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Show SOMEWHAT HISTORICAL his teachers that they must see to it that their 7 pupils get the thought. step in the right direction, but it must be that the average result does not seem to justify the acknowledged This is a chief reasons for this are two: First, for one cause or another, the finer shades of meaning too often escape us: Second, very few teachers have received the necessary training to enable them to discern quickly with what mental condition various forms of vocal expression are associated. In other words, they have not the criteria oj vocal expression: as a consequence, helpful criti 7 cism is irnpossibte." Alfred Ayres, (Charles E. Embley) was the Alfred Ayres. great apostle of the get-the-thought method. He taught, spoke, and wrote to make the word Elocution respected and respectable. He hurled his invectives against the mechanical system itself, and against all the unnatural, bombastic readers and actors. He made his very name feared in speech circles. When asked by a reporter how to read, he said, "With brains!" His method of procedure was "wholly unlike anything that had hitherto forced its way into print." Yet what he wrote was older than the oldest of venerable "systems" that had come down to us from former generations. It dates back to the beginnings of speech -the time when men began to exchange ideas by means of spoken language. "Then as/ever, the sensible man spoke naturally and not with the elocution of books, and as most teachers of the art would have us speak, for that tends to make only bow-bowers and sing 8 These pages, "The Essentials of Elocution," offer songers." : such a field for the practice of mental gymnastics as is seldom met method. And the . . with. "With few exceptions the now-a-day elocutionists look elocution as being little more than a thing near kin to upon gymnastics. They begin, continue, and end with the brawn side of the art; they demean themselves from first to last as though, having got the voice-making machine in good condition and well under control; as though having possessed themselves of the power of successfully firing sound at words, they have done all that there is to do in order 7 8 How to Teach Reading-Scott, Foresman and Company, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York City. Chicago. |
