理智的人绝不会没有计划就开始建造房屋，那为什么他在对自己的目的是什么都还没有概念的情况下，却妄想开口演讲呢？NO SANE MAN would start to build a house without some sort of plan; but why will he begin to deliver a talk without the vaguest notion of what he wishes to accomplish?

讲演是有目的的旅程，必须事先绘好行程的图表。一个人随便从某处开始，通常也就终止于某处了。A talk is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The man who starts nowhere, generally gets there.

我想把拿破仑的一句话，漆成鲜红的一尺高的大字，悬挂在地球上所有演讲课的课堂门口：“战争是门科学，未经计划、思考，休想成功。”I wish that I could paint this saying of Napoleon's in flaming letters of red a foot high over every doorway on the globe where students of effective speaking foregather: "The art of war is a science in which nothing succeeds which has not been calculated and thought out."

这个道理同样适用于讲演。讲演人是不是明白这点——或者明白，但有没有付诸行动呢？这就不敢肯定了。许多讲演的计划与安排，花费的时间不会比烹煮一碗爱尔兰炖菜多。That is Just as true of speaking as of shooting.But do speakers realize it-or, if they do, do they always act on it? They do not. Many a talk has just a trifle more plan and arrangement than a bow I of Irish stew.

如何安排是最好、最有效的方式？在没有研究以前，谁也不能肯定。它永远是个新问题，是每个讲演人应该一再询问自己的问题。我们无法对此提出绝对可靠的规则，不过仍然可以指出，进行较长的演讲有三个方面很重要：引起注意、正文和结论。这三个阶段，都各有历久弥新的方法可供参考。What is the best and most effective arrangement for a given set of ideas? No one can say until he has studied them. It is always a new problem, an eternal question that every speaker must ask and answer himself again and again. No infallible rules can be given; but we can, at any rate, indicate the three major phases of the longer talk to get action: the attention step, the body, and conclusion. For each, there are some timetested methods of developing each phase.