experience with professional students, represent new and old methods, has convinced me that so combination of psychic and physical training as trated herein is the only one which can produce tory results.

cess.

The order of study is that which I have used It will be noticed that each step is exemp a number of selections. While it may be nec anticipate occasionally, the best plan is to dwell u step until it is mastered. For instance, in the phrasing, while the teacher might correct some fault of emphasis, the pupil's attention should no tracted from phrase grouping and pause. The should note, however, that though the imaginat emotional processes are more fully considered chapters, they are touched upon in the introducto ter, and that expression presupposes from the ou fullest possible coördination of all the psychic pro

Rightly studied, as the art of interpretation, e is a key to the spiritual meaning of all great lit No man was ever yet truly eloquent in an ignob and no boy or girl can live in communion with el without being helped to a nobler ideal of personal

Acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Harper & 1 and the Century Company for permission to us righted selections. I wish especially to thank Houghton, Mifflin, & Company for permission to copyrighted selections from the works of Bryan Higginson, Holmes, and Whipple, of which they authorized publishers.

F. TOWNSEND SOUTHW

The New York School of Expression,

318 W. 57th Street.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

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

Literature is the effort of man to express himself by ritten language, and to read literature aloud requires ot merely command of the voice, but complete underanding of and sympathy with the thoughts and emoons 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.

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

se.

but of teaching the lesson of kindness. expression:

To say

the speaker must believe what he says.

Not only must one believe, but he must wish to m believe, and try to read so that they shall agree w

He will do this most effectively if he reads or well that his auditors forget that he is reading at almost imagine that he is speaking his own wor highest compliment that can be paid to a reader is not "How well you recited that poem!" bu a beautiful poem you recited! or “I never app that poem until you interpreted it for me!"

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

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

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