Deliver the following with decisive strokes on the emphatic ideas. Deliver it in

a vivacious manner, noting the elastic touch-action of the tongue. A flexible,

responsive tongue is absolutely essential to good voice work.

 

_FROM NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO THE DIRECTORY ON HIS RETURN FROM EGYPT_

 

What have you done with that brilliant France which I left you? I left you at

peace, and I find you at war. I left you victorious and I find you defeated. I

left you the millions of Italy, and I find only spoliation and poverty. What

have you done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen, my companions in glory? They

are dead!... This state of affairs cannot last long; in less than three years it

would plunge us into despotism.

 

Practise the following selection, for the development of elastic touch; say it

in a joyous spirit, using the exercise to develop voice charm in _all_ the ways

suggested in this chapter.

 

_THE BROOK_

 

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out

among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

 

By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges; By twenty thorps, a

little town, And half a hundred bridges.