Thought and Reserve Power

Synopsis

Esenwein and Carnegie compare the speaker without reserve to a motorist crossing the wilds with too little gasoline: nature extends no credit, so a speaker must never go before an audience having only just enough material. Reserve power rests on three things — a well-founded grasp of the subject, alertness in thinking on one's feet, and self-possession — but this chapter concentrates on the middle element, Thought. The 'seeing eye' comes first: only a rare person truly observes, yet observation can be cultivated by translating every incident of the day into words, as Beecher found sermon material in every person he passed. Thinking is then defined as mental arithmetic — weighing ideas and placing them in relation to each other — and becomes a habit only through resolute, repeated practice. Because few can rely solely on original observation, reading supplies a second source, the 'milk from the milkman,' feeding thought with the recorded seeing and thinking of others. The chapter's counsel is that abundance, not bare sufficiency, produces the magnetic quality audiences sense as reserve power.