had better be sure to see the image himself before, and indeed after, he speaks it. Others will then be with him. Although among most young speakers the tone of imagination is lacking, yet often young persons who become proficient vocally are fain greatly to overdo it, till the sound that is suited to the sense becomes sound for its own sake, and thereby obscures the sense. Regard for proportion and fitness, in relation to the central idea or purpose, should control the feeling for color in the detail.

EXPRESSION BY ACTION

It should always be borne in mind that gesture means the bearing or the action of the whole man. It does not mean simply movement of the arm and hand. The practice of gesture should be governed by this understanding of the term. A thought, an emotion, something that moves the man from within, will cause a change, it may be slight, or it may be very marked, in eye, face, body. This is gesture. This change or movement may, from the strength of the feeling that prompts it, extend to the arm and hand. But this latter movement, in arm and hand, is only the fuller manifestation of one's thought or feeling - the completion of the gesture, not the gesture itself. Arm movement, when not preceded or supplemented by body movement, or body pose, is obtrusive action; it brings a member of the body into noticeable prominence, attracting the auditor's eye and taking his mind from the speaker's thought. Better have no gesture than gesture of this kind. The student, then, should first learn to appreciate the force of ideas, to see and feel the full significance of what he would say, and indicate by some general movement of body and

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expression of face, the changing moods of mind. Then the arm and hand may come in not too conspicuous a way to the aid of the body. When Wendell Phillips pointed to the portraits in Faneuil Hall and exclaimed: "I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead," it was not, we may be sure, the uplifted arm alone, but the pose of the man, the something about his whole being, which bespoke the spirit within him, and which was really the gesture. In less positive or striking degrees of action, the body movement will, of course, be very slight, at times almost imperceptible, but the principle always holds, and should be from the first taught. In gesture, the bodily man acts as a unit.

The amount of gesture is, of course, determined by the temperament of the speaker, the nature of the speech, the character of the audience, and the occasion of the address. One speaker will, under certain conditions, gesticulate nearly all the time; another will, under the same conditions, seem seldom to move in any way. The two may be equally effective. A speech that is charged with lively emotion will usually be accompanied by action; a speech expressive of the profound feeling that subdues to gravity, or resignation, would be comparatively without action. The funeral oration by Mark Antony is full of action because it is really intended to excite the will of his audience; in a funeral address simply expressive of sorrow and appreciation, gesture would, as a rule, be out of place. A sharply contested debate may need action that punctuates and enforces; the pleasantry of after-dinner talk may need only the voice. So, one audience, not quick in grasping ideas, may need,

both in language and action, much clear, sharp indication of the point by illustration, much stirring up by physical attack, so to speak, while another audience would be displeased by this unnecessary effort to be clear and expressive. Yet again, given a certain speaker and a certain subject and a certain audience, it is obvious that the occasion will determine largely how the speaker will bear himself. The atmosphere of a college commencement will be different from that of a barbecue, and the speaker would, within the limits set by his own personality and his own dignity, adapt himself to the one or the other. The general law of appropriateness and good taste must determine the amount of gesture.

For the purposes of this work there is probably very little, if any, value in a strict classification of gestures. It may, at times, be convenient to speak of one gesture as merely for emphasis, of another as indicating location, of another as giving illustration, of one as more subjective, expressing a thought that reflects back upon the speaker, or is said more in the way of self-communion, of another as objective concerned only with outer objects or with ideas more apart from the person or the inward feeling of the speaker. But it can easily be shown that one idea, or one dominant feeling, may be expressed by many kinds of action, in fact, so far at least as prescribed movements are concerned, in directly opposite kinds, and gesture is so largely a matter of the individual, and is governed so much by mixed motive and varying circumstance, that the general public speaker will profit little by searching for its philosophic basis, and trying to practice according to any elaborated system. The observing of life, with the exercise of instinct, taste, sense,

above all of honest purpose - these, with of course the help of competent criticism, will serve as sufficient practical guides in the cultivation of expressive action.

Some observations, or perhaps general principles, may be offered as helpful. When a speaker is concerned with driving ideas straight home to his audience, as in putting bare fact in a debate, his action will be more direct; it will move in straighter lines and be turned, like his thought, more directly upon his audience. As his statement is more exactly to a point, so his gesture becomes more pointed and definite. When the speaker is not talking to or at his audience, to move them to his will, but is rather voicing the ideas and feelings already possessed by them, and is in a non-aggressive mood, he is likely to use less of the direct and emphasis-giving gesture, and to employ principally the gesture that is merely illustrative of his ideas, more reposeful, less direct, less tense.

To consider more in detail the principle that the man, and not the arm, is the gesture, a man should look what he is to speak. The eye should always have a relation to gesture. The look may be in the direction of the arm movement or in another direction. No practical rule can be given. It can only be said that the eye must play its part. Observing actions in real life, we see that when one person points out an object to another, he looks now at the object, now at the person, as if to guide that person's look. When he hears a sound he may glance in the direction of it, but then look away to listen. Often a suspended action, with a fixed look of the face, will serve to arrest the attention of auditors and fix it upon an idea. One should cultivate first the look, then the supporting or completing action.

As to the movement of the arm and the form of the hand, one should be careful not to become stiff and precise by following exact rules. In general, it may be said that the beginning of the arm movement, being from the body, is in the upper arm; the finish of it is at the tips of the fingers, with the forefinger leading, or bringing the gesture to a point. There is generally a slightly flexible, rythmical movement of the arm and hand. This should not, as a rule, be very marked, and in specially energetic action is hardly observable. In this arm action there is an early preparatory movement, which indicates or suggests, what is coming. Often a moment of suspense in the preparation enhances the effect of the finish, or stroke, of the gesture, which corresponds usually to the vocal emphasis. At the final pointing of the action, the hand is, for a moment or for moments, fixed, as the mind and the man are fixed, for the purpose of holding the attention of the auditor; then follows the recovery, so-called, from the gesture, or it may be, the passing to another gesture. And all the while, let it again be said, slight changes of bodily pose with proper adjustments of the feet, will make the harmonious, unified action. It should be remembered that, as in viewing a house or a picture we should be impressed by the main body and the general effect, rather than by any one feature, so on the same principle, no striking feature of a man's action should attract attention to itself. On the same principle, no part of the hand should be made conspicuous — the thumb or forefinger should not be too much stuck out, nor the other fingers, except in pointing, be very much curved in. Generally, except in precise pointing, there is a graduated curving, not too nice, from the bent little finger