THE NEW YORK SPEAKER. A SELECTION OF PIECES DESIGNED FOR ACADEMIC EXERCISES IN ELOCUTION, BY WARREN P. EDGARTON, PROFESSOR OF ORATORY AND RHETORIC, HUDSON RIVER INSTITUTE, CLAVERACK, N K WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON DECLAMATION, AUTHOR (” “UNIVERSITY SPEAKER," "PULPIT ELOCUTION," "ORTHOPHONY," ETⱭ REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: 1868. TOE SPARY Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by MASON BROTHERS, the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE selection of pieces comprised in the following pages, has been prepared with particular reference to the class of institutions in which the compiler was occupied with the duties of instruction. He has, therefore, studiously avoided all matter not applicable to the exercises in such establishments. His design has been to omit, as unsuitable for the practice of academic elocution, all pieces marked, in subject and style, by the extremes either of too juvenile a character, or those of formal, political declamation. The former always tend to cherish a feeble and puerile style of speaking: the latter produce a heavy and unnatural manner in youthful speakers. The volume now offered, will, it is hoped, prove such as academic teachers and students may take up without having to encounter the unnecessary task of wading through a mass of inappropiate matter, before reaching any thing adapted to their use, but with the certainty of finding in it the materials which their peculiar circumstances require in the business of elocutionary training. For the remarks on attitude and gesture as connected with exercises in recitation and declamation, the compiler is happy to express his obligations to one to whom he, in common with so many others, has been indebted for personal instruction; and to the same source he would refer students and teachers for directions regarding the important subjects of vocal training, articulation, pronunciation, inflection, emphasis, pauses, expressive tones, and all the other details of elocution, connected with utterance. These are presented in a compendious form in Professor Russell's American. School Reader, and more extensively in his work entitled Orthophony, or Vocal Culture in Elocution. W. P. E. CLAVERACK, October, 1856. |