A UNIVERSAL DRAMATIC READER
BY
LEONARD G. NATTKEMPER
Polytechnic High School, Long Beach, Cal.
Formerly Professor of Public Speaking,
University of Southern California
AND
GEORGE WHARTON JAMES, Litt. D.
Author of “California, Romantic and Beautiful,”
“Arizona, the Wonderland,” “In and Out
of the Old Missions of California,”
“Reclaiming the Arid West,”
Etc., Etc.
A New, Complete and Practical Method of
Securing Delight and Efficiency in
Silent and Oral Reading and
Private and Public Speech
TOGETHER WITH A LARGE AND VARIED COLLECTION
OF CAREFULLY CHOSEN
SELECTIONS IN PROSE AND POETRY,
WITH CHAPTERS ON “THE CULTIVATION OF THE
MEMORY” AND “AFTER DINNER SPEAKING”
THE RADIANT LIFE PRESS
Pasadena, California
1919
Copyright, 1919,
By The Radiant Life Press
J. F. TAPLEY CO.
NEW YORK
Speech is one of God’s greatest gifts to man, yet, comparativelyspeaking, how few there are whose speech is pleasingto hear, clear and understandable, impressive and stimulativeto action.
From the cradle to the grave every person, perforce, usesspeech, just as he eats, breathes, drinks, sleeps. It is one ofthe important, ever exercised functions of life. Upon it allour social, business and professional intercourse is based.Without it, life as we know it, would be impossible. With it,developed to its natural, normal, proper, and readily attainableefficiency, there are few limits to what man may aspireto attain.
Recognizing to the full the truth of the aphorism that “thethings we enjoy doing are the things we do best,” it is thepurpose of this book so to present its subject as to create inits readers a firm resolve to so thoroughly enjoy good readingthat they will do it well.
The aim is twofold: first, to stimulate a natural desire onthe part of the student for the proper use of voice and bodyin the oral interpretation of literature; and second, to presenta natural and practical scheme for the attainment of this end.
After a number of years of experience and observation theauthors have come to believe that when even the most diffidentpupil has once had aroused in him a real enjoyment in theacts of speaking and reading aloud, he is destined to becomenot only an intelligent, but an intelligible reader.
It is no longer necessary to argue for the recognition ofvocal expression as a worthy and definite part of the curriculum[iv]of High School and College. Training in the spokenword is to-day, as never before, looked upon as a prerequisiteto professional and business success. Henry Ward Beecher,speaking of the rightful place of speech culture, says:
A living force that brings to itself all the resources of the imagination,all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, invoice, in eye, i