Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve, Resolves, and re-resolves, and dies the same.
Let not your force "die a-borning,"--bring it to full life in its conviction, emotional tension, resolve, and propulsive power.
Yes, if the acquirer has any such capacities as we have just outlined. How to acquire this vital factor is suggested in its very analysis: Live with your subject until you are convinced of its importance.
If your message does not of itself arouse you to tension, _PULL_ yourself together. When a man faces the necessity of leaping across a crevasse he does not wait for inspiration, he _wills_ his muscles into tensity for the spring--it is not without purpose that our English language uses the same word to depict a mighty though delicate steel contrivance and a quick leap through the air. Then resolve--and let it all end in actual _punch_.
This truth is worth reiteration: The man within is the final factor. He must supply the fuel. The audience, or even the man himself, may add the match--it matters little which, only so that there be fire. However skillfully your engine is constructed, however well it works, you will have no force if the fire has gone out under the boiler. It matters little how well you have mastered poise, pause, modulation, and tempo, if your speech lacks fire it is dead. Neither a dead engine nor a dead speech will move anybody.
Four factors of force are measurably within your control, and in that far may be acquired: _ideas_, _feeling about the subject_, _wording_, and _delivery_. Each of these is more or less fully discussed in this volume, except wording, which really requires a fuller rhetorical study than can here be ventured. It is, however, of the utmost importance that you should be aware of precisely how wording bears upon force in a sentence. Study "The Working Principles of Rhetoric," by John Franklin Genung, or the rhetorical treatises of Adams Sherman Hill, of Charles Sears Baldwin, or any others whose names may easily be learned from any teacher.
Here are a few suggestions on the use of words to attain force:
PLAIN words are more forceful than words less commonly used--_juggle_ has more vigor than _prestidigitate_.
SHORT words are stronger than long words--_end_ has more directness than _terminate_.