That is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go.For truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of me, all different from each other and from us; there's no royal road, we just have to sclamber and tumble.
That is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go.
For truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.
Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.
You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of me, all different from each other and from us; there's no royal road, we just have to sclamber and tumble.
Now, once more, and this time with detailed analysis, let us study the passage fromExperience. Let us first consider for a moment some of the words which make this passage powerful:finish,journey's-end,good hours,wisdom,fanatics,mathematicians,sprawling-in-want,sitting-high,firmer,poised,postpone,justice,humble,odious,mystic,pleasure. When spoken with a keen sense of its inherent meaning, with full appreciation of its form, and with delight in molding it, how efficient each one of these words becomes! When shall we, as a people, learn reverence for the words which make up our language—reverence that shall make usashamed to mangle words, offering as our excuse that we are "Westerners" or "Southerners" or from New York or New England or Indiana. The clear-cut thought calls for the clean-cut speech. Let us say these words over and over until they assume full value. And now we pass from words to groups of words. The mind and the tone must move progressively through the first three phrases which make up this first sentence: "To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom." The phrases must be held together by an almost imperceptible suspension and upward reach of the voice at the end of each group of words, and yet each phrase must be allowed to be momentarily complete. Read the sentence, making each phrase a conclusion, and then again letting each phrase look forward to the next. Each phrase is really a substantive, looking forward to its predicate through a second substantive which is a little more vital than the first, and again through a third substantive which is a little more vital thaneither of the other two. Bring this out in reading the sentence. The next sentence depends for its significance upon your contrasting inflections of the three words "men," "fanatics," and "mathematicians"; and again upon your sympathetic inflection of "sprawling-in-want" and "sitting-high." "It is not the part of men, but of fanatics—or of mathematicians, if you will—to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high." In your utterance of these words can you make "men" MEN, and "fanatics"fanatics, and consign "mathematicians" to the cold corner of human affairs designed for them? Can you so inflect "sprawling in want" and "sitting high" as to suggest a swamp and a mountain-top, or a frog and an angel? Let your voice leap from the swamp to the mountain-top. Let it climb. Now comes the swift, concise, admonitory sentence: "Since our office is with moments, let us husband them." Pause before you speak the word "husband," andhusbandit. "Fiveminutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium." Make "five minutes of to-day" one word, and accent the last syllable, thus: five-minutes-of-to-day. Let the tone retard and take its time on the last seven words. Now poise your tone for the next sentence. "Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day." The paragraph closes with a more complex statement of the theme. Let your voice search out the meaning. Let it settle down into the conclusion, and utter it convincingly. Give a definite touch to the words which I shall put in italics. "I settle myself everfirmerin thecreedthat we should notpostponeandreferandwish, but dobroad-justicewhere weare, bywhomsoeverwe deal with, accepting ouractualcompanions and circumstances, howeverhumbleorodious, as themystic officialsto whom theuniversehas dedicated itswhole pleasureforus."
Analyze vocally the following paragraph:
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that hemust take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.... What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.—Self-Reliance.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that hemust take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.... What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.—Self-Reliance.
By choosing as further material for vocal interpretation selections which shall also be good examples for examination as to their literary construction, we shall serve the double purpose of adapting our studies in vocal interpretation to the uses of English composition.
The following selections are to be: first,read aloud (in class); second, examined as to their literary construction (in class); third, analyzed and reported upon as specimens of exposition and argumentation (in the study).