Aids to Correct and Effective Elocution: With Selected Readings and Recitations for Practice

In this day and age it is even more necessary to learn how to express ourselves properly and modestly. Let us consider this on Gesture: “GESTURE is a universal language. It is usually defined as the various postures and motions of the body. We would define gesture as the body's attempt to give expression to the thought. All laws for gesture must rest upon the primary one of correspondence. Gestures, or movements of the body, should be made with precision, ease, and harmony-in a word, with grace. Although grace is defined as the union of ease, precision, and harmony, the student is cautioned against bringing anyone of these into undue prominence. We have seen ease degenerate into vulgarity, precision into pedantry, and harmony into affectation. Gesture must always precede speech. The sense is not in the words; it is in the inflection and gesture.” This is followed by exercises for proper posture and gestures. Let us consider the voice: “The human voice is the most wonderful of all musical instruments, and the most satisfactorily expressive when" the soul attunes the instrument to the theme." The voice has three properties -Pitch, Force, and Quality." and it is to the cultivation of these three properties of the voice that the best efforts of the student should be directed. Indeed, in a technical training of the voice, all the artifices of the Elocutionist are founded upon the three properties of the voice, Pitch, Force, and Quality. What the elder Garcia said of the singing voice-" Its beauty constitutes ninety-nine hundredths of the power of the singer "-is equally true of the speaking voice. For this reason we disapprove of giving to young students recitations requiring certain faulty qualities of the voice. The aim of the teacher of vocal culture should be to preserve and improve the natural beauty of the voice. L'Abbe Delaumosne says: "It is through the voice we please an audience. If we have the ear of an auditor, we easily win his mind and heart. The voice is a mysterious hand which touches, envelops, and caresses the heart. "