CHAPTER ONE

DEVELOPING COURAGE AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

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 basic want in the vast majority, remained surprisingly the same:

              When I am called upon to stand up and speak [person after person wrote] I become so self-conscious, so frightened, that I can't think clearly, can't concentrate, can't remember what I had intended to say. I want to gain self-confidence, poise, and the ability to think on my feet. I want to get my thoughts together in logical order and I want to be able to say my say clearly and convincingly before a business or club group or audience.

Thousands of their confessions sounded about like that.

To cite a concrete case; Years ago, a gentleman here called Mr. D. W. Ghent", joined my public-speaking course in Philadelphia. Shortly after the opening session, he invited me to lunch with him in the Manufacturers' Club. He was a man of middle age and had always led an active life; was head of his own manufacturing establishment, a leader in church work and civic activities. While we were having lunch that day, he leaned across the table and said: "I have been asked many times to talk before various gatherings, but I have never been able to do so. I get so fussed, my mind becomes an utter blank: so I have sidestepped it all my life. But I am chairman now of a board of....................