On the other
hand, remember that such diversion is incidental, and that your main
business is to deal seriously with a serious question. The uneasy
self-consciousness that keeps a man always trying to be funny is
nowhere more out of place than in a debate.
65. Voice and Position. The matter of delivery is highly important,
and here no man can trust to the light of nature. Any voice can be made
to carry further and to be more expressive, and the poorest and thinnest
voice can be improved. Every student who has a dream of being a public
speaker should take lessons in elocution or in singing or in both. The
expressiveness as well as the carrying power and the endurance of a
voice depend on a knowledge of how to use the muscles of the chest,
throat, and face; and trainers of the voice have worked out methods for
the proper use of all these sets of muscles. A man who throws his breath
from the top of his chest and does not use the great bellows that reach
down to his diaphragm can get little carrying power. So with the throat:
if it is stiff and pinched the tones will be high and forced, and
listening to them will tire the audience nearly as much as making them
will tire the speaker. Finally, the expressiveness of a voice, the
thrill that unconsciously but powerfully stirs hearers, is largely a
matter of the resonance that comes from the spaces above the mouth and
behind the nose.
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