artistic riot. Every great museum in the world now has whole floors devoted to statues from the Nile, and marvelous carvings from the palaces of Sargon and Assurbanipal. You can get the artistic remains of the Jews during that whole period into a child's wheelbarrow. They had the sense and strength to penalize art; they alone survived. They saw the Egyptians go, the Assyrians go, the Greeks go, the late Romans go, the Moors in Spain go,- all the artistic peoples perish. They remained triumphing over all. Now at last their long-belated apogee is here; their decline is at hand. I am told that in this present generation in Europe the Jews are producing a great lot of young painters and sculptors and actors, just as for a century they have been producing famous composers and musicians. That means the end of the Jews!"

(FREDERICK: The Damnation of Theron Ware)

THEY'RE OFF!

The trumpet sounded short and sharp. Forth from each stall, like missiles in a volley from so many great guns, rushed the six fours; and up the vast assembly arose, electrified and irrepressible, and, leaping upon the benches, filled the circus and the air above it with yells and screams. The arena swam in a dazzle of light; yet each driver looked first for the rope, then for the inner line. All six aiming at the same point and speeding furiously, a collision seemed inevitable.

The fours neared the rope together. Then the trumpeter by the editor's side blew a signal vigorously. Seeing the action, the judges dropped the rope; and not an instant too soon, for the hoof of one of Messala's horses struck it as it fell. Nothing daunted, the Roman

shook out his long lash, loosed the reins, and, with a triumphant shout, took the wall.

(WALLACE: Ben Hur)

ATTACK ON THE BASTILE

On, then, all Frenchmen, that have hearts in your bodies! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old soldier of the Regiment Dauphiné; smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus: let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guardroom, some on bayonets stuck into the joints of the wall,' Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemère, also an old soldier, seconding him. The chain yields, breaks; the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering. Glorious and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight Grim Towers, with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact, Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back toward us; the Bastile is still to take!

(CARLYLE: The French Revolution)

MARULLUS CHASTISES THE MOB

(Marullus)

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome;
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?

And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes to triumph over Pompey's blood?
Be gone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,

Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on such ingratitude.

(SHAKESPEARE: Julius Cæsar)

The Low Register

Just as certain states of mind or feeling are most naturally and convincingly portrayed by a voice range higher than normal, so others are most fittingly expressed by a lower than normal range. The explanation lies in the fact that whereas unsuppressed excitement tenses the vocal organs, those attitudes which are markedly tranquil, soothing, or subduing have a relaxing effect upon them. Therefore, unusual calm, re

pose, humility, reverence, sympathy, tenderness and pity; also those states which involve a lowered vitality, such as weakness, gloom, depression, and sorrow, all of these find natural and suggestive expression in the low range.

It will not be amiss to observe again that in using the low range the tones of the middle register are not excluded. On the contrary, there is more or less frequent employment of the lower tones of the middle register. But the prevailing range as a whole is lower than the normal. At no point should the voice drop to such a point that the words become inaudible. This fault is especially likely to occur at the termination of sentences.

In working on the following selections for control, firmness of tone and flexibility of inflection in the low range, it is especially necessary to understand, and sympathize with the mental and emotional attitude expressed in the selection. Without such sympathy, the low, soft voice alone is likely to leave both the audience and the speaker himself cold and unmoved.

SELECTIONS FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE BUTTON

Sometimes in passing along the street I meet a man who, in the left lapel of his coat, wears a little, plain, modest, unassuming bronze button. The coat is often old and rusty; the face above it seamed and furrowed by the toil and suffering of adverse years; perhaps beside it hangs an empty sleeve, and below it stumps a wooden peg. But when I meet the man who wears that button I doff my hat and stand uncovered in his presyea! to me the very dust his weary foot has

ence

pressed is holy ground, for I know that man, in the dark hour of the nation's peril, bared his breast to the hell of battle to keep the flag of our country in the Union sky.

Maybe at Donaldson he reached the inner trench; at Shiloh held the broken line; at Chattanooga climbed the flame-swept hill, or stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights. He was not born or bred to soldier life. His country's summons called him from the plow, the forge, the bench, the loom, the mine, the store, the office, the college, the sanctuary. He did not fight for greed of gold, to find adventure, or to win renown. He loved the peace of quiet ways, and yet he broke the clasp of clinging arms, turned from the witching glance of tender eyes, left good-by kisses upon tiny lips to look death in the face on desperate fields.

And when the war was over he quietly took up the broken threads of love and life as best he could, a better citizen for having been so good a soldier.

(THURSTON: The Man Who Wears the Button)

SIDNEY CARTON'S PROPHECY

They said of Sidney Carton, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers of the same scaffold, not long before by the same axe a woman -had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

"I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new op