Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/29

 The ability to stand on one's feet and speak is almost as much a matter of the body as of the mind. If a boy knows how to manage his feet and what to do with his hands and how to stand erect, he will find usually, that he has enough in his head out of which to make a pretty fair speech. Every boy in high school ought to practice sufficiently to be able to speak without having his hands shake or his knees tremble, and once he has learned, he is quite unlikely ever to forget.

I asked a very effective public speaker not long ago if his ability to speak well was natural or acquired.

"I was the shyest sort of boy," was his reply, "I stammered and hesitated and turned cold with fright whenever I got on my feet to speak. I determined, even while I was in high school, to learn to talk extemporaneously, and I forced myself to do so whenever I had a chance, and to speak as correctly and as much to the point as I could. Every boy can learn if he tries."

In addition to controlling his mind and his body, one of the most important things that a boy just entering upon youth should learn is the discipline and control of his desires and his emotions. All sorts of new emotions and desires and passions rush upon the fourteen-year-old boy, and in so far as he subdues and controls and directs these, he will become a strong man. It is his failure to do this that causes him to run away from home, or to learn to smoke and to swear and to develop habits of mind and of body that are unclean and immoral. It is as