VII. EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION OF GESTURE VIII. NOTATION OF GESTURE Diagrams.-Positions of the feet Motions of the arms Exercises on transitions IX. GENERAL SCHEME OF NOTATION FOR ATTI- TUDE AND MOTION The feet, lower limbs and trunk The arms 68 69 placed The hands Parts of the body on which the hands may be 236 236 241 INTRODUCTION. ELOCUTION does not occupy the place it reasonably ought to fill in the curriculum of education. The causes of this neglect will be found to consist mainly of these two: the subject is undervalued, because it is misunderstood; and it is misunderstood because it is is unworthily represented in the great majority of books, which take its name on their title page; and, also by the practice of too many of its teachers, who make an idle display in Recitation the chief, if not the only end, of their instruction. When we point to the fact, that public speaking is a part of the professional duty of every Clergyman and Advocate, and no unusual part of the social duty of a private citizen; and that Public Speaking involves two distinct requirements,—a knowledge of what to say, and how to say it; and when we farther advert to the fact, that in the whole course of school and college education, either for private citizens or public speakers, only one of these requirements is systematically provided for, the inadequacy of the provision to the requirements cannot but be manifest. We naturally ask " why is this?" The reason, perhaps, may simply be, that so it is! We are all slaves of custom, and cannot, without much difficulty be brought to alter existing arrangements, however unreasonable. We are too apt to lazily acquiesce in things as they are, however wrong, and passively accept the doctrine that whatever is, is right." But, besides this natural conservatism, this unreason, which is the principal cause of the maintenance of all error, there is another cause which is indeed a reason for the anomaly referred to, although the reason itself will be admitted to be unreasonable : a prejudice exists against the cultivation of manner in Delivery. Prejudice,—that Reason's very opposite,—denounces manner as if it was a thing of no matter. "Manner" and "Matter" are |