PREFACE TO PART I.

THIS book is an outgrowth of practical class-room work. It is an effort to strengthen that work by furnishing a basis for pursuing elocution as a study. This it attempts to do by giving some definite statement of the principles that govern the mental processes of communication.

The design in this treatment is so to present the subject that the student shall have a definite thing to do each day; shall be able to have a lesson assigned, to prepare that lesson, and to bring into class the results of his work upon it, as definitely as in any other study.

Vocal Expression has obvious relations with psychology and with physiology. Speech occupies the meetingground of the mental and the physical. The laws of thought as related to utterance might be considered a form of applied psychology; and the action of body and voice in connection with the highest function of a rational being, communication of thought, must be considered one of the noblest and finest departments of physical activity. On both sides its connections, when fully traced, involve much of delicate and painstaking research; yet its prac