in the cultivation of that art; but, according to the editor of the Chicago Chronicle, they should guard against certain tendencies which threaten to lower the present standard. The warning against insincerity and shallowness is as follows:

As an Italian listens to his own voice with perfect pleasure as he sings, so the American rejoices in his rounded periods. Schools of oratory are common here; more prizes are offered for oratory than for any other art. Men and women in the colleges east and west strive for the oratorical honors. Large audiences gather all over the country every year to listen to the oratorical contests. It follows, therefore, naturally enough, that the people of this country are qualified to criticize oratory. In fact, occasionally, they are fascinated by it, and a very fair minority of the voters of the whole country are sometimes put to it to discriminate between that which is merely oratorical in a presidential candidate and that which is statesmanlike. A man who can talk well enough of statecraft is apt to seem like a statesman.

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There is no denying that some of our most noted orators have been the possessors of more form than feeling; for example, Edward Everett, Emory Storrs, Robert Ingersoll, etc. The memoirs of Rev. Charles F. Deems contain an account of Mr. Everett's famous oration on Washington. Mr. Deems says of it: Every gesture was put in precisely where it should have been; every sentence was balanced; every tone studied. As a literary performance it was polished to perfection; but at the conclusion, I had not once felt my blood stirred, nor did I feel a greater veneration for Washington, whereupon I concluded that, with all its merits, it failed both as a philosophical inquiry and as an oration.'

At Gettysburg, it will be remembered that Mr. Everett talked for two hours. What he said has been forgotten. Mr. Lincoln talked fifteen minutes. What he said every school-child knows, and when men quote his words the heart grows hot with patriotic flame or the eyes moisten with uncontrollable tenderness.

66 Toward the cultivation of actual eloquence Americans should strive. In this country, where, sooner or later, the people have their will, where every town-hall is a forum and every state capitol a place of lawmaking, much depends upon the use of oratory. True, a man may reach the highest place in the nation without being an orator, but he could hardly have attained it without the assistance of orators."

THE STAGE AND POLITICS.

On the stage politics has met with but little encouragement. A few farce-comedies with political themes are popular, but in serious drama, politics would seem to have no place. J. H. Pence, in writing on this subject in Lippincott's Magazine, says:

"The heroes of Mr. Crane are not politicians; they are gentlemen of noble natures placed in what purports to be political environment. Refreshingly honest, exceptionally patriotic, they also derive much of their popularity from their amusing inability to make love. The Governor of Kentucky,' for instance, quietly submits to be chosen United States senator, while the arrest of a forger, the defeat of a railroad swindle, and a trio of humorous but not too lifelike courtships absorb his mind and the attention of the audience.

"Mr. Hoyt, in his farces, often touches upon modern politics, but is careful not to go much deeper than he can be followed by the dullest spectator. In his A Contented Woman' a wealthy resident of Denver put himself in nomination for mayor of the city, hoping that the office might be a stepping. stone to the governorship of the State and eventually to the national Senate. The worry of the campaign made him nervous, and one day when he was in a hurry to get out with the boys' a button came off his overcoat. His wife sewed it on several inches out of place; he got angry, and said,

Damn that button!' Because he did so, the wife consented to run against him, and was elected, only to find that not being twenty-one years of age she could not take the office. The action of the play is intended as a satire on the woman in politics. The Temperance Town,' Mr. Hoyt's masterpiece, as they say, is not on the face of things a political play. It is serious, an unusual thing for Mr. Hoyt, and deals with the temperance laws of New Hampshire,political conditions-although no election or candidate appears. It amounts to little

more or less than an attempt, a successful attempt in some ways, to throw deserved and undeserved ridicule upon the active, radical prohibitionists.

The play which perhaps more than any other deals seriously with American politics is Mr. Carleton's Ambition,' in which Nat Goodwin pleased the New York public and made a success last season. In it the political element is almost robust enough to stand alone.

Melodramatic though they are, the politicians of The Great Diamond Robbery' are life like in their villainy and trickery, if in nothing else. The play, however, contains a little of everything, possible and impossible, and a review of its political phases would not be profitable. To be understood it must be seen twice, at least.

"It can scarcely be said that there is more than one political play on the boards to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the political history of this country abounds in dramatic incidents, situations, and characters. If I

were asked to tell offhand why it is so, I should say, because the American dramatist has consented to receive with blind faith the dogma that love is the central theme of the drama, and according to the spirit of the age has allowed that central theme to acquire a monopoly. The writers who know society fairly well and can picture love and the lover in all plights, romantic and ludicrous, have not, as a rule, frequent opportunities to pry into the workings of political machinery. Being able to dispose of their work as it is, they see no reason for troubling themselves about the matter. When, however, some adventurous writer does break away from conventions and traditions, 'Shore Acres' or Pudd'nhead Wilson' is the successful outcome,-hopeful signs, indeed, but surely not the culmination of the American drama."

CORRECT WALKING TO PRESERVE FORM.

a

"Not one woman in hundred walks correctly," asserts Ida K. Hinds in Health-Culture. "The majority of them walk from the knee, not exercising the hips at all; and that is the reason so many fail to reduce the hips by walking. Then again they bring the centre of gravity over the heel instead of over the ball of the foot, giving prominence to the abdomen, jarring the spinal column and the base of the brain, and is the great cause of weariness and backache felt by many after walking; whereas, if they walked correctly, with swinging hip. light, elastic, springing step, they would find themselves not only refreshed but all their being responding to the ecstasy of perfect action, for there is laughter in such a walk. The whole being must laugh in response, for the action of the body affects the soul as much as the soul affects the body. So I would say to every woman: Learn to walk correctly; prepare your body by daily exercise, and then walk. If you are going ten blocks, walk-it is only half a mile; later take twenty blocks, and then forty. Do not fatigue yourself. Then you will not have to complain of poor digestion, headaches, too much fat. You can keep a good form if you will take the necessary trouble, and at much less cost than it takes to clothe the form.

"Many think that they can reduce their flesh by taking medicine, which, in many cases, destroys the health and seldom reduces the flesh where it needs to be reduced, and that is around the hips, and which correct walking with proper diet will always reduce. But you may walk all day with only knee motion and you will be no better off, only as you may be benefited by the fresh air breathed into your lungs. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Begin in time- and the time for most women to begin is after she has passed thirty. Then they must commence to keep the old age matter away from their joints and the flesh from accumulating around their hips, otherwise they may soon find that they are shut off from many pleasures of life."

THE INTELLECT IN ELOCUTION, That there is a brain side" to elocution is a truth which is rapidly gaining recognition. The case for greater attention to this side is put very strongly-too strongly some may say-in the following utterance of Alfred Ayres in the Dramatic Mirror. Mr. Ayres does not believe in voice-culture:

To those elocutionists who contend that a course in muscle-training, in voice-culture, must precede every other step in acquiring the elocutionary art; that it is useless to try to learn to read until one has trained the voice-to such elocutionists the field that the real elocutionist begins, continues, and ends with is an unknown realm. The veritable elocutionist, the elocutionist that recognizes the importance of cultivating the intellectual side of his art, in his teaching, gives little time to voice-culture, and that little he gives grudgingly. He knows that if his pupil is in earnest, a few simple hints, a directing word now and then, will suffice to enable him, little by little, to strengthen the voice-making apparatus and get it under control. He feels, he knows, that to take a pupil's time in putting him through a course of voice-exercises is to receive without making an equitable return. He knows that the pupil can exercise and develop the voice making muscles perfectly well without his immediate aid. Teachers that spend time in vocal culture are of the sort that contrive to make as many bites of the cherry as possible; that are ever intent on making the little they know go as far as they can; that are always studying to make the simple appear complex. The few things a reader has to do, in order to read well, offer difficulties so great that none ever attain to excellence but those who supplement natural aptitude with long and careful study. would not be understood to intimate that the gymnastic elocutionists are dishonest. To censure them for not knowing what they never have had an opportunity to learn, or even to know the existence of, obviously would be unfair. Few of us ever see anything that is not pointed out to us. fact, however, is still a fact that the brawn side of elocution is to the brain side as a

I

The

pond is to the Pacific. Mastery of the gymnastic side is within the easy reach of all."

BRUNETIÈRE ON FRENCH DRAMATIC ART.

The leading French critic and editor, Ferdinand Brunetière, while lecturing in this country on the development of French literature, devoted several lectures to tragedy and comedy, as represented by the great French classical dramatists. The first lecture of the course on French tragedy dealt with Corneille and the principles underlying his art and methods. He expressed himself as follows in part:

"French tragedy, a unique product of French genius, had a short but complete

have a favorite theory that the history of a literary species is the same as that of a natural species, and obeys the same laws, although the individual creator, the author, counts for much in its development. At the Renaissance there was a vast and general effort to reproduce the literary and artistic forms of antiquity, and in this case of French literature this effort was attended by an imitation of the Italian and Spanish literature of the date. Tragedy was for a long time excluded from France by the popularity of the pastoral poetry, and did not appear sporadically till 1628, with Melite,' Corneille's first drama.

In the eight years that elapsed before the production of The Cid' (1636) Corneille wrote eight dramas, which are little known and whose principal claim to interest is that they perfectly exemplify the Louis XIII. style in literature. One great merit of his is that he gave the freedom of the theatre to women, who in ancient and Renaissance drama had no share in it.

"Corneille is indebted to none of the ancients but Seneca, whose florid style unfortunately influenced him. What most inspired him was the actual. The Cid' is the reflection of the attitude in France toward dueling; Cinna' was suggested by the many conspiracies against Richelieu, Horace by the Spanish Invasion; 'Polyeucts' by the Jansenism then prevalent. The fact of having borrowed his plots makes him none the less original, as we are prone to think in these days of excessive copyright. He uses historical sources for his plots, because history furnishes innumerable illus. trations of his favorite theme-the conflict of the human will with external circumstance and with the passions.

"The general idea that his dramas are meant to portray the conflict of the will and the passions is an error; his master-idea is the triumph of the will. His heroes are preeminently heroes of the will; they overcome or are overcome by the will; they often commit crimes, but are always noble morally. The great difference between the drama and the novel lies in the role given the will, which in the novel is almost nil.

"When the will does not overcome obstacles we have tragedy; when it does we have tragi-comedy: when the will is in conflict with some social problem we have the modern drama; when the will is in conflict with trivial objects (as the choice of a hat, etc.) we have vaudeville.

"Tragedy and oratory are alike in that to each a public is absolutely indispensable; therefore, both concern themselves with matters of public interest. French drama is commonly supposed to have been most unfortunately tied to the three unities by an edict made by Richelieu at the suggestion of Chapelain. Nothing is more erroneous. The question was agitated in Spain in the 16th century and the unities introduced into France from there."

Another lecture was devoted to Racine, and the new elements introduced by him are thus pointed out:

Racine is the successor of Corneille, but by no means his disciple, as is generally supposed. Racine was familiar with Greek and in France those writers that know Greek are distinguished by certain family likeness. He has more sensibility-and more vivacity -than Corneille. We have a general impression that the court of Louis XIV. was very stilted, but there is no greater mistake. It was filled with young and gay people, and was the centre of France, then at the height of her glory. For such a court Corneille was both too abstract and too austere. Another point of difference between Corneille and Racine is in their styles. That of Corneille we have seen to be very florid, while Racine avails himself of the simplest language, and depends upon his wonderful art of associating words for his effect, with the result that he is as intelligible to-day as he was to the audience of his owntime. Further, Racine's method is to subordinate the situation to the development of character, while that of Corneille is to subordinate his char. acters to the dramatic situation. Racine depends for the development of his plot upon the development of the moods of the sufferOne might use the simile of two architects, one of whom aims at building a magnificent and striking edifice, the other of whom makes his first consideration the comfort of the indwellers. Corneille's heroes are rare among men; the situations in which they find themselves are unlikely ones for most of us. Racine purposely chooses situations full of human interest, and those of common occurrence. Racine was justified in his choice of great personages in that they present a spectacle of pure passion, freed as they are from the checks which meaner men suffer from their struggle with the bare necessaries of life.

er.

“Perfection, however, is always nearest decadence, and Racine has too much art. Iphigenie' is perfection, but Phedre' is decadent. Phedre herself is the only interest; the other characters exist, but in functions to her. We see that here new elements come into tragedy, and to reassume all its former faults.'

Decadence of the French drama in the 18th century was the interesting subject of a third lecture, and Voltaire was characterized as the exponent of the decadent tendencies. The lecturer said:

"Voltaire, great as he was, never understood tragedy, although he wrote it for sixty years. He believed himself the successor of Corneille and Racine. He made the signal mistake of not imitating nature, thinking it to be more original to depart from it. In his tragedies everything happens by chance. Let us look at his best tragedy, Zaire.' The young Christian girl has just decided to marry the Moslem king, Orosmane, when a Christian knight appears, who happens to be her brother. Their father, Lusignan, happens to be a prisoner of war confined in a dungeon in the castle, etc., the whole plot of the play being built upon pure accident.

The essence of vaudeville is in mistakes

as to persons and things. The essence of melodrama is unexpected recognitions. Voltaire is full of such mistakes, of which we find none in Racine or in Shakespeare, and full of such recognitions, of which Racine has few. Voltaire's personages have but little individual value; they are of universal interest, but only because they might be anybody. Racine's personages are the incarnations of various passions, such as love, jealousy, ambition, etc. Voltaire himself realized that he was lacking in general interest, and, in order to excite it, introduced long philosophic discussions, voicing thus the favorite theories of his age. In a slight measure Corneille suffered also from a

tendency toward moralizing. His style, however, was far nobler than Voltaire's, who is purely conversational, and for the most part, in his dramas, vague and inconsequential.

St. Beuve compares the 17th century to a bridge ornamented with beautiful statues, under which the current of the early 17th century merges without apparent change into that of the later 18th century. It seems as if Corneille and Racine had left no trace behind them. But in reality Corneille and Racine are not merely statues on the bridge, and their influence on French drama was, in fact, immense. Voltaire shows himself far more sentimental than his predecessors, and far less reserved in his choice of subjects. He may well be said to be the precursor of the romantic dramatists. With the exception that they have abandoned the three unities, they have made none of the innovations which they claim."

TRAINING FOR BICYCLE RACING.

Zimmerman, Meintjes, and Sanger recently gave the New York Herald some points regarding their training for cycle races. Zimmerman says to consult a physician to determine soundness. Diet, retire early, and abstain from smoking and alcoholic drinks. Rest during the winter, gauge yourself as to distances, do not ride before breakfast and reserve sprinting for the last of preliminary riding. Meintjes smokes, but diets and tabooes liquors. His morning ride is ten miles at slow pace, with a good rub down, and an afternoon ride of twenty miles from slow to fast. Sawyer believes in physic and dieting with gradual reduction of pace over fixed distance, turning superfluous flesh into muscle by hard work, thorough rubbing with coarse towels, followed by thorough massage.

ADVANTAGES OF DEBATING-CONTESTS.

The revival of interest in collegiate debating-contests, already commented upon in this department, leads to comparisons of their value to that of the oratorical contests which have been so prominent a feature of western college-land. H. L. Prescott, instructor of English at Indiana University, writes at length of the superior advantages

of debate in the Indianapolis News. He alleges that college oratory produces results "unreal and unindividual," owing to inherent lack in the set speech to influence or restrain the mental and the emotional wanderings of youth, whereas in great orators sound is subservient to sense. For securing the last-named result, he maintains that the debate is better fitted since the thing said is the fundamental consideration. Debate is a battle, and "glittering generalities" are meat for a debater's opponent. We quote further:

"With an opponent, vigorously preparing in the knowledge that he, too, will be opposed, is a speaker for a moment likely to forget that he must look conditions in the face and keep his feet on the ground? Realizing that if he makes statements that are false or demands action that is silly, his opponent will call him treacherous or dull, is he likely to stray far from the domain of reason and common sense? In the knowledge of this opposition he at once begins to prune his statements from the superlative to the positive, to be cautious and to qualify when conditions forbid him to be absolute.

Realizing further, that nothing can be gained by unsupported assertion, and that if his opponent produces evidence, all will be lost, he at once begins to see the necessity carefully to search out and to weigh evidence. He ceases to rely on airy assertion, and begins to hunt for strong proof' that warrants his position. I suppose that no one would claim for debating perfection of results; but it is not too much to maintain that by it glittering generalities' and melodramatic intellectual posing are avoided, while sane, speaking-standards are continually enforced. The foundation and the direction, at least, are right.

"So much for the character of the preparation for the speech. A word, now, as to the effect of debating on the way in which the speaker says what he has found out should be said. Debate is a contest, we remember-a contest for the definite purpose of winning the assent of the auditors to the speaker's view. He must, then, talk straight to his audience, adapting his arguments, his illustrations, his persuasion, so that he shall neither fail to reach the understandings and emotions of those who hear, nor overshoot the mark by ridiculous or irrelevant rantings. Further than this, he must talk with reference to what his opponent has said. He must adapt' his arguments so that they shall appear to grow out of those on the other side. And, as he can not know beforehand exactly what these are going to be, the adaptation must largely be upon the spur of the moment.

Of course, this does not preclude previous planning how various ideas are to be convincingly and persuasively phrased, nor even some memorizing of telling passages. On the contrary, it encourages this. Nor does debate give any less opportunity for

graces of voice and manner. It only insists that instead of being learned by rote for the particular occasion, previous training shall have made them an ingrained part of the speaker's personality.

"Thus, after all that we have been considering, it will need no elaboration to see not only that reality of thought and utterance will be greatly increased, but also that there will be developed that power of extempore reply, that fertility of resource and that alertness and readiness of wit, which, perhaps more than all else, make the speaker a power, whether before the town council or before the United States Senate."

DECLINE OF MODERN COMEDY.

The eminent English comedian, John Hall, has been explaining the neglect of the "legitimate," and the popular craze for low farce and vaudeville. The difficulty, in his opinion, is with playwrights rather than with the theatregoers. In an interview with the dramatic critic of the Chicago Times-Herald we find the following ideas and suggestions:

From the time of Sheridan and The School for Scandal' and The Rivals' there had been no dramatic period. Tom Taylor and Charles Reade and, in their time, H. J. Bryon and Madison Morton, did not create any distinctive impression, but Robertson fairly electrified the English stage. With Society.' School,' Ours,' 'Caste,' and his other plays the business of the English playhouse was revolutionized. 'School' had a run of one year, which was the first of the long runs, and 'Caste' was kept on for four months, and has frequently been revived. They were the product of a certain time. Some of them are almost local in their meaning and all breathe the atmosphere of their own period, and perhaps seem a little artificial.

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The difficulty of obtaining suitable plays does not seem to abate. On the contrary, the trouble grows more serious all the time. Some of our playwrights have become philosophers and elaborate too much on profound_themes. Such studies are not popular. The people prefer the vaudevilles, where they can be entertained. Then, the speculative managers buy up everything in bulk, and thus the competition has become very burdensome.

"The music hall and vaudeville craze, here and elsewhere, has come to stay. In London the ladies have taken up the music halls, and to my mind that settles it. Formerly, no ladies ever thought of attending these performances, but now it is quite the accepted thing. This is ruinous to the legitimate. There are only three London theatres running successfully along legitimate lines. The rest are given over to the light gaiety attractions and the music halls do the rest In America the conditions are equally bad. Public taste is not necessarily deteriorating, but it is impossible to get a supply of really entertaining plays, and the

people do not want the other sort. They are certain to find some mental relief in the music halls or burlesque houses, so they go and listen or not, just as suits them. Hard times and cheap prices may be one reason, but the legitimate theatres suffer chiefly through lack of interesting material. Pinero and others have become too learned and discursive. They elaborate dull subjects."

AN OLD-FASHIONED GYMNASIUM.

Not many years ago an artist twitted a poor college for its lack of a modern gymnasium by labeling a sketch of a senior at a sawhorse, -'s gymnasium." The Boston Transcript, however, regards sawing wood as excellent exercise, and praises it in earnest as a home-gymnasium of the first class. Listen:

It

to

"In the first place, sawing wood, taken in reasonable moderation, probably never did anybody harm. Instead of unfavorably affecting the heart, it strengthens it. At first, the exercise naturally puts one out of breath and sets the heart to thumping. is so with all kinds of active exercise to which one is not accustomed. Soon, however, no loss of breath is experienced in sawing a log of considerable size, and the heart, barring affections extraneous wood-sawing, retains its composure. Meantime the biceps grow prodigiously. After a couple of months of daily exercise at the sawhorse, you experience the queer sensation, some day at your bath, of having got hold of somebody else's arm You can hardly realize that the solid and bulky arm which you have grasped, with its arched and protruding biceps, is the pindling and flabby member which was yours when you began the beneficial exercise. Moreover, much of you besides your arms, your heart, and your lungs has been exercised and strengthened. The muscles of your back and thighs have been increased. Your position at the sawhorse, with one knee gently but firmly holding the log in place, while the other leg springily supports the weight of the body, exercises the legs almost as much as walking. In fact, there is scarcely a muscle of the body that is not agreeably and beneficially exercised by this exercise-which should, by the way, be carried on in the open air, preferably on the north side of a building, where the temperature is more equable than on the sunny lee side.

"If to the sawing you add the transportation of the wood to a shed some rods distant, where it is carefully piled up under cover, and afterward carry it to your woodbox near the fire, you get still another sort of exercise, that attending the support of a considerable weight of wood on the arm, and the effort of rising from a squatting position after picking up the wood. Of course, care should be taken not to rise with a burden that is heavy enough to strain the back. Under this daily stooping and rising the back becomes powerful,