read it, this time noting the effect of the
action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why?
How did you inflect the words "wine and dreams"? How did the inflection
of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of
the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your
tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us
approach the passage, this time with a different intention. Let us study
it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of
attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is.
Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its
object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart
either to another. But the day of reading which "_maketh a full man_"
seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The
necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour
in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner
guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions
which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect
of beauty or truth upon the mind and heart of the reader. Should it not
be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master
mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the
boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his
thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such
reading might not result in a less _bromidic_ social atmosphere, even
though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe
and interesting to try such an experiment.

But now we must return to Emerson on _Friendship_. In studying a passage
for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the
concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must
make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your
auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought
must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own
brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and
until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give. Having
recalled these precepts, read the passage silently again. Pour upon it
the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your
perception of truth. Comment