Great Speeches: How To Make Them (160 page)

This is the day of concise speech. The tedious, long-drawn-out oratory of former times is no longer tolerated by intelligent audiences. There is a silent but no less insistent demand that a speaker waste no time in words, but give expression to his ideas with reasonable brevity.

It is surprising how much can be said in the space of one minute by a speaker who has his
subject well in hand. The most notable example in all history of short speech-making
is Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, which occup...