up, like any other playwright and manager of the time, a play that had evidently struck the popular fancy, found it a barren story of revenge, with a murder, a ghost, a good deal of bloodshed, and some striking lines and phrases. There was apparently nothing much to be made out of this. But the poet's imagination, and his intense interest in character, seized on the one point in which there lay a possibility. He took the merely external causes of delay, as the old piece represented them, and transformed them into internal subjective motives, arising out of the very nature of the man himself. The whole play now turns, not upon the guards which surround the King or the banishment of the hero to England, but upon Hamlet's own character, the almost morbid imagination which always interposes between him and his purposed action, his predominant reflectiveness, his humor, his profound scepticism. It is obvious what a fitting vehicle the drama thus became for Shakespeare's favorite moralizing, and for the meditations on life and on death, which seem to mark especially the plays of the Hamlet' period; while, on the other hand, the shrewd. practical judgment of the actor and mana ger is shown in his selection of an existing play which supplied a succession of varied and attractive scenes for representation. But it supplied only a framework. Anyone reading the German Hamlet' will find nothing but a sort of lay figure which Shakespeare adorned with his wit and humor and philosophy, while the element which has made it live was wholly original, for it is the character of Hamlet himself. In fact, the old play, if the German actually represents it, is the real justification for the hackneyed saying; for it gives us the play of 'Hamlet' with the character of Hamlet left out."

NEED OF SYSTEMATIC PHYSICAL TRAINING IN SCHOOLS OF ELOCUTION.

"No one is more willing to yield homage to great philosophers and teachers of pantomime, such as Delsarte and MacKaye; the plea I make is that these truths should be taught to people whose bodies have been properly prepared for them," writes Mary C. Freeston, in the Posse Gymnasium Journal for November. This position is maintained effectively in substance as follows:

"I think the foundation-work in expression should be deeper and firmer. The day is fast coming when we shall no longer talk of German, French, or Swedish gymnastics (and I hope the day is passed when anyone will venture to talk of a Delsarte System of Gymnastics), only of gymnastics, which is, or ought to be, ranked with the other sciences. Until that day comes, because of its broad underlying principles, and because it is the outcome of scientific research, I say the introduction of the Swedish System of Gymnastics in schools of elocution is both a necessity and a duty. Let us have more Delsarte teaching as to movements of head and torso, hand and foot; let us practice

opening the hand as we have seen the flower unfold its petals; but, with it all, let us have a training of the body that will make the one who has mastered these truths strong enough to delight us with his acquirements, not elicit our compassion for defects or weaknesses. I am a believer in the great truths of Delsarte, but the best teachers I have ever known were not remarkable for the beauty of their movements. They could explain poise, but they lacked it. Repose is one of the things we must have, but they lacked it. But that some living body can embody all these truths I have faith to believe. We must have ideals. I have seen very many of these truths exemplified by such people as Terry, Bernhardt, and Modjeska, and on the side of 'organic' gymnastics I have seen those who have taken too many Del sarte' exercises (to the exclusion of others) made beautiful by taking what they had previously neglected-systematic care of the body as to its functions and as a whole Too often in schools where some gymnastic work is done, the teacher works to eradicate faults by movements of extensions, and neglects the other phase, which is possibly quite as much needed-the movements of contractions to develop the pupils' srength.

"As before mentioned, while health is the watchword in this work, that is but a fraction of what we hope to attain and to gain. With health comes the physical effects of balance and coordination. The training of the body as a whole eradicates mannerisms, that bane of a reader's success. Large, roundabout movements, that so clearly indicate lack of culture and breeding, can soon be replaced by strong, direct movements. The elemental movements make the groundwork for differentiation, and the simple movement takes the place of the mixed or chaotic movement. Is not this a basis for pantomimic work?"

MUSIC AND ART IN EDUCATION.

The American composer, E. A. MacDowell, of Columbia University, contributes a paper to the University Bulletin, on the relation of music to modern educational ideals. He insists that music should be included among the elements of liberal culture. We quote:

"Until the minor institutions include some preparatory musical training in their curricula, university work in the art must be something of a compromise, if it is to appeal to more than a very few. Music occupies a peculiar position in our culture. Without having been generally recognized as an element of school or university training, it has succeeded in slipping into our lives without official recognition. The result is that it is studied seriously only by specialists. In other words, our doctors, lawyers, literary and scientific men generally know but little of the art except that which comes to them through the medium

of social intercourse. The most painful ignorance is often displayed by novelists and by poets, when they write of music; and but few learned men, even among the very greatest, have grasped the fact that in ignoring music, they have deprived themselves of one of the most precious boons granted mankind. A man of great attainments once remarked to a friend of mine that he understood music was pleasing to women and children, but to him it was not only a bore, but positively offensive.' It is shameful to our civilization that a university-bred man could display such ignorance. With painting, and perhaps sculpture, it is somewhat better, and a remark such as the above would hardly be ventured upon with reference to these arts. Still, before a picture is bought nowadays, an expert is generally consulted to determine its artistic value. This state of things is all the more humiliating, inasmuch as it is entirely unnecessary."

To this may be added a paragraph from the Philadelphia Record, approving a paper by Daniel Batchellor, read before the Pennsylvania Musical Teachers' Association, on "Learning to Sing as a Means of Mental Training: "

"Of course, musicians are apt to overemphasize the importance of a highly technical equipment on the part of the listener, just as artists frequently insist more on their color-scheme and studio minutiæ than upon their subject or its general treatment. In reading poetry, it is not neces sary for the reader to understand one syllable about cæsura, ictus, iamb, trochee, and such metrical matters. He may judge the prosody by its appeal to his own mind. The great poet speaks in an eloquence appreciable without a technical knowledge of rhythm and of metre. So, too, although music be a sort of divine science of mathematics, if the composer shall thoroughly express his thought, it will find some translation, at least, in the imagination of the listener. Nevertheless, the purely sensuous enjoyment of music is much like a love for perfume or for alcohol. Music, in such circumstances, intoxicates rather than inspires; and it certainly can not be said to be noble, from the point of view of the auditor, nor to realize Browning's words that

'There is no truer truth obtainable By man than comes from music.' Yet there are intelligent persons who placidly confess a total indifference to the science of music, when they would be insulted if anyone should declare that they were unable to tell true poetry from doggerel or true art from tea-store chromos. Music, indeed, not only needs brains for its understanding, but is naturally as good mental discipline as mathematics or Greek. Its study should certainly be restored to the curriculum of our schools; for what science or art tends more in our day to the human happiness? Restore music to the dignity which it enjoyed in the educational system of the ancients!"

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VOWEL-MOLDING.

"I sometimes tell my pupils" says Mme. Florenza D'Arona, in the New York Musical Courier,to "imagine little children with hands joined together, making a ring around a rubber-ball attached to a tube from a reservoir, and never permitting that ball to inflate large enough to touch the ring. The ring is the hard-palate; tongue, cheeks, and lips adjusting themselves; the vowel mold is the ball, the lungs are the reservoir, and the diaphragm is the pump. The direction in which the mold of the vowel and 'tone form' receives the vibratory breath and breath support determines the ease and the elasticity of the voice. Distinguishing these unadulterated and distinctive vowelmolds, and the possibilities in their varied shades of color, and knowing the wonderful difference in resonance, and how to make use of it, open the way to an expression of the emotions."

FUTURE OF ENGLISH SPELLING.

Discussing the recent movement in the United States for spelling reform, and the slight encouragement it is receiving at the hands of the public, the editor of Chicago Dial reviews the grounds for conservative opposition and also points out some mistakes of the reformers. We quote what he says about the opinions of Mr. Smith, the editor of the Century Dictionary:

"The conservative could ask for no better statement than the following, of the reason that chiefly influences him in opposing any radical change. This reason is the closelyknit association, in all minds, between the form of the printed word, or of the printed page, and the spiritual atmosphere which breathes through our language and literature. There is a deep-rooted feeling that the existing printed form is not only a symbol but the most fitting symbol of our mother tongue, and that a radical change in this symbol must inevitably impair for us the beauty and the spiritual effectiveness of that which it symbolizes. Could the literary spirit, even of a Shakespeare, we feel, retain for us undiminished its delicacy and power if clothed in the spelling of the

Fonetic Nuz?" The feeling thus expressed is akin to that which makes us enjoy literature far more in the pages of a comely and carefully-studied volume than we could enjoy the same work in some cheap and tasteless reprint. This, of course, is only one of the reasons for which a wholesale change in our spelling is opposed by so many earnest thinkers. There are other weighty considerations; such as the danger of making the great mass of printed literature in the least degree difficult of access for the average reader, and the danger of obscuring etymologies, of which too much has doubtless been made but which remains a real danger in spite of the many efforts to minimize it. We must also remember that the arguments made in behalf of reform are often greatly overstated. We are given the

wildest estimates of the amount of money that might be saved in our printing bills, of the number of years that might be saved in the work of primary education, of the obstacles that might be removed from the path of foreign students of our language. All of these arguments have weight, but they do not have anything like the weight given them by phonetic extremists.

"It may safely be said that English spelling will continue to undergo the modification in the direction of rationality, that has marked its development in the past, and at a probably accelerated rate. It may be said with equal safety, that no other sort of change is possible. It is our opinion that no other change is, all things considered, desirable, and that each simplified spelling proposed must be judged upon its own merits, submitting to a test in which feeling and instinct are given as much weight as logic, before it shall receive permanent acceptance in our speech. There are,' we quote from Mr. Smith once more, 'in the variations of our existing orthography allowed by the dictionaries and in the occasional innovations of influential writers which are accepted by the public without any jarring of the nerves, the beginnings of a movement which, if continued along its own lines and gradually pushed to a consistent conclusion, will result in a vast simplification and rationalizing of our language.'"

INDIAN SONGS.

An interesting article on Indian songs is contributed to the Boston Leader for January, by Warren K. Moorhead, who describes the religious nature of the dances of the Messiah craze in the Northwest. Nearly all Indian songs, it is said, are sung in a high minor key, which largely accounts for their sadness, although the Indians at heart are far from a sad people. Two Chippewa songs are given, "which may be properly considered as chief and national anthems among that tribe seventy-five years ago:'

CHIPPEWA DEATH CHANT.

"I fall; but my body shall lie a name for the gallant to tell;

The gods shall repeat it on high, and youths be made brave by the spell.'

CHIPPEWA WAR-SONG.

"The eagles scream on high, they whet their forked beaks.

Raise, raise the battle-cry, 'tis fame our leader seeks!"

The writer continues:

"Both of these are exceedingly strong and stirring, and would do credit to a civilized nation of to-day; but they have been cbanged in the course of contact with the whites, and to day something of their original strength and beauty is wanting. Anyone who has a knowledge of the Indians of the old buffalo days' can easily imagine a stoical warrior who has received his death

The

wound feebly chanting the song which none but the brave were allowed to sing. war-song was usually sung by the head chief, just previous to the departure of the war-party. The terrible Iroquois of two centuries ago had a song which was in many respects like that of the Chippewas. When a war-party left the village, the head man would slowly sing the war-song, and, as he completed it, the brave immediately behind him continued it, and thus it was passed along the line. As each man finished he fired his gun.

"Two ghost-dance songs particularly were sung at the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota, by the Ogallalla Sioux six years ago. These songs were purely religious. The Sioux fervently believed in the coming of a Messiah, and danced and sang in his honor, in direct obedience to communications received, through the medicinemen, from the Spirit Land. In order that this may be properly understood, it will be necessary to tell something concerning the dance. The assistants of the medicine-men prepared a level strip of ground, by pulling up sage-brush, mesquite, etc. A small tree was planted in the centre of the space selected, and about it the people arranged themselves in a circle, all joining hands. Only converts to the new doctrine stood in the circle, all others remained without and looked on. After a short harangue by the chief doctor, the medicine-men in unison began slowly to chant the first ghost-dance song-A te he ye lo,' etc. The people would join after the song had been sung through once by the leader. One can scarcely imagine a weirder scene than was presented at the assembly ground. Often 300 people participated in the ceremony, while possibly three or four times that number were spectators.

"It went thus: In English: 'Come here, my mother; my younger brother is walking and crying. Come here, my mother; come here, my mother. This the Father said; this the Father said.'

Occasionally the singers would vary from one song to the other, but readers can judge of the monotony of the music when I tell them that the first song was often sung for two hours without change. During the singing, the priest and his assistants were busily engaged in running about the circle, waving eagle feathers in the faces of those who had become wellnigh hypnotized by the continuous moving of the circle toward the left. The chief priest would often stop and gaze earnestly into the eyes of some subject, wave his hands gently through the air, and conduct himself much after the manner of the modern mesmerist. The dance seldom continued more than half an hour before several persons were under the control of the priest. Those susceptible to mesmeric influences fell into a deep sleep and during its continuance saw remarkable visions.'

DUSE AND HER ART.

To the old discussion as to whether an actor should lose himself in his part or retain his personality, Eleanora Duse, one of the greatest living actresses, is reported to have made the following contribution, by a writer for Demorest's Magazine:

"Can anyone believe that an artist is nothing better than an automaton? Can anyone believe that one can be Othello, Mercadet, Oswald, Armand, Hamlet, Loris, without becoming, for the time being, to the inmost depths of one's soul each of these men, with all his passions and mental torture? May I be pardoned if I quote myself as an example? Analyze me, study me, when I am on the stage. My poor, tortured nerves vibrate horribly, my blood boils, my pulse throbs, my heart palpitates quickly, my brain seems about to give way. If you watch me closely, you will see that I am unconscious of my presence on the stage, that I forget the scenic fiction and live the reality, that I am not myself, but Magda or Cæsarine, Marguerite or Mirandolina, Cyprienne or Fedora. I laugh with them, weep with them, rave, struggle, and betray with them. I give myself away, I refuse myself, I revenge myself, I live, love, and die. It is the poison of Fedora that is mine, really in my body. It is genuine consumption, the ravaging, terrible consumption which chokes me in the arms of Armand."

IDEAL PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS.

According to Chicago Men the ideal physical measurements are:

"The neck, the arms up and the legs, around the calves, should measure about the same. The upper arms down should measure from two to two and a half inches more than the forearms. The circumference of a shoulder should be about four inches more than that of the neck. The circumference of the shoulders should be about four inches more than that of the muscular chest inflated. The difference between the expanded and the unexpanded respiratory chest should be about four inches. The muscular chest expanded should be eight or ten inches larger than the smallest natural waist. The chest width should be about two and a half inches more than the chest depth. The largest hip measurement should be four or five inches larger than the smallest natural waist measurement. The thigh

should measure six or seven inches more than the calf."

A SCHOOL OF AMERICAN MUSIC.

The controversy as to whether there is an American school of music is still pending, but, according to the New York Tribune, we have both an older and a younger generation of American composers. It says:

"Not one of them, old or young, has made himself so generally felt throughout

the country as Dudley Buck, The reason is, probably, because he has so consistently and persistently labored in fields which belong to the thousands instead of the few. No one is fonder of indulging in lofty ideals than he, but he seems to look upon such an indulgence as a luxury which must not interfere with the more practical activities which fill his daily life Symphonies, chamber music, and operas lie in his desk, and their number will probably be increased before pause is given to his stupendous industry, but they are the fruits of his betweentimes labors, of the moments which he sets aside for his own delectation, when he can humor himself rather than his publisher. The rest of his days and evenings (for Dudley Buck is never idle) go into work which is felt from Maine to California. The bulk of his church music, sung every Sunday in the cities, towns and villages of the United States, is probably larger than that of any five other composers for the Protestant service. His influence does not stop there, however. Through his books he teaches the organ to hundreds who have never seen him. His songs are heard in the concertrooms, his part songs for men's voices are in the repertory of every American gleeclub, and his cantatas and oratorios, though they must, in the nature of things, have fewer performances than the works of less scope and magnitude, have an honorable place in the concert-record of the United States. A pervasive influence, indeed, in American music has been that of Dudley Buck for the last twenty years."

THE STANDARD OF CONGRESSIONAL ORATORY.

Henry Cabot Lodge, United States senator from Massachusetts, contends, in the New York Herald, that the average quality of oratory among us, as shown in congres. sional debates, is probably higher than ever before. Against the habitual sneers with reference to Congress, Senator Lodge affirms "even a disposition," on the part of Americans, "to struggle for a place in this degenerate assembly." He adds:

"The truth is that if anyone will take the trouble to follow the debates, a privilege which the general public does not now enjoy, he will find that, while there is unquestion ably a certain amount of ignorance and cheap talk and empty declamation inseparable from any popular representative assembly, the discussion, on the whole, is carried on vigorously and effectively, and with a great deal of special information on the many and varied subjects which come before both the Senate and the House."

Senator Lodge avers that the causes of the evils that exist and the obstacles to the improvements which might be made are largely mechanical, or the mere outgrowth of custom. The chamber of the House of Representatives is too large, and should be divided so that visiting and private business

might be separated from the debating floor. The Senate needs new rules. Senator

Lodge believes that if the Congressional Record was abolished, the press would adequately report speeches and both improve their quality and give people better judgment regarding them. The current notion that oratory has greatly declined in Congress since the days of Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, is erroneous, according to Senator Lodge. These men, particularly Webster, were exceptional rather than representative:

"In all history the number of orators in the class to which Webster belongs can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Webster not only had all the qualities, physical and mental, which oratory of the highest kind demands and in the largest degree, but he had also the literary gift, the gift of style, so that his speeches are not only oratory but literature, and are recited, quoted, and studied, while those of all his contemporaries, great and small, slumber on the shelves unread. Webster, however, is so exceptional that he destroys the average of his time, and it is the average quality of oratory which it is most important to value rightly in discerning its merits or its defects in any large representative body. Looked at in this way, I think it may be fairly said that the general average of oratory and debate among the English-speaking people everywhere is higher to-day than ever before, or, to put the same thing in another way, there are more men in public life now who can speak forcibly and well than at any previous time.

There are fashions in public speaking just as there are in dress, and the form and the manner of one time may easily seem strange and wrong if tried by that of another and not by general and lasting principles. The stately sentences, elaborate forms, and rounded periods of the early and middle 18th century melted before the fierce fire of the French Revolution, when there came such an awakening of the mind of Europe and of America, and when the genius of the new time broke forth in every field of human endeavor. Oratory then cast off the conventions of the earlier period and became more glowing, richer in metaphor and in allusion, more dramatic and more intense. It was a very great period in this as in every other way. Then came the romantic movement, which was felt in speech as in literature. There was more sentiment and less earnestness than in the Revolutionary period; more rhetoric of the kind we should now call florid,' more elaboration, more of what in literature would be called 'fine writing.' Against this fashion of oratory the modern style is largely a reaction. What is aimed at now is simplicity and directness, clear, business-like statements, and an effort to convince and persuade by addressing the reason rather than by appealing to the passions or the emotions. That, in the main, the modern movement has been sound and that it has caused a return to better models and to a better style than that of the middle

of the century can not, I think, be questioned. At the same time, there is always danger of carrying the principle too far, and the tendency of modern oratory is to become too cold and dry. The oratory which abounds in flowers of speech and rhetorical flourishes is to be avoided sedulously, but it is also true that public speech which tends to become little more than a statistical report or a lawyer's brief is not much better. To move men really in any cause or for any purpose, we must touch their hearts as well as convince their heads, and in the effort to place facts before one's hearers in plain and direct fashion, it is not well to abandon all search for the beauties which imagination affords and which a rich and noble language can express.

"Yet, after all deductions are made, it still remains true, as I have said, that the average quality of public speaking among those who use the English tongue is probably higher now than ever before. This is owing to many causes-to the vast spread of the English race; to the wide diffusion of education; and to the multiplication of representative bodies, not only in America, but in Australia, Africa, and in England itself, which afford countless opportunities for training in debate and in public speech unknown a century ago. Many persons think that these opportunities are too numerous, and that we suffer from an oversupply of talk. Possibly there is justice in the criticism, but we must take the bad with the good, and if the advantages overbalance the drawbacks, be well content. Despite the railings of Carlyle, who, with unconscious humor, preached his gospel of silence in some forty volumes, the system of government by debate has worked well in the hands of the English-speaking people, and has produced results in the way of progress, enlightenment, and human liberty, which can not be equaled in the history of any other

race.

HENRY ARTHUR JONES AS A DRAMATIST.

The recent production of a new play of his, and the revival of several others lead the critic of Harper's Weekly to define the status of Henry Arthur Jones in the dramatic life of the present day. He started out by writing melodramas, but his development has been rapid and continuous. We quote:

"Of all the dramatists who are contributing to the edification of the public of the present day, Mr. Jones is the most thoroughly in earnest. One has only to read his book of essays to realize that this writer takes himself with desperate seriousness. In the present pandemonium of folly and vulgarity, Mr. Jones is one of the few playwrights who believe that the theatre has a higher purpose than that of merely amusing. It seems a trifle paradoxical that a person of such gravity should be so deft a hand at comedy. Still, Molière was a misanthrope, and there is abundant internal evidence to show that the creator of Falstaff was of a