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THE LOST CHORD

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER

Seated one day at the organ,

I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence
As if it were loath to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,

That came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;

It may be that only in Heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen.

VIII

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FORCE

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THE second of the elements of tone-making is Force, the element that has to do with the loudness or quietness of the sound made by the voice. A study of Force must not be understood to be a study only of how to make more noise, how to use a bigger and more powerful voice. For though most novices need to develop greater vocal power, yet a study of Force as a factor in carrying meaning is just as much taken up with quietness as with loudness. Meaning is every whit as much dependent on mild tones as on loud. It is the contrast between loud and quiet that makes Force a factor in the carrying of thought, not noise or volume alone.

DEGREE OF FORCE

Touch.-In describing the effect of Force in expression we may profitably borrow a term from the sister art of music-Touch. Touch carries the double idea of variety and skill, prime requisites in the application of Force to the use of the voice. Just as some piano-players have a touch like a blacksmith and others the touch of a gold-beater, some speakers and readers strike their notes with a thump like a pile-driver and others like the falling of the rain. To be effective for all possible occasions, one ought to possess both the heavy and the light; neither is necessarily a defect nor necessarily a virtue.

Command of each is very much to be desired both for public address and for interpretation and acting.

Force Is Chiefly Total Reaction. The factor of Force is all a matter of general bodily participation; that is, true emotional reaction. Force is, by the psychologist and physicist, called intensity. Intensity in the use of one set of muscles always tends to spill over into other sets. The man who feels the need of shouting is by the nature of his attitude intense-much tensed up. Examination would show that the muscles of his neck, back, arms, and legs are much tightened. What more to be expected, then, than that his diaphragm should also show intensity and should expel air at an intensity calculated to make much noise? Force is thus highly charged with emotional meanings, with general attitudes, and total bodily dispositions.

Coming from such a condition in the speaker, it produces imitatively the same type of reaction in the listener. When we hear a loud noise of any kind our reaction is total and intense; when we hear a sound soft and gentle we react with very little intensity and with only slight reverberation in the muscles distant from those of the ears. We prefer most of the time freedom from great noises, being much happier when quiet. Noises wear us out; they keep us at work all over the body; whereas a little at a time of total bodily work is plenty. Noises are strong stimulants and easily bring the listener to a state of numbness. Consequently con

tinuous shouting, in a small room where it strikes each listener hard and noisily, so agitates him all over and so thoroughly wears him out that he has no mechanism left for the differentiations and discriminations needed for activity of an intellectual nature.

A sermon or a campaign speech shouted from start to finish-especially where there are no opposing noises— leaves no intellectual impression, no disposition to catch

refinements of meaning: the only thing carried being a general feeling, a total attitude. Yet frankness compels us to note that many audiences delight in just this vagueness and grossness of emotionality; they are none too capable of fine distinctions, and seldom get from a public meeting anything but the most hazy and expansive of attitudes. Ask them how they enjoyed the "effort," and they will rhapsodize over its beauties and charms and power; but ask them just what the speaker said, and they cannot tell. No wonder so many hopeful preachers and politicians and lyceum lights go wrong; the defects of the listeners invite them to it. Yet there is a path between the Scylla of over-intellectualized hush and the Charybdis of popularized bombast; and it is highly worth finding.

It is found in a sense of balance for Touch, for the right degree of Force. Some words are shouted, necessarily; very good, so handle them; do not fail to give them all the intensity they need. But select them with care and do not inflict injuries of violence upon the others, those needing gentler treatment. In conversation less than half the syllables need a hard blow; the majority are touched only hard enough to be distinct. In public address for small gatherings no more in number are stressed, but the blow is enough harder always to fit the size of the audience and the acoustic properties of the hall. The same applies pretty generally to interpretation.

For oratory, impersonation, and acting the ratio shifts, varying according to the intensity of the speaker's feelings, the temper of the audience, and the size of the gathering. Some oratory must be by shouts only, a shout for every syllable; Webster, addressing a great outdoor throng on Bunker Hill, must have shouted on almost every syllable; Lincoln and Douglas must have been pretty intense in every word in their great debates;

Bryan in the Coliseum could not have captured the convention without making each sound one of great volume and intensity. Impersonators and actors sometimes represent characters of fiction or drama whose mood calls for a shout in every utterance-Lear defying the thunder, William Tell addressing the mountain peaks, Sir Toby Belch airing his grievances.

Range of Touch.-There are some interesting notions concerning Force entertained by different types of extremists. One type assumes that the only way to be effective in speech is to shout all the time. The ministry and the stump seem to have almost a monopoly of this theory, though the bar occasionally steals their thunder, as it were. We are all familiar with the brother who starts his sermon with much more voice than is necessary, then very quickly turns on all the power he has, and never lets down until the "lastly," sometimes even assaulting Heaven in his closing prayer. And we have heard the campaigner who, inflated with the importance of his mission as a savior of his country, puts on the full diapason at the start and never relents in his ardor till his concluding "I thank you."

But these types, absurd as they seem, are no more so in reality than the other which assumes that because quietness is a virtue in the parlor and at the dinnertable, or in the library, study, and laboratory-where such men spend most of their time-therefore it must be the chief commendation of a public speaker. This notion seems to be most prevalent in academic circles, where the quiet, restrained soul holds sway and gentleness and lightness of touch are the greatest of virtues. Many a college lecturer, who gets along well enough in his class-room and in the committee gathering, wonders why he fails when he goes out among the unelect. Usually he ascribes the result to the ignorance and lack of taste of the uninitiated; but more often prob

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