CHAPTER IA RATIONAL VOCAL METHODSong, so far as voice-production is concerned, is the result of physiological action, and as voice-production is the basis of all song, it follows that a singing method, to be correct, must be based on the correct physiological use of the vocal organs. The physiology of voice-production lies, therefore, at the very foundation of artistic singing. The proper physiological... more...

CAN reading be taught? is a question often asked, and partly for the reason, it may be, that so many readers who have gone through courses of vocal training in schools of elocution, or under private teachers, so frequently offend people of taste and culture by an extravagance of expression, by mimetic gesture, and by offensive mannerisms of various kinds. But a reasonable inference cannot be drawn from... more...

THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES I MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW It would be difficult to find anything in the encyclopedia that would justify the claim that we are about to make, or anything in the dictionary. Even a poem—which is supposed to prove anything with a little of nothing—could hardly be found to prove it; but in this beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us—for... more...

A VOICE ON THE WINDShe walks with the wind on the windy heightWhen the rocks are loud and the waves are white,And all night long she calls through the night,"O, my children, come home!"Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,Tosses around her like a shroud,While over the deep her voice rings loud,—"O, my children, come home, come home!O, my children, come home!"Who is she who wanders... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CLAIMS AND IMPORTANCE OF VOCAL PHYSIOLOGY. To know consciously and to do with special reference to guiding principles are to be distinguished from carrying out some process without bearing in mind the why or wherefore. Science is exact and related knowledge, facts bound together by principles. Art is execution, doing, and has not necessarily any conscious reference to principles. While... more...

If one can just lie close enough to the breast of the wilderness, he can't help but be imbued with some of the life that pulses therein.—From a Frontiersman's Diary. Long ago, when the great city of Gitcheapolis was a rather small, untidy hamlet in the middle of a plain, it used to be that a pool of water, possibly two hundred feet square, gathered every spring immediately back of the... more...

BOOK I FAIR WEATHER AT KINGSBOROUGH I The last day of Circuit Court was over at Kingsborough. The jury had vanished from the semicircle of straight-backed chairs in the old court-house, the clerk had laid aside his pen along with his air of listless attention, and the judge was making his way through the straggling spectators to the sunken stone steps of the platform outside. As the crowd in the... more...

ADULTERY Note on a Magistrate Written about 1764 A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to... more...

CHAPTER I. HISTORIC NOTICES OF VOLCANIC ACTION. There are no manifestations of the forces of Nature more calculated to inspire us with feelings of awe and admiration than volcanic eruptions preceded or accompanied, as they generally are, by earthquake shocks. Few agents have been so destructive in their effects; and to the real dangers which follow such terrestrial convulsions are to be added the... more...

THE ROSE IN THE MIRE The first time I was blessed with a sight of the señorita was on the day of my arrival in the Federal City,—in fact, it was upon my arrival. An inquiry in the neighborhood of the President's House for my sole acquaintance in the city, Senator Adair of Kentucky, had resulted in my being directed to Conrad's boarding house on the Capitol Hill. In the Fall of 1805 Indian... more...