n and hard. Again, it is surrender and not effort
I want. Just as I should try to secure the relaxation of your arm or
hand by asking you to surrender it to me, drop it a dead weight at your
side for me to lift as I choose, so now I ask you to surrender your
lower jaw to yourself. Let it go.

Drop your head forward, resting your chin on your chest. Then raise your
head, but not your chin. Let your mouth fall open. Assume for the moment
that mark of the feeble-minded, the idiotic, the dropped-open mouth,
just long enough to note the sensation. Place your fingers on either
side of your head where the jaws conjoin, and open your mouth quickly
and with intention. Note the action under your finger-tips. Now let the
mouth fall open, by simply surrendering the lower jaw, and note this
time the lack of action under your fingers, at the juncture of the jaws.
It is this passive surrender which we must learn to make, if we find, on
investigation, that we are speaking through a half-open mouth held fast
by a set jaw. The set jaw resists and distorts the mould, and the beauty
of the form of the word which flows from the mould is lost; the relaxed
jaw yields to the moulding of the perfectly modeled word.

In practising this relaxation there is very little danger of going too
far, since the set jaw is the indication of a tense habit of thought, of
a high-strung temperament, and this habit of thought will never become,
through the practise of an outward mechanical exercise, the slack habit
of thought which is evidenced by the loose dropping of words from a too
relaxed jaw--a habit which must be met by quite the opposite method of
treatment. There are many exercises involved in vocal training which
must be directed very carefully for a time before the student can be
trusted to practise them alone; so I am confining myself in this, as in
every step we take together, to the simple, fundamental, and at the same
time perfectly safe ones.

To review those for relaxation of the lower jaw:

_First._--Drop the head until the chin rests upon the breast. Raise the
head, but not the lower jaw.

_Second._--With eyes devoid of intelligence and the mouth dropped open,
shake the head until you feel the weight of the lower jaw--until the
lower jaw seems to hang loosely from the upper jaw and to be shaken by
it, as your hand, when you shake it from the wrist, seems to be
commanded by the arm, and to have no volition of its own.

_Third._--Test you