s which is clamorous for expression; not even a
very 'still small voice' urging them to express something. Many who
desire, or think they do, to be readers, as there are many who desire,
or think they do, to be artists, evidently believe that if they be
trained in technique they can be readers or artists.

But suppose some one is impelled to cultivate vocal power because of his
desire to express what he has sympathetically and lovingly assimilated,
of a work of genius: if he endeavor to give an honest expression, so far
as in him lies, to what he feels, and avoid trying to express what he
does not feel, and if he persevere in his endeavor, with always a
coefficient ideal back of his reading, he may--in time, he certainly
will--become a better reader than another could if he should set out,
with malice prepense, to be an elocutionist, and with that malicious
purpose, were to employ a mere voice-trainer who should teach him to
perpetrate all sorts of vocal extravagances, to make faces, and to
gesticulate when reading what does not need any gesture. Such an one,
after passing out of the hands of his trainer, is most likely to go
forth and afflict the public with his performances, which will be wholly
a pitiable exhibition of himself.

Some of the best readers I have ever known have been of the former
class, who honestly voiced what they had sympathetically assimilated,
and did not strain after effect. But it seems that when one sets out to
read, with no interior capital, he or she, especially she, is apt to run
into all kinds of extravagances which disgust people of culture and
taste. The voice, instead of being the organ of the soul, is the
betrayer of soullessness.

Without that interior life which can respond to the indefinite life of a
work of genius (indefinite, that is, to the intellect), a trained voice
can do nothing of itself in the way of real interpretation. It may bring
out the definite articulating thought, in a way, but the electric aura
in which the thought should be enveloped, will be wanting; and where
this is wanting, in the expression of spiritualized thought, the true
object of reading is but imperfectly realized. What can be got through
the eye, it is not the main function of the voice to deliver. There must
be the requisite 'drift' and choral intonation--drift, the air, the
pervading, ruling spirit, 'the dominant's persistence,' the prevailing
tone color.

I am pleased to quote, in this connection