A Quarterly Magazine VOL. I. INCLUDING NUMBERS ONE, TWO, THREE EDITED BY PAUL M. PEARSON PUBLISHED BY HINDS, NOBLE & ELDREDGE 31, 33 AND 35 WEST FIFTEENTH STREET Volume I. T DECEMBER, 1905. No. 1 HE editors offer this first number of THE SPEAKER in the hope that their apology will be suggested by the merit of the literature, the quality of work in its adaptation and arrangement, and the inherent human interest which characterizes the selections. They trust that the collection will be found of permanent value. An effort has been made to avoid that which depends for its effect upon any vocal or gymnastic trick. The successful reader is an honest interpreter of life-not a clever mimic of some of the accidents of its manifestations. He is a hu Foreword manitarian in the broadest, best sense of that word; and he is successful in proportion to the correctness of his sympathy and the power of his imagination. There is a rapidly-growing class of readers whose ideals are in the direction of interpretation and not exhibition, and to these the editors offer this magazine. They humbly hope that they have not wholly misunderstood the needs and requirements of the class who honestly pray: "Write me as one who loves his fellow-man." Expression seems a fundamental need of human life. From infancy to the end we are struggling with the impulse to manifest what is within. We are taught that man is made in the image and likeness of God. If he can express this divinity that is within him he is an artist. Art's material is the good, the true, the beautiful, found in perfection in God alone. Art is always trying to express the thoughts and purposes of the Perfect One; and that accounts for the "Joy of the working," as well as for the unrest, the sense of defeat, that makes even a Shakespeare say, "With what I most enjoy, contented least." The Infinite is Art's ideal, its rest, its ever-flying goal. This is the foundation of our reverence for Art, for that manifestation of it which interests us. Foundation 219535 |