understood by singers and
public speakers, many of whom would be amazed at the sometimes most
wonderful results produced by such simple means. I will therefore quote
a case in point which came under my notice quite recently, and which
will give the reader an idea of the importance of proper breathing:

Mr. X, a tall thin young man, engaged in evangelistic work, suffered
from a "weakness of voice," which he found a great hindrance to his
success. He therefore consulted Mr. Lennox Browne, who at once told him
that he had no disease of any kind, and sent him to me for a course of
breathing exercises. I found that Mr. X chiefly spoke in a child's
voice, over which, moreover, he had very little control; and when I
requested him to take a deep inspiration, he drew in his abdomen, bulged
out his chest, and raised his collar-bones. The spirometer only
registered 200 cubic inches instead of 260, which, according to
Hutchinson's table, was his mean.

My course was, therefore, plain. I made him stand in an easy natural
position, neither allowing him to bulge out his chest, nor to draw in
the abdomen, and then instructed him how to acquire some control over
his midriff and the lower muscles of the chest. It may be observed here,
in passing, that we can, in a state of health, contract and relax these
muscles at will, just as easily as we can bend a finger, and that this
power, when lost through disuse, can be regained with little difficulty.
In Mr. X's case this process was particularly speedy, with the result of
increasing his breathing power in two lessons by 60 cubic inches. In one
additional week I could dismiss him with a full sonorous man's voice, in
place of the uncertain child's squeak with which he came to me. It is no
exaggeration to say that this young man left me with a _new_ voice, and
if people had heard him when he first came to me, behind a screen, and
again after the last lesson, they would certainly not have believed that
they were listening to the same person. What Mr. X and his friends think
of his case may be seen from the following letter which he wrote me on
July 6th, 1880:--"Now that a week has passed since the last lesson I had
from you, I write to bear testimony to the wonderful benefit to my voice
obtained through the very short course I took. My friends are quite
astonished at the marked difference, and I beg you will accept my most
sincere thanks," &c.

Many similar cases might be mentioned, but the on