我的课程里有几门课的目的，是解除成人的拘谨和紧张。我跪下来——这可不是夸张——请求我的学生从害羞的龟壳里出来，自己见识一下。只要他们愿意走出来，这个世界会热情地欢迎他们。我承认这需要时间，然而很值。像法国福熙元帅说的战争艺术：“概念极为简单，不幸的是，执行起来很复杂、很困难。”最大的绊脚石，是拘谨局促，不仅是身体上的，而且是心理上的。它随年龄的增长而变得更顽固。In my course there are several sessions that have as their purpose the freeing of tightly bound and tense adults. I got down on my knees, literally, to implore my class members to come out of their shells and find out for themselves that the world would treat them with cordiality and welcome when they would do so. It took some doing, I admit, but it was worth it. As Marshal Foch says of the art of war, "It is simple enough in its conception, but unfortunately complicated in its execution." The biggest stumbling block, of course, is stiffness, not only of the physical, but of the mental as well, a kind of hardening of the categories that comes with growing up.
要在听众面前自然、流畅地讲演的确不容易，这需要反复练习才能达到，演员们最能体会这点。不过当你还是孩子时，比如4岁时吧，你也许可以登上讲台，伶俐地讲话！可是等到24岁时，或45岁时，会怎样？你还能有4岁时那种不知不觉的自然吗？有这可能，但多半变得拘谨、矜持而又呆板，并且像只乌龟，很快就会缩回壳里去了。It is not easy to be natural before an audience. Actors know that. When you were a child, say, four years old, you probably could have mounted a platform and talked naturally to an audience. But when you are twenty-and-four, or forty-and-four, what happens when you mount a platform and start to speak? Do you retain that unconscious naturalness that you possessed at four? You may, but it is dollars to doughnuts that you will become stiff and stilted and mechanical, and draw back into your shell like a snapping turtle.
指导成人发表演讲的重点，并不是帮他们添加什么特性，主要是协助他们排除障碍，做到本能的反应那样。The problem of teaching or of training adults in delivery is not one of superimposing additional characteristics; it is largely one of removing impediments, of getting them to speak with the same naturalness that they would display if someone were to knock them down.
不知有多少次，我在他们的演讲过程中打断他们，请他们“讲得像个人”。不知有多少个夜晚，我设法训练学生说话自然些，弄得自己回家时精神和神经都疲惫不堪。请相信，这件工作做起来不像说起来那么容易。Hundreds of times I have stopped speakers in the midst of their talks and implored them to "talk like a human being." Hundreds of nights I have come home mentally fatigued and nervously exhausted from trying to drill members of my classes to talk naturally. No, believe me, it is not so easy as it sounds.
我让学生们表演对话里的某些部分，有些人非常惊慌地发现，自己像个傻子，可是在表演时，自己感觉还不错，而对另一些人表现出的表演能力，则惊叹不已。我的意思是，一旦你能在人群面前安然随意，就不会再退缩。不论是对上级或在普通人群面前，都能以正常的方式来表达自己的意见。In one of the sessions of my course I ask the class to act out portions of dialogue, some of which is in dialect. I ask them to throw themselves into these dramatic episodes with abandon. When they do, they discover to their amazement that, though they may have acted like a fool, they didn't feel badly when they were doing it. The class too is amazed at the dramatic ability some of the class members display. My point is that once you let your hair down before a group you are not likely to hold yourself back when it comes to the normal, everyday expression of your opinions whether to individuals or before groups.
你突然发现的这种自由，正像一只小鸟从拘禁的笼子里出来展翅高飞。你知道人们为什么会蜂拥着上剧院、上电影院吗？因为在那里，他们可以看到自己的同类毫无拘谨的表演，在那里可以看到人们坦白地展露真情。The sudden freedom you feel is like a bird taking wing after being imprisoned in a cage. You see why it is that people flock to the theater and the movies-because there they see their fellow human beings act with little or no inhibition, there they see people wearing their emotions prominently displayed on their sleeves.
