Chapter IV: Part I: Studies in Vocal Interpretation (1)

PRELIMINARY STUDY

TO ESTABLISH A CONSCIOUS PURPOSE

"The orator must have something in his very soul he feels to be
worth saying. He must have in his nature that kindly sympathy that
connects him with his fellow-men and which so makes him a part of
the audience that his smile is their smile, his tear is their tear,
the throb of his heart the throb of the hearts of the whole
assembly."--HENRY WARD BEECHER.

We have said that whatever part in the world's life we choose or are chosen to take, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively is essential to fulfilling, in the highest sense, that function. Whether the occupation upon which we enter be distinguished by the title of cash-girl or counsellor at law; dish-washer or debutante; stable-boy or statesman; artist in the least or the highest of art's capacities, crises will arise in that calling which demand a command of effective speech. The situation may call for a slow, quietly searching interrogation or a swift, ringing command. The need may be for a use of that expressive vocal form which requires, to be efficient, the rugged or the gracious elements of your vocabulary; the vital or the velvet tone; the straight inflection or the circumflex; the salient or the slight change of pitch; the long or the short pause. Whatever form the demand takes, the need remains for command of the efficient elements of tone and speech if we are to become masters of the situation and to attain success in our calling. How to acquire this mastery is our problem. How to take the first step toward acquiring that command is the subject of this first study.

Is there a student reader of these pages who has not already faced a situation requiring for its mastery such command? Listen to Mr. James again:

"All life, therefore, comes back to the question of our speech, the medium through which we communicate with each other; for all life comes back to the question of our relations with each other. These relations are possible, are registered, are verily constituted by our speech, and are successful in proportion as our speech is worthy of its human and social function; is developed, delicate, flexible, rich--an adequate accomplished fact. The more we live by it, the more it promotes and enhances life. Its quality, its authenticity, its security, are hence supremely important for the general multifold opportunity, for the dignity and integrity, of our existence."

Is there one among you whose relations with others would not have been rendered simpler, truer, clearer at some critical moment had your "speech been more worthy of its great human and social function?" Then, do you hesitate to enter upon a study which shall make for clarified relations and a new "dignity and integrity of existence?" Anticipating your reply, I invite you to take a first step in Vocal Expression. How shall we approach the subject? How did you begin to master any one of the activities in which you are more or less proficient? How did you learn to swim, or skate, or play the violin? Not by standing on the shore and gazing at the water or ice! Not by looking at violins in shop windows! No! You began by leaping into the water, putting on your skates and going out on the ice; taking the violin into your hands and drawing the bow across the strings. But you say: "We have taken the step which corresponds to these in speech! We can talk!" Exactly! But what command of the art of skating or swimming or playing the violin would the artist in any of these activities have achieved had he been content to stop with the act of jumping into the water, going out on the ice, or drawing the bow across the violin? The question's answer calls up an illuminating analogy. Are not most of us in regard to our mastery of speech in the condition of the skater, the swimmer, the fiddler in the first stage of those expressive acts? Are we not floundering in the water, fallen on the ice, or alienating the ears of our friends? "We are so! We confess it!"--every time we speak.

And so to-day we shall offer no argument against entering upon an _introductory_ study--we shall take our first step in the Art of Vocal Expression. But we shall take it in a new spirit--the spirit of an artist bent upon the mastery of his art. If we flounder or fall, we shall not be more content in our ignominy than is the choking swimmer or the prostrate skater. If we produce painful instead of pleasing sounds with our instrument, we shall not persist in a merciless process of tone production; but we shall proceed to study diligently the laws governing the control of the instrument until we have mastered its technique and made it an agent of harmonious intercourse. We shall take the first steps with a conscious purpose, the purpose to make our speech worthy of its great social and human function.

Then in this spirit I invite you "to plunge." I furnish as the material for your experiment these sentences:

DISCUSSION OF DIRECT APPEAL

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual
freedom!--CURTIS.

Mind your own business with your absolute will and soul, but see
that it is a good business first.--RUSKIN.

Back to the bridge and show your teeth again,
Back to the bridge and show to God your eyes!--MACKAYE.

What news, and quickly!--MACKAYE.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal
to your tasks.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a
holiday?--SHAKESPEARE.

And so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, we are not
Democrats, we are Americans!--CURTIS.

I shall not discuss the interpretation of these sentences with you. I shall not interpret them for you. Such discussion and interpretation is your part in this study. But you are not to discuss them with a pencil on paper; you are to interpret them with your voice to another mind.

Let us stop here and consider together for a few moments this act which we call Vocal Interpretation (which might be more simply designated as Reading Aloud), and with which these first studies are concerned. What does it mean to vocally interpret a piece of literature--a poem, a play, a bit of prose; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word? It means that you, the interpreter, must transfer the thought contained in that word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from the printed page to the mind of an auditor. It means that you must take the thought out of the safety vault and put it into circulation. That is your problem, and it presents three factors. You cannot slight any one of these factors and expect to successfully solve your problem. These factors are: your author's thought, your own voice, and your auditor's mind.

We shall concern ourselves in this first study with the last of these three factors--the mind of the auditor, or, to put it more definitely, your attitude toward the mind of your auditor. We shall make this our first concern, not because it is more essential to successful delivery than the other two elements of the problem, but because failure at this point is a fundamental failure. Such failure involves the whole structure in ruin.

Let me make this point explicit. Failure of the speaker to direct the thought toward a receiving mind--the mind of an auditor--results in blurred thought, robs the voice of all aim, and reduces the interpretation to a meaningless recital of words. Consider the first factor in the problem of interpretation--the thought of the author. Take these first two sentences:

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!

A wholly satisfying interpretation of these lines involves a knowledge of the speech from which they are taken, and a knowledge of the circumstances under which it was delivered. Complete possession of the thought, which alone insures perfect expression, requires a grasp of the situation out of which it was born and an appreciation of the mind which conceived it. But with no context and no knowledge of these conditions, and so only an approximate appreciation of the thought in all its fulness, the interpreter, under the stimulus of an intent to convince another of the truth contained in the detached sentence, may deliver the lines convincingly! And to carry conviction is the first and fundamental requisite of all good delivery.

So it is with the second factor in your problem. Your voice may fail at a dozen different points, but _directed_ thought can employ so skilfully even an inefficient instrument that the resultant expression, while never satisfying, may still carry conviction.

But let the one who speaks these lines feel no responsibility toward another, let him fail to direct the idea toward another mind, and the most complete possession of the author's thought, plus the most perfect control of the voice, will fail to make the interpretation convincing. You must establish a relation with your auditor! You must have an aim. You must "have something to say," but you must also have some one "to say it at." You cannot hope to become an expert marksman by "shooting into the air."

Then once more I bid you approach the subject of Vocal Interpretation in a new spirit. Let your study of the thought in these sentences hold in its initial impulse this idea: "I have something I _must tell you_!" Try prefacing your interpretation with some such phrase as this: "Listen to me!" or, "I want to tell you something."

I would suggest as a preliminary exercise that you should try "shooting at a mark" these single words: "No!" "Yes!" "Come!" "Go!" "Aim!" "Fire!" "Help!" "What ho!"

Listen to me!

"You will find the gayest castles in the air far better for comfort
and for use than the dungeons that are daily dug and caverned out
by grumbling, discontented people."--EMERSON.

Let me tell you something!

"Might is right, say many, and so it is. Might is the right to bear
the burdens of the weak, to cheer the faint, to uplift the fallen,
to pour from one's own full store to the need of the
famishing."--NAPIER.

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He
who aims for perfection in a trifle is trying to do that trifle
holily. The trier wears the halo, and, therefore, the halo grows as
quickly round the brows of peasant as of king.--GANNETT.

Think twice before you speak, my son; and it will do no harm if you
keep on thinking while you speak.--ANONYMOUS.

Sweet friends
Man's love ascends,
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.

--LANIER.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

HAMLET'S SPEECH TO THE PLAYERS

_Hamlet:_ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your
players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not
saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for
in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness....

Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
nature, for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form
and pressure.

--SHAKESPEARE.

Let us consider together the problem of vocally interpreting this speech of Hamlet's, keeping the mind of the auditor constantly before us, the special factor in our problem which is the concern of this study. What is the first point to be determined? The situation, is it not? Remember, in our previous discussion I have made it clear that it is not essential _to our present purpose_ that we should know, in determining our situation, the exact conditions under which this speech was delivered. Neither is it essential _to our present purpose_ that we should make an exhaustive study of the play of "Hamlet" or of the character of the Prince of Denmark. Lest you mistake me I must reiterate the fact that an interpretation of these lines, looked upon as Hamlet's speech, would require just such exhaustive study of context and character--study which would lead to that complete possession which alone insures perfect expression; but it is legitimate at this point in our study of vocal expression to use this text quite apart from its context as a perfect example of direct appeal. It is legitimate to _imagine_ a situation of our own in which this thought could be pertinently expressed. We must then first determine what you, the speaker, are to represent, and the nature of the audience you are to address. One word in the text more than any other, perhaps, determines these points--the word "players." With this word as a key to a probable situation, let us imagine that you, the one who must "speak this speech," are a stage-director of your own play, and that we, the class to whom you must speak, are a company of players (actors, as we now call them) which is about to present your play. The fact that this is exactly the situation in Shakespeare's play from which this speech is taken is interesting, but does not affect our attitude toward the text. But that we should assume the state of mind which animated the author of the _Mouse-trap, is_ vital to our problem. Hamlet was intent upon getting an effect incalculably potent from the delivery of the "speech" he "had pronounced." You must imagine that you have written not merely a play, but a play which you intend shall have a powerful influence upon the lives of the people who are to hear it. Once more, then, let us determine the exact situation. You, the author of a moving play--you, its stage-director--have called us, your actors, together for rehearsal. You know just how you wish the lines of your play delivered. It is absolutely vital to the success of your venture that we, the actors, should grasp your ideal of delivery and act upon it. You must convince us that this is the only way in which you will permit the text to be handled. You are the orator as Mr. Beecher has drawn him for us. You will realize, in thinking your way through this appeal, that, while the stage-director is addressing the whole company of players, he has singled out from the others one who is to deliver a particular speech from his play. It is well to follow this idea of the situation. Include us all, then, as a class in your chosen cast, but single out one of us, and speak directly at the mind of that one. Look him straight in the eye. Direct your thought in the main to his mind, even while your thought reaches out and draws us all into the circle of its enthusiasm. Now, with this attitude and intent toward an audience, try to vocally interpret, to _think aloud_ this thought. What is the trouble? "Speak the speech" you say, "is a difficult combination of words to utter"? "'Trippingly' trips up your tongue"? "You don't understand the reference to a 'town-crier'"?

Ah, what discoveries we are making!

"You feel that you should be able to illustrate your own ideal of delivery by delivering these directions after the very manner you ask your players to observe"? That might legitimately be expected of you, I think. "But this you cannot do!" What a shocking confession! Yes, but how good to have this new knowledge of your own ability, or, in this case, disability. How appalling to find that you cannot easily utter the simple combination of words, "Speak the speech, I pray you," without stumbling; that any word, a plain, simple English word, trips your tongue. How appalling, but how encouraging it is! For the discovery of this fact, the consciousness of these limitations, "constitutes half the battle" before us. It is a battle. But you shall be equipped to meet it. Turn to the chapters on "Freeing the Tone." Find the exercises for training the tongue. Faithful practice of these exercises (even _without_ direction, but, if you are a member of the class in expression for which this book was made, _under_ direction) will very shortly conquer the unruly tongue for use in uttering any difficult combination of words. And your teacher will patiently "pick you up" (_in this first study_) every time you trip over a word or phrase, and she will patiently refer you to the corner of history which will explain any unfamiliar portions of your text if _you_ will persistently try to do _your_ part at this point. That part is, to think the thought before you directly at another's mind. That is all we ask at this point. Make this direct appeal for simplicity in delivery straight to the mind of him whom you have chosen to receive, and act upon it. Talk to me if I am your chosen player! Convince me! Make me realize what you expect of me! Make me want to meet your expectation! Make me afraid to fail you!

With these suggestions and this direct appeal to you, I leave you with your teacher and with the following material chosen for your preliminary study in _Vocal Interpretation_.

SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION

There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, straining at
full speed from England to America. Two-thirds of a prosperous
voyage thus far were over, and in our mess we were beginning to
talk of home.

Suddenly a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but, as this was
a common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly
mentioned in our talk. A happier company never sailed upon an
autumn sea. When a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers
and men, and we were grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race. I
heard the cry, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that meant--the
masts were in danger of falling. A hundred pallid faces were
huddled together near the stern of the ship where we were told to
go and wait.

Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the
wheel-house ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves. As
the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's
trumpet to "Shift the cargo," to "Back her," to "Keep her steady,"
we felt, somehow, that the commander up there in the thick mist
knew what he was about.

When, after weary days of anxious suspense, the vessel leaking
badly, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of the
line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck
on the rocks and been saved by the captain's presence of mind and
courage, replied, simply: "Just what I might have expected. Captain
Harrison is always master of the situation."

No man ever became master of the situation by accident or
indolence. "He happened to succeed" is a foolish, unmeaning phrase.
No man happens to succeed. "What do you mix your paints with?"
asked a visitor of Opie, the painter. "With brains, sir," was the
artist's reply. * * *

There are men who fail of mastery in the world from too low an
estimate of human nature. "Despise nothing, my son," was the
advice a mother gave to her boy when he went forth into the untried
world to seek his fortune, and that boy grew up into Sir Walter
Scott. * * *

In case of great emergency it took a certain general in our
army several days to get his personal baggage ready. Sheridan
rode into Winchester without even a change of stockings in his
saddle-bags. * * *

All great leaders have been inspired with a great belief. In nine
cases out of ten, failure is borne of unbelief.--_Masters of the
Situation_, JAMES T. FIELDS.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage: * * *
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height! On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument. * * *
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry--God for Harry! England! and St. George!--_Henry V._, SHAKESPEARE

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot
consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our
power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.--_Address at Gettysburg_, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

From an address delivered in the Auditorium, at Chicago, on the afternoon of February 22, 1902, on the occasion of the celebration of Washington's Birthday.

The meaning of Washington in American history is discipline. The
message of Washington's life to the American people is discipline.
The need of American character is discipline.

Washington did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The
people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage.
That quality was and is in the American blood. He did not even give
them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. But
Washington gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was
the genius of order. He was poise personified. He was the spirit of
discipline. He was the first Great Conservative. It was this
quality in him that made all other elements of the Revolution
effective. It was this that organized our nebulous independence
into a nation of liberty. The parts of a machine are useless until
assembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. Washington was
the master mechanic of our nation; so it is that we are a people.

But we are not yet a perfect people. We are still in the making. It
is a glorious circumstance. Youth is the noblest of God's gifts.
The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American
people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not
entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And
therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of
Washington--he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached
through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed
passions of riotous youth.--_Conservatism; the Spirit of National
Self-Restraint_, ALBERT BEVERIDGE.

We have noted in our introduction the close analogy which exists between the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal expression. Let us not fail to follow this analogy through the various studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?

Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English composition, called _The Forms of Prose Literature_,[1] discusses these forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-titles which all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not find the _exact_ parallel for our study in direct appeal under these subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of _exposition_, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression corresponding to the question of _vitality in thinking_, which is our first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary study" in composition.

[1] _The Forms of Prose Literature_, courtesy of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.

In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument must move its reader, we begin to pass from the realm of pure thought, in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a necessary preliminary to action. How large a part feelings play in argument you can see if you have ever heard the speech of a demagogue to an excited crowd. It is simply a crass appeal to their lower passions, aided by all the devices of oratory, often, perhaps, also by a moving presence. A better example is Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech, in which he won a hearing from a hostile mob by an appeal to their sense of fair play. Such cases show how far argument may get from the simple appeal to the understanding, how little it may be confined to the element of thought. The prime quality, therefore, of argument is _persuasiveness_."

Not argument, then, but the element in argument, called persuasion, furnishes the study in composition which corresponds to direct appeal in interpretation. And just as truly as your intent to convince another mind of the truth of your author's thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of its vocal expression and result in _convincing interpretation_, so the intent to persuade another mind of the truth of your own thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of verbal expression and result in _moving composition_.

Following Mr. Gardiner a little further in his discussion of persuasion, we find our study in interpretation in direct accord with his advice in the study of composition, for he says: "This element of persuasion belongs to that aspect of literature which has to do with the feelings; and, as depending on the personal equation of the writer, it is much less easy than the intellectual element to catch and generalize from, and almost impossible to teach. All that I can do is to examine it in good examples, and then make very tentatively a few suggestions based on these examples. For it cannot too often be written down in such a treatise as this that the teacher of writing can no more make a great writer than the teacher of painting can turn out a new Rembrandt or a Millet; in either case the most that the teacher can do is to furnish honest and illuminating criticism, and to save his pupil unnecessary and tedious steps by showing him the methods and devices which have been worked out by the masters of the craft."

In treating the question of pure style, as another division of the power of persuasion, Mr. Gardiner says: "It is almost impossible to give practical help toward acquiring this gift of an expressive style; the ear for the rhythm and assonance of style is like an ear for music, though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the writing of men who are famous for the quality, and, when you read to yourself, always to have in mind the sound of what you read. The more you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write, yourself, will you hear the way your own style sounds."

With our idea for a combined study of the two great forms of expression reinforced by such authority, let us, in taking our next step in this preliminary study in vocal expression, make it also a preliminary study in verbal expression by using as our next selection for interpretation, not a fragment of an address or a part of an oration, but a complete example of persuasive discourse. Such an example we find in this sermon of Mr. Gannett's "Blessed be Drudgery." And, as we try our growing powers of lucid interpretation upon this subject-matter, let us stop to note its verbal construction and its obedience to the laws of persuasive discourse. The interpretation must be made in the class-room, because interpretation needs an immediate audience; the analysis of the literary form may be made in your study: the two processes should be carried on as far as possible together.

BLESSED BE DRUDGERY[2]

[2] This sermon is published with the kind permission of the author and the publisher.

I

Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every
second woman is _sure_ she is. Either we are not doing the thing we
would like to do in life; or, in what we do and like, we find so
much to dislike that the rut tires even when the road runs on the
whole, a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the _Culture that
comes through this very drudgery_.

"Culture through my drudgery!" some one is now thinking: "This
treadmill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that,
as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome--to this have I owed
'culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies,
teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter,
those blue overalls in the machine shop--have these anything to do
with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of
time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness,
crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches.
Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly
magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas.
Our real and our ideal are not twins--never were! I want the
books,--but the clothes-basket wants me. The two children are
good,--and so would be two hours a day without the children. I
crave an outdoor life,--and walk down-town of mornings to perch on
a high stool till supper-time. I love Nature,--and figures are my
fate. My taste is books,--and I farm it. My taste is art,--and I
correct exercises. My taste is science,--and I measure tape. I am
young and like stir,--the business jogs on like a stage-coach. Or I
am _not_ young, I am getting gray over my ears, and like to sit down
and be still,--but the drive of the business keeps both tired arms
stretched out full length. I hate this overbidding and this
underselling, this spry, unceasing competition, and would
willingly give up a quarter of my profits to have two hours of my
daylight to myself,--at least I would if, working just as I do, I
did not barely get the children bread and clothes. I did not choose
my calling, but was dropped into it--by my innocent conceit, or by
duty to the family, or by a parent's foolish pride, or by our hasty
marriage; or a mere accident wedged me into it. Would I could have
my life over again! Then, whatever I _should_ be, at least I would
_not_ be what I am to-day!"

Have I spoken truly for any one here? I know I have. Goes not the
grumble thus within the silent breast of many a person, whose pluck
never lets it escape to words like these, save now and then on a
tired evening to husband or to wife?

There is often truth and justice in the grumble. Truth and justice
both. Still, when the question rises through the grumble, Can it be
that drudgery, not to be escaped, gives "culture"? the true answer
is--Yes, and culture of the prime elements of life; of the very
fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood.

Our _prime_ elements are due to our drudgery--I mean that
literally; the _fundamentals_ that underlie all fineness and
without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible.
These, for instance--and what names are more familiar? Power of
attention; power of industry; promptitude in beginning work; method
and accuracy and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage
before difficulties; cheer under straining burdens; self-control
and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities;
these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we
were small mother had a way of harping on them, and father joined
in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church.
And this was what our first employer meant--only his way of putting
the matter was, "Look sharp, my boy!"--"Be on time, John!"--"Stick
to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant: these _are_ the very
qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked
us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their
platitudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And
that goes to _show_ that they are the fundamentals. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a
man are handier to have; worth more; worth more than Latin and
Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting
and wax flowers and travels in Europe added together. These last
are the decorations of a man or woman: even reading and writing are
but conveniences: those other things are the _indispensables_. They
make one's sit-fast strength and one's active momentum, whatsoever
and wheresoever the lot in life be--be it wealth or poverty, city
or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid
substance of one's self.

And the question I would ask of myself and you is, How do we get
them? How do they become ours? High-school and college can give
much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book
processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call "our
education," give no more than _opportunity_ to win these
indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them? We get them
somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it
that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore
conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long
chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and
grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These
rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the
soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had
we been there to watch. It was "drudgery" all over the land. Mother
Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing work! That
was yesterday: to-day, result of scrubbing-work, we have the
laughing landscape.

Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the
earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done
much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us; but that which
scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and
keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by--that depends
on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one
word, depends upon our "drudgery." It is because we have to go,
and _go_, morning after morning, through rain, through shine,
through toothache, headache, heartache, to the appointed spot, and
do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick
to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would
be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learned at
nine o'clock and learned without a slip; because the accounts on
the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally
exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with
children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven
times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow,
and the next day; in short, without much matter _what_ our work be,
whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut,
plod, grind, humdrum _in_ the work, that we at last get those
self-foundations laid of which I spoke,--attention, promptness,
accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I
think over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I
have to answer each with _No_:--Are there any qualities in the list
which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities?
Not one. Can I get these self-foundations laid, save by the weight,
year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other
way. Is there a single one in the list which I cannot get in some
degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one.
Then beyond all books, beyond all class-work at the school, beyond
all special opportunities of what I call my "education," it is
this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great
school-master. _My daily task_, whatever it be--_that is what
mainly educates me_. All other culture is mere luxury compared with
what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am,
this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at
as my "drudgery"!

We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very
important fact to girls and boys as ambitious as they ought to
be,---the higher our ideals, the _more_ we need those foundation
habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and
laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes
takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the
sick-room, or laws in the legislature, or children in the nursery.
The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day
long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every
stroke,--which of the two more needs the self-control, the method,
the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh
for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more "concentration" to
use books--head tools--well than to use hand tools. It takes more
"self-control" to use leisure well than workdays. Compare the
Sundays and Mondays of your city; which day, all things considered,
stands for the city's higher life,--the day on which so many men
are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge,
more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear
the healthy pinch of the just-enough.

Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native
power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for
much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the
uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their
genius. "Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. "The
Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great
Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, "My imagination
would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of
commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"?
It was Charles Dickens. Who said "The secret of a Wall Street
million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe
for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), "Never use
what is not your own, never buy what you cannot pay for, never sell
what you haven't got." How simple great men's rules are! How easy
it is to be a great man! Order, diligence, patience, honesty,--just
what you and I must use in order to put our dollar in the
savings-bank, to do our school-boy sum, to keep the farm thrifty,
and the house clean, and the babies neat. Order, diligence,
patience, honesty! There is wide difference between men, but truly
it lies less in some special gift or opportunity granted to one and
withheld from another, than in the differing degree in which these
common elements of human power are owned and used. Not how much
talent have I, but how much will to use the talent that I have, is
the main question. Not how much do I know, but how much do I do
with what I know? To do their great work the great ones need more
of the very same habits which the little ones need to do their
smaller work. Goethe, Spencer, Agassiz, Jesus, share, not
achievements, but conditions of achievement, with you and me. And
those conditions for them, as for us, are largely the plod, the
drill, the long disciplines of toil. If we ask such men their
secret, they will uniformly tell us so.

Since we lay the firm substrata of ourselves in this way, then, and
only in this way; and since the higher we aim, the more, and not
the less, we need these firm substrata,--since this is so, I think
we ought to make up our minds and our mouths to sing a hallelujah
unto Drudgery: _Blessed be Drudgery_,--the one thing that we cannot
spare!

II

But there is something else to be said. Among the people who are
drudges there are some who have given up their dreams of what, when
younger, they used to talk or think about as their "ideals"; and
have grown at last, if not content, resigned to do the actual work
before them. Yes, here it is,--before us, and behind us, and on all
sides of us; we cannot change it; we have accepted it. Still, we
have not given up one dream,--the dream of _success_ in this work
to which we are _so_ clamped. If we cannot win the well-beloved
one, then success with the ill-beloved,--this at least is left to
hope for. Success may make _it_ well-beloved, too,--who knows?
Well, the secret of this success still lies in the same old word,
"drudgery." For drudgery is the doing of one thing, one thing, one
thing, long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is this "one
thing I do" that gathers me together from my chaos, that
concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into
achievements. "One thing I do," said Paul, and, apart from what his
one thing was, in that phrase he gave the watchword of salvation.
That whole long string of habits--attention, method, patience,
self-control, and the others--can be rolled up and balled, as it
were, in the word "concentration." We will halt a moment at the
word:

"I give you the end of a golden string:
Only wind it into a ball,--
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall."

Men may be divided into two classes,--those who have a "one thing,"
and those who have no "one thing," to do; those with aim, and those
without aim, in their lives: and practically it turns out that
almost all of the success, and, therefore, the greater part of the
happiness, go to the first class. The aim in life is what the
backbone is in the body: without it we are invertebrate, belong to
some lower order of being not yet man. No wonder that the great
question, therefore, with a young man is, What am I to be? and that
the future looks rather gloomy until the life-path opens. The lot
of many a girl, especially of many a girl with a rich father, is a
tragedy of aimlessness. Social standards, and her lack of true
ideals and of real education, have condemned her to be frittered:
from twelve years old she is a cripple to be pitied, and by thirty
she comes to know it. With the brothers the blame is more their
own. The boys we used to play our school games with have found
their places; they are winning homes and influence and money, their
natures are growing strong and shapely, and their days are filling
with the happy sense of accomplishment,--while _we_ do not yet know
what we are. We have no meaning on the earth. Lose us, and the
earth has lost nothing; no niche is empty, no force has ceased to
play, for we have got no aim, and therefore we are still--nobody.
_Get your meaning_ first of all! Ask the question until it is
answered past question, What am I? What do I stand for? What name
do I bear in the register of forces? In our national cemeteries
there are rows on rows of unknown bodies of our soldiers,--men who
did a work and put a meaning to their lives; for the mother and the
townsmen say, "He died in the war." But the men and women whose
lives are aimless reverse their fates. Our _bodies_ are known, and
answer in this world to such or such a name,--but as to our inner
_selves_, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be
labeled, "An unknown man sleeps here!"

Now, since it is concentration that prevents this tragedy of
failure, and since this concentration always involves drudgery,
long, hard, abundant, we have to own again, I think, that that is
even more than what I called it first,--our chief school-master;
besides that, drudgery is the gray Angel of Success. The main
secret of any success we may hope to rejoice in is in that angel's
keeping. Look at the leaders in the profession, the "solid" men in
business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by
building a town in which to house their factory hands; they are
drudges of the single aim. The man of science, and to-day more than
ever, if he would add to the world's knowledge, or even get a
reputation, must be, in some one branch at least, a plodding
specialist. The great inventors, Palissy at his pots, Goodyear at
his rubber, Elias Howe at his sewing-machine, tell the
secret,--"One thing I do." The reformer's secret is the same. A
one-eyed, grim-jawed folk the reformers are apt to be: one-eyed,
grim-jawed, seeing but the one thing, never letting go, they have
to be, to start a torpid nation. All these men as doers of the
single thing drudge their way to their success. Even so must we,
would we win ours. The foot-loose man is _not_ the enviable man. A
wise man will be his own necessity and bind himself to a task, if
by early wealth or foolish parents or other lowering circumstances
he has lost the help of an outward necessity.

Again, then, I say, Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh
beatitude: _Blessed be Drudgery!_ It is the one thing we cannot
spare.

III

This is a hard gospel, is it not? But now there is a pleasanter
word to briefly say. To lay the firm foundations in ourselves, or
even to win success in life, we _must_ be drudges. But we _can_ be
_artists_, also, in our daily task. And at that word things
brighten.

"Artists," I say,--not artisans. "The difference?" This: the artist
is he who strives to perfect his work,--the artisan strives to get
through it. The artist would fain finish, too; but with him it is
to "finish the work God has given me to do!" It is not how great a
thing we do, but how well we do the thing we have to, that puts us
in the noble brotherhood of artists. My Real is not my Ideal,--is
that my complaint? One thing, at least, is in my power: if I cannot
realize my Ideal, I can at least _idealize my Real_. How? By trying
to be perfect in it. If I am but a rain-drop in a shower, I will
be, at least, a perfect drop; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will
be, at least, a perfect leaf. This poor "one thing I do,"--instead
of repining at its lowness or its hardness, I will make it glorious
by my supreme loyalty to its demand.

An artist himself shall speak. It was Michael Angelo who said:
"Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to
create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever
strives for it strives for something that is godlike. True painting
is only an image of God's perfection,--a shadow of the pencil with
which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony." The great
masters in music, the great masters in all that we call artistry,
would echo Michael Angelo in this; he speaks the artist essence
out. But what holds good upon their grand scale and with those
whose names are known, holds equally good of all pursuits and all
lives. That true painting is an image of God's perfection must be
true, if he says so; but no more true of painting than of
shoemaking, of Michael Angelo than of John Pounds, the cobbler. I
asked a cobbler once how long it took to become a good shoemaker;
he answered, promptly, "Six years,--and then you must travel!" That
cobbler had the artist soul. I told a friend the story, and he
asked his cobbler the same question: How long does it take to
become a good shoemaker? "All your life, sir." That was still
better,--a Michael Angelo of shoes! Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker,
of central New York, was an artist: "Yes," said he to Mr. Parton,
"I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." "Well, then, you
ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." "No,
sir," was the answer, "I _never_ made a pretty good hammer. I make
the best hammer made in the United States." Daniel Morell, once
president of the Cambria Railworks in Pittsburgh, which employed
seven thousand men, was an artist, and trained artists. "What is
the secret of such a development of business as this?" asked the
visitor. "We have no secret," was the answer; "we always try to
beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have, and we
don't care who knows it." The Paris bookbinder was an artist, who,
when the rare volume of Corneille, discovered in a book-stall, was
brought to him, and he was asked how long it would take him to bind
it, answered, "Oh, sir, you must give me a year, at least; _this_
needs all my care." Our Ben Franklin showed the artist when he
began his own epitaph, "Benjamin Franklin, printer." And Professor
Agassiz, when he told the interviewer that he had "no time to make
money"; and when he began his will, "I, Louis Agassiz, teacher."

In one of Murillo's pictures in the Louvre he shows us the interior
of a convent kitchen; but doing the work there are, not mortals in
old dresses, but beautiful white-winged angels. One serenely puts
the kettle on the fire to boil, and one is lifting up a pail of
water with heavenly grace, and one is at the kitchen dresser
reaching up for plates; and I believe there is a little cherub
running about and getting in the way, trying to help. What the old
monkish legend that it represented is, I hardly know. But, as the
painter puts it to you on his canvas, all are so busy, and working
with such a will, and so refining the work as they do it, that
somehow you forget that pans are pans and pots pots, and only think
of the angels, and how very natural and beautiful kitchen-work
is,--just what the angels would do, of course.