Practical recitations

Title: Practical recitations

Selections for literary exercises appropriate for reception-days, holidays, poets' birthdays, etc.

Author: Caroline B. Le Row

Release date: February 14, 2023 [eBook #70040]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Clark & Maynard, 1886

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70040

Credits: Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

[1]

Practical Recitations

Selections for Literary Exercises APPROPRIATE FOR Reception-Days, Holidays, Poets’ Birthdays, etc., INCLUDING CONCERT AND MUSICAL RECITATIONS, AND DIALOGUES FROM POPULAR AUTHORS, ESPECIALLY ARRANGED FOR THIS WORK.

BY Caroline B. LeRow, Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly Instructor in Vassar and Smith Colleges.

NEW YORK: Clark & Maynard, Publishers, 771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth Street.

[2]

A Practical Reader.

WITH EXERCISES IN VOCAL CULTURE.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW,

Instructor in Elocution, Central School, Brooklyn, and formerly at Smith and Vassar Colleges.

All students are expected to be able to read well ordinary prose and poetry, and it is for the purpose of helping them to do this, as well as to help teachers in the teaching of reading, that this book is prepared.

It is thoroughly practical. No unnecessary technical terms are used. The subjects explained and illustrated are those only which, as the result of many years’ experience among teachers as well as pupils, the compiler has found most necessary.

As physical development and correct vocalization must precede all good reading, the simplest and therefore most essential physical and vocal exercises are given, with full directions for their use.

The selections for reading present nothing of a merely showy style of elocution. They are adapted for the upper classes of Grammar Schools, as well as for High and advanced schools.

We claim that the Practical Reader contains more suitable material for elocutionary work in the school-room, in more condensed, analytical, and available form, than any other Reader or Speaker before the public.

224 Pages, 16mo, Handsome Cloth Binding, Red Edges.

A Specimen Copy for Examination, or Copies for Introduction, will be Delivered at 60 Cents Each.

How to Teach Reading.

By CAROLINE B. LeROW.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Failure in the Teaching of Reading—Teaching by Imitation—Natural and Logical Method—Variety in Teaching—Physical Exercise—Value of Exercise—Directions for Using Exercises—Exercises for the Body—Exercises for the Chest—Cautions in the Use of Physical Exercises—Breathing—Breathing Exercises—Cautions in the Use of Breathing Exercises—Whispering—Articulation—Vowel Sounds—Consonant Sounds—Final Consonants—Physical Effort in Articulation—Impediments of Speech—Blundering Articulation—Manner of Practicing Exercises in Articulation—Spelling Words by Sounds—Naturalness in Reading—Place of Emphasis—Selection of Words—Teaching without a Book—Punctuation—Sense Independent of Punctuation—The Reading of Poetry—Concert Reading—Reading and Singing—Vocal Accuracy in Recitations—Breathlessness in Reading—Timidity in Reading—Work in Advanced Classes—Special Faults—Extract from “Reading as a Fine Art.”

32 Pages. Price Postpaid, 12 Cents per Copy.

CLARK & MAYNARD, Publishers, 771 Broadway, New York.

Copyright, 1886, by Clark & Maynard.

[3]

PREFACE.

Recitations form one of the most attractive features of school entertainments, and give a pleasant variety to every-day work; yet few teachers have the time, even if they have the ability, to drill pupils in the long and difficult pieces which form the bulk of the countless Recitations offered to the public.

The selections included in this volume are in harmony with the spirit of class-room work, which demands brevity, simplicity, good sense, and sound morality. This is the only compilation of the kind in which these matters are considered as of equal importance with elocutionary effect. Very few of the pieces are to be found in any other book, and each one has been practically tested in the school-room. The style of rendering, wherever specified, can be changed, of course, to suit the taste of the teacher.

As it is desirable that the largest possible number of students should share in such exercises, many short selections, excellent for practice in correct emphasis and distinct articulation, are provided for the purpose.

The observance of our poets’ birthdays is becoming a pleasant and profitable custom in most schools, and[4] provision has been made for these anniversaries as well as for all other holidays.

As it is not possible to make liberal provision for each poet, it is hoped that the Alphabets will be suggestive of their best poems, and the prose extracts concerning the writers will inspire in students a desire to become better acquainted with them and their works.

[5]

CONTENTS.

[10]

LIST OF AUTHORS.

[11]

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

After Vacation.

[12]

The People’s Holidays.

Marianne Farningham.

[13]

Home Lights.

Concerning Beginnings and Ends.

Rev. A. K. H. Boyd.

We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop and start again in everything. The journey that crushes us down when we contemplate it as one long weary thing can be borne when we divide it into stages. And one great lesson of practical wisdom is to train ourselves to mentally divide everything into stages. It would crush down any man’s resolution if he saw in one glance the whole enormous bulk of labor which he will get through in a lifetime. And yet you know, and the little child knows just as well, that after he has conquered that tremendous alphabet, he must begin again with something else, he must mount from his first little book onwards and upwards into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step by step.

[14]

A Strange Experience.

Josephine Pollard.

The Daily Task.

Marianne Farningham.

“What’s the Lesson for To-day?”

Moral Courage.

Rev. Sydney Smith.

A great deal of talent is lost in the world for the want of a little courage. The fact is, that to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating tasks, and adjusting nice chances; it did very well before the flood, where a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for an hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its success afterwards: but at present, a man waits and doubts and hesitates, and consults his brother and his uncle and particular friends, till one fine day he finds that he is sixty years of age; that he has lost so much time in consulting his first cousin and particular friends, that he has no more time to follow their advice.

[18]

No Work the Hardest Work.

Charles F. Orne.

Some Old School-books.

[21]

Their Cost.

Ellen M. H. Gates.

A true life must be simple in all its elements.—Horace Greeley.

[22]

The Old Reading Class.

Will Carleton.

[24]

Forward.

Susan Coolidge.

[25]

Her Angel.

Anna F. Burnham.

Are the Heroes Dead?

Helen Lee Sargent.

[27]

Failed! a poem of hard times.

Phillips Thompson.

Labor.

Rev. Orville Dewey.

To some field of labor, mental or manual, every idler should fasten, as a chosen and coveted theater of improvement. But so he is not impelled to do, under the teachings of our imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses himself in his idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which Mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven’s great ordinance. Toil, I repeat—toil, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the

only true manhood, the only true nobility.

[29]

The Holy Place.

Mary Frances Butts.

[30]

A Discourse of Buddha.

Edwin Arnold.

We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. It cannot be said that as a people we are so positively sad or morose as that we are vacant of that sportiveness of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and that springs from full and harmonious life,—a sound heart in accord with a sound body. A man must invest himself near at hand, and in common things, and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart, and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is a lesson the American has yet to learn,—capability of amusement on a low key.—John Burroughs.

[32]

To fill the youthful mind with lofty and noble ideas, to stock the memory with the richest vocabulary, and to acquire a wide command of our grand English language, we have nothing better, except the Bible, than the plays of Shakespeare.

Extracts from Shakespeare once thoroughly committed to memory are never forgotten. Many of the world’s great orators and statesmen were wont to commit and recite passages from Shakespeare. Edmund Burke made Shakespeare his daily study, while Erskine, it is said, could have held conversation on every subject in the phrases of the great dramatist. Rufus Choate was familiar with every line of Shakespeare. Daniel Webster never tired of repeating passages from the same author. The genial Dr. Holmes tells us that Wendell Phillips, Motley the historian, and himself, when boys, used to declaim Antony’s oration on holiday afternoons over the prostrate form of some younger playmate.

Sparrows.

Adeline D. T. Whitney.

But, above all, where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness—attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sinai thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the silence of deep eternities, of worlds beyond the morning stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old graves, with their long moldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry—do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.—Thomas Carlyle.

[34]

The Storming of Stony Point.

(July 16, 1779.)

Elaine Goodale.

[35]

Humility.

Ernest W. Shurtleff.

[36]

What of That?

Knowledge has in our time triumphed, and is still triumphing, over prejudice and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.—Daniel Webster.

[37]

The Old Folks in the New School-house.

The Barbarous Chief.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Growth.

Horace Mann.

At first the mind cannot project itself outward, if we may so speak, even so far as the eye can reach. A child may see with the eye the outlines of a distant mountain long before his mind can, as it were, leap over the intervening space. But soon the mind attains a power of flight compared with which the space traveled by the keenest eye, aided by the best telescope, is nothing. The eye, indeed, can see the remote star, whose light, traveling since its creation at the rate of two hundred thousand miles a second, has but just reached the earth; but all this is only a hand-breadth compared with the depths in the abysses of space into which the adventurous mind plunges itself.

[40]

A Bird’s Ministry.

Margaret J. Preston.

Extract from a Letter.

William Wirt.

I want to tell you a secret. The way to make yourself pleasing to others, is to show that you care for them. The world is like the miller at Mansfield, “who cared for nobody, no, not he, because nobody cared for him.” And the whole world will serve you so if you give them the same cause. Let every one, therefore, see that you do care for them, by showing them what Sterne so happily calls “the small, sweet courtesies,” in which there is no parade; whose voice is to still, to ease; and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks and little kind acts of attention, giving others the preference in every little enjoyment at the table, in the field, walking, sitting, or standing.

[42]

The Coast-Guard.

Emily Huntington Miller.

A Turkish Tradition.

[44]

“Eyes that See Not.”

Ella Jewett.

Lamentation of the Lungs.

To read the English language well, to write with dispatch a neat, legible hand, and be master of the first rules of arithmetic, so as to dispose of at once, with accuracy, every question of figures which comes up in practice—I call this a good education. And if you add the ability to write pure grammatical English, I regard it as an excellent education. These are the tools. You can do much with them, but you are helpless without them. They are the foundation; and unless you begin with these, all your flashy attainments, a little geology, and all other ologies and osophies are ostentatious rubbish.—Edward Everett.

[46]

The Light-house.

A Swedish Poem.

[48]

The Demon on the Roof.

Josephine Pollard.

Only a Little.

Dora Goodale.

[50]

My Portion.

Carlotta Perry.

[51]

Saxon Grit.

Rev. Robert Collyer.

[53]

The Little Light.

Wind and Sea.

Bayard Taylor.

[55]

Happiness.

Maggie B. Peeke.

An Illumined Text.

Older than all preached gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work;—and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee? What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.—Thomas Carlyle.

[57]

The King’s Bell.

Eben E. Rexford.

[59]

Noblesse Oblige.

Carlotta Perry.

[60]

Uses of Adversity.

The Value of Literature.

The literature of the world is in a very deep sense the direct and most beautiful outcome of its life. Men have had but a partial success in shaping their external life, but their ideals, their aspirations, their highest thoughts of themselves are to be found in books. It is only as we unite the actual which we find in its history with the ideal which we find in its literature, that we are able to get any true understanding of an age. The value and vitality of great books lie not so much in their art as in the fidelity and completeness with which they represent human life. Literature is, in a word, the best that has been thought or dreamed in the world, and must therefore remain to the very end of time the most fascinating and the most fruitful study to which men can give themselves.—Hamilton W. Mabie.

[61]

True Heroism.

[62]

The Burial of the Old Flag.

Mary A. Barr.

The Old Stone Basin.

Susan Coolidge.

Beside the Railway Track.

[66]

A Song for the Conquered.

William W. Story.

The Amen of the Rocks.

Christian Gellert.

Only a Little Thing.

Mrs. M. P. Handy.

The Little Messenger of Love.

I’d rather be right than to be President of the United States.—Henry Clay.

[71]

Original Maxims of George Washington.

[Recitations for Twelve Students.]

I.

Commerce and industry are the best mines of a nation.

II.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distresses of every one.

III.

Ingratitude, I hope, will never constitute a part of my character, nor find a place in my bosom.

IV.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

V.

To persevere is one’s duty, and to be silent is the best answer to calumny.

VI.

I never wish to promise more than I have a moral certainty of performing.

VII.

I shall never attempt to palliate my own foibles by exposing the error of another.

VIII.

It is a maxim with me not to ask what, under similar circumstances, I would not grant.

IX.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well tried before you give them your confidence.

[72]

X.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

XI.

A good character is the first essential in a man. It is, therefore, highly important to endeavor not only to be learned, but virtuous.

XII.

I am resolved that no misrepresentations, falsehoods, or calumny shall make me swerve from what I conceive to be the strict line of duty.

The Work of a Sunbeam.

Nathan G. Shepherd.

[73]

The Silver Bird’s Nest.

[74]

Luther.

Joaquin Miller.

Original Maxims of James A. Garfield.

[Recitations for Ten Students.]

I.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

II.

Poets may be born, but success is made.

III.

Be fit for more than the one thing you are now doing.

IV.

I would rather be beaten in right than succeed in wrong.

V.

Luck is an ignis fatuus. You may follow it to ruin, but not to success.

[75]

VI.

If the power to do hard work is not a talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.

VII.

I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.

VIII.

Things don’t turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up.

IX.

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soil, its spirit, and its life.

X.

The privilege of being a young man is a great privilege, and the privilege of growing to be an independent man, in middle life, is a greater.

It is a strange fancy of mine, but I cannot help wishing we could move for returns—as their phrase is in parliament—for the suffering caused in any one day, or other period of time, throughout the world, to be arranged under certain heads; and we should then see what the world has occasion to fear most. What a large amount would come under the heads of unreasonable fear of others, of miserable quarrels amongst relations upon infinitesimally small subjects, of imaginary slights, of undue cares, of false shames, of absolute misunderstandings, of unnecessary pains to maintain credit or reputation, of vexation that we cannot make others of the same mind with ourselves! What a wonderful thing it would be to see set down in figures, as it were, how ingenious we are in plaguing one another!—Arthur Helps.

[76]

The Angel of Dawn.

J. S. Cutler.

[77]

Questions.

Kate Lawrence.

[78]

The Landing of the Pilgrims.

Felicia Hemans.

Plymouth (Dec. 21, 1620).

The Twenty-first of February.

William Cullen Bryant.

Forefathers’ Day.

Helen Hunt Jackson.

[80]

A True Story.

[82]

Little Christel.

Mrs. Mary E. Bradley.

[85]

CONCERT RECITATIONS.

Songs of the Seasons.

Meta E. B. Thorne.

[For Four Students.]

[87]