Modern Short Speeches

by James Milton O'Neill '07, The Century Company, 1923.

Few college graduates are called upon to be eloquent. But practically every college man has frequent occasion to "make a few remarks" in public—to introduce a speaker, to preside at a banquet, to make a short dedicatory speech or speech of presentationand the ability to perform this office gracefully and effectively greatly increases his usefulness to his fellows. Teachers of public speaking who are interested in preparing men and women to meet common speech situations of this kind have long felt the need of a collection of short, modern speeches of the everyday variety for use as classroom models. Professor O'Neill's volume is an attempt to meet this need. The speeches included in the volume are modern, all having been delivered since 1890; they are short, ranging in length from ex-President Taft's ten-page address on Woodrow Wilson to Shailer Mathews' "Ladies and Gentlemen: The President;" and they include speeches of introduction, speeches of welcome, speeches of farewell, speeches of presentation and acceptance, speeches of dedication, after-dinner speeches, etc. In Professor O Neill's words, "The aim has been to present as large a number as possible of excellent examples of short, simple, dignified speeches of the kinds that are so frequently required of almost all college and university students—in fact of almost all men and women today who take any active part in the world in which they live. This volume is devoted to that type of speaking which all intelligent people not only can learn how to do well, but should learn how to do well if they wish to prepare at all adequately for an active and useful life." Those whose study of the oratorical masterpieces has led them to expect a high degree of literary merit in any production set up as a "model" will, of course, be disappointed in many of these speeches. "This is distinctly not a book of great oratory." Ma,ny of the speeches, hastily prepared in the hurry and bustle of public life, lack the literary excellence we expect of classroom models. This is a real, but probably unavoidable, defect in a volume of this kind. Many teachers will doubtless feel, however, that the unique practical value of a collection of speeches of this kind more than compensates for the mediocre literary quality of many of them.