If you have practised and studied the previous pages of this book, you will have gained an elementary knowledge of the science of elocution. Carlyle says, "The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand school-master is Practice." To make an artist of yourself in elocution requires much practice and much patience. As Longfellow says, "Art is long, and time is fleeting;" and the art of elocution is no exception to that truth.

You must have health, strength, and elasticity of body; and, to get and keep these, obey the laws of life as to exercise, rest, pure air, good food, and temperance in all things. Avoid all stimulants, or tobacco in any form. Practise any gymnastics that shall help to make you strong and sprightly, but especially the physical gymnastics here given, as they are designed to benefit the muscles used in speaking.

When you stand to speak, the first thing that strikes your audience is the position you assume. Therefore be careful to assume and keep the speaker's position until some other position is needed for expression; and return to the speaker's position, as the one which is an active position, but gives the idea of repose and confidence, without that disagreeable self-consciousness which to an audience is disgusting. While you are speaking, avoid all swaying or motion of body, unless it means something.

Do not bow too quickly, but do it with dignity, and respect to your audience, first with a general, quick glance of the eye about you. Bend the body at the hip-joints; let the back bend a little, and the head more than the body. Do not bow too low, nor be stiff in your movements.

How to hold the book has been shown in Part One; and you will find that to be the position that strikes the audience most favorably, and gives an impression of ease, which goes a great way towards making the audience enjoy your reading.

When you speak, it is for the purpose of making yourself understood. And to do this you must articulate perfectly; that is, give a clear and correct utterance every element in a word. " Pronunciation."You must also pronounce properly,—that is, accent the proper syllable in a word; and, to find out what the proper syllable is, refer to Webster's or Worcester's large Dictionary (Worcester being preferable), and find out for yourself. " Emphasis." You must also give the right phrasing, subordinating all other phrases to the principal one, and remembering that the emphatic word of your sentence is the emphatic word of the important phrase. The emphatic word is usually brought out by inflection and added force; but it may be made emphatic by particular stress, or a pause before it or after it, or both before and after, or by a change of quality. Your own common sense will tell you when these may be proper and effective and natural.

You must also make your audience hear you; and this requires, not a loud, high-pitched voice, but—unless dramatic expression requires otherwise—your middle or conversational pitch, with fulness of voice, that shall give you power. Your own mind will regulate this for you, if you will direct your attention to the persons in the back part of the hall, and speak in middle pitch, so that they may hear. " Avoid high pitch." Many speakers make the mistake of using a high pitch, and render their speech very ineffective by so doing. You will call to mind the fact, that, when we say we cannot hear a speaker, it is not that we do not hear the sound of his voice, but that we cannot understand the words. Bearing this in mind, you will see that perfect articulation is what is wanted, and that fulness added to your voice in middle pitch will make the voice reach, will require less effort, and will produce better effect.

Having made your audience understand and hear, you must then make them feel. To do this as public reader, actor, clergyman, lawyer, teacher, orator, lecturer, you must yourself feel what you have to say, and, forgetting every thing else in your subject, concentrate your whole being in your utterance and action. Then you will be effective, and you will carry your audience with you. And you will fail in proportion as you fail to lose your own personality in your subject. "The heart giveth grace unto every art;" and of no art is this more true than of elocution. You may have all the graces of elocution which practice will give you; yet, in the effect these will produce,—if the will, acting alone, not being guided by mind and heart, prompts the utterance,—something will be lacking, of which learned and unlearned alike will be conscious.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," and cultivated and uncultivated alike will feel it; and this "touch of nature" you will show if you enter into what you have to say with mind, heart, and soul. Your voice will vary in all the elements of emotional expression, and you will be natural.

When speaking in public, do not try to remember the first rule of elocution. Leave it all behind you when you come before the audience. Speak from your thought and feeling, and be sure you are thoroughly familiar with what you have to say. Be sure you understand it yourself before you try to make others understand. " Words without meaning."You can read words, calling them off mechanically, or you can speak words from memory very mechanically, and not have a clear idea of the meaning the words convey while you speak them. But do not do this. Always think the thought, as you read or speak, in the same manner as you would if speaking extempore. You can express your thought clearly by thinking it as you speak; but at the same time there may be no expression of emotion. " Thought without feeling." You may have thought without feeling; but you must impress your thought by feeling. When you read, your mind gets the thought through the words, and from that thought comes feeling; but, when you speak your own thoughts, the feeling creates the thought. In reading, you think, and then feel; but, in speaking your thought, you feel, and then think. When you read, then, or speak from memory, if you will let thought create feeling before you speak, you will avoid mechanical reading and speaking, and be effective in conveying the thought and feeling both together.

You can convey emotion without a definite thought; and this is as bad as either words without meaning, or thought without feeling. This arousing the feelings without guiding them by definite thought is the province of the art of music. Elocution is superior to music for the reason that it guides both thought and feeling, for certainly it is better that mind and feeling should work together, than either alone.

The elements of emotional expression are alike in speech and song. In each you have quality, time, force, and pitch. The variation of these elements makes expression of feeling; and each sound you make contains all these elements. It has a certain quality; it has more or less of force; it is relatively high or low in pitch, it takes a longer or shorter time. " Variety in expression." The more you vary in the elements of emotional expression, the better the effect, provided the variation is caused by the variation of your feeling, and not by any artificiality, or seeming to express what you do not feel.

The quality of voice, its purity or harshness, its aspiration, &c., will vary with the kind of feeling; the degree of force will vary according to the intensity of feeling; the pitch will be according to what we may call the height or depth of your feeling; the movement, or time, will be according as the emotion is quick or slow. After having cultivated the voice well in these elements of emotional expression, your own common sense ought to be your best guide in the application of them to reading and speaking. You, for the time being, should be the author of what you read. "Put yourself in his place," and express as you feel that he felt while writing it.

It is possible for you to feel intense emotion, and not be capable of properly expressing it, so as to make others feel it. You may not have had training that will give you command of sound and motion, those channels of expression through which the body is made to obey mind and soul, and express their thought and feeling. " No expression without feeling." It is impossible to express, even with the best cultivation, what, at the moment of utterance, you do not feel: therefore you must sink your own personality in your subject; and, according to your conception, so will you express.

All apparent effort must be avoided; that is, in the expression of the strongest passion or emotion, you must not give the audience the slightest indication of want of power. You will give that impression if you try to express more than you actually feel. In emotional expression it must seem as if it overflowed because of excess, and you could hardly control it; but you must never lose control of it. This control will give the audience the impression that you feel more than you express, and is what is called reserved power. If—your well of emotion not being overflowingly full—you use a force-pump, or, in other words, your will-power, to make it overflow, you will fail in expression.

How are you to get this, you ask. By study and long practice. As you plainly see, it involves a perfect command over the feelings; and "he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Conquer yourself. All art, elocution included, is but a means of expression for man's thoughts and feelings; and, if you have no thought or feeling to express, art is useless to you.

Do not let your audience be reminded that you breathe at all. Take breath quietly through nostrils or mouth, or both. Form the habit of keeping the chest, while speaking, active, as recommended in all vocal exercises; and the breath will flow in unobstructed whenever needed. Breathe as nearly as possible as you would if you were not speaking, that is, do not interfere with right action of the lungs. The instant you feel a want of breath, take it: if you do not, you will injure your lungs; and what you say, feeling that want of breath, will lack power. The more breath you have, so that it does not feel uncomfortable and can be well controlled, the more power you will have: therefore practise breathing until you breathe rightly and easily.

If your general health is good, your throat will be well; and therefore pay attention to the general health of the whole body, and the throat will take care of itself. If, when you come before an audience, your throat and mouth are dry, use only clear, cold water, not ice-water: that is too cold. Avoid candy or throat-lozenges; for the use of either of these is worse than if you used nothing at all. If you have a cold or sore throat, you had better not use your voice; but, if you must use it, keep it clear by clear water. A healthy throat will not need even water: it will moisten itself after a little use, if at first it is dry.

Deliberate movement and frequent pausing are very expressive in some cases. Where it is applicable may be determined by what you have to express. Pausing in its appropriate place makes emphasis strong. " Punctuation." Let the pause be regulated, however, by the feeling, and not all by the punctuation. Express according to your conception of the thought. Punctuation may be a guide to you in obtaining the right idea; but it is no guide to correct expression. Pausing, generally, comes naturally either before or after, or both before and after, the emphatic word or phrase.

Speak or read poetry with the same care and attention to phrasing that you would give to prose, and you will avoid all drawling, monotony, or sing-song. In order that the rhyme in poetry may be preserved, the pronunciation of a word may be changed from common usage, if, by so doing, you do not obscure the meaning; but never sacrifice the meaning for the sake of the rhyme. In good poetry, which includes blank verse, the metrical movement will show itself without any attempt on your part to make it prominent.

You may feel, when you first come before an audience, a shrinking, or faintness of feeling, such as is known to actors as "stage fright." It probably arises from a very sensitive, nervous organization; and, other things being equal, persons of this character make the best speakers. As to the real cause of this feeling, as Lord Dundreary says, "It's one of those things no fellah can find out." But, whatever its cause, you can overcome it by strong will-power and self-possession; and, after a time, you will become used to appearance in public, and that will establish the "confidence of habit." Some of the best orators and actors that ever lived have had "stage fright;" and some of them, so far as we know, never had it. So you must not flatter yourself that this is a certain indication of your power. It takes much more than a tendency to "stage fright" to make a powerful speaker.

Whether you are reading from a book or paper, reciting from memory, or speaking extempore your own thought, you should do all as you would the latter, so that a blind man, who could not judge which you were doing except by the sound of your voice, would be unable to tell. In committing to memory for recitation, you will remember more easily if you will pick out the emphatic words of the sentences in their order, and commit them, as they contain an outline of the succession of thought and meaning.

The look upon the face, the gestures of the arm, the attitude of the body, all speak the language of emotion as plainly to the eye as elocution proper does to the ear. This action will be prompted by the feelings, as the voice is; and it will be expressive or not, it will be appropriate or not, it will be graceful or not, according as you have natural or acquired ability. Natural ability will be much aided by a knowledge and practice of gesture as a language, and much may be acquired by any one with practice.

I have said nothing of action in the previous pages, as this book treats of expression through the voice, or elocution. A few words here upon the subject will not be out of place. When you read, you should ordinarily make your voice express much, and use gesture sparingly, but, if you feel prompted to make gestures, never do so while the eye rests on the book. Look either at the audience, or as may be indicated by the gesture. When you recite, or speak extempore, you can add much to the expression by look, gesture, and attitude. In natural expression the face will first light up, and show feeling; and the attitude and gesture follow more or less quickly, according to the feeling; and then comes speech. And all these must express alike. For the face to be expressionless, or to express one thing while the speech and gesture say another thing, is in effect ludicrous.

Remember that all motions and attitudes have meaning; and, when no other gesture or attitude is called for to express some feeling, stand perfectly still in the speaker's position before mentioned, that being an active, and at the same time a neutral position. Don't move, unless you mean something by it. Don't sway the body, or nod the head, or shrug the shoulders, or move the feet, or make motions or gestures, unless the proper expression call for it, and your emotion prompts.

The eye is particularly effective in expression, as there the emotion first shows itself; and by it you can get and keep the attention of your audience. In reading, keep your eye off the book as much as possible, and on your audience. In recitation or extempore speaking, look at your audience. The eye leads in gesture, and, in many cases, looks in the direction of the gesture. In personation of character, as in dramatic scenes, your eye must look at those to whom you are supposed to be speaking, as, in common conversation, you usually look at the person to whom you speak. Never look in an undecided way, as if you did not have a purpose in looking, but look in the face and eyes of your audience when emotional expression does not require you to look elsewhere.

When you don't wish to use your arm for gesture, let it hang naturally at the side. When the emotion calls for gesture, make it with decision, and let the gesture continue as long as you utter words explaining the meaning of the gesture. Gesture always comes before words, more or less quickly, as may be the kind of emotion. Usually, if the words are quickly spoken, the gesture will be quickly made, and the words will be spoken almost at instant of the gesture. If the words move slow, the gesture will move slow, and there may be a perceptible pause between the gesture and words. " No rules for gesture." No stated rules for gesture can be given; for they are as infinite in number and variety as the emotions they express. You will find, however, that gesture may be regulated, as emotional expression of voice is, by means of your intensity of thought and feeling, guided by common sense, and aided by genius. Gesture is a science and art, which, as in speech and song, has elements of emotional expression; and these elements correspond in each. You have in gesture (as said of the others) quality or kind of gesture, force or intensity in gesture, time or the degree of movement in gesture, and pitch, or relative height and depth; and all these have a meaning something like the corresponding elements of song, or speech, or other arts. Long and hard study and practice will be necessary to perfection in this, as in all arts. A graceful habit of gesture, an appropriate expression of eye and face, united to a voice full-toned, musical, and varying in all shades of emotional expression,—what is there more captivating to eye and ear, more pleasing to the senses, more instructive to the mind, more moving to the emotions, if only it is, as Mendelssohn says of all art, expressive of lofty thought? "Every art can elevate itself above a mere handicraft only by being devoted to the expression of lofty thought."

DEFECTS OF SPEECH.

Defects of speech cannot be spoken of at great length in this book. A thorough study of articulation in Parts One and Two will cure any of them where there is no defect in the mouth. The letter s is more often defective than any other letter, it being pronounced like th in thin, or whistled. In the first the tongue is too far forward: in the last it is drawn too far back. Cure by imitating somebody who makes it correctly. R is often defective by substituting w for it; as, wun for run. Sometimes it is defective by being made with the whole tongue, something as y is made; as, yun for run: and cure may be had by imitating the correct sound. Other defects of letters or elementary sounds are less common, and need not be mentioned here.

Too precise speech is a defect, and results from trying to give too much force to the consonant sounds, and not a due proportion to the vowel sounds. It sounds like affectation on the part of the speaker, and may be corrected by giving more force to the vowels, and particular attention to phrasing. (See "Articulation," Part Three.)

Slovenly speech is a defect, and is opposite in kind and effect from the above. The consonants are not pronounced; and, to remedy it, practise to give consonants more force and precision, and pay attention to phrasing and emphasis.

Speaking too rapidly is a defect, and results from too rapid thought. Put a restraint upon thought,—that is, control it,—and make the tongue move slower in consequence, being careful to phrase and emphasize well.

Speaking too slowly is also a defect, opposite in kind from rapid speech, and is caused by the mind moving too slowly in thinking. The remedy is to think faster, and urge the tongue to move quicker.

When you have too slow thought and too rapid speech, you have stuttering; for the tongue keeps moving all the time while the thought is coming, and it repeats syllables or words. Make the mind of the stutterer move faster, and the tongue talk slower. In each of these last three defects, let the person who wants to cure it "know what you wish to say before you attempt to say it."

Stammering is caused by too much effort on the part of the person to make articulate sounds, and is usually the result of imitating some one who stammered, or formed gradually by habit of incorrect breathing, and from physical weakness. Stammerers make the attempt to speak, and the lips or tongue or jaw become immovable, or the words stick in their throat; and, because this takes place, they make great effort to overcome it. The more effort they make, the harder it is for them; and sometimes this leads to contortions and jerkings of body and limbs that are painful. To cure this takes a longer or shorter time, depending on the state of health, the length of time the habit has been in forming, the amount of jerking of limbs to which the stammerer is subject, and the care taken by the stammerer to practise much. A stammerer can be cured by teaching articulation thoroughly. (See Parts One and Two of this book; also Monroe's Fourth Reader.) Show every element separately, and the position the mouth takes to make it; then combine into syllables, then into words, then into phrases. Show the stammerer, that, the less the effort made, the easier will be the speaking. Impress upon the stammerer's mind, "Make no effort to speak," and the habit is to be overcome by long-continued practice and a thorough and complete training in articulation. When reading, be sure and read in phrases; that is, speak a phrase, as a long word, without pause. Stammerers, being usually feeble in health, should practise the physical and vocal gymnastics (Parts One and Two), and particularly the breathing exercises. When you have given the stammerer confidence, and he or she finds that talking is as easy as walking or singing, the cure is certain. There may be times of excitability or nervousness when stammering will return; but these times will be less and less frequent as health gets better and confidence grows, and finally will not return. Remember, stammerer, "make no effort." Be lazy, and even, at first, slovenly in speech, and cure is certain.

THE END.

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MR. WALTER K. FOBES,

(Graduate of Boston University School of Oratory,)

IS PREPARED TO TEACH