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PUBLIC LIBRARY

366412A

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

R

1928

COPYRIGHT

A. C. MCCLURG & CO.

1911

Published, March, 1911

PRESS OF THE VAIL COMPANY
COSHOCTON, U. S. A.

INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF

PROFESSOR PHILIP LAWRENCE WHO FOR FIFTY YEARS DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO TEACHING THE ART OF SPEECH

A NOBLE MAN, AN UNSELFISH TEACHER, A DEVOTED PARENT,

AND A LOVER OF MAN AND GOD

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well'

THE

PREFACE

HE arts of Reading and Speaking have, of late years, been greatly neglected, and it is the aim of the editor of this compilation to endeavor to arouse new interest by presenting, in convenient form and attractive guise, many masterpieces of literature, and specimens of oratory, likely to awaken, in the minds of students in schools and colleges, a desire to know more of these useful and delightful arts. Nothing has a greater tendency to improve the diction, and enlarge the vocabulary of a speaker, than a study of the works of great writers and orators, as man mentally grows by what he feeds on just as he does physically; and by a careful perusal of well-constructed sentences, polished and expressive language, he will learn to use instinctively the proper form and expression of words when communicating his thoughts. The matter may be that of Shakespeare, Milton, Demosthenes, Cicero, Webster, or Longfellow, but a careful student who reads to learn and, while reading, bears in mind the saying

of Confucius, "Learning without thought is labor lost, and thought without learning is death to the mind," will incorporate the wisdom of others into his own being, and give it out again in his own manner as though it had never existed in any other form.

It is the opinion of the editor that only by intelligent and painstaking efforts are persons made good readers and speakers, and he therefore advises all who are desirous of excelling in these arts to disabuse themselves of the idea that oratory is a God-given gift, that all they have to do is to sit idly by and await its coming, because in all cases of real greatness not apparent greatness

success as orators has only come to those who went in search of it. Those who achieved success without much labor, men like Patrick Henry and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, would have accomplished far greater results had they stored up knowledge in their youth instead of idling away their time lolling by brooks or wasting their strength in dissipation.

This book is intended to be purely a Reader and Speaker, presenting to the student the finished matter of expression and not the means of gaining the art of vocal delivery, but to all who desire to take up the technical part of vocal work, the

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