front of you. I think a feeble speaker should not have apparatus as it is apt to divert the attention of the audience.

When you feel you have no more to say conclude at once. Never repeat anything, and never spin out your speech. Spunout speeches annoy the audience, and selfishly steal time from the next speaker.

Then about conclusions. Never, never say "I think this is all I have to say." Make a different ending to every speech. Sometimes briefly sum up your points and place them in a clear and concise form before the class. Sometimes you may mention your next fit or speech, but do not do this too much. Then again you may hope the class have enjoyed the speech. Never allude to your marks in your ending. It sounds bad. If you have notes, hold them in your left hand and occasionally glance at them. If you are answering another person make mental notes of the weak points in his speech. When you get up compliment him first and then attack him on his weak points. Sum up for an ending. If anybody is drawing on the board and goes wrong, quietly correct him, and do not make a great fuss about it.

Now we will talk about notes. I for myself think no one should have notes. Certainly no one should read his speech unless he is called upon to read a written lecture. Never take books up with you. If you speak on a subject, you ought to be proficient enough in it to be able to speak without a book. Never read extracts from books, or quote at any length poetry or prose. Never read newspaper cuttings. The less you read to your audience the better.

And now in conclusion I think that if you will keep these rules you will make very good speeches with ten-tens and VGs showering round you.

Age 12.1.

J. B. W.

CHAPTER V

ILONDS AND CHAP-BOOKS

My travels' history:

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

"Othello

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart.

WORDSWORTH

GROWN-UP people who cannot draw usually do one of two things. Either they pretend they can, and make horrid pictures on their holidays, or they make no attempt at all. But every one should draw sometimes, whether he is any good at it or not. There is a world of entertainment in rapid sketches made on the back of an envelope or in thumb-nail caricatures drawn on the table-cloth during dessert.

Most people in their hearts love to make pictures, but they resist the temptation for fear of " doing it wrong." The "art" master with his models and his casts and his rules of perspective has frightened away the practice of sketching for fun. The art master is like all other school-teachers, he does not base his teaching on anything which it interests you to do, but sets all that aside and compels you to go through his course of formal study.

But if Littleman does not find his natural desire for playrecognized officially he will satisfy it unofficially, and there are few boys who have not at one time or another risen to the temptation offered by the margins and fly-leaves of their schoolbooks.

Those who are denied the privilege of this literary expression draw on whitewashed walls.

Most people who have to attend lectures with notebooks in front of them will draw while they listen. Many a schoolmaster at a round-table conference will amuse himself by fidgeting with a pencil and making strange patterns and geometrical designs on the paper before him. He would not understand what you meant if you accused him of not attending to the speakers; and yet many a small boy in his classes gets a smart rap on the knuckles for doing precisely the same thing.

An Ilond is one of those dreamlands which all children imagine, and love to tell stories of. We use the older form of the word, and call our thing an Ilond, to distinguish it from a piece of land surrounded by water. For an Ilond has no geographical situation. It is rather a region of faery, a country in the clouds.

It needs very little encouragement to persuade a playboy to make a picture-map of an imaginary country. There is a delight in making a creek just where you want to land, affording good shelter for your boat. Far inland you see a chain of mountains, and there must needs be a river up which you may paddle on your explorations. A volcano, a trackless forest, and a lagoon will be good things to find, so you put them in. A grotto seems a secure place to live in, so you put that in too. There you may be safe from surprise by the native inhabitants, whose huts and fires soon make their appearance. There is a fascination, too, in naming features of the Ilond, such as bays and capes and passes.

With such a game as this in hand a boy will work industriously for hours. "To what end?" I may be asked. I don't know. It may end in anything. Certainly you cannot claim to have definitely taught a boy something. But you may have set him going strongly on the path of that self-expression of which we hear so much. It is possible, too, that by going the same road in pursuit of the same goal he may shortly find himself in company with certain other adventurers not unknown to students of literature or science or geography.

Of course we don't know what will happen if we give Littleman pencil and paper and a free half-hour to draw an imaginary

island. He may draw another plan of the school playground; or he may attempt another version of Great Britain! On the other hand, he may give free expression to his playful fancy. It all depends upon what Littleman has learnt to think of his teacher.

A word or two will be enough to show the Littlemen what you propose they shall do. As Othello says:

It was my hint to speak, such was the process.

Every boy is full of Ilonds. You may ask the boys if they have ever imagined themselves cast away upon a desert island. Have they, indeed! Or you may recount the opening of a dream which broke off disappointingly just as your boat overturned on the reef and...

An introduction to the making of Ilonds would in itself make a fascinating essay in imaginative literature. But in this matter the playboys require but the merest suggestive beginning; and the wise teacher will not go beyond a certain point. That point is reached when every Littleman is wide awake, almost painfully interested, and anxious to help the story along by every means in his power. One jumps about in his seat and cries, " O, yes, sir," in excited corroboration of a proposed shark waiting by the coral reef. Another adds, “And the sea is deep blue and there are palms and a sandy shore"; and another says, "You've drifted for days in an open boat and your lips are swollen and black with thirst."

This only is the witchcraft I have used.

To proceed is more than unnecessary, it is almost a denial of right. The boy who cannot make an Ilond after such a beginning really deserves to be spoon-fed on Mungo Park and Marco Polo.

Ilonds themselves are not the invention of the playboys or their master. We have simply borrowed a word and given it a special application. We do not so much invent as remember things, and devise ways of playing them. The interest in what we call Ilonds is world-wide, and the love of them lies deep in the hearts of men. Consequently some of the greatest players have turned their hands to the making of Ilonds.