_Third._--Stand and test your newly acquired power by trying to breathe
diaphragmatically while on your feet.

These three exercises constitute the first step in the first stage of
vocal training, and that step is called _Learning to Support the Tone_.

I know a little girl who, in the beginning of her career, alarmed her
parents by refusing to utter a syllable or the semblance of a syllable
until she was three years old, when she evidently considered herself
ready for her maiden effort at speech. Prepared she proved, for, sitting
at the window in her high-chair one day, watching people pass, she
remarked quietly and with perfect precision, "There goes Mrs. Tibbets."
I find myself secretly wishing it were possible for you to refrain from
speech, not for three years, but for three weeks, while you quietly
prepare for speech by practising these three breathing exercises. It is
quite the customary thing (or ought to be) for the teacher of voice as
an instrument of song to require of the student a period of
silence--that is, a period in which only exercises are allowed, and
songs, even the simplest, are forbidden. However, our only way to secure
this condition would be to go into retreat; but, after all, one of the
most encouraging things about this work is the remarkable effect upon
the speaking voice of simply holding the thought of the right condition
for tone, _thinking_ the three exercises I have given you. It is not so
remarkable, perhaps, in the light of the experiment recently made (I am
told) in one of our great colleges, when three men daily performed a
certain exercise, and three other men simply thought it intensely, and
the resultant effect upon the muscles used in the act was marvelously
similar. I am half afraid to have recalled this, lest you take advantage
of the suggestion and relax your effort, or, out of curiosity, make the
experiment. Please don't. I offer it only as an incentive to you, to
_think_ at least of the desired condition, if you cannot every day
indulge in an active effort to attain it.

Please test at once the immediate effect of this third exercise. Take
the attitude I have defined, and try once more any full-voweled
syllable. I think you will find the tone already improved.

LEARNING TO FREE THE TONE

We have worked, so far, for support of tone. We must now free the
supported tone, by freeing the channel for the emission of the breath as
it is converted into tone and moulded into sp