After you have read this simple tale two or three times, I think you will begin to feel some sympathy with the loving mother who would do without her food to give joy to her little child. When you read the sentences I have put in italics, if you have really tried to see the pictures, I am sure you will feel some sympathy that will make your reading so different from the reading of, let us say, the first sentence in this lesson. Take the line, “The sweet voice was full of pleading.” Can’t you imagine some sweet child-voice pleading for the toy? Well, then, listen to that voice, and after you have, then read, “The sweet voice was full of pleading.” You will find that your voice will be so full of sympathy that it will say not only the words, but also will express love, and tenderness, and sympathy. You will think, perhaps, some such thought as, “She was such a lovely child and she wanted the toy so much. It made me feel sorry to hear her ask for it.” There is another sentence in italics that I want you to think about. When you read, “And the tears came into her eyes,” can you not feel something of the sadness of that mother, as she thinks how much she would like to buy the toy, and yet there is nothing to buy it with? When you express your feeling, your voice will say, “And the mother’s heart was sad when she thought that her darling could have no little gift at Christmas, when it seemed everyone should be made happy. How disappointed the sweet one would be when she found out how many toys her playmates had while she had not one!” All these thoughts will run through your mind if you will only think about this scene long enough, and then your voice will express that sympathy with the picture you are describing without which you can never be a good reader. Let us then close this lesson by reminding you that the best way to develop our feelings as we read is through sympathy.
There are several other phrases and sentences in this story that I want you to study sympathetically for to-morrow’s lesson. Then, after you have grasped the idea of this lesson, be sure, in every selection you read hereafter, that you do not fail to pay particular attention to sympathy.
Let us, in closing this long but most vital discussion, direct attention in a few words to the psychology of the atmosphere of description. When we are giving the description for its own sake, desiring simply to impress the picture upon the audience, we should probably use the normal quality. To illustrate:
A fellow in a market-town,
Most musical, cried “Razors!” up and down,
And offered twelve for eighteen pence;
Which certainly seemed wondrous cheap,
And for the money quite a heap,
As every man would buy, with cash and sense.
When, however, we are somewhat moved through the contemplation of what we see, when it takes possession of us, we should be likely to manifest our feeling in a suggestive imitation of the object described. See the [third stanza] of The Fight of Paso del Mar. The third stage is reached when the picture moves us to such an extent that imitation and suggestion disappear, and we show merely our own feelings. See lines 69 and 70 of the same poem. In reading these we do not utter the cry, nor do we show the death anguish, but our own feelings of pity and perhaps terror. There is a fourth stage, in which the conditions of the second and third are blended. Again we may use the same poem as an illustration. In lines 53 and 54, one could conceive a reader partaking through sympathy of the passion of Bernal, and yet manifesting his own feeling of fear and horror at the same time.