Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/116

106 are intended to support is self-evident. I lay stress on them, however, because I am convinced that the necessity of training the speaking voice is very imperfectly appreciated by most people.

It is not within my province to discuss the technical details of voice-training. I will only say that every system of vocal instruction should aim at strengthening the power of the voice, increasing its compass, and purifying its tone, and, above all, at giving the speaker perfect control over it, even in the very whirl-wind of oratorical passion. It would be well if every school in the land had a master of elocution attached to it, and if the art of delivery were taught to every boy as part of the regular course of education. In the excellent system of education which Rabelais sketched out, the development of the voice is expressly mentioned as part of Gargantua's athletic training. In the middle of a detailed description of his swimming and climbing exercises and practice in the use of weapons of all kinds, we are told that "pour s'exercer le thorax et poulmons crioit comme tous les diables. Je l'ouy une fois appellant Eudemon depuis la porte Sainct Victor jusques à Montmartre. Stentor n'eut onques telle voix à la bataille de Troye." There is a hint for schoolmasters of the present day. The "young barbarians" under their charge might by degrees be made to look on strength and beauty of voice, and skill in using it, as an athletic distinction; this would at once ennoble the subject in their eyes, and make elocution a matter of keen competition.

As part of the general vocal training which I think desirable, I should be disposed to urge that all children and young people should learn to sing as far as their natural capacity will allow. Even those with little or no musical endowment will thus learn to use their voices better in speaking. I may say here, though it is rather anticipating, that, if I think it desirable for speakers to learn to sing, I think it still more necessary that singers should learn to speak. Too many of those who soar aloft on the wings of song despise the musa pedestris of speech, and take no trouble to acquire what they look upon as an inferior and possibly superfluous accomplishment—with what result is known to cultivated listeners whose ears have been tortured by the uncouth distortions and mutilations to which singers often subject the words they have to utter.

Of the management of the voice I can not say much here. The chief thing is that the speaker should make himself distinctly heard by the whole of the audience, and to this end art serves better than loudness. A weak voice, properly managed, will carry farther than a powerful organ worked by sheer brute