Chapter 3 So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of February, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush—and very remarkable luggage it was. There were a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational man might need, […]
Chapter 2 At four o’clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs Hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar.“My sakes! Mrs Hall,” said he, “but this is terrible weather for thin boots!” The snow outside
Chapter 1 The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim
Chapter 12 An Englishman, without employment and without financial reserves, was walking the streets of Philadelphia seeking a position. He entered the office of Mr. Paul Gibbons, a well-known business man of that city, and asked for an interview. Mr. Gibbons looked at the stranger distrustfully. His appearance was emphatically against him. His clothes were
Chapter 11 This page you are reading now, this sheet of paper you are looking at—it is very ordinary, isn’t it? You have seen countless thousands of such pages. It seems dull and insipid now; but if I tell you a strange fact about it, you are almost sure to be interested. Let us see!
Chapter 10 A famous English bishop, during World War I, spoke to some unlettered troops at Camp Upton. They were on their way to the trenches; but a very small percentage of them had any adequate idea why they were being sent. I know: I questioned them. Yet the Lord Bishop talked to these men
Chapter 9 Would you like to know in what parts of your speech you are most likely to reveal inexperience or expertness, inaptitude or finesse? In the opening and the closing. There is an old saying in the theatre, referring, of course, to actors, that goes like this: “By their en trances and their exits
Chapter 8 I once asked Dr. Lynn Harold Hough, formerly president of Northwestern University, what was the most important fact that his long experience as a speaker had taught him. After pondering for a minute, he replied, “To get an arresting opening, something that will seize the attention immediately.” He planned in advance almost the
Chapter 7 The Carnegie Institute of Technology at one time gave intelligence tests to one hundred prominent business men. The tests were similar to those used in the army during the war; and the results led the Institute to declare that personality contributes more to business success than docs superior intelligence.That is a very significant
Chapter 6 Shortly after the close of the First World War, I met two brothers in London, Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith. They had just made the first aeroplane flight from London to Australia, had won the fifty thousand dollar prize offered by the Australian government, had created a sensation throughout the British Empire,
Chapter 5 The day these lines are written, January 5th, is the anniversary of the death of Sir Ernest Shackleton. He died while steaming southward on the good ship “Quest” to explore the Antarctic. The first thing that attracted one’s eyes on going aboard the “Quest” were these lines engraved on a brass plate:If you
Chapter 4 “The average man,” said the noted psychologist, Professor Carl Seashore, “does not use above ten percent of his actual inherited capacity for memory. He wastes the ninety percent by violating the natural laws of remembering.”Are you one of these average persons? If so, you are struggling under a handicap both socially and commercially;
Chapter 3 I was present once at a luncheon of the New York Rotary Club when the principal speaker was a prominent government official. The high position that he occupied gave him prestige, and we were looking forward with pleasure to hearing him. He had promised to tell us about the activities of his own
Chapter 2 It has been the author’s professional duty as well as his pleasure to listen to and criticize approximately six thousand speeches a year each season since 1912. These were made, not by college students, but by mature business and professional men. If that experience has engraved on his mind any one thing more
Chapter 1 More than five hundred thousand men and women, since 1912, have been members of public speaking courses using my methods. Many of them have written statements telling why they enrolled for this training and what they hoped to obtain from it. Naturally, the phraseology varied; but the central desire in these letters, the