"Elocution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeling for one's fellow men! Shy people are always distrustful of their powers and look upon their lack of confidence as a weakness or lack of ability, when it may indicate quite the reverse. By teaching children early the arts of social life, such as boxing, horseback riding, dancing, elocution, and similar accomplishments, we may do much to overcome ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... might enjoy her conversation, might applaud the rectitude of her sentiments, the richness of her elocution, and her skill in all the offices of politeness. But it was only for him who dwelt constantly under the same roof, to mark the inviolable consistency of her actions and opinions, the ceaseless flow of her ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... and study music, law, medicine, elocution, or any of that amazing hodge-podge of pursuits which are permitted to small-town women. But she really couldn't afford to do any of these; and, besides, she had no talent for music of a higher grade than Sousa and Victor Herbert; she was afraid of lawyers; ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... me and to make me believe that I was born to become the most renowned preacher of our age as soon as I should have grown fat—a quality which I certainly could not boast of, for at that time I was extremely thin. I had not the shadow of a fear as to my voice or to my elocution, and for the matter of composing my sermon I felt myself equal to the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... poetry—then classic art begins to influence our ripening youth, as it did the youth of our nation in the sixteenth century, and delight in dramatic poetry follows as a natural consequence—and last, but not least, as the fruit of all these changes, a vigorous and matured prose. For indeed, as elocution is the highest melody, so is true prose the highest poetry. Consider how in an air, the melody is limited to a few arbitrary notes, and recurs at arbitrary periods, while the more scientific the melody becomes, the more numerous and nearly allied ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... called immediately on Mr. Micklewham to read the letter which he had received from the Doctor; and which the worthy dominie did without delay, in that rich and full voice with which he is accustomed to teach his scholars elocution ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... nature, may be noted down in recitative. Writing recitative is but committing to paper the accent and intonation, in short, the reading of the language to be delivered by the performer; and the composer may almost be considered as a master of elocution, writing down that reading of a passage which he thinks may best express the passion or the sentiment of the words. The effect of this reading or intonation is often aided and increased by the sound of instruments, sometimes, expressing the harmonies of the passages ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... pronunciation, we should hardly care to hear the mutilation of Holy Scripture which must have followed the continuance of the practice. Would it not be possible to find men qualified to hold the office of parish clerk by education and powers of elocution who could revive the ancient practice with advantage to the church both to the clergyman ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... exercise. In forming and undulating the voice, not only the chest, but also the diaphragm and abdominal muscles are in constant action, and communicate to the stomach and bowels a healthy and agreeable stimulus. Where the voice is raised and the elocution is rapid, the muscular effort becomes fatiguing; but when care is taken not to carry reading aloud so far at one time as to excite a sensation of soreness or fatigue in the chest, and the exercise is duly repeated, it is extremely useful in developing and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Barron used to shine in the chief parts; and later in life, after the Norwich home was broken up, his little granddaughter would sit behind him in a great armchair, and be introduced, with his stately elocution, to the world of dramatic literature. From this, in a direct line, we can deduce the charades at Claygate; and after money came, in the Edinburgh days, that private theatre which took up so much of Fleeming's energy and thought. The company - Mr. and Mrs. R. O. Carter of Colwall, W. B. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man is made by conversation. He that buries himself among his manuscripts, "besprent," as Pope expresses it, "with learned dust," and wears out his days and nights in perpetual research and solitary meditation, is too apt to lose in his elocution what he adds to his wisdom; and when he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with his own notions, like a man armed with weapons which he cannot wield. He has no facility of inculcating his speculations, of adapting himself to the various degrees of intellect which the accidents of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the arts of rhetoric; but as the mind of the orator was never disconcerted by timid perplexity, he was able, as often as the occasion prompted him, to deliver his decided sentiments with bold and ready elocution. The laws of martial discipline were the only laws that he had studied; and he was soon distinguished by the laborious diligence, and inflexible severity, with which he discharged and enforced the duties ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... ought to go on the stage," chorus the admiring friends of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class. And sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... Queen's foibles. It was probably earlier in the year, and about this same Irish business, that Raleigh spoke to Elizabeth, on the occasion which Naunton describes. 'Raleigh,' he says, 'had gotten the Queen's ear at a trice; and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands; and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.' Lord Grey, who was no diplomatist, had the want of caution to show that he was annoyed at advice being asked from a young man who was so lately his inferior. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Dolabella, who assumed the Consulship upon Caesar's death, and Hirtius, who became Consul during the next year, used to attend upon Cicero and take lessons in elocution. So at least the story has been told, from a letter written in this year to his friend Poetus; but I should imagine that the lessons were not much in earnest. "Why do you talk to me of your tunny-fish, your pilot-fish, and your cheese and sardines? Hirtius ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... sweetly beautiful little poem its noble truths should be uttered with emphatic, but not noisy elocution. There is sufficient variety in the different stanzas for the speaker to ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... altogether masculine. She had the sharp voice, the freedom of speech, the unruly tongue of the old woman of the eighteenth century, heightened by an accent suggestive of the common people, a mannish, highly colored style of elocution peculiar to herself, rising above modesty in the choice of words and fearless in calling things baldly by ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... language as this poetry became impossible, and it is still a matter for wonder by what trick of elocution actors can have made it tolerable on the stage. Yet it was certainly tolerated. And not only so, but, when the theatre came to be open again, the discontent with blank verse, which partly at least drove Dryden and others into rhyme, never seems to have noticed ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... was to be "Professor of Elocution," as Mr. Roberts gaily called her when the workers were alone together. It had been discovered that she could read both prose and poetry with effect. So a reading-class was organized, and they chose for the first evening, not one of Bryant's or Whittier's ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... psychology is a basis for every employment or activity which has to deal with enlightenment or persuasion of the public. The person who would like to become a speaker or writer needs to begin with it rather than with the study of elocution or rhetoric. The first thing essential for him to know is himself; the second, his hearers or readers—what is the order of progress in their enlightenment. Even logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical psychological order. Formal ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... connected with the church, and some of us members of the choir. At the Guild meetings on Sunday nights, the chaplain, Father Nugent, an Irishman, but, like most of ourselves, born out of his own country, used to delight in teaching us elocution, and encouraging us to write essays, besides putting other means of culture in ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... velvet costume which seems to be the only alternative to white muslin for ladies who aspire to be considered historic. Not Marie Stuart herself could have become it better than Lola Montez. Her face, air, attitude, and elocution are thoroughly and bewilderingly feminine. Perhaps her smartest and happiest remark was the one in which, with a pretty affectation, she says, "If I were a gentleman, I should like an American young lady to flirt with, but a typical English girl for a wife." This dictum was received ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... with distinction from Charleston College in 1850, receiving a prize for superiority in English composition and elocution. He then studied law; but, like many other authors both North and South, the love of letters proved too strong for the practice of his profession. His literary bent, as with most of our gifted authors, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... loquacious, loquacity, colloquial, eloquent, obloquy, circumlocution, elocution; (2) magniloquent, grandiloquent, ventriloquism, interlocutor, locutory, allocution. (For related log and Ology words see above under Prying Into ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... radiance about him, as if emanating from his genius. We had never seen him before; we only knew his works, but he seemed like a friend immediately. Listening to his fluent, felicitous talk, his clear and energetic elocution, his original ideas and veins of thought, was a rare treat, and his keen enjoyment of recovered health and active life was really infectious. He could not remain seated, but walked and smoked the whole of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... nineteen. He was telling her what a high profession the actor's was, how great he was as an actor, how commonplace her life there, how beautiful he could make it if only he had money. It was an experience to hear Mr. Feuerstein say the word "money." Elocution could go no further in surcharging five letters with contempt. His was one of those lofty natures that scorn all such matters of intimate concern to the humble, hard-pressed little human animal as food, clothing and shelter. He so ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... her lashes—a look that always made him think of the pool above the parsonage, where lucent brown water shone through rushes. He saw the look, for he always glanced round as he read, having gathered from his book on elocution that this was correct. He smiled across at ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... People or Hogswash (1794) took its title from the fact that Burke called the people the "swinish multitude." The book resulted in sending the author to the Tower for sedition. In 1798 he gave up politics and started a school of elocution which became very famous. Thomas Hardy (1752-1832), who kept a bootmaker's shop in Piccadilly, was a fellow prisoner with Thelwall, being arrested for high treason. He was founder (1792) of The London Corresponding Society, a kind of clearing house for radical associations ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of stage representation reduces everything to a controversy of elocution. Every character, from the boisterous blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must play the orator. The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... slower progress. The generality of readers, for having found a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the same body and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss, and outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most of those I converse with, speak the same language I here write; but whether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, says Plato, study fulness and elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affect brevity, and those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of conception ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... poetry should be presented orally. The appeal is first to the ear just as in music. The teacher should read or, better, recite the poem in order to get the best results. There should be no effort at "elocution" in its worst sense, but a simple, sincere rendering of the language of the poem. The more informal the process is, the better. There should be much repetition of favorite poems, so that the rich details and pictures may sink into ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... publication of many valuable performances, which lay neglected by the greatest part of the learned world; and, if reputation be estimated by usefulness, he may claim a higher degree in the ranks of learning, than some others of happier elocution, or more ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... or orations to the people will be of great benefit to the Senate, the prerogative, and the whole nation. To the Senate, because they will not only teach your Senators elocution, but keep the system of the government in their memories. Elocution is of great use to your Senators, for if they do not understand rhetoric (giving it at this time for granted that the art were not otherwise good) and come to treat with, or vindicate the cause ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... possible, therefore, that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermonizing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pulpit from the platform, there is no question. This feeling on the part of preachers is by no means universal, however; for some of them have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... could not pass in. Of course my pride was up; for was I to defer to an untutored African on a point of pronunciation? Classic shades of Harvard, forbid! Affecting scornful indifference, I tried to edge away, proposing to myself to enter the camp at some other point, where my elocution would be better appreciated. Not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... that critical moment after the second lesson was reached with dreadful celerity. Doctor Parsons, having read a chapter from the New Testament, which he emerged from the congregation to do, and which he did ill, though he prided himself upon his elocution, returned to his seat as the Vicar rose, adjusted his double eyeglasses and gave out ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... his mighty soul the fire of a generous emulation had been kindled, not to go out until his oratorical fame threw a refulgent glory on the declining fortunes of the once formidable Iroquois. In the deep and silent forest he practiced elocution, or to use his own expressive language, played Logan, until he caught the manner and tone of his great master. Unconsciously the forest orator, was an imitator of the eloquent Greek, who tuned his voice on the wild sea beach, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... been irksome to him, but had relieved him from domestic cares, regulated and watched over the expenses of his house, etc.' 'She had,' as Boswell says (post, Aug. 1783), 'valuable qualities.' 'Had she had,' wrote Johnson, 'good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her' (Piozzi Letters, ii. 311). To Langton he wrote:—'I have lost a companion to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... manifested. But he died within two months after, and in him we lost a powerful fellow-laborer. His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right: but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more of the milk of human ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... he felt it hit the nail on the head. When he returned to New York from his Western tour, he had so much improved that his voice completely filled the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He had taken a few lessons from a professor of elocution in Boston, as advised, and all went ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... charge of Oliver Optic, gives every other week a selection for Declamation, marked for delivery according to the most approved rules of elocution; 26 MARKED ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... licentiousness, which while it pleased, tended to corrupt the audience. The first step our author made into life, was in the character of an ensign in the army. He was possessed of a very ready wit, and an agreeable elocution. He happened somewhere in his winter quarters, to contract an acquaintance with Sir Thomas Skipwith, and received a particular obligation from him. He had very early discovered a taste for dramatic writing, to improve which he made some attempts in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Hector, and I certainly never saw a boy that "showed off" more. His mother was wrapped up in him; you could see in a minute that she fairly worshipped him; but I don't know, if it hadn't been for Mary, that I'd have praised his recitations and elocution ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... of the day." To which Mr. Toole replied, "Well, for my part, I think repose is everything. Quiet humour is always much more telling than noisy fun, and to feel your part deeply is far more than mere elocution." "Do you think that the training that young people on the stage get, now-a-days, is as thorough as it was in your early days, Mr. Toole?" "Well," he said, "I don't think that young actors get so much practice as they did in the old days when Irving and I used to be for years together ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... laughingly: "Hedrick HAS written some rhymes for the county papers, and Sweeney once introduced him, at an Old Settlers' Meeting, as 'The Best Poet in Center Township,' and never cracked a smile! Always after each other that way, but the best friends in the world. SWEENEY'S strong suit is elocution. He has a native ability that way by no means ordinary, but even that gift he abuses and distorts simply to produce grotesque, and oftentimes, ridiculous effects. For instance, nothing more delights him than to 'loathfully' consent to answer ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... harmonies of the Italian language. In his Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib, he recommends that boys should be instructed in the Italian pronunciation of vowel sounds, in order to give sonorousness and dignity to elocution. This slight indication supplies us with a key to the method of melodious structure employed by Milton in his blank verse. Those who have carefully studied the harmonies of the 'Paradise Lost,' know how all-important are the assonances ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... omitted in the Treatise. The nod is given to elocution. Invention is discussed, but only as a tool to assist the communicator in amplifying his ideas, as a means to spin out his thoughts to extreme lengths. Arrangement, memory, and delivery are overlooked. Accordingly, the Treatise neatly fits into the ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... little innocent you are, Betty Wales," declared Bob. "Have you forgotten that you are on the all-powerful play-committee, and that you five and Miss Kingston, head of the elocution department, practically decide ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... charity," said the former, "if some philanthropist would give this blighter elocution lessons. Can ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... comfortable pace, only one daughter, the youngest, Mollie, having so far escaped from the traditional female employments of the region as to spend a season in New York, supplementing the grammar school education by a course in elocution, with Delsarte accompaniments. When she returned she gave her old friends to understand that she was thoroughly misunderstood by her family; also, that she was now to be called Marie and preferably Miss, hinted that she was soon going on a professional tour, and condescendingly ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... my hand, in the back drawing-room of my lodging in Conduit-street. It was about ten o'clock in the afternoon. My dinner was just removed. It had left me with that gay complacency of disposition, and irrepressible propensity of elocution, which result from a satisfied appetite, and an undisturbed digestion. My sense of contentment became more vigorous and confirmed, as I cast my eye around my apartment, and contemplated my well-filled book-case, and the many articles of convenience with which I had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... base-ball, French, pigeon-shooting, elocution, kites, composition, nutting, and the academy debating society; and the list of the future demands upon their time grew as they talked, ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... full of plums, Care's a canker that benumbs. Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... who had mislaid their fans blushed as they listened to the old gentleman, whose brilliant elocution won their indulgence for certain details which we have suppressed, as too erotic for the present age; nevertheless, we may believe that each lady complimented him in private; for some time afterwards he gave to each of them, as also to the masculine ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... "I drink propitiation to you as a profissional gintle-man! No man uses more indepindent language than you do. You are under no earthly obligation to Messrs. Syntax and Prosody. Grammar, my worthy friend, is banished as an intruder from your elocution, just as you would exclude a gauger ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she leaned over the balcony and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... above portrait of Daniel Webster is taken from a book just issued by the Fowler & Wells Co., New York, entitled, "A Natural System of Elocution and Oratory," founded upon analysis of the Human Constitution. By Thomas A. Hyde and William Hyde. Among other valuable subjects which this book contains is a description and analysis ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... his debut; from the first his great gifts were apparent, and during the Revolution he was the foremost actor at the Theatre de la Republique, and subsequently enjoyed the favour of Napoleon; his noble carriage and matchless elocution enabled him to play with great dignity such characters as Othello, Nero, Orestes, Leicester, etc.; introduced, like Kemble in England, a greater regard for historical accuracy in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... student. About three-fourths of the Freshman and Sophomore years are devoted to the classics and mathematics. A large share of the work in the Junior and Senior years may be devoted to specialization in science, language, mathematics, history, sociology, or philosophy. In some cases elocution, music, and the fine arts rightly receive a fair share of attention on the part of a large number of students throughout ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... recollection, and are necessarily therefore most imperfect. The best-known specimen of Pitt's eloquence, his reply to the sneers of Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a place in so many handbooks of elocution, is evidently, in form at least, the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to the Gentleman's Magazine. Probably Pitt did say something of the kind attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of Johnson's repentant admission ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to seek it; and I became a patient listener. If the boldness and strangeness of his opinions occasionally startled me, I could not but admire the clearness with which he stated his propositions, the fervour of his elocution, and the plausibility ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... fruit, which with desire, Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, Solicited her longing eye; yet first Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused. Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired; Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise: Thy praise he also, who forbids thy use, Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... nine Comoedies, whervnto, in imitation of Herodotus, you giue the names of the nine Muses, (and in one mans fansie not vnworthily), come not neerer Ariostoes comoedies, eyther for the finesse of plausible elocution or the rarenesse of poetical inuention, than that Eluish Queene doth to his Orlando Furioso; which, notwithstanding, you wil needes seeme to emulate, and hope to ouergo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only the wrong side of his brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity. Results, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... year 1875, when the telegraph and the Atlantic cable were the most wonderful things in the world, a tall young professor of elocution was desperately busy in a noisy machine-shop that stood in one of the narrow streets of Boston, not far from Scollay Square. It was a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... if delivered spontaneously before scholars and princes, who assembled to listen to the marvelous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and magicians, from the lips of the story-teller. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud with distinct utterance and animated elocution, an accomplishment of peculiar value at a time when books were scarce, and the emoluments of authors depended more on the gratuities of their patrons than the sale of their works. In each of the four editions which he published, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... always thinkin' so earnest about his learnin' that I've saw him walk along the street in Lancaster a'ready and a'most walk into people!" "He certainly can stand on the pulpit elegant!" agreed Mrs. Wackernagel. "Why, he can preach his whole sermont with the Bible shut, yet! And he can put out elocution that it's ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... happy to say that I saw Dr. Macdonald once and heard him speak. His venerable aspect and chaste elocution made a powerful impression on all who heard him. His discourse could not be reported in cold print, for the flash of the mystic's eye, the human kindness that emanated from his whole being, and the felt emotion of his every tone could not be reproduced by any artifice ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... from a woman's pen was written by Miss Caroline B. Le Row, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a teacher of elocution, and the writer of many charming stories and verses. It was suggested by a study in butter of "The Dreaming Iolanthe," moulded by Caroline S. Brooks on a kitchen-table, and exhibited at the Centennial in Philadelphia. I do not remember any other poem in the language that rings so many changes ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... do away with the artificial and mechanical styles of teaching.—Henry W. Smith, A.M., Professor of Elocution, Princeton University. ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... the colleges founded by the Tangs, he built a school or academy in every town, he directed the public examinations to be held impartially and frequently, and he gave special prizes as a reward for elocution. Some of the greatest historians China has produced lived in his reign, and wrote their works under his patronage; of these Szemakwang was the most famous. His history of the Tangs is a masterpiece, and his "Garden of Szemakwang" an idyll. He was remarkable for ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... chest, with a speakin' tube runnin' up to the mouth. John Henry bein' a regular minister, he can get the Homiletic Review at a dollar and a half a year; we can subscribe for that, get the up-to-datest sermons by the most distinguished divines, get some gent that's afflicted with elocution to say 'em into a record, and on Sunday our friend and pastor here will reel 'em off fine. You press the button—he does the rest, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... came the first rehearsal. This, of course, could be little more than a reading of the parts before Mr. Mann, with the latter to advise them as to elocution and stage business. But Bobby declared she had been practicing walking like a boy and had succeeded in copying ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Rochester stage must have been rather low, when we find two such persons as Jingle and Dismal Jemmy members of the corps. Jingle's jerky system of elocution would seem a complete disqualification. From sheer habit, it would have been impossible for him to say his lines in any other fashion—which in all the round of light "touch and go" comedy, would ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... father (the elder Pitt, as he is often called), was proud of the intelligent little fellow, and took pains to fit him for a Parliamentary career by teaching him elocution, and making him recite every day a passage from Milton or Shakespeare. Lord Chatham seems to have taken more interest in the education of his five children than was usual among parents of his day. We are told by Bishop Tomline that 'he seldom suffered a day to pass without giving instruction ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... instance, modeled the plan of his great work, "De la Justice dang l'Eglise et dans la Revolution," upon the letter of Rousseau to Beaumont; his three volumes are a string of letters to an archbishop; eloquence, daring, and elocution are all fused in a kind of persiflage, which is the foundation of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consists of various exemplifications of such differences of style as require correspondent diversities of pronunciation, it will be proper to inform the scholar, that there are, in general, three forms of style, each of which demands its particular mode of elocution: the familiar, the solemn, and the pathetick. That in the familiar, he that reads is only to talk with a paper in his hand, and to indulge himself in all the lighter liberties of voice, as when he reads the common articles of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Latin Reader, (first part); Modern Geography; Intellectual and Practical Arithmetic finished; Dr. Barber's Grammar of Elocution; Writing, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... who was a professional, having studied elocution in Milwaukee, disapproved of Carol's enthusiasm for recent plays. Miss Stowbody expressed the fundamental principle of the American drama: the only way to be artistic is to present Shakespeare. As no one listened to her she sat back and looked like ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... are questions of elocution that I would like to speak to you about. I've to run away now, but ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... dignity, and action add to the celebrity of a public man, repeated to him several passages from Sophocles and Euripides, which so delighted and astonished Demosthenes that he always afterwards formed his elocution and action on the models of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... suffrage—resulted in a $20 prize to Edwin Hahn of Pomona College, five young men participating. Clare, daughter of Judge C. C. McComas, gave highly-appreciated recitations on the woman question, and Miss Nina Cuthbert, the young teacher of elocution, delighted many audiences with her readings and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... thousands of dollars on that girl's education," Madam continued, "and what do you suppose she elected to specialize in? 'Expression'! In my day they called it elocution. When a girl was too dumb to learn anything else, the teacher got money out of her parents by teaching her to swing her arms around her hear and say, 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night.' Now they all want to write poetry, or play the flute, or go on the stage, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Payne's rendition a critic says, "He had all the skill of a finished artist combined with the freshness and simplicity of youth. Great praise, but there are few actors who can claim any competition with him." Six weeks later he was playing Hamlet there, and his elocution is spoken of as remarkable for its purity, his action as suited to the passion he represented, and his performance as an exquisite one that delighted his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in order that elocution may be cultivated? But elocution is seldom, if ever, cultivated in the ordinary elementary school, the veriest mumbling on the part of the child being accepted by his teacher (who follows him with an open book in his hand), provided that he can read correctly ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... language, but courteous and kind in manner. I relieved Mrs. Fosdyke from anxiety by informing her that we had a professor of elocution at school. And then I was left to improve my acquaintance ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... most sensitive tact. His qualities and his limitations alike appear in the Spectator. For example, he tells us that he wishes that country clergymen would borrow the sermons of great divines, and devote all their own efforts to acquiring a good elocution: [Footnote: Spectator 106.] here we detect the practical moralist and the man who likes a thing good of its kind, but not the enthusiast. He upholds the observance of Sunday on account of its social ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... altigi. Elevation (height) altajxo. Elf koboldo, feino. Elicit eltiri. Elide elizii. Eligible elektebla. Eligibility elektebleco. Eliminate elmeti. Elision elizio. Elite eminentularo. Ell ulno. Ellipse elipso. Elm ulmo. Elocution parolscienco. Eloquence elokventeco. Eloquent elokventa. Elope forkuri. Else alie. Elsewhere aliloke. Elude lerte eviti. Emaciated malgrasega. Emanate deveni. Emancipate liberigi. Embalm balzamumi. Embankment surbordo bordmarsxejo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... words, and interlarding his periods with innuendos and formal reservations, he is evidently making up his mind all the time which side he shall take. He puts his sentences together as printers set up types, letter by letter. There is certainly no principle of short-hand in his mode of elocution. He goes round for a meaning, and the sense waits for him. It is not conversation, but rehearsing a part. Men of education and men of the world order this matter better. They know what they have to say on a subject, and come to the point at once. Your coffee-house politician balances between what ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural; it could never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence. I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... United States District Attorney, George Hay—serious, humorless, faithful to Jefferson's interests, and absolutely devoid of the personal authority demanded by so grave a cause. He was assisted by William Wirt, already a brilliant lawyer and possessed of a dazzling elocution, but sadly lacking in the majesty of years. At the head and forefront of the defense stood Burr himself, an unerring legal tactician, deciding every move of the great game, the stake of which for him was life itself. About him were gathered the ablest members of the Richmond ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... scattered about. Betty, the old nurse, brought me a bowl of laughing potatoes, and gave me a hearty "Much good may it do you, miss"; and didn't I tip her a word of Irish, which delighted her.... Our dinner-party were mamma and the two young ladies, two itinerant preceptors, a writing and elocution master, and a dancing-master, and Father Murphy, the P.P.—such fun!—and the Rev. Mr. Beaufort, the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... violence carried to such a height as in this session; the House [the Irish House of Parliament] seldom breaking up till eleven or twelve at night. From these contests the desire of improving in the article of elocution is become very general. There are no less than five persons of rank and fortune now waiting my leisure to become my pupils.' Ib. p. 60. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... prince. But to return from this digression to a further account of my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with elocution. The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... there must be something dashing and 'fast' in his appearance, whereas his costume was perfectly plain; the expression of his face grave and earnest; his address perfectly unaffected, and such as we might expect to meet with, in a well-bred man somewhat advanced in years. His elocution also surprised those who had derived their impressions from the English journals. His voice is a superb tenor, and possesses that pathetic tremble which is so effective in what is called emotive eloquence, while his delivery was as well suited ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and Mackinnons, but Twing had managed to import into the cognate exercises of recitation a wonderful degree of enthusiasm and excellence. Dialectical Pike County, that had refused to recognize the governing powers of the nominative case, nevertheless came out strong in classical elocution, and Tom Hardee, who had delivered his ungrammatical protest on behalf of Pike County, was no less strong, if more elegant, in his impeachment of Warren Hastings as Edmund Burke, with the equal sanction of his parents. The trustees, Sperry and Jackson, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... declaimed the whole passage in a sing-song tone, accompanied by a few crude gestures recalled from long-ago school-boy elocution. Josephine knew what was coming. Every time David proposed to her he had begun by reciting poetry. She twirled her towel around the last plate resignedly. If it had to come, the sooner it was over the better. Josephine knew by experience that there ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the eye when there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded, like she'd been taking elocution or something. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... the city, did accordingly improve it with soap ashes. I remember the gentleman very well. He dyed about 1650, I believe near 90 yeares old, and was the handsomest, well limbed, strait old man that ever I saw, had a good witt and a graceful elocution. He was the father of Bess Broughton, one of the greatest beauties of her ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... examining character, correcting the errors of phrenology, demonstrating the science by his own experiments, and applying its principles in the treatment of disease, in experimental investigation, in education, self-culture, and elocution. This may satisfy the urgent present demand, until time shall permit a satisfactory work, containing the illustrations and proofs, the important modern discoveries in cerebral anatomy and vivisecting experiments, as well as the vast and interesting philosophy into which we are ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... with dignity. And he read with emphatic elocution from some closely-printed columns in the Times, interjecting exclamatory ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... read from the centre of the stage, with elocution true and syllable precise, Dryden's ponderous lines. The King nodded approvingly to the poet. The poet glowed with pride at the patronage of the King. The old-time audience were enchanted. Dryden sat with a triumphant ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Pinkney Hall, a third building for the use of the college. Dr. Humphreys also secured cabinets and philosophical apparatus for the college and gave instruction in Political Economy, Latin and Greek, Chemistry, Geology, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Composition, Elocution, Evidences of Christianity, Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Logic. Verily, an encyclopaedic man of vast industry! Only four years after Dr. Humphreys' death the War of the Rebellion broke out, ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies To all the reverent whats and whys, Resolving doubts of every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous reception; When unbelievers void of grace Came to investigate ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... my companion, on whom his entrance into this company appeared to operate like magic. His eyes sparkled; his features expanded into a benign serenity; and his wonted reserve gave place to a torrent-like and overflowing elocution. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Laws, and not fearing a publique Enemy; nor between abstaining from Injury, and pardoning it in others. There is therefore no such Inconsistence of Humane Nature, with Civill Duties, as some think. I have known cleernesse of Judgment, and largenesse of Fancy; strength of Reason, and gracefull Elocution; a Courage for the Warre, and a Fear for the Laws, and all eminently in one man; and that was my most noble and honored friend Mr. Sidney Godolphin; who hating no man, nor hated of any, was unfortunately slain in the beginning of the late Civill warre, in the Publique quarrel, by an indiscerned, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to some single spot, and who, when they are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered by a long series of observations that invention and elocution suffer great impediments from dense and impure vapors, and that the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance from the surface of the earth accelerates the fancy and sets at liberty those intellectual powers which were before ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... among the most interesting and most profitable events of the institution was the annual society contest between the two societies, the Literati and the Lyceum. The Silver City Commercial Club offered a costly cup to the winning society and it was won by the Lyceum. The contest was in oration, elocution, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... an early study of singers and actors and their performances; it gave rise to an effort to form a voice that would meet the requirements of an unusually sensitive ear; it led to the practice and teaching of elocution, and, later, to much communion with voice-users, both singers and speakers. In the meantime came medical practice, with speedy specialization as a laryngologist, when there were daily consultations with ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... the parlor Of the place of last resort, The smiler and the snarler And the guests of every sort— The elocution chap With rhetoric on tap; The mimic and the funny dog; The social sponge; the money-hog; Vulgarian and dude; And the prude; The adiposing dame With pimply face aflame; The kitten-playful virgin— Vergin' on to fifty years; The solemn-looking sturgeon Of a firm of auctioneers; The ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... amused by the young man, and had related some of his own experiences in elocution—how his clerk on the first occasion of reading the lesson at Windlow was reported to have said, "Why, you might think he had been THERE, in ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... than justice, and he bore his sufferings with the spirit of a knight who had been wounded in defense of his "faire ladye." While at school he manifested a marked talent for public speaking, and took the highest rank in elocution in the Kinmont Academy, and I think that all through his life this gift of eloquence gave him a power over those with whom he mingled. I recall distinctly my sisterly pride in him when at an exhibition he delivered that wonderful speech of Marc Antony over the ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... cost much to print and publish. But I have heard my father, who was his bailiff, say that he was a pleasant man, and was fond of reciting old scraps of poetry, which he did with great energy; indeed, Mr. Darrell declares that it was the noticing, in his father's animated and felicitous elocution, the effects that voice, look, and delivery can give to words, which made Mr. Darrell himself the fine speaker he is. But I can only recollect the antiquary as a very majestic gentleman, with a long pigtail—awful, rather, not so much so as his son, but ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive, and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and conduct in war; was provident without timidity; severe in the execution of justice without rigour; and temperate without ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... cessation, so constantly, so unweariedly, and so unblameably. Two things (rarely to be found in one man) were eminent in him, viz. a quick invention and sound judgment, and these accompanied with a homely but clear expression, and graceful elocution; so that such as knew him best were in a strait whether to admire him most for his penetrating wit and sublime genius in the schools, and peculiar exactness in disputes and matters of controversy, or his familiar condescension in the pulpit, where he was one of the most ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... who has been studying elocution under a graduate of the Old Bowery, and has acquired a most tragic croak, which, with a little rouge and burnt cork, and haggard hair, gives him a truly awful aspect, remarked that the soil of the South was clotted with blood by fiends in human shape, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... importance has been given to this. The fact is that one short unaccented vowel is very likely to be mistaken, for another, especially by the uneducated and by careless speakers. The hearer cannot detect the difference, and in fact there is none, practically. The extremely accurate and discriminating elocution of which we hear was in all probability confined ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... public life, the ambition for it dinned into his ear from childhood. In his school vacations his father made him learn and declaim chosen specimens of masculine oratory; engaged an eminent actor to give him lessons in elocution; bade him frequent theatres, and study there the effect which words derive from looks and gesture; encouraged him to take part himself in private theatricals. To all this the boy lent his mind with delight. He had the orator's inborn temperament; quick, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very much treated as a thing understood, requiring little enforcement; while, the main thing demanded of them being sermons in some sense their own—honey culled at least by their own bees, and not bought in jars, much was said about the plan and composition of sermons, about style and elocution, and action—all plainly and confessedly, with a view to pulpit-success—the lowest of all low ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of sympathy (the question of Waterloo apart) rested, it was impossible not to feel, on his so resenting the dishonour suffered at our hands by his beautiful tongue, to which, as the great field of elocution, he was patriotically devoted. I think he fairly loathed our closed English vowels and confused consonants, our destitution of sounds that he recognised as sounds; though why in this connection he put up best ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... The Art of Elocution, exemplified in a Simplified Course of Exercises. By Henry N. Day, Author of "Elements of the Art of Rhetoric." Revised Edition. Cincinnati. Moore, Wilstach, Keys, & Co. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... taught. There was a School of Art, in which wood modelling, carving, and other minor arts were taught, as well as painting and drawing. There was a Commercial School for Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Shorthand, Typewriting; French, German, etc., were taught; there were Musical Classes, Elocution Classes, a School of Engineering, a School of Photography. Enough; it will be seen that everything a lad might desire to learn he could learn ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... played an ignoble part among the nations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we have covenanted to protect, wronged. We have seen our men, women, and children murdered on the high seas without protest. We have used elocution as a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... were spokesman," Kelson sighed, his eyes glistening at the sight of so many pretty upturned faces. "Go on, old man!" he added, giving Curtis a nudge. "Fire away, and show them you know a bit about elocution, for the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... for Whitefield should have made her a sharper detective of the ingenuity of others. Those successful imitations, published originally in her novel of "The Rebels," have hardly yet ceased to pass current in the school elocution-books. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... she said one day, "I wish I had a place of my own. What is the reason I can't? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and all that is Progress and Woman's Rights; why can't she ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a deep voice that contrasted oddly with his air of debility, and I noticed that he not only had a good accent, but his words were uttered with a deliberate attempt at formal and polished elocution. We talked of horse-racing, and he mouthed out one speech after another with a balanced kind of see-saw, which again and again ran into blank verse. I said, "You have something good for Lincoln, I hear. Any chance ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... occasion to remark here, that sailors, like the orientals, are exceedingly addicted to the use of tropes and figures of speech, to similes and metaphors. In fact, if any gentleman was about compiling a treatise on elocution, I would recommend to him to pass a year or two on board one of our men of war, where he would daily hear specimens of eloquence, known and unknown to exclusively terrestrial orators, whether in the halls of Congress, at a public dinner-table, or on ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... while they were engaged in dividing their plunder. Carrying them to Pergamus, he handed them over to the civil authorities, by whom his promise of crucifying them all was duly carried out. Then he went to Rhodes, and spent two years in the study of elocution. He had proved himself an awkward kind of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... short and necessarily imperfect exposition of the art of reading therein given. The more familiar he is with the scientific principles the more successfully will he be able to direct the studies and practices of his pupils. Works on elocution are numerous and accessible. Dr. Rush's Philosophy of the Voice is perhaps the foundation of all subsequent good work in the exposition of voice culture. Professor Murdoch's Analytic Elocution is an exhaustive ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... did her duty by the child according to her lights. She engaged the best "Gawayyas" to teach her music, the best "Kath-thaks" to teach her dancing, the best "Ustads" to teach her elocution and deportment, and the best of Munshis to ground her in Urdu and Persian belles lettres; so that when Imtiazan reached her fifteenth year her accomplishments were noised abroad in the bazaar. Beautiful too she was, with the fair complexion ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... said Francis Ardry; "no one questions his judgment concerning what relates to elocution. His fame on that point is so well established, that the greatest orators do not disdain occasionally to consult him; C—- {251b} himself, as I have been told, when anxious to produce any particular effect in the House, is in the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults, in either a speaker or a writer. For my own part, I confess (and I believe most people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarism and solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Society, where it had, long before, been the custom of those about to be called to the Bar, {p.159} and those who after assuming the gown were left in possession of leisure by the solicitors, to train or exercise themselves in the arts of elocution and debate. From time to time each member produces an essay, and his treatment of his subject is then discussed by the conclave. Scott's essays were, for November, 1791, On the Origin of the Feudal System; for the 14th February, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... received a good education, learning much from a scholarly father, a college-bred man, and an ornament to the United States District Court for more than a quarter of a century. Moreover, from early youth Conkling had studied elocution, training a strong, slightly musical voice, and learning the use of secondary accents, the choice of words, the value of deliberate speech, and the assumption of an impressive earnestness. In this debate, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... governor.[254] The tradesmen of that public spirited community first expressed their sentiments. A few transportationists induced a respectable shopkeeper to propose thirty-nine reasons for the continuance of transportation, but the warmth of his elocution and the frequent repetition of "because" in an Aberdeen accent, dissolved his party in laughter. The good humoured logician acquiesced in the voice of the assembly and abandoned the cause of transportation for ever. The meeting ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... churches in the country teach only the standards of right and wrong to which the farmers already conform. For a short time a new minister is popular with them because his new voice and his fresh elocution contain a subtle flattery. He denounces the sins to which they are not inclined and praises the virtues which they have learned to practise from their fathers. But after about six months of such preaching ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... souls of your neighbours if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word. You have got a fine voice, and it will improve with judicious use. Your father is now on the outlook for a teacher of elocution to instruct you how to make the best of it, and speak ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... as usual upon such occasions, by local talent. Leila MacDonald, who sang contralto in the church choir, and Mrs. Arthur Wells, who sang soprano, and Mrs. Jack Evarts, who played the piano very well, and Miss Sally Anderson, who had taken lessons in elocution, all had their parts, besides the president of the club, Mrs. Wilbur Edes, who had a brief address in readiness, and the secretary, who had to give the club report for the year. Mrs. Snyder was to give her lecture as a grand climax, then there were to be light refreshments and a reception following ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was Ernestine the means of bestowing through her good elocution, united to the happy circumstance that brought it to the knowledge of the king! First there were her poor neighbors, to whom she could give instruction and entertainment. Then there was the poor widow who sent the petition, and who not only regained her son, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... hir indeede? To be plaine, I am voyde of al judgement, if your nine Com{oe}dies, whereunto, in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses, and (in one man's fansie not unworthily), come not neerer Ariostoes Com{oe}dies, eyther for the finenesse of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish queene doth to his Orlando Furioso, which notwithstanding, you will needes seem to emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last letters. Besides ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... in the undaunted and independent manner, hardy sentiment, and manly rude elocution of the old man, that had its effect upon the party, and particularly on the seconds, whose pride was uninterested in bringing the dispute to a bloody arbitrament, and who, on the contrary, eagerly watched for an ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Prince and Country with a religious application and perfect integrity, he feared no one, courted no one, neglected his own fortune. Besides this, he was a person of universal worth, and in great estimation among the Literati, for his unbounded reading, his sound judgment, his great elocution, his mastery in method, his singular curiosity, and his uncommon munificence towards the advancement of learning, arts, and industry, in all degrees: to which were joined the severest morality of a philosopher, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard III. With the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essential to success. She ransacked her father's library for works on elocution, and discovering on one occasion "Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks before it became known to her parents, to commence under its guidance the task of building up a somewhat weak and ineffective organ into ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... come forth from the Elocution Contest, I find that night has closed in. Not a ripple is on the far-stretching blue waste. From the high cliffs that overhang the town and its amphitheatre can be seen the faintly outlined harbour, where the white-chimneyed packet snoozes as it were, the smoke curling upwards, almost ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... art, that it must be grounded on a wide basis of general information. I do not here discuss the exact scope of this preparatory study, as my purpose is to narrow the illustration to what is special to the faculty of persuasion. I must even omit all those points relating to delivery or elocution, on which so much depends; and also the consideration of how to attain readiness or fluency in spoken address, except in so far as that follows from abundant oratorical resources. We thus sink the difference between ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... consumptive, and as being subject to an effusion of blood from the lungs; about the last condition, one would think, poor woman, for the exercise of public elocution as an art. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... and one of Billina's chickens gobbled it up. A few minutes afterward this chick got upon a roost and recited 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' without making a single mistake. Then it recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and afterwards 'Excelsior.' You see, the chicken had eaten an Elocution Pill." ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to Treatment.—Make him speak slowly and deliberately: let him form each word, without clipping or chopping; let him be made, when you are alone with him, to exercise himself in elocution. If he speak quickly, stop him in his mid-career, and make him, quietly and deliberately, go through the sentence again and again, until he has mastered the difficulty; teach him to collect his thoughts, and to weigh each word ere he give it utterance; practise him in singing little hymns ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... written, the question then is how to deliver it. Now, with the exception of returning thanks for "art" or "literature" or for "the visitors" now and then at a City banquet, I was quite unaccustomed to public speaking. A friend of mine suggested I should take lessons in elocution from "one of those actor fellows." "It is not what you say but how you say it," he said to me. "Indeed!" I replied, rather nettled. "Matthew Arnold had a wretched delivery, and I think there was something in what he said." "True, but you are not a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... intentions, and quite as bottomless are even his finished sentences. We have known "old stagers," in the newspaporial line, veteran reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... their exercises in the art of reading: they should be allowed to put down the book as soon as they are tired; but an attentive tutor will perceive when they ought to be stopped, before the utmost point of fatigue. We have heard a boy of nine years old, who had never been taught elocution by any reading master, read simple pathetic passages, and natural dialogues in "Evenings at Home," in a manner which would have made even Sterne's critic ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... fancy, which is everywhere vigorous, is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this "vivida vis animi," in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the exterior seems to have no effect on the "inner man." "In the Prince's conversation I found the same talent, the unrivalled esprit. The fluency and elocution, so entirely his own, were as graceful, and the memory was as perfect, as at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... merit) Farquhar having acquaintance with him, Mr. Wilks, was soon introduced upon the stage by his means, where he did not long continue, nor make any considerable figure. His person was sufficiently advantageous, he had a ready memory, proper gesture, and just elocution, but then he was unhappy in his voice, which had not power enough to rouse the galleries, or to rant with any success; besides, he was defective in point of assurance, nor could ever enough overcome his natural timidity. His more excellent talents ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... him a little learning, for the obtaining of which his father had not paid a little money. He subsequently enlarged his Lilliputian stock of ideas, by assiduously prosecuting his studies at home, three days a-week, and three hours a-day, when he was attended by masters in elocution, Italian, boxing, fencing, and the other sciences. This eager cultivation of his mind he pursued till he was two and twenty, and then took his station in about the third degree of fashionable society, as a scholar and a man of taste. His father had determined he should be a gentleman, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... a fact. To him it is always, 'Yes, sir, no, sir.' I'm going to tell him a few things when he comes home to-night of what I go through with all day in his absence. Elocution lessons! Just you ask him for ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... forth with an ear-piercing elocution, and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon. Such as it was, it was the gift of all hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Mr. Philip de Gray have received a cable despatch from the Prince of Wales, inviting them to instruct his sons in elocution and music, at a very liberal salary. They have this proposal under consideration, though they are naturally rather reluctant to give up the plaudits of the public, even for so ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... Marjorie, "but if somebody had stumbled over every line I shouldn't have felt it so. I know the good there is in studying elocution. When Mr. Woodfern was here and read 'O, Absalom, my son! My son, Absalom!' everybody had tears in their eyes, and I had never seen tears about it before. And now I know the good of punctuation. I guess punctuation helps ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... I listened—ah, I did not understand That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand, Might, as stated oft in fiction, spread into a sable pall, When she said that she should study Elocution in the fall! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and, this pious duty accomplished, called upon a solicitor to read the conditions of sale. The solicitor complied and made a distressing exhibition of self-consciousness. The conditions of sale were very lengthy, and apparently composed in a foreign tongue; and the audience listened to this elocution with a stoical pretence of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett |
