for music,
though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the
writing of men who are famous for the quality, and, when you read to
yourself, always to have in mind the sound of what you read. The more
you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write,
yourself, will you hear the way your own style sounds."

With our idea for a combined study of the two great forms of expression
reinforced by such authority, let us, in taking our next step in this
preliminary study in vocal expression, make it also a preliminary study
in verbal expression by using as our next selection for interpretation,
not a fragment of an address or a part of an oration, but a complete
example of persuasive discourse. Such an example we find in this sermon
of Mr. Gannett's "Blessed be Drudgery." And, as we try our growing
powers of lucid interpretation upon this subject-matter, let us stop to
note its verbal construction and its obedience to the laws of persuasive
discourse. The interpretation must be made in the class-room, because
interpretation needs an immediate audience; the analysis of the literary
form may be made in your study: the two processes should be carried on
as far as possible together.

BLESSED BE DRUDGERY[2]

[2] This sermon is published with the kind permission of the author and
the publisher.

I

Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every
second woman is _sure_ she is. Either we are not doing the thing we
would like to do in life; or, in what we do and like, we find so
much to dislike that the rut tires even when the road runs on the
whole, a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the _Culture that
comes through this very drudgery_.

"Culture through my drudgery!" some one is now thinking: "This
treadmill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that,
as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome--to this have I owed
'culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies,
teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter,
those blue overalls in the machine shop--have these anything to do
with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of
time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness,
crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches.
Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly
magazine, t