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PREFACE.

This book is not an elaborate treatise, designed for special teachers of elocution, but a drill-book of essentials for use by teachers that do not make elocution a specialty. In most High and Normal schools, and in the advanced Grammar grades, the curriculum is so crowded that there is no time for the special training given by professional teachers of elocution to select classes of private pupils. The time generally allotted to reading and elocution seldom exceeds that allowed for vocal music-perhaps one or two hours a week. Hence the successful training of large classes involves a great deal of concert drill; and this requires the use of a suitable manual of principles, directions, and drill exercises.

This treatise owes its existence to the difficulties met with in the management of a very large High school, including a postgraduate Normal department, in which an honest effort has been made to secure a fair degree of attention to school reading and elocution.

Fully realizing the limitations of teachers in similar schools, I have endeavored to keep within the bounds of what it is possible to accomplish without making elocution a hobby. The salient points of this hand-book are as follows:

1. It includes only what it is possible to take up without material interference with the ordinary school curriculum.

2. It embraces only what pupils of average ability are capable of comprehending and mastering.

3. It includes a fair outfit of principles and practice for those who intend to become teachers.

4. It can be effectively used by teachers who are not specialists in elocution.

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5. It contains clear and concise statements of principles and rules.

6. It is characterized by the copiousness and freshness of the illustrative drill-examples.

It was my good fortune, more than thirty years ago, to be a student under that most critical and scholarly elocutionist and Normal-school instructor, Professor William Russell; and it is natural that I should follow in the steps of my revered instructor. I am also indebted to many excellent manuals on elocution for principles and examples that constitute the common stock of matter on this subject.

I am under obligations to the publishers of the works of American authors for permission to make short extracts from their publications, and in particular, to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for extracts from Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and Emerson.

JOHN SWETT.

San Francisco, 1884.

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