bodies are different. "Imitation," says Emerson, "is suicide," and there is no place where this applies more than in the work of expression.

The imitator in art, painting, sculpture, in expression or action, is always recognized at once, and his work, as second-rate, mediocre, without centrality, vitality, or personality. "There are no two men alike," said Sam Jones; " if there are, one of them is no account." In the same way, we can say there are no two Hamlets alike, no two Lady Macbeths, no two Lady Teazles alike, or if there are, one is of no account. A character to be artistically portrayed must be found in the depths of the artist's being. Even though he remains true to the writer of the play, he must still be himself. The writer of the play himself takes great interest and realizes the twin creation of his fellow artist.

In imitation of every kind, there is a struggle to get an effect without a cause, hence affectation and artificiality necessarily result with consequent discouragement and fettering of personality.

Anyone may convince himself of this by trying to imitate a smile or by observing someone else do so. In the very nature of the case, imitation can be only a constriction, a caricature. It is exhibition, not expression; manipulation, not manifestation.

Weak as is imitation, the remedy offered for it has been scarcely better. What is the substitute? Mechanical rules, artificial analysis.

Apply this method to the smile. Try to smile by rule. Try consciously and voluntarily to control every element in the smile. How truly artificial is the result.

Yet this method is exactly what mechanical

elocution has tried to employ. It has endeavored to make every element of delivery deliberative. It has tried to make man give every inflection according to some rule. Everyone must be conscious and volitional. No room is left for the spontaneous emanation which is the very fundamental characteristic of the true smile.

We may, however, control our attention. We may sustain our attitude of joyous interest in a way to awaken character and more harmonious spontaneity. Hence, the smile can be improved. It can be reserved, controlled, guided and encouraged. We can allow it to become the spontaneous result of conditions.

We can give ourselves up to a mental attitude. We can allow a picture to dominate us. We can repress a wrong feeling or chasten it or elevate it to a higher plane and thus affect the smile as its expression.

The smile itself is a resultant, a kind of reflex action or response to attention. To try to produce by will the spontaneous elements of any expression is ridiculous. No wonder elocution has become the synonym of artificiality.

A theory may sound well but it needs to be tested by fact. Let us take the theories of mechanical elocution and apply them to the smile.

We can improve expression in all its forms, whether that expression be a smile, a song, a painting or a statue, in three ways: first, we can stimulate its cause; second, we can secure better control of the means to be employed; and third, we may by careful observation, study and experiment, come to understand something of its nature or meaning; we may comprehend better its elements, its expressive value. In short, we

may gain command of a better vocabulary. We can also repress bad results and can encourage and develop that which is right.

To illustrate by the smile: in the first place, we can awaken joy, sympathy, love and interest. We can develop a man's imagination and his powers of observation; we can harmoniously unfold all his faculties. That is, we can actually develop a cause for the smile.

In the second place, we can limber up the face. We can improve the health and agility of the whole body. We can remove, by direct action of the fingers, various constrictions from the features.

In the third place, we may realize that a smile may be exploded into a jerky laugh and become ridiculous or offensive, on the one hand; on the other, we may realize that emotion may be controlled and allowed to diffuse itself through the whole body and the face. We can allow our whole nature to respond properly to the deeper influences; we can study our faces and see the significance of the smile. We can see that our smile is only in the lips and has nothing about the corners of the eyes. We can render the eyes more mobile.

There is, of course, a tendency to self-consciousness in this, but a certain element of self-consciousness is necessary in the correction of all faults, all one-sidedness, all abnormal conditions.

In a similar way, the musician must have music in his soul. Poets, musicians, artists of all kinds, need one another. Not that they may imitate but that they may stimulate and inspire one another. The music in man must be awakened by music; the right awakening of the imagination by the study of literature, by a more sympathetic observation of Nature, by listening to the winds among the

trees, the murmuring of the brooks and the singing of the birds. He must be awakened also by the great musical interpretations of these things by the masters. He needs the musicians of other ages that his own individual power may be awakened. To love Beethoven does not necessarily mean the imitation of that master. The musician must have power in himself to respond to the music in Nature and to appreciate the artistic endeavors of others.

In short, he must have a love of music in his own being as the basis of all his education.

In the second place, he must have an instrument in tune. The means must be at his command. The best musician in the world cannot bring good music from an instrument that is badly constructed, that has discordant overtones or is out of tune.

In the third place, he must know how to play. He must have command of every key. He must understand the right use of chords. He must have the command of his touch, of his bow, if he is a violinist; of his fingers and the keys, if he is a pianist.

Thus he must have imaginative, creative power to receive an impression. He must have his instrument rightly attuned and have command of the technique of his art. As has already been said, the technique must not be despised, but no one of the three must be slighted. One of the great difficulties with art schools has been that they give merely the technique. They say that is all they can do for a student. If he has art in his soul, he will succeed. They do nothing to awaken the artistic or the spiritual instincts, or a love of nature and beauty. At times they even repress

it. A student is compelled for months to draw from a cast. He is rarely sent out face to face with Nature to sketch, but the work of drawing should be combined with wider studies, to awaken interest and the artistic nature, otherwise the work will become drudgery. The art schools kill more artists than they make.

It was the aim of the founders of the School of Expression not only to reform elocution, but to bring the speaker, the actor, and the reader to study their arts from all points of view.

It was their aim, also, to lead all the art schools to do the same thing, that is, realize that to make an artist you must awaken the cause as well as secure a command of the technical means of the art, or the technical language used.

It was one of the aims, also, of this School to show the world the necessity of studying man's primary modes of expression, such as the smile. The Greeks did this and the same has been true of every great artistic period in the history of the world. There is a proper realization not only of the generic nature of expression, but this gives some understanding of the character of all true artistic endeavor brought about by a study of man's own primary languages, especially his primary languages from the earliest childhood or those which are most directly connected with the awakening of the artistic faculties. Expression in its most primitive and natural forms, from the first smile of the little child to the simplest use of the voice in conversation, from the simplest motion to the most complex expression of the whole body,—is wholly neglected in education or spoken of contemptuously.

"What is the use of studying such things?"