_Essential Elements of a Plan:_ "There are certain general characteristics that each plan should possess. It must fully indicate the nature of the proposed discourse and mark out each of its successive steps with accuracy. Any want of definiteness in the outline is a fatal defect. You must feel that you can rely absolutely on it for guidance to the end of your discourse, or be always in danger of embarassment and confusion. Each clause should express a distinct idea, and but one. This should be repeated in no other part of the discourse; otherwise we fall into wearisome repetitions, the great vice, as it is often claimed, of extempore speakers. A brief plan is better, other things being equal, than a long one. Often a single word will recall an idea as perfectly as many sentences, and it will burden the memory less. We do not expect the draft of a house to equal the house in size, but only to preserve a proportionate relation to it throughout. The plan cannot supply the thought, but, indicating what is in the mind, it shows how to bring it forth in regular succession. It is a pathway leading to a definite end, and, like all pathways, its crowning merits are directness and smoothness. Without these qualities it will perplex and hinder rather than aid. Each word in the plan should suggest an idea, and be so firmly bound to that idea that the two cannot become separated in any exigency of speech. You will find it sorely perplexing if, in the heat of discourse, some important note should lose the thought for which it previously stood and become an empty word. But with clear conceptions condensed into fitting words, this cannot easily happen. A familiar idea can be expressed very briefly, while a strange or new conception may require more expansion. But all thoughts advanced by the speaker ought to be familiar to himself as the result of long meditation and thorough mastery, no matter how strange or startling they are to his hearers. Most skeletons may be brought within the compass of a hundred words, and every part be clearly indicated to the mind that conceived it, though perhaps not to any other." (Extempore Speech, Pittinger, pp. 171-2-3.) * * * * * * _Clearness in Speech:_ We turn again to the consideration of the quality of clearness in speech. In Lesson XXII the fault of ambiguity was dealt with to some extent, and here consideration of the same fault is renewed. _"Ambiguity from the Use of Too Many Pronouns:_ Ambiguity may be produced by a too free use of pronouns. A student who wishes to tell how Dr. Livesey, of Treasure Island fame, threatened the pirate, Billy Bones, writes: "The Doctor told him he was a dirty old scamp, and that he was a doctor and a magistrate, so that if he ever caught him doing anything like that again, he would run him out of the district." It lakes time to discover to which man the various pronouns refer. To remove the obscurity we shall have to make part of the passage a direct quotation: