ever be introduced into such delightful fellowship. He wished to pay Dr. Curry the highest compliment one man can to another, by declaring that he had been helped by his teaching.

"Having recently come from New Jersey," he continued, “let me illustrate one point I wish to make by a story appropriate to the region from which I have come. When the animals came out of the ark, a long procession was formed, led by the lion; then followed the tiger, the leopard, and so on, to the elephant, just behind whom came the mosquito, who thought it an excellent opportunity to make a breakfast, and so began operations. The elephant at last looked around and asked, 'What makes you push so hard?' Buildings and endowment, and all that we hope for, will come if we all push together."

Mr. Estes, as the active vice-president of the Playgoers Club, referred to the need of elevating dramatic art and the province of the school in that direction. He then took occasion to urge upon the students the desirability and importance of thorough organization among themselves. He advised each class while in the school to organize, as well as the graduates and past students. He said that he had always considered his connection with the school as trustee to be unselfish, that he had never expected to get anything from it; but the beautiful sight before him to-night, the bright speeches, and the delightful occasion, fully repaid him for anything he had ever done.

At this point Mrs. Curry was to respond to the toast “One who consecrates her life to the sublime ideal of art, till life and art are one," but a severe cold prevented her giving the following, on

Public Reading as a Fine Art. In one of a series of lectures given at the Johns Hopkins University, during the winter of 1879-80, Sidney Lanier expressed his admiration for what he called "a new art which was rising in our midst, based upon the tunes of speech. inquiry into which seems to reveal that the speech-tune has but recently segregated itself, as an art, from the main stem of music proper; that it is an art in its infancy, destined to noble and beautiful extensions in the future."

Public reading is somewhat more than this. It is an art in which the natural languages of voice and action-together with articulate speech, and under the co-ordinating impulse of life itself, stirred by imaginative thinking are used as a means of realizing in concrete living form the spirit of literature. That it is an art destined to play

an important part in the development and culture of the now opening century cannot be doubted. If we look for a moment at the conditions about us, we shall find consciousness crowded with new facts, pride of knowledge stimulated to its highest pitch, and a momentum of life-force generated which is still spasmodic and therefore destructive. Under those circumstances we demand for the art which is to command our attention, life, reality, suggestiveness, revelation of personality, skill, individuality, versatility; that the possibilities of the art of public reading meet these requirements in the highest degree, I will suggest to you rather than attempt to prove.

Form is an essential characteristic of art. Without form we cannot communicate thought in its essential power froin mind to mind. The study of how to develop essential power, in the thought conveyed through brush and canvas, makes painting an art. The study of how to develop the essential power in each moment of life represented is what makes our dramatic art. The study of how to develop the essential power in each thought conveyed to others through voice and action, making alive words used as symbols, no less makes all forms of delivery art; and public reading is therefore an art, that form of delivery that has to do with interpreting the spirit and life of literature.

While we owe much to the insight of Sidney Lanier, whose words have often brought with them sustaining hope and faith, still it is to Dr. Curry we must turn with thanks for the practical value of his earnest labors. He has collected and systematized the elements of this art, and has arranged progressive steps of training for the several faculties and agents employed. Above all, our gratitude is due to him for keeping these agents in their natural relation of unity. From this fact we know that he foresaw the end in the beginning; and, no less than Lanier foresaw the possibilities of a fine art in the natural use of the natural languages.

I have spoken of Dr. Curry's work as if it were accomplished. This is not the case. It is indeed but begun; but in what has been done, he has struck the keynote of our needs, and given us a right now, for the first time, to speak of public reading as a fine art. Art is something more than doing, or attempting to do, a certain thing. Art finds the best way, the only way; and the study to find this way leads deep into the heart of things. Help, if we have any, must be upon fundamental principles. Dr. Curry has brought to our art a

wealth of scholarly thought, an intense purpose, a highly developed analytic imagination. He has forced the subject upon the attention of those who think, and has found an actual place in the world for that art which Charlotte Cushman revealed to us, that Sidney Lanier called the Art of Speech-tunes, but which I prefer to call the Art of Public Reading.

The practical value to the world of thus developing an art can never be estimated, nor its influence measured. Art is man's interpretation of God's way of working in his universe, the epitomizing of man's understanding of universal processes. Art, by concentration and suggestion, reveals spirit, frees from the limitation of material life, and - - teaches us to think.

Between the speeches the company were entertained by Prof. Wellington Putnam and Miss Carolyn S. Foy, graduates of the school; also by Miss Marie H. Schumacher, who played selections on the violin, and by Miss Nelle B. Jones, of the New England Conservatory, who rendered a piano solo.

Dr. Shinn brought the admirable feast to a close, with a few words about the electric lights which had wobbled up and down during the evening, as if to illustrate Dr. Curry's periods of depression; but as with these lights, so with our friend, all would be bright at the close.

The whole affair reflected the greatest credit upon those concerned therein; one gentleman, who had attended over a hundred banquets in the crystal room, declared he had never enjoyed one so much. Indeed, there was not a dull moment, and few left the hall before the close. J. H. WIGGIN.

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

HOME STUDY NOTICES. Professor Charles H. Patterson, A.M., has been given the supervision of studies in literature taken in absentia.

Questions and suggestive topics for investigation and study upon Longfellow's "Miles Standish," "The Tales of The Wayside Inn,” and Scott's "Lady of the Lake are now ready.

Terms, $5.00, a course, including examinations. For further particulars address Prof. Chas. H. Patterson, Hinsdale, N. H.

THE NEXT SUMMER TERM. The Courses of the summer term of the School of Expression have grown to be more and more thorough during the past twelve years. The numbers have somewhat increased of those thorough students who wish to find the highest and best methods and the most careful training. The school has had terms at Martha's Vineyard, Saratoga, Newport, Lancaster, and Plymouth. Three or four of the terms have been held in Boston and the preference of almost every one is for our old home. The expense of living is much less, and students delight to come to Boston, because the advantages here are superior to any other locality, offering the comforts of city life and easy access to seashore and summer resorts. Hence, by general desire the summer term will meet in Boston, July 5th, 1897.

Full particulars will be given in the next number.

EXPRESSION is now recognized as filling a place not occupied by any other periodical. It seeks to present the advances in all forms of training and expression, and to represent the cause of thorough teaching, to advocate the vocal interpretation of literature, and to study and advance expression in all forms of art. It has been sent out freely to find friends, possibly too freely. Some who have received one number have written for the others, as if it were a periodical for free distribution and merely for advertising purposes. It is not an advertising sheet. It is the representative of a great work. It will seek in every way to take higher and higher ground. Hence it cannot be sent out with the same liberality as formerly. It depends for support entirely upon subscriptions and the small amount of advertising which it receives. The advertisement from the School of Expression is paid for as any other advertisement.

A few numbers are very scarce. A full year's subscription will be given for the number for March, 1896, and half a year's subscription for June, 1896.

A red mark on the back of this number indicates either that your subscription expires with this number, or that this copy is sent to you as a sample to solicit your subscription.

The rates of advertising in Expression are $25 a page; half page, $15; quarter page, $8.

The work of a highly intellectual man, who thinks and feels deeply, who is in earnest, and whose words are entitled to the most thoughtful consideration. William Winter.

A book of rare significance and value, not only to teachers of the vocal arts, but also to students of fundamental pedagogical principle. In its field I know of no work presenting, in an equally happy combination, philosophic insight, scientific breadth, moral loftiness of tone, and literary facility of exposition. -President William F. Warren, LL.D., of Boston University.

It is a treatise on the whole subject of expression, and the broadest and most complete survey of the whole subject. — Dr. Julius H. Ward, in “Boston Herald."

$2.00, postpaid; with a year's subscription to "Expression," $2.50.

Classics for Vocal Expression.

NEW Edition, Enlarged.

"The best book of selections ever arranged for teaching."

I am more than pleased with the book, and find it perfectly adapted to the Shailer Mathews, A.M., Professor in the University of Chicago.

work.

Price for examination, $1.10.

Expression.

I

Accept my thanks for a copy of No. 1 of "Expression," which I have looked through with a pleasure enhanced by personal interest. How vividly to my mind's eye you bring up the image of our dear friend, Lewis Monroe, making one of his characteristic utterances, often so curiously prophetic! ... My dear Mr. Curry, I congratulate you on having established a broad, bright light at last, of which this little brochure is one of the beams.-J. T. Trowbridge.

Professor Curry's deep devotion to art in its highest sense permeates all his work, and in the resultant one feels the unusually spiritual culture to which his judgment has attained. This little quarterly, "Expression," is indeed a gem among periodicals, and will contribute untold pleasure and benefit to all seekers after true development. - Boston Ideas.

Full of good things. - Kansas City Weekly Mail.

Valuable to all students of the art of expression, in whatever field. — Evangelical Messenger.

Exceedingly valuable. — Evening Leader, New Haven, Conn.

Helpful and readable. Boston Times.

Invaluable for all speakers. - The Guest.

Aims to study the fundamental principles of all the arts or modes of expression. Brooklyn Times.

$1.00 a year.

Address:

SCHOOL OF EXPRESSION,

458 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass.