GESTURE.

Gesture presupposes Bearing. Bearing is the essential; gesture, the desirable, the allowable, the occasional, or the superfluous. To the speaker, and much more to the reader, bearing takes precedence of gesture. The avoidance of excessive, awkward, or eccentric motions, the repose that enables one to stand still and at ease, is more to be desired than grace, strength, variety, or magnificence of action. If the voice conveys its message truly and fully, while face and bearing sympathize, gesture, unless subdued to a mere rhythmical accompaniment, is often impertinent, and mars and weakens the delivery.

Nevertheless, gesture of some sort is almost unavoidable, except by the exercise of painful and unnatural self-restraint. As soon as a person becomes animated and earnest in speech, the nerves and muscles of face and body and limbs are in instant sympathy, and the result is facial expression and gesture, or grimace and contortion. If the speaker compels himself to resist altogether this tendency to gesture, hebecomes constrained and rigid in feeling and appearance, and the voice is wanting in sparkle, flexibility, resonance, and life, or is even compressed and strained. Only training and experience can confer the self-mastery that 'suits the action to the word, the word to the action'-the Repose that relegates gesture to its proper secondary place, and in its omission supplies the ease and freedom of bearing that win confidence and respect, and leave the voice untrammeled. In the young speaker, however, superfluous action is preferable to helpless, awkward rigidity; and it is easier to tone down and prune excess than to engraft positive grace

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and propriety upon stiff or timid negation. In your early practice of gesture, cultivate facility rather than taste; recognize all the analogies of a given passage, try all admissible forms and degrees of gesture upon every group, availing yourself of every opportunity and excuse for action. When practice has given dexterity and analogies suggest themselves readily, begin the exercise of taste and judgment; to pick out, in every case, the best gesture; to study order, symmetry, proportion, grace, strength, economy, and variety. Self-mastery is the chief end of education; and no study confers more of self-mastery than does the resolute study of the artistic use of the voice and gesture.

To the actor and impersonator gesture is of vital importance. It supplies or fulfills the meaning, when words fall short. It illuminates, interprets, characterizes. It is another language, sometimes more eloquent and potent than the tongue's utterance. The purpose of this book does not include a discussion of acting and dramatic action, except incidentally.

BEARING.

The reader and the orator make an impression, favorable or unfavorable, before the first word is spoken. Feature, person, dress, walk, carriage, prepossess every individual in the audience for or against the man or the woman who claims attention. It is clear, then, that the claimant should be careful to look and do his best. Trepidation, slovenliness, carelessness, bravado, ponderosity, stiffness, self-consciousness, however manifested,--make a bad first impression, that it would require superhuman gifts or power to obliterate.

The nervous temperament is a part, and an important one, of the endowment of the speaker. Often he deems it his peculiar curse, because it makes him suffer. There is, perhaps, no nightmare more distressing than the waking

agonies of stage-fright; and yet those agonies no speaker who is truly called', can hope to escape. They are a part of his discipline, 'the trying as by fire' of his metal. No man who is not sensitive to his audience can win, impress, or command: he who complacently boasts that 'he can face an audience of a thousand souls without a flutter of the pulse,' has no message that any audience cares to hear— from him. Nervousness, in truth, is a thing to be devoutly thankful for: but, to become the blessing and the power that are its function, the speaker must so understand and so school it that he shall be its master, instead of its victim. He must, besides, gain a great and complete victory over a host of wrong habits and tendencies of movement and gesture. Every step toward self-conquest is a step toward Repose; and when that is won, all things are possible.

No one agency is more efficient in the acquirement of moral and mental self-mastery than the frequent repetition of the act of facing the audience. If, at the same time, the outward appearance and deportment are watched and guarded, improvement should be constant and swift. At first, nervousness is seemingly all-powerful: indeed, it would be utterly unnatural to be and feel otherwise than unnatural. In the course of time,-weeks-months-years, it may be, in some cases,-fright diminishes to dread; dread to trepidation; trepidation to excitement, that may capriciously lift up or cast down; and excitement may become at length a controlled nervous exaltation, a pleasurable sense of purpose, power, and opportunity, with only a lurking shadow of the possibility of failure. Experience and self-discipline, and they alone, can transmute nervousness into assured power and potential inspiration.

The speaker's standard position should indicate ease, stability, and dignity. He is a gentleman, addressing ladies and gentlemen, and his bearing should clearly show respect for them and for himself.

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THE SPEAKER'S POSITION.

The speaker's standard position should secure for him ease, dignity, and freedom of change.

The feet should be about in line with each other laterally, separated far enough to give a conscious and visible base of support, and at an angle with each other of from sixty to seventy-five degrees. The actual distance of the feet apart is best determined by the height of the speaker.

The weight should be so adjusted that the center of gravity is directly over the instep of one foot or the other; which is called the strong foot. The strong knee should be straight, with the muscles of the leg easily firm. The weak foot should rest the inner edge of the ball lightly on the floor, with the heel slightly lifted; and the weak knee should be completely relaxed, and therefore sagging more

inward.

or less

In adjusting the weight, the strong hip will naturally and properly be thrown outside the line of the perpendicular, and the trunk and shoulders will decline away to the weak side. The head, in turn, will lean somewhat to the strong side. These oppositions, as they are called, should not be overdone, or distortion and constraint will result. On the other hand, if the speaker holds himself bolt upright, he not only looks stiff, but stiffens and constrains his breathing, voice, utterance, and action.

The hips should be neither advanced nor drawn back; the chest should be held buoyantly up; the shoulders held down, but not forward or back; and the face fronting the audience level-headed, not tilted forward or back from the neck.

The arms should hang naturally, of their own weight, the hands turned palms inward and backward, without twist of forearm or wrist.

Such is the standard, or normal, speaker's position.