out in the turf before him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of fire, and it led him on down the ragged slope, his feet striking against ridges of ground and falling from beneath him at a sudden dip. The bramble bushes shot out long prickly vines, amongst which he was entangled, and lower he was held back by wet bubbling earth. He had descended into a dark and shady valley, beset and tapestried with gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises were the only sounds, strange, unutterable mutterings, dismal, inarticulate. He pushed on in what he hoped was the right direction, stumbling from stile to gate, peering through mist and shadow, and still vainly seeking for any known landmark.

ARTHUR MACHEN: The Hill of Dreams.12

THE WHIRL

The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon streamed in a flood of glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.

Round and round we swept-not with any uniform movement but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards-sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. POE: A Descent into the Maelstrom.

NIGHT

I heard the trailing garments of the night
Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls.

I felt her presence, by its spell of night,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the light,
As of the one I love.

12 By permission of the author.

LONGFELLOW.

SCROOGE

Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from whom no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. DICKENS: A Christmas Carol.

THE RIDE

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the walls to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the night we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

BROWNING: How They Brought The Good News. from Ghent to Aix.

SOUTHWARD

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe,

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast,

And southward aye we fled.

COLERIDGE: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

PART II. THE TECHNIQUE OF EXPRESSION

CHAPTER IX

BODILY ACTIVITY

We have been shown how the interpreter may get a richer meaning from the page for himself. Now the problem is, "How can I get that meaning over to my audience? What shall I do to have my audience understand as I want them to understand?"

Inasmuch as men always see before they hear, that is, the eye is quicker than the ear, we can easily recognize the fact that what our bodies do is most important in stirring up meaning among the members of our audience. But, the sceptics ask, "How can our bodies stir up meaning when we have not said anything?" To them we answer, "Watch the crowd of spectators following the track man as he runs to win his race, or the football hero as he tears down the field for his touchdown; notice what your body tends to do when you see a sleeping baby, or a crying baby; behold a class before an active teacher and then see it before the listless, nondescript, "hugging-the-desk" instructor. How do you react to your friend who has a sparkle in his eye, or perhaps a frown on his face, or a set expression about his mouth; how do you feel before a writhing, wriggling snake?"

Empathy as Total Activity. If you analyze what your body is doing, you will find that you have caught the muscular tensions of the person at whom you are looking; that is, the tensions of his muscles, if he stirs up enough meaning, produce the same tensions in you. As a rule you either like or dis-> like a person because of the muscular tensions you catch him making: what is called the man of "personality" is much

of the time the man whose movements make people do the things they feel are correct and proper and stimulating. In a large measure men are what they are looking at. At least they try to be.

Of course, meaning can be stirred not only from animate objects but also from inanimate. Have you ever wondered why some people are uplifted when near mountains, and others feel crushed and overpowered; or why you feel exalted by a church spire or restful and calm on the prairie, or stirred by dancers? In the presence of a Laocoön you squirm to throw off the serpents; when Casca stabs Caesar your arm stabs too; when the high jumper takes off you jump also. The answer is simple: your muscles are tending to do what the object or scene suggests. This process is called Empathy, a "feeling in," as indicated in the chapter preceding. From the thing or person you are watching come certain meanings because the person or thing creates in you the same action.

Sometimes these muscular tensions are very noticeable; sometimes they are hidden from the casual observer. As we grow in experience, we learn to cover up the muscular tensions that reveal how we feel. You have caught yourself imitating the facial expression of the actor on the stage; the greater the number of these tensions you experience, the better you like the play. When you do not get any empathic responses, you are cold, bored, pained at the performance.

Herein is the art of the great artist; he has the artifice of his art controlled in such a way that he can stir up within you the kind of muscular reactions he wants you to have. Some of us have never seen a villain on the stage whom we really like, because if he is good, he has given us unpleasant tensions which are characteristic of his part. Our judgment is affected by what he does to us. Very seldom does he receive the praise devoted to the heroine or hero, even though the villain may be a much better actor than they. Of course the way in which the actor interprets his lines has a great deal to do with the impression created, but let us keep that out of the picture for the present. Primarily he is an actor-one who

acts, one who has the right bodily activity of the character he presents, one who, knowing the art of that bodily activity, can cause the same muscular reaction, the desired empathic response in the observer. When he can do that, he is a great artist.

Acting helps interpretation or impersonation. But not all who can interpret can act. The difference lies in bodily activity: the actor knows better how to get the emotional set of the character he is taking, for he has caught the whole of the character; the interpreter, on the other hand, does not necessarily have to demonstrate all of the activity of the actor; but he ought to know it, and knowing it, he will be able to reveal better the character's proper muscular tensions or as others would say the spirit, the soul of the selection. Any attempt on the part of the interpreter to repress, to inhibit those tensions he feels, will tend to give a negative result to the audience. The person who knows the value of stirring up meaning through his bodily activity and knows how to do it, has mastered a great part of the art of interpretation.

Total Activity. Now how can you, the interpreter, create the right empathic response? You cannot-always-because your audience is made up of people with individual differences; and to try to make all of them like you in the same degree is not possible. Your aim should be to attempt to please the majority and secure the interpretation which you think that group would like most. But to stand before an audience with an expressionless face and with hands that are waving and whirling through the air as you say, "Wherefore rejoice?" or "Why stand we here idle?" is not going to bring success; to tense the muscles of the face and then stand inert from the neck down as you say, "Begone, run to your houses," will not make the audience happy, except as they laugh at you; to read Vachel Lindsay's The Congo with no total bodily activity would be to lose most of the meaning of the poem. Coördination is not only advisable, but positively

necessary.

If you do not know how to make your muscles act as one,