as still latent, with the masters of lyric
expression.

Such an introduction is the object of this study, so far as it can
embrace in its aim the ends of both forms of expression,--interpretation
and composition. There is no thought of inducing even an aspirant to the
_poetical purple_, much less a Shelley or a Keats or an Alice Brown,
through this brief dwelling with their immortal songs; but if this
intensive interpretative study of the highest lyric expression does not
result in a new sense of word values, a new sensitiveness to the music
of the English language, out of which the songs of America must be made,
then the study will have failed in its purpose toward you. If from this
suggestive analysis of Shelley's "Skylark" you receive no impulse to use
words with a new delight in the fitting of sound to sense, a new
reverence for their harmonious arrangement to suggest and sustain an
atmosphere; if, in short, your vocabulary is not enriched and your
choice of words clarified through this study, then your new acquaintance
with lyric expression will have been in vain. And, finally, if some one
of you at least is not impelled by these excursions into the world of
song to use his enriched vocabulary in an attempt to create a bit of
lyric description in prose or verse, then the author of this study, and
the teacher under whose direction it is made, must admit a failure to
reach with the pupil the ultimate aim of such interpretative effort.

Let us make the test. As a final problem of this study I shall ask you
to let your emotion find expression--lyric expression--in a bit of prose
description. Don't be afraid! Use your vocabulary! Take as a subject:
the bit of earth and sky you have secretly worshiped; the bird song or
flight which has charmed your day; the memory of some illumined moment;
the effect of any one of these lyrics upon you. Don't be afraid! And
remember it is to be literature of _feeling_ rather than thought;
_description_, not exposition.

THIRD STUDY

TO DEVELOP THE WHIMSICAL SENSE

Addressing the _Gentle Reader_ in deliciously whimsical vein on the
_Mission of Humor_, Mr. Samuel Arthur Crothers declares: "Were I
appointed by the school board to consider the applicants for teachers'
certificates, after they had passed the examinations in the arts and
sciences, I should subject them to a more rigid test. I should hand each
candidate Lamb's essays on 'The Old and New Schoolmaster' and on
'Imper