Public speaking & debates

MANY years ago I printed an outline book on this subject (Public Speaking and Debate) for the use of persons who found learned treatises on oratory uninteresting, or too profound to be intelligible. Though dealing alone with the Rudiments of the art, it was reprinted in America, and in the New York Tribune described it as being 'unpretentious and practical." After the experience of forty years, I write a new book, and trust the reader will find the same qualities in it.
Now, a series of chapters on the essential parts of public speaking--not chained together, but capable of independent use on emergency, with a springing board in each of them from which a speaker of moderate activity can throw himself at will, as it were, into the heart of an argument- will best serve the practical student. The execution may not equal the design, but this is the rule on which these pages are written.
Whatever may conduce to improvement in the art and character of agitation, as it is the hope of the Author this book will do, may be of public service, seeing what an increase of wise, reasoning voices will be heard in the land, as sure footed democracy advances.