in pitch and thus be subordinated to something preceding or to something following. The greater the emphasis, the more the central word is given saliency from a higher pitch, while the subordinate clause following is given on a lower pitch. This opposition between the emphatic parts and the unemphatic parts, or the putting of the unemphatic parts into the background, not only gives greater naturalness but greater clearness and force to the thought.

Later, we shall find wide changes which indicate transitions in the imaginative situation and indicate feeling and contrast in different situations or points of view. Change of pitch, in fact, is found associated with all true voice modulations. Since all vocal expression is change of voice expressing change of thought or emotion we should naturally expect this, but it is strange how frequently the importance of change of pitch has been entirely overlooked.

Range of voice or the ability to change pitch, enables the voice to reveal more clearly the larger relations of ideas and of argument in thinking. It brings out different actions and thus prevents the over use of certain muscles or certain degrees of attention. It helps auditors also to gain the perspective of ideas or the distinction between what is foreground and what is background.

The student may imagine from all this that delivery is a very complicated thing and extremely difficult. Although there is some truth in this the subject when rightly understood is not beyond our comprehension.

Take any passage, a simple one at first, and definitely think about it. Do not hesitate and calculate how long the inflexion is to be, and whether it is to be rising or falling, and how wide is the interval, but trust instinct and the vigor of the thought and discover at once how natural and how easy expression is. Take animated conversation of something you are interested in. Observe the great possibilities in your own voice of revealing as by a perfect mirror all the varieties of contrasts in your thinking. Then render some simple passage like "Trees." How easily you introduce in different parts of the voice the name of each tree, the characteristic of the name, and the characteristics

of the different trees. You introduce each tree with long inflexion and with change of pitch from what precedes.

Do not hesitate; do not try to think up rules or propositions which you grasp intellectually. "Knowledge," said George Inness, must be only a soil for instinct." This is especially true of the art of reading.

TREES

The Oak is called the King of Trees,
The Aspen quivers in the breeze,
The Poplar grows up straight and tall,
The Pear-tree spreads along the wall.
The Sycamore gives pleasant shade,
The Willow droops in watery glade.

Sara Coleridge

You can introduce all these names of trees with a falling inflexion or you can introduce some with rising and some with falling. Or you may give all the trees with falling and all their characteristics with falling. Of course, you will have different lengths of inflexion and they must all be various pitches in order to be clear. You will observe that length of inflexion is something about which you can lay down no rules; straightness of inflexion and change of pitch are also independent of any possible elocutionary rule, and all are more important than the question of what direction your inflexion may take. One elocutionist laid down 86 rules about direction of inflexion. Throw these aside as absolutely useless; eliminate such ingenious and mechanical endeavors to make people read alike. They produce reading that is mechanical and artificial.

Be simple and genuine and free. Let your main aim be to intensify so deeply your own thinking and feeling that your voice will directly obey your mind. No one can read without intensity and earnestness and enjoyment Mrs. Ewing's "Our Friend in the Garden." Idea will follow idea simply. The law of association of ideas needs to be obeyed only instinctively, though, of course, "gardener," "cat," "dog," "blackbird" and "toad" demand long falling inflexions, and "toad" will be aided by a long pause. Do not think because no rule is laid down, that there are no principles to follow.

Read such a poem many times, giving it more and more freedom, more and more variety, and yet with a conscious realization of the instinctive meaning of direction and length of inflexion, in union with pause and touch, and especially with change of pitch.

Some people do not appreciate toads, and therefore may not like this beautiful little poem. They do not stop to think that we could not have any peas, beans, potatoes or other vegetables without the help of the toad. He is really the chief gardener.

If you think "Our Friend in the Garden" is too easy and that this freedom comes only from the simplicity of the poem then try something more difficult, as these lines from Dr. Holmes. Give greater vigor and greater earnest

ness and observe, as was said by Professor Munroe, that "earnestness covers a multitude of elocutionary sins." It not only covers them but prevents them.

If to embody in a breathing word

Tones that the spirit trembled when it heard;
To fix the image all unveiled and warm,
And carve in language its ethereal form,
So pure, so perfect, that the lines express
No meagre shrinking, no unlaced excess;
To feel that art, in living truth, has taught
Ourselves, reflected in the sculptured thought; ·
If this alone bestow the right to claim

The deathless garland and the sacred name;
Then none are poets, save the saints on high,
Whose harps can murmur all that words deny.
So every grace that plastic language knows
To nameless poets its perfection owes.
The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined
Were cut and polished in their nicer mind:
Caught on their edge, imagination's ray
Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;
From sense to soul, from soul to sense,
And through all nature links analogies;
He who reads right will rarely look upon
A better poet than his lexicon.

it flies,

Oliver Wendell Holmes

XXIV. RELATIVE VALUE OF IDEAS AND WORDS

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;

For want of a rider, the battle was lost;
For loss of the battle, the country was lost,
And all for the want of a twopenny nail.

First three lines, Prefix to "Poor Richard's Almanac."

We are brought naturally to that subject which many regard as the most difficult, and which some consider as containing the whole problem of reading. It is usually called emphasis. Many persons endeavor to formulate rules regarding the emphatic word and think that finding what they call the emphatic word is the basis of all intelligent reading. The word "emphasis " is given too many meanings. The word is best avoided entirely. Certainly

no rules can be laid down for the finding of the emphatic word. When the giving of certain words is regarded as the key to reading, reading becomes mechanical, cold, and loses its freedom. Emphasis is the accentuation of any modulation or any means of making more salient an idea. There are many ways of doing this. There are many degrees of emphasis.

The first point to note is that the central ideas in successive phrases and the logical accent of sentences are rendered chiefly by long inflexions. Pauses introduced before and after the words which are given with long inflexions greatly enhance the emphasis.

That which determines where the long inflexions are to be located is the logical or methodic action of the mind. When we think logically, when we trust our methodic instinct or the sense of value in our successive ideas and the orderly progression of our thought and when the voice is flexible the length of the inflexions, emphatic pauses and the range of the voice will tend to respond. We must, however, study the action of our minds and practice the rendering of emphatic passages until this instinct of valuation and relationship is developed. No rule, no amount of reasoning can compensate for the lack of an instinctive logical method.

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat, that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt that lay in the houe that Jack built.

This is the dog, that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn, that tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with the crumpled horn, that tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.