PART III. MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS. SECTION I. PROSE SELECTIONS. 1. ELOCUTIONARY TRAINING. 1. Elocutionary training should be begun in early life, because then the vocal organs are flexible. It is a serious defect in our school methods of instruction, that the expressive faculties, comprising feeling, affection, emotion, passion, imagination, fancy, association, imitation, and description, are called so little into action. Elocution, when properly taught, calls into active exercise the expressive faculties, and tends to educate the child as a social being. 2. In most ungraded schools in the country, and in many city schools, an hour of the closing afternoon of each week may be usefully devoted to declamation, dialogue, and select readings. It is not advisable to compel every child in school to take part in these exercises, for there are some who never can become good readers, and others who are so awkward and diffident that it is cruel to force them upon the school stage with a declamation. 3. Appropriate selections should at first be made by (277) the teacher; for the uncultivated taste of pupils will lead them to choose pieces altogether too difficult, or utterly worthless when committed to memory. Select at times, for the boys, short prose declamations, which, when learned, remain in the memory as models of pure prose and patriotic feeling. If they learn a poem, let it not be one made up of doggerel rhymes, or of painful attempts at a low order of wit. 4. A careful selection of pieces will be the surest safeguard against the ranting, tearing, overstrained, theatrical style of florid oratory which so painfully mars many school exhibitions. The teacher can take odd moments at the intermission, or recess, or before and after school, for the purpose of hearing rehearsals, and giving special instructions. 5. Teachers should instruct pupils in the elements of gesture. Gestures spring naturally from the close sympathy of mind and body. A look of the eye, an expression of the countenance, a movement of the hand, often convey more than words can express. The principles of gesture may be easily learned from any one of several excellent works on elocution. 6. The reading and recitation of poetry by girls is an indispensable part of the education of woman, as one of the most efficient modes of discipline for the taste and imagination. Many of the most exquisite passages of the poets can never be fully appreciated until repeated by the voice of woman. 7. It requires no close observer to perceive the effects of poetry on the youthful mind. Childhood delights in the melody of verse, and is pleased with its flowing harmony of sound. In poetry are embodied some of the most beautiful lessons of morality; and they are presented in a manner which arrests the attention and impresses the character. What teacher has not seen the dull eye kindle, the vacant countenance take expression the face glow with emotion, and the whole boy become lost in the sentiment of his declamation ? 8. Introduce elocution into school to cultivate a taste for reading, to exercise and strengthen memory, to awaken feeling, to excite imagination, and to train those who are to enter the professions, to become graceful and pleasing speakers. Introduce it as a relief from study, a pleasing recreation, and a source of intellectual enjoyment. Introduce it as a part of the aesthetic education so peculiarly appropriate for woman. Make it as a part of the education of man as an expressive being. 2. GOOD READING. 1. There is one accomplishment, in particular, which I would earnestly recommend to you. Cultivate assiduously the ability to read well. I stop to partícularize this, because it is a thing so very much neglected, and because it is such an elegant and charming accomplishment. Where one person is really interested by músic, twenty are pleased by good reading. Where one person is capable of becoming a skillful musician, twenty may become good readers. Where there is one occasion suitable for the exercise of músical talent, there are twenty for that of good reading. 2. The culture of the voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful charm to the same voice in conversàtion. Good réading is the natural exponent and vehicle of all good things. It seems to bring dead authors to life again, and makes us sit down familiarly with the gréat and good of all àges. 3. What a fascination there is in really good rèading! What a power it gives one! In the hospital, in the chamber of the invalid, in the nursery, in the doméstic and in the social circle, among chosen friends and companions, how it enables you to minister to the amuse ment, the comfort, the pleasure of dear ones as no other art or accomplishment càn. No instrument of man's devising can reach the heart as does that most wonderful instrument, the húman voice. 4. If you would double the value of all your other acquisitions, if you would add immeasurably to your ówn enjoyment and to your power of promoting the enjoyment of others, cultivate, with incessant care, this divine gift. No music below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech from the lips of a man or woman of high culture. JOHN S. HART. 3. THE MUSIC OF THE HUMAN VOICE. 1. Willis, in his essay on "unwritten music," has placed the appropriate sound of the female voice among the most beautiful of its forms; and there is, unquestionably, a fine analogy between the sound of the running brook, the note of the wood-bird, the voice of a happy child, the low breathing of a flute, and the clear, soft tone of a woman's voice, when it utters the natural music of home-the accents of gentleness and love. 2. To a well-tuned ear, there is a rich, deep melody in the distinctive bass of the male voice, in its subdued tones. But the key-note of poetry seems to have been lent to woman. On the ear of infancy and childhood, her voice was meant to fall as a winning prelude to all the other melodies of nature; the human perves are attuned, accordingly, to the breath of her voice; and, through life, the chords of the heart respond most readily to her touch. 3. Yet how often is this result impeded by the processes of artificial culture; by the over-excitement of mind and nerve, attending excessive application; by that unwise neglect of health and healthful action, which dims the eye and deadens the ear to beauty, and robs life of the joyous and sympathetic spirit which is native to childhood; and which, otherwise, would ever be gushing forth in notes of gladness and endearment, the physical not less than the moral charm of human utterance! 4. There are beautiful exceptions, undoubtedly, to this general fact of ungainly habit. But the ground of just complaint is, that there is no provision made in our systems of education for the cultivation of one of woman's peculiar endowments-an attractive voice. Our girls do not come home to us, after their period of school life, qualified to read with effect in their own language. There is wanting in their voices that adaptation of tone to feeling, which is the music of the heart in reading; there is wanting that clear, impressive style which belongs to the utterance of cultivated taste and judgment, and which enhances every sentiment by appropriate emphasis and pause; there is even a want of that distinct articulation which alone can make sound the intelligible medium of thought. PROF. WILLIAM RUSSELL. 4. THE ART OF READING. 1. The art of reading well is an accomplishment that all desire to possess, many think they have already, and that a few set about to acquire. These, believing their power is altogether in their genius, are, after a few lessons from an elocutionist, disappointed at not becoming themselves at once masters of the art; and with the restless vanity of their belief, abandon the study for some new subject of trial and failure. Such cases of infirmity result in part from the wavering character of the human tribe; but they chiefly arise. from defects in the usual course of instruction. 2. Go to some of our colleges and universities, and observe how the art of speaking is not taught there. |