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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vocal Expression, by Katherine Jewell Everts
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Vocal Expression
+       A Class-book of Voice Training and Interpretation
+
+
+Author: Katherine Jewell Everts
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 30, 2010  [eBook #31828]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOCAL EXPRESSION***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Odessa Paige Turner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Hyphenation
+   and accentuation have been made consistent. All other
+   inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
+   spelling has been retained.
+
+   [=x] denotes macron above the letter x.
+
+   Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+
+
+
+
+VOCAL EXPRESSION
+
+A Class-Book of Voice Training and Interpretation
+
+by
+
+KATHERINE JEWELL EVERTS
+
+Author of "The Speaking Voice"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Harper & Brothers New York and London
+MCMXI
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BOOKS BY
+
+KATHERINE JEWEL EVERTS
+
+VOCAL EXPRESSION net $1.00
+
+THE SPEAKING VOICE. Post 8vo net 1.00
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1911
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PLAN OF THE BOOK
+
+
+TO THE PUPIL
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+PART I
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL INTERPRETATION
+
+
+PRELIMINARY STUDY:--To Establish a Conscious
+Purpose.
+
+
+  DISCUSSION:--The Relation of the Speaker to His
+       Audience.
+
+  MATERIAL:--Direct Appeal in Prose and Verse, with
+         Suggestive Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+FIRST STUDY:--To Establish Vitality in Thinking.
+
+  DISCUSSION:--Action of the Mind in Reading Aloud.
+
+  MATERIAL:--The Essay and Didactic Poetry, with
+        Suggestive Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+SECOND STUDY:--To Establish Intelligence in Feeling.
+
+  DISCUSSION:--Emotional Response and Abandon.
+
+  MATERIAL:--Lyric Poetry, with Suggestive Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+THIRD STUDY:--To Develop the Whimsical Sense.
+
+  DISCUSSION:--Humor and Fancy.
+
+  MATERIAL:--Fairy Story, Fable, and Nonsense
+        Rhyme, with Suggestive Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+FOURTH STUDY:--To Develop Imaginative Vigor.
+
+  DISCUSSION:--The Picture, the Atmosphere, the
+        Action.
+
+  MATERIAL:--Short Story and Epic Poetry, with
+        Suggestive Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+FIFTH STUDY:--To Develop Dramatic Instinct.
+
+  DISCUSSION:--Impersonation and Characterization.
+
+  MATERIAL:--Monologue and Play, with Suggestive
+        Analysis.
+
+  SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+PART II
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION:--The Vocal Vocabulary.
+
+  STUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCH.
+
+  STUDY IN INFLECTION.
+
+  STUDY IN TONE COLOR.
+
+
+PART III
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL TECHNIQUE
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION:--Tuning the Instrument.
+
+  HOW TO SUPPORT THE TONE.
+    Directions and Exercises.
+
+  HOW TO FREE THE TONE.
+    Directions and Exercises.
+
+  HOW TO RE-ENFORCE THE TONE.
+    Directions and Exercises.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE PUPIL
+
+
+Let me trace the evolution which has led to the plan of this text-book.
+A class in elocution of which you are a member is given a paragraph from
+_Modern Eloquence_, a bit from an oration or address of Beecher or
+Phillips or Beveridge, to study. The passage appeals to you. You are
+roused by it to an eager, new appreciation of courage, conservatism or
+of the character of some national hero. You "look" your interest. You
+are asked to go to the platform. You are glad. You want to repeat the
+inspired word of the prophet. You begin confidently to voice the words
+of the great orator--the words which you had lifted alive from the
+page--but in your voice they sound now formal, cold, lifeless. You
+hesitate, your emotion is killed, your thought inhibited, your eagerness
+gone, your impulse dead--but you have made a discovery. You have become
+conscious of a great need, and your teacher, if she be wise, has
+discovered the nature of that need. You consult together and find three
+things have failed you, and, through you, the orator you wished to
+interpret. These things are your mind, your vocabulary, and your voice.
+You find that your need is threefold--it is the need to feel
+intelligently and to think vitally _on your feet_; the need to acquire a
+vocal vocabulary; the need to train your instruments of
+expression--voice and body.
+
+To help you and your teacher to meet this threefold need is the wish of
+this book; and the book's plan is the result of the author's experience
+with her own pupils in watching the evolution of their skill in vocal
+expression, the development, along natural lines, of their ability to
+speak effectively.
+
+
+
+
+VOCAL EXPRESSION
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The strongest impulse of the human heart is for self-expression. The
+simplest form of expression is speech. Speech is the instinctive use of
+a natural instrument, the voice. The failure to deal justly with this
+simple and natural means of expression is one of the serious failures of
+our educational system. Whether the student is to wait on another's
+table or be host at his own; whether he is to sell "goods" from one side
+of a counter or buy them from the other; whether he is to enter one of
+the three great professions of law, medicine, or theology; "go on the
+stage" or platform; become Minister to France or President of the United
+States, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively will be
+essential to his success, and should be as essential to his own
+happiness as it will be to that of all involved in his pursuit of
+success.
+
+Yet, if we give heed at all to the question of voice and speech, it is
+our last, not our first, consideration. We still look upon the mind as a
+storehouse instead of a clearing-house. We continue to concern ourselves
+with its ability to take in, not its capacity to give out. Voice and
+speech are still left to shift for themselves during the period of
+school life when they should be guarded and guided as a most essential
+equipment for life after school days are over. To convert the resultant
+hard, high-pitched, nasal tone which betrays the American voice into the
+adequate agent of a temperament which distinguishes the American
+personality, and to help English speech in this country to become an
+efficient medium of lucid intercourse, such is the object of this book.
+
+In an address upon the "Question of Our Speech" delivered before a
+graduating class at Bryn Mawr, several years ago, Mr. Henry James said:
+
+"No civilized body of men and women has ever left so vital an interest
+to run wild, to shift, as we say, all for itself, to stumble and
+flounder, through mere adventure and accident, in the common dust of
+life, to pick up a living, in fine, by the wayside and the ditch.
+
+"The French, the Germans, the Italians, the English, perhaps, in
+particular, and many other people, Occidental and Oriental, I surmise,
+not excluding the Turks and the Chinese, have for the symbol of
+education, of civility, a tone-standard; we alone flourish in
+undisturbed and in something like sublime unconsciousness of any such
+possibility."
+
+So searching an arraignment by so eminent a scholar before an audience
+of so high a degree of intelligence and culture seems to have been
+necessary to command an adequate appreciation of the condition of "Our
+Speech" and to incite an adequate effort toward reform. Since the
+arraignment was made and afterward published, classes have been
+organized, books written, and lectures delivered in increasing
+abundance, forming a veritable speech crusade--and the books and the
+classes and the lectures have availed much, but the real and only
+"reliable remedy" lies with the teacher in the public and private
+schools and colleges of the United States. And it is to the teacher of
+English and Elocution that this _Class Book on Vocal Expression_ is
+offered.
+
+_Learning to Talk_ might have been a truer, as it had been a simpler,
+title, yet the more comprehensive phrase has justifiable significance,
+and we have chosen it in the same spirit which discards for the
+text-book in Rhetoric or English Composition the inviting title
+_Learning to Write_.
+
+There is a close analogy between the evolution of vocal and the
+evolution of verbal expression. The method of instruction in the study
+of the less heeded subject of the "Spoken Word" throws an interesting
+light on the teaching of the more regarded question of the "Written
+Word." An experience as teacher of expression and English in a normal
+school in Minnesota has influenced the author of these pages to so large
+an extent in the formulation of her own method of study, and so in the
+plan of this volume, that it seems advisable to record it. To the work
+of reading or expression to which she was originally called two classes
+in composition were added. The former teacher of composition had
+bequeathed to the work as a text-book a rhetoric which consisted of
+involved theory plus one hundred and twenty-five separate and distinct
+rules for the use of words, and the teacher of expression found, to her
+amazed dismay, that the students had been required to learn these rules,
+not only "by heart," but by number, referring to them as rule six or
+thirty-six or one hundred and twenty-five, according to the demanded
+application.
+
+A week, possibly a fortnight, passed in silent struggle, then the
+distracted teacher of expression went to the president of the school
+with these questions: "Of what avail are one hundred and twenty-five
+rules for the use of words when these children have less than that
+number of words to use, and no desire to acquire more? Could you make
+teachers of these normal students by giving a hundred and more laws for
+the governing of pupils and the imparting of the material of knowledge,
+if you furnished neither pupils nor material upon which to test the
+laws?" "Certainly not!" was the restful reply of one of the wisest of
+the educators I have known. "May I lay aside the text-book and read with
+these students in English for a little?" "You may teach them to write
+English in any way you can!"
+
+The next day the class in composition was discovered eagerly reading
+Tennyson's _Holy Grail_, stopping to note this felicitous phrase, that
+happy choice of words, the pertinent personnel of a sentence or
+paragraph. The first examination of the term consisted in a series of
+single questions, written on separate slips of paper and laid face down
+on the teacher's desk. Each student took one of these slips which read,
+"Tell in your own words the story of _The Coming of Arthur_, the _Holy
+Grail_, _Lancelot and Elaine_ or _Guinevere_," as the chance of the
+chooser might allot a given idyl. The experiment was a success. The
+president was satisfied with the papers in English composition. Each
+student had had "something to say" and had said it. Each student had
+words at his command little dreamed of in his vocabulary before the
+meeting with the Knights of the Round Table.
+
+The first step toward a mastery of Verbal Expression had been
+successfully taken! The consciousness of need--the need of a
+vocabulary--had been awakened. The desire to supply that need--to
+acquire a vocabulary--had been aroused. A way to acquire a vocabulary
+had been made manifest. Out of such consciousness alone is born the
+willingness to work upon which progress in the mastery of any art
+depends. To the teacher of expression it seemed no more advisable now
+than it had seemed before, to ask the students to learn either "by
+heart" or by number the one hundred and twenty-five rules of technique.
+But the great laws governing the use of a vocabulary she now found her
+students eager to study, to understand, and to apply. She found her
+class willing to enter upon the drudgery which a mastery of technique in
+any art demands.
+
+So in the teaching of Vocal Expression, he who _begins_ with rules for
+the use of this change of pitch or that inflection, this pause or that
+color of tone, before he has aroused in the pupil the desire to express
+a vivid thought, and so made him conscious of the need to command subtle
+changes of pitch, swift contrasts in tone and turns of inflection, will
+find himself responsible for mechanical results sadly divorced from true
+and natural speech. But let the teacher of expression begin, not with
+rules of technique, but with the material for inspiration and
+interpretation; let him rouse in the pupil the impulse to express and
+then furnish the material and means for study which shall enrich the
+vocabulary of expression and he will find the instruments of the
+art--voice and speech--growing into the free and efficient agents of
+personality they are intended by nature to be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In March, 1906, the editor of _Harper's Bazar_ began a crusade in the
+interest of the American voice and speech. Through the issues of more
+than a year the magazine published arraignment, admonition, and advice
+on this subject. It was the privilege of the author of this volume to
+contribute the last four articles in that series. In response to a
+definite demand from the readers of the Bazar these articles were later
+embodied in a little book called _The Speaking Voice_. In a preface to
+this book the author confesses her "deliberate effort to simplify and
+condense the principles fundamental to all recognized systems of vocal
+instruction," making them available for those too occupied to enter upon
+the more exhaustive study set forth in more elaborate treatises. The
+book was not intended for hours of class-room work in schools or
+colleges, but for the spare moments of a business or social life, and
+its reception in that world was gratifying. But, to the author's
+delight, the interest aroused created a demand in the schools and
+colleges for a real text-book, a book which could be put into the hands
+of students in the departments of English and expression in public and
+private institutions and colleges, and especially in normal schools. It
+is in response to that appeal that this class-book in _Vocal
+Expression_ is issued; and it is to the teachers whose impelling
+interest and enthusiasm in the subject justify the publication of this
+volume that the author desires first to express her grateful
+appreciation.
+
+To Miss Frances Nash, of the Lincoln High School in Cleveland, for her
+invaluable advice in determining the exact nature of the need which the
+book must meet, and for her assistance in choosing the material for
+interpretation, my gratitude and appreciation are especially due.
+
+To others whose influence through books or personal instruction has made
+this task possible, acknowledgment made in _The Speaking Voice_ is
+reiterated.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL INTERPRETATION
+
+
+
+
+PRELIMINARY STUDY
+
+TO ESTABLISH A CONSCIOUS PURPOSE
+
+     "The orator must have something in his very soul he feels to be
+     worth saying. He must have in his nature that kindly sympathy that
+     connects him with his fellow-men and which so makes him a part of
+     the audience that his smile is their smile, his tear is their tear,
+     the throb of his heart the throb of the hearts of the whole
+     assembly."--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+We have said that whatever part in the world's life we choose or are
+chosen to take, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively is
+essential to fulfilling, in the highest sense, that function. Whether
+the occupation upon which we enter be distinguished by the title of
+cash-girl or counsellor at law; dish-washer or débutante; stable-boy or
+statesman; artist in the least or the highest of art's capacities,
+crises will arise in that calling which demand a command of effective
+speech. The situation may call for a slow, quietly searching
+interrogation or a swift, ringing command. The need may be for a use of
+that expressive vocal form which requires, to be efficient, the rugged
+or the gracious elements of your vocabulary; the vital or the velvet
+tone; the straight inflection or the circumflex; the salient or the
+slight change of pitch; the long or the short pause. Whatever form the
+demand takes, the need remains for command of the efficient elements of
+tone and speech if we are to become masters of the situation and to
+attain success in our calling. How to acquire this mastery is our
+problem. How to take the first step toward acquiring that command is the
+subject of this first study.
+
+Is there a student reader of these pages who has not already faced a
+situation requiring for its mastery such command? Listen to Mr. James
+again:
+
+"All life, therefore, comes back to the question of our speech, the
+medium through which we communicate with each other; for all life comes
+back to the question of our relations with each other. These relations
+are possible, are registered, are verily constituted by our speech, and
+are successful in proportion as our speech is worthy of its human and
+social function; is developed, delicate, flexible, rich--an adequate
+accomplished fact. The more we live by it, the more it promotes and
+enhances life. Its quality, its authenticity, its security, are hence
+supremely important for the general multifold opportunity, for the
+dignity and integrity, of our existence."
+
+Is there one among you whose relations with others would not have been
+rendered simpler, truer, clearer at some critical moment had your
+"speech been more worthy of its great human and social function?" Then,
+do you hesitate to enter upon a study which shall make for clarified
+relations and a new "dignity and integrity of existence?" Anticipating
+your reply, I invite you to take a first step in Vocal Expression. How
+shall we approach the subject? How did you begin to master any one of
+the activities in which you are more or less proficient? How did you
+learn to swim, or skate, or play the violin? Not by standing on the
+shore and gazing at the water or ice! Not by looking at violins in shop
+windows! No! You began by leaping into the water, putting on your skates
+and going out on the ice; taking the violin into your hands and drawing
+the bow across the strings. But you say: "We have taken the step which
+corresponds to these in speech! We can talk!" Exactly! But what command
+of the art of skating or swimming or playing the violin would the artist
+in any of these activities have achieved had he been content to stop
+with the act of jumping into the water, going out on the ice, or drawing
+the bow across the violin? The question's answer calls up an
+illuminating analogy. Are not most of us in regard to our mastery of
+speech in the condition of the skater, the swimmer, the fiddler in the
+first stage of those expressive acts? Are we not floundering in the
+water, fallen on the ice, or alienating the ears of our friends? "We are
+so! We confess it!"--every time we speak.
+
+And so to-day we shall offer no argument against entering upon an
+_introductory_ study--we shall take our first step in the Art of Vocal
+Expression. But we shall take it in a new spirit--the spirit of an
+artist bent upon the mastery of his art. If we flounder or fall, we
+shall not be more content in our ignominy than is the choking swimmer or
+the prostrate skater. If we produce painful instead of pleasing sounds
+with our instrument, we shall not persist in a merciless process of tone
+production; but we shall proceed to study diligently the laws governing
+the control of the instrument until we have mastered its technique and
+made it an agent of harmonious intercourse. We shall take the first
+steps with a conscious purpose, the purpose to make our speech worthy of
+its great social and human function.
+
+Then in this spirit I invite you "to plunge." I furnish as the material
+for your experiment these sentences:
+
+
+DISCUSSION OF DIRECT APPEAL
+
+     Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?
+
+     The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual
+     freedom!--CURTIS.
+
+     Mind your own business with your absolute will and soul, but see
+     that it is a good business first.--RUSKIN.
+
+     Back to the bridge and show your teeth again,
+     Back to the bridge and show to God your eyes!--MACKAYE.
+
+     What news, and quickly!--MACKAYE.
+
+     Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal
+     to your tasks.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.
+
+     Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a
+     holiday?--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     And so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, we are not
+     Democrats, we are Americans!--CURTIS.
+
+I shall not discuss the interpretation of these sentences with you. I
+shall not interpret them for you. Such discussion and interpretation is
+your part in this study. But you are not to discuss them with a pencil
+on paper; you are to interpret them with your voice to another mind.
+
+Let us stop here and consider together for a few moments this act which
+we call Vocal Interpretation (which might be more simply designated as
+Reading Aloud), and with which these first studies are concerned. What
+does it mean to vocally interpret a piece of literature--a poem, a play,
+a bit of prose; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word? It means
+that you, the interpreter, must transfer the thought contained in that
+word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from the printed page to the mind
+of an auditor. It means that you must take the thought out of the safety
+vault and put it into circulation. That is your problem, and it presents
+three factors. You cannot slight any one of these factors and expect to
+successfully solve your problem. These factors are: your author's
+thought, your own voice, and your auditor's mind.
+
+We shall concern ourselves in this first study with the last of these
+three factors--the mind of the auditor, or, to put it more definitely,
+your attitude toward the mind of your auditor. We shall make this our
+first concern, not because it is more essential to successful delivery
+than the other two elements of the problem, but because failure at this
+point is a fundamental failure. Such failure involves the whole
+structure in ruin.
+
+Let me make this point explicit. Failure of the speaker to direct the
+thought toward a receiving mind--the mind of an auditor--results in
+blurred thought, robs the voice of all aim, and reduces the
+interpretation to a meaningless recital of words. Consider the first
+factor in the problem of interpretation--the thought of the author. Take
+these first two sentences:
+
+     Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?
+
+     The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!
+
+A wholly satisfying interpretation of these lines involves a knowledge
+of the speech from which they are taken, and a knowledge of the
+circumstances under which it was delivered. Complete possession of the
+thought, which alone insures perfect expression, requires a grasp of
+the situation out of which it was born and an appreciation of the mind
+which conceived it. But with no context and no knowledge of these
+conditions, and so only an approximate appreciation of the thought in
+all its fulness, the interpreter, under the stimulus of an intent to
+convince another of the truth contained in the detached sentence, may
+deliver the lines convincingly! And to carry conviction is the first and
+fundamental requisite of all good delivery.
+
+So it is with the second factor in your problem. Your voice may fail at
+a dozen different points, but _directed_ thought can employ so skilfully
+even an inefficient instrument that the resultant expression, while
+never satisfying, may still carry conviction.
+
+But let the one who speaks these lines feel no responsibility toward
+another, let him fail to direct the idea toward another mind, and the
+most complete possession of the author's thought, plus the most perfect
+control of the voice, will fail to make the interpretation convincing.
+You must establish a relation with your auditor! You must have an aim.
+You must "have something to say," but you must also have some one "to
+say it at." You cannot hope to become an expert marksman by "shooting
+into the air."
+
+Then once more I bid you approach the subject of Vocal Interpretation in
+a new spirit. Let your study of the thought in these sentences hold in
+its initial impulse this idea: "I have something I _must tell you_!" Try
+prefacing your interpretation with some such phrase as this: "Listen to
+me!" or, "I want to tell you something."
+
+I would suggest as a preliminary exercise that you should try "shooting
+at a mark" these single words: "No!" "Yes!" "Come!" "Go!" "Aim!" "Fire!"
+"Help!" "What ho!"
+
+     Listen to me!
+
+     "You will find the gayest castles in the air far better for comfort
+     and for use than the dungeons that are daily dug and caverned out
+     by grumbling, discontented people."--EMERSON.
+
+     Let me tell you something!
+
+     "Might is right, say many, and so it is. Might is the right to bear
+     the burdens of the weak, to cheer the faint, to uplift the fallen,
+     to pour from one's own full store to the need of the
+     famishing."--NAPIER.
+
+     It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He
+     who aims for perfection in a trifle is trying to do that trifle
+     holily. The trier wears the halo, and, therefore, the halo grows as
+     quickly round the brows of peasant as of king.--GANNETT.
+
+     Think twice before you speak, my son; and it will do no harm if you
+     keep on thinking while you speak.--ANONYMOUS.
+
+    Sweet friends
+    Man's love ascends,
+    To finer and diviner ends
+    Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.
+
+                                           --LANIER.
+
+
+SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS
+
+HAMLET'S SPEECH TO THE PLAYERS
+
+     _Hamlet:_ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
+     trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your
+     players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not
+     saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for
+     in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your
+     passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
+     smoothness....
+
+     Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your
+     tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
+     this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
+     nature, for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
+     whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
+     'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
+     scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form
+     and pressure.
+
+                                           --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+Let us consider together the problem of vocally interpreting this speech
+of Hamlet's, keeping the mind of the auditor constantly before us, the
+special factor in our problem which is the concern of this study. What
+is the first point to be determined? The situation, is it not? Remember,
+in our previous discussion I have made it clear that it is not essential
+_to our present purpose_ that we should know, in determining our
+situation, the exact conditions under which this speech was delivered.
+Neither is it essential _to our present purpose_ that we should make an
+exhaustive study of the play of "Hamlet" or of the character of the
+Prince of Denmark. Lest you mistake me I must reiterate the fact that
+an interpretation of these lines, looked upon as Hamlet's speech, would
+require just such exhaustive study of context and character--study which
+would lead to that complete possession which alone insures perfect
+expression; but it is legitimate at this point in our study of vocal
+expression to use this text quite apart from its context as a perfect
+example of direct appeal. It is legitimate to _imagine_ a situation of
+our own in which this thought could be pertinently expressed. We must
+then first determine what you, the speaker, are to represent, and the
+nature of the audience you are to address. One word in the text more
+than any other, perhaps, determines these points--the word "players."
+With this word as a key to a probable situation, let us imagine that
+you, the one who must "speak this speech," are a stage-director of your
+own play, and that we, the class to whom you must speak, are a company
+of players (actors, as we now call them) which is about to present your
+play. The fact that this is exactly the situation in Shakespeare's play
+from which this speech is taken is interesting, but does not affect our
+attitude toward the text. But that we should assume the state of mind
+which animated the author of the _Mouse-trap, is_ vital to our problem.
+Hamlet was intent upon getting an effect incalculably potent from the
+delivery of the "speech" he "had pronounced." You must imagine that you
+have written not merely a play, but a play which you intend shall have a
+powerful influence upon the lives of the people who are to hear it. Once
+more, then, let us determine the exact situation. You, the author of a
+moving play--you, its stage-director--have called us, your actors,
+together for rehearsal. You know just how you wish the lines of your
+play delivered. It is absolutely vital to the success of your venture
+that we, the actors, should grasp your ideal of delivery and act upon
+it. You must convince us that this is the only way in which you will
+permit the text to be handled. You are the orator as Mr. Beecher has
+drawn him for us. You will realize, in thinking your way through this
+appeal, that, while the stage-director is addressing the whole company
+of players, he has singled out from the others one who is to deliver a
+particular speech from his play. It is well to follow this idea of the
+situation. Include us all, then, as a class in your chosen cast, but
+single out one of us, and speak directly at the mind of that one. Look
+him straight in the eye. Direct your thought in the main to his mind,
+even while your thought reaches out and draws us all into the circle of
+its enthusiasm. Now, with this attitude and intent toward an audience,
+try to vocally interpret, to _think aloud_ this thought. What is the
+trouble? "Speak the speech" you say, "is a difficult combination of
+words to utter"? "'Trippingly' trips up your tongue"? "You don't
+understand the reference to a 'town-crier'"?
+
+Ah, what discoveries we are making!
+
+"You feel that you should be able to illustrate your own ideal of
+delivery by delivering these directions after the very manner you ask
+your players to observe"? That might legitimately be expected of you, I
+think. "But this you cannot do!" What a shocking confession! Yes, but
+how good to have this new knowledge of your own ability, or, in this
+case, disability. How appalling to find that you cannot easily utter the
+simple combination of words, "Speak the speech, I pray you," without
+stumbling; that any word, a plain, simple English word, trips your
+tongue. How appalling, but how encouraging it is! For the discovery of
+this fact, the consciousness of these limitations, "constitutes half the
+battle" before us. It is a battle. But you shall be equipped to meet it.
+Turn to the chapters on "Freeing the Tone." Find the exercises for
+training the tongue. Faithful practice of these exercises (even
+_without_ direction, but, if you are a member of the class in expression
+for which this book was made, _under_ direction) will very shortly
+conquer the unruly tongue for use in uttering any difficult combination
+of words. And your teacher will patiently "pick you up" (_in this first
+study_) every time you trip over a word or phrase, and she will
+patiently refer you to the corner of history which will explain any
+unfamiliar portions of your text if _you_ will persistently try to do
+_your_ part at this point. That part is, to think the thought before you
+directly at another's mind. That is all we ask at this point. Make this
+direct appeal for simplicity in delivery straight to the mind of him
+whom you have chosen to receive, and act upon it. Talk to me if I am
+your chosen player! Convince me! Make me realize what you expect of me!
+Make me want to meet your expectation! Make me afraid to fail you!
+
+With these suggestions and this direct appeal to you, I leave you with
+your teacher and with the following material chosen for your preliminary
+study in _Vocal Interpretation_.
+
+
+SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION
+
+     There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, straining at
+     full speed from England to America. Two-thirds of a prosperous
+     voyage thus far were over, and in our mess we were beginning to
+     talk of home.
+
+     Suddenly a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but, as this was
+     a common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly
+     mentioned in our talk. A happier company never sailed upon an
+     autumn sea. When a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers
+     and men, and we were grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race. I
+     heard the cry, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that meant--the
+     masts were in danger of falling. A hundred pallid faces were
+     huddled together near the stern of the ship where we were told to
+     go and wait.
+
+     Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the
+     wheel-house ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves. As
+     the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's
+     trumpet to "Shift the cargo," to "Back her," to "Keep her steady,"
+     we felt, somehow, that the commander up there in the thick mist
+     knew what he was about.
+
+     When, after weary days of anxious suspense, the vessel leaking
+     badly, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of the
+     line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck
+     on the rocks and been saved by the captain's presence of mind and
+     courage, replied, simply: "Just what I might have expected. Captain
+     Harrison is always master of the situation."
+
+     No man ever became master of the situation by accident or
+     indolence. "He happened to succeed" is a foolish, unmeaning phrase.
+     No man happens to succeed. "What do you mix your paints with?"
+     asked a visitor of Opie, the painter. "With brains, sir," was the
+     artist's reply. * * *
+
+     There are men who fail of mastery in the world from too low an
+     estimate of human nature. "Despise nothing, my son," was the
+     advice a mother gave to her boy when he went forth into the untried
+     world to seek his fortune, and that boy grew up into Sir Walter
+     Scott. * * *
+
+     In case of great emergency it took a certain general in our
+     army several days to get his personal baggage ready. Sheridan
+     rode into Winchester without even a change of stockings in his
+     saddle-bags. * * *
+
+     All great leaders have been inspired with a great belief. In nine
+     cases out of ten, failure is borne of unbelief.--_Masters of the
+     Situation_, JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+    Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
+    Or close the wall up with our English dead!
+    In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
+    As modest stillness and humility;
+    But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
+    Then imitate the action of the tiger:
+    Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
+    Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage: * * *
+    Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
+    To his full height! On, on, you noblest English,
+    Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
+    Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
+    Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
+    And sheathed their swords for lack of argument. * * *
+    I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
+    Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
+    Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
+    Cry--God for Harry! England! and St. George!--_Henry V._, SHAKESPEARE
+
+     Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this
+     continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
+     proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+     great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
+     conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
+     battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
+     field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives
+     that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
+     that we should do this.
+
+     But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot
+     consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living
+     and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our
+     power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long
+     remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
+     here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
+     unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
+     advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
+     task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
+     increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
+     measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead
+     shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall
+     have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by
+     the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
+     earth.--_Address at Gettysburg_, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+From an address delivered in the Auditorium, at Chicago, on the
+afternoon of February 22, 1902, on the occasion of the celebration of
+Washington's Birthday.
+
+     The meaning of Washington in American history is discipline. The
+     message of Washington's life to the American people is discipline.
+     The need of American character is discipline.
+
+     Washington did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The
+     people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage.
+     That quality was and is in the American blood. He did not even give
+     them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. But
+     Washington gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was
+     the genius of order. He was poise personified. He was the spirit of
+     discipline. He was the first Great Conservative. It was this
+     quality in him that made all other elements of the Revolution
+     effective. It was this that organized our nebulous independence
+     into a nation of liberty. The parts of a machine are useless until
+     assembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. Washington was
+     the master mechanic of our nation; so it is that we are a people.
+
+     But we are not yet a perfect people. We are still in the making. It
+     is a glorious circumstance. Youth is the noblest of God's gifts.
+     The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American
+     people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not
+     entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And
+     therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of
+     Washington--he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached
+     through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed
+     passions of riotous youth.--_Conservatism; the Spirit of National
+     Self-Restraint_, ALBERT BEVERIDGE.
+
+We have noted in our introduction the close analogy which exists between
+the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal
+expression. Let us not fail to follow this analogy through the various
+studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun
+our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What
+corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?
+
+Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English
+composition, called _The Forms of Prose Literature_,[1] discusses these
+forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and
+the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-titles which
+all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of
+literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not
+find the _exact_ parallel for our study in direct appeal under these
+subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of
+English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in
+interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of
+_exposition_, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression
+corresponding to the question of _vitality in thinking_, which is our
+first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary
+study" in composition.
+
+[1] _The Forms of Prose Literature_, courtesy of Messrs. Charles
+Scribner's Sons.
+
+In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner
+says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite
+unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it
+should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument
+must move its reader, we begin to pass from the realm of pure thought,
+in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a
+necessary preliminary to action. How large a part feelings play in
+argument you can see if you have ever heard the speech of a demagogue to
+an excited crowd. It is simply a crass appeal to their lower passions,
+aided by all the devices of oratory, often, perhaps, also by a moving
+presence. A better example is Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech, in
+which he won a hearing from a hostile mob by an appeal to their sense of
+fair play. Such cases show how far argument may get from the simple
+appeal to the understanding, how little it may be confined to the
+element of thought. The prime quality, therefore, of argument is
+_persuasiveness_."
+
+Not argument, then, but the element in argument, called persuasion,
+furnishes the study in composition which corresponds to direct appeal in
+interpretation. And just as truly as your intent to convince another
+mind of the truth of your author's thought will often take care of all
+other elements in the problem of its vocal expression and result in
+_convincing interpretation_, so the intent to persuade another mind of
+the truth of your own thought will often take care of all other elements
+in the problem of verbal expression and result in _moving composition_.
+
+Following Mr. Gardiner a little further in his discussion of persuasion,
+we find our study in interpretation in direct accord with his advice in
+the study of composition, for he says: "This element of persuasion
+belongs to that aspect of literature which has to do with the feelings;
+and, as depending on the personal equation of the writer, it is much
+less easy than the intellectual element to catch and generalize from,
+and almost impossible to teach. All that I can do is to examine it in
+good examples, and then make very tentatively a few suggestions based on
+these examples. For it cannot too often be written down in such a
+treatise as this that the teacher of writing can no more make a great
+writer than the teacher of painting can turn out a new Rembrandt or a
+Millet; in either case the most that the teacher can do is to furnish
+honest and illuminating criticism, and to save his pupil unnecessary and
+tedious steps by showing him the methods and devices which have been
+worked out by the masters of the craft."
+
+In treating the question of pure style, as another division of the power
+of persuasion, Mr. Gardiner says: "It is almost impossible to give
+practical help toward acquiring this gift of an expressive style; the
+ear for the rhythm and assonance of style is like an ear for music,
+though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the
+writing of men who are famous for the quality, and, when you read to
+yourself, always to have in mind the sound of what you read. The more
+you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write,
+yourself, will you hear the way your own style sounds."
+
+With our idea for a combined study of the two great forms of expression
+reinforced by such authority, let us, in taking our next step in this
+preliminary study in vocal expression, make it also a preliminary study
+in verbal expression by using as our next selection for interpretation,
+not a fragment of an address or a part of an oration, but a complete
+example of persuasive discourse. Such an example we find in this sermon
+of Mr. Gannett's "Blessed be Drudgery." And, as we try our growing
+powers of lucid interpretation upon this subject-matter, let us stop to
+note its verbal construction and its obedience to the laws of persuasive
+discourse. The interpretation must be made in the class-room, because
+interpretation needs an immediate audience; the analysis of the literary
+form may be made in your study: the two processes should be carried on
+as far as possible together.
+
+
+    BLESSED BE DRUDGERY[2]
+
+[2] This sermon is published with the kind permission of the author and
+the publisher.
+
+     I
+
+     Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every
+     second woman is _sure_ she is. Either we are not doing the thing we
+     would like to do in life; or, in what we do and like, we find so
+     much to dislike that the rut tires even when the road runs on the
+     whole, a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the _Culture that
+     comes through this very drudgery_.
+
+     "Culture through my drudgery!" some one is now thinking: "This
+     treadmill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that,
+     as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome--to this have I owed
+     'culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies,
+     teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter,
+     those blue overalls in the machine shop--have these anything to do
+     with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of
+     time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness,
+     crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches.
+     Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly
+     magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas.
+     Our real and our ideal are not twins--never were! I want the
+     books,--but the clothes-basket wants me. The two children are
+     good,--and so would be two hours a day without the children. I
+     crave an outdoor life,--and walk down-town of mornings to perch on
+     a high stool till supper-time. I love Nature,--and figures are my
+     fate. My taste is books,--and I farm it. My taste is art,--and I
+     correct exercises. My taste is science,--and I measure tape. I am
+     young and like stir,--the business jogs on like a stage-coach. Or I
+     am _not_ young, I am getting gray over my ears, and like to sit down
+     and be still,--but the drive of the business keeps both tired arms
+     stretched out full length. I hate this overbidding and this
+     underselling, this spry, unceasing competition, and would
+     willingly give up a quarter of my profits to have two hours of my
+     daylight to myself,--at least I would if, working just as I do, I
+     did not barely get the children bread and clothes. I did not choose
+     my calling, but was dropped into it--by my innocent conceit, or by
+     duty to the family, or by a parent's foolish pride, or by our hasty
+     marriage; or a mere accident wedged me into it. Would I could have
+     my life over again! Then, whatever I _should_ be, at least I would
+     _not_ be what I am to-day!"
+
+     Have I spoken truly for any one here? I know I have. Goes not the
+     grumble thus within the silent breast of many a person, whose pluck
+     never lets it escape to words like these, save now and then on a
+     tired evening to husband or to wife?
+
+     There is often truth and justice in the grumble. Truth and justice
+     both. Still, when the question rises through the grumble, Can it be
+     that drudgery, not to be escaped, gives "culture"? the true answer
+     is--Yes, and culture of the prime elements of life; of the very
+     fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood.
+
+     Our _prime_ elements are due to our drudgery--I mean that
+     literally; the _fundamentals_ that underlie all fineness and
+     without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible.
+     These, for instance--and what names are more familiar? Power of
+     attention; power of industry; promptitude in beginning work; method
+     and accuracy and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage
+     before difficulties; cheer under straining burdens; self-control
+     and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities;
+     these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we
+     were small mother had a way of harping on them, and father joined
+     in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church.
+     And this was what our first employer meant--only his way of putting
+     the matter was, "Look sharp, my boy!"--"Be on time, John!"--"Stick
+     to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant: these _are_ the very
+     qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked
+     us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their
+     platitudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And
+     that goes to _show_ that they are the fundamentals. Reading,
+     writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a
+     man are handier to have; worth more; worth more than Latin and
+     Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting
+     and wax flowers and travels in Europe added together. These last
+     are the decorations of a man or woman: even reading and writing are
+     but conveniences: those other things are the _indispensables_. They
+     make one's sit-fast strength and one's active momentum, whatsoever
+     and wheresoever the lot in life be--be it wealth or poverty, city
+     or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid
+     substance of one's self.
+
+     And the question I would ask of myself and you is, How do we get
+     them? How do they become ours? High-school and college can give
+     much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book
+     processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call "our
+     education," give no more than _opportunity_ to win these
+     indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them? We get them
+     somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it
+     that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore
+     conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long
+     chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and
+     grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These
+     rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the
+     soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had
+     we been there to watch. It was "drudgery" all over the land. Mother
+     Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing work! That
+     was yesterday: to-day, result of scrubbing-work, we have the
+     laughing landscape.
+
+     Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the
+     earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done
+     much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us; but that which
+     scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and
+     keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by--that depends
+     on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one
+     word, depends upon our "drudgery." It is because we have to go,
+     and _go_, morning after morning, through rain, through shine,
+     through toothache, headache, heartache, to the appointed spot, and
+     do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick
+     to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would
+     be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learned at
+     nine o'clock and learned without a slip; because the accounts on
+     the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally
+     exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with
+     children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven
+     times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow,
+     and the next day; in short, without much matter _what_ our work be,
+     whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut,
+     plod, grind, humdrum _in_ the work, that we at last get those
+     self-foundations laid of which I spoke,--attention, promptness,
+     accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I
+     think over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I
+     have to answer each with _No_:--Are there any qualities in the list
+     which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities?
+     Not one. Can I get these self-foundations laid, save by the weight,
+     year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other
+     way. Is there a single one in the list which I cannot get in some
+     degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one.
+     Then beyond all books, beyond all class-work at the school, beyond
+     all special opportunities of what I call my "education," it is
+     this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great
+     school-master. _My daily task_, whatever it be--_that is what
+     mainly educates me_. All other culture is mere luxury compared with
+     what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am,
+     this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at
+     as my "drudgery"!
+
+     We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very
+     important fact to girls and boys as ambitious as they ought to
+     be,---the higher our ideals, the _more_ we need those foundation
+     habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and
+     laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes
+     takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the
+     sick-room, or laws in the legislature, or children in the nursery.
+     The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day
+     long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every
+     stroke,--which of the two more needs the self-control, the method,
+     the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh
+     for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more "concentration" to
+     use books--head tools--well than to use hand tools. It takes more
+     "self-control" to use leisure well than workdays. Compare the
+     Sundays and Mondays of your city; which day, all things considered,
+     stands for the city's higher life,--the day on which so many men
+     are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge,
+     more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear
+     the healthy pinch of the just-enough.
+
+     Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native
+     power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for
+     much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the
+     uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their
+     genius. "Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. "The
+     Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great
+     Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, "My imagination
+     would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of
+     commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"?
+     It was Charles Dickens. Who said "The secret of a Wall Street
+     million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe
+     for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), "Never use
+     what is not your own, never buy what you cannot pay for, never sell
+     what you haven't got." How simple great men's rules are! How easy
+     it is to be a great man! Order, diligence, patience, honesty,--just
+     what you and I must use in order to put our dollar in the
+     savings-bank, to do our school-boy sum, to keep the farm thrifty,
+     and the house clean, and the babies neat. Order, diligence,
+     patience, honesty! There is wide difference between men, but truly
+     it lies less in some special gift or opportunity granted to one and
+     withheld from another, than in the differing degree in which these
+     common elements of human power are owned and used. Not how much
+     talent have I, but how much will to use the talent that I have, is
+     the main question. Not how much do I know, but how much do I do
+     with what I know? To do their great work the great ones need more
+     of the very same habits which the little ones need to do their
+     smaller work. Goethe, Spencer, Agassiz, Jesus, share, not
+     achievements, but conditions of achievement, with you and me. And
+     those conditions for them, as for us, are largely the plod, the
+     drill, the long disciplines of toil. If we ask such men their
+     secret, they will uniformly tell us so.
+
+     Since we lay the firm substrata of ourselves in this way, then, and
+     only in this way; and since the higher we aim, the more, and not
+     the less, we need these firm substrata,--since this is so, I think
+     we ought to make up our minds and our mouths to sing a hallelujah
+     unto Drudgery: _Blessed be Drudgery_,--the one thing that we cannot
+     spare!
+
+     II
+
+     But there is something else to be said. Among the people who are
+     drudges there are some who have given up their dreams of what, when
+     younger, they used to talk or think about as their "ideals"; and
+     have grown at last, if not content, resigned to do the actual work
+     before them. Yes, here it is,--before us, and behind us, and on all
+     sides of us; we cannot change it; we have accepted it. Still, we
+     have not given up one dream,--the dream of _success_ in this work
+     to which we are _so_ clamped. If we cannot win the well-beloved
+     one, then success with the ill-beloved,--this at least is left to
+     hope for. Success may make _it_ well-beloved, too,--who knows?
+     Well, the secret of this success still lies in the same old word,
+     "drudgery." For drudgery is the doing of one thing, one thing, one
+     thing, long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is this "one
+     thing I do" that gathers me together from my chaos, that
+     concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into
+     achievements. "One thing I do," said Paul, and, apart from what his
+     one thing was, in that phrase he gave the watchword of salvation.
+     That whole long string of habits--attention, method, patience,
+     self-control, and the others--can be rolled up and balled, as it
+     were, in the word "concentration." We will halt a moment at the
+     word:
+
+         "I give you the end of a golden string:
+           Only wind it into a ball,--
+         It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
+           Built in Jerusalem's wall."
+
+     Men may be divided into two classes,--those who have a "one thing,"
+     and those who have no "one thing," to do; those with aim, and those
+     without aim, in their lives: and practically it turns out that
+     almost all of the success, and, therefore, the greater part of the
+     happiness, go to the first class. The aim in life is what the
+     backbone is in the body: without it we are invertebrate, belong to
+     some lower order of being not yet man. No wonder that the great
+     question, therefore, with a young man is, What am I to be? and that
+     the future looks rather gloomy until the life-path opens. The lot
+     of many a girl, especially of many a girl with a rich father, is a
+     tragedy of aimlessness. Social standards, and her lack of true
+     ideals and of real education, have condemned her to be frittered:
+     from twelve years old she is a cripple to be pitied, and by thirty
+     she comes to know it. With the brothers the blame is more their
+     own. The boys we used to play our school games with have found
+     their places; they are winning homes and influence and money, their
+     natures are growing strong and shapely, and their days are filling
+     with the happy sense of accomplishment,--while _we_ do not yet know
+     what we are. We have no meaning on the earth. Lose us, and the
+     earth has lost nothing; no niche is empty, no force has ceased to
+     play, for we have got no aim, and therefore we are still--nobody.
+     _Get your meaning_ first of all! Ask the question until it is
+     answered past question, What am I? What do I stand for? What name
+     do I bear in the register of forces? In our national cemeteries
+     there are rows on rows of unknown bodies of our soldiers,--men who
+     did a work and put a meaning to their lives; for the mother and the
+     townsmen say, "He died in the war." But the men and women whose
+     lives are aimless reverse their fates. Our _bodies_ are known, and
+     answer in this world to such or such a name,--but as to our inner
+     _selves_, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be
+     labeled, "An unknown man sleeps here!"
+
+     Now, since it is concentration that prevents this tragedy of
+     failure, and since this concentration always involves drudgery,
+     long, hard, abundant, we have to own again, I think, that that is
+     even more than what I called it first,--our chief school-master;
+     besides that, drudgery is the gray Angel of Success. The main
+     secret of any success we may hope to rejoice in is in that angel's
+     keeping. Look at the leaders in the profession, the "solid" men in
+     business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by
+     building a town in which to house their factory hands; they are
+     drudges of the single aim. The man of science, and to-day more than
+     ever, if he would add to the world's knowledge, or even get a
+     reputation, must be, in some one branch at least, a plodding
+     specialist. The great inventors, Palissy at his pots, Goodyear at
+     his rubber, Elias Howe at his sewing-machine, tell the
+     secret,--"One thing I do." The reformer's secret is the same. A
+     one-eyed, grim-jawed folk the reformers are apt to be: one-eyed,
+     grim-jawed, seeing but the one thing, never letting go, they have
+     to be, to start a torpid nation. All these men as doers of the
+     single thing drudge their way to their success. Even so must we,
+     would we win ours. The foot-loose man is _not_ the enviable man. A
+     wise man will be his own necessity and bind himself to a task, if
+     by early wealth or foolish parents or other lowering circumstances
+     he has lost the help of an outward necessity.
+
+     Again, then, I say, Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh
+     beatitude: _Blessed be Drudgery!_ It is the one thing we cannot
+     spare.
+
+     III
+
+     This is a hard gospel, is it not? But now there is a pleasanter
+     word to briefly say. To lay the firm foundations in ourselves, or
+     even to win success in life, we _must_ be drudges. But we _can_ be
+     _artists_, also, in our daily task. And at that word things
+     brighten.
+
+     "Artists," I say,--not artisans. "The difference?" This: the artist
+     is he who strives to perfect his work,--the artisan strives to get
+     through it. The artist would fain finish, too; but with him it is
+     to "finish the work God has given me to do!" It is not how great a
+     thing we do, but how well we do the thing we have to, that puts us
+     in the noble brotherhood of artists. My Real is not my Ideal,--is
+     that my complaint? One thing, at least, is in my power: if I cannot
+     realize my Ideal, I can at least _idealize my Real_. How? By trying
+     to be perfect in it. If I am but a rain-drop in a shower, I will
+     be, at least, a perfect drop; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will
+     be, at least, a perfect leaf. This poor "one thing I do,"--instead
+     of repining at its lowness or its hardness, I will make it glorious
+     by my supreme loyalty to its demand.
+
+     An artist himself shall speak. It was Michael Angelo who said:
+     "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to
+     create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever
+     strives for it strives for something that is godlike. True painting
+     is only an image of God's perfection,--a shadow of the pencil with
+     which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony." The great
+     masters in music, the great masters in all that we call artistry,
+     would echo Michael Angelo in this; he speaks the artist essence
+     out. But what holds good upon their grand scale and with those
+     whose names are known, holds equally good of all pursuits and all
+     lives. That true painting is an image of God's perfection must be
+     true, if he says so; but no more true of painting than of
+     shoemaking, of Michael Angelo than of John Pounds, the cobbler. I
+     asked a cobbler once how long it took to become a good shoemaker;
+     he answered, promptly, "Six years,--and then you must travel!" That
+     cobbler had the artist soul. I told a friend the story, and he
+     asked his cobbler the same question: How long does it take to
+     become a good shoemaker? "All your life, sir." That was still
+     better,--a Michael Angelo of shoes! Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker,
+     of central New York, was an artist: "Yes," said he to Mr. Parton,
+     "I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." "Well, then, you
+     ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." "No,
+     sir," was the answer, "I _never_ made a pretty good hammer. I make
+     the best hammer made in the United States." Daniel Morell, once
+     president of the Cambria Railworks in Pittsburgh, which employed
+     seven thousand men, was an artist, and trained artists. "What is
+     the secret of such a development of business as this?" asked the
+     visitor. "We have no secret," was the answer; "we always try to
+     beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have, and we
+     don't care who knows it." The Paris bookbinder was an artist, who,
+     when the rare volume of Corneille, discovered in a book-stall, was
+     brought to him, and he was asked how long it would take him to bind
+     it, answered, "Oh, sir, you must give me a year, at least; _this_
+     needs all my care." Our Ben Franklin showed the artist when he
+     began his own epitaph, "Benjamin Franklin, printer." And Professor
+     Agassiz, when he told the interviewer that he had "no time to make
+     money"; and when he began his will, "I, Louis Agassiz, teacher."
+
+     In one of Murillo's pictures in the Louvre he shows us the interior
+     of a convent kitchen; but doing the work there are, not mortals in
+     old dresses, but beautiful white-winged angels. One serenely puts
+     the kettle on the fire to boil, and one is lifting up a pail of
+     water with heavenly grace, and one is at the kitchen dresser
+     reaching up for plates; and I believe there is a little cherub
+     running about and getting in the way, trying to help. What the old
+     monkish legend that it represented is, I hardly know. But, as the
+     painter puts it to you on his canvas, all are so busy, and working
+     with such a will, and so refining the work as they do it, that
+     somehow you forget that pans are pans and pots pots, and only think
+     of the angels, and how very natural and beautiful kitchen-work
+     is,--just what the angels would do, of course.
+
+     It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He
+     who aims for perfectness in a trifle is trying to do that trifle
+     holily. The _trier_ wears the halo, and therefore, the halo grows
+     as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspiration
+     to do perfectly,--is it not religion practicalized? If we use the
+     name of God, is this not God's presence becoming actor in us? No
+     need, then, of being "great" to share that aspiration and that
+     presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and
+     its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as
+     well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live
+     splendidly! That is the royal truth that we need to believe,--you
+     and I who have no "mission," and no great sphere to move in. The
+     universe is not quite complete without _my_ work well done. Have
+     you ever read George Eliot's poem called "Stradivarius"?
+     Stradivarius was the famous old violin-maker, whose violins, nearly
+     two centuries old, are almost worth their weight in gold to-day.
+     Says Stradivarius in the poem:
+
+                     "If my hand slacked,
+         I should rob God,--since He is the fullest good,--
+         Leaving a blank instead of violins.
+         _He_ could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins
+         Without Antonio."
+
+     That is just as true of us as of our greatest brothers. What, stand
+     with slackened hands and fallen heart before the littleness of your
+     service! Too little, is it, to be perfect in it? Would you, then,
+     if you were Master, risk a greater treasure in the hands of such a
+     man? Oh, there is no man, no woman, so small that they cannot make
+     their life great by high endeavor; no sick crippled child on its
+     bed that cannot fill a niche of service _that_ way in the world.
+     This is the beginning of all gospels,--that the kingdom of heaven
+     is at hand just where _we_ are. It is just as near us as our work is,
+     for the gate of heaven for each soul lies in the endeavor to do
+     that work perfectly.
+
+     But to bend this talk back to the word with which we started: will
+     this striving for perfection in the little thing give "culture"?
+     Have you ever watched such striving in operation? Have you never
+     met humble men and women who read little, who knew little, yet who
+     had a certain fascination as of fineness lurking about them? Know
+     them, and you are likely to find them persons who have put so much
+     thought and honesty and conscientious trying into their common
+     work--it may be sweeping rooms, or planing boards, or painting
+     walls--have put their ideals so long, so constantly, so lovingly
+     into that common work of theirs, that finally these qualities have
+     come to permeate not their work only, but so much of their being
+     that they are fine-fibred within, even if on the outside the rough
+     bark clings. Without being schooled, they are apt to instinctively
+     detect a sham,--one test of culture. Without haunting the
+     drawing-rooms, they are likely to have manners of quaint grace and
+     graciousness,--another test of culture. Without the
+     singing-lessons, their tones are apt to be gentle,--another test of
+     culture. Without knowing anything about Art, so called, they know
+     and love the best in _one_ thing,--are artists in their own little
+     specialty of work. They make good company, these men and
+     women,--why? Because, not having been able to realize their Ideal,
+     they have idealized their Real, and thus in the depths of their
+     nature have won true "culture."
+
+     You know all beatitudes are based on something hard to do or to be.
+     "Blessed are the meek": is it easy to be meek? "Blessed are the
+     pure in heart": is that so very easy? "Blessed are they who mourn."
+     "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst--who _starve_--after
+     righteousness." So this new beatitude by its hardness only falls
+     into line with all the rest. A third time and heartily I say
+     it,--"Blessed be Drudgery!" For thrice it blesses us: it gives us
+     the fundamental qualities of manhood and womanhood; it gives us
+     success in the thing we have to do; and it makes us, if we choose,
+     artists,--artists within, whatever our outward work may be.
+     _Blessed be Drudgery_,--the secret of all culture!
+
+And now, as a final step in this preliminary study, a step which shall
+again give practice in both forms of expression, you are to choose from
+your vital interests one concerning which you hold intense convictions.
+First you are to set forth these convictions in the strongest piece of
+persuasive prose you can command: this is work for your study. Second,
+you are to summon all your vocal resources, and, with the one idea of
+persuading us of the truth of your convictions, make to us for them a
+direct appeal: this work is for the class-room. So shall we have
+combined the preliminary study in vocal expression of _direct appeal_
+with the preliminary study in verbal expression of _persuasion_.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST STUDY
+
+TO ESTABLISH VITALITY IN THINKING
+
+
+Among the axioms of our subject-matter already formulated stands this
+one: reading aloud is thinking aloud. If reading aloud is thinking aloud
+the quality of the reading will depend, of course, upon the quality of
+the thinking. But while clear thinking does not assure lucid reading
+(since there are other elements in the problem), the converse is true,
+that good reading implies clear thinking. For it is impossible to read
+convincingly unless one is thinking vitally, which brings us to the
+object of this study: _To Establish Vitality in Thinking._
+
+Do you know what it means to think vitally in reading? It means a
+concentration of your mind upon the thought before you until you,
+yourself, seem to be thinking that thought for the first time,--until
+you seem to be bringing forth a thought of your own conception instead
+of rethinking the conception of another's mind. Is this a familiar
+experience? It must become one if you are to become a true interpreter.
+For the true interpreter is first of all the keen thinker.
+
+We do not say of the great actor, after a performance of Hamlet, "He
+played Hamlet wonderfully!" We say, rather, "He was Hamlet." The great
+actor creates the part he plays each time he plays it. He creates the
+part by living the part. Even in the same way the great interpreter
+creates the thought he voices through a concentration of mind which
+appropriates the thought and makes it his own to voice.
+
+We have said that the greatest need of the human heart is for
+self-expression. To satisfy the heart that act of expression must be a
+creative act. True interpretation is creative expression. The
+fundamental step toward creative expression is complete possession of
+the thought to be expressed. Complete possession depends upon your power
+to concentrate your mind upon a thought until it is your own. The first
+step in interpretation is to establish vitality in thinking.
+
+The new arithmetic trains the mind to see the relation behind the
+mathematical statement of the relation. The child who "says his tables"
+to-day is not repeating by rote words and figures, he is realizing vital
+relations, he is developing a sense of proportion, he is learning to
+think vitally. The old method in arithmetic left the statement "two
+times one is two" a cold mathematical fact; the new method makes it a
+key to living relations. One in the "tables" of the child in mathematics
+to-day stands for a definite object, and the statement "two times one is
+two" is an interesting and significant fact. The statement through
+imaginative thinking, which is vital thinking, may be invested with
+personal significance and become a personally interesting fact. Try it!
+Say your "tables of one" up to ten times one is ten, _thinking vitally_,
+which means getting behind the statement of the relation to the relation
+itself, behind the sign to the thing signified. Let your "one" stand
+each time for something you desire--as a small boy might desire pieces
+of candy, or a miser "pieces of eight"; now think vitally in this way
+and say, "Ten times one is ten!" What has happened to the mathematical
+fact? It has become a living expression!
+
+This might be called _interpreting_ our mathematics. Why not? That is
+the surest way to master them! It is the surest way to mastery of any
+subject, of any art, of Life itself. It is the only real way. But we
+have leaped from the part to the whole, from the study of a detail to an
+application of the law governing the whole subject. Back we must go to
+our special point. If we can turn the statement of a cold mathematical
+fact into the expression of a living vital relation by thinking vitally,
+so investing the fact with personal significance and making it our own,
+what can we not do with the more easily appropriated thought which poets
+and philosophers and play-writers have given us, and with which rests
+our especial concern as interpreters? Let us see what we can do! But
+first there is one other point to be considered in this question of
+_vital thinking_. We have spoken of one aspect of the process of the
+mind in thinking,--the _concentration_ upon an idea until it is one's
+own. But there is the passing of the mind from idea to idea to be noted.
+This phase the psychologists name "transition." This alternate
+concentration and transition constitutes the "pulsing of the mind" in
+reading, which Doctor Curry discusses so vitally in his _Lessons in
+Vocal Expression_. Now transition is an inevitable result of
+concentration and follows it as naturally as expiration follows
+inspiration. This being true, we need only note, in our study of the
+process of the mind in reading aloud, the question of transition,
+letting it follow naturally the fundamental act of concentration which
+is our chief concern. If the intense concentration is accomplished the
+clean transition will follow. In choosing material which shall require
+for adequate interpretation this intense concentration of the mind, we
+find our source, of course, to be the literature of thought rather than
+the literature of feeling. The literary form which seems to furnish the
+best examples for our purpose at this point is the essay where the
+appeal is, primarily, at least, an intellectual appeal. For my own
+suggestive analysis and for our preliminary study in vital thinking I
+have chosen paragraphs from Emerson's essays because Emerson's almost
+every paragraph is an essay in miniature. The story is told of the
+gentle seer that once in the midst of a lecture he dropped all the pages
+of his manuscript over the front of the pulpit. The incident disturbed
+his auditors greatly until they saw Mr. Emerson gather up the leaves and
+without any effort at rearrangement in the old order begin to read as
+though nothing had happened. Every sentence was almost equally pertinent
+to the main theme, and suffered not from a new juxtaposition. So in
+printing extracts from this source we feel no sense of incompleteness.
+
+
+SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS
+
+Let us read this passage from Emerson's _Experience_:
+
+     To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of
+     the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It
+     is not the part of men, but of fanatics--or of mathematicians, if
+     you will--to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not
+     worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in
+     want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us
+     husband them. Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as
+     five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise,
+     and our own, to-day. I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed
+     that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad
+     justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our
+     actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as
+     the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole
+     pleasure for us.
+
+If you do not think your way through this paragraph clearly, concisely,
+logically, intensely, when you read it aloud your voice will betray you.
+In what way? Your tone will lack resonance, your speech will lack
+precision, your pitch will be monotonous, your touch will be uncertain,
+your inflections will be indefinite. Your reading will be unconvincing,
+because it will fail in lucidity and variety. In approaching this
+passage let us study first the question of proper emphasis. What is
+emphasis? The dictionaries tell us that, in delivery, it is a special
+stress of the voice on a given word. But we must use it in a broader
+sense than this. To emphasize a word is not merely to put a special
+stress of the voice upon that word. Such an attack might only make the
+word conspicuous and so defeat the aim of true emphasis. True emphasis
+is the art of voicing the words in a phrase so that they shall assume a
+right relation to one another and, so related, best suggest the thought
+of which they are the symbols. I do not emphasize one word in a phrase
+and not the others. I simply vary my stress upon each word, in order to
+gain the proper perspective for the whole sentence. Just so, in a
+picture, I make one object stand out, and others fall into the
+background, by drawing or painting them in proper relation to one
+another. I may use any or all of the "elements of vocal expression" to
+give that proper relation of values to the words in a single phrase. I
+may pause, change my pitch, vary my inflection, and alter my
+tone-color, in order to give a single word its full value. Let us try
+experiments in emphasis with some isolated sentences before analyzing
+the longer passage. Here is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's beautifully
+wrought periods:
+
+    "Every man has a sane spot somewhere."
+
+Let us vary, vocally, the relative values of the words in this sentence,
+and study the effect upon the character of the thought. Let us look upon
+the statement as a theme for discussion. With a pause before the second
+word, "man," a lift of the voice on that word, a whimsical turn of the
+tone, and a significant inflection, we may convert an innocent statement
+of fact into an incendiary question for debate on the comparative sanity
+of the sexes. A plea for endless faith and charity becomes a back-handed
+criticism of women. Now let us read the sentence, giving it its true
+meaning. "Every man has a sane spot somewhere." Let your voice make of
+the statement a plea, by dwelling a bit on the first word and again on
+the last word. Hyphenate the first two words (they really stand for one
+idea). Compound also the words "sane" and "spot." Lift them as a single
+word above the rest of the sentence. Now put "somewhere" a little higher
+still above the level of the rest of the sentence. So, only, have we the
+true import of this group of words:
+
+                                       some
+
+                                           where.
+
+                       sane-spot
+
+    Every-
+
+          man has a
+
+Analyze the rest of these sentences from Stevenson in the same way, and
+experiment with them vocally.
+
+     That is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go.
+
+     For truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of
+     the enemy.
+
+     Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.
+
+     Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.
+
+     You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out
+     or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
+
+     An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not
+     to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
+
+     The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions
+     of me, all different from each other and from us; there's no royal
+     road, we just have to sclamber and tumble.
+
+Now, once more, and this time with detailed analysis, let us study
+the passage from _Experience_. Let us first consider for a moment
+some of the words which make this passage powerful: _finish_,
+_journey's-end_, _good hours_, _wisdom_, _fanatics_, _mathematicians_,
+_sprawling-in-want_, _sitting-high_, _firmer_, _poised_, _postpone_,
+_justice_, _humble_, _odious_, _mystic_, _pleasure_. When spoken with a
+keen sense of its inherent meaning, with full appreciation of its form,
+and with delight in molding it, how efficient each one of these words
+becomes! When shall we, as a people, learn reverence for the words which
+make up our language--reverence that shall make us ashamed to mangle
+words, offering as our excuse that we are "Westerners" or "Southerners"
+or from New York or New England or Indiana. The clear-cut thought calls
+for the clean-cut speech. Let us say these words over and over until
+they assume full value. And now we pass from words to groups of words.
+The mind and the tone must move progressively through the first three
+phrases which make up this first sentence: "To finish the moment, to
+find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest
+number of good hours, is wisdom." The phrases must be held together by
+an almost imperceptible suspension and upward reach of the voice at the
+end of each group of words, and yet each phrase must be allowed to be
+momentarily complete. Read the sentence, making each phrase a
+conclusion, and then again letting each phrase look forward to the next.
+Each phrase is really a substantive, looking forward to its predicate
+through a second substantive which is a little more vital than the
+first, and again through a third substantive which is a little more
+vital than either of the other two. Bring this out in reading the
+sentence. The next sentence depends for its significance upon your
+contrasting inflections of the three words "men," "fanatics," and
+"mathematicians"; and again upon your sympathetic inflection of
+"sprawling-in-want" and "sitting-high." "It is not the part of men, but
+of fanatics--or of mathematicians, if you will--to say that, the
+shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so
+short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high." In your
+utterance of these words can you make "men" MEN, and "fanatics"
+_fanatics_, and consign "mathematicians" to the cold corner of human
+affairs designed for them? Can you so inflect "sprawling in want" and
+"sitting high" as to suggest a swamp and a mountain-top, or a frog and
+an angel? Let your voice leap from the swamp to the mountain-top. Let it
+climb. Now comes the swift, concise, admonitory sentence: "Since our
+office is with moments, let us husband them." Pause before you speak the
+word "husband," and _husband_ it. "Five minutes of to-day are worth as
+much to me as five minutes in the next millennium." Make "five minutes
+of to-day" one word, and accent the last syllable, thus:
+five-minutes-of-_to-day_. Let the tone retard and take its time on the
+last seven words. Now poise your tone for the next sentence. "Let us be
+poised, and wise, and our own, to-day." The paragraph closes with a more
+complex statement of the theme. Let your voice search out the meaning.
+Let it settle down into the conclusion, and utter it convincingly. Give
+a definite touch to the words which I shall put in italics. "I settle
+myself ever _firmer_ in the _creed_ that we should not _postpone_ and
+_refer_ and _wish_, but do _broad-justice_ where we _are_, by
+_whomsoever_ we deal with, accepting our _actual_ companions and
+circumstances, however _humble_ or _odious_, as the _mystic officials_
+to whom the _universe_ has dedicated its _whole pleasure_ for _us_."
+
+Analyze vocally the following paragraph:
+
+     There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
+     conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that
+     he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that
+     though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing
+     corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of
+     ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in
+     him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he
+     can do, nor does he know until he has tried.... What I must do is
+     all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally
+     arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole
+     distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder
+     because you will always find those who think they know what is your
+     duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after
+     the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own;
+     but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
+     perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.--_Self-Reliance._
+
+
+SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION
+
+By choosing as further material for vocal interpretation selections
+which shall also be good examples for examination as to their literary
+construction, we shall serve the double purpose of adapting our studies
+in vocal interpretation to the uses of English composition.
+
+The following selections are to be: first, read aloud (in class);
+second, examined as to their literary construction (in class); third,
+analyzed and reported upon as specimens of exposition and argumentation
+(in the study).
+
+     Exposition is an explanation, a setting forth, or an expounding. It
+     is an attempt to render something plain, an effort to convey to the
+     reader a train of thought which represents the conclusions of the
+     writer upon a subject. The writer, it is at once evident, must be
+     acquainted with the subject with which he deals. He is presuming to
+     teach, and must be in a position which justifies him in so doing.
+     He is prepared to write an exposition only when he is able, in
+     regard to the topic in hand, to take frankly and unreservedly the
+     attitude of a teacher.
+
+     A teacher must have many good gifts and graces; and whoever else
+     may fail to be well acquainted with a given lesson, he must have
+     mastered it thoroughly. To teach he must first know. Whoever has
+     taught understands how completely different is the attitude of the
+     teacher from that of the pupil. While the pupil is hardly expected
+     to be able to do more than reasonably well to understand the
+     subject in hand, the teacher must be able to explain, to justify,
+     to make clear relations, and to impart the whole matter. The pupil
+     is excused with a sort of hearsay knowledge, but the teacher must
+     have a vital experience of what he teaches. Especially must he be
+     able to comprehend and to represent a subject as a whole. He is
+     responsible for the student's being able in turn to co-ordinate
+     facts and theories so as to produce unity; and it is therefore
+     essential that he himself have power to hold and to make clear a
+     continuous train of thought.
+
+     The teacher, moreover, must have over his mind discipline so firm
+     that he is not dependent upon moods. He must cover the wide
+     difference between the train of thought which springs spontaneously
+     in the mind and that which is laboriously worked out as a logical
+     sequence of ideas relating to a subject forced upon the attention.
+     The pupil may, to a certain extent, indulge the vagaries of his
+     inclination, but the teacher must respond to the need of the
+     moment. He must have trained his mind to give an intelligent
+     judgment upon any matter presented to it. He is not equipped for
+     instructing--nor is any individual ready for life--until he can
+     command the resources of his inner self to the utmost. The trained
+     person is one who can take a subject which may not at the outset
+     especially appeal to him, which is full of complications, which is
+     not in itself, perhaps, attractive, and can insist with himself
+     that his mind shall master it thoroughly. He is able so to expend
+     his whole mental strength, if need be, upon any necessary topic
+     that the subject shall be examined, acquired, assimilated, and then
+     shall be so organized, so illumined, and so presented that others
+     shall be instructed. The mind of the teacher, in a word, is so
+     disciplined that it will work when it is ordered.
+
+     The ideal state of mind for him who wishes to communicate knowledge
+     is that of being absolute master of all its resources. Many who
+     possess no inconsiderable powers of thought are practically unable
+     to command the best powers of their intelligence. They depend upon
+     the whim of the moment, upon some outward pressure or inward
+     impulse, to arouse their intellect. They fail to reflect that while
+     any ordinary intellect naturally forms some opinion upon any
+     subject which interests it, only the trained mind is able to judge
+     clearly and lucidly of an indifferent or uninteresting matter. In
+     this mastery of thought lies the difference between the sterile and
+     the productive mind. Only one brain in a thousand has not the
+     disposition to shirk work if it is allowed, and every student has
+     moments when his intelligence seems almost to act like a spoiled
+     child that hates to get up when called on a cold morning. To
+     establish the power of the will over the intellect is the object of
+     education, and the ability to exercise this power is what is meant
+     by the proper use of the word "cultivation."
+
+     The mental process of the cultivated thinker when considering any
+     subject is likely to be: first, to become sure of his terms; then,
+     clearly to set before his mind the facts and conditions; and,
+     lastly, to make the possible and resulting deductions and
+     conclusions. This gives a hint, and indeed practically affords a
+     rule for the writer of exposition.
+
+     An exposition, broadly speaking, may be said to consist of three
+     steps which nearly correspond to the three steps of mental
+     activity just set down: the Definition, the Statement, and the
+     Inference.
+
+     Definition is making clear to self or to the reader what is under
+     discussion.
+
+     Statement is the setting forth of whatever is to be said of the
+     facts, conditions, relations, and so on, which it is the object of
+     the exposition to make clear.
+
+     Inference is the conclusion or conclusions drawn.
+
+     These three parts will seldom be found as formal divisions in any
+     ordinary exposition, but in some sort they are always present; and
+     the writer must at least have them clear in his mind if he hopes to
+     render his work well ordered, comprehensive, and symmetrical.
+     Together they are woven as the strands which give a firmness of
+     texture to the whole.
+
+     To illustrate the bearing of this analysis on the composition of an
+     exposition, we may imagine that a student has been required to
+     write a theme on "The Influence of College Life." He has first to
+     concern himself with definition. He must decide what he means by
+     college life as a molding influence; whether its intellectual, its
+     social, its moral aspects, or all these. He must consider, too,
+     whether he is to deal with the effect upon specific characters or
+     upon types; whether upon boys during the time they are in college
+     or as a training for after life; whether at a special institution
+     or as the result of any college. If he limits himself to one phase
+     of influence, he must in the same way decide fully in what sense
+     he intends to treat that phase. If he is to consider the social
+     effect of college life, for instance, he has to define for himself
+     the sense in which he will use the word "social." Is it to mean
+     simply formal society, adaptation to the more conventional and
+     exclusive forms of human intercourse, or to imply all that renders
+     a man more self-poised, more flexible, and more adaptable in any
+     relations with his fellows? If, on the other hand, it is the
+     intellectual influence of college life which is to be studied, the
+     first step is to decide what is to be considered for this purpose
+     the range of the term "intellectual"; whether it is to be taken to
+     mean the mere acquirement of information; whether it has relation
+     to acquirement or to modification of mental conditions; whether it
+     means change in the mind in the way of development or of
+     modification; whether it shall be applied to an alteration in the
+     student's attitude toward knowledge or toward life in general. All
+     this is in the line of definition, and it is naturally connected
+     with the statement of whatever facts bear upon the topic under
+     discussion.
+
+     Statement has largely to do with fact. Theory belongs rather to
+     whatever inference is part of an exposition. In the statement will
+     come the observations of the writer; whatever he knows of general
+     conditions at college, or such individual examples as bear upon the
+     question in hand. From these he will inevitably draw some
+     conclusions, and the value of the exposition will depend upon the
+     reasonableness and convincingness of these inferences, as these
+     will, in turn, depend upon the clearness of the writer's original
+     knowledge in regard to his intentions and the logic of his
+     statements.
+
+     Composition, it should be remembered, is the art of communicating
+     to others what is in the mind of the writer. To write without
+     having the subject abundantly in mind is to invite the reader to a
+     Barmecide feast of empty dishes. The necessity of insisting upon
+     such particulars as those just given of the process of making an
+     exposition arises from the stubborn idea of the untrained student
+     that writing is something done with paper and ink. It is, on the
+     contrary, something which is done with brains; it is less putting
+     things on paper than it is thinking things out in the mind.
+
+     Before leaving the illustration of a theme on the influence of
+     college life we may glance a moment more at the difficulty, even
+     with so simple a subject, of attaining perfect clarity of thinking.
+     One of the first things which must be determined is the essential
+     difference of life in a college from ordinary existence. If the
+     subject be given out to a class of students half the themes handed
+     in will begin with a remark upon the great change which comes to a
+     boy who finds himself for the first time freed from the restraints
+     of home. The moment this idea is presented to the mind it is to be
+     looked at, not as something with which to fill so much paper, but
+     as a stepping-stone toward ideas beyond. It is necessary, for
+     instance, to determine the distinctions between freedom at college
+     and freedom elsewhere; to decide wherein lie the differences in
+     the conditions which surround a boy in a university and one who
+     escapes from the restrictions of home by going away to live in a
+     city or in a country village, on shipboard or in the army. To be of
+     value, every thought in an exposition must have been tested by a
+     comparison with allied ideas as wide and as exhaustive as the
+     thinker is equal to making.
+
+     To learn to think is, after all, the prime essential in
+     exposition-writing, and the beginning of thought is the realization
+     of what is already known. The student who patiently examines his
+     views on the subject of which he is to write, who determines to
+     discover exactly how much he knows and what is the relative
+     importance of each of his opinions, is likely soon to come to find
+     that he is considering the theme chosen not only deeply, but with
+     tangible results. The value of any exposition, to sum the matter up
+     in a word, rests primarily and chiefly on the thoroughness of the
+     thought which produces it.--ARLO BATES.[3]
+
+     [3] This selection from Prof. Arlo Bates's _Talks on Writing
+     English_ is printed by permission of the author and his publishers,
+     Houghton Mifflin Company.
+
+     The _Idylls of the King_ has been called a quasi-epic. Departing
+     from the conventional epic form by its lack of a closely continuous
+     narrative, it has yet that lofty manner and underlying unity of
+     design which leads us to class it with the epics, at least, in the
+     essentials. It consists of a series of chivalric legends, taken
+     chiefly from the _Morte d'Arthur_ of Sir Thomas Malory, grouped so
+     as to exhibit the establishment, the greatness, and the downfall of
+     an ideal kingdom of righteousness among men. "The Coming of
+     Arthur," the ideal ruler, shows us the setting up of this kingdom.
+     Before this was disorder, great tracts of wilderness,
+
+         Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
+         But man was less and less.
+
+     Arthur slays the beast and fells the forest, and the old order
+     changes to give place to new. Then the song of Arthur's knights
+     rises, a majestic chorus of triumph:
+
+         Clang battle-axe and clash brand. Let the king reign.
+
+     In "Gareth and Lynette" the newly established kingdom is seen doing
+     its work among men. Arthur, enthroned in his great hall, dispenses
+     impartial justice. The knights
+
+         Ride abroad redressing human wrongs.
+
+     The allegory shows us, in Gareth's contests with the knights "that
+     have no law nor King," the contest of the soul with the temptations
+     that at different periods of life successively attack it:
+
+         The war of Time against the soul of man.
+
+     Then follow the "Idylls," which trace the entrance and growth of an
+     element of sin and discord, which, spreading, pulls down into ruin
+     that "fellowship of noble knights," "which are an image of the
+     mighty world." The purity of the ideal kingdom is fouled, almost at
+     its source, by the guilty love of Lancelot and the Queen. Among
+     some the contagion spreads; while others, in an extremity of
+     protest, start in quest of the Holy Grail, leaving the duty at hand
+     for mystical visions. Man cannot bring down heaven to earth; he
+     cannot sanctify the mass of men by his own rapturous anticipations;
+     he cannot safely neglect the preliminary stages of progress
+     appointed for the race; he "may not wander from the allotted field
+     before his work be done."
+
+     So by impurity and by impatience the rift in the kingdom widens,
+     and in "The Last Tournament," in the stillness before the impending
+     doom, we hear the shrill voice of Dagonet railing at the King, who
+     thinks himself as God, that he can make
+
+             Honey from hornet-combs
+         And men from beasts.
+
+     In "Guinevere," unequaled elsewhere in the "Idylls" in pure poetry,
+     the blow falls; at length, in the concluding poem, Arthur passes to
+     the isle of Avilion, and once more
+
+         The old order changeth, yielding place to new.
+
+     Tennyson himself tells us that in this, his longest poem, he has
+     meant to shadow "sense at war with soul," the struggle in the
+     individual and in the race, between that body which links us with
+     the brute and the soul which makes us part of a spiritual order.
+     But the mastery of the higher over the lower is only obtained
+     through many seeming failures. Wounded and defeated, the King
+     exclaims:
+
+         For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
+         And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
+         And all whereon I lean'd, in wife and friend,
+         Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
+         _Reels back into the beast_, and is no more.
+
+     But he also half perceives the truth which it is the poet's purpose
+     to suggest to us. It is short-sighted to expect the immediate
+     sanctification of the race; if we are disheartened, striving to
+     "work His will," it is because "we see not the close." It is
+     impossible that Arthur's work should end in failure--departing, he
+     declares, "I pass, but shall not die," and when his grievous wound
+     is healed, he will return. The _Idylls of the King_ is thus the
+     epic of evolution in application to the progress of human society.
+     In it the teachings of "In Memoriam" assume a narrative form.
+
+         Move upward, working out the beast,
+
+     may be taken as a brief statement of its theme: and we read in it
+     the belief in the tendency upward and an assurance of ultimate
+     triumph:
+
+         Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
+             Will be the final goal of ill,
+             To pangs of nature, sins of will,
+         Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
+
+         That nothing walks with aimless feet,
+             That not one life shall be destroyed,
+             Or cast as rubbish to the void
+         When God hath made the pile complete.
+
+                                           --PANCOAST.[4]
+
+
+[4] Reprinted by permission from Pancoast's _Introduction to English
+Literature_. Copyright, 1907, by Henry Holt and Company.
+
+As an interlude study which shall look back to the step we have just
+taken, and forward to the one we are about to take, let us test our
+growth in _vitality in thinking_ and our need of _intelligence in
+feeling_, by voicing the following selections from didactic poetry. This
+form affords the best exercise in both activities because it makes a
+double appeal, and so a double demand upon the interpreter--an appeal
+through form to emotion, through aim to intelligence, and through
+message and atmosphere to both. I have chosen examples of this form in
+which the beauty and fascination of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, and the
+didactic nature of the thought do not seem to overbalance each other. If
+either should predominate you must, by your interpretation, strike the
+balance. In reading Robert Browning's _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ (from which I
+shall quote but a few verses) you must carry to your auditor the full
+import of the philosophy, but in doing so you must not lose the beauty
+of the verse in which the poet has set it.
+
+    RABBI BEN EZRA
+
+    Grow old along with me!
+    The best is yet to be,
+      The last of life, for which the first was made:
+    Our times are in His hand
+    Who saith, "A whole I planned,
+      Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
+
+    Not that, amassing flowers,
+    Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
+      Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
+    Not that, admiring stars,
+    It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
+      Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
+
+    Not for such hopes and fears
+    Annulling youth's brief years,
+      Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
+    Rather I prize the doubt
+    Low kinds exist without,
+      Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Then, welcome each rebuff
+    That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+      Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
+    Be our joys three-parts pain!
+    Strive and hold cheap the strain,
+      Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
+
+    For thence--a paradox
+    Which comforts while it mocks--
+      Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
+    What I aspired to be,
+    And was not, comforts me:
+      A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now, who shall arbitrate?
+    Ten men love what I hate,
+      Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
+    Ten, who in ears and eyes
+    Match me: we all surmise,
+      They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe?
+
+    Not on the vulgar mass
+    Called "work," must sentence pass,
+      Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
+    O'er which, from level stand,
+    The low world laid its hand,
+      Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
+
+    But all, the world's coarse thumb
+    And finger failed to plumb,
+      So passed in making up the main account:
+    All instincts immature,
+    All purposes unsure,
+      That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
+
+    Thoughts hardly to be packed
+    Into a narrow act,
+      Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
+    All I could never be,
+    All, men ignored in me,
+      This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                           --BROWNING.
+
+
+    FORBEARANCE
+
+    Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
+    Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
+    At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
+    Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
+    And loved so well a high behavior,
+    In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
+    Nobility more nobly to repay?
+    O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
+
+
+    EACH AND ALL
+
+    Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
+    Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
+    The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
+    Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
+    The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
+    Deems not that great Napoleon
+    Stops his horse and lists with delight,
+    Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
+    Nor knowest thou what argument
+    Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
+    All are needed by each one;
+    Nothing is fair or good alone.
+    I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
+    Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
+    I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
+    He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
+    For I did not bring home the river and sky;--
+    He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.
+    The delicate shells lay on the shore;
+    The bubbles of the latest wave
+    Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
+    And the bellowing of the savage sea
+    Greeted their safe escape to me.
+    I wiped away the weeds and foam,
+    I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
+    But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
+    Had left their beauty on the shore
+    With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
+    The lover watched his graceful maid,
+    As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
+    Nor knew her beauty's best attire
+    Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
+    At last she came to his hermitage,
+    Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;--
+    The gay enchantment was undone,
+    A gentle wife, but fairy none.
+    Then I said, "I covet truth;
+    Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
+    I leave it behind with the games of youth":--
+    As I spoke, beneath my feet
+    The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
+    Running over the club-moss burrs;
+    I inhaled the violet's breath;
+    Around me stood the oaks and firs;
+    Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
+    Over me soared the eternal sky,
+    Full of light and of deity;
+    Again I saw, again I heard,
+    The rolling river, the morning bird;--
+    Beauty through my senses stole;
+    I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
+
+                                           --EMERSON.
+
+As a final step in this study which has for its aim an increase in your
+power to _think vitally_ you are to choose from the "great heap of your
+knowledge" a subject about which you have sufficient understanding and
+enthusiasm to justify your discussion of it, and with this as a topic
+you are "to unmuzzle your wisdom" in the form of _exposition_ or
+_argumentation_.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND STUDY
+
+
+TO ESTABLISH INTELLIGENCE IN FEELING
+
+Art is in bondage in this country: its internal polity to the
+temperamental ideal; its external polity to the commercial ideal.
+Business and social life are in the same bondage. In music, in drama, in
+letters, in society, and in trade we permit personality to exploit
+itself for commercial purposes. The result is either chaotic or
+calculated expression on every side. When temperament seeks restraint in
+technique, and policy, whether business or social, seeks freedom in
+service, then shall we have that balanced expression in art, in society,
+and in trade which should proceed from the American personality and
+distinguish American life.
+
+It may seem a far cry from a comment upon American life to the subject
+of this second study--_intelligence in feeling_. Carry the idea of
+balanced expression from the introduction to the body of this exposition
+and the transition is not difficult to make.
+
+"Wonderful technique, but no heart in her singing!" "Tremendous
+temperament, but no technique!" "She moves me profoundly, but oh, what a
+method!" "Her instrument is flawless, but she leaves me absolutely
+unmoved." Have you ever heard such comment, or made such comment, or
+been the subject of like comment? Diagnosis of the case, whether it be
+yours or another's, should be the same--lack of poise in expression,
+producing the undesirable effect upon the auditor of no emotion at all,
+or of unintelligent emotion. To determine just what we mean by
+intelligent emotion is our first problem for this study.
+
+An experience I had in visiting a class in interpretation in a
+well-known school of oratory some years ago will illustrate the point.
+The selection for interpretation was the prelude to the first part of
+_The Vision of Sir Launfal_.
+
+    "And what is so rare as a day in June?
+    Then, if ever, come perfect days;
+    Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
+    And over it softly her warm ear lays; ..."
+
+The work was well under way when I entered the class-room. My entrance
+did not disturb the expression on the face of the student who was "up
+before" the class. A Malvolio smile was never more deliciously
+indelible. I thought at first my request to see some work in
+interpretation had been mistaken and I had been ushered into a class in
+facial gymnastics. Then I concluded that Mr. Lowell's poem was being
+employed as text for an exercise in smiling. Finally the awful truth
+came upon me that this teacher of interpretation was seriously
+attempting to secure from her pupils an expression which should suggest
+the spirit of the June day by asking them to assume the outward sign of
+joy known as smiling. The result was a ghastly series of facial
+contortions, which left at least one auditor's day as bleak as the
+bleakest December. No intelligent feeling can be induced in interpreter
+or auditor by assuming the outward sign of an inward emotion. Some of
+you are recalling Mr. James's _talk to students_, on the reflex theory
+of emotion, and are being confused at this point. Let us stop and
+straighten out the confusion. Mr. James says:
+
+"Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go
+together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct
+control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is
+not.
+
+"Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous
+cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully,
+and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such
+conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that
+occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our
+will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of
+fear."
+
+The application of this principle to the reading of these lines would
+seem to justify the method the teacher was pursuing. A smile is
+acceptedly the indication of happy emotion, the outward symbol of inward
+rejoicing or joy. The June day is full of joyful emotion,--the joy of
+awakening life. Applying Mr. James's theory, a legitimate way to induce
+the inward emotion would seem to be to assume the outward sign. But wait
+a moment. Let us look to our premises. Mr. Lanier, who sings of Nature
+with joyful understanding, cries in _Sunrise_:
+
+    "Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree
+    That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know
+    From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?
+    They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
+    Reason's not one that weeps.
+    What logic of greeting lies
+    Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?"
+
+Here is a great master of verbal expression whose inward joy finds its
+outward symbol not in a smile but in a tear. So you and I may respond to
+Mr. Lowell's "high tide of the year" with smiles or with tears, with
+bowed head and closed eyes, or with eyes wide and head raised to meet
+the returning flood of life.
+
+The effect upon me of the beauty of this day as Mr. Lowell has painted
+it, my personal emotional response is interesting psychology, but is not
+my concern as an interpreter. My own emotion and its personal response
+belong to my preparatory interpretative efforts in the study; but when
+the interpretation is ready for the audience-room, the emotion must be
+assimilated into the interpretative act and appear only as part of the
+illumination of the bit of life I am presenting.
+
+The object of all great art, whether creative or interpretative, is not
+to exploit the personality of the artist, but to disclose at some point
+the personality of the very God himself, which is life. The revelation
+not of personal emotion but of universal life is the legitimate aim of
+all artistic effort.
+
+Emotional response will accompany every vital mental conception.
+Abandonment to that response is a legitimate and necessary part of full
+comprehension. But such abandonment, as I have said, belongs to our
+preparation for expression. Such abandonment must not be taken out of
+the study on to the stage. No temperamental expression along any line is
+fit for the public until it is controlled by technique, the technique
+which has been worked out by the masters of every art, not excluding the
+art of living.
+
+It is not the effect of June upon you I want from your interpretation,
+it is the spirit of June itself. You must let me have my own emotion.
+Your emotional response was the result of your mental concept; mine, to
+be intelligent, must find the same impulse. If you impose your own
+emotion upon me mine will be merely an unintelligent reflection of
+yours. Taking as our ideal of the interpreter, the absolutely pure
+medium, bars out every manifestation which calls attention to the
+interpreter, and so interferes with the direct message.
+
+"The natural form of expression which literature takes when it passes
+beyond the normal powers of prose, is lyric poetry. When your feelings
+rise beyond a certain degree of stress you need the stronger beat and
+vibration of verse; to express the highest joy or the deepest grief
+poetry is your natural instrument." Again corroborated in our choice of
+direction in study by Mr. Gardiner, let us turn for "material" in the
+establishment of _intelligence in emotion_, to the most intensive type
+of the literature of feeling,--lyric poetry.
+
+"Every now and then a man will come who will reduce to words--as Mr.
+Ruskin has done--some impression of vivid pleasure which has never been
+reduced to words before. It is only the great master who makes these
+advances; by studying his works you may perhaps come somewhere near the
+mark that he has set." This further word from the same paragraph should
+influence us to pause with Mr. Ruskin's poetry in prose form for a brief
+study on our way to the lyrics of Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats, a
+song from Shakespeare, and some few from the rare, more modern
+lyricists. I shall trust you to this by-path under the guidance of _The
+Forms of Prose Literature_, where you will find passages from such
+masters of prose as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Stevenson--passages of surpassing
+lyric beauty which shall furnish models for your correlated study in
+Description.
+
+
+SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS
+
+I have chosen for suggestive analysis of the lyric, Shelley's ode _To a
+Skylark_. I shall analyze in detail only the first five stanzas:
+
+          Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
+            Bird thou never wert,
+          That from heaven, or near it
+            Pourest thy full heart
+    In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+
+          Higher still and higher
+            From the earth thou springest,
+          Like a cloud of fire
+            The blue deep thou wingest,
+    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
+
+          In the golden lightning
+            Of the sunken sun
+          O'er which clouds are brightening,
+            Thou dost float and run,
+    Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
+
+          The pale purple even
+            Melts around thy flight;
+          Like a star of heaven
+            In the broad daylight
+    Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
+
+          Keen as are the arrows
+            Of that silver sphere
+          Whose intense lamp narrows
+            In the white dawn clear,
+    Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
+
+How shall we create an atmosphere for the reading of these verses! How
+can we catch the spirit of the creator of them! Shall we ever feel ready
+to voice that first line? Do you know Jules Breton's picture _The Lark_?
+Do you love it? Go, then, and stand before it, actually or in
+imagination. Let something of the spirit which informs that lovely
+child, lifting her eyes, her head in an attitude of listening rapture,
+steal over you. I know her power. I have tested it. In reading the
+"Skylark" with a class of boys and girls from twelve to fourteen years
+old, I tried the experiment. I happened to have with me a beautiful copy
+of Breton's picture. I took it to the class-room. I wrote on the
+blackboard verses of the poem and hung the picture over them. The
+_picture_ taught them to read the poem. The eyes of the girl became
+their teacher. I tried the experiment, with a private pupil in my
+studio, with a somewhat different result. I had told her to bring a copy
+of Shelley's poems to her next lesson. "Do you know the ode _To a
+Skylark_?" I asked. "Yes," she said. A copy of Breton's picture hung on
+the wall. "Before you open your book look at the picture," I said. She
+obeyed. Her expression, always radiant, deepened its radiance. "Do you
+know what the girl is doing?" I asked. "Oh yes, she is listening to the
+skylark." "How do you know?" "I have heard the skylark sing." "I never
+have," I said. "Read the poem to me." Now when _I_ read the "Skylark," I
+see the girl in Jules Breton's picture, but I hear the voice of my
+English pupil.
+
+But if our apperceptive background fails to furnish a memory of the
+identical sight and sound for our inspiring, it at least holds bird
+notes and bird flights of great beauty, and we must call upon these for
+the impulse to voice Shelley's apostrophe:
+
+          Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
+            Bird thou never wert,
+          That from heaven, or near it
+            Pourest thy full heart
+    In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+
+An early autumn number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1907 published a
+poem by Mr. Ridgley Torrence, entitled _The Lesser Children_, or _A
+Threnody at the Hunting Season_. The poem is worthy, in sentiment and
+structure, to be set beside Shelley's ode. Let us compare with the
+picture which the eighteenth-century poet has given us this one from our
+modern song-writer:
+
+    Who has not seen in the high gulf of light
+    What, lower, was a bird, but now
+    Is moored and altered quite
+    Into an island of unshaded joy?
+    To whom the mate below upon the bough
+    Shouts once and brings him from his high employ.
+    Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud
+    Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud,
+    But took a little of the day,
+    A little of the colored sky,
+    And of the joy that would not stay
+    He wove a song that cannot die.
+
+Now let us study closely the first verse of the older poem. Spirit and
+voice must soar in the first line, "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" The
+two words "hail" and "blithe" are swift-winged words. Let them fly. Give
+them their wings. Let them do all they are intended to do. The rhythm of
+the whole poem is aspiring. Reverence the rhythm, but keep the thought
+floating clear above it in the second line, "Bird thou never wert." With
+the next two lines the tone must gather head to be poured forth in the
+last line, "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." Let us make
+another comparative study. Set on the other side of this picture
+Lowell's description of the "little bird" in his prologue to Sir
+Launfal's vision:
+
+    The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
+      Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
+    And lets his illumined being o'errun
+      With the deluge of summer it receives.
+
+The second verse of the "Skylark" demands a still higher flight of
+imagination and tone. Let us try it.
+
+          Higher still and higher
+            From the earth thou springest,
+          Like a cloud of fire
+            The blue deep thou wingest,
+    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
+
+Again all the words rise and float. Sing them over: _higher_, _higher_,
+_springest_, _fire_, _wingest_, _singing_, _soar_, _soaring_, _singest_.
+The reader must feel himself poised for flight in every word of the
+first three verses. Why does the poet say cloud of fire? What is the
+color of the skylark? And now the tone, which has been of a radiant hue
+through these three verses, must soften a little in the first three
+lines of the next verse--
+
+    The pale purple even
+      Melts around thy flight;--
+
+glow gold again in the last three lines--
+
+          Like a star of heaven
+            In the broad daylight
+    Thou art unseen, and yet I hear thy shrill delight--
+
+and become the white of an incandescent light in the next verse--
+
+          Keen as are the arrows
+            Of that silver sphere
+          Whose intense lamp narrows
+            In the white dawn clear,
+    Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
+
+Do you not see that the secret of its beauty lies, for vocal
+interpretation, in the color of tone and in the inflection of the words?
+Say "unseen," dwelling on the second syllable; "shrill delight,"
+directing _shrill_ over the head of _delight_; "keen," making it cleave
+the air like an arrow; "silver sphere," suggesting a moonlit path across
+water; "intense" and "narrows," letting the tone recede into the "white
+dawn"; "see," with a vanishing stress; and "feel," with a deepening note
+carried to the end. So we might go on through the twenty-one stanzas
+which make up the poem.
+
+Please analyze undirected the next two verses.
+
+          All the earth and air
+            With thy voice is loud,
+          As, when night is bare,
+            From one lonely cloud
+    The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.
+
+          What thou art we know not;
+            What is most like thee?
+          From rainbow clouds there flow not
+            Drops so bright to see
+    As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
+
+In reading the first lines of the next four verses we must avoid
+monotony.
+
+          Like a poet hidden
+            In the light of thought,
+          Singing hymns unbidden,
+            Till the world is wrought
+    To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
+
+          Like a high-born maiden
+            In a palace tower,
+          Soothing her love-laden
+            Soul in secret hour
+    With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
+
+          Like a glowworm golden
+            In a dell of dew,
+          Scattering unbeholden
+            Its aerial hue
+    Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
+
+          Like a rose embower'd
+            In its own green leaves,
+          By warm winds deflower'd,
+            Till the scent it gives
+    Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
+
+Vary, if only for variety, the pitch on which you begin each of these
+first lines. Let the first three words of the eighth verse, "like a
+poet," ascend in pitch. Keep the voice level in the first line of the
+ninth verse, "like a high-born maiden." Let the pitch fall in the first
+words of the tenth stanza, "like a glowworm golden." And again keep the
+tone level on the first line of the next stanza, "like a rose
+embower'd." I leave to you the analysis of the rest of the poem:
+
+          Sound of vernal showers
+            On the twinkling grass,
+          Rain-awaken'd flowers,
+            All that ever was
+    Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
+
+          Teach us, sprite or bird,
+            What sweet thoughts are thine:
+          I have never heard
+            Praise of love or wine
+    That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
+
+          Chorus hymeneal
+            Or triumphal chaunt
+          Match'd with thine, would be all
+            But an empty vaunt--
+    A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
+
+          What objects are the fountains
+            Of thy happy strain?
+          What field, or waves, or mountains?
+            What shapes of sky or plain?
+    What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
+
+          With thy clear, keen joyance
+            Languor cannot be:
+          Shadow of annoyance
+            Never came near thee:
+    Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
+
+          Waking or asleep
+            Thou of death must deem
+          Things more true and deep
+            Than we mortals dream,
+    Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
+
+          We look before and after,
+            And pine for what is not:
+          Our sincerest laughter
+            With some pain is fraught;
+    Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
+
+          Yet if we could scorn
+            Hate and pride and fear;
+          If we were things born
+            Not to shed a tear,
+    I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
+
+          Better than all measures
+            Of delightful sound,
+          Better than all treasures
+            That in books are found,
+    Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
+
+          Teach me half the gladness
+            That thy brain must know,
+          Such harmonious madness
+            From my lips would flow,
+    The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
+
+                                           --SHELLEY.
+
+
+SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION
+
+The following selections from lyric poetry are designed to give the
+voice exercise in the expression of varied emotions.
+
+I
+
+    THE DAFFODILS
+
+    I wander'd lonely as a cloud
+      That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
+    When all at once I saw a crowd,
+      A host of golden daffodils,
+    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
+    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
+
+    Continuous as the stars that shine
+      And twinkle on the milky way,
+    They stretch'd in never-ending line
+      Along the margin of a bay:
+    Ten thousand saw I at a glance
+    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
+
+    The waves beside them danced, but they
+      Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:--
+    A Poet could not but be gay
+      In such a jocund company!
+    I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
+    What wealth the show to me had brought;
+
+    For oft, when on my couch I lie
+      In vacant or in pensive mood,
+    They flash upon that inward eye
+      Which is the bliss of solitude;
+    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
+    And dances with the daffodils.
+
+                                           --WORDSWORTH.
+
+II
+
+    BY THE SEA
+
+    It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
+    The holy time is quiet as a Nun
+    Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
+    Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
+
+    The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea:
+    Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
+    And doth with his eternal motion make
+    A sound like thunder--everlastingly.
+
+    Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
+    If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought
+    Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
+    Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
+    And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
+    God being with thee when we know it not.
+
+                                           --WORDSWORTH.
+
+III
+
+    TO THE CUCKOO
+
+    O blithe new-comer! I have heard,
+      I hear thee and rejoice:
+    O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
+      Or but a wandering Voice?
+
+    While I am lying on the grass
+      Thy twofold shout I hear;
+    From hill to hill it seems to pass,
+      At once far off and near.
+
+    Though babbling only to the vale
+      Of sunshine and of flowers,
+    Thou bringest unto me a tale
+      Of visionary hours.
+
+    Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
+      Even yet thou art to me
+    No bird, but an invisible thing,
+      A voice, a mystery;
+
+    The same whom in my school-boy days
+      I listen'd to; that Cry
+    Which made me look a thousand ways
+      In bush, and tree, and sky.
+
+    To seek thee did I often rove
+      Through woods and on the green;
+    And thou wert still a hope, a love,
+      Still long'd for, never seen!
+
+    And I can listen to thee yet,
+      Can lie upon the plain
+    And listen, till I do beget
+      That golden time again.
+
+    O blesséd Bird! the earth we pace
+      Again appears to be
+    An unsubstantial, faery place,
+      That is fit home for Thee!
+
+                                           --WORDSWORTH.
+
+IV
+
+    ODE TO THE WEST WIND
+
+    O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
+      Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
+    Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
+      Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
+    Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
+      Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
+    The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
+      Each like a corpse within its grave, until
+    Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
+      Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
+    (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
+      With living hues and odours plain and hill:
+    Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
+      Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, oh hear!
+
+    Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
+      Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
+    Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
+      Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
+    On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
+      Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
+    Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge
+      Of the horizon to the zenith's height--
+    The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
+      Of the dying year, to which this closing night
+    Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
+      Vaulted with all thy congregated might
+    Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
+    Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!
+
+    Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
+     The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
+    Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
+      Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
+    And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
+      Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
+    All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
+      So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
+    For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
+      Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
+    The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
+      The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
+    Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear
+    And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear!
+
+    If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
+      If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
+    A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
+      The impulse of thy strength, only less free
+    Than Thou, O uncontrollable! If even
+      I were as in my boyhood, and could be
+    The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
+      As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
+    Scarce seem'd a vision,--I would ne'er have striven
+      As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
+    Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
+      I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
+    A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
+    One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud.
+
+    Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is:
+      What if my leaves are falling like its own!
+    The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
+      Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
+    Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
+      My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!
+    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
+      Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
+    And, by the incantation of this verse,
+      Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
+    Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
+      Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
+    The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
+    If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
+
+                                           --SHELLEY.
+
+V
+
+    TO THE NIGHT
+
+    Swiftly walk over the western wave,
+              Spirit of night!
+    Out of the misty eastern cave
+    Where, all the long and lone daylight,
+    Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
+    Which make thee terrible and dear,--
+              Swift be thy flight!
+
+    Wrap thy form in a mantle gray
+              Star-inwrought;
+    Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day,
+    Kiss her until she be wearied out:
+    Then wander o'er sea and city and land,
+    Touching all with thine opiate wand--
+              Come, long-sought!
+
+    When I arose and saw the dawn,
+              I sigh'd for thee:
+    When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
+    And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
+    And the weary Day turn'd to his rest
+    Lingering like an unloved guest,
+              I sigh'd for thee.
+
+    Thy brother Death came, and cried
+              Wouldst thou me?
+    Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
+    Murmur'd like a noon-tide bee
+    Shall I nestle near thy side?
+    Wouldst thou me?--And I replied
+              No, not thee!
+
+    Death will come when thou art dead,
+              Soon, too soon--
+    Sleep will come when thou art fled;
+    Of neither would I ask the boon
+    I ask of thee, beloved Night--
+    Swift be thine approaching flight,
+              Come soon, soon!
+
+                                           --SHELLEY.
+
+VI
+
+    ODE TO A GRECIAN URN
+
+    Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
+      Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
+    Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
+      A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
+    What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
+      Of deities or mortals, or of both,
+        In Tempé or the dales of Arcady?
+    What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
+      What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
+        What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
+
+    Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
+      Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
+    Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
+      Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
+    Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
+      Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
+        Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
+    Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
+      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
+        For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
+
+    Ah happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
+      Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
+    And, happy melodist, unweariéd,
+      For ever piping songs for ever new;
+    More happy love! more happy, happy love!
+      For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
+        For ever panting, and for ever young;
+    All breathing human passion far above,
+      That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
+        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
+
+    Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
+      To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
+    Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
+      And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
+    What little town by river or sea shore,
+      Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
+        Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
+    And, little town, thy streets for evermore
+      Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
+        Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
+
+    O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
+      Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
+    With forest branches and the trodden weed;
+      Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
+    As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
+      When old age shall this generation waste
+        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
+    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
+      "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
+        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
+
+                                           --KEATS.
+
+VII
+
+    It was a lover and his lass
+      With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino!
+    That o'er the green corn-field did pass
+    In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
+    When birds do sing hey ding a ding:
+      Sweet lovers love the Spring.
+
+    Between the acres of the rye
+    These pretty country folks would lie:
+    This carol they began that hour,
+    How that life was but a flower:
+
+    And therefore take the present time
+      With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino!
+    For love is crownéd with the prime
+    In spring time, the only pretty ring time,
+    When birds do sing hey ding a ding:
+      Sweet lovers love the Spring.
+
+                                           --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+VIII
+
+    Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day,
+      With night we banish sorrow;
+    Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft
+      To give my Love good-morrow!
+    Wings from the wind to please her mind
+      Notes from the lark I'll borrow;
+    Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing,
+      To give my Love good-morrow;
+        To give my Love good-morrow
+        Notes from them both I'll borrow.
+
+    Wake from thy nest, Robin-red-breast,
+      Sing, birds, in every furrow;
+    And from each hill, let music shrill
+      Give my fair Love good-morrow!
+    Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
+      Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow!
+    You pretty elves, amongst yourselves
+      Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
+        To give my Love good-morrow
+        Sing, birds, in every furrow!
+
+                                           --HEYWOOD.
+
+IX
+
+    THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE
+
+    Come live with me and be my Love,
+    And we will all the pleasures prove
+    That hills and valleys, dale and field,
+    And all the craggy mountains yield.
+
+    There will we sit upon the rocks
+    And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
+    By shallow rivers, to whose falls
+    Melodious birds sing madrigals.
+
+    There will I make thee beds of roses
+    And a thousand fragrant posies,
+    A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
+    Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
+
+    A gown made of the finest wool,
+    Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
+    Fair linéd slippers for the cold,
+    With buckles of the purest gold.
+
+    A belt of straw and ivy buds
+    With coral clasps and amber studs:
+    And if these pleasures may thee move,
+    Come live with me and be my Love.
+
+    Thy silver dishes for thy meat
+    As precious as the gods do eat,
+    Shall on an ivory table be
+    Prepared each day for thee and me.
+
+    The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
+    For thy delight each May-morning:
+    If these delights thy mind may move,
+    Then live with me and be my Love.
+
+                                           --MARLOWE.
+
+X
+
+    HUNTING SONG
+
+    Waken, lords and ladies gay,
+    On the mountain dawns the day;
+    All the jolly chase is here
+    With hawk and horse and hunting-spear;
+    Hounds are in their couples yelling,
+    Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
+    Merrily, merrily mingle they,
+    "Waken, lords and ladies gay."
+
+    Waken, lords and ladies gay,
+    The mist has left the mountain gray,
+    Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
+    Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
+    And foresters have busy been
+    To track the buck in thicket green;
+    Now we come to chant our lay
+    "Waken, lords and ladies gay."
+
+    Waken, lords and ladies gay,
+    To the greenwood haste away;
+    We can show you where he lies,
+    Fleet of foot and tall of size;
+    We can show the marks he made
+    When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd;
+    You shall see him brought to bay;
+    "Waken, lords and ladies gay."
+
+    Louder, louder chant the lay
+    Waken, lords and ladies gay!
+    Tell them youth and mirth and glee
+    Run a course as well as we;
+    Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
+    Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk;
+    Think of this, and rise with day,
+    Gentle lords and ladies gay!
+
+                                           --SCOTT.
+
+XI
+
+Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the
+foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and
+within a few paces of the Glaciers, the _Gentiana Major_ grows in
+immense numbers, with its "flowers of loveliest blue."
+
+
+HYMN
+
+    BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI
+
+    Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
+    In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
+    On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!
+    The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
+    Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
+    Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
+    How silently! Around thee and above
+    Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
+    An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
+    As with a wedge! But when I look again,
+    It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
+    Thy habitation from eternity!
+    O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
+    Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
+    Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
+    I worshiped the Invisible alone.
+
+    Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
+    So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
+    Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
+    Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy:
+    Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
+    Into the mighty vision passing--there
+    As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
+    Awake, my Soul! not only passive praise
+    Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
+    Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
+    Voice of sweet song! Awake, my Heart, awake!
+    Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
+
+    Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale!
+    O struggling with the darkness all the night,
+    And visited all night by troops of stars,
+    Or when they climb the sky or when they sink;
+    Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
+    Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
+    Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
+    Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
+    Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
+    Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
+
+    And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
+    Who called you forth from night and utter death,
+    From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
+    Down those precipitous, black, jagged Rocks,
+    Forever shattered and the same forever?
+
+    Who gave you your invulnerable life,
+    Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
+    Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
+    And who commanded (and the silence came),
+    Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?
+
+    Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
+    Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
+    Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
+    And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
+    Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
+    Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
+    Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the Sun
+    Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
+    Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
+    God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
+    Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
+    God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
+    Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
+    And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
+    And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
+
+    Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
+    Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
+    Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
+    Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
+    Ye signs and wonders of the element!
+    Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
+
+    Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
+    Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
+    Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
+    Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast--
+    Thou too again--stupendous Mountain! thou
+    That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
+    In adoration, upward from thy base
+    Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
+    Solemnly seemest like a vapory cloud,
+    To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
+    Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth!
+    Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
+    Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
+    Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
+    And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
+    Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
+
+                                           --COLERIDGE.
+
+XII
+
+    JAUN'S SONG FROM THE SPANISH GYPSY
+
+    Memory,
+    Tell to me
+    What is fair
+    Past compare
+      In the land of Tubal?
+
+    Is it Spring's
+    Lovely things,
+    Blossoms white,
+    Rosy dight?
+      Then it is Pepita.
+
+    Summer's crest
+    Red-gold tressed,
+      Corn-flowers peeping under?
+    Idle noons,
+    Lingering moons,
+    Sudden cloud,
+    Lightning's shroud,
+
+    Sudden rain,
+    Quick again
+      Smiles where late was thunder?
+    Are all these
+    Made to please?
+      So too is Pepita.
+
+    Autumn's prime,
+    Apple-time,
+    Smooth cheek round,
+    Heart all sound?--
+    Is it this
+    You would kiss?
+      Then it is Pepita.
+
+    You can bring
+    No sweet thing,
+    But my mind
+    Still shall find
+      It is my Pepita.
+
+    Memory
+    Says to me
+    It is she--
+    She is fair
+    Past compare
+      In the land of Tubal.
+
+XIII
+
+    PABLO'S SONG FROM THE SPANISH GYPSY
+
+    Spring comes hither,
+      Buds the rose;
+    Roses wither,
+      Sweet spring goes.
+        Ojala, would she carry me!
+
+    Summer soars--
+      Wide-winged day,
+    White light pours,
+      Flies away.
+        Ojala, would he carry me!
+
+    Soft winds blow,
+      Westward born,
+    Onward go
+      Toward the morn.
+        Ojala, would they carry me!
+
+    Sweet birds sing
+      O'er the graves,
+    Then take wing
+      O'er the waves.
+        Ojala, would they carry me!
+
+                                           --GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+XIV
+
+    MEMORY[5]
+
+[5] This and the following poem appear by special permission of Houghton
+Mifflin Company, the publishers of Mr. Aldrich's poems.
+
+    My mind lets go a thousand things,
+    Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
+    And yet recalls the very hour--
+    'Twas noon by yonder village tower,
+    And on the last blue noon in May--
+    The wind came briskly up this way,
+    Crisping the brook beside the road;
+    Then, pausing here, set down its load
+    Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
+    Two petals from that wild-rose-tree.
+
+XV
+
+    ENAMOURED ARCHITECT OF AIRY RHYME
+
+    Enamoured architect of airy rhyme,
+        Build as thou wilt; heed not what each man says:
+        Good souls, but innocent of dreamer's ways,
+    Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time;
+    Others, beholding how thy turrets climb
+      'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days;
+      But most beware of those who come to praise.
+    O Wondersmith, O Worker in sublime
+    And Heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all;
+      Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame,
+        Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given:
+    Then, if at last the airy structure fall,
+      Dissolve, and vanish--take thyself no shame.
+        They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
+
+                                           --THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
+
+XVI
+
+    LOVE IN THE WINDS[6]
+
+[6] From _Along the Trail_, by Richard Hovey. Copyright, 1898, by Small,
+Maynard & Co., Duffield & Co., successors.
+
+    When I am standing on a mountain crest,
+      Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
+    My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
+      Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
+    My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,
+      And plunges in the wild ride of the night
+    Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee
+      That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight.
+    Ho, love, I laugh aloud for love of you,
+      Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather,--
+    No fretful orchid hot-housed from the dew,
+      But hale and hardy as the highland heather,
+    Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,
+    Comrades of ocean, playmate of the hills.
+
+                                           --RICHARD HOVEY.
+
+
+XVII
+
+    CANDLEMAS[7]
+
+[7] By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
+
+    O hearken, all ye little weeds
+      That lie beneath the snow,
+      (So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)
+    The sun hath risen for royal deeds,
+    A valiant wind the vanguard leads;
+    Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds
+      Before ye rise and blow.
+
+    O furry living things, adream
+      On Winter's drowsy breast,
+      (How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)
+    Arise and follow where a gleam
+    Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,
+    And all the woodland windings seem
+      With sweet expectance blest.
+
+    My birds, come back! the hollow sky
+      Is weary for your note.
+      (Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)
+    Ere May's soft minions hereward fly,
+    Shame on ye, laggards, to deny
+    The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,
+      The tawny, shining coat!
+
+                                           --ALICE BROWN.
+
+Mr. Gilbert Chesterton tells us that the real Robert Browning of
+literary history arrived with the _Dramatic Lyrics_. "In Dramatic
+Lyrics," says Mr. Chesterton, "Browning discovered the one thing that he
+could really do better than any one else--the dramatic lyric. The form
+is absolutely original; he had discovered a new field of poetry, and in
+the center of that field he had found himself." The form is new, but it
+obeys the fundamental law of lyric poetry, and so in our study belongs
+to this chapter. The new element which the word "dramatic" suggests
+makes a new and a somewhat broader demand upon the interpreter;
+therefore I have chosen this group of _Dramatic Lyrics_ from Browning as
+the material for your final study of this form:
+
+    MY STAR
+
+    All that I know
+      Of a certain star
+    Is, it can throw
+      (Like the angled spar)
+    Now a dart of red,
+      Now a dart of blue;
+    Till my friends have said
+      They would fain see, too,
+      My star that dartles the red and the blue!
+    Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
+      They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
+    What matter to me if their star is a world?
+      Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
+
+
+CAVALIER TUNES
+
+    MARCHING ALONG
+
+    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
+    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing.
+    And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
+    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
+    Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
+    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
+
+    God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
+    To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
+    Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
+    Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
+    Till you're--
+    _(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._
+
+    Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
+    Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
+    England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
+    Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,
+    _(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_
+
+    Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
+    To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
+    Hold by the right, you double your might;
+    So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight.
+    _(Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_
+
+
+GARDEN FANCIES
+
+    THE FLOWER'S NAME
+
+    Here's the garden she walked across,
+      Arm in my arm, such a short while since.
+    Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
+      Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
+    She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
+      As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
+    For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
+      To feed and forget it the leaves among.
+
+    Down this side of the gravel walk
+      She went while her robe's edge brushed the box:
+    And here she paused in her gracious talk
+      To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
+    Roses, ranged in valiant row,
+      I will never think that she passed you by!
+    She loves you, noble roses, I know;
+      But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!
+
+    This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
+      Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
+    Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
+      Its soft meandering Spanish name.
+    What a name! Was it love or praise?
+      Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
+    I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
+      Only for that slow sweet name's sake.
+
+    Roses, if I live and do well,
+      I may bring her, one of these days,
+    To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
+      Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
+    But do not detain me now; for she lingers
+      There, like sunshine over the ground,
+    And ever I see her soft white fingers
+      Searching after the bud she found.
+
+    Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
+      Stay as you are and be loved forever!
+    Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
+      Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
+    For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
+      Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
+    Till round they turn and down they nestle--
+      Is not the dear mark still to be seen?
+
+    Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
+      Whither I follow her, beauties flee;
+    Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
+      June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
+    Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
+      Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
+    --Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces--
+      Roses, you are not so fair after all!
+
+                                           --BROWNING.
+
+That "the poet is born, not made," is more and more an undisputed fact
+in every literary age. But many a birthright of poetic power has been
+saved from sale for a mess of pottage by a wisely ordered meeting of the
+young bard, while his gift was still latent, with the masters of lyric
+expression.
+
+Such an introduction is the object of this study, so far as it can
+embrace in its aim the ends of both forms of expression,--interpretation
+and composition. There is no thought of inducing even an aspirant to the
+_poetical purple_, much less a Shelley or a Keats or an Alice Brown,
+through this brief dwelling with their immortal songs; but if this
+intensive interpretative study of the highest lyric expression does not
+result in a new sense of word values, a new sensitiveness to the music
+of the English language, out of which the songs of America must be made,
+then the study will have failed in its purpose toward you. If from this
+suggestive analysis of Shelley's "Skylark" you receive no impulse to use
+words with a new delight in the fitting of sound to sense, a new
+reverence for their harmonious arrangement to suggest and sustain an
+atmosphere; if, in short, your vocabulary is not enriched and your
+choice of words clarified through this study, then your new acquaintance
+with lyric expression will have been in vain. And, finally, if some one
+of you at least is not impelled by these excursions into the world of
+song to use his enriched vocabulary in an attempt to create a bit of
+lyric description in prose or verse, then the author of this study, and
+the teacher under whose direction it is made, must admit a failure to
+reach with the pupil the ultimate aim of such interpretative effort.
+
+Let us make the test. As a final problem of this study I shall ask you
+to let your emotion find expression--lyric expression--in a bit of prose
+description. Don't be afraid! Use your vocabulary! Take as a subject:
+the bit of earth and sky you have secretly worshiped; the bird song or
+flight which has charmed your day; the memory of some illumined moment;
+the effect of any one of these lyrics upon you. Don't be afraid! And
+remember it is to be literature of _feeling_ rather than thought;
+_description_, not exposition.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD STUDY
+
+TO DEVELOP THE WHIMSICAL SENSE
+
+
+Addressing the _Gentle Reader_ in deliciously whimsical vein on the
+_Mission of Humor_, Mr. Samuel Arthur Crothers declares: "Were I
+appointed by the school board to consider the applicants for teachers'
+certificates, after they had passed the examinations in the arts and
+sciences, I should subject them to a more rigid test. I should hand each
+candidate Lamb's essays on 'The Old and New Schoolmaster' and on
+'Imperfect Sympathies.' I should make him read them to himself, while I
+sat by and watched. If his countenance never relaxed, as if he were
+inwardly saying, 'That's so,' I should withhold the certificate. I
+should not consider him a fit person to have charge of innocent youth."
+We can readily see from this extract that we need not go back to the
+early part of the last century to find material for our test of this
+sovereign quality, a sense of humor. Mr. Crothers himself, the Charles
+Lamb of our American Letters to-day, shall furnish our subject-matter.
+Bring your _Gentle Reader_, or _The Pardoner's Wallet_, or the essays
+collected with the _Christmas Sermon_, to class to-morrow. If these
+volumes are not in your personal library, your library is sadly lacking.
+Read "The Honorable Points of Ignorance," "How to Know the Fallacies,"
+or "Conscience Concerning Witchcraft." If any one of these fails to
+disclose in you the mental alertness and power of discrimination which
+their author considers to be requisite characteristics of a true sense
+of humor, then _you_ are sadly lacking in that coveted quality of mind
+and heart, and it behooves us to make an attempt to supply these
+deficiencies.
+
+Can a sense of humor be cultivated, and if it can be cultivated, is it
+safe to do so? some one asks--some one who has suffered at the hands of
+a clever jester perhaps. By way of arriving at an answer, let us
+examine a little further the category of qualities which Mr. Crothers
+considers requisite to true humor.
+
+We have already noted mental alertness and power of discrimination.
+There can be no question as to the desirability or feasibility of
+developing these characteristics, since such development belongs to the
+fundamental effort of education. But these are but two characteristics
+of the quality we are considering, and not the distinguishing ones.
+"Humor," continues the category, "is the frank enjoyment of the
+imperfect." Now we scent a danger! For if, as Mr. Crothers admits,
+"artistic sensibility finds satisfaction only in the perfect," and
+since, as we all admit, artistic sensibility is an end in education
+devoutly to be desired, then is not a cultivation of the "frank
+enjoyment of the imperfect," oh dear and gentle humorist, a dangerous
+indulgence? The conclusive answer comes: "One may have learned to enjoy
+the sublime, the beautiful, the useful, the orderly, but he has missed
+something if he has not also learned to enjoy the incongruous, the
+illusive, and the unexpected." It is a conclusive reply, because we know
+that it is just as essential to achievement in the finest of the Fine
+Arts,--the art of living, as in every other form of Art, to recognize
+that the inrush of discord is for the final issue of harmony; that only
+through our ability to recognize illusion shall we come to know reality;
+that only through sensitiveness to the incongruous shall we develop a
+true sense of the fitness of things; that only frank enjoyment can
+disarm imperfection and find satisfaction in the perfect. So let us not
+hesitate to do all we can to cultivate a quality which Thackeray defines
+as a mixture of love and wit; to which Erasmus ascribes such desirable
+characteristics as good temper and insight into human nature; and for
+one grade of which, in addition to all its other qualities, Mr. Crothers
+claims "that it can proceed only from a mind free from any taint of
+morbidness."
+
+If then we conclude that it is not only safe, but possible and
+desirable, to cultivate a sense of humor, how shall we set about it? To
+answer you, as to one way at least, and that a way of interpretation,
+Mr. Crothers "is left alive," not only to furnish new material for the
+exercise of the sense, but to point a gently reminding finger toward the
+immortal sources of good humor,--"Chaucer and Cervantes and Montaigne;
+Shakespeare and Bacon and Fielding and Addison; Goldsmith, Charles Lamb,
+and Walter Scott, and in our own country, Irving and Dr. Holmes and
+James Russell Lowell." Whatever period of time your schedule grants to
+this phase of the work should be dedicated to a closer acquaintance with
+the flavor and atmosphere of these great-hearted humorists in their most
+genial moments. Let us also heed Mr. Crothers' warning against the humor
+of the Dean Swifts which "would be so irresistible were it not bad
+humor." Let us avoid more intimate acquaintance with the broad variety
+furnished by the Mark Twains and Mr. Dooleys, which may be legitimately
+classed as "good humor," but which is so obvious as to be little
+conducive to that mental alertness and power of discrimination which we
+aim to acquire through this study. Instead, let us seek the gracious
+company of William Dean Howells in the whimsical mood he so often
+induces.
+
+Accepting, then, as a distinguishing characteristic of the humor we
+desire to cultivate, ability to enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and
+the unexpected, let us look to a master maker of these conditions for
+class-room guidance in this effort. I suppose Mr. Lewis Carroll has done
+more to develop this distinguishing characteristic than any other
+contributor to our Letters. So we shall go on an excursion with his
+_Alice_ into the _Wonderland_ he made for her. If her frank enjoyment
+and free acceptance of the incongruous and the unexpected does not prove
+infectious, we must be forever written down among those who could not
+understand _Peter Pan_. We shall read and enjoy a chapter or two of
+_Alice_ together in class, but for suggestive analysis along
+interpretative lines Heaven forbid that I should lay violent hands on
+her text. No one can teach you to interpret your _Alice_ save Alice
+herself. You may walk with her, talk with her, dwindle and grow with
+her, join her adventures in any way she will permit, but you may not
+analyze nor dissect her. You may learn to interpret her only by living
+with her and loving her.
+
+Now _Æsop_ is another matter. However long you may live with him,
+however much you may love his fables, there is a trick of interpretation
+to be learned in voicing his philosophy which will develop the whimsical
+side of your sense of humor and counteract the insistent moral tone
+attached to every fable.
+
+
+SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS
+
+The danger in handling a fable does not lie, as the interpreter seems so
+often to think, in adopting too serious a tone. All the literature of
+pure fancy, from the humorous essays of Bacon through the _Arabian
+Nights_ to the nonsensical rhymes of Lear, must be treated with great
+gravity of tone and temper by the interpreter. It is not levity, but
+only whimsicality of temperament, I demand from one who would read from
+this particular lore to me. I want my whimsical friend to interpret my
+Chaucer and Crothers, _Peter Pan_ and the _Pied Piper_, Hans Christian
+Andersen, Carroll, and Lear, and all the rest of the genial host who
+minister to my most precious sense of nonsense. And, perhaps, most of
+all, it is he (the whimsical friend) who must read fables to me, for a
+fable, the dictionary tells us, is "a story in which, by the imagined
+dealings of men with animals or mere things, or by the supposed doings
+of these alone, useful lessons are taught." Now a moral "rubbed in" is
+like an overdose of certain kinds of medicine, where a little cures, too
+much kills. It is the presence of the _lesson_ which the whimsical tone
+alone can offset. The whimsical tone never falls into the monotone.
+Whimsicality always seeks variety of emphasis and movement. Let us apply
+this to the reading of the fable called
+
+
+     THE CROW AND THE PITCHER
+
+     A crow, half dead with thirst, came upon a pitcher which had once
+     been full of water; but when the crow put his beak into the mouth
+     of the pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it,
+     and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried,
+     and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought
+     came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the pitcher.
+     Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then
+     he took another pebble and dropped that into the pitcher. Then he
+     took another pebble and dropped that into the pitcher. Then he took
+     another pebble and dropped that into the pitcher. Then he took
+     another pebble and dropped that into the pitcher. At last, at last,
+     he saw the water mount up near him; and after casting in a few more
+     pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.
+
+     Little by little does the trick.
+
+How shall we avoid the monotony of the lines beginning "Then he took
+another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher"? Note that this line is
+followed by one in which but two words are changed, and then by a line
+with but one change, and then by three lines with no change at all. Our
+only hope lies in a variation of emphasis and movement--a whimsical
+variation. Try it! Give "another" the particular stress in reading the
+first of these lines. Pause at the close of the line as if to study the
+effect of the pebble. In the next line "that," of course, takes the
+emphasis. Pause before the word and give it a salient stress. The
+movement of the voice through these two lines has been deliberate. On
+the next line hasten it a little, and make the pause at the close of the
+line shorter. With the fourth line let the tone settle down to work.
+Give each of the first five words equal stress. With the fifth and last
+line let us feel that you may "go on forever," and surprise us with a
+very short pause and a joyful stress upon "at last, at last," and don't
+fail to let the enthusiasm of your tone give us the full sense of the
+relief which comes with the mounting of the water, and the delight in
+the conclusion--"he was able to quench his thirst and save his life."
+And now, most whimsically, let us voice the moral, "Little by little
+does the trick."
+
+
+SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION
+
+     THE LION AND THE MOUSE
+
+     Once when a lion was asleep a little mouse began running up and
+     down upon him; this soon wakened the lion, who placed his huge paw
+     upon him, and opened his big jaws to swallow him. "Pardon, O King,"
+     cried the little mouse; "forgive me this time. I shall never forget
+     it; who knows but what I may be able to do you a turn some of these
+     days?" The lion was so tickled at the idea of the mouse being able
+     to help him, that he lifted up his paw and let him go. Some time
+     after the lion was caught in a trap, and the hunters, who desired
+     to carry him alive to the king, tied him to a tree while they went
+     in search of a wagon to carry him on. Just then the little mouse
+     happened to pass by, and seeing the sad plight in which the lion
+     was, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes that bound the
+     king of the beasts. "Was I not right?" said the little mouse.
+
+     Little friends may prove great friends.
+
+
+     THE WIND AND THE SUN
+
+     The wind and the sun were disputing which was the stronger.
+     Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the sun
+     said: "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause
+     that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the
+     stronger. You begin." So the sun retired behind a cloud, and the
+     wind began to blow as hard as he could upon the traveler. But the
+     harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak
+     round him, till at last the wind had to give up in despair. Then
+     the sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who
+     soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
+
+     Kindness effects more than severity.
+
+And, now, here is Alice herself to play with a little. Go fearlessly
+into her _Wonderland_ and let her teach you "how to meet the illusive,
+the incongruous, and the unexpected." Let her minister to your ability
+to enjoy the imperfect. Let her develop your _sense of humor_. If she
+cannot do so no one can.
+
+
+     DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE[8]
+
+     [8] These following selections are taken from Harper & Brothers'
+     edition of _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Alice Through the
+     Looking-Glass_.
+
+     Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on
+     the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped
+     into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
+     conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought
+     Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
+
+     So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for
+     the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the
+     pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of
+     getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit
+     with pink eyes ran close by her.
+
+     There was nothing so _very_ remarkable in that; nor did Alice think
+     it so _very_ much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself,
+     "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over
+     afterward, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at
+     this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the
+     Rabbit actually _took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket_, and
+     looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for
+     it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit
+     with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and,
+     burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and
+     fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole
+     under the hedge.
+
+     In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering
+     how in the world she was to get out again.
+
+     The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and
+     then dipped suddenly down--so suddenly that Alice had not a moment
+     to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling
+     down a very steep well.
+
+     Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
+     plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder
+     what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and
+     make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see
+     anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed
+     that they were filled with cupboards and bookshelves; here and
+     there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a
+     jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labeled "ORANGE
+     MARMALADE," but to her great disappointment it was empty. She did
+     not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed
+     to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.
+
+     "Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I
+     shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all
+     think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I
+     fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)
+
+     Down, down, down. Would the fall _never_ come to an end? "I wonder
+     how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said, aloud. "I must
+     be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. Let me see: that
+     would be four thousand miles down, I think--" (for, you see, Alice
+     had learned several things of this sort in her lessons in the
+     school-room, and though this was not a _very_ good opportunity for
+     showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her,
+     still it was good practice to say it over) "--yes, that's about the
+     right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've
+     got to?" (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either,
+     but thought they were nice, grand words to say.)
+
+     Presently she began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right
+     _through_ the earth? How funny it'll seem to come out among the
+     people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I
+     think--" (she was rather glad there _was_ no one listening this
+     time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) "--but I shall have
+     to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. 'Please,
+     ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?'" (and she tried to
+     courtesy as she spoke--fancy _courtesying_ as you're falling
+     through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And what an
+     ignorant little girl she'll think me! No, it'll never do to ask;
+     perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."
+
+     Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
+     talking again. "Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should
+     think!" (Dinah was the cat.) "I hope they'll remember her saucer of
+     milk at tea-time. Dinah, my dear, I wish you were down here with
+     me! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a
+     bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats,
+     I wonder?" And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on
+     saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, "Do cats eat bats? Do
+     cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as
+     she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which
+     way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just
+     begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and
+     saying to her very earnestly, "Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did
+     you ever eat a bat?" when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came
+     upon a heap of dry leaves, and the fall was over.
+
+     Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on her feet in a
+     moment. She looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was
+     another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight,
+     hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost; away went
+     Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it
+     turned a corner, "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"
+     She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit
+     was no longer to be seen; she found herself in a long, low hall,
+     which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.
+
+     There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and
+     when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other,
+     trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how
+     she was ever to get out again.
+
+     Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of
+     solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and
+     Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors
+     of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large or the key
+     was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them.
+     However, the second time round she came upon a low curtain she had
+     not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen
+     inches high. She tried the little golden key in the lock, and to
+     her great delight it fitted!
+
+     Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage,
+     not much larger than a rat-hole. She knelt down and looked along
+     the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed
+     to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of
+     bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get
+     her head through the doorway! "And even if my head would go
+     through," thought poor Alice, "it would be of very little use
+     without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a
+     telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin." For, you
+     see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice
+     had begun to think that very few things indeed were really
+     impossible.
+
+     There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she
+     went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on
+     it, or, at any rate, a book of rules for shutting people up like
+     telescopes. This time she found a little bottle on it ("which
+     certainly was not here before," said Alice), and round its neck a
+     paper label, with the words "DRINK ME" beautifully printed on it in
+     large letters.
+
+     It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise little Alice
+     was not going to do _that_ in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she
+     said, "and see whether it's marked '_poison_' or not"; for she had
+     read several nice little histories about children who had got
+     burned, and eaten up by wild beasts, and many other unpleasant
+     things, all because they _would_ not remember the simple rules
+     their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will
+     burn you if you hold it too long; and that, if you cut your finger
+     _very_ deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never
+     forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked "_poison_,"
+     it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
+
+     However, this bottle was _not_ marked "poison," so Alice ventured
+     to taste it, and, finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of
+     mixed flavor of cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey,
+     toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shutting up like a
+     telescope."
+
+     And so it was, indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her
+     face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size
+     for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First,
+     however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to
+     shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this, "for it
+     might end, you know," said Alice, "in my going out altogether, like
+     a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?" And she tried to
+     fancy what the flame of a candle is like after it is blown out, for
+     she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.
+
+     After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided to
+     go into the garden at once, but, alas for poor Alice! when she got
+     to the door she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and
+     when she went back to the table for it she found she could not
+     possibly reach it. She could see it quite plainly through the
+     glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the table-legs,
+     but it was too slippery; and when she had tired herself out with
+     trying, the poor little thing sat down and cried.
+
+     "Come, there's no use in crying like that!" said Alice to herself,
+     rather sharply. "I advise you to leave off this minute!" She
+     generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom
+     followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to
+     bring tears in her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her
+     own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was
+     playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of
+     pretending to be two people. "But it's no use now," thought poor
+     Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of
+     me left to make _one_ respectable person!"
+
+     Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the
+     table. She opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which
+     the words "EAT ME" were beautifully marked in currants. "Well, I'll
+     eat it," said Alice, "and if it makes me larger I can reach the
+     key, and if it makes me smaller I can creep under the door; so,
+     either way, I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which
+     happens!"
+
+     She ate a little bit and said anxiously to herself, "Which way?
+     Which way?" holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which
+     way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she
+     remained the same size. To be sure, this generally happens when one
+     eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting
+     nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen that it seemed quite
+     dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
+
+     So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+     THE POOL OF TEARS
+
+     "Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised
+     that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English);
+     "now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!
+     Good-by, feet!" (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed
+     to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). "Oh, my
+     poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings
+     for you now, dears? I'm sure _I_ sha'n't be able! I shall be a
+     great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage
+     the best way you can--but I must be kind to them," thought Alice,
+     "or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see; I'll
+     give them a new pair of boots every Christmas."
+
+     And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. "They
+     must go by the carrier," she thought; "and how funny it'll seem,
+     sending presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will
+     look!--
+
+    _Alice's Right Foot, Esq.
+                  Hearthrug,
+                          near the Fender_
+                                  (_with Alice's love_).
+
+     Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!"
+
+     Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall--in fact she
+     was now more than nine feet high--and she at once took up the
+     little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.
+
+     Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side,
+     to look through into the garden with one eye, but to get through
+     was more hopeless than ever. She sat down and began to cry again.
+
+     "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Alice--"a great girl
+     like you" (she might well say this), "to go on crying in this way!
+     Stop this moment, I tell you!" But she went on all the same,
+     shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round
+     her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.
+
+     After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance,
+     and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the
+     White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white
+     kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other. He came
+     trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came,
+     "Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've
+     kept her waiting!" Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to
+     ask help of any one; so, when the Rabbit came near her, she began,
+     in a low, timid voice, "If you please, sir--" The Rabbit started
+     violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and scurried
+     away into the darkness as hard as he could go.
+
+     Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot,
+     she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: "Dear,
+     dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on
+     just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me
+     think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I
+     can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same,
+     the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, _that's_ the great
+     puzzle!" And she began thinking over all the children she knew that
+     were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been
+     changed for any of them.
+
+     "I'm sure I'm not Ada," she said, "for her hair goes in such long
+     ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I
+     can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she
+     knows such a very little! Besides, _she's_ she and _I'm_ I, and--oh
+     dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I
+     used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times
+     six is thirteen, and four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never
+     get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table
+     doesn't signify: let's try Geography. London is the capital of
+     Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome--no, _that's_ all
+     wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I'll try
+     and say '_How doth the little--_'" and she crossed her hands on her
+     lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her
+     voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the
+     same as they used to do:
+
+         How doth the little crocodile
+           Improve his shining tail,
+         And pour the waters of the Nile
+           On every golden scale!
+
+         How cheerfully he seems to grin,
+           How neatly spread his claws,
+         And welcomes little fishes in
+           With gently smiling jaws!
+
+     "I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her
+     eyes filled with tears again as she went on: "I must be Mabel,
+     after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little
+     house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many
+     lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it; if I'm Mabel,
+     I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down
+     and saying, 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say,
+     'Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that
+     person, I'll come up; if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody
+     else.' But, oh dear!" cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears,
+     "I do wish they _would_ put their heads down! I am so _very_ tired
+     of being all alone here!"
+
+     As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to
+     see that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves
+     while she was talking. "How _can_ I have done that?" she thought.
+     "I must be growing small again." She got up and went to the table
+     to measure herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could
+     guess, she was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking
+     rapidly. She soon found out that the cause of this was the fan she
+     was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid
+     shrinking away altogether.
+
+     "That _was_ a narrow escape!" said Alice, a good deal frightened at
+     the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in
+     existence; "and now for the garden!" and she ran with all speed
+     back to the little door; but, alas! the little door was shut again,
+     and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before,
+     "and things are worse than ever," thought the poor child, "for I
+     never was so small as this before--never! And I declare it's too
+     bad, that it is!"
+
+     As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment,
+     splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was
+     that she had somehow fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can
+     go back by railway," she said to herself. (Alice had been to the
+     seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion
+     that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of
+     bathing-machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with
+     wooden spades, then a row of lodging-houses, and behind them a
+     railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the
+     pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
+
+     "I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about,
+     trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I
+     suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That _will_ be a queer
+     thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day."
+
+     Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little
+     way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was. At first she
+     thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she
+     remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was
+     only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.
+
+     "Would it be of any use, now," thought Alice, "to speak to this
+     mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here that I should
+     think very likely it can talk; at any rate, there's no harm in
+     trying." So she began: "O Mouse, do you know the way out of this
+     pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!" (Alice
+     thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse. She had
+     never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in
+     her brother's Latin Grammar, "A mouse--of a mouse--to a mouse--a
+     mouse--O mouse!") The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively,
+     and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said
+     nothing.
+
+     "Perhaps it doesn't understand English," thought Alice; "I dare say
+     it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." (For
+     with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion
+     how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: "Ou est ma
+     chatte?" which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book.
+     The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver
+     all over with fright. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice,
+     hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal's feelings. "I
+     quite forgot you didn't like cats."
+
+     "Not like cats!" cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice.
+     "Would _you_ like cats if you were me?"
+
+     "Well, perhaps not," said Alice, in a soothing tone. "Don't be
+     angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I
+     think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is
+     such a dear, quiet thing," Alice went on, half to herself, as she
+     swam lazily about in the pool, "and she sits purring so nicely by
+     the fire, licking her paws and washing her face--and she is such a
+     nice soft thing to nurse--and she's such a capital one for catching
+     mice--oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice again, for this time the
+     Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be
+     really offended. "We won't talk about her any more, if you'd rather
+     not."
+
+     "We, indeed!" cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of
+     his tail. "As if _I_ would talk on such a subject! Our family
+     always _hated_ cats--nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear
+     the name again!"
+
+     "I won't, indeed!" said Alice, in a great hurry to change the
+     subject of conversation. "Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs?" The
+     Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: "There is such a
+     nice little dog near our house I should like to show you! A little
+     bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long, curly brown
+     hair! And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit up
+     and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things--I can't remember
+     half of them--and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says
+     it's so useful it's worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills all
+     the rats and--oh dear!" cried Alice in a sorrowful tone, "I'm
+     afraid I've offended it again!" For the Mouse was swimming away
+     from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in
+     the pool as it went.
+
+     So she called softly after it, "Mouse dear! Do come back again, and
+     we won't talk about cats, or dogs either, if you don't like them!"
+     When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to
+     her. Its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it
+     said in a low, trembling voice, "Let us get to the shore, and then
+     I'll tell you my history, and you'll understand why it is I hate
+     cats and dogs."
+
+     It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded
+     with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a
+     Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious
+     creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the
+     shore.
+
+
+     THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
+
+    The sun was shining on the sea,
+      Shining with all his might;
+    He did his very best to make
+      The billows smooth and bright--
+    And this was odd, because it was
+      The middle of the night.
+
+    The moon was shining sulkily,
+      Because she thought the sun
+    Had got no business to be there
+      After the day was done--
+    "It's very rude of him," she said,
+      "To come and spoil the fun!"
+
+    The sea was wet as wet could be,
+      The sands were dry as dry.
+    You could not see a cloud, because
+      No cloud was in the sky;
+    No birds were flying overhead--
+      There were no birds to fly.
+
+    The Walrus and the Carpenter
+      Were walking close at hand;
+    They wept like anything to see
+      Such quantities of sand--
+    "If this were only cleared away,"
+      They said, "it would be grand!"
+
+    "If seven maids with seven mops
+      Swept it for half a year,
+    Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
+      "That they could get it clear?"
+    "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
+      And shed a bitter tear.
+
+    "O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
+      The Walrus did beseech.
+    "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
+      Along the briny beach;
+    We cannot do with more than four,
+      To give a hand to each."
+
+    The eldest Oyster looked at him,
+      But never a word he said;
+    The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
+      And shook his heavy head--
+    Meaning to say he did not choose
+     To leave the oyster-bed.
+
+    But four young Oysters hurried up,
+      All eager for the treat;
+    Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
+      Their shoes were clean and neat--
+    And this was odd, because, you know,
+      They hadn't any feet.
+
+    Four other Oysters followed them,
+      And yet another four;
+    And thick and fast they came at last,
+      And more, and more, and more--
+    All hopping through the frothy waves,
+      And scrambling to the shore.
+
+    The Walrus and the Carpenter
+      Walked on a mile or so,
+    And then they rested on a rock
+      Conveniently low--
+    And all the little Oysters stood
+      And waited in a row.
+
+    "The time has come," the Walrus said,
+      "To talk of many things:
+    Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
+      Of cabbages--and kings--
+    And why the sea is boiling hot--
+      And whether pigs have wings."
+
+    "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
+      "Before we have our chat;
+    For some of us are out of breath,
+      And all of us are fat!"
+    "No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
+      They thanked him much for that.
+
+    "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
+      "Is what we chiefly need;
+    Pepper and vinegar besides
+      Are very good indeed--
+    Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear,
+      We can begin to feed."
+
+    "But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
+      Turning a little blue.
+    "After such kindness, that would be
+      A dismal thing to do!"
+    "The night is fine," the Walrus said.
+      "Do you admire the view?
+
+    "It was so kind of you to come!
+      And you are very nice!"
+    The Carpenter said nothing but,
+      "Cut us another slice.
+    I wish you were not quite so deaf--
+      I've had to ask you twice!"
+
+    "It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
+      "To play them such a trick.
+    After we've brought them out so far,
+      And made them trot so quick!"
+    The Carpenter said nothing but,
+      "The butter's spread too thick!"
+
+    "I weep for you," the Walrus said;
+      "I deeply sympathize."
+    With sobs and tears he sorted out
+      Those of the largest size,
+    Holding his pocket-handkerchief
+      Before his streaming eyes.
+
+    "O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
+      "You've had a pleasant run!
+    Shall we be trotting home again?"
+      But answer came there none--
+    And this was scarcely odd, because
+      They'd eaten every one.
+
+We must not deny to humor and fancy the opportunity for creative effort
+offered to other faculties in our previous studies. What form shall the
+effort take: fable, fairy tale, a whimsical play of fancy in essay, or
+merely a nonsense rhyme? I think we must bar the _limerick_ from our
+serious creative efforts in the study. You may engage as a class in an
+extemporaneous contest in the making of this infectious form of verse if
+you like.
+
+Meanwhile, there is still another class-room test of humor which should
+be made,--the test of the clever anecdote. There is nothing which so
+effectually discloses the quality of your sense of humor as your
+attitude toward so-called funny stories. Judgment in such a case will
+rest upon three points: What you think is "funny" enough to tell; when
+you judge it "apropos" to tell; and the manner of the telling. Three
+warnings are in order at this point. If you find that you must preface
+your anecdote with the question too often heard, "Do you think you can
+stand this story?--it really _is_ clever," in the name of clean humor,
+don't tell it! If you find you must introduce your anecdote with the
+remark, "Apropos of nothing," or "This is not apropos, but"--in the name
+of "sulphitic" humor, don't tell it; finally, if you don't know _how_ to
+tell it, in the name of any and all humor, _don't tell it_.
+
+With these cautions in mind, I shall ask you to bring to class to-morrow
+your best three "funny stories." Conflicting choice is not likely to
+have appropriated all three of your favorite anecdotes. Should you find
+that it has done so, never mind. Your taste, though it coincides with
+another's, can be quite as well questioned or commended; and the manner
+of your telling will be subjected to trial by comparison, which, if not
+always comfortable, is always helpful (_when met in the right spirit_).
+
+Remember, the serious creative work you are to produce is to take the
+form of a fable, fairy story, or humorous essay.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH STUDY
+
+TO DEVELOP IMAGINATIVE VIGOR
+
+
+In one of the great manufacturing towns of the Northwest there are some
+twenty-five thousand girls employed in factories. The city permits
+conditions of work hostile to the physical life of these girls. Civic
+reform is trying to control these conditions. In time it doubtless will
+succeed in doing so; meanwhile it makes efforts in other directions. It
+establishes working girls' clubs. A class in literature in one of these
+clubs enlisted the services of a comprehending young teacher, who kept
+the girls interested for more than two years. A little girl from a bag
+factory entered this class. She came to every meeting of the first year.
+She did not join in the discussions nor ask questions nor evince unusual
+intelligence or enjoyment, but she _came_ every night. The class began
+its second year. The little girl from the bag factory was the first to
+enroll. The teacher could not cover the surprise in her question, "Are
+you coming into the class again?" The girl's breathless "Oh yes" sent
+her to investigate the case. She went to the factory. She found the
+child standing at a bench folding bags. Eight hours a day she folded
+bags. A swing back on her right foot with the stuff of which the bag was
+made grasped in her hands--a swing forward, and her hands brought the
+edges of the stuff together evenly. Over and over a thousand times the
+single motion repeated made up the girl's day. "It used to make me
+tired," she said, simply. "But it doesn't any more?" "No, because now I
+forget what I am doing sometimes. I have my book, you see. They let me
+fasten it here." There it was--a paper copy of Shelley's poems. The
+print was good; the teacher had seen to that. She had observed that
+factory girls' eyes are not always very strong. The book was fastened to
+the front of the desk. The child could catch a line from time to time
+without interrupting her bag-folding. "But I know most of the poems we
+have studied in class by heart." So she had to recall but a line, and
+then off she would go through the windows of the stifling factory into
+the open fields on the wings of her _imagination_. She was a swift,
+sure, little workman; her eye watched the stuff before her and measured
+it truly; her hands obeyed her eye, did her work efficiently, and "kept
+her job." But the eye of her imagination had been opened in the
+literature class and kept her soul alive in spite "of her job." This is
+a true story. It has significance for you and me.
+
+If through the use of her imagination a little factory girl can escape
+from the monotony of bag-folding, and find freedom and joy in the lyric
+world Shelley has created, what limit need be set to our emancipation
+through the development of this faculty?
+
+But emancipation is but one result of such development. Listen to David
+as he stands with his harp before the King in Browning's story of
+_Saul_. Already his song has released the monarch from the depths of
+his great despair, but now comes the boy's cry:
+
+            What spell or what charm
+    (For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge
+    To sustain him where song had restored him?...
+            Then fancies grew rife
+    Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep
+    Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
+    And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
+    'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:
+    And I laughed--"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks,
+    Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,
+    Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show
+    Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!
+    Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,
+    And the prudence that keeps what men strive for."
+            And now those old trains
+    Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
+    Of my harp made response to my spirit....
+
+So the imagination of the young shepherd boy had not only disregarded
+the limits of his actual environment and escaped in fancy to the great
+world beyond, but so vividly had he realized that world _through his
+imagination_ that his sympathies had been made broad to comprehend a
+monarch's need and his song potent to meet it. Experience alone gives
+comprehension. We are prone to think that experience is limited by our
+actual horizon. We need to know that experience has no limit save that
+which is set by the limit of our imaginative insight. No door of life is
+closed to the imaginative mind and heart. The world is its playground to
+wander in at will. Experience, and thorough experience, comprehension of
+life is at the command of _imagination_.
+
+Life can be intelligently apprehended on the material plane through
+trained senses. Life can be vividly realized on the spirit's plane only
+through a trained imagination. It is only vivid realization of life at
+every point which makes it worth living. You may see the lark long after
+he is lost to my duller eye in our common sky, you may hear the song
+when my less keen ear no longer catches a faintest thread of melody; but
+unless the eye and ear of your imagination match mine you shall not
+_vividly realize_ flight or song, and so I shall follow both long after
+they are lost to you. Your skylark will pass with the moment of his
+rapturous song-flight, while mine shall remain forever a spirit of joy
+to be recalled at will for my spirit's refreshing.
+
+Looking then upon imagination as a key to that comprehension of life
+which clarifies and constitutes its worth, let us eagerly enter upon the
+cultivation of such power. We have left this question of imaginative
+development as a definite exercise to a fifth place in our
+interpretative study, not because it is less vital to effective
+expression than the first four subjects we have considered, but because
+_balanced expression_ is our aim, and imagination once given free play
+may easily impair that harmonious development of all our faculties which
+makes for balance in expression. Of course there is no phase of the
+study of interpretation which, when rightly conducted, does not
+indirectly or directly involve the training of the imagination. On the
+other hand, training of the imagination wisely conducted may comprehend
+and carry on development along all other lines of evolution in
+expression. A sensitive imagination trained and controlled to its
+highest power of apprehension must make for sympathy and intelligence in
+thought and feeling, keep humor sane, and give direction to purpose. But
+imaginative vigor set free to the uses of thought and emotion _already_
+disciplined, to _conscious_ purpose and to _good_ humor, becomes a safe
+master of expressive living.
+
+The material through which we are to exercise the imagination and
+develop imaginative vigor is the narrative form of discourse. Narration
+is successful when it records or has the effect of recording actual
+experience. A story (according to the authority we so often invoke,--Mr.
+Gardiner), "whether it be as simple as those of the Book of Genesis or
+as complex as Mr. James or Mr. Meredith, must carry the effect of the
+concreteness, and, as it were, the solidity of life." The plot, the
+characters, the setting of a story _which is to live_, must have the
+vividness of real experience. This does not mean that the creator of the
+story must have actually experienced the plot, the people, and the
+pictures which together make up his tale--they may be the product of
+actual experience or of imagination--but it does mean that while he is
+putting these elements together and creating his narrative he must
+realize _as though it were actual experience_ the incident of his plot
+with the characters and in the atmosphere of his creation. Such
+realization can only come through vivid imagination.
+
+Exactly the same demand is made upon the imagination of the interpreter.
+When you retell the tale of a master creator of stories your
+interpretation will be convincing, exactly as was his creation,--through
+the lucid play of a vivid imagination. You must make me feel that I am
+in the presence of incidents, characters, pictures which you yourself
+have experienced. Nay, more, you must make me feel that I myself am
+actually meeting these people, seeing these pictures, taking part in
+these incidents, as you relive for me _in imagination_ at the moment of
+your interpretation the tale you are retelling to me.
+
+
+SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS
+
+We shall use for suggestive analysis in this study not a complete
+specimen of narration, but several examples illustrating two of the
+three elements necessary to the personnel of a good story. These three
+recognized elements are the setting or situation which the pictures
+compose, the atmosphere which the characters create, and the plot or the
+action in which the characters engage. We shall leave the question of
+the plot to class work upon the selections from epic poetry to be
+considered later in this study.
+
+Suppose we test our imaginations in the analysis of a situation or
+setting before we attempt a character study. Remember the situation is
+to be realized through imagination as though it were actual experience.
+It is to be _recreated_. Give your imagination full play in this opening
+chapter of George Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_. Let us read the first
+sentence:
+
+     A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its
+     green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it,
+     checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.
+
+Can you see and feel the elements of this picture! You have never
+experienced a tide river? Never mind! There is enough in the picture
+which _is_ familiar to your actual senses through experience to brace
+your imagination for a grasp of the unfamiliar elements. The wide plain,
+the river hurrying between green banks--no apperceptive background fails
+thus far in the picture. What do we mean by apperceptive background? Let
+us investigate for a moment the psychology involved in the art of
+"making pictures." Let us get back of this word-picture. Rather let us
+stay this side of it. Look at the page before you not with the inner eye
+of your imagination, but with the outer eye--the eye which is merely
+the organ of the sense of sight. Use your eye as a physical sense only.
+What does your eye carry to your mind when you look at this page? "Black
+letters grouped into words on a white surface." Did you get all these
+qualities at once? Yes, because you have seen other printed pages. Can
+you wipe out of your mind your knowledge of paper, print, and words? Can
+you imagine looking on such a page as this for the first
+time--_perceiving_ it for the first time? If you can do this you will
+arrive at an understanding of apperceptive background through its
+elimination. You will realize, that all that is in the back of your
+mind, stored there by its previous acquaintance with other printed
+pages, makes up the apperceptive background by which you get a
+conception of this page. That conception comes first through your
+physical sense of sight. You may perceive also through touch, through
+feeling, for instance, the quality of paper. But all that you perceive
+in this initial process,--the stimulus which comes through the physical
+senses, yields little to the complete conception as compared with the
+yield of your so-called _mental senses_. It is when you have fully
+apperceived the object that your conception is complete. It is when you
+have brought to bear upon this page (still looked upon, remember, merely
+as a printed page regardless of the matter behind the print) all your
+previous knowledge,--it is when you have observed that the paper is of
+good quality, that the page is closely set, that the print is excellent,
+that the margin is wide,--it is when you have compared it in memory with
+other pages in other books,--it is when you have not only perceived but
+_ap_perceived it that you have really gained a conception of it. Of
+course, if you are a type-setter, or a proof-reader, or a printer, or an
+editor, or one connected with book-making in any least or last capacity,
+you will see a printed page quite lost to me, because your apperceptive
+background will outmatch mine as to paper, print, margin, and type.
+Good! I yield to you from type-setter to editor! But I challenge you to
+another contest over the same page. Match with me now conceptions
+gained from another view of this same printed matter. Forget now type,
+paper, margins, and words--yes, forget the words as printed words--look
+back of them with me. What do you see now on the page? Still words? Look
+behind them at the pictures! Now, what do you see? "A wide plain, a
+river, green banks, the sea!" Yes, but I see more than that! And you do,
+too? "The river flows between green banks?" You have missed a point. How
+does she flow? Ah, yes, "She hurries on." Where? "To the sea!" Yes! And
+what meets her? "The tide!" Yes, the loving tide meets her! But how?
+"Rushing, he checks her passage in an impetuous embrace!" "You _see_ all
+this!" you say. Yes, but do you hear it, smell it, taste it, feel it?
+Are you, too, caught up in that impetuous embrace? No? Ah, then your
+imagination is only half awake. No, it is not a question of background
+or actual experience now. There are enough familiar elements, as I have
+said before, to rouse your senses to _vividly realize_ the picture as a
+whole if you will not shut the door to such realization--that door is
+your imagination. Open it! Open it! Now I shall close the book and ask
+the class to do likewise, while you read once more _to us_ these first
+sentences, paint for us this picture. Yes, now you are using your
+imagination to stimulate my senses and awake my imagination, but you
+must take heed. You must let me enjoy this picture as a whole. You must
+let me see, feel, taste, smell, all "in the same breath." Remember it is
+a picture. Don't disregard its perspective. Let all the elements rest in
+proper relation one to another and to the whole--as George Eliot placed
+them when she made the setting. The atmosphere is on the whole full of
+peace. The river "hurries," _but_ the "plain is wide"; the tide
+"rushes," but it is a "_loving_ tide," even though its embrace be
+"impetuous." Try it once more! Is there not the joy of creation in such
+interpretation? Let us read on! You read to us still.
+
+     On this mighty tide the black ships--laden with the fresh-scented
+     fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with dark
+     glitter of coal--are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which
+     shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its
+     wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing
+     the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this
+     February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and
+     the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved,
+     green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed
+     autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of the last year's
+     golden clusters of beehive ricks rising at intervals beyond the
+     hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees: the
+     distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their
+     red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just
+     by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively
+     current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its
+     dark, changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion
+     while I wander along the bank and listen to its low, placid voice,
+     as to the voice of one who is dear and loving. I remember these
+     large, dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge.
+
+     And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the
+     bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is
+     far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing
+     February it is pleasant to look at--perhaps the chill, damp season
+     adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as
+     old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern
+     blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little
+     withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in
+     front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass,
+     the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great
+     trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I
+     am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are
+     dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes,
+     unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world
+     above.
+
+     The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy
+     deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene.
+     They are like a grand curtain of sound, shutting one out from the
+     world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered
+     wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is
+     thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late
+     hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses--the
+     strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking
+     mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should
+     crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if they needed that
+     hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the
+     bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home!
+     Look at their grand shaggy feet, that seem to grasp the firm earth,
+     at the patient strength of their neck, bowed under the heavy
+     collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I
+     should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly earned feed
+     of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the
+     harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they
+     are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and
+     the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the
+     trees.
+
+     Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the
+     unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little
+     girl is watching it too: she has been standing on just the same
+     spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge.
+     And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and
+     barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is
+     jealous, because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in
+     its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think;
+     and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines
+     out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to
+     leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge.
+
+     Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on
+     the arms of my chair and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge
+     in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many
+     years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and
+     Mrs. Tulliver were talking about as they sat by the bright fire in
+     the left-hand parlor on that very afternoon I have been dreaming
+     of.
+
+If, in your interpretation of this passage, a sensitive imagination
+free, but controlled by vital thought and intelligent feeling, has found
+in trained instruments a lucid channel for expression, then, at the
+close of your reading, _we_, your auditors, shall find our arms really
+benumbed from pressing our elbows on the arms of our chairs as we dream
+with you that we are standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote
+Mill--the Mill on the Floss, which we find on awakening is but the title
+and setting of a great author's great story.
+
+We turn now to the second element of Narration--the _characters_. The
+setting we have just analyzed has introduced us to the main characters
+of a great story. Our interest is already awake to the little girl who
+has been watching with us the unresting wheel of the mill. Why not take
+Maggie Tulliver for our character study? To follow Maggie but a little
+way is to find Tom. This is well for us, because we need to study both
+types. Let us read from the chapter called "Tom Comes Home" in the life
+of the boy and girl.
+
+
+TOM COMES HOME
+
+     Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another
+     fluttering heart besides Maggie's when it was late enough for the
+     sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a
+     strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound
+     came--that quick light bowling of the gig-wheels--and in spite of
+     the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to
+     respect Mrs. Tulliver's curls and cap-strings, she came outside the
+     door, and even held her hand on Maggie's offending head, forgetting
+     all the griefs of the morning.
+
+     "There he is, my sweet lad! But Lord ha' mercy! he's got never a
+     collar on; it's been lost on the road, I'll be bound, and spoiled
+     the set."
+
+     Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one
+     leg and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig, and
+     said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, "Hallo!
+     Yap--what! are you there?"
+
+     Nevertheless, he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though
+     Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his
+     blue-gray eyes wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the
+     river, where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the
+     first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow
+     everywhere in England and at twelve or thirteen years of age look
+     as much alike as goslings--a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of
+     cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows--a
+     physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but
+     the generic character of boyhood; as different as possible from
+     poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have molded and colored
+     with the most decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep
+     cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so
+     that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and
+     all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their
+     confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that
+     she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most
+     rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable
+     characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may
+     after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this
+     pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.
+
+     "Maggie," said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner as
+     soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box, and the warm
+     parlor had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive,
+     "you don't know what I've got in _my_ pockets," nodding his head up
+     and down as a means of rousing her sense of mystery.
+
+     "No," said Maggie. "How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls
+     (marbles) or cobnuts?" Maggie's heart sank a little, because Tom
+     always said it was "no good" playing with _her_ at those games--she
+     played so badly.
+
+     "Marls! no; I've swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and
+     cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But
+     see here!" He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.
+
+     "What is it?" said Maggie, in a whisper. "I can see nothing but a
+     bit of yellow."
+
+     "Why, it's ... a ... new ... guess, Maggie."
+
+     "Oh, I _can't_ guess, Tom," said Maggie, impatiently.
+
+     "Don't be a spitfire, else I won't tell you," said Tom, thrusting
+     his hand back into his pocket and looking determined.
+
+     "No, Tom," said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that
+     was held stiffly in the pocket. "I'm not cross, Tom; it was only
+     because I can't bear guessing. _Please_ be good to me."
+
+     Tom's arm slowly relaxed, and he said, "Well, then, it's a new
+     fish-line--two new uns--one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. I
+     wouldn't go halves in the toffee and ginger-bread on purpose to
+     save the money; Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I
+     wouldn't. And here's hooks--see here! I say, _won't_ we go and fish
+     to-morrow down by Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish,
+     Maggie, and put the worms on, and everything--won't it be fun?"
+
+     Maggie's answer was to throw her arms around Tom's neck and hug
+     him, and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he
+     slowly unwound some line, saying, after a pause:
+
+     "Wasn't I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself?
+     You know, I needn't have bought it if I hadn't liked."
+
+     "Yes, very, very good. I _do_ love you, Tom."
+
+     Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking at the
+     hooks one by one, before he spoke again.
+
+     "And the fellows fought me because I wouldn't give in about the
+     toffee."
+
+     "Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn't fight at your school, Tom. Didn't
+     it hurt you?"
+
+     "Hurt me? no," said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a
+     large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he
+     looked at meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he
+     added:
+
+     "I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know--that's what he got by wanting
+     to leather _me_; I wasn't going to go halves because anybody
+     leathered me."
+
+     "Oh, how brave you are, Tom! I think you're like Samson. If there
+     came a lion roaring at me, I think you'd fight him--wouldn't you,
+     Tom?"
+
+     "How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There's no
+     lions only in the shows."
+
+     "No; but if we were in the lion countries--I mean, in Africa, where
+     it's very hot--the lions eat people there. I can show it to you in
+     the book where I read it."
+
+     "Well, I should get a gun and shoot him."
+
+     "But if you hadn't got a gun--we might have gone out, you know, not
+     thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a great lion might run
+     toward us roaring, and we couldn't get away from him. What should
+     you do, Tom?"
+
+     Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying: "But
+     the lion _isn't_ coming. What's the use of talking?"
+
+     "But I like to fancy how it would be," said Maggie, following him.
+     "Just think what you would do, Tom?"
+
+     "Oh, don't bother, Maggie! you're such a silly--I shall go and see
+     my rabbits."
+
+     Maggie's heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the
+     sad truth at once, but she walked after Tom in trembling silence as
+     he went out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to
+     soften at once his sorrow and anger; for Maggie dreaded Tom's anger
+     of all things--it was quite a different anger from her own.
+
+     "Tom," she said, timidly, when they were out-of-doors, "how much
+     money did you give for your rabbits?"
+
+     "Two half-crowns and a sixpence," said Tom, promptly.
+
+     "I think I've got a great deal more than that in my steel purse
+     up-stairs. I'll ask mother to give it you."
+
+     "What for?" said Tom. "I don't want _your_ money, you silly thing.
+     I've got a great deal more money than you, because I'm a boy. I
+     always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes,
+     because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces,
+     because you're only a girl."
+
+     "Well, but, Tom--if mother would let me give you two half-crowns
+     and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket to spend,
+     you know, and buy some more rabbits with it?"
+
+     "More rabbits? I don't want any more."
+
+     "Oh, but, Tom, they're all dead."
+
+     Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round toward Maggie.
+     "You forgot to feed 'em, then, and Harry forgot?" he said, his
+     color heightening for a moment, but soon subsiding. "I'll pitch
+     into Harry--I'll have him turned away. And I don't love you,
+     Maggie. You sha'n't go fishing with me to-morrow. I told you to go
+     and see the rabbits every day." He walked on again.
+
+     "Yes. But I forgot--and I couldn't help it, indeed, Tom. I'm so
+     very sorry," said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast.
+
+     "You're a naughty girl," said Tom, severely, "and I'm sorry I
+     bought you the fish-line. I don't love you."
+
+     "Oh, Tom, it's very cruel," sobbed Maggie. "I'd forgive you if
+     _you_ forgot anything--I wouldn't mind what you did--I'd forgive
+     you and love you."
+
+     "Yes, you're a silly; but I never _do_ forget things--_I_ don't."
+
+     "Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break," said Maggie,
+     shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom's arm, and laying her wet cheek
+     on his shoulder.
+
+     Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone:
+     "Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren't I a good brother to you?"
+
+     "Ye-ye-es," sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling
+     convulsively.
+
+     "Didn't I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to
+     buy it, and saved my money o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in
+     the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't?"
+
+     "Ye-ye-es ... and I ... lo-lo-love you so, Tom."
+
+     "But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off
+     my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag
+     my fish-line down when I set you to watch it, and you pushed your
+     head through my kite, all for nothing."
+
+     "But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it."
+
+     "Yes, you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded what you were doing.
+     And you're a naughty girl, and you sha'n't go fishing with me
+     to-morrow."
+
+     With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie toward the
+     mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry.
+
+     Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two;
+     then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic,
+     where she sat on the floor, and laid her head against the
+     worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come
+     home, and she had thought how happy she should be--and now he was
+     cruel to her. What use was anything, if Tom didn't love her? Oh, he
+     was very cruel! Hadn't she wanted to give him the money, and said
+     how very sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but
+     she had never been naughty to Tom--had never _meant_ to be naughty
+     to him.
+
+     "Oh, he is cruel!" Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure
+     in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of
+     the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she
+     was too miserable to be angry.
+
+     These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and
+     strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and
+     weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
+
+This text furnishes an easier exercise in interpretation, does it not?
+It does not require a great stretch of imagination to slip back five,
+ten, a dozen years to play with these children. But I cannot let you
+_play_ with them. We want to meet and know them. The task for your
+imagination is not so simple as you think. It is called upon to engage
+in character interpretation. You cannot be allowed to merely watch
+Maggie and Tom play, or even to play with them. You must use your
+imagination to get inside the minds, hearts, souls of this boy and girl
+and reveal them to us. You must relive this scene for us, becoming first
+Maggie and then Tom. This exercise of your imagination belongs in its
+final and complete stage to the next and last of our studies, and to
+work on the drama; so we shall not demand too much of you along this
+line here, and I shall confine my suggestive analysis of the text to the
+following questions:
+
+Define the relation existing between this brother and sister indicated
+by this scene.
+
+Is this scene typical of their relation?
+
+Is it a relation likely to obtain throughout their lives? Why?
+
+Define the dispositions of these two children by applying to each three
+adjectives.
+
+Will Maggie or Tom make the sacrifices inevitable to such a relation?
+
+Characterize as to inflection and tone-color Maggie's voice and
+Tom's. (If your use of this book has been intelligently directed
+you have already made a study of these two elements of a vocal
+vocabulary--_inflection_ and _tone-color_.)
+
+Answer these questions and re-read the scene.
+
+
+SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION
+
+The following selections were chosen for this study with a double
+concern in the choice,--concern for the development of imaginative vigor
+in vocal interpretation; concern for the development of a sense of plot
+in narrative composition. The demand upon the interpreter of any of
+these poems, for sensitive progressive play of imagination, in carrying
+an auditor through a series of events up to a critical issue, cannot
+fail to develop, with imaginative vigor, a new sensitiveness of creative
+instinct to the third element in narrative,--action.
+
+Your imagination given free play can no more carry the "good news" from
+Ghent to Aix on this wild ride, and in the feat fail to outgrow all its
+former dimensions, than could the heart of Roland's master remain
+untouched in actually performing the feat itself.
+
+
+     HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX[9]
+
+     [9] The "Good News" is that of the "Pacification de Gant,"
+     concluded in 1576. It was a treaty of union between Holland,
+     Zealand, and the southern Netherlands, against Spain, under
+     tyrannical Philip II. The treaty was greeted rapturously by the
+     frontier cities, because it was expected to free the Netherlands
+     from Spanish power.
+
+     "There is," writes Mr. Browning, "no sort of historical foundation
+     about 'Good News from Ghent.' I wrote it under the bulwark of a
+     vessel off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough
+     to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain
+     good horse 'York,' then in my stable at home. It was written in
+     pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's _Simboli_, I remember."
+
+     While there is, then, no historical foundation for the "gallop,"
+     the verisimilitude of the situation is perfect. Aix might easily
+     have resolved to set herself on fire at a given hour, rather than
+     submit herself and her citizens piecemeal to the torch of the
+     persecutor. The "horse without peer" might possibly have galloped
+     the ninety-odd miles between Ghent and Aix, but the feat would be a
+     marvelous one.
+
+     This poem and "Hervé Riel," with the accompanying notes, are
+     reprinted from _Select Poems of Robert Browning_, edited by William
+     Rolfe, A.M., and Héloise E. Hersey, and published by Harper &
+     Brothers.
+
+    I
+
+    I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
+    I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
+    "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
+    "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
+    Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
+    And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
+
+    II
+
+    Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
+    Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
+    I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
+    Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
+    Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
+    Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
+
+    III
+
+    'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
+    Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
+    At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
+    At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
+    And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half chime,
+    So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
+
+    IV
+
+    At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
+    And against him the cattle stood black every one,
+    To stare through the mist at us galloping past;
+    And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
+    With resolute shoulders, each butting away
+    The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray;
+
+    V
+
+    And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
+    For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
+    And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
+    O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
+    And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
+    His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
+
+    VI
+
+    By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
+    Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
+    We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
+    Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
+    And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
+    As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
+
+    VII
+
+    So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
+    Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
+    The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
+    'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
+    Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
+    And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!
+
+    VIII
+
+    How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
+    Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
+    And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
+    Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
+    With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
+    And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
+
+    IX
+
+    Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
+    Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
+    Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
+    Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
+    Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
+    Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
+
+    X
+
+    And all I remember is, friends flocking round
+    As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
+    And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
+    As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
+    Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
+    Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
+
+                                           --BROWNING.
+
+
+     LOCHINVAR
+
+    Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
+    Through all the wide border his steed was the best;
+    And save his good broadsword he weapon had none,
+    He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
+    So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
+    There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
+
+    He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,
+    He swam the Esk river where ford there was none;
+    But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
+    The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
+    For a laggard in love and a dastard in war
+    Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
+
+    So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
+    'Mong bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all;
+    Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
+    For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,--
+    "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
+    Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"
+
+    "I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied;
+    Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide;
+    And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
+    To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
+    There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far
+    That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."
+
+    The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up;
+    He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup;
+    She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
+    With a smile on her lip, and a tear in her eye.
+    He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,--
+    "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.
+
+    So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
+    That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
+    While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
+    And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
+    And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far
+    To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar!"
+
+    One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+    When they reached the hall door, where the charger stood near;
+    So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,
+    So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+    "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
+    They'll have fleet steeds that follow!" quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+    There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan:--
+    Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;
+    There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lea,--
+    But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
+    So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
+    Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
+
+                                           --WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+     KING VOLMER AND ELSIE
+
+     _After the Danish of Christian Winter_
+
+    Where, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg,
+    In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg,
+    In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his power,
+    As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower.
+
+    Out spake the king to Henrik, his young and faithful squire:
+    "Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?"
+    "Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me:
+    As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee."
+
+    Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow shall bring another day,
+    When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay."
+    Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood,
+    Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should.
+
+    The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the ancient town
+    From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down:
+    The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn,
+    The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.
+
+    In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins,
+    And, singing with the early birds, her daily task begins.
+    Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower,
+    But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower.
+
+    About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white
+    As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight;
+    Below the modest petticoat can only half conceal
+    The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel.
+
+    The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm;
+    But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades it with her arm.
+    And, hark! a train of horsemen, with sound of dog and horn,
+    Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling down the corn!
+
+    Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume streamed gay,
+    As fast beside her father's gate the riders held their way;
+    And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden spur on heel,
+    And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden checked her wheel.
+
+    "All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me!
+    For weary months in secret my heart has longed for thee!"
+    What noble knight was this? What words for modest maiden's ear?
+    She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear.
+
+    She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would seek the door,
+    Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes crimsoned o'er.
+    "Nay, fear me not," the rider said, "I offer heart and hand,
+    Bear witness these good Danish knights who round about me stand.
+
+    I grant you time to think of this, to answer as you may,
+    For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day."
+    He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round his train,
+    He saw his merry followers seek to hide their smiles in vain.
+
+    "The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of golden hair,
+    I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you wear;
+    All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in a chariot gay
+    You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds of gray.
+
+    And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and brazen lamps shall
+          glow;
+    On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances to and fro;
+    At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall shine,
+    While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink the blood-red wine."
+
+    Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face to face;
+    A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip found place.
+    Back from her low white forehead the curls of gold she threw,
+    And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and blue.
+
+    "I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight;
+    I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn to slight.
+    If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not a lord;
+    I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty sword."
+
+    "To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel away,
+    And in its place will swing the scythe and mow your father's hay."
+    "Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can never bear;
+    A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you must wear."
+
+    "Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the rider gaily spoke,
+    "And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet cloak."
+    "But mark," she said, "no stately horse my peasant love must ride,
+    A yoke of steers before the plow is all that he must guide."
+
+    The knight looked down upon his steed: "Well, let him wander free,--
+    No other man must ride the horse that has been backed by me.
+    Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen talk,
+    If only little Elsie beside my plow will walk."
+
+    "You must take from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can;
+    The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant-man."
+    "Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine,
+    And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain my generous wine."
+
+    "Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign and boss,
+    Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly knee across.
+    And pull me down your castle from top to basement wall,
+    And let your plow trace furrows in the ruins of your hall!"
+
+    Then smiled he with a lofty pride: right well at last he knew
+    The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth-plight true.
+    "Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act your part full well:
+    You know that I must bear my shield and in my castle dwell!
+
+    The lions ramping on that shield between the hearts aflame
+    Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her ancient name.
+    For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder towers,
+    Who plows them plows up Denmark, this goodly home of ours!
+
+    I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart I know is true;
+    Would God that all our maidens were good and pure as you!
+    Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall well repay:
+    God's peace! Farewell! To-morrow will bring another day!"
+
+    He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good steed then,
+    And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his gallant men.
+    The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on winds of morn
+    The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.
+
+    "Thou true and ever faithful!" the listening Henrik cried:
+    And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by Elsie's side.
+    None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from afar,
+    The Golden Goose that watched them from the tower of Valdemar.
+
+    O darling girls of Denmark! of all the flowers that throng
+    Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my song.
+    No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's skill;
+    Thank God! of maids like Elsie the land has plenty still!
+
+                                           --WHITTIER.
+
+
+     HERVÉ RIEL[10]
+
+     [10] "This spirited poem was sent to the _Cornhill_, because
+     Browning was asked for a subscription to the fund for sending food
+     to Paris after the siege by the Germans in 1870-71. Though he
+     condemned Louis Napoleon's war, he wished to help the French in
+     their distress, and he sent to the fund the 100 pounds that Mr.
+     George Smith gave him for 'Hervé Riel.' The subject of the poem and
+     its generous treatment surely manifolded the good-will of the gift.
+     An English poet restored to France its 'Forgotten Worthy.' An
+     Englishman sang the praises of a French sailor's balking the
+     English fleet. One of the nation whose boast it is that her heroes
+     need no other motive for their noble deeds than 'England expects
+     every man to do his duty' showed that in France, too--whose
+     citizens were accused of seeking glory and vainglory as their
+     dearest gain--was a man who could act out Nelson's words with no
+     thought of Nelson's end--a 'peerage or Westminster Abbey'--but just
+     do his duty because it lay before him, and put aside with a smile
+     the reward offered him for doing it; a real man, an honor to the
+     nation and the navy of which he was part."
+
+     "The facts of the story had been forgotten and were denied at St.
+     Malo, but the reports to the French Admiralty at the time were
+     looked up and the facts established. Browning's only alteration is
+     that Hervé Riel's holiday to see his wife, 'La Belle Aurore,' was
+     to last, not a day only, but his lifetime."
+
+     "Hervé Riel" was written at Le Croisic, the home of the hero. It is
+     a small fishing village near the mouth of the Loire.
+
+    I
+
+    On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
+      Did the English fight the French--woe to France!
+    And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue,
+    Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
+      Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
+    With the English fleet in view.
+
+    II
+
+    'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
+      First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville:
+        Close on him fled, great and small,
+        Twenty-two good ships in all;
+    And they signaled to the place,
+    'Help the winners of a race!
+      Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick--or, quicker still,
+      Here's the English can and will!'
+
+    III
+
+    Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board;
+      'Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?' laughed
+          they:
+    'Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,
+    Shall the _Formidable_ here with her twelve and eighty guns
+      Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
+    Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,
+        And with flow at full beside?
+        Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide.
+      Reach the mooring? Rather say,
+    While rock stands or water runs,
+      Not a ship will leave the bay!
+
+    IV
+
+    Then was called a council straight.
+    Brief and bitter the debate:
+    'Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
+    All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
+    For a prize to Plymouth Sound?
+    Better run the ships aground!'
+      (Ended Damfreville his speech).
+    Not a minute more to wait!
+      'Let the captains all and each
+      Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
+    France must undergo her fate.
+
+    V
+
+    Give the word!' But no such word
+    Was ever spoke or heard;
+    For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these--
+    A captain? A lieutenant? A mate--first, second, third?
+        No such man of mark, and meet
+        With his betters to compete!
+        But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet,
+    A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese.
+
+    VI
+
+    And, 'What mockery or malice have we here?' cries Hervé Riel:
+      'Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
+    Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
+    On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
+      'Twixt the offing here and Grève, where the river disembogues?
+    Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
+        Morn and eve, night and day,
+        Have I piloted your bay,
+    Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
+      Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
+        Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!
+    Only let me lead the line,
+      Have the biggest ship to steer,
+      Get this _Formidable_ clear,
+    Make the others follow mine,
+    And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
+      Right to Solidor past Grève,
+        And there lay them safe and sound;
+      And if one ship misbehave,
+        Keel so much as grate the ground,
+    Why, I've nothing but my life--here's my head!' cries Hervé Riel.
+
+    VII
+
+    Not a minute more to wait.
+    'Steer us in, then, small and great!
+      Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!' cried its chief.
+    Captains, give the sailor place!
+      He is Admiral in brief.
+    Still the north wind, by God's grace!
+    See the noble fellow's face
+    As the big ship, with a bound,
+    Clears the entry like a hound,
+    Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
+      See, safe thro' shoal and rock,
+      How they follow in a flock,
+    Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
+      Not a spar that comes to grief!
+    The peril, see, is past,
+    All are harbored, to the last,
+    And just as Hervé Riel hollas 'Anchor!'--sure as fate
+    Up the English come, too late!
+
+    VIII
+
+    So, the storm subsides to calm:
+      They see the green trees wave
+      On the heights o'erlooking Grève.
+    Hearts that bled are stanched with balm,
+      'Just our rapture to enhance,
+        Let the English rake the bay,
+      Gnash their teeth and glare askance
+        As they cannonade away!
+    'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!'
+    How hope succeeds despair on each captain's countenance!
+    Out burst all with one accord,
+      'This is Paradise for Hell!
+      Let France, let France's King,
+      Thank the man that did the thing!'
+    What a shout, and all one word,
+      'Hervé Riel!'
+    As he stepped in front once more,
+      Not a symptom of surprise
+      In the frank blue Breton eyes,
+    Just the same man as before.
+
+    IX
+
+    Then said Damfreville, 'My friend,
+    I must speak out at the end,
+      Though I find the speaking hard.
+    Praise is deeper than the lips;
+    You have saved the King his ships,
+      You must name your own reward.
+    Faith our sun was near eclipse!
+    Demand whate'er you will,
+    France remains your debtor still.
+    Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville.'
+
+    X
+
+    Then a beam of fun outbroke
+    On the bearded mouth that spoke,
+    As the honest heart laughed through
+    Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
+    'Since I needs must say my say,
+      Since on board the duty's done,
+      And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?--
+    Since 'tis ask and have, I may--
+      Since the others go ashore--
+    Come! A good whole holiday!
+      Leave to go, and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!'
+    That he asked and that he got--nothing more.
+
+    XI
+
+    Name and deed alike are lost:
+    Not a pillar nor a post
+      In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
+    Not a head in white and black
+    On a single fishing smack,
+    In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
+      All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
+    Go to Paris: rank on rank
+      Search the heroes flung pell-mell
+    On the Louvre, face and flank!
+      You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.
+    So, for better and for worse,
+    Hervé Riel, accept my verse!
+    In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more
+    Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the Bell Aurore!
+
+
+Your imagination can no more follow the flight of the _Formidable_,
+steered by Hervé Riel, with the French fleet close following her
+guidance and "the English at her heels" past the rocks and shoals of
+Grève to safe harbor at Solidor, and remain creatively unsensitive to
+the pulse of progressive action, than could the actual rescue of his
+country's squadron leave unmoved toward the "man who did the deed" the
+heart of her Captain Damfreville.
+
+And when your imagination has not only carried you through such
+adventure, but stimulated _my_ imagination to like activity, there is no
+limit to be set to the development which may result for us both.
+
+Suggestive analysis can be of little help at this point, the work must
+be done in the class-room under direction.
+
+To such stimulating exercise in the vocal interpretation of these poems
+of action, I leave you and your imagination. I shall hope to find
+difficulty in recognizing either of you at our next meeting. Like Mr.
+Rhoades's[11] pupil when he emerged from the Ninth book of _Paradise
+Lost_, you ought to have "outgrown all your present intellectual
+clothes" in the study of these stories in verse.
+
+[11] Read _The Training of the Imagination_, by James Rhoades; John
+Lane Publishing Company.
+
+As further material for this study there is no better choice to be made
+than Tennyson's great quasi-epic, _The Idylls of the King_, from which
+but for lack of space we should have printed selections. The following
+suggestions for work in composition at this point are based on the
+_Idylls_.
+
+Describe in your own words Camelot.
+
+Write an imaginary scene between Gareth and his mother.
+
+Tell the story of Elaine.
+
+Make the Holy Grail into the form of a miracle play.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH STUDY
+
+TO DEVELOP DRAMATIC INSTINCT
+
+
+Our final study in interpretation has for its concern the development of
+dramatic instinct. The work just finished should have left no doubt in
+your mind as to the nature or value of this final step in the training,
+since it has anticipated both. Development of imaginative vigor should
+arouse a latent dramatic instinct and release histrionic power. The
+choice of place in these studies for this phase of the training was made
+to insure cumulative evolution resulting in balanced expression. As
+imagination needs to safeguard her freedom with sympathetic thought and
+intelligent emotion, so dramatic instinct needs the guidance of a
+vigorous but trained imagination. Dramatic instinct so directed should
+achieve skill in interpreting drama and lead to distinction in the art
+of acting. The immediate evolution should be a clarified vision of life.
+Your final attainment from this theory should be distinction in the art
+of living.
+
+With dramatic instinct capable of such achievement, let us proceed to
+exercise it in the material chosen for this study,--dramatic literature.
+The natural transition from story to play, from narrative to drama, is
+by way of the monologue. Some discussion with suggestive analysis of
+this form is necessary in order to impress upon you the difference
+between suggestive impersonation and actual impersonation or
+characterization, leading to a clear understanding of the difference
+between reading a play and acting in one; but the final evolution of
+interpretative power must come through acted drama,--through taking part
+in a play.
+
+The dictionary in defining the monologue authorizes three forms: (1)
+when the actor tells a continuous story in which he is the chief
+character, referring to the others as absent; (2) when he assumes the
+voice or manner of several characters successively; (3) more recently,
+when he implies that the others are present, leading the audience to
+imagine what they say by his replies. Browning created this more recent
+form, which is the most vital of the three. I have chosen for your study
+of the monologue examples from Browning alone. To interpret effectively
+any one of the Browning monologues will call into play every element of
+power in voice and expression which you have gained in your study of
+previous forms. You must think vividly, feel intelligently, realize and
+suggest an atmosphere, sustain a situation, and keep the beauty of the
+poetic form. And you must do all this _in the person of another_. The
+new demand which the monologue makes is impersonation. Let us see just
+what we mean by impersonation. It is the art of identifying one's self
+with the character to be portrayed. It is the art of losing one's self
+in the character and the situation the dramatist has created. This means
+that the spirit of the character must take possession of the
+impersonator, and inform his every thought and feeling, and so his
+every motion and tone. Remember, it is the _spirit_ of the character
+that must determine the nature of the tone and gesture. The great danger
+in entering upon the study of impersonation lies in emphasizing the
+outward manifestation instead of the inward spirit of the character to
+be portrayed. If you really sense the soul, mind, heart quality of the
+character you are to present, and have made your voice and body free
+agents for the manifestation of those qualities, your impersonation will
+be convincing. If the spirit of the _Patriot_ or _Andrea del Sarto_ or
+_Fra Lippo Lippi_ or _Pompilia_ or _Caponsacchi_ or _Guido_ obsesses
+you, the outward manifestation will take care of itself--always provided
+your instruments are responsive. Don't begin with the outward
+manifestation. Don't say I think this man would frown a great deal, or
+fold his arms over his breast, or use an eyeglass, or strut, or stoop,
+or do any one of a hundred things which, if repeated a half-dozen times
+during an impersonation, may become a mannerism and get between the
+audience and the spirit of the character. When you are studying a
+character for the purpose of impersonation determine first to what type
+it belongs. Then study that type, wherever you are. Daily life becomes
+your teacher and studio. When you enter upon this art there are no
+longer dull moments in railroad stations or trains, in shops or in the
+social whirl. Everywhere and always you are the student seeking to know
+and understand types of people better, that you may use your knowledge
+in presenting to an audience an individual. When you have caught the
+spirit of the individual you must realize the situation out of which
+this particular individual speaks.
+
+Let us make a special study of the _Tale_ (Browning's epilogue to _The
+Two Poets of Croisic_). It is perhaps the most exquisite of the poet's
+creations in this field. The situation reveals a young girl recalling to
+her poet lover an old Greek tale he had once told her. There is a
+suggestion from some critics that Browning has drawn his wife in this
+portrait, and through it pays his tribute to her. This immediately
+affords us a clue to the type of character to which the speaker belongs.
+We cannot hope (nor do we wish) to impersonate Mrs. Browning, but a
+knowledge of Mrs. Browning and her relation to her poet lover, gained
+through a study of her _Letters and Sonnets_, will lead us more quickly
+to a comprehension of the speaker and situation in the _Tale_.
+
+Obsessed by the spirit of the character and fully realizing the
+situation, our next step is, _in imagination_, to set the stage. This is
+an important point in presenting a monologue. The impersonator must have
+a clear idea of his position on his imaginary stage relative to his
+imaginary interlocutor. But he must remember that _imaginary_
+stage-setting admits of only delicately suggestive use. This is true of
+the handling of a monologue at every point. It must be suggestive. The
+actor carries to completion the action which the monologuist suggests.
+The art of interpreting a monologue depends upon the discrimination of
+the impersonator in drawing his line between suggestion and
+actualization in gesture. The business of the monologuist is to make an
+appeal to the imagination of the audience so vivid that the imagination
+of the audience can actualize the suggestion. And the illusion is
+complete. What are the relative positions of the girl and her lover in
+the _Tale_? There is nothing in the lines to make our choice arbitrary.
+It is only important that we determine a relation and keep it
+consistently throughout the reading. Here is a possible "setting." They
+are in the poet's study; he is working at his desk; she is sitting in a
+great chair before the fire, a book in her hand, which she does not
+read; she is gazing into the flames. She begins dreamily, more to
+herself than to him--"What a pretty tale you told me." At what point
+does her tone lose its reflective quality and become more personal?
+Where does she turn to him? How do we know that he leaves his chair and
+comes over to sit on the arm of her chair? What calls him to her? What
+two qualities of feeling run through her mood and determine the color of
+her tone and the character of her movements. If your study of Mrs.
+Browning has been intelligent, this interplay of the whimsical and
+serious in her nature cannot have escaped you, and it will illumine now
+your impersonation of this girl. It is the secret of the peculiar charm
+of this creation. The story she tells is an old and well-known one. It
+is the manner of the telling through which we come in touch with an
+exquisite woman's soul that holds us spellbound. Unless the interpreter
+catches this secret and reveals it to his audience, he will miss the
+distinctive feature of the monologue and reduce it to a narrative poem.
+
+
+    A TALE
+
+    I
+
+    What a pretty tale you told me
+     Once upon a time
+    --Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
+     Was it prose or was it rhyme,
+    Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
+    While your shoulder propped my head.
+
+    II
+
+    Anyhow there's no forgetting
+      This much if no more,
+    That a poet (pray, no petting!)
+      Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
+    Went where such like used to go,
+    Singing for a prize, you know.
+
+    III
+
+    Well, he had to sing, nor merely
+     Sing but play the lyre;
+    Playing was important clearly
+     Quite as singing: I desire,
+    Sir, you keep the fact in mind
+    For a purpose that's behind.
+
+    IV
+
+    There stood he, while deep attention
+      Held the judges round,
+    --Judges able, I should mention,
+      To detect the slightest sound
+    Sung or played amiss: such ears
+    Had old judges, it appears!
+
+    V
+
+    None the less he sang out boldly,
+      Played in time and tune,
+    Till the judges, weighing coldly
+      Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon,
+    Sure to smile 'In vain one tries
+    Picking faults out: take the prize!'
+
+    VI
+
+    When, a mischief! Were they seven
+     Strings the lyre possessed?
+    Oh, and afterward eleven,
+     Thank you! Well, sir--who had guessed
+    Such ill luck in store?--it happed
+    One of those same seven strings snapped.
+
+    VII
+
+    All was lost, then! No! a cricket
+      (What 'cicada'? Pooh!)
+    --Some mad thing that left its thicket
+      For mere love of music--flew
+    With its little heart on fire,
+    Lighted on the crippled lyre.
+
+    VIII
+
+    So that when (Ah, joy!) our singer
+      For his truant string
+    Feels with disconcerted finger,
+      What does cricket else but fling
+    Fiery heart forth, sound the note
+    Wanted by the throbbing throat?
+
+    IX
+
+    Ay and, ever to the ending,
+      Cricket chirps at need,
+    Executes the hands intending,
+      Promptly, perfectly,--indeed
+    Saves the singer from defeat
+    With her chirrup low and sweet.
+
+    X
+
+    Till, at ending, all the judges
+      Cry with one assent
+    'Take the prize--a prize who grudges
+      Such a voice and instrument?
+    Why, we took your lyre for harp,
+    So it shrilled us forth F sharp!'
+
+    XI
+
+    Did the conqueror spurn the creature,
+      Once its service done?
+    That's no such uncommon feature
+      In the case when Music's son
+    Finds his Lotte's power too spent
+    For aiding soul-development.
+
+    XII
+
+    No! This other, on returning
+      Homeward, prize in hand,
+    Satisfied his bosom's yearning:
+      (Sir, I hope you understand!)
+    --Said 'Some record there must be
+    Of this cricket's help to me!'
+
+    XIII
+
+    So, he made himself a statue:
+      Marble stood, life-size;
+    On the lyre, he pointed at you,
+      Perched his partner in the prize;
+    Never more apart you found
+    Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.
+
+    XIV
+
+    That's the tale: its application?
+      Somebody I know
+    Hopes one day for reputation
+      Thro' his poetry that's--oh,
+    All so learned and so wise
+    And deserving of a prize!
+
+    XV
+
+    If he gains one, will some ticket,
+      When his statue's built,
+    Tell the gazer ''Twas a cricket
+      Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt
+    Sweet and low, when strength usurped
+    Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?
+
+    XVI
+
+    For as victory was nighest,
+      While I sang and played--
+    With my lyre at lowest, highest,
+      Right alike,--one string that made
+    "Love" sound soft was snapt in twain,
+    Never to be heard again,--
+
+    XVII
+
+    Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
+      Perched upon the place
+    Vacant left, and duly uttered
+      "Love, Love, Love," whene'er the bass
+    Asked the treble to atone
+    For its somewhat somber drone.'
+
+    XVIII
+
+    But you don't know music! Wherefore
+      Keep on casting pearls
+    To a--poet? All I care for
+      Is--to tell him that a girl's
+    'Love' comes aptly in when gruff
+    Grows his singing. (There, enough!)
+
+
+    INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP
+
+    I
+
+    You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
+      A mile or so away,
+    On a little mound, Napoleon
+      Stood on our storming-day;
+    With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
+      Legs wide, arms locked behind,
+    As if to balance the prone brow
+      Oppressive with its mind.
+
+    II
+
+    Just as perhaps he mused 'My plans
+      That soar, to earth may fall,
+    Let once my army-leader Lannes
+      Waver at yonder wall,'--
+    Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew
+      A rider, bound on bound
+    Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
+      Until he reached the mound.
+
+    III
+
+    Then off there flung in smiling joy,
+      And held himself erect
+    By just his horse's mane, a boy:
+      You hardly could suspect--
+    (So tight he kept his lips compressed,
+      Scarce any blood came through)
+    You looked twice ere you saw his breast
+      Was all but shot in two.
+
+    IV
+
+    'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's grace
+      We've got you Ratisbon!
+    The Marshal's in the market-place,
+      And you'll be there anon
+    To see your flag-bird flap his vans
+      Where I, to heart's desire,
+    Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plans
+      Soared up again like fire.
+
+    V
+
+    The chief's eye flashed; but presently
+      Softened itself, as sheathes
+    A film the mother-eagle's eye
+      When her bruised eaglet breathes;
+    'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's pride
+      Touched to the quick, he said:
+    'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside,
+      Smiling the boy fell dead.
+
+
+    MY LAST DUCHESS
+
+    FERRARA
+
+    That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
+    Looking as if she were alive. I call
+    That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
+    Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
+    Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
+    'Frà Pandolf' by design; for never read
+    Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
+    The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
+    But to myself they turned (since none puts by
+    The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
+    And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
+    How such a glance came there; so, not the first
+    Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, t'was not
+    Her husband's presence only, called that spot
+    Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
+    Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
+    Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
+    Must never hope to reproduce the faint
+    Half-flush that dies along her throat': such stuff
+    Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
+    For calling up that spot of joy. She had
+    A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
+    Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
+    She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
+    Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
+    The dropping of the daylight in the West,
+    The bough of cherries some officious fool
+    Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
+    She rode with round the terrace--all and each
+    Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
+    Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
+    Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
+    My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
+    With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
+    This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
+    In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
+    Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
+    Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
+    Or there exceed the mark'--and if she let
+    Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
+    Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
+    --E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
+    Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
+    Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
+    Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
+    Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
+    As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
+    The company below, then. I repeat,
+    The Count your master's known munificence
+    Is ample warrant that no just pretense
+    Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
+    Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
+    At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
+    Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
+    Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
+    Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
+
+                                           --BROWNING.
+
+Our last form for interpretative vocal study is the play. We shall
+discover that the presentation of the play makes the same demands upon
+the interpreter as the monologue with the new element of _transition_.
+We are still studying the monologue, because we are to read, not act,
+the play. It is still suggestive, not actualized impersonation. But
+instead of one character to suggestively set forth we have two, three, a
+dozen to present. The transition from character to character becomes our
+one new problem. As we have said before, in making the transition from
+character to character, voice, mind, and body must be so volatile that
+the action of the play shall not be interrupted. I know of no better
+way to enter upon the study of a play for reading (or acting) than to
+treat each character as the speaker in a monologue of the Browning type.
+The danger in transition from character to character centers in the
+instant's pause when one speaker yields to another. The unskilful reader
+loses both characters at this point and becomes conscious of himself;
+the action of the play stops; and the illusion of scene and situation is
+lost. The great reader of the play (in that _instant's pause_), as he
+utters the last word of one character, becomes the interlocutor
+listening to the words which he as the other character has just uttered.
+In that instant he must show the effect of the speech he has just
+uttered upon the character he has just become. Which is the greater art:
+to read a play, or to act in it?
+
+Use for your study of the play the Shakespearian drama. Begin with
+scenes from _As You Like It_ and _The Merchant of Venice_; but begin
+with actualized impersonation of the characters. No discussion more! No
+analysis more! The play--the "play's the thing" through which to
+complete this evolution in Vocal Expression.
+
+
+_A FINAL WORD ON INTERPRETATION_
+
+Looking back over these studies in interpretation, let us review in true
+scholastic fashion the main points thus far discovered. We say looking
+back, but as far as the arrangement of our text goes this review
+involves looking forward too. The division of the book into three parts
+is purely a matter of a necessary separation in discussing the three
+activities involved in vocal expression. If your use of this book has
+been intelligent, each study in interpretation has revealed your need to
+strengthen your vocal vocabulary or to perfect your vocal technique, and
+you have turned at once for the required help to the studies in Part II
+and the exercises in Part III.
+
+Omitting a review of the _preliminary plunge_, which was intended to
+"show up" all your peculiar powers and all your especial needs at once,
+and so furnish a basis for the main work, let us see what happened in
+the five following studies. It will simplify our statement in each case
+to base the analysis of our discoveries on the form of literature
+employed in each study.
+
+You found then (or ought to have found) in Study One: that the essay and
+didactic poem make a fundamental appeal to the mind; that the demand
+upon the interpreter of this form is for clear, concise thinking; that
+your need is for a command of unerring emphasis and purposeful
+inflection. You turned to the studies in _pause_, _change of pitch_, and
+_inflection_ to meet that need. Returning to the main study, you tested
+your vocal skill on the essay to find the essay so read might persuade
+an auditor to some readjustment of his ideas, values, discriminations,
+or strengthen him in convictions already held.
+
+Study Two revealed that in lyric poetry the primary appeal is to
+emotion; that its vocal demand upon the interpreter is for a mastery of
+_tone-color_, a sense of rhythm, and the power to suggest a background
+of musical sound. Having supplied as far as possible any lack in your
+vocabulary or technique by supplementary work in Parts II and III,
+returning you found that a lyric rightly read could release in the
+auditor pity, forgiveness, forbearance, endurance, understanding, love.
+
+The Third Study should have convinced you that a sense of _good_ humor
+is a safe and desirable thing to cultivate; that the whimsical tone in
+interpretation will leaven almost any lump of sheer learning and
+counteract a serious overdose of sentiment; that fable, fairy tale, and
+nonsense rhyme depend too for successful interpretation upon this
+element of whimsicality in the reader; that the secret of the whimsical
+element in vocal expression lies in a use of _pause_ and _inflection_.
+
+Study Four should have discovered to you that the three elements of the
+short story can only be realized through imagination; that imaginative
+vigor dealing with action requires sustained vitality of tone. Such
+discovery should have resulted in many hours of work on the exercises
+for _support_ and _freedom_ of _tone_.
+
+When you reached the Fifth and last Study, the work in monologue and
+drama should have easily awakened your dramatic instinct and quickly
+released your histrionic power. You should have learned through
+monologue and drama to understand various types of persons; to see more
+clearly the relations of men and events; to more intelligently
+comprehend life itself.
+
+Finally, we have discovered that to become a true interpreter of
+literature means to become a lucid channel for the message of an author
+to the mind of an auditor,--nay, that it means more than that. In final
+evolution the interpreter of literature becomes a revealer of life. The
+final effect of literature worth interpreting is to enlarge the world's
+knowledge of life's beauty, truth, or power. Your final concern as an
+interpreter is to let life find through you uninterrupted revelation on
+one of these planes; to become a pure medium between the beauty, truth,
+and power of life and the seeking soul. The author need not be
+considered in this final analysis, because you, the interpreter, first
+became identified with the author, and then both of you are lost in the
+vision, save only as either personality may enlarge or clarify the
+revelation.
+
+A personal experience may help you to realize this ideal of the
+interpreter's art.
+
+With a sense of protest, I had presented a play I loved to an audience
+with which I felt little sympathy. By chance there was in that audience
+one of our best teachers and critics. After my recital I sought his
+criticism. Beginning, as the true critic always should, with a noting of
+some point of power, he said, "I congratulate you upon your _illumined
+moments_, but--they are too infrequent. You must multiply them." "What
+do you mean by my illumined moments?" I asked. "The moments when you do
+not get between your audience and the thought you are uttering--the
+moments when you become a revealer of life to them. Your attitude toward
+your audience is not sustained in the simplicity and clearness of some
+of its moments. You suddenly ring down the curtain in the middle of the
+scene. That spoils the scene, you know. You seem to feel a revolt
+against the giving of your confidence to the audience, and thereupon you
+immediately shut them away. You become conscious of yourself, and we,
+the audience, lose the vision and become conscious of you and the way
+you are reading or reciting or acting." Then he added, "Adelaide
+Neilson, at first, had illumined moments in her playing of Juliet, but
+finally her impersonation became one piece of illumination." That
+delightful teacher, reader, and critic, the late Mr. Howard Ticknor,
+suggested the same ideal in comparing a Juliet of to-day with Miss
+Neilson's Juliet. "When Miss ---- is on the balcony," he said, "you hear
+all around you: 'How lovely she looks!' 'Isn't that robe dear?' 'How
+beautiful her voice is!' When Miss Neilson lived that little minute, a
+breathless people prayed with Juliet, 'I would not for the world they
+found thee here,' and sighed with Romeo--'O blessed, blessed night! I am
+afeard, being in night, all this is but a dream.'" Miss Neilson _was_
+Juliet. They, the audience, lived with these lovers one hour of lyric
+rapture, and could never again be quite so commonplace in their attitude
+toward the "deathless passion." They may not now remember Adelaide
+Neilson, but they remember that story, and forever carry a new vision of
+life and love, because the actress lost herself in the life of the play.
+She did not exploit her personality and let it stand between the
+audience and the drama. When some one says to you--the reader or
+actress, "I shall never forget the way you raised your eyebrow at that
+point," don't stop to reply, but fly to your study and read the lines
+"at that point" over and over, with level brows, until you understand
+the meaning, and can express the thought so effectively by a lift of
+your voice that you no longer need the help of your eyebrow. Every
+gesture, every tone, must call attention, not to itself, but to the
+hidden meaning of the author. It must illumine the text of the character
+portrayed. That is it: if we would be artists (and there is not one
+among us who would not be an artist) we must cease to put our little
+selves in front of our messages. In the home, in the office, in the
+houses of our friends, in the school-room, on the platform, on the
+stage, let us be _simple_, _natural_, _sincere_. Let us lay aside our
+mannerisms. Let us seek to know and reveal life. Then shall we be
+remembered--not, for a queer way of combing our hair, or lifting our
+eyes, or using our hands, or shrugging our shoulders, but for some
+revelation of truth or of beauty which we have brought to a community.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
+
+THE VOCAL VOCABULARY
+
+
+There is a theory that it is dangerous to go beyond the mere freeing of
+the instrument in either vocal or physical training. In accordance with
+this theory I was advised by a well-known actress to confine my study
+for the stage, so far as the vocal and pantomimic preparation was
+concerned, to singing, dancing, and fencing. "Get your voice and body
+under control," she said. "Make them free, but don't connect shades of
+thought and emotion with definite tones of the voice or movements of the
+body; don't meddle with Delsarte or elocution." This advice seemed good
+at the time. It still seems to me that it ought to be the right method.
+But I have grown to distrust it. One of the chief sources of my distrust
+has been the effect of the theory upon the art of the actress who gave
+the advice. She is perhaps the most graceful woman on the stage to-day,
+and her voice is pure music. But her gestures and tones fail in
+lucidity; they fail to illumine the text of the part she essays to
+interpret. One grows suddenly impatient of the meaningless grace of her
+movements, the meaningless music of her voice. One longs for a swift--if
+studied--stride across the stage in anger instead of the unstudied grace
+of her glide in swirling-robed protest. One longs to hear a staccato
+declaration of intention instead of the cadenced music of a voice
+guiltless of intention. No! After the body has been made a free and
+responsive agent, a mastery of certain fundamental laws, a mastery of
+certain principles of gesture in accordance with the dictates of thought
+and emotion, is necessary to its further perfecting as a vivid,
+powerful, and true agent of personality. The action must be suited to
+the word, the word to the action, through a study of the laws governing
+expression in action.
+
+So with the voice: to become not only a free instrument, but a
+beautiful and powerful means of expression and communication it must
+learn to recognize and obey certain fundamental laws governing its
+modulations. A master of verbal expression is distinguished by his vast
+vocabulary of words, and his skill and discrimination in its use. A
+master of vocal expression must acquire what we may call a _vocal
+vocabulary_, consisting of changes of pitch, varieties of inflection and
+variations in tone color, and must know how to use these elements with
+skill and discrimination. Our need for such a vocabulary was discovered
+to us at every step of the work in interpretation. The suggestions and
+exercises of the following studies aim to supplement the work in
+interpretation by meeting that need. Before making a detailed study of
+each element of this vocal vocabulary let us make a quick study with the
+four elements in mind. Remember, in the last preliminary exercise, as in
+the final complete interpretative endeavor, the material we employ is to
+be chosen from real literature. It is to be worth interpreting whether
+it be a single line or phrase or a complete poetical drama. We have
+agreed to consider literature as real literature, and so worth our
+interpretative efforts, when it possesses one or combines all of the
+three qualities,--_beauty_, _truth_, and _power_.
+
+This passage from Emerson's _Friendship_ surely meets that requirement.
+It is truth beautifully and powerfully expressed. It will serve.
+
+     Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have
+     made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber
+     of the human heart.
+
+Having read this passage cursorily (as is the custom in reading to one's
+self to-day), will you now study it for a moment very closely. Now, once
+more, please, read it silently, noting the action of your mind as you
+read. ("Watch its pulsations," Dr. Curry would say.) And now, aloud,
+although without an auditor, read it, this time noting the effect of the
+action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why?
+How did you inflect the words "wine and dreams"? How did the inflection
+of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of
+the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your
+tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us
+approach the passage, this time with a different intention. Let us study
+it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of
+attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is.
+Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its
+object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart
+either to another. But the day of reading which "_maketh a full man_"
+seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The
+necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour
+in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner
+guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions
+which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect
+of beauty or truth upon the mind and heart of the reader. Should it not
+be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master
+mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the
+boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his
+thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such
+reading might not result in a less _bromidic_ social atmosphere, even
+though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe
+and interesting to try such an experiment.
+
+But now we must return to Emerson on _Friendship_. In studying a passage
+for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the
+concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must
+make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your
+auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought
+must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own
+brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and
+until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give. Having
+recalled these precepts, read the passage silently again. Pour upon it
+the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your
+perception of truth. Comment upon it silently as you read. Now read it
+aloud and let your voice do this commenting. But wait a moment. Let me
+quote for you the paragraph following this statement.
+
+     The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the
+     laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty
+     benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit
+     in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters
+     must ripen.
+
+This is Emerson's paraphrase of his original statement. How much of it
+did your mental commentary include? How did your silent paraphrase
+resemble this? Read the original passage again to yourself in the light
+of this paraphrase. I shall ask you now to repeat the first sentence
+from memory, for you will find, after this concentrated contemplation of
+a thought, that its form is fixed fast in your mind. That is a
+delightful accompaniment of this kind of reading. The form of the
+thought, if it be apposite (which it must be to be literature, and we
+are considering only literature), the form of a thought so approached
+stays with us in all its beauty.
+
+Let us then repeat the original statement, having read the passage in
+which Emerson has elaborated it. Now, what you must demand of your voice
+is this: that it shall so handle the single introductory sentence as to
+suggest the rest of the paragraph. In other words, your voice must do
+the paraphrasing, by means of its changes in pitch, its inflections, and
+its variations in tone-color; by means, in short, of its _vocal
+vocabulary_.
+
+
+I
+
+STUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCH
+
+It is asserted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject."
+Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve a _last word_ on the subject
+of _pause_ when he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he
+would pause, and into the pool of expectancy created by that pause drop
+just the right word." There seems little to be added to complete the
+exposition of that single sentence. It surely leaves no doubt in our
+minds as to the effect to be desired from the use of this element of our
+vocabulary. How to use it to gain that effect is our problem. First of
+all, we must cease to be afraid to pause. We hurry on over splendid
+opportunities to elucidate our text through a just use of this form of
+emphasis, beset by two fears: fear that we shall seem to have forgotten
+the text; fear that we shall actually forget it if we stop to think.
+Think of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking!
+That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a
+confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its
+ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his
+definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask.
+Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a
+ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audience in one
+of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought
+has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarrassed
+sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have
+learned the meaning of an _empty pause_.
+
+On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of those
+_fateful_ moments when your voice pauses because your thought is so
+vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to
+fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of
+expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop,
+then you will learn the meaning of a _true pause_.
+
+Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon
+the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The
+definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis
+includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running
+commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of
+the text he interprets. The words reveal the thought; your valuation of
+that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal
+vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your
+emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are
+uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal
+vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of
+the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.
+
+Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element
+of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our
+vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It
+behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary
+as to its other elements.
+
+Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.
+
+
+     EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRL
+
+     At midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a
+     purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a
+     corridor you can almost hear Miss ----'s peaceful snore, when as
+     the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness
+     clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"--(I thought Jane and I
+     would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line
+     in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),--well, as I say, exactly at that hour
+     my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge
+     without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to
+     begin preparations for our grand spread.
+
+
+From Sidney Lanier's _Crystal_.
+
+    At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.
+    When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
+    The great soft rumble of the course of things--
+    A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,--
+    When darkness clears our vision that by day
+    Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
+    For truth and flitteth here and there about
+    Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
+    Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
+    Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
+    And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart,
+    Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...
+
+The same hour, _midnight_, is designated by both girl and poet; the same
+two words, "at midnight," open the confession and the poem. A pause
+must follow these words in the reading of either text, and another pause
+must be made after the qualifying phrase which immediately follows the
+opening words of either text. But what a difference in the comparative
+length of the pauses demanded by the two readings! A very different
+atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a
+school-girl's escapade or set apart for a _poet's meditation_. And the
+voice by its use of _pause_ can preserve or destroy either atmosphere.
+Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal
+length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will
+find the result is that _overemphasis_ which has brought such discredit
+upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader
+strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple
+change in her programme. I have heard more than one reader give the
+stage directions, indicate the scene setting, and introduce the
+characters in exactly the same voice and with the same use of emphasis
+which were afterward employed in the most dramatic passages. Of course
+all the ammunition had been used up before the real battle began, and no
+one was in the least affected by the firing during the rest of the
+engagement.
+
+We have said that the use of pause determines the use of all other
+elements of the vocabulary. This is particularly true of the _change of
+pitch_ which immediately follows pause. We pause before a new idea to
+get possession of it; in that pause we measure the idea, and the pitch
+of the voice changes to accord with that measure. Every change of
+thought causes a change of pitch, but the degree and direction of change
+in pitch of the voice depends upon the degree and direction of change in
+thought values. In the pause the mind takes time to value the new
+thought, and tells the voice what change it must make. Robert Browning
+affords the best material for a study in change of pitch, because of his
+sudden and long parentheses, which can be handled lucidly by a voice
+only after it has mastered this element of the vocal vocabulary. _Abt
+Vogler_ offers the voice an excellent opportunity for exercise in change
+of pitch. I print the first stanza and first line of the second stanza
+of this poem for your use.
+
+    Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
+      Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
+    Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
+      Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
+    Man, brute, reptile, fly--alien of end and of aim,
+      Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,
+    Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
+      And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
+
+    Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--
+
+Remember, you are to confine your consideration to the one point,
+_change of pitch_, not the change of pitch within a word, which is
+inflection and belongs to another chapter, but to the broad changes of
+pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence,
+following the intricate changes of the thought.
+
+I leave you to blaze a trail through this forest of ideas. You must find
+the main road, and then trace the by-paths which lead away from that
+main road, and in this case, fortunately, come back to it again--which
+does not always happen in Mr. Browning's "woody tracts of thought." To
+employ a better figure for vocal purposes, you must cut off the stream,
+the voice, and trace the bed of this river of thought, following the
+main channel, and then its branches. You will find the main channel cut
+by the first and last lines:
+
+    Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--
+
+All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey,"
+and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princess he
+loved," is a branch channel, leading away from and coming back to the
+main river's bed. But this branch channel is interrupted in turn by its
+own branch leading away from it and returning with it to join the main
+bed with the last line we quote. This second branch begins in the middle
+of the third line with the words, "As when Solomon willed," wanders in
+this course for five lines, and, rejoining the first offshoot, returns
+to the main channel with the last line. Now turn on the stream, the
+_Voice_, and watch it flow into the course as traced. Analyze the
+reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.
+
+
+II
+
+STUDY IN INFLECTION
+
+To me, the most notable among the many notable elements in Madame Alla
+Nazimova's acting is her illumination of the text of her impersonations
+through _inflection_. To an ear unaccustomed to the "broken music" of
+her speech, a word may now and then be lost because of her still faulty
+English, but of her attitude toward the thought she is uttering, or the
+person she is addressing, or the situation she is meeting, there can
+never be a moment's doubt--so illuminating is the inflectional play of
+her voice. The tone she uses is not to me pleasing in quality. It does
+not fall in liquid alluring cadences upon the ear as does Miss
+Marlowe's, for instance. It is always keyed high, whether the child-wife
+Nora, or Hedda, omnivorous of experience, is speaking. But this
+high-pitched tone is endlessly volatile. It is restless. It never lets
+your attention wander. It is never monotonous. It is a master of
+_inflection_. Madame Nazimova's emotion is always primarily
+intellectual. It always proceeds from a mind keenly alive to the
+instant's incident. This intensely intellectual temperament reveals
+itself through her voice in a rare degree of inflectional agility.
+Recall the revelation of Nora's soul in her cry: "It is not possible! It
+is not possible!" Madame Nazimova's conception of the mistress of _The
+Doll's House_ is concentrated in these four words--in her inflection of
+the last word, I may almost say. When I close my eyes and think of
+Madame Nazimova's voice I see a grove of soft maples in early October
+with the sun playing upon them, while Miss Marlowe's tone carries me at
+once into the pine woods, where a white birch now and then shimmers its
+yellow leaves. Again, the voice of the Russian actress suggests a
+handful of diamonds, and the American instrument a set of turquoise in
+the matrix. The difference in these two agents of two compelling
+personalities is, of course, the result of a difference in the two
+temperaments; but undoubtedly it also arises from a difference in
+methods of training. Whatever the temperament, light and shade can be
+developed in the voice through practice of inflection; and whatever the
+temperament, a pure tone can be secured through a mastery of support of
+breath and freedom of vocal conditions. The voices of these two
+actresses vividly illustrate these two points. We shall study how to
+secure Miss Marlowe's tone. We are now to work for Madame Nazimova's
+light and shade, so far as a mastery of inflection will secure it. How
+shall we proceed?
+
+"All my life," writes Ellen Terry, in her entrancing memoirs, "the thing
+which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are
+tone-deaf, and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of
+contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that
+faculty of taking infinite pains." That is the secret of successful
+acquisition in any direction, is it not--the _faculty of taking infinite
+pains_? With Ellen Terry it resulted in a voice which in its prime
+estate suggested, it is said, all the riotous colors of all the autumns,
+or Henry Ward Beecher's most varied collection of precious stones. We
+can secure an approximate result by employing the same method. Let us
+proceed with infinite pains to practise, practise, practise inflection.
+
+Let us first examine this _change of pitch within a word_ which we call
+inflection. How does the pitch change, and why, and what does the change
+indicate? We have discovered that a change of thought results in a
+broad change of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to
+sentence, and we shall discover that a change in emotion results in a
+change in the color of the tone we are using; but this element of our
+vocal vocabulary, inflection, is subtler than either of the other two.
+While change of pitch is an intellectual modulation, and variation in
+tone-color is an emotional modulation, _inflection_, in a degree,
+combines both. It is a change in both color and key within the word. It
+is primarily of intellectual significance, but it also reveals certain
+temperamental characteristics which cannot be disassociated with
+emotion. For instance, the staccato utterance of Mrs. Fiske is
+technically the result of her use of straight, swift-falling
+inflections, but it is temperamentally the result of thinking and
+feeling in terms of Becky Sharp.
+
+Let us see how inflections vary. They rise and fall swiftly or slowly.
+They move in a straight line from point to point, or make a curve. (The
+latter we call circumflex inflection.) They make various angles with
+the original level of pitch, rising or falling abruptly or gradually.
+These are some of the variations, each indicating an attitude of the
+mind and heart of the speaker toward the thought, or toward the one
+spoken to, or toward the circumstances out of which the speech arises.
+All must be mastered for use at will if light and shade are to be
+developed in the voice.
+
+Now let us take a phrase or sentence, and voice it under a certain
+condition, noting the inflection of the word or words which hold the
+thought of the phrase or sentence in solution. Then let us change the
+condition and again voice the thought, noting the change in inflection.
+Let me propound a profound question,--"Do you like growing old?" The
+answers will all be "yes" or "no." But what of the inflection of those
+monosyllabic words? _Sweet Sixteen_ will employ a straight,
+swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward
+influence, such as "_Love_ the _Destroyer_," has embittered her life,
+when she may give us one of _May Iverson's_ adorable replies, masked in
+indifference and circumlocution). _Twenty_ will employ the
+straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's
+slide. With _twenty-five_ we detect a faint sign of a curve in the more
+gradual fall. _Twenty-eight_ to _thirty-five_ employs various degrees of
+circumflex, according to the desire--or possibility--of concealing the
+real facts. _Forty_ to _forty-five_, if in defiant mood, employs the
+abrupt-falling inflection, or, if quite honest, changes to the negative
+with as swift and straight a fall. This lasts through sixty-five, and at
+_seventy_ we hear a new and gentle circumflex of the "no," until the
+pride of extreme old age sets in at _eighty-five_ with the swift fall of
+sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly
+relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes
+of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising
+you to do so.
+
+It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a
+personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents of his delightful talk
+with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present
+problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you
+ever read _Titan_?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady.
+"Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect
+the word _Yes_ to call forth the injunction, _Read it again_? What did
+her inflection reveal?
+
+However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the
+Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's
+frail soul through _inflection_ as she crushes letter after letter in
+her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words, _Je déchire_,
+and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful
+voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the
+close of this episode of the letters.
+
+No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the
+paragraph from Emerson's _Friendship_, quoted in a preceding chapter.
+Let us repeat the first sentence again. "Our friendships hurry to short
+and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and
+dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart." Study, in voicing
+this, how to illumine the thought by your contrastive inflection of the
+words "wine and dreams" and "tough fiber of the human heart." A
+lingering circumflex cadence in uttering the first two words will
+suggest the unstable nature of a friendship woven out of so frail a
+fabric as wine and dreams, while a swift, strong, straight-falling
+inflection on each of the last six words indicates the vigorous growth
+of a love rooted in the tough fiber of the human heart.
+
+In _Monna Vanna_ Maurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb
+opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene
+in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]
+
+[12] From _Monna Vanna_. By Maurice Maeterlinck. Published by Harper &
+Brothers.
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. Are you in pain?
+
+     VANNA. No!
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. Will you let me have it [her wound] dressed?
+
+     VANNA. No! (Pause.)
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. You are decided?
+
+     VANNA. Yes.
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. Need I recall the terms of the--?
+
+     VANNA. It is useless--I know them.
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. Your lord consents.
+
+     VANNA. Yes.
+
+     PRINZIVALLE. It is my mind to leave you free....
+
+     There is yet time should you desire to renounce....
+
+     VANNA. No!
+
+And so the seeming inquisition proceeds. To each relentlessly searching
+interrogation from Gianello comes Vanna's unfaltering reply, in a
+single, swift monosyllable, "Yes" or "No." The same word, but, oh, the
+revelation which may lie in the inflection of that word! Let us try it.
+Let us read the scene aloud, first giving as nearly as possible the same
+inflection to each of Vanna's answers, then let us voice it again,
+putting into the curve of the tone within the narrow space of the two or
+three lettered monosyllables all the concentrated mental passion of
+Vanna's soul in its attitude toward the terrible situation and toward
+the man whom she believes to be her enemy. This is a most difficult
+exercise, but if "a man's reach should exceed his grasp," it will not
+retard our progress toward the goal of a vocal vocabulary to attempt it
+now. Apart from all aim in its pursuit, there is no more fascinating
+study than this study of inflection. In this day of artistic photography
+there is an endless interest for the artist of the camera in playing
+with a subject's expression by varying the light and shade thrown upon
+the face. So for the student of vocal expression there is endless
+interest in this play with the thought behind a group of words by
+varying the inflection of those words. Lady Macbeth's, "We fail!" or
+Macbeth's, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were
+done quickly," occurs to us, of course, as rich material for this
+exercise.
+
+In her analysis of the character of Lady Macbeth Mrs. Jameson gives us
+an interesting study in inflection, based on Mrs. Siddons's
+interpretation of the words "We fail." A foot-note reads: "In her
+impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth Mrs. Siddons adopted
+successively three different intonations in giving the words 'we fail.'
+At first a quick, contemptuous interrogation--'we fail?' Afterward with
+the note of admiration--'we fail!' and an accent of indignant
+astonishment laying the principal emphasis on the word we--'_we_ fail!'
+Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true reading--'_we
+fail_'--with the simple period, modulating the voice to a deep, low,
+resolute tone which settled the issue at once, as though she had said:
+'If we fail, why then we fail, and all is over.'"
+
+Think how vitally the total impersonation is affected by your choice of
+inflections at this point. Compare the effects of the three, Mrs.
+Siddons tested. Are there other possible intonations of the words? What
+are they? Do you realize the vital effect upon the voice of such vocal
+analysis and experimentation? Devote ten minutes of the time you take
+for reading each day to this phase of vocal interpretation, and at the
+end of a week note its effect upon your silent reading and upon your
+voice.
+
+Remember, with inflection, as with every other phase of the training,
+the greatest immediate benefit will come from holding the question of
+its peculiar significance constantly in mind. Study the temperament of
+the people about you by noting this element in their speech. Study the
+attitude of every interlocutor you face, by studying the inflection of
+his replies to the questions of life and death you propound. But, above
+all, study your own use of this element. Do not let your own attitude go
+undetected. It may help you to alter an unfortunate attitude to realize
+its effect upon your own voice.
+
+
+III
+
+STUDY IN TONE-COLOR
+
+And now we must turn to our last point of discussion, tone-color. What
+is the nature of this element of our vocabulary--this _Klangfarbe_, this
+_Timbre_? Upon what does it depend? You will say, "It is a property of
+the voice depending upon the form of the vibrations which produce the
+tone." True! And physiologically the form of the vibrations depends
+upon the condition of the entire vocal apparatus. _Tone-color_, then, is
+a modulation of resonance. But what concerns us is the fact that it is
+an _emotional_ modulation of resonance. What concerns us is the fact
+that, as a change of thought instantly registers itself in a change of
+pitch, so a change of emotion instantly produces a change in the color
+of the tone--if the voice is a free instrument. And so, as before, I
+want you not to think of the physiological aspect, but to yield to the
+emotion, noting the character of the resultant tone, regardless of what
+has happened in the larynx to produce that result.
+
+As Browning affords us the best material for our study in change of
+pitch, so the poems of Sidney Lanier offer to the voice the richest
+field for exercise in tone-color. Musician and poet in one, Lanier's
+peculiar charm lies in his unerring choice of words, which suggest in
+their sound, when rightly voiced, the atmosphere of the scene he is
+painting. Lanier uses words as Corot uses colors. This gives the voice
+its opportunity to bring out by subtle variations in _timbre_ the
+variations in light and shade of an atmosphere. To read aloud,
+sympathetically, once a day, Lanier's _The Symphony_ is the best
+possible way to develop simultaneously all the elements of a vocal
+vocabulary. We shall use this poem to-day as a text for our study in
+tone-color. Let us omit the message of the violins and heavier strings,
+and take the passage beginning with the interlude upon which the
+flute-voice breaks:
+
+    But presently
+    A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
+    Upon the bosom of that harmony,
+    And sailed and sailed incessantly,
+    As if a petal from a wild rose blown
+    Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone
+    And boatwise dropped o' the convex side
+    And floated down the glassy tide
+    And clarified and glorified
+    The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
+    From the warm concave of that fluted note
+    Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,
+    As if a rose might somehow be a throat; ...
+
+What an ideal for tone-color! Dare we think to make it ours? We must. We
+must adopt it with confidence of attainment. Let me quote a little
+further:
+
+    When Nature from her far-off glen
+    Flutes her soft messages to men,
+    The flute can say them o'er again;
+    Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
+    Breathes through life's strident polyphone
+    The flute-voice in the world of tone.
+
+Read this passage aloud as a mere statement of fact, employing a
+matter-of-fact tone. Gray in color, is it not? Now let your voice take
+the color Lanier has blended for you. Let your tone, like a thing "half
+song, half odor," float forth on these words and linger as only a
+perfume can about the thought. Now let the tone change in color to
+clarify and glorify the following message from the flute:[13]
+
+[13] The extracts on pp. 279-287 are from Mr. Sidney Lanier's volume of
+"Poems," published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+    Sweet friends,
+    Man's love ascends
+    To finer and diviner ends
+    Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.
+
+I cannot, for lack of space, reprint the whole flute message, but you
+will get the poem, if you have it not, and voice every word of it, I am
+sure. Here are some of the most telling lines for our present purpose:
+
+    I speak for each no-tongued tree
+    That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
+    And dumbly and most wistfully
+    His mighty prayerful arms outspreads
+    Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
+    And his big blessing downward sheds.
+    I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
+    Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
+    Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
+    Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
+    And briery mazes bounding lanes,
+    And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
+    And milky stems and sugary veins;
+    For every long-armed woman-vine
+    That round a piteous tree doth twine;
+    For passionate odors, and divine
+    Pistils, and petals crystalline;
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
+    Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
+    And night's unearthly undertones;
+    All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
+    All cool reposing mountain-steeps,
+    Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;--
+    Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
+    And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,
+    Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
+    --These doth my timid tongue present,
+    Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
+    And servant, all love-eloquent.
+
+You see, to voice this message a mood born of all the "warmths and
+mysteries and mights of Nature's utmost depths and heights" must take
+possession of you, and you must yield your instrument to the expression
+of that mood. Then watch, watch, watch the color of the tone change as
+the voice, starting with the clear flute-note, follows sympathetically
+the varying phases of Nature's face which the poet has so
+sympathetically painted. And now, after a "thrilling calm," the flute
+yields its place to a sister instrument, and the tone must change its
+_timbre_ to the reed note of the clarionet. In the "melting" message of
+that instrument we find two passages which afford the voice chance for a
+most vivid contrast in color. Beginning with the line, "Now comes a
+suitor with sharp, prying eye," read the two descriptions which follow,
+lending your voice to the atmosphere of each:
+
+    _ ... Here, you Lady, if you'll sell I'll buy:
+    Come, heart for heart--a trade? What! weeping? why?_
+    Shame on such wooer's dapper mercery!
+    I would my lover kneeling at my feet
+    In humble manliness should cry, _O sweet!
+    I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
+    I ask not if thy love my love can meet:
+    Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say,
+    I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:
+    I do but know I love thee, and I pray
+    To be thy knight until my dying day._
+
+The first two lines, which set forth a suit in terms of trade, demand a
+hard, calculating tone, suggestive of large silver dollars. Call this
+color dull steel gray. This tone flashes out for a moment in the white
+indignation of the third line, softens and warms with the next two
+lines, then grows and glows until it reaches a crimson radiance in the
+last two lines. Try it!
+
+And now, with "heartsome voice of mellow scorn," let us sound the
+message of the "bold straightforward horn."
+
+    "Now comfort thee," said he,
+      "Fair Lady.
+    For God shall right thy grievous wrong,
+    And man shall sing thee a true-love song,
+    Voiced in act his whole life long,
+    Yea, all thy sweet life long,
+      Fair Lady.
+
+    Where's he that craftily hath said.
+    The day of chivalry is dead?
+    I'll prove that lie upon his head,
+    Or I will die instead,
+      Fair Lady.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed
+    To fight like a man and love like a maid,
+    Since Pembroke's life as Pembroke's blade,
+    I' the scabbard, death was laid,
+    I dare avouch my faith is bright
+    That God doth right and God hath might.
+    Nor time hath changed His hair to white,
+    Nor His dear love to spite,
+      Fair Lady.
+
+    I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay,
+    And fight my fight in the patient modern way
+    For true love and for thee--ah me! and pray
+    To be thy knight until my dying day,
+      Fair Lady."
+
+    Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away,
+    Into the thick of the melodious fray.
+
+Remember your _key_ is set for you,--the color of the tone is plainly
+chosen for you by Mr. Lanier. Not red nor yellow, but a blending of the
+two. _Orange_, is it not? Will not an orange tone give us the feel of
+heartsome confidence behind and through the mellow scorn of the
+knight's message? Try it! Let the two primary colors, red and yellow,
+enter in varying degrees according to, or following, the emotional
+variation in the thought, as the knight or the lover dominates in the
+message. In the first seven lines the tone glows with the love radiance
+and the orange deepens toward red. With the next five lines the lover
+yields to the knight, and the tone flashes forth a golden, keen-edged
+sword. With the thirteenth line the tone begins in the orange on "Now by
+each knight that e'er hath prayed," flashes into yellow in "to fight
+like a man," softens and deepens toward red in "and love like a maid,"
+and returns to the orange to finish the horn _motif_.
+
+Next in this poem which affords such a wonderful study for tone-color we
+have the hautboy's message. The color is mixed and laid on the palette
+ready for use as before, with the introductory lines:
+
+    And then the hautboy played and smiled,
+    And sang like any large-eyed Child,
+    Cool-hearted and all undefiled.
+
+Don't let the words _large-eyed Child_ mislead you. Don't, I beseech
+you, make the mistake of adopting the "Little Orphan Annie" tone with
+which the "elocutionist" too often insults the pure treble of a child's
+"undefiled" instrument. That is the keynote to us for our choice of
+color--"cool-hearted and all undefiled." Almost a white tone, is it not?
+With a little of the blue of the June sky? Try it. Let the blue be
+visibly present in the first three lines:
+
+    "Huge Trade!" he said,
+    "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head
+    And run where'er my finger led!"
+
+turning to pure white in the next three lines:
+
+    Once said a Man--and wise was He--
+    Never shalt thou the heavens see
+    Save as a little child thou be.
+
+The last voice comes from the "ancient wise bassoons." Again there is
+danger. Do not, oh! do not fall afoul of the conventional old man's
+quavering tone. There is nothing conventional about these "weird,
+gray-beard old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes," chanting runes.
+The last words of these introductory lines safeguard us--"chanted
+runes." There is only one color of tone in which to _chant runes_. Gray,
+is it not? Yes, but a silver gray, not the steel gray of the clarionet
+when she became for the moment a commercial lover. Then in the
+silver-gray tone of the philosopher, voice this last _motif_:
+
+    Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,
+    The sea of all doth lash and toss,
+    One wave forward and one across:
+    But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
+    And worst doth foam and flash to best,
+      And curst to blest.
+
+The importance of a right use of tone-color in vocal interpretation was
+impressed upon a Browning class last winter. We were reading the
+_Dramatic Lyrics_. The poem for the hour was _Meeting at Night_. The
+tone with which the first student attacked this exquisite love-lyric was
+so businesslike, so matter of fact, so utterly out of key, that we who
+listened saw not the lover hastening to his beloved, but a real-estate
+agent "out to buy" a farm. The "gray sea, the long black land, the
+yellow half-moon large and low, the startled little waves that creep in
+fiery ringlets from their sleep, the pushing prow of the boat quenched
+in the slushy sand, the warm, sea-scented beach, and the three fields"
+all assumed a merely commercial value. They were interesting exactly as
+would be a catalogue of properties in a deed of real estate. If you are
+not a very _intense_ member of a Browning society you will, I think,
+enjoy the test of tone-color involved in reading this poem from the
+contrasted standpoints of the business man and the lover. Of course, in
+the first instance you must stop where I, in desperation, stopped the
+student on the words, "a farm appears." For I defy any one to read the
+last two lines in a gray, matter-of-fact tone.
+
+As was the case in our consideration of inflection, so in this study of
+tone-color there is an embarrassment of rich material for the exercise
+of this element. Lanier's _Sunrise_ and _Corn_; Browning's prologue to
+_The Two Poets of Croisic_, with a vivid contrast of color in each
+verse; Swinburne's almost every line; Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
+Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson--but why enumerate? All the colorists among
+the poets will reward your search of a text for the development of
+_timbre_.
+
+For a final brief study of the three elements we aim to acquire, with
+especial emphasis in thought upon the last one, let us take this
+prologue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, with its color-contrast in each
+verse:
+
+    Such a starved bank of moss
+      Till that May morn,
+    Blue ran the flash across:
+      Violets were born!
+
+    Sky--what a scowl of cloud
+      Till, near and far,
+    Ray on ray split the shroud:
+      Splendid, a star!
+
+    World--how it walled about
+      Life with disgrace
+    Till God's own smile came out:
+      That was thy face
+
+The vocal treatment of the first two verses will be very much alike. The
+voice starts in minor key, a gray monotone, in harmony with the absence
+of color in the bare bank of dull moss. The inflection of the word
+"starved" must emphasize the grayness. It must be a dull push of the
+tone on the first syllable, with little, if any, lift above the level of
+the low pitch on which the whole line is spoken. With a swift, salient,
+rising inflection on the opening word of the second line, an inflection
+which creates expectancy of change, the voice lifts the thought out of
+the minor into the major key. I must call your attention to the vital
+significance of the use of pause at this point by simply asking you to
+indulge in it. Stop after uttering the word _till_ and study the effect
+of the pause. It is the pause quite as much as the inflection, you see,
+which induces the expectant attitude you desire to create in the mind of
+your auditor. With the next three words, "that May morn," the tone takes
+on a bit of the warmth of early summer. A lingering cadence on the word
+"May" will help the suggestion. With the third line the voice begins to
+shine. I know no other way to express it. The inflections are swift and
+straight, but not staccato, because they must suggest a growth, not a
+burst of color. The tone on which the words are borne must be
+continuous. It must not be broken off definitely with each word, as is
+to prove most effective, we shall find, in handling the third line of
+the second verse. The fourth line brings the full, glowing, radiant tone
+on the first word, "violets." This tone must be held in full volume on
+the last two words. The law for beautiful speech must be observed here.
+(But where should it not be observed?) Let us recall the law,
+"_Beautiful speech depends upon openness of vowels and definiteness of
+consonants._" The vowels give volume to a word, the consonants form.
+Slur your consonants and squeeze your vowels in the three words of this
+line, "Violets were born," and what becomes of this miracle of spring?
+The voicing of the second verse is very like that of the first. The
+opening line demands the same gray monotone. But the three words,
+"sky," "scowl," and "cloud," if clear-cut in utterance, as they should
+be, will break the level of the line more than the single word "starved"
+in the first line of the first verse can do, or was meant to do. There
+is the same swift lift of the voice in the opening word of the second
+line, the same change to the major key, the same growing glow in the
+tone on the third line, and the same radiant outburst of color sustained
+through the last line. The only difference lies in the suffusion of
+radiance in the tone to suggest the coming of color to the bank, in the
+first verse, and the outburst of radiance to suggest the sudden
+splitting of the clouds and the star's swift birth, in the second verse.
+With the emotional change of thought in the last verse, from a travail
+and birth in nature to a human soul's struggle and rebirth, the
+deepening color which creeps into the tone indicates the entrance of
+personal passion. The key does not change. The inflections are still and
+straight. The tone simply deepens and glows in the last two lines, as a
+prayerful ecstasy possesses the one who reads.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL TECHNIQUE
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN VOCAL TECHNIQUE
+
+
+THE UNINTERRUPTED TONE
+
+
+When a rich, dramatic temperament seeks for its instrument of expression
+the control of faultless technique the result ought to be art of the
+highest order. Such is the art of Gracia Ricardo. She has translated her
+English name into musical Italian, but does her country the honor to
+announce her beautiful voice as an American soprano.
+
+Every tone of Gracia Ricardo's singing voice is as absolutely free from
+effort as the repeated note of the hermit thrush's song, and her tone as
+pure tone has the effect of that liquid call. But could you freight the
+thrush note with knowledge of human passion,--with throb of joy or pulse
+of pain, you would get from it the effect of Gracia Ricardo's singing of
+a Heine-Schubert song, a Schumann, Brahms, or Franz _lied_, or one of
+our English ballads. It must always be a song, for Gracia Ricardo does
+not exploit her voice in astonishing vocal feats. She simply _sings her
+song_. It was her wish to interpret the _lieder_ of all countries that
+sent her in search of a method which would free her voice to that high
+use. She found that method, not in her own country, alas, but in
+Germany, where for twelve years she has used it in the guidance of her
+own voice and that of many others. She finds the American pupil
+"difficult," because "You are so impatient of a long, quiet preparation.
+You wish to try your skill at every step of the way--and not in the
+privacy of your study, but in a public's hearing." Poor American public!
+How it has suffered from this _impatience_. It is true, is it not, we
+are not willing to take time to establish a right condition for tone
+before using the tone in what should be final efforts of the perfected
+instrument. _Blessed be drudgery_ has not become a beatitude in the
+gospel of the American artist. When it is so recognized by the student
+of vocal expression perhaps we can reclaim this great singer and
+teacher, Madame Ricardo. This book would further that end.
+
+It has been my good fortune while making this book for you to do some
+brief but intensive studying under Madame Ricardo. It is by her gracious
+consent that I shall leave with you as an incentive toward the ideal for
+which we are striving the two _watchwords_ of her teaching which were
+most potently suggestive to me. The exercises which constitute her
+method require personal supervision, but the active principle of those
+exercises for both tone production and breath control is clearly
+indicated by the two phrases "the uninterrupted tone" and "the constant
+mouth-breath." These two ideas fully sensed by a voice will work swift
+wonders in its use.
+
+Like Mr. Mabie's pool of expectancy, these watchwords of the Ricardo
+method suggest their own application; but let us consider them somewhat
+more closely. Think then with me of an _uninterrupted tone_--a tone
+which is not interfered with at any point in its production. Think of a
+breath that flows freely on and on, constantly reinforced, but never
+interrupted--a breath that is allowed to enter the vocal box, pass
+between the vocal chords, where it is converted into tone; yield itself
+to the organs of speech and controlled by the speech process, issue from
+the mouth in beautiful speech forms, in the words which constitute a
+language!
+
+Tracing the process of tone production in this way, we find that three
+distinct steps are involved. Even as I write the words distinct and
+steps I realize their inharmony with the idea of flowing tone. Rather
+then let us say three phases in the evolution of speech: _breath_,
+_tone_, _speech_. In using the word speech to designate the final phase
+in this evolution I am thinking of it in its broadest sense--really in a
+sense identical with language. With this final phase beyond its mere
+initiation this book cannot deeply concern itself. For work along this
+line I must refer you to Prof. T. R. Lounsbury's _Standard of
+Pronunciation in English_; to the article on _The Acquiring of Clear
+Speech_ by John D. Barry, published in _Harper's Bazaar_ for August,
+September, and October, 1907; to _The Technique of Speech_, by Dora Duty
+Jones.
+
+Not technique of speech, but _technique_ of _tone_ is our study. Not how
+to make beautiful speech forms, but how to make beautiful speech-tones;
+not how to distinguish one speech from another in a language, or the
+speech forms of one language from those of another, but how to
+distinguish interrupted speech-tone from _uninterrupted_
+speech-tone--such is our problem.
+
+But tone is breath before it becomes speech, so our first concern is
+with the initial stage. The process of breath control in the Ricardo
+method of tone production (as in my own) is analogous to the process of
+pumping water. Let your chest with its lungs represent the reservoir,
+your diaphragm, the great muscle at the base of the lungs, becomes the
+piston and your mouth the mouth of the pump. If the mouth of the pump
+runs dry the pump itself runs down and has to be primed. Priming a pump
+is precisely analogous to "catching your breath" in speech.
+
+The active principle of breath control in the Ricardo method is the idea
+of a _constant mouth-breath_. A sense of uninterrupted breath is as
+essential to a knowledge of correct tone as a sense of uninterrupted
+tone is to a knowledge of correct speech and song.
+
+In breathing to speak or sing there must be such perfect diaphragmatic
+control that the mouth shall never be out of breath. You must learn in
+speaking and reading to take easily and quietly breath enough and _often
+enough_ to supply the tone which is to be made into a single word, a
+phrase, a sentence, or a series of sentences, and leave the mouth-breath
+unexhausted, even unaffected. You must never catch your breath; the
+breath must pass continuously, the _mouth-breath_ remaining a _constant_
+quantity.
+
+It was gratifying in my work with this master of tone production to find
+that my own method in the training of the speaking voice was in accord
+at almost every point with her method in the training of the singing
+voice. In reprinting for you the exposition of my own method, as set
+down in _The Speaking Voice_, I have found it necessary to make but few
+changes. I have altered entirely the method of handling the tongue. I
+have added a word as to the part the lips play in the production of
+speech. In the few exercises it is safe to offer under the reinforcing
+of tone I have used the _[=e]_ instead of the _ä_, convinced that it is
+the more effective vowel sound through which to work for uninterrupted
+tone.
+
+It was also a pleasure to find my own instrument, through its training
+for speech, adequately prepared for the work in song. The studies which
+constitute _Part Three_ of this book, if faithfully attended, will fit
+your voices for higher work in either art.
+
+
+LEARNING TO SUPPORT THE TONE
+
+Before attempting the exercises involved in the first step, let us
+examine a tone in the making, or, rather, let us feel how it is
+made--for the process of tone production, so far as it concerns us, is
+not of physiological, but rather psychological, significance. The huge
+tomes on the physiology of the voice which are of vital interest to the
+student of anatomy are not only of no use, but are apt to be a positive
+hindrance to the student of vocal training. A vivid picture of the
+larynx or vocal cords, a cross-section of the trachea, or a highly
+illuminated image of any of the cavities concerned in the production of
+that most wonderful thing in the world, a pure tone of the human voice,
+is a source of delight to the physiologist, but will only interfere with
+that _feel_ for the free, full volume of sound which the student of
+voice as an instrument of thought and emotion is to make, as a first
+step in vocal training. Then, not as anatomists or physiologists, but as
+makers of music, let us look at, let us feel for, a tone.
+
+I am "stung by the splendor of a sudden thought"; I desire to share it
+with you; the desire causes me to take a deep breath, a column of air
+rises, is converted into tone, passes into the mouth, and is moulded
+into the words which symbolize my thought. Let us, without further
+analysis, try this. Close your eyes, think of some line of prose or
+poetry which has moved you profoundly; let it take possession of you
+until you are seized by the desire to voice it. Still with closed eyes,
+feel yourself take the breath which is to be made into tone, and then
+into the words which stand for the thought. Hold that sensation, and
+study it with me for a moment. "But," you say, "the desire to voice the
+thought does not seize me." Very well, let me ask you a question. "Do
+you believe in examinations?" Now your thought was converted so swiftly
+into speech that you had no time to study the conversion. Once more,
+whether your answer be Yes or No, close your eyes and feel for the tone
+you are to use in making the single word.
+
+Now, a little more in detail, let us see what happens. A thought full of
+emotion meets the question, the desire to answer is born; the need of
+breath to meet the desire contracts the diaphragm (the pump); the chest
+(the reservoir) fills; a column of air, pumped and controlled by the
+diaphragm, and reinforced in the chest, rises, strikes the vocal cords
+(the "strings" of the instrument), the strings vibrate, converting the
+air into sound, into tone; the tone, reinforced in all the chambers of
+the head, passes into the mouth, and is there moulded by the
+juxtaposition of the organs of speech (lips, teeth, tongue) into the
+word, the single, monosyllabic word, Yes or No, which frames the
+thought. Now, once more, with closed eyes, sense the process and hold
+the sensation, but do not speak the word. Now, still once more, and this
+time, speak. Alas! did we say we were "makers of music"? Is this
+harmony,--this harsh, hard, breathy, strident note? What is the trouble?
+
+First of all, fundamental to all, and beyond a doubt the secret of the
+dissonance, you did not breathe before you spoke or as you spoke. I
+mean, really breathe. And that is the first point to be attacked.
+Breathe, breathe, breathe! you must learn how to breathe; you must get
+your pump, your diaphragm, into working order, you must master it, you
+must control it, you must not fetter it, you must give it a free chance
+to do its work. If you are a man, you have probably at least been fair
+in not tying down your pump; you have not incased yourself in steel
+bands and drawn them so tight that your diaphragm could not descend and
+perform its office. Yes, and if you are the athletic girl of to-day, you
+have probably learned the delight and benefit of free muscular action.
+But you may still be suffering from the effect of your mother's crime in
+this direction. It may have sent you into the world with weakened
+muscles in control of the great pumping-station upon which must depend
+the beauty of your voice.
+
+But whatever the condition or the cause, it must, if wrong, be made
+right. We must learn to breathe properly, freely, naturally. (Do not
+confuse _naturally_ and "habitually." In this connection these terms are
+opposites rather than synonyms.) To breathe naturally we must do away
+with all constriction. We must choose between the alleged beauty of a
+disproportionately small waist and the charm of a beautiful and
+alluring voice. We cannot have both. Then, off with tight corsets! Thank
+Heaven! they are the exception and not the rule to-day. Please note that
+I distinctly do not say, "Off with corsets," but only "Off with
+_ill-fitting_ corsets," for which tight is but another name. I believe,
+to digress a moment, with our present method of dress, a properly fitted
+corset is an absolute necessity, except in the rare instances where a
+perfectly proportioned and slender figure is also under the control of
+firm, well-trained muscles. In a first flush of rapture over the vision
+of the gentle ladies of Mr. Howell's Altruria, seen _Through the Eye of
+the Needle_, we feel that we can take a step toward that paradise by
+discarding the strait-laced tailored torture the present-day costume
+prescribes, for the corsetless grace of the Altrurian garment; but our
+enthusiasm is short-lived, as we realize that we are in modern America
+and must make as inconspicuously gracious an appearance as possible
+without violating the conventions. So, as I say, do not discard the
+corset, which is, for the majority of women, the saving grace of the
+present fashion in dress; only see that your corset brings out what is
+best in the figure God gave you, instead of disfiguring it, as undue
+constriction of any part of your body will inevitably do. Incidentally,
+by this precaution, save your voice as well.
+
+But until we can be refitted, or readjust the corsets we already wear,
+and the gowns made over them, we must avoid the discouraging effect of
+trying to work against the odds of a costume which interferes with our
+breathing, by making a practice of taking the breathing exercises
+involved in the first step, at night and in the morning. Five minutes of
+deep, free breathing from the diaphragm, lying flat on your back in bed
+at night and before you rise in the morning, will accomplish the desired
+result. The point in lying flat on your back is that in that position
+alone you can be sure you are breathing naturally, which is
+diaphragmatically. Indeed, you cannot, without great effort, and
+sometimes not even then, breathe any other way than naturally. I cannot
+tell you why. I can only say, try it and see.
+
+Our first exercise, then, is to lie flat on the back at night and in the
+morning, when you are perfectly free, and, with closed eyes, take deep,
+long breaths, letting them go slowly, and studying the accompanying
+sensation until it is fixed fast and you feel you cannot lose it, but
+can reproduce, under any condition, the action which resulted in that
+sensation. The incidental effect of this exercise is to make one very
+sleepy. Indeed, nothing will so quickly and effectually put to flight
+that foe of the society woman and business man of to-day, insomnia, as
+the practice of deep, regular natural breathing. Add counting each
+respiration, and it is an almost unfailing remedy. The only trouble for
+our purpose is that it is sometimes so swiftly soporific that we are
+asleep before the sensation is fixed fast and noted in consciousness:
+which is one object of the exercise. However, should we find the
+prescribed five minutes at night interfered with by coming drowsiness,
+we may yield in sleepy content, "sustained and soothed" by the thought
+that we shall be in splendid shape for the morning practice, with which
+nothing must interfere, "not headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or
+thunder-stroke."
+
+We are ready now for the third exercise. When, for five minutes in the
+morning, lying flat on your back, with closed eyes, you have taken deep,
+long breaths, letting them go slowly, yielding your whole body to the
+act of respiration, noting the effect and fixing fast the sensation, as
+a next step you are to stand up and repeat the operation. Still holding
+the sensation (not by tightening your muscles, or clenching your fists,
+or setting your teeth, but simply by thinking the sensation, letting it
+possess you), in this attitude of mind breathe naturally, standing
+instead of lying down. That is all. Don't be discouraged if the test
+prove unsatisfactory at first. Try an intermediate step. Sit on the side
+of your bed, or in a straight-back chair, and, closing your eyes and
+relaxing all your muscles except those governing the diaphragm, breathe.
+Now stand, well poised. By well poised, of course, you know I mean with
+the weight perfectly balanced about the center of gravity, which, in
+turn, means that a perpendicular dropped from the highest point of the
+lifted chest without encountering any part of your body, and especially
+not your abdomen (which should be held always back, so that it is flat,
+if not actually concave) will fall unobstructed to the floor, striking a
+point just between the balls of your feet. Standing thus, well poised,
+place the right hand on your body, just below your ribs at the base of
+the lungs, and your left hand on your back, just opposite your right
+hand; then breathe, and feel the diaphragm, as it descends, cause the
+torso, in turn, to expand from front to back, pressing against either
+hand. Let the breath go slowly, controlling its emission by controlling
+the diaphragm.
+
+So the three exercises stand progressively thus:
+
+_First._--Breathe naturally, which is diaphragmatically, five minutes at
+night. (At first you can be sure of doing this only by lying flat on
+your back.)
+
+_Second._--Breathe naturally, which is diaphragmatically, for five
+minutes in the morning, and note the sensation.
+
+_Third._--Stand and test your newly acquired power by trying to breathe
+diaphragmatically while on your feet.
+
+These three exercises constitute the first step in the first stage of
+vocal training, and that step is called _Learning to Support the Tone_.
+
+I know a little girl who, in the beginning of her career, alarmed her
+parents by refusing to utter a syllable or the semblance of a syllable
+until she was three years old, when she evidently considered herself
+ready for her maiden effort at speech. Prepared she proved, for, sitting
+at the window in her high-chair one day, watching people pass, she
+remarked quietly and with perfect precision, "There goes Mrs. Tibbets."
+I find myself secretly wishing it were possible for you to refrain from
+speech, not for three years, but for three weeks, while you quietly
+prepare for speech by practising these three breathing exercises. It is
+quite the customary thing (or ought to be) for the teacher of voice as
+an instrument of song to require of the student a period of
+silence--that is, a period in which only exercises are allowed, and
+songs, even the simplest, are forbidden. However, our only way to secure
+this condition would be to go into retreat; but, after all, one of the
+most encouraging things about this work is the remarkable effect upon
+the speaking voice of simply holding the thought of the right condition
+for tone, _thinking_ the three exercises I have given you. It is not so
+remarkable, perhaps, in the light of the experiment recently made (I am
+told) in one of our great colleges, when three men daily performed a
+certain exercise, and three other men simply thought it intensely, and
+the resultant effect upon the muscles used in the act was marvelously
+similar. I am half afraid to have recalled this, lest you take advantage
+of the suggestion and relax your effort, or, out of curiosity, make the
+experiment. Please don't. I offer it only as an incentive to you, to
+_think_ at least of the desired condition, if you cannot every day
+indulge in an active effort to attain it.
+
+Please test at once the immediate effect of this third exercise. Take
+the attitude I have defined, and try once more any full-voweled
+syllable. I think you will find the tone already improved.
+
+
+LEARNING TO FREE THE TONE
+
+We have worked, so far, for support of tone. We must now free the
+supported tone, by freeing the channel for the emission of the breath as
+it is converted into tone and moulded into speech. We shall find that in
+learning to support the tone we have gone far toward securing that
+freedom; but the habit of years is not easily overcome, and every time
+you have spoken without proper support of breath you have _forced_ the
+tone _from_ the _throat_, by tightening the muscles and closing the
+channel, thus making conditions which must now be reformed by steady,
+patient effort. Yet it is not effort I want from you now; it is _lack_
+of effort. It is _passivity_; it is _surrender_. I want you to relax
+all the muscles which govern the organs concerned in converting the
+breath into tone and moulding the tone into speech, all the muscles
+controlling the throat and mouth, including the lips and jaw. I want
+utter passivity of the parts from the point where the column of breath
+strikes the vocal cords to where, as tone, it is moulded into the word
+"No." Surrender to the desire to utter that word. Concentrate your
+thought on two things: the taking of the breath and the word it is to
+become. Now, lying down, or sitting easily, lazily, in a comfortable
+chair, or standing leaning against the wall, with closed eyes, surrender
+to the thought "No," and, taking a breath, speak. Still hard and
+unmusical you find? Yes, but I am sure not so hopelessly hard as before.
+What shall we do to relax the tense muscles, to release the throat and
+free the channel? At the risk of being written down a propagandist, in
+the ranks of the extreme dress-reformers, I shall say, first of all,
+take off those high, tight collars. Again, as with the corset, it is a
+case of a misfit rather than too tight a fit. If your collar is cut to
+fit, it need not be too high nor too tight for comfort, and it will
+still be becoming. You want it to cling to the neck and keep the line.
+Cut it to fit, and it will keep the line; then put in pieces of
+whalebone, if necessary, or resort to some of the many other devices now
+in vogue for keeping the soft collar erect, but don't choke yourself,
+either by fastening it too tight or cutting it too high. But how simple
+it would be if we could relax the tension by doffing our ill-fitting
+corsets and collars. Alas! the trouble is deeper seated than that.
+
+It is an indisputable and most unfortunate fact that nervous tension
+registers itself more easily in the muscles about the mouth and throat
+than anywhere else. So, if we live as do even the children of to-day,
+under excitement, and so in a state of nervous tension, the habit of
+speaking with the channel only half open is quickly formed, and the
+voice becomes shrill and harsh. You have noticed that the more emphatic
+one grows in argument the higher and harder the voice becomes, and,
+incidentally, the less convincing the argument. This is true of all
+excitement; the nervous tension accompanying it constricts the throat,
+and the result is a closed channel. To learn instinctively to refer this
+tension for registration not to the throat, but to the diaphragm, is a
+part of vocal training. This can be easily accomplished with children,
+and the habit established of taking a deep breath under the influence of
+any emotion. This breath will cause the throat to open instead of shut,
+and the tone to grow full, deep, and round, instead of high and harsh.
+The full, deep, round tone will carry twice as far as the high, harsh,
+breathy one. The one deep breath resulting in the full, deep tone
+may--nay, will--often serve the same purpose as Tattycoram's "Count
+five-and-twenty," and save the angry retort.
+
+It is useless to regret, on either ethical or aesthetic grounds, that we
+were not taught in childhood to take the deep breath and make the deep
+tone. But let us look to it that the voices and dispositions of our
+children are not allowed to suffer. Meanwhile, in correcting the fault
+in the use of our own instruments, we shall go far toward establishing
+the proper condition with the next generation, since the child is so
+mimetic that, to hear sweet, quiet, low tones about him will have more
+effect than much technical training in keeping his voice free and
+musical. In the same way, the child who hears good English spoken at
+home seems less dependent upon text-books in grammar and rhetoric to
+perfect his verbal expression than the child who is not so fortunate in
+this respect.
+
+To insure the registration of nervous tension in the muscles controlling
+the diaphragm and not the throat--that is, to form the habit of
+breathing deeply when speaking under the influence of emotion, is our
+problem. The present fault in registration will be found to be different
+with each one of us, or, at least, will cause us "to flock together"
+according to the place of registration. Each must locate for himself his
+own difficulty, or go to a vocal specialist and have it located. The
+tension may be altogether in the muscles governing the throat, or it
+may be in those about the mouth. There is the resultant, _breathy_ tone,
+the _hard_ tone, the _nasal_ tone, the _guttural_ tone, the tone that
+issues from a set jaw or an unruly tongue. All mean tension of muscles
+somewhere, and must be met by relaxation of these muscles and the
+freeing of the channel. How to relax the throat shall be our initial
+point of attack. A suggestion made by my first teacher proved most
+helpful to me, a suggestion so simple that I did not for the moment take
+it seriously. "Think," she said, "how your throat feels just before you
+yawn." "Yes," I replied, irrelevantly, "and just after you have eaten a
+peppermint--that cool, delicious, open sensation." This impressed her as
+significant, but not so effective as her suggestion to me, which I felt
+to be true when I began to think of it seriously, and so, of course, to
+yawn furiously. Try it.
+
+Think of the yawn. Close your eyes and feel how the deep breath with
+which the yawn begins (the need of which, indeed, caused it) opens the
+throat, relaxing all the muscles. Now, instead of yawning, speak. The
+result will be a good tone, simply because the condition for tone was
+right. The moment the yawn actually arrives, the condition is lost, the
+throat closes; but in that moment before the break into the yawn, the
+muscles about the throat relax and the channel opens, as the muscles
+controlling the diaphragm tighten and the deep breath is taken.
+
+These, then, are the first exercises in the second step in vocal
+training. This step is called _Freeing the Tone_.
+
+_First._--Yawn, noting the sensation.
+
+_Second._--Just before the throat breaks into the yawn, stop, and,
+instead of carrying out the yawn, speak. Repeat this fifty times a day,
+or ten times, as often as you will. Only, keep at it. Take always a
+single full-voweled monosyllable; _one_, or _four_, or _no_, or _love_,
+or _loop_, or _dove_, etc.
+
+We cannot, in a printed consideration, touch more in detail upon
+individual cases, but must confine ourselves to these simple exercises,
+which will, in general, be swiftly and effectively remedial.
+
+But we must not stop with the throat, which is but part of the channel
+involved in the emission of breath as speech. There is the tense jaw to
+be reckoned with--the jaw set by nervous tension, the jaw which refuses
+to yield itself to the moulding of the tone into the beautiful open
+vowel and the clean-cut consonant which make our words so interesting to
+utter. It is the set jaw which, forcing the tone to squeeze itself out,
+causes it to sound thin and hard. Again, it is surrender and not effort
+I want. Just as I should try to secure the relaxation of your arm or
+hand by asking you to surrender it to me, drop it a dead weight at your
+side for me to lift as I choose, so now I ask you to surrender your
+lower jaw to yourself. Let it go.
+
+Drop your head forward, resting your chin on your chest. Then raise your
+head, but not your chin. Let your mouth fall open. Assume for the moment
+that mark of the feeble-minded, the idiotic, the dropped-open mouth,
+just long enough to note the sensation. Place your fingers on either
+side of your head where the jaws conjoin, and open your mouth quickly
+and with intention. Note the action under your finger-tips. Now let the
+mouth fall open, by simply surrendering the lower jaw, and note this
+time the lack of action under your fingers, at the juncture of the jaws.
+It is this passive surrender which we must learn to make, if we find, on
+investigation, that we are speaking through a half-open mouth held fast
+by a set jaw. The set jaw resists and distorts the mould, and the beauty
+of the form of the word which flows from the mould is lost; the relaxed
+jaw yields to the moulding of the perfectly modeled word.
+
+In practising this relaxation there is very little danger of going too
+far, since the set jaw is the indication of a tense habit of thought, of
+a high-strung temperament, and this habit of thought will never become,
+through the practise of an outward mechanical exercise, the slack habit
+of thought which is evidenced by the loose dropping of words from a too
+relaxed jaw--a habit which must be met by quite the opposite method of
+treatment. There are many exercises involved in vocal training which
+must be directed very carefully for a time before the student can be
+trusted to practise them alone; so I am confining myself in this, as in
+every step we take together, to the simple, fundamental, and at the same
+time perfectly safe ones.
+
+To review those for relaxation of the lower jaw:
+
+_First._--Drop the head until the chin rests upon the breast. Raise the
+head, but not the lower jaw.
+
+_Second._--With eyes devoid of intelligence and the mouth dropped open,
+shake the head until you feel the weight of the lower jaw--until the
+lower jaw seems to hang loosely from the upper jaw and to be shaken by
+it, as your hand, when you shake it from the wrist, seems to be
+commanded by the arm, and to have no volition of its own.
+
+_Third._--Test your ability to surrender the jaw by placing your fingers
+on either side your head in front of the ears at the conjunction of the
+jaws, and first open your mouth with intention, noting the action; then
+think the word No, and surrender the jaw to the forming of the word,
+noting the action or absence of action again.
+
+So much for the set jaw. Ten or fifteen minutes a day--yes, even five
+minutes a day of actual practice with the constant thought of surrender,
+will reward you. Try it.
+
+And still the channel is not open. There remains that most unruly
+member, the tongue. Dora Duty Jones refers all faults of technique in
+speech to failure in the management of the tongue. Miss Jones bases her
+entire system upon the three words, "On the tongue," in Hamlet's
+injunction to the players: speak the speech ... trippingly _on the
+tongue_. That this organ plays a vital part in the presentation of
+speech is not to be questioned; that it is the chief actor may be
+disputed. But whether the tongue is to play a main or a minor part the
+training to which Miss Jones would subject it is most interesting, and
+_The Technique of Speech_[14] should belong to the library of every
+student of expression. The only danger of this training lies in that of
+making the tongue a self-conscious actor. What we require of the tongue
+is that it shall act as a free agent in modeling the perfect word. Many
+of the exercises given by Miss Jones can be safely attempted only after
+the preparatory freeing of the organ has been accomplished, but all of
+them will eventually repay investigation.
+
+[14] _The Technique of Speech_, by Dora Duty Jones, published by Harper
+& Brothers.
+
+Meanwhile the following drill for freeing the tongue ought to develop
+the agility we desire:
+
+_First._--Combine _l_ (which may be called the tongue's pet consonant)
+with _ä_ and repeat the syllable _la_ with constantly increasing speed
+to form the following groups: _lä'_ ... _lä lä lä'_ ... _lä lä lä'_ ...
+_lä'_ ... _lä'_.
+
+_Second._--Change the accent over the vowel and repeat the exercise
+until all the sounds of _a_ are exhausted in combination with the _l_.
+
+_Third._--Change the vowel and repeat the exercise until all the vowels
+have been used in combination with _l_.
+
+_Fourth._--Change the consonant to _d_, then to _t_, then _n_, and
+repeat the exercise.
+
+_Fifth._--Follow these exercises on groups of syllables with work on
+groups of words of one syllable beginning with _l_, such as: _late_,
+_lade_, _lane_, _lame_; _last_, _lack_, _lank_, _lapse_, _laugh_;
+_lean_, _least_, _leak_, _leap_, _lead_, etc.
+
+Remember, we are considering primarily speech-_tone_ and not speech
+form, and that our aim in the exercise of the tongue is to keep it from
+interrupting the tone.
+
+And now a word must be said as to the part the lips take in speech. It
+must be only a word, because here more than at any other point the work
+needs the careful supervision of a trained ear and trained eyes. Madame
+Ricardo yields to the lips control of the tongue, as she gives to the
+diaphragm control of the breath. I think she would make _easily on the
+lips_ rather than "trippingly on the tongue" the controlling principle
+in tone and speech. I shall give you but one exercise:
+
+Combine the speech process _m_ with the vowel _[=e]_ and let the tone
+explode easily on the lips in the repeated syllable, _m[=e]_, _m[=e]_,
+_m[=e]_.
+
+
+LEARNING TO REINFORCE THE TONE
+
+And now we turn from the second step in the training to the third and
+last step--the _reinforcing_ of the supported and freed tone. It is
+again a freeing process. This time we are to free the cavities now
+closed against the tone; we are to use the walls of these cavities as
+sounding-boards for tone, as they were designed to be, so reinforcing
+the tone and letting it issue a resonant, bell-like note with the
+carrying power resonance alone can give, instead of the thin, dull,
+colorless sound which conveys no life to the word into which it is
+moulded by the organs of speech. How shall we free these cavities? I
+find myself now impatient of the medium of communication we are using. I
+want to make the tone for you. I want, for instance, to shut off the
+nasal cavity and let you hear the resultant nasal note, thin, high,
+unresonant, which hardly reaches the first member of my audience; then I
+want you to hear the tone flood into the nasal cavity, and, reinforced
+there by the vibration from the walls of the cavity, grow a resonant,
+ringing, bell-like note, which will carry to the farthest corner of the
+room without the least increase in loudness. But we must be content with
+the conditions imposed by print.
+
+First, you must realize that so-called "talking through the nose" is not
+talking _through_ the nose at all, but rather failure to do so--that is,
+instead of letting the tone flood into the nasal cavity, to be
+reinforced there by striking against the walls of the cavity, which act
+as sounding-boards for the tone confined within that cavity, we shut off
+the cavity, and refuse the tone its natural reinforcement. It takes on,
+as a result, a thin, unresonant quality which we call nasal, although it
+is thin and unpleasing because it lacks _true nasal resonance_. The only
+remedy lies in ceasing to shut off the cavity. Think the sound [=oo].
+Let the tone on which it is to be borne grow slowly in thought, filling,
+filling, and, as it grows, flooding the whole face. Let it press
+against your lips (in thought only as yet), feel your nostrils expand,
+your face grow alive between the eyes and the upper lip, that area so
+often inanimate, lifeless, even in a mobile, animated countenance. Now
+let the sound come, but let it follow the thought, flood the face, let
+the nostrils expand, feel the nasal cavity fill with sound; let it go on
+up into the head and strike the forehead and the eye-sockets and the
+walls of all the cavities so unused to the impact of sound, which should
+never have been shut out. Now begin, with lips closed, a humming note,
+_m-m-m_. Let it come flooding into the face, until it presses against
+the lips, demanding the open mouth. Now let it open the mouth into the
+_e_. Repeat this over and over--_m-[=e]_, _m-[=e]_, _m-[=e]_. Don't let
+the tone drop back as the mouth opens. Keep it forward behind the upper
+lip, which it has made full, and which, playing against, it tickles
+until we _must_ let the tone escape. Just as much of the day as
+possible, think the tone in a flood into the face, and as often as
+possible hum and let it escape, noting its increasing resonance. It
+will increase in resonance, I promise you. It will lose its thin,
+high-pitched nasal quality, and grow mellow and rich and ringing.
+
+And so, with chest lifted, diaphragm at work, throat open, tongue free,
+jaws relaxed, and all the cavities concerned in vocalization open to the
+tone, as you breathe and yawn and hum, let it issue a full, round,
+resonant, singing note to add itself to the music of the world.
+
+
+A LAST WORD TO THE PUPIL
+
+Mr. William James tells us that we learn to swim in winter and to skate
+in summer. The principle underlying this statement is of immense comfort
+in approaching a class in vocal expression. The hope of satisfying
+results is fostered by the knowledge that a mere statement of the
+fundamental facts of right tone production will do much toward inducing
+a right condition for tone. But I know, too, that immediate results
+depend upon immediate and faithful putting into practice of the
+principles set forth. A little practice every day will work swift
+wonders with the voice. And so, in leaving with you Madame Ricardo's
+watchwords, I also commend you to Ellen Terry's "infinite pains." When
+it means, as it does in pursuing this ideal, that we must be _on guard_
+every waking instant--_for a time_; when it means a watch set (for a
+time) upon every organ involved in expression--lips, teeth, tongue, jaw,
+mouth, throat, chest, diaphragm, and all the muscles governing these
+organs; when it means a watch set (for a time) upon one's every thought
+and emotion lest it make false demands upon the sensitive instruments of
+their expression--then it becomes a daring device, indeed, to wear upon
+one's crest. Let us not hesitate to carve it there, when we realize that
+to follow it means culture, true culture, the culture which can only
+come through control and command of one's self.
+
+
+TO THE TEACHER
+
+When I consider how much depends in the training of a voice upon
+listening to the made tone, how little depends upon knowing how it was
+made, I realize that it is _your ear_, not my book, which must become
+the real guide in this _Study of Vocal Expression_.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOCAL EXPRESSION***
+
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+******* This file should be named 31828-8.txt or 31828-8.zip *******
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