EXERCISES FOR TRANSITION.

1. "O, how our organ can speak with its many and wonderful voices!

Play on the soft lute of love, blow the loud trumpet of

war,

Sing with the high sesquialtro, or, drawing its full diapason,

Shake all the air with the grand storm of its pedals and
stops."

2. "The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!

"Ah! few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet

Shall be a soldier's sepulcher."

3. "Lo, dim in the starlight their white tents appear! Ride softly! ride slowly! the onset is near.

More slowly! more softly! the sentry may hear!

Now fall on the foe like a tempest of flame!

Strike down the false banner whose triumph were

shame!

Strike, strike for the true flag, for freedom and fame!"

4. "Hush! hark! did stealing steps go by?

Came not faint whispers near?

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
Majestically calm, would go,

Mid the deep darkness, white as snow!
But gentler now the small waves glide,
Like playful lambs o'er a mountain's side.
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse for ever and aye.
Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast.
Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her
last!"

6. "Hark! distant voices that lightly
Ripple the silence deep!

No; the swans that, circling nightly,
Through the silver waters sweep.

"See I not, there, a white shimmer?
Something with pale silken shine?
No; it is the column's glimmer,
'Gainst the gloomy hedge of pine."

7. "Hark, below the gates unbarring!

Tramp of men and quick commands!
"T is my lord come back from hunting,'
And the Duchess claps her hands.

"Slow and tired came the hunters;
Stopped in darkness in the court.
'Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters!
To the hall! What sport, what sport?'

"Slow they entered with their master;
In the hall they laid him down.
On his coat were leaves and blood-stains,
On his brow an angry frown."

8. "Now clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, like to hailstones,

Short words fall from his lips fast as the first of a

shower,

Now in twofold column, Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee,
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling along, —
Now with a sprightlier springiness, bounding in triplicate
syllables,

Dance the elastic Dactylics in musical cadences on;
Now, their voluminous coil intertangling like huge ana-
condas,

Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedalian words."

27

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

Define Expression.

Expression is thought taking on embodiment. It is thought completing itself in order to be understood by another mind.

How Does Thought Do This?

By virtue of the activity of its Vital Function and by virtue of the obedience of the material medium. In proportion to its obedience to vitalized thought, the material medium disappears as material and appears as embodiment.

What Principle Is Thus Demonstrated?

All expression has its causation in mind, and hence all is mental. The expression must prove this. It must speak to mind, not to the five senses.

How Is An Individual Trained In Expression?

By the training of the Vital Function of the thought, by arousing and exercising this Vital Function and causing the student to recognize it. The voice and body (in our special field of expression) are trained by means of exercises to be flexibly obedient to the command of the vitalized thought and the vitalized thought is trained to command its media. This training comes through practice, rightly directed. Right direction depends on the recognition and application of a principle.

Why Will Not Voice and Body Obey Mind Without Training?

It is found that all things physical take form and motion along the lines of least resistance. It is found that left to itself the body (and so the voice) will follow habit-lines and nerve impulses, rather than the command of vitalized thought.

FUNDAMENTAL STATEMENT.

Every expressive manifestation has its cause in mind. If the cause is mental the manifestation is also a mind act. When the mental concept, becoming vital enough to demand expression, is carried out in definite thought pictures through the trained and obedient voice and body, under mental guidance, the result is a mental concept made visible.

It is a complete thought. The expressional process is as much a mind action as the concept itself; they are both a part of the same thing—the concept incomplete without the expression; the expression impossible without the concept.