ination, and for the accumulation of
thought. But conversation offers an immediate outlet for this stored-up
knowledge, testing it as a finished product in expression, and
projecting it into life and reality by all the resources of voice and
feeling. This exercise is as necessary to the mind as physical exercise
is to the body. Indeed, a full mind demands this relief in expression,
lest the strain become too great.

The daily newspaper and the magazines should not be allowed to usurp the
place of conversation. If the art of talking is rapidly dying out, as
some assert, we should do our share to revive it. We may not again have
the wit and repartee, the brilliant intellectual combats of those other
days, but we can at least each have a cultivated speaking-voice, an
interesting manner of expressing our ideas in conversation, and a
refined pronunciation of our mother tongue.

A TALK TO PREACHERS

The aim of one who would interpret literature to others, by means of the
speaking voice, should be first to assimilate its spirit. There can be
no worthy or adequate rendering of a great poem or prose selection
without a keen appreciation of its inner meaning and content. This is
the principal safeguard against mechanical and meaningless declamation.
The extent of this appreciation and grasp of the inherent spirit of
thought will largely determine the degree of life, reality, and
impressiveness imparted to the spoken word.

The intimate relationship between the voice and the spirit of the
speaker suggests that one is necessary to the fullest development of the
other. The voice can interpret only what has been awakened and realized
within, hence nothing discloses a speaker's grasp of a subject so
accurately and readily as his attempt to give it expression in his own
language. It is this spiritual power, developed principally through the
intuitions and emotions, that gives psychic force to speaking, and which
more than logic, rhetoric, or learning itself enables the speaker to
influence and persuade men.

The minister as an interpreter of the highest spiritual truth should
bring to his work a thoroughly trained emotional nature and a cultivated
speaking voice. It is not sufficient that he state the truth with
clearness and force; he must proclaim it with such passionate enthusiasm
as powerfully to move his hearers. To express adequately the infinite
shades of spiritual truth, he must have the ability to play upon his
v