while performing the mechanical act of
reading the words. These emotions, together with the two kinds of
thinking mentioned, affect the voice and the manner of reading, and
determine what we call =expression=. If the words were simply repeated
mechanically there would be no expression. Since expression involves
the employment of so many different powers at one time, a mastery of
the art of expression is much harder to acquire, than a mastery of
merely the mechanical side of reading.

Accordingly, good vocal expression springs primarily from something
within ourselves--that is, from our mental and emotional state. It
cannot be acquired by mechanical imitation, whether of the reading of
another, or of the movements, sounds, and gestures indicated in the
subject matter of what we read. Nevertheless it is very stimulating
to hear a selection well read, not because a model is thus supplied
for our imitation, but because we get a grasp of the selection as a
whole, and because the voice, which possesses great power in stirring
the imagination and the feelings, thus prepares within us the mental
and emotional state necessary for the correct expression.

In the same way, imitation of the movements, sounds, and gestures,
suggested by the subject matter may be a stimulus to thought and
feeling when preparing a selection, since what we have actually
reproduced is more real to us than what we have only imagined. After
such preparation, imitation, if it enters into the reading at all,
will be spontaneous, and not intentional and forced. In reading _The
Charge of the Light Brigade_ or _The Ride from Ghent to Aix_, we do
not designedly hurry along to imitate rapidity of movement; but,
rather, the imagination having been kindled by the picture, our pulse
is quickened, and the voice moves rapidly in sympathy with the
feelings aroused.

In the following extract (p. 216) the atmosphere is one of joy. The
reader is moved through sympathy with Horatius, and his voice
indicates the joy of the Romans, but he does not attempt to imitate
vocally, or by gesture, the "shouts," "clapping," and "weeping":

Now round him throng the Fathers
To press his gory hands;
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River-Gate,
Borne by the joyous crowd.

Sometimes, as already stated, we imitate spontaneously:

Back darted Spurius Lartius;
Herminius darted back:
And, as they passed, beneath