help you and your teacher to meet this threefold need is the wish of
this book; and the book's plan is the result of the author's experience
with her own pupils in watching the evolution of their skill in vocal
expression, the development, along natural lines, of their ability to
speak effectively.

VOCAL EXPRESSION

INTRODUCTION

The strongest impulse of the human heart is for self-expression. The
simplest form of expression is speech. Speech is the instinctive use of
a natural instrument, the voice. The failure to deal justly with this
simple and natural means of expression is one of the serious failures of
our educational system. Whether the student is to wait on another's
table or be host at his own; whether he is to sell "goods" from one side
of a counter or buy them from the other; whether he is to enter one of
the three great professions of law, medicine, or theology; "go on the
stage" or platform; become Minister to France or President of the United
States, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively will be
essential to his success, and should be as essential to his own
happiness as it will be to that of all involved in his pursuit of
success.

Yet, if we give heed at all to the question of voice and speech, it is
our last, not our first, consideration. We still look upon the mind as a
storehouse instead of a clearing-house. We continue to concern ourselves
with its ability to take in, not its capacity to give out. Voice and
speech are still left to shift for themselves during the period of
school life when they should be guarded and guided as a most essential
equipment for life after school days are over. To convert the resultant
hard, high-pitched, nasal tone which betrays the American voice into the
adequate agent of a temperament which distinguishes the American
personality, and to help English speech in this country to become an
efficient medium of lucid intercourse, such is the object of this book.

In an address upon the "Question of Our Speech" delivered before a
graduating class at Bryn Mawr, several years ago, Mr. Henry James said:

"No civilized body of men and women has ever left so vital an interest
to run wild, to shift, as we say, all for itself, to stumble and
flounder, through mere adventure and accident, in the common dust of
life, to pick up a living, in fine, by the wayside and the ditch.

"The French, the Germans, the Italians, the English, perhaps, in
particul