O the student, reading and declaiming poems and prose selections now offers a really important field of labor in the smaller towns and cities where there are no theatres, giving a very fair remuneration to the public reader. In larger towns it is the custom for wealthy society ladies to invite them to furnish an evening's amusement and entertainment to friends, and the young debutante in this particular branch need have no false ideas of pride in regard to a paid invitation, where she can do honor to her pro

fession, charm a circle of interested listeners, and add ten, fifteen or twenty-five dollars to her income. It is understood that she is a professional reader, and not an amateur or volunteer. She makes her entrance at the hour designated by the hostess, reads her selections, with brief interludes of music, and when she has finished quietly withdraws, regarding the guests simply as an audience. There is nothing derogatory to the dignity of any lady in giving these readings

or recitations. She takes the same stand that the pianist or other musical artist does, who, if he be an artist, rises superior to any mere pretention to the claims of society, and distinguishes himself as an exponent of his art. To insist on being a guest is lowering the standard of professional dignity. That matter will adjust itself in small social circles, but in the severe ethics of metropolitan society rules are arbitrary, and an attempt to break them would result in disagreeable failure.

Schools for elocution are now established in Boston, New York, and many smaller towns, and they offer great advantages to the student, as in developing the voice the lungs are strengthened, the general health improved, and an easy, graceful manner acquired, together with a culture which comes of the combined forces of æsthetic development included in the studies of this course of education. In Detroit, Michigan, there is a training school in elocution and English literature, managed and sustained by Mrs. Edna Chaffee Noble, whose portrait will be found in this work. Mrs. Noble is assisted by a large corps of teachers and professors, many of whom are graduates of her school, and are now reimbursing themselves in this manner. English literature, classes in Shakespeare, in mythology, in many ancient and abstruse studies are included in the course, but the aim of the school is to teach a high standard of elocution. It is, perhaps, a sufficient diploma for Mrs. Noble, that her scholars are many of them successful teachers, and earning a good living, while ladies who studied with her for the advantage of the culture elocution gives, have the power to gratify themselves and

their friends by the accomplishment. The Detroit School of Elocution has sent its pupils out as readers north and south, east and west, and they have the capacity of filling halls wherever they go with a paying audience. The labor of the course is severe, but it is thorough and beneficial.

There is now a literature of elocution, so that the reader can, without difficulty, find grave or gay selections, new methods to please, and so fill out an evening with a variety that gives the vocal organs full scope for all their powers. The elocutionist can imitate a bird singing, a chicken piping, machinery creaking, a child laughing, or a piano playing. She can make her listener cry or laugh at will. She can read tragedy or comedy with a stage effect that gives it all the attractions of a theatre, without its associations, and she can whistle like a boy, or like a steam engine-things that seem of little account, but which require months of careful study to accomplish. Mrs. Noble has made her school a financial as well as an educational success. The course includes the whole science of elocution, voicebuilding, vocal physiology, and other calisthenics of the organs of speech. Mrs. Noble is the director of the school; the faculty consists of an equal number of male and female professors.

"A great deal," says N. H. Gillespie, "has been said and written upon the subject of elocution. Authors and teachers have furnished excellent rules for pronunciation and the correct modulation of the voice; they have explained the nature and use of stress, volume, pitch,

slides, inflections, and all the other elements which enter into correct reading and speaking.

This drill, however, though very useful and even necessary to a successful cultivation of the art of speaking, will never make an elocutionist. It may render a person a good mimic or imitator, but that is all.

To become an elocutionist in the true sense of the word, one must learn to do what Dr. Johnson declared was done by Garrick, the celebrated actor. When asked his opinion of the reputation attained by that wonderful interpreter of Shakespeare, he replied: "Oh, sir, he deserves everything he has acquired for having seized the soul of Shakespeare, for having embodied it in himself, and for having expanded its glory over the world." Yes, herein, lies the secret of elocution-one must seize the soul of the author whose thoughts he would reproduce; he must embody that soul in himself, making it a part of his own being, and then he will speak with that forcible eloquence which alone deserves the name of elocution.

Having ascertained the meaning of the author, the next and most important step is, as Dr. Johnson has it, to seize and embody in one's self the soul of the author. This is accomplished by studying carefully the character of the man, ascertaining his peculiarities, his habits of thought, his natural disposition and temper—in a word, the tone of his mind.

Then comes the last step, which consists in putting one's self, for the time at least, in that man's place, creating in one's self a tone and habit of thought similar to his, and striving to feel as he most likely felt while