sion when there is so little appreciation? Is it any wonder that elocution-a noble art-has fallen into disrepute; that it is a synonym of banality, incapacity, rant, and affectation? How can there be good elocution when the material with which it should deal is outside of the experience of the elocutionist?

I believe that the value of reading as reading has not been fully realized as a truly educative study. First, it is necessary to have a working vocabulary, which is analogous to paradigms, declensions, formulae, theorems, etc. Secondly, the necessity of careful attention to all the facts is not dissimilar from what is required in the laboratory or in the translation of foreign languages. (I dare to suggest that because of the elusiveness and complexity of language the student's powers are more taxed in careful observation of the printed page than in many an experiment in the laboratory.) And thirdly, the training in concentration, in sequential thinking, in logic, in drawing conclusions from observed facts, in detecting errors in statements and in conclusions-all this is, in the highest and best sense of the word, educative.

It is my sincere, earnest, humble hope that the method herein presented may heighten the student's appreciation of what is best in literature, not through accepting my views, or anyone's views, as to what is beautiful in prose and poetry, but through that careful (not necessarily dry), patient study of the text that alone can reveal its innermost meaning.

INTERPRETATION OF THE PRINTED PAGE

CHAPTER I

GROUPING

Read aloud these lines with no other object than just to utter the words:

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-
That blue blade that the king's son bears,--but this
Blunt thing!" he snapt and flung it from his
hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

-SILL: Opportunity.

Now read the first six lines silently, trying to get the author's meaning:

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. Have you not noticed in this careful reading a tendency to break up the lines into groups of words? Read the poem again to yourself, very carefully, and note that the more determined you are to get the meaning the slower will you read and the more groups will you make. We might rearrange it something like this:

This I beheld,

or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust
along a plain;

And underneath the cloud,

or in it,

raged A furious battle,

and men yelled,

and swords Shocked upon swords and shields.

A prince's banner Wavered,

then staggered backward,

hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought,

"Had I a sword of keener steel

That blue blade that the king's son bears,—

but this Blunt thing—!"

he snapt

and flung it from his hand,

And lowering

crept away

and left the field.

Then came the king's son,

wounded,

sore bestead,

And weaponless,

and saw the broken sword,

Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it,

and with battle-shout Lifted afresh
he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause
that heroic day.

Secs

This deliberate study of the grouping has compelled you to read slowly and carefully; and that is the sole purpose of the lesson. It is easy to recognize words and then to pronounce them, but if one is to get the meaning he must do hard thinking. The author of this poem saw an entire picture, saw a good deal of it in one glance-just as you can close your eyes and recall some picture of home, or sea, or landscape, or farm-but when he wanted us to see what he had seen he had to describe it group by group. We must then get these groups one by one and build them up again into complete pictures. For instance, in the lines:

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields,

we see a cloud of dust spreading along a plain, and in the midst of the cloud a battle raging wherein swords