They are downcast or averted in shame or grief.

They are cast on vacancy in thought.

They are cast in various directions in doubt and anxiety.

The Arms.

The placing of the hand on the head indicates pain or distress.

On the eyes, shame or sorrow.

On the lips, an injunction of silence.

On the breast, an appeal to conscience.

The hand is waved or flourished in joy or contempt.
Both hands are held supine, or they are applied or

clasped, in prayer.

Both are held prone in blessing.

They are clasped or wrung in affliction.

They are held forward, and received, in friendship.

The Body.

The body held erect indicates steadiness and courage. Thrown back, pride.

Stooping forward, condescension or compassion.

Bending, reverence or respect.

Prostration, the utmost humility or abasement.

The Lower Limbs.

The firm position of the lower limbs signifies courage or

obstinacy.

Bended knees indicate timidity or weakness.

The lower limbs advance in desire or courage.
They retire in aversion or fear.

Start in terror.

ADVICE TO READERS AND DECLAIMERS.

1. To make sure that you understand and have a proper appreciation of what you wish to express, write out your ideas concerning the passage, talk about it to yourself as if giving your thoughts to another, and be sure that your explanations and statements concerning it are full, clear, and entirely satisfactory to your own mind.

2. Practice on plain, simple, conversational pieces, until you can give them as if giving unpremeditated utterance to your own thoughts; afterwards practice upon simple emotional passages; and last of all, on difficult rhetorical and dramatic pieces.

3. A necessary condition to successful declamation, is that the words of the piece to be delivered must be perfectly committed to memory, and the meaning fully understood. Imperfect recollection of the words to be delivered is usually followed by partial or total failure.

4. Do not, when reading, declaiming, or speaking, think about your voice or manner; leave nature to suggest the tone, the look, and the action. The reader or declaimer who fully understands the meaning of what he reads or speaks, will make himself understood by those whom he addresses; but if his attention be withdrawn from his subject to himself, to voice, manner, or any thing else he will make an unfavorable impression on his hearers.

5. One of the most important matters in connection with the arts of reading, speaking, and acting, is that of avoiding all appearance of art. To do this, the speaker must be so thoroughly and deeply affected with the thoughts, facts, and sentiments uttered, that he never bestows a moment's thought on his manner.

6. Cultivate the habit of speaking distinctly, correctly, and pleasantly at all times. Be as careful to speak correctly in familiar conversation as in declaiming a passage, in reading before critics whom you know to be critics,

or in speaking your own thoughts before an intelligent and critical audience.

7. Cultivate a habit of reading, declaiming, and of speaking your own thoughts, first in a light, and then in a loud, whisper. This exercise, if frequently and faithfully practiced, will not only improve your articulation and increase your control of your breathing organs, but will also increase your command of words and your facility in the expression of your own thoughts,-an important attainment in which silent thinkers are generally deficient.

8. Try every way to find out your own elocutionary faults and defects, and be untiring in your endeavors to remove them.

9. If you fully understand what you attempt to read or speak, you can tell whether you are doing it correctly or not, without the aid of rules; if you do not understand it, no rules will enable you to express it correctly.

10. Put yourself, as well as you are able, by the aid of your imagination, in the place of the person for whom you speak, and excite in your own mind similar feelings to those which animated him; in this way you can find out the emphasis and the expression that the piece requires.

11. Commence with a few sentences; commit these thoroughly, then practice on them until you develop in your own mind the proper spirit with which they should be given.

12. Cultivate a deliberate manner. Most young declaimers and speakers hurry through their pieces, or express what they have to say with constantly increasing force and rapidity.

13. Cultivate an unstudied, earnest, extemporaneous manner in reading, declaiming, or speaking. It is the greatest excellence in delivery.

14. To understand a short and simple passage requires some thought; to understand long and complex passages requires the closest attention and the most careful thinking.

To express correctly and pleasantly your conception of the meaning of a passage, your voice should be full, flexible, and under good control.

15. No rules will aid you in your efforts to obtain a correct understanding of the sense of any passage, or of the spirit with which it should be given; neither can any rules concerning inflection, pitch, force or stress guide you to the correct use of any of these elements of expression. All good reading and good speaking come from clear understanding and right feeling. The first and most important thing, then, for the student to do, is to make sure of the sense.

16. Carefully avoid all theatrical, clerical or any other mannerisms, and all affected and artificial tones. Be natural; speak as if uttering your own thoughts in your own way. Don't try to express too much, nor manifest more feeling than the sentiment requires. Be truly and deeply in earnest when it is necessary, but never rant.

17. When character is to be impersonated, exercise your own invention and imagination in forming your own conception of the character, and present that conception in your own peculiar style of delivery.

18. Try to make yourself believe that the words you are about to utter, express your own thoughts and sentiments, and consider how you would speak them if they were your own thoughts and sentiments.

19. If you are addicted to a monotone or to an artificial manner of reading or declaiming, select a suitable passage for practice in the descriptive, narrative, or argumentative style, and give it, a sentence at a time, in a simple, conversational manner; do not commence the second passage until you succeed in giving the first to your own satisfaction.

20. To estimate the amount of voice necessary to fill a room, look at the most distant of the persons you intend to address, and your own voice will instinctively take the pitch and the force necessary to make him hear.

21. Read over a piece very carefully and as often as may

be necessary to enable you to understand it perfectly. First, the class to which it belongs; as, descriptive, didactic, argumentative, etc.; also, whether it is emotional or unemotional, or part emotional and part unemotional, whether it is sentimental, humorous, or impassioned. Second, What is the pervading spirit of the piece? Is it sarcastic, pathetic, mirthful, serious, denunciatory or courteous? Third, Does it require impersonation? if so, what is the character to be portrayed? Is it an old person or a young person ? a soldier or a saint? a vulgar person, or one of great dignity? What are the peculiarities-physical or moral-which distinguish the character according to your conception of it?

22. As applied to reading and speaking, appreciation means to understand and to enter into the spirit of a piece, to deliver it with the right kind and the right degree of feeling. We may understand without appreciating, but we can not appreciate without understanding.

Give a

23. Practice on good original examples will benefit the student more than practice on selected passages. short time every day to the making of examples of your own in antithesis, amplification, climax, emphatic repetition, etc., etc.

24. Great labor is always followed by some fatigue, but there is no excellence without great labor. Practice, to be profitable, must be vigorous and frequent, and should be continued until more or less weariness is felt. Whatever exercise you engage in, continue it long enough and with sufficient spirit and energy to derive some benefit from it.

SUGGESTIONS TO EXTEMPORANEOUS
SPEAKERS.

1. "Be sure you understand your subject. No matter how pleasant the modulation, how distinct the utterance, or