God’s most dreaded instrument,
In working out a pure intent,
Is man—arrayed for mutual slaughter;
Yea, carnage is his daughter.
We shudder even as we quote the words; but yet the cause for which Grant fought—the unity of a great people, the freedom of a whole race of mankind—was as great and noble as that when at Lexington the embattled farmers fired the shot which was heard round the world. The South has accepted that desperate and bloody arbitrament. Two of the Southern generals will bear General Grant’s funeral pall. The rancor and the fury of the past are buried in oblivion. True friends have been made out of brave foemen, and the pure glory and virtue of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson will be part of the common national heritage with the fame of Garfield and of Grant.
CHAPTER VI
A SERIES OF PRACTICAL HOWS
How to Breathe
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.[1]
—The Bible
These words were spoken several thousand years ago by one of the wisest of men, who was inspired by the Master of Life to utter words of wisdom for the guidance of the children of men. From the moment those divine words were spoken it seems as though man has been aiming to get along with as little of the breath of God as possible. The divine breath is given as freely now as it was at the time of the creation, and it is ever present to those who are willing to receive it, as, like God’s love, it is not withheld from us, but we withhold ourselves from it. No soul is ever lost save through its own determination to go to destruction, and no body suffers for the want of the life-giving breath except through sin, ignorance, or wilfulness. The great English preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon, in a lecture to his students, thus expressed himself: “The next best thing to the grace of God for a preacher is oxygen.” As the world cannot live without the grace of God, the body cannot exist without oxygen; and this oxygen is the life-giving property of the air which is drawn into the lungs and distributed through the body by means of the blood. Correct breathing insures physical health in that it causes the blood to circulate properly through all the veins as well as through the arteries, thus carrying off the particles that otherwise would remain in the system, decomposing and poisoning the body with their dead matter. Proper breathing brightens the eye, makes ruddy the cheek, raises the spirits, clarifies the mind, ennobles the soul, and forms the voice. Sir George Mivart, the noted English naturalist, voiced a self-evident fact when he said: “Of all the functions of the body that of respiration is the most conspicuously necessary for the maintenance of life,” but while it is understood by all thinking animals that they must breathe in order that they may live, it is not so clearly evident to man that he must breathe correctly in order that pure vocal tones may be produced and expressive speech formed.
The question of breath. This is of the greatest importance to the speaker, as by the action of the breathing muscles the voice is controlled in all things except modulation. Speech is breath and voice before it becomes speech, and the form it takes as it starts on its journey at the moment of its creation it must retain until it ceases to exist. Breath possesses three forms, effusive, expulsive, and explosive, and whichever of these forms it assumes at the start, it must retain during its transition into voice and speech. After the pressure of the breathing muscles against the lungs has forced the breath into the larynx and produced voice through the vibration of the vocal cords until that voice has been formed into articulated sounds by the action of the hard and soft palate, the tongue, the teeth, and the lips, it must remain, so far as its form is concerned, exactly as it started. Effusive breath can produce only effusive voice, effusive voice can be converted into only effusive speech, and in no manner can this form be altered after the breath has been expelled from the lungs. The voice is affected and modified by the resonance chambers, the organs of articulation, and the mentality of the speaker, but it must be one of the three forms, effusive, expulsive, or explosive, and it must retain this form from its birth to its death.
Respiration. Respiration is the process of taking air into the lungs and sending it out. This process of breathing is twofold, inhalation and exhalation. Inhalation is the taking in of the air, and exhalation is the sending out of the breath. Normal persons breathe about twenty times a minute; that is, they inhale twenty times and exhale twenty times during that period. When the air is received into the lungs, the oxygen is extracted from it, eaten up, as it were, and distributed through the system; and, on the exhalation, the carbonic gas and organic matter is carried out. If a person is confined within a limited space, and little air permitted to enter, he will soon consume most of the oxygen contained therein, poison the atmosphere with the carbonic gas which he throws off, and die for the want of the life-giving property—oxygen. It is estimated that almost half the deaths are caused through improper breathing and the inhalation of vitiated air. Five hundred cubic feet of air every twenty-four hours is not too much for every human being.