There are, of course, exceptions to all rules. Some young men possess an amount of self-confidence which is proof against embarrassment. Such youth are sometimes gifted with a flow of words that is fatal to ultimate success. It enables them to fill time without previous preparation. Bautain describes a “fatal facility a thousand times worse than hesitation or than silence, which drowns thought in floods of words, or in a torrent of copiousness, sweeping away good earth and leaving behind sand and stones alone. Heaven keep us from these interminable talkers, such as are often to be found in southern countries, who deluge you, relatively to anything and to nothing, with a shower of dissertation and a down-pouring of their eloquence. During nine-tenths of the time there is not one rational thought in the whole of this twaddle, carrying along in its course every kind of rubbish and platitude. The class of persons who produce a speech so easily and who are ready at the shortest moment to extemporize a speech, a dissertation, or a homily, know not how to compose a tolerable sentence; and I repeat that, with such exceptions as defy all rule, he who has not learned how to write will never know how to speak.”[40]
No one stands in greater need of the discipline derived from the use of the pen than those who overflow with words and sentences. Their dearth of ideas can be remedied in no other way. The sentence which escapes from the lips is fleeting and soon forgotten. The sentence in black and white, which stares you in the face from the written page, can be read and re-read until its lack of sense and its wealth of nonsense and absurdity grow too glaring to be endured. Paragraph after paragraph can thus be tested, condensed, and stuffed full of meaning. This discipline ultimately enables a fluent talker to speak with force and to the point, because it gradually transforms his habits of thinking, deepening the stream of thought and enabling it to carry craft too weighty to be borne by a shallow stream.
The person who is afflicted with hesitation and embarrassment also stands in sore need of the discipline of writing. In the solitude of the home one can take time to find and fix the right word, to weave it into sentences that stand the test of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and to arrange a line of thought from which everything irrelevant is excluded. Embarrassment vanishes with the advent of the feeling that one has something to say. The growth of language, which invariably accompanies the evolution and clarification of thought, corrects hesitation. Soon the hands drop to the side or obey the will in gesture, and the feeling of ease begins to color the delivery. Nothing more beneficial can happen to a young preacher than the call to preach the same discourse a number of times in succession, each time to a different audience. Repetition will make him a master of the train of ideas, improving his phraseology, and deeping the stream of thought. Who has not watched with delight the improvement in the presentation of a lecture heard from the same lips half a dozen times in succession? The change for the better was due to the deepening, straightening, and improvement of the channel in which the stream of thought seems to flow.