Excerpt from The Art of Interesting, Its Theory and Practice for Speakers and Writers To be able to arrest and hold the attention of other minds is a useful and necessary power for all speakers and writers. Minds are fickle; minds are wearied or indifferent, and the writer, and especially the speaker, who would propose his truths to the mind for understanding and his motives to the will for action will make a dismal failure if he cannot arrest and hold the attention of audience or readers. To be clear, to be forceful, these are indeed necessary qualities of expression, but a preliminary condition to clearness and force is interest which will awaken attention and keep attention while the mind is instructed and the will aroused to action. It is that necessary quality of interest which is studied in detail in this book. The problem which offers difficulty to the advertiser is the same that offers greater difficulty to writer or speaker. The advertiser may make use of pictures and colors and devices of print for the eyes and has usually but a brief, simple message to convey. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.