14. Develop the normal and the elemental actions of every agent of voice and body concerned in expression, and bring them into unity and harmony.

15. Relate and unite all technical action to the actions of the mind of which they are the expression. Study the natural expression of the noblest people whose expression is most pleasing, and contrast their modes of execution with that which is weak, so as to be able to appreciate right modes of execution, and distinguish them from that which is perverted.

TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS.

THE best exercises may be perverted by misuse. The study or diagnosis of delivery is one of the most difficult problems of teaching. The teacher, to develop it, must compare an infinite number of actions, and penetrate to that which is fundamental. It requires thorough knowledge of the actions of the mind and of the structure of the body; it requires knowledge of human nature and of the principles of art; it requires the most immediate application of the most advanced methods in education.

The lessons of this book are so arranged that the student is brought at once into contact with extracts from good literature. These are so arranged that illustrations can be found before the discussion, and others in different parts of the work can be selected, or it may accompany the Classics for Vocal Expression.

All theory must be made secondary to practice. The student must be set to reading, reciting, or speaking at once in order to make him conscious of his needs, and the necessity for training. The text-book is only a means of assistance, not an end in itself. The discussions have grown up in teaching, and are fragmentary, and are only meant to be read over by the student after performance or effort to express, to furnish additional light to what he finds from a study of himself.

Occasionally it is necessary to give a student a clear idea of some specific problem or exercise before he begins to read or practise, but it must be understood to be only a preliminary

hypothesis, to be proved or disproved by his own experiments in practice. The true scientific method is to have a preliminary hypothesis, and then experiment or observe for its establishment or disproval. The same principle is applicable to training.

One of the first difficulties to be met is to get a student to recognize the spontaneous activity of his own nature, and that this must directly cause all expression. The processes of his own thinking must furnish the basis, rather than any external rule.

All art consists primarily in doing, in execution; we cannot learn to swim without going into the water. The teacher must give his explanation in the very midst of practice. A student must be awakened to think. He must be given such problems as will reveal to him his own mistakes and imperfections, or make him conscious of attainment. The explanations are to be given to students to be read out of class. A part of the selections should be practised first with a few suggestions from the teacher, and others should be assigned for definite and special study, as laid down in the "Lessons." The teacher will be able soon to judge, by the way a student reads, whether he has observed the directions in his study or not.

At times, of course, the discussion of many points will be necessary, but too much theorizing and discussion will be injurious. A student must be kept in an attitude of execution. 7 His understanding of the principles must be shown by his artistic rendering. Understanding is only a preliminary step. A student must first know, then do; and doing, he can become.

All the steps should be illustrated by reading, speaking, and by recitation. In the selections for recitation the student should always be brought into direct contact with literature. He should make his abridgments himself, and should in no case take a recitation from books of "Choice Selections." The student must be led to know and feel a whole poem before he attempts to recite a part of it, a whole play before he gives a scene, a whole oration before he give a paragraph, a whole novel before he can

give an abridgment. He must be taught how to read silently. This text-book can be used in many ways.

1. Cause the student to observe himself, to become conscious of his possibilities, of his ideal as well as of his actual, and to compare the one with the other.

2. Students must be led to observe and inspired to think at all hazards. 3. The student must receive before he can give; and the way truth is taken must determine the way it is given. Reception and manifestation, impression and expression, must be regarded as essential to each other.

4. Never give rules; awaken a conception of nature's processes and methods, and test expression by truthfulness to what is natural.

5. Give a few clear ideas, and hold students to the definite practice of an exercise which embodies these ideas. Remember, true practice is a struggle to realize an idea.

6. Study each student's peculiar power as well as needs. Remember that even the greatest critics have continually taken qualities for faults.

7. Interest and inspire students. Often change subject and form of literature, and correct any monotonous or mechanical relation to a subject.

8. Do not go too fast. Steps and lessons are divided in this book according to subjects, and not according to time to be taken: most students will require many hours of study and practice to master each step.

9. Have positive convictions and present the truth faithfully; but be sympathetic and receptive in regard to differences in modes of execution.

10. Remember that rarely do two people see anything from the same point of view. It is only the most exalted art that can reveal and determine a definite point of view.

11. Give students definite problems, and explanations of them, and prescribe long-continued practice.

12. State in a few words the results which have been found after each lesson, and indicate the point of advance in passing from step to step. 13. Allow students often to select what they best like in literature, and encourage them to express this in their own way.

14. Give great poems and literary masterpieces to be studied.

15. Never say that a certain piece must be given with a certain "tone." Thought and passion are greater than any tone. The poem is greater than its body. No two poems in the world can have exactly the same expression, nor any two men express the same poem in precisely the same way.

NOTE.-Poetry in this book is often printed as prose, to aid, not to hinder, the study of metre and rhythm and their expression through the voice.

1. 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 blessed bird! the earth we pace again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place, that is fit home for Thee!

Wordsworth

2. THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

AVENGE, O Lord! Thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones.
Forget not: in Thy book record their groans

Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant, that from these may grow

A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

10

Milton

1.

IDEAS AND ELEMENTAL RELATIONS.

IF

L. STUDY OF NATURE.

we carefully study the two poems on the preceding page, we feel that noble emotion impelled the two authors to write them; that they simply gave their impulses voice and words. We find that we can read them merely as words, or statements of facts, and that in this case the reading is cold and mechanical. The expression, too, of both poems, through the voice, its tones, inflections, and pitch, can be made essentially the same.

As we study deeper, however, and become permeated by the spirit of the two poems, when the ideas become visions in our own mind, and we become thoroughly filled with the emotion,— the vocal rendering of the two begins to differ more and more widely. Each of them begins to have a distinct and definite character. Thus in every poem there is not only a peculiar thought, but also a peculiar spirit, a specific impulse or feeling, which is somehow awakened in the heart of the reader, and which gives definite character to his rendering.

Art is founded upon the study of nature. Of all forms of art, Vocal Expression is the nearest to nature; for it is an art in which nature furnishes not only the impulse and the idea, but also the materials and the agents of manifestation. In all natural expression, man is impelled to speak as the bird is to sing.

Other arts have more or less of a mechanical nature. The mastery of them is primarily dependent upon the control of technical mechanical instruments: the painter must gain command of his brush, the musician of his instrument, the sculptor