h act
as sounding-boards for the tone confined within that cavity, we shut off
the cavity, and refuse the tone its natural reinforcement. It takes on,
as a result, a thin, unresonant quality which we call nasal, although it
is thin and unpleasing because it lacks _true nasal resonance_. The only
remedy lies in ceasing to shut off the cavity. Think the sound [=oo].
Let the tone on which it is to be borne grow slowly in thought, filling,
filling, and, as it grows, flooding the whole face. Let it press
against your lips (in thought only as yet), feel your nostrils expand,
your face grow alive between the eyes and the upper lip, that area so
often inanimate, lifeless, even in a mobile, animated countenance. Now
let the sound come, but let it follow the thought, flood the face, let
the nostrils expand, feel the nasal cavity fill with sound; let it go on
up into the head and strike the forehead and the eye-sockets and the
walls of all the cavities so unused to the impact of sound, which should
never have been shut out. Now begin, with lips closed, a humming note,
_m-m-m_. Let it come flooding into the face, until it presses against
the lips, demanding the open mouth. Now let it open the mouth into the
_e_. Repeat this over and over--_m-[=e]_, _m-[=e]_, _m-[=e]_. Don't let
the tone drop back as the mouth opens. Keep it forward behind the upper
lip, which it has made full, and which, playing against, it tickles
until we _must_ let the tone escape. Just as much of the day as
possible, think the tone in a flood into the face, and as often as
possible hum and let it escape, noting its increasing resonance. It
will increase in resonance, I promise you. It will lose its thin,
high-pitched nasal quality, and grow mellow and rich and ringing.

And so, with chest lifted, diaphragm at work, throat open, tongue free,
jaws relaxed, and all the cavities concerned in vocalization open to the
tone, as you breathe and yawn and hum, let it issue a full, round,
resonant, singing note to add itself to the music of the world.

A LAST WORD TO THE PUPIL

Mr. William James tells us that we learn to swim in winter and to skate
in summer. The principle underlying this statement is of immense comfort
in approaching a class in vocal expression. The hope of satisfying
results is fostered by the knowledge that a mere statement of the
fundamental facts of right tone production will do much toward inducing
a right condition for tone. But I know, too, th