book devoted to the voice, my article on Vocal Culture, published
'The Atlantic Monthly' for June, 1895._

_H. C._
_Cascadilla Cottage,
Ithaca, N. Y., 30 Jan., 1896._

_La voix est une revelatrice, une initiatrice, dont la puissance est
aussi merveilleuse qu'inconnue._

* * * * *

_Un des plus reels avantages de la lecture a haute voix est precisement
de vous reveler dans les chefs-d'oeuvre une foule de petites nuances
ignorees du peintre meme qui les y a jetees. Par la, cet art pourrait
devenir un puissant instrument d'education. C'est souvent un excellent
professeur de litterature qu'un grand maitre de diction._

ERNEST LEGOUVE, _de l'Academie francaise_.

THE VOICE AND SPIRITUAL EDUCATION

Can reading be taught? is a question often asked, and partly for the
reason, it may be, that so many readers who have gone through courses of
vocal training in schools of elocution, or under private teachers, so
frequently offend people of taste and culture by an extravagance of
expression, by mimetic gesture, and by offensive mannerisms of various
kinds. But a reasonable inference cannot be drawn from such readers that
vocal training must necessarily do more harm than good.

Yes, much can be taught, and is taught, and well taught, it may be; the
desideratum is the education, intellectual and spiritual, especially the
latter, without which the mere teaching and training are vain and
impotent.

The organs of speech can be brought by intelligent training into a
complete obedience to the will and the feelings; and without this
obedience of his vocal organs, a reader, whatever be his other
qualifications, cannot do his best. He is in the position of a musical
performer who has sympathetically assimilated the composition he is
rendering, but whose instrument is badly out of tune. A reader may have
the fullest possible appreciation of the subject matter, intellectual
and spiritual, of a poem, and a susceptibility to all the subtlest
elements of effect involved in its form; but if he have not full control
of his vocal faculties, he can but imperfectly reveal through his voice,
his appreciation and susceptibility. This control can be secured only by
long and intelligent training. The voices, generally, of even the most
cultivated people, have gone more or less astray, and need to be brought
back from the error of their ways, b