Volunteer Recitals, or Question Box, or General Discussion of Papers and Recitals.

Recital-Comedy and Tragedy, a play,

MISS GRACE E. MAKEPEACE, Cleveland, Ohio.

Johnson

Caverly

Gilbert

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

National Speech Arts Association

SIXTEENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION

Held at the Auditorium of the Young Men's Christian Association, Toledo, Ohio, June 24-28, 1907.

President Williams called the meeting to order at 3. o'clock, June 24, 1907.

PRESIDENT WILLIAMS:

Fellow Members: In accordance with Our usual custom, the first afternoon session will be opened with prayer. Rev. George R. Wallace, D. D., of the First Congregational Church has been kind enough to serve us in that capacity.

INVOCATION BY DR. WALLACE

PRESIDENT WILLIAMS: I take pleasure in introducing the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mrs. Irving, of Toledo.

MRS. IRVING:

Mr. President, Officers and Members of the National Speech Arts Association: It is my great pleasure to look you in the face today and to express the most cordial welcome from the local membership and from the Toledo Association of Elocutionists.

Toledo has long been famed as a convenient and delightful city in which to hold state and national conven

tions; convenient because of its location, delightful because of the cordiality of its citizens.

And now it is my pleasure to introduce one who has long stood for the best that there is in educational interests, one that is an honored member of the Toledo Bar, one whose fame as an author has gone beyond the limits of our own state, our honored Mayor, Mr. Brand Whitlock, who will now give you an address of welcome. (Applause.)

MAYOR WHITLOCK:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am sure that I am very glad to be here this afternoon and to extend to you a welcome to this our city. I wish to make this welcome as warm as I know how to make it officially, and to that I wish to add that I hope you will feel that I make it warm personally as well.

We are glad that you have come among us, because whether or not we can do you any good we are sure that you can do us good. I know that on occasions of this sort it is customary for city officials to boast of their city, but I think I shall not do that. I shall not weary you with a long list of the number of miles of wharfage that we have here, or the number of miles of street cars, or the number of buildings that we have been constructing in the last few years. Those things are important. They have their place. But after all, that is not what makes a city. Walt Whitman, the great poet of democracy, has said that if it be but a few ragged huts, that city which has the greatest men and women is the greatest city in the world. And it follows from that, if that be true, and I believe it to be true, that to have a great city we must have great people. We must produce, as he says, great persons and the rest follow. We must produce great men and women, and in order to do this we must build up character, and out of character, out of the character of the people who dwell in a city, a city's greatness will come. Spiritual worth is of far more importance and of far more value than all the natural wealth of the world.

I welcome you then to a city, which I think stands its share in the development of this kind of character. I welcome you to a city which I think is noted for the city.

spirit that dwells within it. We have here a free people, not altogether free, but a people that are struggling to be free, so that here in this town we may realize the great ideals of American democracy. I welcome you to such a city; and I trust that your deliberations here will be found pleasant, profitable and agreeable and that you will come to know us and come to love us.

Your Association, this national association devoted to the advancement of the speech arts, is certainly a very important one, because there is nothing more important in the world than human speech. It is the thing that separates us and marks us out from all the rest of animal life. It plays its great part in all of our affairs, because it gives to mankind the greatest of all blessings; that is, expression.

Life without expression is mere death, and we have many dead people among us and many corpses walking about on the street, rich and poor, who are losing all there is in life, who are living not at all, simply because they lack the art of expression; they lack the opportunity and the ability to express themselves. And in these great cities with their great problems this fact is illustrated at the two ends of the city; because in every city of the world you find at one end the marble magnificence of the avenue and the boulevard and at the other end the squalor of the slums, and in both of these unfortunate extremes, the one complementing the other, the one caused economically by the other, we find people who are starving, starving for expression. We find those who are lapped in luxurious indulgence and idleness who are losing all the best there is in life, for there is no poverty so squalid as the poverty of mere material possession; and we find them at the other end in a material poverty, likewise lacking this power of expression. So that it is a great thing and a very important thing to aid people to expression, to self-interpretation. I sometimes think, and I may be wrong about this (because I like to start out every proposition and every argument with the statement that I may be wrong;) if we could be ourselves clearly and exactly that there would be no differences in the world, or at least very, very few differences; I sometimes feel that way because I know the difficulties I have in

making others understand me, and it is a very sad experience to feel that one is not fully understood. So that the most important thing we can do is to strive and struggle for a better art of expression, a better, wider and more facile means of making ourselves understood. And so we need to cultivate this great art of speech. It is an art. The oratorical art is the greatest in the world, and among all the arts it seems to me to stand preeminent because it embraces and embodies all of them and demands all of them. And, still, the ability to be an orator is not given to all. It comes rarely. Now and then in the long sweep of time some man is born with a tongue that is beautiful enough to inspire and ennoble and encourage and wake up all those about him; but it is only now and then in the long sweep of centuries. We are living in an age when, somehow or other, we are casting aside much cant and affectation. The old flamboyant style does not meet with great approval. We are becoming more practical, more direct. We want men to say what they mean and say it clearly and say it simply; and, as in all arts, of course, the first requisite is simplicity, in speech we want that simplicity which comes only after art has gone to those limits when it can conceal itself. We are living in a time when it is important that the truth be expressed. It has always been important, and in all ages of the world there have. been minds inspired to speak the truth and to prophesy of the future; and I believe that inspiration still dwells in the world, that God is still with us and that he still speaks through the minds and the lives of men and that he will continue so to do for long, long ages, until as a great people, until as a human whole we have realized ourselves as that whole. Mr. William Dean Howells, the dean of American literature, said the other day that truth can be spoken without art but that art without truth is of no avail; and it seems to me that that was a very important statement, and one that we all should take well to heart, and that we should do as much as we can to bring about the ability on the part of all people to express themselves; to make themselves clear first so that they may get closer together and be bound closer together in this whole human brotherhood. All men and all