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VOCAL EXPRESSION IN

SPEECH

A TREATISE ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC
SPEAKING ADAPTED TO THE USE OF

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

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COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY GINN AND COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

911.2

The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY. PRO-
PRIETORS BOSTON U.S.A.

DEDICATED TO

THE WILL-TO-EXPRESS

268773

From age to age,

and in every peopled land, a vital instinct,

imperishable as fire, appears to be reborn;

a bodiless principle,

peremptory as some vast genius of the elements, seeks embodiment.

Under that yearning Spirit's touch,

the institutions of men are as clay;

the stubborn neck of custom is docile.

Stung by his voice,

the nations and the communities awaken,

grow articulate,

freshly comprehend one another and themselves;

moved by his imperious smile,

they do his bidding wonderingly.

That unwithstandable Spirit is the Will-to-Express.

A new century,

beautiful and terrible in portent,

charged with unexampled passion and delight,

waits to be expressed.

An institution which shall fail,

or refuse to become the responsive instrument,.

will decline in power,

and another shall rise in its place, and subserve the Will-to-Express.

PERCY MACKAYE

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PREFACE

This treatise on vocal expression in speech offers an exposition of the scientific basis of the speech arts. So far as the author knows, this exposition is now presented for the first time in any treatise. It is in line with modern psychology and physics.

The terms used throughout the work have departed as little as possible from the terms already sanctioned by long usage; where there is a departure, the terms have been such as have been approved in the kindred art of music.

This treatise presents also practical methods for voice cultivation and vocal interpretation based on the principles of the science and art of speech. The selections for practice have been carefully chosen with reference to their availability for classroom work, having been given a thorough trial there. Many of them are new and appear for the first time in such a manual.

The author is under great obligation to many firms and authors for the use of copyrighted selections. Many acknowledgments are made in immediate connection with the selections. Especial thanks are due to the following publishers and authors: to Houghton Mifflin Company for the use of extracts from Emerson's Essays and Poems, from Lowell's Poems, from Crother's "The Gentle Reader," from Hawthorne's "Marble Faun," from Holmes's "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," from Longfellow's "The Ride of Paul Revere," from Trowbridge's "The Vagabonds";

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