DEDICATED

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WHIG AND CLIO HALLS,

THE

HISTORIC LITERARY SOCIETIES

WHICH ARE 1

"THE PRIDE AND GLORY OF PRINCETON."

M. M. M.

PREFACE.

THE text of this book has been prepared by request, in order to aid teachers in class-room work. The "Orator's Manual," from which most of the material is taken, was intended to be comprehensive. Necessarily, therefore, it explained methods of curing faults which few manifest, as well as of causing excellences which most speakers produce naturally. These methods it is unnecessary for the majority of a class to study. Sometimes, too, it is unsafe, because they direct attention to what, for many at least, is unimportant; and, in studying any art, to make the unimportant seem important, tends to artificiality. Wherever a student's delivery is right, it should be let alone. For the reasons mentioned, it is believed that many will welcome a book which is designed to confine class instruction to the more general characteristics of delivery which all need to study, and which all can study in the same way; while training in more subtle effects is left to a time when the pupil can be dealt with individually.

The book is thus suited to a concise, practical course of ten lessons in Academic and College Oratory. It is also a guide to the chief literature upon the subject, since its references, while more especially applicable to the books in the Princeton College Library, are suited, by the introduction in each instance of the names of author and publisher, to the needs of other libraries and of private collections. It is an attempt to do for forensic selections in

book form what the reference list in Werner's Directory (Publisher, E. S. Werner, New York) has done for parlor elocution in pamphlet form.

Unity as well as conciseness has been gained by the consideration of College Oratory as forensic rather than dramatic. However, in the matter of gesture, because of the inter-relation of the objective and subjective forms, a "Chart of Dramatic Gestures, mainly Subjective," has been included. (See pp. 92, 93.)

Unity has been further gained by the constant use of the method of Induction. A hint has been taken from Mr. Rosenthal's method of instruction in foreign languages. Instead of beginning with a "foundation sentence," however, there is a reversal of the "Meisterschaft System" in that each lesson leads up to one. Furthermore, the fact that this example is, in each instance, the same, saves the student time in committing a variety of texts, confines to one selection the tendency toward mechanical rendition incident upon crowding into it every variety of emphasis and gesture, and, above all, reveals the close connection between all the parts of the subject, and this to an extent attainable by no other method.

The

The principles, especially those printed in large type, may be studied for recitation in the class-room. praxis should be subsequently rehearsed by the students singly or in small divisions.

The Selections of Princeton College Oratory are especially intended to illustrate the lesson upon Oratorical Composition. As the actual work of undergraduates, they are more inspiriting models than the classics of oratory to be found in the books for which the reference list is a guide, although some of these classics are also given with the appropriate marks for inflection and gesture.

As examples of actual college themes there is added a list of subjects of Princeton Junior Orations for ten years back.