In the course of urging his audience not to fear opposition, Neville mentions in passing that he has been speaking publicly since 1938 — nearly thirty years by the time of this 1967 lecture — framing his own persistence against early discouragement (recounted in the same passage, where a voice teacher once singled him out in front of a class of forty as an example of someone who would never make a living with his voice) as proof that opposition only pushes a determined person further along.