Bene. We'll be friends first.

Beat. You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.

Bene. Is Claudio thine enemy?

Beat. Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour, O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.

Bene. Hear me, Beatrice,

Beat. Talk with a man out at a window! A proper saying! Bene. Nay, but, Beatrice,

Beat. Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.

Beat. Princes and counties! Surely, a princely testimony, a goodly count, Count Confect; a sweet gallant, surely! O that I were a man for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie, and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.

Bene. Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand I love thee.

Beat. Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it. Bene. Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?

Beat. Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul.

Bene. Enough, I am engaged; I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go, comfort your cousin: I must say she is dead: and so, farewell.

[Exeunt.

SECTION III. MELODY

Melody is the succession or trend of speech notes on the scale of Pitch. Spoken Melody does not necessarily signify a pleasing succession of tones as in music; but it is the vital, vocal placing of notes of various Qualities, Forms, Degrees of Force, Stresses, Changes of Pitch, and rates of Time in harsh as well as pleasing succession. The speaker composes and delivers his melody at the same time, and he should have as many varieties in Melody as he has emotions. The difficulty with many speakers and readers is that they have so few Melodies in which to express themselves. It behooves the student to so train his voice in Melody that his delivery will not be monotonous.

Melody is composed of two parts, - (1) Current, and (2) Cadence, which may be likened to the current of a stream, and its fall into a lake when it ceases to be a stream. Every complete sentence we utter has a current of speech notes and a cadence of plunging down in Pitch to close the sense.

1. Current Melody is the succession of notes in the body of the sentence. If any considerable number of successive speech notes are begun on the same Degree of Pitch, however they may be inflected, a monotone is produced such as is heard in counting, calling a list of names, in the perfunctory reading of some legal document, or in the utterance of some supposed supernatural being, such as the ghost in the play of Hamlet or Julius Cæsar. If the range of Melody is too limited for the thoughts expressed, the utterance becomes monotonous, and monotony is the bête noir of the reader or speaker. If, on the other hand, the notes are varied too much for a given sentiment, an unstable, flippant effect is produced. For example, if we read the sublime words of the Psalmist, "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," with wide intervals and sweeping inflections, the dignity and sublimity of the passage is destroyed.

There are three kinds of Current Melody corresponding to man's triune nature, and expressive of his entire range of thought and feeling,- (1) Chromatic, (2) Diatonic, and (3) Broken. Their relation to the triune nature is shown as follows:

(1) Chromatic Melody is made up of inflections and waves which run through Semitonic and other minor intervals of the musical scale. It is largely composed of Semitones and minor Thirds and may occur on any degree of Pitch. We have seen that Semitones respond to the Emotive nature of man; hence Chromatic Melody, composed so largely of Semitones, belongs to the Emotive division and is the medium of expression for sad emotions, plaintiveness, tenderness, pity, sorrow, and wailing.

(2) Diatonic Melody is composed of inflections and waves made through Intervals of Seconds and Thirds, and represents the Mental nature already explained. It is used to express the ordinary and lively thoughts such as conversation, didactic thought, gladness, delight, grandeur, and oratorical fervor.

(3) Broken Melody is composed of inflections and waves of wider slides and more broken changes of Pitch through the Intervals of Fifths and Octaves. As it manifests great vitality and energy, it clearly represents the Vital nature of man and is used to express his more dramatic and impassioned conditions, such as ecstatic joy, triumph, oratorical invective, amazement, alarm, and rage.

Selection illustrating Current Melody.

NOTE. In reading the following selection the student should strive for a pleasing variety in the arrangement of speech notes. As monotony shows lack of interest on the part of the speaker and destroys interest on the part of the audience, every effort should be made to acquire

spirit and sprightliness of Current Melody.

THE NEW SOUTH

HENRY W. GRADY

A master hand has drawn for you the picture of your returning armies. You have been told how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war, - an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory, in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home.

Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as, ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.

What does he find let me ask you what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training, and, beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence, — the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do, this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who

had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow; and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June.

But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that the

free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop, and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics.

The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full statured and equal, among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because, through the inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were

beaten.

The South has nothing for which to apologize. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill —a plain white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men — that of a brave and simple man who died in a brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood.

But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his almighty hand, that