And sing how oft in glee

Came a truant boy like me,

Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody,

Till the gurgle and refrain

Of your music in his brain

Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain.

Sing him all the songs of summer till he sink in softest sleep;
And then sing soft and low

Through his dreams of long ago

Sing back to him the rest he used to know!

From "The Brook" in The Bobbs-Merrill
“Rhymes of Childhood." Copyright, 1900.

James Whitcomb Riley

Sprightliness, joyousness, admiration and exultation will cause more changes of pitch; while seriousness, earnestness and intensity will cause more inflexion. The two, however, are united in all true natural speaking, and we should endeavor to unite them more vitally to enable us to speak with as wide a range as possible.

In Mr. Riley's little poem on "The Brook" can you let your fancy play and talk and laugh with it. In the second stanza especially observe the touch of humor. Can you laugh at the bumble-bee who fell in and did not like at all to swim to the shore to dry his wings? Introduce in the other stanzas the leaf and the dragon fly and different topics with as great variation of your voice as possible.

This method develops not only flexibility in the voice, but also a certain life and movement in your thinking. Many people think lazily. The mind drags from idea to idea and the voice becomes monotonous. We need to think with sprightliness, with intensity, and express with sincere earnestness, exercising our voices in direct response to every action of voice and mind, and then both will become free and flexible.

Read some poem with short lines such as "Jack in the Pulpit," and with an upright line mark each phrase of a prose passage. Try to make as wide changes of pitch as you can with every phrase; and make a long, definite inflexion on the principal word in each phrase. You will find that however greatly accentuating these, if you really

think and make your modulations expressive of your thinking, you will be interesting.

JACK IN THE PULPIT

Jack in the pulpit
Preaches to-day,
Under the green trees
Just over the way.
Squirrel and song-sparrow,
High on their perch,
Hear the sweet lily-bells
Ringing to church.

Come, hear what his reverence
Rises to say,

In his low painted pulpit

This calm Sabbath-day.

Fair is the canopy

Over him seen,

Penciled by Nature's hand,
Black, brown, and green.

Green is his surplice,
Green are his bands;
In his queer little pulpit
The little priest stands.

In black and gold velvet,
So gorgeous to see,
Comes with his bass voice
The chorister bee.
Green fingers playing
Unseen on wind-lyres,
Low singing bird voices,
These are his choirs.
The violets are deacons
I know by the sign
That the cups which they carry
Are purple with wine.

And the columbines bravely

As sentinels stand

On the look-out with all their
Red trumpets in hand.

Meek-faced anemones,
Drooping and sad;
Great yellow violets,

Smiling out glad;

Buttercups' faces,

Beaming and bright;

Clovers, with bonnets,

Some red and some white; Daisies, their white fingers Half-clasped in prayer; Dandelions, proud of

The gold of their hair; Innocents, children Guileless and frail, Meek little faces Upturned and pale; Wild-wood geraniums, All in their best, Languidly leaning

In purple gauze dressed:
All are assembled

This sweet Sabbath-day
To hear what the priest
In his pulpit will say.

Look! white Indian pipes

On the green mosses lie! Who has been smoking Profanely so nigh? Rebuked by the preacher

The mischief is stopped, But the sinners, in haste,

Have their little pipes dropped. Let the wind, with the fragrance Of fern and black birch, Blow the smell of the smoking Clean out of our church! So much for the preacher: The sermon comes next, Shall we tell how he preached it,

And where was his text? Alas! like too many

Grown-up folks who play
At worship in churches
Man-builded to-day,

We heard not the preacher
Expound or discuss;
But we looked at the people,

And they looked at us.
We saw all their dresses,

Their colors and shapes; The trim of their bonnets, The cut of their capes.

We heard the wind-organ,

The bee, and the bird,
But of Jack in the Pulpit

We heard not a word!

Clara Smith

A passage characterized by intensity, that is, one marked by very deep feeling and thought, has more pauses and its touch has great vigor. Read such passages, contrasting indifference with a sense of great weight and importance, as in the following.

THE KING

They rode right out of the morning sun —
A glimmering, glittering cavalcade
Of knights and ladies, and every one
In princely sheen arrayed;

And the king of them all, O he rode ahead,
With a helmet of gold, and a plume of red
That spurted about in the breeze and bled
In the bloom of the everglade.

And they rode high over the dewy lawn,

With brave, glad banners of every hue,
That rolled in ripples, as they rode on

In splendor, two and two;

And the tinkling links of the golden reins
Of the steeds they rode rang such refrains
As the castanets in a dream of Spain's
Intensest gold and blue.

And they rode and rode; and the steeds they neighed
And pranced, and the sun on their glossy hides
Flickered and lightened and glanced and played

Like the moon on rippling tides;

And their manes were silken, and thick and strong,

And their tails were flossy, and fetlock-long,

And jostled in time to the teeming throng,

And their knightly song besides.

Clank of scabbard and jingle of spur,

And the fluttering sash of the queen went wild
In the wind, and the proud king glanced at her
As one at a wilful child,

And as knight and lady away they flew,
And the banners flapped, and the falcon, too,
And the lances flashed, and the bugle blew,
He kissed his hand and smiled.

And, then, like a slanting sunlit shower,

The pageant glittered across the plain,

And the turf spun back, and the wildweed flower
Was only a crimson stain.

And a dreamer's eyes, they are downward cast,
As he blends these words with the wailing blast:
"It is the King of the Year rides past!"

And Autumn is here again.

From "Afterwhiles." Copyrighted.

By permission of the Bobbs-Merrill Co., Publishers.

James Whitcomb Riley

XXVI. UNION OF THE PRIMARY VOICE MODULATIONS

Thou must be true thyself,

If thou the truth wouldst teach;
Thy soul must overflow if thou
Another's soul wouldst reach!
It needs the overflow of heart
To give the lips full speech.
Think truly and thy thoughts

Shall the world's famine feed;

Speak truly and each word of thine

Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly and thy life shall be

A great and noble creed.

Horatio Bonar

We have found that the beginning of thinking is attention. We pause while realizing our ideas, and give a certain phrase accent or touch to that word which shows to what our attention is given.

Pause and touch must necessarily be found together. One denotes the receiving of a picture; the other its affirmation or positiveness.

If we think definitely pictures arise in the mind with each phrase, and the change of passing from one idea to another causes change of pitch. This change may be either upward or downward; it comes of itself as does the picture. Every change of the mind is shown by an easy and natural change in the body or voice.

In proportion to the vigor of our thinking, our natural expression and intervals in pitch are wide and numerous. A change of pitch in passing from one phrase to another shows the modification or divergence of the second idea from that which preceded it. Inflexions, on the contrary,