audience that is worth reading to. He that would precipitate a discussion in his class-room has only to read, after illuminating preface, the account of the death of Falstaff, from "King Henry V," and follow it with the death of Socrates from the "Phaedo." I have chosen both scenes for the collection, though the chronological order keeps them far apart. Dr. Furness, who was a capital reader, gave the whole Falstaff scene as broad farce, in which I venture to think he was almost entirely wrong. But here beginneth new matter-for the class-room. Certain portions of the Bible provoke fine differences of opinion. A few among many such I have found to be the Book of Ruth, the Book of Ecclesiastes, the story of the Prodigal Son, the story of Naaman and Elisha and Gehazi. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean ?" Here is a good place to say that I should not like to have the Bible as much dramatized in church as I incline to dramatize it. The clergy should, however, be audible. Not all of them are. The clergy should give us the meaning. Not all of them do. The theological schools send out many of them not even emphasizing the negative in the Ten Commandments. How then can the laity be expected to be good? But let us go back to College. Much as I have read with comment, I have favored and often practised a method praised in a recent article in the Boston Herald. "The head of the English department in a state university," this editorial piece begins, "recently said in discussing his work that he rated no influence that he was able to bring to bear upon students higher than that of reading aloud to them masterpieces, and accompanying the exercise with a minimum of critical discussion. . . . A member of the Yale faculty, whose department is not English, feels that one of the best things that he can do for selected groups of students is to stir their interest and appreciation of great literature in evenings of reading aloud and free discussion." These words bring to the minds of old Harvard men Child and the ballads, Palmer and his own translation of Homer. The few persons privileged to hear Mr. Palmer read Shelley and other modern verse today note with delight that the charm and the spell are quite what they so famously were in that distant time. There never sounded in the voices of those great professors the didactic, almost hectoring tone that often ruins the effect of literature made audible. To conclude, without sequence but very heartily, Harvard undergraduates have become even better to teach and to read to in the last few years, the years during which the tutorial system has begun to make itself felt. And further, in conclusion, among my few best audiences for more than a generation have been those assembled at Radcliffe College, in Sever Hall, at the Harvard Union, and at the Harvard clubs of Chicago and Boston. But all my audiences are good, and therefore I sha'n't blame them when they begin to give me a good-natured signal to stop lecturing and talking and reading. Cambridge, C. T. COPELAND. |