PART THREE.
ELOCUTION.
If you have faithfully practised Parts One and Two, you have gained some control of voice, and can now begin elocution, or expression of thought and feeling. In each of the short extracts you will find some thought and feeling to express; and if you will take pains to understand thoroughly what you have to speak, and then speak earnestly as the thought and feeling prompts you, you will certainly improve. Speak to some person; and, if no one is present, imagine that there is, and talk to them: for you need never speak aloud, unless it is for some one besides yourself to hear. Your first endeavor as a speaker should be to make a pleasant quality of voice, so that you may make good listeners of your audience. The following exercises suggest pleasure, and let your voice suggest the sentiment.
PLEASANT QUALITY.
1.A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
2. There's something in a noble boy,
A brave, free-hearted, careless one,
With his unchecked, unbidden joy,
His dread of books, and love of fun,—
And in his clear and ready smile,
Unshaded by a thought of guile,
And unrepressed by sadness,—
Which brings me to my childhood back,
As if I trod its very track,
And felt its very gladness.
3. The scene had also its minstrels: the birds, those ministers and worshippers of Nature, were on the wing, filling the air with melody; while, like diligent little housewives, they ransacked the forest and field for materials for their housekeeping.
4. Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man whose blood is warm within
Sit like his grandsire, cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish?
5. Across in my neighbor's window, with its drapings of satin and lace,
I see, 'neath its flowing ringlets, a baby's innocent face.
His feet, in crimson slippers, are tapping the polished glass;
And the crowd in the street look upward, and nod and smile as they pass.
6. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold!
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.