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The Table of Contents for this issue is found at the end of the text.
THE SPEAKER
EDITED BY
PAUL M. PEARSON
No. 5
PEARSON BROTHERS
PHILADELPHIA
The Speaker
Volume II. DECEMBER, 1906. No. 1.
[Sidenote: =The Will=]
In teaching public speaking the final purpose must be to train the will.
Without this faculty in control all else comes to nothing. Exercises may
be given for articulation, but without a determined purpose to speak
distinctly little good will result. The teacher may spend himself in an
effort to inspire and enthuse the student, but this is futile unless the
student comes to a resolution to attain those excellencies of which the
teacher has spoken. That a student may become self-reliant is the chief
business of the teacher. To suggest such vital things in a way that the
student will feel impelled to work them out for himself, this is the art
in all teaching. To tell a student all there is to know about a subject,
or to present what is said in such a way that the student thinks there
is nothing more to be said, is to dwarf and stultify the mind. The
inclination of most students is to depend upon the teacher with a
helplessness that is as enervating as it is pitiable. Too many teachers,
flattered by this attitude or possessed of a sentimental sympathy,
encourage it. Thought, discretion, and courage are required to put a
student on his own resources and compel him to stay there until he has
acquired self-mastery.
Public speaking cannot be exchanged for so much time or money. It cannot
be bought or sold; it comes, if it comes at all, as the result of a
wisely-directed determination. The teacher's part is to exalt, enthuse,
stimulate. He must criticise, certainly, but this is generally overdone.
Like some teachers of English who can never overlook a misplaced comma,
whose idea of English seems to be to spell and to punctuate correctly,
there are teachers of public speaking whose critical eye never sees
farther than gesture, articulation, and emphasis. With this attitude
toward their work, they become fault-finders rather than teachers. They
nag, harrass, and suppress. The business of the teacher is to make the
student see visions of beauty, truth and love, to open up to him these
mighty fields that he may go in and possess them. To implant a yearning,
an unquenchable, all-consuming desire to comprehend and to express the
emotions of which his teacher enables him to get glimpses.
[Sidenote: =The Teacher=]
Exercises? Yes, all the student can stand without becoming a drone.
Criticism? Yes, but no quibbling, no nagging. Criticism is something
more than fault-finding. The teacher exalts his profession, ennobles his
art, and begets consideration for himself when he maintains the highest
standards for himself and for his students.
[Sidenote: =Habit=]
Learning to speak well is, like forming character, a matter of
self-discipline and self-culture. A good voice is a good habit; distinct
articulation is a good habit; graceful and effective gestures are a good
habit. Like all good habits, these are formed by a constant exercise
of the will. The teacher's part is to get the students to hear his own
voice, to observe his own gestures, and listen to his own articulation.
These things cannot be accomplished over night, and if attempted all at
once may make the student too self-conscious; certainly this condition
will result if his faults are continually insisted upon. The teacher's
great opportunity is to enable the student to know himself, and to see
that he is determined to develop his best self.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: =Sincerity=]
Sincerity in art! One sometimes doubts whether it exists. Take the
special field of art with which the readers of this magazine are
especially concerned. How many depend upon tricks to get their effects!
How many struggle mightily to gain a laugh or "a hand," neglecting the
theme, the message, the spirit of that which they are professing to
interpret. If that which we read is worth while, if it has anything
vital in it, the effect will be stronger if the skill and personality of
the speaker are kept in the background, and the audience is brought face
to face with the spirit of that which has been embodied in the lines. As
some readers go through their lines they seem to be saying, Listen to my
voice, observe my graceful gestures; isn't this a pretty gown I have?
I'll win you with my smile. Most audiences are good-natured, and enjoy
to the full such small vanities; moreover, we all like to see winning
smiles, beautiful gowns, and graceful gestures; but it is a pitiable
misnomer to call such exhibitions reading. But the more subtle forms of
insincerity in this art are even more prevalent. To exaggerate some form
of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression, to wrest a
passage from its meaning, these, and many other devices for forcing
immediate approval from an audience, are grossly insincere. There is
still a broader plan on which our sincerity must be judged. To present
this effectively I quote at length from Bliss Carmen's recent book, "The
Poetry of Life." The essay sets a high standard, but by no other can
enduring work be done. The fact that a reader has many engagements, or
that a teacher has many pupils is no assurance of sincerity or the high
grade of his work. "Munsey's Magazine" has a larger circulation than
"The Atlantic Monthly"; the one, "hack stuff," to be suffered only a
few minutes while waiting for a train; the other is literature. But,
to quote from Bliss Carmen. He is discussing the poetry of life, but
the same general principles apply to all art:
[Sidenote: =Quoting Bliss Carmen=]
"As for sincerity, the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any
more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty,
humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless,
since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity,
which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe,
becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude.
Insincerity in life may be mean, despicable, and indicate a petty
nature; but in art insincerity is death. A strong man may lie upon
occasion, and make restitution and be forgiven, but for the artist who
lies there is hardly any reparation possible, and his forgiveness is
much more difficult. Art, being the embodiment of the artist's ideal,
is truly the corporeal substance of his spiritual self; and that there
should be any falsehood in it, any deliberate failure to present him
faithfully, it is as monstrous and unnatural as it would be for a man
to disavow his own flesh and bones. Here we are every one of us going
through life committed and attached to our bodies; for all that we do
we are held responsible; if we misbehave, the world will take it out of
our hide. But here is our friend, the artist, committing his spiritual
energy to his art, to an embodiment outside himself, and escaping down
a by-path from all the consequences--what shall be said of him? The
insincere artist is as much beyond the pale of human sympathy as the
murderer. Morally he is a felon.
"There is no excuse for him, either. There was no call for him to make a
liar of himself, other than the most sordid of reasons, the little gain,
the jingling reward of gold. For no man would ever be insincere in his
art, except for pay, except to cater to some other taste than his own,
and to win approval and favor by sycophancy. If he were assured of his
competency in the world, and placed beyond the reach of necessitous
want, how would it ever occur to him to create an insincere art? Art is
so simple, so spontaneous, so dependent on the disingenuous emotion,
that it can never be insincere, unless violence is done to all laws of
nature and of spirit. Since art arises from the sacramental blending of
the inward spirit with the outward form, any touch of insincerity in it
assumes the nature of a horrible crime, a pitiable revolt against the
order and eternity of the universe.
[Sidenote: =Sincerity in Humor=]
"It is not necessary, as I say, for art to be solemn and wholly
serious-minded in order to be sincere. Comedy is quite sincere. Yet it
is easy to usurp her name and play the fool for pennies, with never a
ray of appreciation of her true character. Sincerity, then, is not the
least averse to fun; it only requires that the fun shall be genuine and
come from the heart, as it requires that every note of whatever sort
shall be genuine and spring from the real personality of the writer."
On Time
BY JOHN MILTON.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on thy lazy, leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood;
When everything that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of Him, t' whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,
Attir'd with stars, we shall forever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee,
O Time.
The Knight in the Wood
BY E. LEICESTER WARREN.
(Lord de Tabley.)
The thing itself was rough and crudely done,
Cut in coarse stone, spitefully placed aside
As merest lumber, where the light was worst
On a back staircase. Overlooked it lay
In a great Roman palace crammed with art.
It had no number in the list of gems
Weeded away, long since pushed out and banished,
Before insipid Guidos over-sweet
And Dolce's rose sensationalities,
And curly chirping angels, spruce as birds.
And yet the motive of this thing ill-hewn
And hardly seen did touch me. O, indeed,
The skill-less hand that carved it had belonged
To a most yearning and bewildered brain:
There was such desolation in the work;
And through its utter failure the thing spoke
With more of human message, heart to heart,
Than all these faultless, smirking, skin-deep saints,
In artificial troubles picturesque,
And martyred sweetly, not one curl awry.--
Listen; a clumsy knight, who rode alone
Upon a stumbling jade in a great wood
Belated. The poor beast, with head low-bowed
Snuffing the ground. The rider leant
Forward to sound the marish with his lance.
The wretched rider and the hide-bound steed,
You saw the place was deadly; that doomed pair,
Feared to advance, feared to return.--That's all.
"A Little Feminine Casabianca"[A]
BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[By permission of the publishers and the author we reprint two
cuttings from stories in "Emmy Lou." There are ten stories in
the book, all of them excellent readings. McClure, Phillips &
Co., New York.]
The Primer Class according to the degree of its precocity was divided in
three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section. It was the last
section, and she was the last one in it, though she had no idea what a
section meant nor why she was in it; and Emmy Lou went on wondering
what it was all about, which never would have been the case had there
been a mother among the elders of the house, for mothers have a way of
understanding these things. But to Emmy Lou "mother" had come to mean
but a memory which faded as it came, a vague consciousness of encircling
arms, of a brooding tender face, of yearning eyes; and it was only
because they told her that Emmy Lou remembered how mother had gone away
South, one winter, to get well. That they afterward told her it was
heaven, in nowise confused Emmy Lou, because, for aught she knew, South
and heaven and much else might be included in these points of the
compass. Ever since then Emmy Lou had lived with three aunties and an
uncle; and papa had been coming a hundred miles once a month to see her.
But somehow the Primer year wore away; and the close of the first week
of Emmy Lou's second year at a certain large public school found her
round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period, ending the long line of
intermingled little boys and girls making what was known, twenty-five
years ago, as the First Reader Class.
Her heart grew still within her at the slow, awful enunciation of the
Large Lady in black bombazine who reigned over the department of the
First Reader, pointing her morals with a heavy forefinger, before which
Emmy Lou's eyes lowered with every aspect of conscious guilt. Nor did
Emmy Lou dream that the Large Lady, whose black bombazine was the
visible sign of a loss by death that had made it necessary for her to
enter the school-room to earn a living, was finding the duties incident
to the First Reader almost as strange and perplexing as Emmy Lou
herself.
Emmy Lou from the first day found herself descending steadily to the
foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at the
close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that
she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly position, made
discovery that while to Emmy Lou "d-o-g" might spell "dog" and "f-r-o-g"
might spell "frog," Emmy Lou could not find either on a printed page,
and further, could not tell wherein they differed when found for her;
that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8's by adding one uncertain little
o to the top of another uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou
might copy, in smeary columns, certain cabalistic signs off the
blackboard, she could not point them off in tens, hundreds, thousands,
or read their numerical values, to save her little life. The Large Lady,
sorely perplexed within herself as to the proper course to be pursued,
in the sight of the fifty-nine other First Readers pointed a condemning
forefinger at the miserable little object standing in front of her
platform; and said, "You will stay after school, Emma Louise, that I
may examine further into your qualifications for this grade."
Now Emmy Lou had no idea what it meant--"examine further into your
qualifications for this grade." It might be the form of punishment in
vogue for the chastisement of the members of the First Reader. But "stay
after school" she did understand, and her heart sank, and her little
breast heaved.
It was past the noon recess. At last the bell for dismissal had rung.
The Large Lady, arms folded across her bombazine bosom, had faced the
class, and with awesome solemnity had already enunciated, "Attention,"
and sixty little people had sat up straight, when the door opened, and
a teacher from the floor above came in.
At her whispered confidence, the Large Lady left the room hastily,
while the strange teacher with a hurried "one-two-three, march out
quietly, children," turned, and followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting
at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind
around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing
footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming
back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from
above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from
outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open
windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the
bricks. Then as these familiar sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther away,
some belated footsteps went echoing through the building, a door slammed
somewhere--then--silence.
Emmy Lou waited. She wondered how long it would be. There was watermelon
at home for dinner; she had seen it borne in, a great, striped promise
of ripe juicy lusciousness, on the marketman's shoulder before she came
to school. And here a tear, long gathering, splashed down the pink cheek.
Still that awesome personage presiding over the fortunes of the First
Reader failed to return. Perhaps this was "the examination into--into--"
Emmy Lou could not remember what--to be left in this big, bare room with
the flies droning and humming in lazy circles up near the ceiling. The
forsaken desks, with a forgotten book or slate left here and there upon
them, the pegs around the wall empty of hats and bonnets, the unoccupied
chair upon the platform--Emmy Lou gazed at these with a sinking
sensation of desolation, while tear followed tear down her chubby face.
And listening to the flies and the silence, Emmy Lou began to long for
even the Bombazine Presence, and dropping her quivering countenance upon
her arms folded upon the desk she sobbed aloud. But the time was long,
and the day was warm, and the sobs grew slower, and the breath began to
come in long-drawn, quivering sighs, and the next Emmy Lou knew she was
sitting upright, trembling in every limb, and some one coming up the
stairs--she could hear the slow, heavy footfalls, and a moment after
she saw the Man, the Recess Man, the low, black-bearded, black-browed,
scowling Man, with the broom across his shoulder, reach the hallway, and
make toward the open doorway of the First Reader room. Emmy Lou held her
breath, stiffened her little body, and--waited. But the Man pausing to
light his pipe, Emmy Lou, in the sudden respite thus afforded slid in
a trembling heap beneath the desk, and on hands and knees went crawling
across the floor. And as Uncle Michael came in, a moment after, broom,
pan, and feather-duster in hand, the last fluttering edge of a little
pink dress was disappearing into the depths of the big, empty coal-box,
and its sloping lid was lowering upon a flaxen head and cowering little
figure crouched within. Uncle Michael having put the room to rights,
sweeping and dusting, with many a rheumatic groan in accompaniment,
closed the windows, and going out, drew the door after him, and, as was
his custom, locked it.
Meanwhile, at Emmy Lou's home the elders wondered. But Emmy Lou did not
come. And by half-past two Aunt Louise, the youngest auntie, started out
to find her. But after searching the neighborhood in vain, returned home
in despair. Then Aunt Cordelia sent the house boy down-town for Uncle
Charlie. Just as Uncle Charlie arrived--and it was past five o'clock by
then--some of the children of the neighborhood, having found a small boy
living some squares off who confessed to being in the First Reader with
Emmy Lou, arrived also, with the small boy in tow.
"She didn't know 'dog' from 'frog' when she saw 'em," stated the small
boy, with derision of superior ability, "an' teacher, she told her to
stay after school. She was settin' there in her desk when school let
out, Emmy Lou was."
But a big girl of the neighborhood objected. "Her teacher went home the
minute school was out," she declared. "Isn't the new lady, Mrs. Samuels,
your teacher?" "Well, her daughter, Lettie, she's in my room, and she
was sick, and her mother came up to our room and took her home. Our
teacher she went down and dismissed the First Readers."
"I don't care if she did," retorted the small boy. "I reckon I saw Emmy
Lou settin' there when we come away."
The three aunts grew pale and tearful, and wrung their hands in despair.
The small boy from the First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker
pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder.
"What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went
past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley.
'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed
in his footsteps.
It was dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting lady,
neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway
of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical
Uncle Michael, lantern in hand.
"Ain't I swept over every inch of this here schoolhouse myself and
carried the trash outten a dust-pan?" grumbled Uncle Michael, with what
inference nobody just then stopped to inquire. Then with the air of
a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels himself a victim, he paused
before a certain door on the second floor, and fitted a key in its lock.
"Here it is then, No. 9, to satisfy the lady," and he flung open the
door. The light of Uncle Michael's lantern fell full upon the wide-eyed,
terror-smitten person of Emmy Lou, in her desk, awaiting, her miserable
little heart knew not what horror.
"She--she told me to stay," sobbed Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia's arms,
"and I stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the coal-box!"
[A] Copyright, 1901, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
What He Got Out of It
BY S. E. KISER.
(From the _Chicago Record-Herald_.)
He never took a day of rest,
He couldn't afford it;
He never had his trousers pressed,
He couldn't afford it;
He never went away, care-free,
To visit distant lands, to see
How fair a place this world might be--
He couldn't afford it.
He never went to see a play,
He couldn't afford it;
His love for art he put away,
He couldn't afford it.
He died and left his heirs a lot,
But no tall shaft proclaims the spot
In which he lies--his children thought
They couldn't afford it.
The Play's the Thing[B]
BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
It was the day of the exhibition. Miss Carrie, teacher of the Third
Reader Class, talked in deep tones--gestures meant sweeps and circles.
Since the coming of Miss Carrie, the Third Reader Class lived, as it
were, in the public eye, for on Fridays books were put away and the
attention given to recitations and company. _No_ other class had these
recitations, and the Third Reader was envied. Its members were pointed
out and gazed upon, until one realized one was standing in the garish
light of fame. The other readers, it seemed, longed for fame and
craved publicity, and so it came about that the school was to have an
exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and engineer the whole.
For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole school, but the
play was for her own class alone.
And this was the day of the exhibition.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had
spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with
instructions to return at half-past two. The exhibition would begin at
three.
"Of course," Miss Carrie had said, "you will not fail to be on time."
And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.
It was not two o'clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to
return. They were in the same piece. It was "The Play." In a play one
did more than suit the part.
In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned
children of a soldier who had failed to return from the war. It was a
very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once Emmy Lou had found
tears in her eyes, watching her.
Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked Hattie
about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered then how
tears came naturally to Sadie.
When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came to
see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of Hattie.
"Dress them in a kind of mild mourning," Miss Carrie explained, "not too
deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters, suppose we
dress them alike."
And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for the
play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses with beltings of black sashes,
flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober little
slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious little
countenances. By the exact center, each held a little handkerchief,
black-bordered.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness
of countenance, but it was a variant seriousness; for as the hour
approached, the solemn importance of the occasion was stealing
brain-ward, and Emmy Lou even began to feel glad she was a part of
The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been worse even
than the moment of mounting the platform.
"My grown-up brother's coming," said Hattie, "an' my mamma an' gran'ma
an' the rest."
"My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door," said Emmy
Lou.
But it was Sadie's hour. "Our minister's coming," said Sadie.
Emmy Lou's part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby
forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of the
soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie's tearful
allusion to an untimely grave.
Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. She was to advance one
foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of orphan for whom
no asylum was offered, "We know not where we go." All day, Emmy Lou had
been saying it at intervals of half minutes, for fear she might forget.
Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so of two o'clock, the orphaned
heroes continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.
"Listen," said Hattie, "I hear music."
There was a church across the street. It was a large church with high
steps and a pillared portico, and its doors were open.
"It's a band, and marching," said Hattie.
The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning the
corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men and boys
accompanied it.
"It's a funeral," said Sadie.
Hattie turned with a face of conviction. "I know. It's that big
general's funeral; they're bringing him home to bury him with the
soldiers."
"We'll never see a thing for the crowd," despaired Sadie.
Emmy Lou was gazing. "They've got plumes in their hats," she said.
"Let's go over on the church steps and see it go by," said Hattie, "it's
early."
The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the steps.
At the top they turned. There were plumes and more, there were flags and
swords, and a band led. But at the church, with unexpected abruptness,
the band halted, turned; it fell apart, and the procession came through;
it came right on through and up the steps, a line of uniforms and swords
on either side from curb to pillar, and halted.
Aghast, between two glittering files, the orphaned children shrank into
the shadow behind a pillar, while upstreamed from the carriages below
an unending line--bare-headed men and ladies bearing flowers. Behind,
below, about, closing in on every side, crowded people, a sea of people.
The orphaned children found themselves swept from their hiding by the
crowd and unwillingly jostled forward into prominence.
A frowning man, with a sword in his hand, seemed to be threatening
everybody; his face was red and his voice was big, and he glittered with
many buttons. All at once he caught sight of the orphaned children and
threatened them vehemently.
"Here," said the frowning man, "right in here," and he placed them in
line. The orphaned children were appalled, and even in the face of the
man cried out in protest. But the man of the sword did not hear, for
the reason that he did not listen. Instead he was addressing a large
and stout lady immediately behind them.
"Separated from the family in the confusion, the grandchildren
evidently--just see them in, please."
And suddenly the orphaned children found themselves a part of the
procession as grandchildren. The nature of a procession is to proceed.
And the grandchildren proceeded with it. They could not help themselves.
There was no time for protest, for, pushed by the crowd, which closed
and swayed above their heads, and piloted by the stout lady close
behind, they were swept into the church and up the aisle, and when they
came again to themselves were in the inner corner of a pew near the
front.
The church was decked with flags. So was the Third Reader room. It was
hung with flags for The Exhibition.
Hattie in the corner nudged Sadie. Sadie urged Emmy Lou, who, next to
the stout lady, touched her timidly. "We have to get out; we've got to
say our parts."
"Not now," said the lady, reassuringly; "the program is at the
cemetery."
Emmy Lou did not understand, and she tried to tell the lady.
"S-h-," said the person, engaged with the spectacle and the crowd;
"sh-h-" Abashed, Emmy Lou sat, sh-h-ed.
Hattie arose. It was terrible to rise in church, and at a funeral, and
the church was filled, the aisles were crowded, but Hattie rose. Hattie
was a St. George, and a Dragon stood between her and The Exhibition.
She pushed by Sadie, and past Emmy Lou. Hattie was slim as she was
strenuous, but not even so slim a little girl as Hattie could push by
the stout lady, for she filled the space.
At Hattie's touch she turned. Although she looked good-natured, the
size and ponderance of the lady were intimidating. She stared at Hattie;
people were looking; it was in church; Hattie's face was red.
"You can't get to the family," said the lady; "you couldn't move in
the crowd. Besides I promised to see to you. Now be quiet," she added
crossly, when Hattie would have spoken. She turned away. Hattie crept
back vanquished by this Dragon.
"So suitably dressed," the stout lady was saying to a lady beyond;
"grandchildren, you know. Even their little handkerchiefs have
black borders." The service began, and there fell on the unwilling
grandchildren the submission of awe. The stout lady cried, she also
punched Emmy Lou with her elbow whenever that little person moved, but
finally she found courage to turn her head so she could see Sadie. Sadie
was weeping into her black-bordered handkerchief, nor were they tears
of histrionic talent. They were real tears. People all about were
looking at her sympathetically. Such grief in a grandchild was very
moving. It may have been minutes; it seemed to Emmy Lou hours, before
there came a general uprising. Hattie stood up. So did Sadie and Emmy
Lou. Their skirts no longer stood out jauntily; they were quite crushed
and subdued. There was a wild, hunted look in Hattie's eyes. "Watch
the chance!" she whispered, "and run."
But it did not come. As the pews emptied, the stout lady passed Emmy Lou
on, addressing some one beyond. "Hold to this one," she said, "and I'll
take the other two, or they'll get tramped in the crowd."
Slowly the crowd moved, and being a part of it, however unwillingly,
Emmy Lou moved, too, out of the church and down the steps. Then came
the crashing of the band and the roll of the carriages, and she found
herself in the front row on the curb.
The man with the brandishing sword was threatening violently. "One more
carriage is here for the family," called the man with the sword. His
glance in search for the family suddenly fell on Emmy Lou. She felt it
fall.
The problem solved itself for the man with the sword, and his brow
cleared.
"Grandchildren next," roared the threatening man. "Keep an eye on
them--separated from the family," he was explaining, and in spite of
their protests, a moment later the three little girls were lifted into
the carriage, and as the door banged, their carriage moved with the
rest up the street.
"Now," said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door. It would not
open. Through the carriage windows the school, with its arched doorways
and windows, gazed frowningly, reproachfully. A gentleman entered the
gate and went in the doorway.
"It's our minister," said Sadie, weeping afresh. Then Hattie wept and
so did Emmy Lou. What would The Exhibition do without them?
Late that afternoon a carriage stopped at a corner upon which a school
building stood. Since his charges were infantile affairs, the colored
gentleman on the box thought to expedite matters and drop them at the
corner nearest their homes. Descending, he flung open the door, and
three little girls crept forth, three crushed little girls, three limp
little girls, three little girls in a mild kind of mourning. They came
forth timidly. They looked around. They hoped they might reach their
homes unobserved.
There was a crowd up the street. A gathering of people--many people.
It seemed to be at Emmy Lou's gate. Hattie and Sadie lived farther on.
"It must be a fire," said Hattie.
But it wasn't. It was The Exhibition, the Principal, and Miss Carrie,
and teachers and pupils, and mammas and aunties and Uncle Charlie.
"An' grand'ma," said Hattie. "And the visiting lady," said Emmy Lou.
"And our minister," said Sadie.
The gathering of many people caught sight of them presently, and came
to meet them, three little girls in mild mourning.
The parents and guardians led them home.
Emmy Lou was tired. At supper she nodded and mild mourning and all,
suddenly she collapsed and fell asleep, her head against her chair.
Uncle Charlie woke her. He stood her up on the chair, and held out his
arms. "Come," he said, "Come, suit the action to the word."
Emmy Lou woke suddenly, the words smiting her ears with ominous import.
She thought the hour had come; it was The Exhibition. She stood stiffly,
she advanced a cautious foot, her chubby hand described a careful half
circle. Emmy Lou spoke her part.
"We know not where we go."
[B] Copyright, 1901, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
The Dancing School and Dicky[C]
BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[From "The Little God and Dicky."]
[We have debated long and earnestly which of the seven stories
in "The Madness of Phillip and Other Tales of Childhood" is the
best public reading. As yet we have no decision; certainly six
of them are among the choicest readings of child-life which may
be found in American literature, where we have the real child in
books. With the permission of the author and the publishers,
McClure, Phillips & Co., New York, we reprint cuttings from two
of these stories.]
"Where are you going?" said somebody, as he slunk out toward the
hat-rack.
"Oh, out."
"Well, see that you don't stay long. Remember what it is this
afternoon."
He turned like a stag at bay.
"_What_ is it this afternoon?" he demanded viciously.
"You know very well."
"_What?_"
"See that you're here, that's all. You've got to get dressed."
"I will not go to that old dancing school again, and I tell you that
I won't, and I won't. And I won't!"
"Now, Dick, don't begin that all over again. It's so silly of you.
You've got to go."
"Why?"
"Because it's the thing to do."
"Why?"
"Because you must learn to dance."
"Why?"
"Every nice boy learns."
"Why?"
"That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from
the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your
father. Ain't you ashamed of yourself? Get right up--you must expect to
be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying--a great boy
like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you
aren't crying for that at all. Come along!"
His sister flitted by the door, her accordeon-plaited skirt held
carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening, blue-knotted
pigtails.
"Hurry up, Dick, or we'll be late," she called back sweetly.
"Oh, you shut up, will you!" he snarled.
She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the
rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the
sin that deceived even her older sister who was dressing her.
A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course
of events there.
"Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don't know where the blue one is--it
doesn't matter; that it just as good. Yes, it is. No, you cannot. You
will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don't know why.
"Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense,
your legs are warm enough. I don't believe you. Now, Richard, how
perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to stockings. You have
no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then.
Because they are made so, I suppose. I don't know why.
"Brush it more on that side--no, you can't go to the barbers. You went
last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don't know how to
trim hair. Anyway, there isn't time now. It will have to do. Stop your
scowling for goodness' sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes
no difference, you must carry one. You _ought_ to want to use it. Well,
you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I
don't know why.
"Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday
before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw
such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put
them right with Ruth's. That's what the bag was made for. Well, how
do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly!
You will knot the strings. I don't care if they do carry skates that
way--skates are not slippers. You'd lose them. Very well, then, only
hurry up. I should think you'd be ashamed to have them dangling around
your neck that way. Because people never _do_ carry them so. I don't
know why.
"Now, here's your coat. Well, I can't help it, you have no time to hunt
for them. Put your hands in your pockets--it's not far. And mind, don't
run for Ruth every time. You don't take any pains with her, and you
hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes,
you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way,
Richard. Men don't dance with their sisters. Because they don't. I don't
know why."
He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his
scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She
tripped along contentedly--she liked to go. The personality capable of
extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension,
and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at
every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This
gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.
"I think you might stop. Everybody's looking at you! Please stop, Dick
Pendleton; you're a mean old thing. I should think you'd be ashamed to
carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter
me I shall tell papa--you _will_ care, when I tell him just the same!
You're just as bad as you can be. I shan't speak with you to-day!"
She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed
his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and
passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a
brother and a plush bag going dutifully and daintily to dancing school.
He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the
head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper.
This destroyed his friend's balance, and a cheerful scuffle followed.
Life assumed a more hopeful aspect.
A shrill whistle called them out in two crowded bunches to the polished
floor.
Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss
Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train--but no! There she
was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that puffed
out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking
castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt.
"Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!"
The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered out
the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.
Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy's pointed shoes. They
slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy insteps;
the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the right side
of the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts at an alluring
angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered diligently through mystic
evolutions.
The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic pauses between; sharp clicks
of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose gradually
towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily about, crossed
behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts resumed the first
position.
A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers and
aunts.
"Isn't that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren't they
graceful, really, now!"
"_One_, two, three! _One_, two three! Slide, slide, cross; _one_, two,
three!"
There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the
dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to frequent
assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing futility. Among
such, however, you shall seek in vain in future years for Richard Carr
Pendleton.
"_One_, two, three! _Reverse_, two, three!"
The whistle shrilled.
"Ready for the two-step, children?"
A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better the two-step
than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does
not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the
time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably.
Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously.
"Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet?" said somebody.
Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little
girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously.
She was ethereally slender, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned. A
little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped over her knees; her ankles
were bird-like. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed
lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the
time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step; that metronomic
dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment.
Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the
art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the
loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time,
and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to
sympathize with clay.
"Don't they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!"
he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.
"What's your name?" he asked abruptly after the dance.
"Thithelia," she lisped. She was very shy.
"Mine's Richard Carr Pendleton. My father's a lawyer. What's yours?"
"I--I don't know!"
"Pooh!" he said, grandly; "I guess you know. Don't you, really?"
She shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her eyes.
"Maybe I know," she murmured. "I gueth I know. He--he'th a really
thtate!"
"A really state? That isn't anything--nothing at all. A really state?"
He frowned at her. Her lip quivered. She turned and ran away.
"Here, come back!" he called; but she was gone.
"That will do for to-day," said Miss Dorothy, presently, and they surged
into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled out of draughts
and trundled home.
She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then enveloped in
a hooded cloak; she looked like an angelic brownie. Dicky ran to her as
a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and tugged at the ribbon of
her cloak.
"Where do you live? Say, where do you?" he demanded.
"I--I don't know." The woman laughed.
"Why, yes, you do, Cissy. Tell him directly, now."
She put one tiny finger in her mouth.
"I--I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet," he called as the door slammed
and shut her in.
His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and opened
a running criticism of the afternoon.
"Did you ever see anybody act like that Fannie Leach? She's awfully
rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice--wasn't that dreadful? What made
you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She's an awful baby--a regular
fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy--do you like her?"
"She's the prettiest one there!"
"Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She's so little--she's not half so
pretty as Agnes, or--or lots of the girls. She's such a baby. She puts
her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you ask
her a single thing she does like this: 'I don't know, I don't know!'"
He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it?
"And she can't talk plain! She lisps--truly she does!"
Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his!
"She puts her finger in her mouth! She can't talk plain!" Alas, my
sisters, it was Helen's finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de
Poitiers stammered!
For two long months the little girl led him along the primrose way. The
poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it was but
a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him. That very night
he reached the top of the wave.
He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by
mistake, and never knew the difference. His sister laughed derisively,
and explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last spoonful, but
he only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.
"I dreamed that it was dancing school. And I went. And I was the only
fellow there. And what do you think? _All the little girls were
Cecilia!_"
They gasped.
"You don't suppose he'll be a poet, do you? Or a genius, or anything?"
his mother inquired anxiously.
"No!" his father returned. "I should say he was more likely to be a
Mormon!"
[C] Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
"A Model Story in the Kindergarten"[D]
BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[From "The Madness of Philip." McClure, Phillips & Company.]
It was evident that something was wrong that morning with the children
of the kindergarten. Two perplexed teachers were quieting the latest
outbreak and marshaling a wavering line of very little people when the
youngest assistant appeared on the scene.
"Miss Hunt wants to know why you're so late with them," she inquired.
"She hopes nothing's wrong. Mrs. R. B. M. Smith is here to-day to visit
the primary schools and kindergartens, and--"
"Oh, goodness," exclaimed a teacher, abruptly, ceasing her attempted
consolation of Marantha Judd. "I can't _bear_ that woman! She's always
read Stanley Hall's _last_ article that proves that what he said before
was wrong! Come along, Marantha, don't be a foolish little girl any
longer. We shall be late for the morning exercise."
Upstairs a large circle was forming under the critical scrutiny of a
short, stout woman with crinkly, gray hair. This was Mrs. R. B. M.
Smith, who, when the opening exercises were finished, signified her
willingness to relate to the children a model story, calling the
teacher's attention in advance to the almost incredible certainty that
would characterize the children's anticipation of the events judiciously
and psychologically selected.
The arm-chairs shortly to contain so much accurate anticipation were
at last arranged and the children sat decorously attentive, their faces
turned curiously toward the strange lady with the fascinating plumes in
her bonnet.
"Nothing like animals to bring out the protective instinct--feebler
dependent on the stronger," she said rapidly to the teachers, and then
addressed the objects of these theories.
"Now, children, I'm going to tell you a nice story--you all like
stories, I'm sure."
At just this moment little Richard Willetts sneezed loudly and
unexpectedly to all, himself included, with the result that his
ever-ready suspicion fixed upon his neighbor, Andrew Halloran, as the
direct cause of the convulsion. Andrew's well-meant efforts to detach
from Richard's vest the pocket-handkerchief securely fastened thereto
by a large black safety-pin strengthened the latter's conviction of
intended assault and battery, and he squirmed out of the circle and made
a dash for the hall--the first stage in an evident homeward expedition.
This broke in upon the story, and even when it got under way again there
was an atmosphere of excitement quite unexplained by the tale itself.
"Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, _what_ do you think I
saw?" The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that
Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested:
"An el'phunt?"
"Why, no! Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It wasn't _nearly_
so big as that--it was a _little_ thing!"
"A fish?" ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in the
corner. The _raconteuse_ smiled patiently.
"Why, no! How could a fish, a live fish, get in my front yard?"
"A dead fish?" persisted Eddy, who was never known to relinquish
voluntarily an idea.
"It was a little kitten," said the story-teller, decidedly. "A little
white kitten. She was standing right near a great big puddle of water.
And what else do you think I saw?"