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experience with professional students, representing both new and old methods, has convinced me that some such combination of psychic and physical training as is illustrated herein is the only one which can produce satisfactory results.

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The order of study is that which I have used with sucIt will be noticed that each step is exemplified by a number of selections. While it may be necessary to anticipate occasionally, the best plan is to dwell upon each step until it is mastered. For instance, in the study of phrasing, while the teacher might correct some obvious fault of emphasis, the pupil's attention should not be distracted from phrase grouping and pause. The teacher should note, however, that though the imaginative and emotional processes, are more fully considered in later chapters, they are touched upor in the introductory chapter, and that expression. presupposes from the outset the fullest possible coordination of all the psychic processes.

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Rightly studied, as the: art of interpretation, elocution is a key to the spiritual meaning of all great literature. No man was ever yet truly eloquent in an ignoble cause, and no boy or girl can live in communion with eloquence without being helped to a nobler ideal of personal cɔnduct.

Acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Harper & Brothers and the Century Company for permission to use copyrighted selections. I wish especially to thank Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Company for permission to use the copyrighted selections from the works of Bryant, Hay, Higginson, Holmes, and Whipple, of which they are the authorized publishers.

F. TOWNSEND SOUTHWICK.

The New York School of Expression,

318 W. 57th Street.

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PART I

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE art of reading consists in speaking the words of another so as to bring out their full meaning. But words are not important in themselves; they are only the signs of things, of ideas about things, or of feelings awakened by these. That is, we usually speak, not to utter sounds merely, but to tell others what we think or feel, or to describe what we have seen or heard.

Literature is the effort of man to express himself by written language, and to read literature aloud requires not merely command of the voice, but complete understanding of and sympathy with the thoughts and emotions of the author.

When the poet writes:

I would not enter on my list of friends

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

- CowPER, The Task.

it is not merely for the amusement of composing verse, but because he hates cruelty and wishes to express his sentiments in language that shall not only be adequate to his meaning, but which, being cast in poetic form, will be more likely to be read and remembered than if it were in prose. So, the reader of these lines must regard his art, not as a mere means of playing with sounds and emotions,

but of teaching the lesson of kindness. To say with real expression:

He prayeth best who lovet. west
All things, both great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

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the speaker must believe what he says.

Not only must one believe, but he must wish to make others believe, and try to read so that they shall agree with him.

He will do this most effectively if he reads or speaks so well that his auditors forget that he is reading at all, and almost imagine that he is speaking his own words. The highest compliment that can be paid to a reader or reciter is not: "How well you recited that poem!" but “ What a beautiful poem you recited!" or "I never appreciated that poem until you interpreted it for me!

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That is the ideal toward which our studies should tend, and it is as important for the student of oratory as for the elocutionist. So long as the audience are occupied with the gestures or even the language of the orator, he has failed. It is only when they become so interested in the matter that they forget the manner that he can be said to succeed. But this does not mean that manner should be neglected, for he who has a bad manner will find not only that it distracts the attention of his audience, but that the consciousness of awkwardness or inefficiency is a constant source of embarrassment to himself.

Words are not only signs of ideas; they picture or suggest pictures.

The words "a mad dog," for instance, call up at once in our minds, not the forms of the letters composing the words, or the mere sounds the letters make, but a mental

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