Part 1 — PRELIMINARY STUDY

TO ESTABLISH A CONSCIOUS PURPOSE

"The orator must have something in his very soul he feels to be worth saying. He must have in his nature that kindly sympathy that connects him with his fellow-men and which so makes him a part of the audience that his smile is their smile, his tear is their tear, the throb of his heart the throb of the hearts of the whole assembly."—Henry Ward Beecher.

We have said that whatever part in the world's life we choose or are chosen to take, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively is essential to fulfilling, in the highest sense, that function. Whether the occupation upon which we enter be distinguished by the title of cash-girl or counsellor at law; dish-washer or débutante; stable-boy or statesman; artist in the least or the highest of art's capacities, crises will arise in that calling which demand a command of effective speech. The situation may call for a slow, quietly searching interrogation or a swift, ringing command. The need may be for a use of that expressive vocal form which requires, to be efficient, the rugged or the gracious elements of your vocabulary; the vital or the velvet tone; the straight inflection or the circumflex; the salient or the slight change of pitch; the long or the short pause. Whatever form the demand takes, the need remains for command of the efficient elements of tone and speech if we are to become masters of the situation and to attain success in our calling. How to acquire this mastery is our problem. How to take the first step toward acquiring that command is the subject of this first study.

Is there a student reader of these pages who has not already faced a situation requiring for its mastery such command? Listen to Mr. James again:

"All life, therefore, comes back to the question of our speech, the medium through which we communicate with each other; for all life comes back to the question of our relations with each other. These relations are possible, are registered, are verily constituted by our speech, and are successful in proportion as our speech is worthy of its human and social function; is developed, delicate, flexible, rich—an adequate accomplished fact. The more we live by it, the more it promotes and enhances life. Its quality, its authenticity, its security, are hence supremely important for the general multifold opportunity, for the dignity and integrity, of our existence."

Is there one among you whose relations with others would not have been rendered simpler, truer, clearer at some critical moment had your "speech been more worthy of its great human and social function?" Then, do you hesitate to enter upon a study which shall make for clarified relations and a new "dignity and integrity of existence?" Anticipating your reply, I invite you to take a first step in Vocal Expression. How shall we approach the subject? How did you begin to master any one of the activities in which you are more or less proficient? How did you learn to swim, or skate, or play the violin? Not by standing on the shore and gazing at the water or ice! Not by looking at violins in shop windows! No! You began by leaping into the water, putting on your skates and going out on the ice; taking the violin into your hands and drawing the bow across the strings. But you say: "We have taken the step which corresponds to these in speech! We can talk!" Exactly! But what command of the art of skating or swimming or playing the violin would the artist in any of these activities have achieved had he been content to stop with the act of jumping into the water, going out on the ice, or drawing the bow across the violin? The question's answer calls up an illuminating analogy. Are not most of us in regard to our mastery of speech in the condition of the skater, the swimmer, the fiddler in the first stage of those expressive acts? Are we not floundering in the water, fallen on the ice, or alienating the ears of our friends? "We are so! We confess it!"—every time we speak.

And so to-day we shall offer no argument against entering upon an introductory study—we shall take our first step in the Art of Vocal Expression. But we shall take it in a new spirit—the spirit of an artist bent upon the mastery of his art. If we flounder or fall, we shall not be more content in our ignominy than is the choking swimmer or the prostrate skater. If we produce painful instead of pleasing sounds with our instrument, we shall not persist in a merciless process of tone production; but we shall proceed to study diligently the laws governing the control of the instrument until we have mastered its technique and made it an agent of harmonious intercourse. We shall take the first steps with a conscious purpose, the purpose to make our speech worthy of its great social and human function.

Then in this spirit I invite you "to plunge." I furnish as the material for your experiment these sentences:

DISCUSSION OF DIRECT APPEAL

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!—Curtis.

Mind your own business with your absolute will and soul, but see that it is a good business first.—Ruskin.

—MacKaye.

What news, and quickly!—MacKaye.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.—Phillips Brooks.

Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a holiday?—Shakespeare.

And so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, we are not Democrats, we are Americans!—Curtis.

I shall not discuss the interpretation of these sentences with you. I shall not interpret them for you. Such discussion and interpretation is your part in this study. But you are not to discuss them with a pencil on paper; you are to interpret them with your voice to another mind.

Let us stop here and consider together for a few moments this act which we call Vocal Interpretation (which might be more simply designated as Reading Aloud), and with which these first studies are concerned. What does it mean to vocally interpret a piece of literature—a poem, a play, a bit of prose; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word? It means that you, the interpreter, must transfer the thought contained in that word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from the printed page to the mind of an auditor. It means that you must take the thought out of the safety vault and put it into circulation. That is your problem, and it presents three factors. You cannot slight any one of these factors and expect to successfully solve your problem. These factors are: your author's thought, your own voice, and your auditor's mind.

We shall concern ourselves in this first study with the last of these three factors—the mind of the auditor, or, to put it more definitely, your attitude toward the mind of your auditor. We shall make this our first concern, not because it is more essential to successful delivery than the other two elements of the problem, but because failure at this point is a fundamental failure. Such failure involves the whole structure in ruin.

Let me make this point explicit. Failure of the speaker to direct the thought toward a receiving mind—the mind of an auditor—results in blurred thought, robs the voice of all aim, and reduces the interpretation to a meaningless recital of words. Consider the first factor in the problem of interpretation—the thought of the author. Take these first two sentences:

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!

A wholly satisfying interpretation of these lines involves a knowledge of the speech from which they are taken, and a knowledge of the circumstances under which it was delivered. Complete possession of the thought, which alone insures perfect expression, requires a grasp of the situation out of which it was born and an appreciation of the mind which conceived it. But with no context and no knowledge of these conditions, and so only an approximate appreciation of the thought in all its fulness, the interpreter, under the stimulus of an intent to convince another of the truth contained in the detached sentence, may deliver the lines convincingly! And to carry conviction is the first and fundamental requisite of all good delivery.

So it is with the second factor in your problem. Your voice may fail at a dozen different points, but directed thought can employ so skilfully even an inefficient instrument that the resultant expression, while never satisfying, may still carry conviction.

But let the one who speaks these lines feel no responsibility toward another, let him fail to direct the idea toward another mind, and the most complete possession of the author's thought, plus the most perfect control of the voice, will fail to make the interpretation convincing. You must establish a relation with your auditor! You must have an aim. You must "have something to say," but you must also have some one "to say it at." You cannot hope to become an expert marksman by "shooting into the air."

Then once more I bid you approach the subject of Vocal Interpretation in a new spirit. Let your study of the thought in these sentences hold in its initial impulse this idea: "I have something I must tell you!" Try prefacing your interpretation with some such phrase as this: "Listen to me!" or, "I want to tell you something."

I would suggest as a preliminary exercise that you should try "shooting at a mark" these single words: "No!" "Yes!" "Come!" "Go!" "Aim!" "Fire!" "Help!" "What ho!"

Listen to me!

"You will find the gayest castles in the air far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people."—Emerson.

Let me tell you something!

"Might is right, say many, and so it is. Might is the right to bear the burdens of the weak, to cheer the faint, to uplift the fallen, to pour from one's own full store to the need of the famishing."—Napier.

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He who aims for perfection in a trifle is trying to do that trifle holily. The trier wears the halo, and, therefore, the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king.—Gannett.

Think twice before you speak, my son; and it will do no harm if you keep on thinking while you speak.—Anonymous.

—Lanier.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

HAMLET'S SPEECH TO THE PLAYERS

Hamlet: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness....

Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature, for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

—Shakespeare.

Let us consider together the problem of vocally interpreting this speech of Hamlet's, keeping the mind of the auditor constantly before us, the special factor in our problem which is the concern of this study. What is the first point to be determined? The situation, is it not? Remember, in our previous discussion I have made it clear that it is not essential to our present purpose that we should know, in determining our situation, the exact conditions under which this speech was delivered. Neither is it essential to our present purpose that we should make an exhaustive study of the play of "Hamlet" or of the character of the Prince of Denmark. Lest you mistake me I must reiterate the fact that an interpretation of these lines, looked upon as Hamlet's speech, would require just such exhaustive study of context and character—study which would lead to that complete possession which alone insures perfect expression; but it is legitimate at this point in our study of vocal expression to use this text quite apart from its context as a perfect example of direct appeal. It is legitimate to imagine a situation of our own in which this thought could be pertinently expressed. We must then first determine what you, the speaker, are to represent, and the nature of the audience you are to address. One word in the text more than any other, perhaps, determines these points—the word "players." With this word as a key to a probable situation, let us imagine that you, the one who must "speak this speech," are a stage-director of your own play, and that we, the class to whom you must speak, are a company of players (actors, as we now call them) which is about to present your play. The fact that this is exactly the situation in Shakespeare's play from which this speech is taken is interesting, but does not affect our attitude toward the text. But that we should assume the state of mind which animated the author of the Mouse-trap, is vital to our problem. Hamlet was intent upon getting an effect incalculably potent from the delivery of the "speech" he "had pronounced." You must imagine that you have written not merely a play, but a play which you intend shall have a powerful influence upon the lives of the people who are to hear it. Once more, then, let us determine the exact situation. You, the author of a moving play—you, its stage-director—have called us, your actors, together for rehearsal. You know just how you wish the lines of your play delivered. It is absolutely vital to the success of your venture that we, the actors, should grasp your ideal of delivery and act upon it. You must convince us that this is the only way in which you will permit the text to be handled. You are the orator as Mr. Beecher has drawn him for us. You will realize, in thinking your way through this appeal, that, while the stage-director is addressing the whole company of players, he has singled out from the others one who is to deliver a particular speech from his play. It is well to follow this idea of the situation. Include us all, then, as a class in your chosen cast, but single out one of us, and speak directly at the mind of that one. Look him straight in the eye. Direct your thought in the main to his mind, even while your thought reaches out and draws us all into the circle of its enthusiasm. Now, with this attitude and intent toward an audience, try to vocally interpret, to think aloud this thought. What is the trouble? "Speak the speech" you say, "is a difficult combination of words to utter"? "'Trippingly' trips up your tongue"? "You don't understand the reference to a 'town-crier'"?

Ah, what discoveries we are making!

"You feel that you should be able to illustrate your own ideal of delivery by delivering these directions after the very manner you ask your players to observe"? That might legitimately be expected of you, I think. "But this you cannot do!" What a shocking confession! Yes, but how good to have this new knowledge of your own ability, or, in this case, disability. How appalling to find that you cannot easily utter the simple combination of words, "Speak the speech, I pray you," without stumbling; that any word, a plain, simple English word, trips your tongue. How appalling, but how encouraging it is! For the discovery of this fact, the consciousness of these limitations, "constitutes half the battle" before us. It is a battle. But you shall be equipped to meet it. Turn to the chapters on "Freeing the Tone." Find the exercises for training the tongue. Faithful practice of these exercises (even without direction, but, if you are a member of the class in expression for which this book was made, under direction) will very shortly conquer the unruly tongue for use in uttering any difficult combination of words. And your teacher will patiently "pick you up" (in this first study) every time you trip over a word or phrase, and she will patiently refer you to the corner of history which will explain any unfamiliar portions of your text if you will persistently try to do your part at this point. That part is, to think the thought before you directly at another's mind. That is all we ask at this point. Make this direct appeal for simplicity in delivery straight to the mind of him whom you have chosen to receive, and act upon it. Talk to me if I am your chosen player! Convince me! Make me realize what you expect of me! Make me want to meet your expectation! Make me afraid to fail you!

With these suggestions and this direct appeal to you, I leave you with your teacher and with the following material chosen for your preliminary study in Vocal Interpretation.

SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION

There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, straining at full speed from England to America. Two-thirds of a prosperous voyage thus far were over, and in our mess we were beginning to talk of home.

Suddenly a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but, as this was a common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly mentioned in our talk. A happier company never sailed upon an autumn sea. When a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers and men, and we were grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race. I heard the cry, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that meant—the masts were in danger of falling. A hundred pallid faces were huddled together near the stern of the ship where we were told to go and wait.

Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the wheel-house ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves. As the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's trumpet to "Shift the cargo," to "Back her," to "Keep her steady," we felt, somehow, that the commander up there in the thick mist knew what he was about.

When, after weary days of anxious suspense, the vessel leaking badly, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of the line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck on the rocks and been saved by the captain's presence of mind and courage, replied, simply: "Just what I might have expected. Captain Harrison is always master of the situation."

No man ever became master of the situation by accident or indolence. "He happened to succeed" is a foolish, unmeaning phrase. No man happens to succeed. "What do you mix your paints with?" asked a visitor of Opie, the painter. "With brains, sir," was the artist's reply. * * *

There are men who fail of mastery in the world from too low an estimate of human nature. "Despise nothing, my son," was the advice a mother gave to her boy when he went forth into the untried world to seek his fortune, and that boy grew up into Sir Walter Scott. * * *

In case of great emergency it took a certain general in our army several days to get his personal baggage ready. Sheridan rode into Winchester without even a change of stockings in his saddle-bags. * * *

All great leaders have been inspired with a great belief. In nine cases out of ten, failure is borne of unbelief.—Masters of the Situation, James T. Fields.

—Henry V., Shakespeare

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.—Address at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln.

From an address delivered in the Auditorium, at Chicago, on the afternoon of February 22, 1902, on the occasion of the celebration of Washington's Birthday.

The meaning of Washington in American history is discipline. The message of Washington's life to the American people is discipline. The need of American character is discipline.

Washington did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage. That quality was and is in the American blood. He did not even give them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. But Washington gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was the genius of order. He was poise personified. He was the spirit of discipline. He was the first Great Conservative. It was this quality in him that made all other elements of the Revolution effective. It was this that organized our nebulous independence into a nation of liberty. The parts of a machine are useless until assembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. Washington was the master mechanic of our nation; so it is that we are a people.

But we are not yet a perfect people. We are still in the making. It is a glorious circumstance. Youth is the noblest of God's gifts. The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of Washington—he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed passions of riotous youth.—Conservatism; the Spirit of National Self-Restraint, Albert Beveridge.

We have noted in our introduction the close analogy which exists between the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal expression. Let us not fail to follow this analogy through the various studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?

Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English composition, called The Forms of Prose Literature,[1] discusses these forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-titles which all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not find the exact parallel for our study in direct appeal under these subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of exposition, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression corresponding to the question of vitality in thinking, which is our first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary study" in composition.

In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument must move its reader, we begin to pass from the realm of pure thought, in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a necessary preliminary to action. How large a part feelings play in argument you can see if you have ever heard the speech of a demagogue to an excited crowd. It is simply a crass appeal to their lower passions, aided by all the devices of oratory, often, perhaps, also by a moving presence. A better example is Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech, in which he won a hearing from a hostile mob by an appeal to their sense of fair play. Such cases show how far argument may get from the simple appeal to the understanding, how little it may be confined to the element of thought. The prime quality, therefore, of argument is persuasiveness."

Not argument, then, but the element in argument, called persuasion, furnishes the study in composition which corresponds to direct appeal in interpretation. And just as truly as your intent to convince another mind of the truth of your author's thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of its vocal expression and result in convincing interpretation, so the intent to persuade another mind of the truth of your own thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of verbal expression and result in moving composition.

Following Mr. Gardiner a little further in his discussion of persuasion, we find our study in interpretation in direct accord with his advice in the study of composition, for he says: "This element of persuasion belongs to that aspect of literature which has to do with the feelings; and, as depending on the personal equation of the writer, it is much less easy than the intellectual element to catch and generalize from, and almost impossible to teach. All that I can do is to examine it in good examples, and then make very tentatively a few suggestions based on these examples. For it cannot too often be written down in such a treatise as this that the teacher of writing can no more make a great writer than the teacher of painting can turn out a new Rembrandt or a Millet; in either case the most that the teacher can do is to furnish honest and illuminating criticism, and to save his pupil unnecessary and tedious steps by showing him the methods and devices which have been worked out by the masters of the craft."

In treating the question of pure style, as another division of the power of persuasion, Mr. Gardiner says: "It is almost impossible to give practical help toward acquiring this gift of an expressive style; the ear for the rhythm and assonance of style is like an ear for music, though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the writing of men who are famous for the quality, and, when you read to yourself, always to have in mind the sound of what you read. The more you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write, yourself, will you hear the way your own style sounds."

With our idea for a combined study of the two great forms of expression reinforced by such authority, let us, in taking our next step in this preliminary study in vocal expression, make it also a preliminary study in verbal expression by using as our next selection for interpretation, not a fragment of an address or a part of an oration, but a complete example of persuasive discourse. Such an example we find in this sermon of Mr. Gannett's "Blessed be Drudgery." And, as we try our growing powers of lucid interpretation upon this subject-matter, let us stop to note its verbal construction and its obedience to the laws of persuasive discourse. The interpretation must be made in the class-room, because interpretation needs an immediate audience; the analysis of the literary form may be made in your study: the two processes should be carried on as far as possible together.

BLESSED BE DRUDGERY[2]

I

Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every second woman is sure she is. Either we are not doing the thing we would like to do in life; or, in what we do and like, we find so much to dislike that the rut tires even when the road runs on the whole, a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the Culture that comes through this very drudgery.

"Culture through my drudgery!" some one is now thinking: "This treadmill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that, as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome—to this have I owed 'culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies, teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter, those blue overalls in the machine shop—have these anything to do with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches. Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas. Our real and our ideal are not twins—never were! I want the books,—but the clothes-basket wants me. The two children are good,—and so would be two hours a day without the children. I crave an outdoor life,—and walk down-town of mornings to perch on a high stool till supper-time. I love Nature,—and figures are my fate. My taste is books,—and I farm it. My taste is art,—and I correct exercises. My taste is science,—and I measure tape. I am young and like stir,—the business jogs on like a stage-coach. Or I am not young, I am getting gray over my ears, and like to sit down and be still,—but the drive of the business keeps both tired arms stretched out full length. I hate this overbidding and this underselling, this spry, unceasing competition, and would willingly give up a quarter of my profits to have two hours of my daylight to myself,—at least I would if, working just as I do, I did not barely get the children bread and clothes. I did not choose my calling, but was dropped into it—by my innocent conceit, or by duty to the family, or by a parent's foolish pride, or by our hasty marriage; or a mere accident wedged me into it. Would I could have my life over again! Then, whatever I should be, at least I would not be what I am to-day!"

Have I spoken truly for any one here? I know I have. Goes not the grumble thus within the silent breast of many a person, whose pluck never lets it escape to words like these, save now and then on a tired evening to husband or to wife?

There is often truth and justice in the grumble. Truth and justice both. Still, when the question rises through the grumble, Can it be that drudgery, not to be escaped, gives "culture"? the true answer is—Yes, and culture of the prime elements of life; of the very fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood.

Our prime elements are due to our drudgery—I mean that literally; the fundamentals that underlie all fineness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible. These, for instance—and what names are more familiar? Power of attention; power of industry; promptitude in beginning work; method and accuracy and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage before difficulties; cheer under straining burdens; self-control and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities; these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we were small mother had a way of harping on them, and father joined in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church. And this was what our first employer meant—only his way of putting the matter was, "Look sharp, my boy!"—"Be on time, John!"—"Stick to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant: these are the very qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their platitudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And that goes to show that they are the fundamentals. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a man are handier to have; worth more; worth more than Latin and Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting and wax flowers and travels in Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man or woman: even reading and writing are but conveniences: those other things are the indispensables. They make one's sit-fast strength and one's active momentum, whatsoever and wheresoever the lot in life be—be it wealth or poverty, city or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid substance of one's self.

And the question I would ask of myself and you is, How do we get them? How do they become ours? High-school and college can give much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call "our education," give no more than opportunity to win these indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them? We get them somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had we been there to watch. It was "drudgery" all over the land. Mother Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing work! That was yesterday: to-day, result of scrubbing-work, we have the laughing landscape.

Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us; but that which scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by—that depends on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one word, depends upon our "drudgery." It is because we have to go, and go, morning after morning, through rain, through shine, through toothache, headache, heartache, to the appointed spot, and do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learned at nine o'clock and learned without a slip; because the accounts on the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow, and the next day; in short, without much matter what our work be, whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut, plod, grind, humdrum in the work, that we at last get those self-foundations laid of which I spoke,—attention, promptness, accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I think over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I have to answer each with No:—Are there any qualities in the list which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities? Not one. Can I get these self-foundations laid, save by the weight, year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other way. Is there a single one in the list which I cannot get in some degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one. Then beyond all books, beyond all class-work at the school, beyond all special opportunities of what I call my "education," it is this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great school-master. My daily task, whatever it be—that is what mainly educates me. All other culture is mere luxury compared with what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am, this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at as my "drudgery"!

We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very important fact to girls and boys as ambitious as they ought to be,—-the higher our ideals, the more we need those foundation habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the sick-room, or laws in the legislature, or children in the nursery. The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every stroke,—which of the two more needs the self-control, the method, the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more "concentration" to use books—head tools—well than to use hand tools. It takes more "self-control" to use leisure well than workdays. Compare the Sundays and Mondays of your city; which day, all things considered, stands for the city's higher life,—the day on which so many men are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge, more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear the healthy pinch of the just-enough.

Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their genius. "Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. "The Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, "My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"? It was Charles Dickens. Who said "The secret of a Wall Street million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), "Never use what is not your own, never buy what you cannot pay for, never sell what you haven't got." How simple great men's rules are! How easy it is to be a great man! Order, diligence, patience, honesty,—just what you and I must use in order to put our dollar in the savings-bank, to do our school-boy sum, to keep the farm thrifty, and the house clean, and the babies neat. Order, diligence, patience, honesty! There is wide difference between men, but truly it lies less in some special gift or opportunity granted to one and withheld from another, than in the differing degree in which these common elements of human power are owned and used. Not how much talent have I, but how much will to use the talent that I have, is the main question. Not how much do I know, but how much do I do with what I know? To do their great work the great ones need more of the very same habits which the little ones need to do their smaller work. Goethe, Spencer, Agassiz, Jesus, share, not achievements, but conditions of achievement, with you and me. And those conditions for them, as for us, are largely the plod, the drill, the long disciplines of toil. If we ask such men their secret, they will uniformly tell us so.

Since we lay the firm substrata of ourselves in this way, then, and only in this way; and since the higher we aim, the more, and not the less, we need these firm substrata,—since this is so, I think we ought to make up our minds and our mouths to sing a hallelujah unto Drudgery: Blessed be Drudgery,—the one thing that we cannot spare!

II

But there is something else to be said. Among the people who are drudges there are some who have given up their dreams of what, when younger, they used to talk or think about as their "ideals"; and have grown at last, if not content, resigned to do the actual work before them. Yes, here it is,—before us, and behind us, and on all sides of us; we cannot change it; we have accepted it. Still, we have not given up one dream,—the dream of success in this work to which we are so clamped. If we cannot win the well-beloved one, then success with the ill-beloved,—this at least is left to hope for. Success may make it well-beloved, too,—who knows? Well, the secret of this success still lies in the same old word, "drudgery." For drudgery is the doing of one thing, one thing, one thing, long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is this "one thing I do" that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into achievements. "One thing I do," said Paul, and, apart from what his one thing was, in that phrase he gave the watchword of salvation. That whole long string of habits—attention, method, patience, self-control, and the others—can be rolled up and balled, as it were, in the word "concentration." We will halt a moment at the word:

Men may be divided into two classes,—those who have a "one thing," and those who have no "one thing," to do; those with aim, and those without aim, in their lives: and practically it turns out that almost all of the success, and, therefore, the greater part of the happiness, go to the first class. The aim in life is what the backbone is in the body: without it we are invertebrate, belong to some lower order of being not yet man. No wonder that the great question, therefore, with a young man is, What am I to be? and that the future looks rather gloomy until the life-path opens. The lot of many a girl, especially of many a girl with a rich father, is a tragedy of aimlessness. Social standards, and her lack of true ideals and of real education, have condemned her to be frittered: from twelve years old she is a cripple to be pitied, and by thirty she comes to know it. With the brothers the blame is more their own. The boys we used to play our school games with have found their places; they are winning homes and influence and money, their natures are growing strong and shapely, and their days are filling with the happy sense of accomplishment,—while we do not yet know what we are. We have no meaning on the earth. Lose us, and the earth has lost nothing; no niche is empty, no force has ceased to play, for we have got no aim, and therefore we are still—nobody. Get your meaning first of all! Ask the question until it is answered past question, What am I? What do I stand for? What name do I bear in the register of forces? In our national cemeteries there are rows on rows of unknown bodies of our soldiers,—men who did a work and put a meaning to their lives; for the mother and the townsmen say, "He died in the war." But the men and women whose lives are aimless reverse their fates. Our bodies are known, and answer in this world to such or such a name,—but as to our inner selves, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be labeled, "An unknown man sleeps here!"

Now, since it is concentration that prevents this tragedy of failure, and since this concentration always involves drudgery, long, hard, abundant, we have to own again, I think, that that is even more than what I called it first,—our chief school-master; besides that, drudgery is the gray Angel of Success. The main secret of any success we may hope to rejoice in is in that angel's keeping. Look at the leaders in the profession, the "solid" men in business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by building a town in which to house their factory hands; they are drudges of the single aim. The man of science, and to-day more than ever, if he would add to the world's knowledge, or even get a reputation, must be, in some one branch at least, a plodding specialist. The great inventors, Palissy at his pots, Goodyear at his rubber, Elias Howe at his sewing-machine, tell the secret,—"One thing I do." The reformer's secret is the same. A one-eyed, grim-jawed folk the reformers are apt to be: one-eyed, grim-jawed, seeing but the one thing, never letting go, they have to be, to start a torpid nation. All these men as doers of the single thing drudge their way to their success. Even so must we, would we win ours. The foot-loose man is not the enviable man. A wise man will be his own necessity and bind himself to a task, if by early wealth or foolish parents or other lowering circumstances he has lost the help of an outward necessity.

Again, then, I say, Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh beatitude: Blessed be Drudgery! It is the one thing we cannot spare.

III

This is a hard gospel, is it not? But now there is a pleasanter word to briefly say. To lay the firm foundations in ourselves, or even to win success in life, we must be drudges. But we can be artists, also, in our daily task. And at that word things brighten.

"Artists," I say,—not artisans. "The difference?" This: the artist is he who strives to perfect his work,—the artisan strives to get through it. The artist would fain finish, too; but with him it is to "finish the work God has given me to do!" It is not how great a thing we do, but how well we do the thing we have to, that puts us in the noble brotherhood of artists. My Real is not my Ideal,—is that my complaint? One thing, at least, is in my power: if I cannot realize my Ideal, I can at least idealize my Real. How? By trying to be perfect in it. If I am but a rain-drop in a shower, I will be, at least, a perfect drop; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will be, at least, a perfect leaf. This poor "one thing I do,"—instead of repining at its lowness or its hardness, I will make it glorious by my supreme loyalty to its demand.

An artist himself shall speak. It was Michael Angelo who said: "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something that is godlike. True painting is only an image of God's perfection,—a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony." The great masters in music, the great masters in all that we call artistry, would echo Michael Angelo in this; he speaks the artist essence out. But what holds good upon their grand scale and with those whose names are known, holds equally good of all pursuits and all lives. That true painting is an image of God's perfection must be true, if he says so; but no more true of painting than of shoemaking, of Michael Angelo than of John Pounds, the cobbler. I asked a cobbler once how long it took to become a good shoemaker; he answered, promptly, "Six years,—and then you must travel!" That cobbler had the artist soul. I told a friend the story, and he asked his cobbler the same question: How long does it take to become a good shoemaker? "All your life, sir." That was still better,—a Michael Angelo of shoes! Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker, of central New York, was an artist: "Yes," said he to Mr. Parton, "I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." "Well, then, you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." "No, sir," was the answer, "I never made a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer made in the United States." Daniel Morell, once president of the Cambria Railworks in Pittsburgh, which employed seven thousand men, was an artist, and trained artists. "What is the secret of such a development of business as this?" asked the visitor. "We have no secret," was the answer; "we always try to beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have, and we don't care who knows it." The Paris bookbinder was an artist, who, when the rare volume of Corneille, discovered in a book-stall, was brought to him, and he was asked how long it would take him to bind it, answered, "Oh, sir, you must give me a year, at least; this needs all my care." Our Ben Franklin showed the artist when he began his own epitaph, "Benjamin Franklin, printer." And Professor Agassiz, when he told the interviewer that he had "no time to make money"; and when he began his will, "I, Louis Agassiz, teacher."

In one of Murillo's pictures in the Louvre he shows us the interior of a convent kitchen; but doing the work there are, not mortals in old dresses, but beautiful white-winged angels. One serenely puts the kettle on the fire to boil, and one is lifting up a pail of water with heavenly grace, and one is at the kitchen dresser reaching up for plates; and I believe there is a little cherub running about and getting in the way, trying to help. What the old monkish legend that it represented is, I hardly know. But, as the painter puts it to you on his canvas, all are so busy, and working with such a will, and so refining the work as they do it, that somehow you forget that pans are pans and pots pots, and only think of the angels, and how very natural and beautiful kitchen-work is,—just what the angels would do, of course.

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He who aims for perfectness in a trifle is trying to do that trifle holily. The trier wears the halo, and therefore, the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspiration to do perfectly,—is it not religion practicalized? If we use the name of God, is this not God's presence becoming actor in us? No need, then, of being "great" to share that aspiration and that presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live splendidly! That is the royal truth that we need to believe,—you and I who have no "mission," and no great sphere to move in. The universe is not quite complete without my work well done. Have you ever read George Eliot's poem called "Stradivarius"? Stradivarius was the famous old violin-maker, whose violins, nearly two centuries old, are almost worth their weight in gold to-day. Says Stradivarius in the poem:

That is just as true of us as of our greatest brothers. What, stand with slackened hands and fallen heart before the littleness of your service! Too little, is it, to be perfect in it? Would you, then, if you were Master, risk a greater treasure in the hands of such a man? Oh, there is no man, no woman, so small that they cannot make their life great by high endeavor; no sick crippled child on its bed that cannot fill a niche of service that way in the world. This is the beginning of all gospels,—that the kingdom of heaven is at hand just where we are. It is just as near us as our work is, for the gate of heaven for each soul lies in the endeavor to do that work perfectly.

But to bend this talk back to the word with which we started: will this striving for perfection in the little thing give "culture"? Have you ever watched such striving in operation? Have you never met humble men and women who read little, who knew little, yet who had a certain fascination as of fineness lurking about them? Know them, and you are likely to find them persons who have put so much thought and honesty and conscientious trying into their common work—it may be sweeping rooms, or planing boards, or painting walls—have put their ideals so long, so constantly, so lovingly into that common work of theirs, that finally these qualities have come to permeate not their work only, but so much of their being that they are fine-fibred within, even if on the outside the rough bark clings. Without being schooled, they are apt to instinctively detect a sham,—one test of culture. Without haunting the drawing-rooms, they are likely to have manners of quaint grace and graciousness,—another test of culture. Without the singing-lessons, their tones are apt to be gentle,—another test of culture. Without knowing anything about Art, so called, they know and love the best in one thing,—are artists in their own little specialty of work. They make good company, these men and women,—why? Because, not having been able to realize their Ideal, they have idealized their Real, and thus in the depths of their nature have won true "culture."

You know all beatitudes are based on something hard to do or to be. "Blessed are the meek": is it easy to be meek? "Blessed are the pure in heart": is that so very easy? "Blessed are they who mourn." "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst—who starve—after righteousness." So this new beatitude by its hardness only falls into line with all the rest. A third time and heartily I say it,—"Blessed be Drudgery!" For thrice it blesses us: it gives us the fundamental qualities of manhood and womanhood; it gives us success in the thing we have to do; and it makes us, if we choose, artists,—artists within, whatever our outward work may be. Blessed be Drudgery,—the secret of all culture!

And now, as a final step in this preliminary study, a step which shall again give practice in both forms of expression, you are to choose from your vital interests one concerning which you hold intense convictions. First you are to set forth these convictions in the strongest piece of persuasive prose you can command: this is work for your study. Second, you are to summon all your vocal resources, and, with the one idea of persuading us of the truth of your convictions, make to us for them a direct appeal: this work is for the class-room. So shall we have combined the preliminary study in vocal expression of direct appeal with the preliminary study in verbal expression of persuasion.