t that
point," don't stop to reply, but fly to your study and read the lines
"at that point" over and over, with level brows, until you understand
the meaning, and can express the thought so effectively by a lift of
your voice that you no longer need the help of your eyebrow. Every
gesture, every tone, must call attention, not to itself, but to the
hidden meaning of the author. It must illumine the text of the character
portrayed. That is it: if we would be artists (and there is not one
among us who would not be an artist) we must cease to put our little
selves in front of our messages. In the home, in the office, in the
houses of our friends, in the school-room, on the platform, on the
stage, let us be _simple_, _natural_, _sincere_. Let us lay aside our
mannerisms. Let us seek to know and reveal life. Then shall we be
remembered--not, for a queer way of combing our hair, or lifting our
eyes, or using our hands, or shrugging our shoulders, but for some
revelation of truth or of beauty which we have brought to a community.

PART II

STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION

STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION

THE VOCAL VOCABULARY

There is a theory that it is dangerous to go beyond the mere freeing of
the instrument in either vocal or physical training. In accordance with
this theory I was advised by a well-known actress to confine my study
for the stage, so far as the vocal and pantomimic preparation was
concerned, to singing, dancing, and fencing. "Get your voice and body
under control," she said. "Make them free, but don't connect shades of
thought and emotion with definite tones of the voice or movements of the
body; don't meddle with Delsarte or elocution." This advice seemed good
at the time. It still seems to me that it ought to be the right method.
But I have grown to distrust it. One of the chief sources of my distrust
has been the effect of the theory upon the art of the actress who gave
the advice. She is perhaps the most graceful woman on the stage to-day,
and her voice is pure music. But her gestures and tones fail in
lucidity; they fail to illumine the text of the part she essays to
interpret. One grows suddenly impatient of the meaningless grace of her
movements, the meaningless music of her voice. One longs for a swift--if
studied--stride across the stage in anger instead of the unstudied grace
of her glide in swirling-robed protest. One longs to hear a staccato
declaration of intention instead of the ca