VOCAL CULTURE.

PRELIMINARY.

No voice is so good that it may not be improved; nor is any voice so bad that it may not be improved, unless the organs of speech and hearing are wanting or essentially impaired. The condition of improvement is intelligent and systematic practice, long continued.

We often hear the genuine and beautiful voices of children; but only at rare intervals do we hear an adult's voice, man's or woman's, that is developed to its full possibilities in music and expressive power. The demand for quiet in the home and the enforced quiet of the schoolroom gradually suppress the exuberance and spontaneity of the child's tones, and what remains, is a relic and a possibility. The average man lives his allotted span,-his threescore and ten, perhaps,and goes to his grave, without ever having heard his own voice, after his early childhood. The voice that he thinks his, that he uses to talk and read with, is but a beggarly patch of the goodly realm which it was his privilege and right to possess. Without cultivation, the latent riches lie undeveloped and unsuspected, and the voice is a mere tool, or implement, instead of the glorious instrument it might have been.

A poor voice, wrongly used, inevitably grows worse, especially if employed in the arduous sphere of public speaking. Throat ailments and vitiated utterance are the penalties that must follow persistent violation of vocal economy. On the other hand, with regular and normal exercise, the voice grows in beauty, ease, and adaptability, until it becomes adequate to express every lightest and strongest shade of thought

and feeling, and lacks no note to make each tune complete.' The voice, so developed and maintained, often survives the enfeeblement, or even the wreck, of other physical functions.

Let me take for granted that you wish to gain, use, and keep, the best voice possible for you. Your early practice should be directed toward two prime objects:

a.

Control of respiration, especially of the issue of breath; b. An easy, open throat.

Control of expiration will induce, in great measure, the correct adjustment of the throat.

BREATHING FOR VOICE.

The outgoing current of breath, acting upon and acted upon by, the more or less tense and approximated vocal bands, produces whisper and voice. Herein consists one of the daily and momentary miracles that we accept and appropriate without thought or acknowledgment. The breath, having accomplished its vital office of changing venous into arterial blood, is straightway no longer minister of life, but demon, charged with physical decay and death. It is banished as an enemy; but, on its way to the outer air, it turns angel again, bounteous in its parting gift: By the magic of its contact with the pillars of the half-way portal, it is reborn into another creature-voice; which, ere it reaches the final exit of the lips, is yet once more transformed, into that greatest marvel of humanity, articulate, living speech. The dying Samson reverses the achievement of the Scriptural hero: his shaking of the pillars calls into being an airy but stupendous fabric, more wonderful than any temple built with hands the temple of eloquence and song.

I am inclined to believe, although I cannot prove, that, in producing the volume and quality of voice that elocutionists call orotund,-answering to the bass and the barytone, and the contralto, of the singing voice, the resonance is initiated, not at the vocal bands, but in the chest: in the trachea, in the bronchi, in the bronchia,-in the very air cells, perhaps. Listening to the mellow amplitude or the thunderous crash of the sound, and at the same time feeling the strong vibration of the whole thorax, it is difficult to believe that the breath does not, upon occasion, become voice before it reaches the vocal bands.

Common sense at once assures us that, in proportion to the volume and energy of voice there must be volume and strength in the outgoing breath current. Again, in proportion to the roundness and fullness of voice sought, and the corresponding largeness of the expiratory current, should be the expansion of the vocal channel: otherwise, the tone is squeezed, cramped, and throaty, sometimes hoarse; the throat lining becomes inflamed, and the throat muscles grow weary and ache.

The first end to be sought, then, is the automatic adjustment of the breathing to the needs of utterance, so that work becomes play, with a buoyant consciousness of abounding power. In the special breathing exercises, the fullest inflation, having been gradually acquired, should be frequently practiced, with moderate retention and smooth, slow exhalation. But, in actual song and speech, this is

THE GOLDEN RULE OF BREATHING.

At every pause of silence, inhale so much, and only so much, breath as is necessary for the ensuing group; the pauses being as frequent as the sense requires or permits.

With the lungs surcharged, natural and easy utterance is impossible; with a scanty breath supply, the tone is thin and feeble, perhaps shrill. Practice soon renders automatic the adaptation of breath supply to force and volume.

A THROAT-OPENING EXERCISE.

Press the side of the forefinger slowly, but firmly and strongly, against the front of the throat, at the angle between chin and neck, just above the Adam's apple. The muscles that control the root of the tongue will be roused to resist the finger pressure, and will contract to thrust it away, and so