on sympathy with the feeling to be expressed and the reciprocal attitudes of interpreter and audience.

Vocal gymnastics, based on the suggestions below, will render the process of development and control more direct and bring about the results more speedily.

FOR BRIGHT COLOR.-Practice Ĭ, ě, ǎ, with light force, effusive, expulsive, explosive. Note carefully quality, pitch, and forward projection. Then take the Murdoch Vowel Table, and conform all the vowels to the typical color and pitch of I, ě, ǎ.

FOR VITAL COLOR.-With full, hearty volume and force, practice the open-throat vowel, ä. Let the resonance result from the employment of both mouth and pharynx as the vowel chamber, both cavities fully and elastically expanded. Then conform all the vowels, front and back, to the ä quality and pitch. The front vowels are deepened and rounded, and the back vowels are focused farther forward, with a consequent mitigation of their inherent somberness. When you have succeeded measurably in equalizing the vowels, with ä-quality as the criterion, practice the Table in full orotund, in middle and moderately high pitch.

FOR DARK COLOR.-Conform all the vowels to the low back, a. In darkening the front vowels, there is danger of distorting their shape, a tendency to be carefully guarded against. The blade of the tongue must be accurately adjusted to the position belonging to the vowel when pronounced with its natural color and texture; while the darkening is induced by approximating the soft palate, back tongue, and pharynx to the a adjustment.

THE VOICE, AS AFFECTED BY LOOK AND BEARING.

You cannot too soon learn that life and truth of vocal expression are inseparably connected with the mental and bodily state. The voice is an almost infallible index of

health or illness; and in speaking or reading, it should be, as it commonly is not, the faithful and complete exponent of the mental and emotional mood. Speech is feeble, lifeless, commonplace, monotonous, futile, and inadequate, because 'the whole man' is not engaged; it sounds indifferent, extraneous, and remote, because what is read or said, is outside the performer's mind and sympathy, and remains there.

In

Whatever we would for the moment seem, we must for the moment be, if the voice is to embody its message truly. other words, the bearing is braced and assured, or drooping; the muscles, especially of the trunk, tense or relaxed; the face bright, pensive, frowning, smiling, lively, severe, in accordance with the words spoken: otherwise, the appropriate vocal texture and color will be wanting. To read expressively a passage of courage, enthusiasm, triumph, resolution, or kindred nature, while the face is simply placid and the muscular system 'all unbraced', is as impossible as to lie still while running a footrace. You cannot employ a truly pathetic color and melody, with smiling features; nor can you use a jovial or laughing voice that rings true, while your face looks grief-stricken, or stolid, or calm. The reader or speaker must 'go with' the voice, mind and heart, spirit and body, in the utterance of every group and every word.

The following paragraph, adapted from Aaron Hill's celebrated 'Essay on the Dramatic Passions', will be of interest and help to the earnest student.

Joy is expressed by muscles intense and a smile in the eye; Anger, by muscles intense and a frown in the eye; Pity, by muscles intense and a sadness in the eye; Hatred, by muscles intense and aversion in the eye; Wonder, by muscles intense and an awful alarm in the eye; Love, by muscles intense and a respectful attachment in the eye; Grief, by neither muscles nor eye intense, but both languid; Fear, by muscles and look both

languid, but with an alarm in eye and motion; Scorn, by muscles languid and neglected, with a smile in the eye, to express the light, or a frown in the eye for the serious species; Jealousy, by muscles intense and look pensive, or the look intense and the muscles languid, interchangeably.

The most recent views of eminent psychologists strongly confirm Hill. The old theory of the emotions was, that a sight, a sound, an odor, a flavor, a contact, a thought, acted upon the emotions, and the emotions in turn acted upon body, features, and voice, producing the visible and audible signs of grief, joy, fear, anger, etc. The elocutionists who insist upon emotion as the spring and director of voice and action pin their faith to this psychology.

But the comparatively new James-Lange theory, already widely accepted, is at direct variance with the above doctrine. This theory states that the object, event, or thought affects the inner organs of the body; these affect aspect, action, and voice; and these again cause the emotion. That is, emotion is the end-the result of aspect and action, instead of being their cause. 'According to this theory,' says William James (Talks to Teachers on Psychology), 'our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so much feel fear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely.'

If this view is sound, then to assume the physical and vocal attributes of an emotion is the direct and logical way of inducing it. If feeling is necessary, the summons is to be made through technic. Shakespeare put the case in a nutshell, when he made Hamlet say, 'Assume a virtue, if you have it not.' And in King Harry's speech at Harfleur, Shakespeare applies the principle in detail. To feel exalted martial courage and do great deeds, nobles and yeomen are urged to put on the look and bearing of heroes.

-imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galléd rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height.

PITCH:

INFLECTION; MELODY.

PITCH.

Pitch is the distinction of sounds in acuteness and gravity. The Compass of the voice is the interval between its highest and lowest notes. The average compass ranges from an octave to an octave and a half. Occasional voices easily reach a compass of two octaves or more.

The untrained speaking voice, as a rule, employs but a fraction of its actual compass,-frequently not more than half an octave, in reading or in unexcited conversation.

The tendency of cultivation is, both to extend the compass and to employ at need the whole available range of pitch. THE ZONES, OR RANGES, OF PITCH.-The compass is technically divided into zones, or ranges, established by comparison with the conversational range.

The conversational zone, comprising a range of three or four musical tones, is called Middle Pitch; but, in a wellmanaged intonation, it is not located halfway between the highest and the lowest note, as its name suggests; but its upper border reaches, or nearly reaches, the halfway point: so that Middle Pitch means, the zone occupied by the three or four uppermost tones of the lower half of the compass.

As speech is, or should be, a solo performance, there is no occasion for the establishment of a concert pitch for the speaking voice. The whole compass of one voice may be high or low as compared with another, and the two voices