MR. BABBITT: Would not the very fact that this man was a connoisseur in art and a cultivated gentleman deter him from singing, having heard Mario and knowing how great an artist Mario was?

MISS NELKE: I believe while Mr. Roberts sang that you were thinking of his beautiful voice and you were moved by the beautiful song, but did it retain that beautiful underlying motive of the poem?

MRS. WILLIAMS: A question has been asked by Mr. Marshman, and I remember, in regard to that very point, that Mr. Roberts did not sing it the first time. He did not even intone it. Then the last time when it came in; you remember that music and the way that voice rang out. Then he had to sing it. But the other time he quietly spoke the words.

MR. MARSHMAN: I do not believe there is any danger breaking into the song in the last stanza at all. There is danger if you sing it in the third stanza. Now, the thing is worthy of our discussion. I think it breaks the atmosphere of the poem to sing it in the third stanza, but I can not see why it does break the atmosphere of the poem to sing it in the last stanza.

MR. RUMMELL: The song of the bell in "The Bell of Atri."

MISS NELKE: I will say, first, I wish the audience to bear in mind that this is a narrative in the third person, and the story is the main thing; quite different from the last. (Miss Nelke here rendered the selection referred to.) (Applause.)

MR. SILVERNAIL : Here again what should be done depends upon how it is done. The words seem to indicate that the poet was thinking of the sound of the bell, imitating it in his own mind. Miss Nelke gave it very beautifully, but the question is whether she might not have given it differently and given it better by giving it differently. The bell does not give a continuous sound. It gives one note. This might have been rendered by putting stress on the word "some." Edward Everett, who never allowed himself to do a thing or say a thing extemporaneously, once introduced into a lecture an illustration where he dipped his finger into a glass of water and held it up and talked about the drop. On the way

home some one said to him, that that was the happiest thing in his lecture, where on the spur of the moment he had dipped his finger into that glass of water, and that it must have been unpremeditated. Mr. Everett said, "I am glad you have discovered something to please you, but I spent three days on that sentence.' He had written a friend in a distant part of the state asking him as to the propriety of such an illustration, and he got a reply that if it were done naturally it would be effective. His son said: "Dad ought to have done that well, he practiced that gesture, with a glass of water after dinner every day, for a week.”

If it is done well, if the bell is heard now, if it rings in our ear now, if a person has sufficient vocal culture so that we can really hear it, then it is successful.

MISS MCINTYRE: I would give that a little differently there, the sound of the bell. (Illustrating.) You know the bell will go and then it will echo; the sound comes out and then it will echo.

SESSION OF THE MAIN BODY

PRESIDENT WILLIAMS: We are now to have a series of addresses on the "Aims and Courses of Study for Public Speaking in Schools." Mr. Kline, of the Columbia School of Expression in the City of Chicago, will speak on the topic: "Aims and Courses of Study for the Special School of Expression."

"AIMS AND COURSES OF STUDY FOR THE SPECIAL SCHOOL OF EXPRESSION."

R. E. PATTISON KLINE, CHICAGO, ILL.

In taking up the discussion of this subject we are aware of two very different attitudes toward our work. The attitude which we ourselves take, in which we believe that we are representing the greatest art which the world knows; and another attitude taken by people outside of our profession who feel that our work is not art, that it is not educational, that it is superficial, and that those who represent the work of vocal expression have put something on from the outside, and therefore are not really creative, and so not artists. This latter attitude is changing, has changed much, and is bound to continue to change until the profession comes fully into its own. Charles Francis Adams has said that he took an educated man to be one whose imaginative faculties, whose reasoning faculties, and whose faculties of observation have been properly and adequately trained. I take it that there ought to be one further step. Perhaps he meant what I wish to add; but he did not say so, nor is it implied. True education must also mean expression. I care not whether it is a child making a toy out of a spool, or whether it is a man constructing a great piece of architecture, a painter painting a picture, a musician writing a symphony, or an orator speaking his oration; the final end of all education must be that of expression,

and in accordance with the artistic degree of accomplishment which he shows in expressional life, to that degree is he educated. He is greatest in education who has attempted the highest type of self-expression and has accomplished that highest type of self-expression in a way highly artistic. That is our work. We are attempting to train for the very highest type of self-expression. We believe that, at least; the world will very soon believe it, that oral expression which is creative in itself, not necessarily repeating some one else's creation, but oral expression which is creative itself, or within the individual himself, is the highest type of self-expression. If that is so, then we are true educators, and are educating men and women in the highest degree. There are other lines of self-expression, but whatever these other lines may be I can not help but believe that training in this line of self-expression is simply going to enhance the artistic value of self-expression in some other manner or by some other means.

Coming then directly to our subject, the aims of our work can perhaps be stated quite briefly. The aim of special schools of oratory, expression and dramatic art, is to train men and women to interpret artistically and effectively the literary works of other men and women. Secondly, the aim is to train to forceful, effective and artistic self-expression in speech, whether that be conversation, the after-dinner speech, the extempore speech, the oration, or the simple telling of a story. Thirdly, the special school aims at the training of teachers who should in turn train others to do this work. And last but not by any means the least part of our work, is the aim to furnish a means of general culture. All of this is external. It is the outside aim, outside of the individual. It is a practical axiom in psychology today, that all spontaneous expression, whether it be the mere movement of a finger or the expression of a sentence, is the result of an inner state of mind or spirit. Whether intuitionist or materialist, in our psychological belief we all practically agree that the expression must come as the result of some inner action, some inner activity-centering within the brain. So the real aim, the real purpose, the real work that we have before us, is to go within and affect

those inner impulses and inner springs, to get at the inner powers which are really the source of this outward expression. And so if we are to accomplish the other things I have mentioned the internal aim of our schools is to train to careful, logical, broad, original,-that is creative, thinking: to train, secondly, to painstaking, accurate, discriminating and broad observation. These two properly adjusted and accomplished will surely lead to safe, trustworthy and sane judgment. If I may stop here just a moment, from the standpoints of logic, at least, we must train, in our courses of expression, toward exceedingly sane, careful, safe judgment. Then we must train the imagination next, so that it shall work in harmony with the other mental powers or spiritual powers and do its part correctly and wisely in relation to vocal utterance. And further we must aim to cultivate a purified, elevated and artistic æsthetic nature which will result in elegance of taste. Many of our discussions hinge right at that point. It is not a question of whether this rendering is absolutely right or absolutely wrong; it is a question whether both might not be right under varying circumstances, or whether this may be right, but that there is something else that may be even more effective, granting that this, in itself, is effective.

To come, then, to the physical nature, it must be our aim to secure a high level of health, creating a foundation for a healthy, well poised, emotional nature; to secure a symmetrically developed and harmoniously adjusted body, which will thus be able to be the unrestricted servant of the mind and the spirit.

And finally, and I want to lay particular stress upon this point, we should train for character. Will you not admit that the outward expression is the result of an inward state and condition? The conclusion follows inevitably that self-expression can be of the highest type and of the most effectual type only when the character has reached the highest point of intellectual and spiritual development. It must eventually be the final thing which will decide the exact effectiveness and quality of utterance.

I have not time to take into consideration the usual things which we find in our course of study; to enumerate the large number of courses which practically all schools.