My gratitude to publishers who have generously permitted the reprinting of copyrighted selections, I would here publicly express. To Little, Brown & Company I am indebted for the use of the extract called "Eloquence," which is taken from a discourse by Daniel Webster; to Small, Maynard & Company for the poem "A Conservative," taken from a volume by Mrs. Gilman, entitled "In This Our World;" to the Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company for the poems by Mr. Burton; and to Longmans, Green & Company for the extracts from the works of John Ruskin. The selections from Sill and Emerson are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, publishers of their works.

The quotations under the headings "Exercises for Elemental Vocal Expression" and "Exercises for Transition," with a few exceptions, are taken from "The Sixth Reader," by the late Lewis B. Monroe, and are here reprinted through the courtesy of the American Book Company.

LELAND POWERS.

INDEX

ACROSS THE FIELDS TO ANNE,	Richard Burton
BROOK, THE	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
CAVALIER TUNES I. Give a Rouse. II. Boot and Saddle.	Robert Browning
COLUMBUS	Joaquin Miller
COMING OF ARTHUR, THE	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
CONSERVATIVE, A	Charlotte Perkins Gilman
EACH AND ALL	Ralph Waldo Emerson
ELAINE	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
ELOQUENCE	Daniel Webster
EXERCISES FOR ELEMENTAL VOCAL EXPRESSION
EXERCISES FOR TRANSITION
FEZZIWIG BALL, THE	Charles Dickens
FIVE LIVES	Edward Rowland Sill
GREEN THINGS GROWING	Dinah Mulock Craik
HERVÉ RIEL	Robert Browning
IF WE HAD THE TIME	Richard Burton
LADY OF SHALOTT, THE	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
LAUGHING CHORUS, A
LIFE AND SONG	Sidney Lanier
LOCHINVAR	Sir Walter Scott
MONT BLANC BEFORE SUNRISE	S.T. Coleridge
MY LAST DUCHESS	Robert Browning
MY STAR	Robert Browning
PIPPA PASSES, Extracts from I. Day. II. The Year's at Spring.	Robert Browning
RHODORA, THE	Ralph Waldo Emerson
RING AND THE BOOK, THE, Extract from	Robert Browning
SCENE FROM DAVID COPPERFIELD, I.	Charles Dickens
SCENE FROM DAVID COPPERFIELD, II.	Charles Dickens
SCENE FROM KING HENRY IV—"Falstaff's Recruits"	William Shakespeare
SCENE FROM THE SHAUGHRAUN	Boucicault
SELF-RELIANCE	Ralph Waldo Emerson
TALE, THE—From The Two Poets of Croisic	Robert Browning
TRUE USE OF WEALTH, THE	John Ruskin
TRUTH AT LAST	Edward Rowland Sill
WORK	John Ruskin

wn. A great deal depends, too, on the way in which they are sung. The true bushman never hurries his songs. They are designed expressly to pass the time on long journeys or slow, wearisome rides after sheep or tired cattle; so the songs are sung conscientiously through—chorus and all—and the last three words of the song are always spoken, never sung. There is, too, a strong Irish influence in the greater number of the songs; quite a large proportion are sung to the tune of the “Wearing of the Green,” and the admixture of Irish wit and Irish pathos in their composition can only be brought out by a good singer.

One excuse, if excuse be needed, for the publication of this collection is the fact that the songs it contains are fast being forgotten. Thirty or forty years ago every station and every shearing shed had its singer, who knew some of the bush songs. Nowadays they are never sung, and even in districts where they took their rise they have pretty well died out. Only a few years ago, every shearing shed had at least one minstrel who could drone out the refrain of a shearing song—

But the Goorianawa sheep are not celebrated in song nowadays, and advertisement has failed to produce a copy of the song. Down in the rough country near the Upper Murrumbidgee, where the bushranger Gilbert was betrayed by a relative and was shot by the police, there was a song about “Dunn, Gilbert, and Ben Hall” It commenced—

Another line ran—

Thirty years ago every one in the district had heard this song, and all the sympathisers with the bushrangers (which meant the bulk of the wild and scattered population) used to sing it on occasion; but to-day the most persistent inquiry has failed to reveal one man who can remember more than a few fragments of it; and yet it is only forty years since Ben Hall was shot. It is in the hope of rescuing these rough bush ballads from oblivion that the present collection is placed before the public.

A. B. PATERSON.