fixed to it (such as the word 'Eroica' attached to Beethoven's Third Symphony) as to some feeling that was uppermost in the composer's mind when writing it. But even in the case of such indications it is the music itself that is of interest to us, not the feeling we are told it is to express. The statement that the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 26 Sonata is a 'funeral march on the death of a hero' gives us a reason for its gloomy grandeur of style and its regular and persistent rhythm; but it is the grandeur of the composition that impresses us, not the fact that it expresses funeral lamentation; and neither the beautiful theme and variations which open the sonata, nor the brilliant and the striking allegro which concludes it, are any the less interesting because there is not the slightest indication of a meaning attached to them. In short, the reply to anyone who asks, after hearing a fine piece of instrumental music, 'What does it express?' is that it expresses itself, and is to be judged by its own character and effect as an artistic creation. Any other answer is beside the mark, and music which cannot interest the hearer by its Own inherent power and beauty, without a secondary meaning tacked on to it, is essentially deficient as music."

Of course, the writer admits that music conveys and inspires sentiment, but he insists that the feeling is inherent in the music itself, and is not something behind it or distinct from it. The composer cannot, even if he should desire, express in words the sentiment he conveys in music.

LOST MEMORY OF WORDS.

The report that Richard Mansfield's illness caused him to forget completely the lines of the plays in his repertoire caused the St. James Gazette to recount many parallel cases. We quote:

"Complete loss of memory is a well-known disease, and very curious examples of it are on record.

"Dr. Gowers had a patient, a clergyman, who had completely forgotten the events of twenty years of his life. No amount of argument could convince him that his age was really sixty years, or that he had done thirty years' clerical work.

"Sir Henry Holland, when down in a mine in the Hartz Mountains and suffering from fatigue, completely forgot his German, and could not remember a word of it until he had rest and refreshment after ascending. We all experience this in a less degree. Sometimes it is an injury which causes the blank in the backward gaze. An English professor once received a violent blow on the head, and at once forgot all his Greek; and a musician lost all memory of music from the same cause. Mr. Whymper, in his book on the Alps, tells how he fell over a frightful precipice, 200 feet high, with the result that his past was for a time entirely blotted out of his memory.

The most singular cases of memory-loss are in connection with language. It is quite common in our hospitals to see a sick German unable to speak a word of the English he had thoroughly mastered. A very singular instance of this is reported from New York. Many years ago a Dr. Scandelli died in a hospital in that city. When first admitted he could speak only in English; as the illness progressed he forgot that language, and could now converse only in French; but on the day of his death another change occurred, and he could speak nothing but his own language, Italian. Many varieties of this loss of memory of words exist. A clergyman, some time ago, lost all recollection of words, but he could still remember the letters of which they were composed, and could express his ideas freely by spelling the words. An officer suffered from a slight attack of apoplexy, and, as a result, forgot all but a very few words. When he tried to speak he merely uttered nonsense; but if a book of manuscript was handed to him, he would read it with perfect propriety.

"When the memory of words is gradually lost, it invariably progresses in one particular order. First the proper names go, then the common nouns, then the adjectives; and this stage is followed by failure of the power to recollect events.'

CURIOSITIES OF AMERICAN SPEECH.

The New York Sun has been studying the notes of the American Dialect Society, and enriches its editorial vocabulary thus:

"In the Tennessee mountains, streams. flowing from the East are sunrise waters; a mule that you can trust is a confidential mule; a railroad train is a smoke wagon; a kiss is a smouch; cheese is a plural with a singular chee; sugar is sweetening, but molasses is long sweetening; a man subject to fits is fitified; and very much is a heap. sight, or a good few, or some several, or way yander. A man points to a hillside and tells you that he lives on yon coast' and has a good scope of land; he greets you with How do you come on?' and asks you to 'come in and rest your hat.' Coof is the name for an off-islander in Nantucket; on Mt. Desert the summer visitor is a rusticrata; a stupid Vermonter is a dodunk; a goober grubber digs peanuts in Tennessee. When a man is confused he is mommixed in Kentucky, he is muxed up in Otsego County, galleyied in New Bedford, stodged in Indiana, and wuzzled in central New York. I don't hurt fer it,' means 'I don't care' in Mississippi, while "I don't mind it a bit" implies terror in North Carolina, where a great calamity is scandalous. The sunset is day down on the Virginia coast. A man has large money in Cincinnati, he has scuds of it in Missouri, and a session of it in Georgia. When a Terre Haute citizen in sullen, he is putchiky, and if too weak to get out of bed is on the lift, while a pawkey Ohioan is one in poor health, and a mentally weak Kentuckian is slack twisted. Hogois a strong smell in New Hampshire, where

Missouri

a severe storm is a tan toaster. slush is sposh. Green corn remains roast'n ear in Florida even when it is canned, and there a cow may give birth to a yearling. In the northwestern part of New York State, when two hearts begin to beat as one, they are said to be scamuljugated. In the central part of the State silver dollars are known as hard tack; slouchy is loplolly; sticky is tacky; you are bushed when you are tired; you change off when you move; you go large when you are extravagant; you pronounce hoax as a dissyllable; you pooster about when you are fussy; you are in a yang when in a hurry, and when violent you do things kabang, kachunck, kaflop,

kaslam.

ENGLISH AS TAUGHT.

Among the specimens of actual answers to examination questions by public school children in New York City, Miss Caroline B. Le Row has noted the following:

"Amenable, anything that is mean. Ammonia, the food of the gods. Capillary, a little caterpillar. Demagogue, a vessel containing beer and other liquids. Epicac, a man who likes a good dinner. Eucharist, one who plays euchre. Mendacious, what can be mended. Republican, a sinner mentioned in the Bible. Technology, something which teaches you to be very technical in your remarks. One sharp chap wrote, "This examination makes me feel nauceous.' There are a great many donkeys in theological gardens. Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex. An intransitive verb expresses an act not done to another, as James did not strike John. To find the number of square feet in a room, you multiply the room by the number of feet; the product is the result. In Austria the principal occupation is gathering 'Austrich' feathers."

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG SPEECH,

Lincoln's "perfect" speech at Gettysburg is the subject of a chapter in Marshal W. H. Lamon's "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865." He denies that Edward Everett grasped Mr. Lincoln's hand and congratulated him. Mr. Lamon "was on the platform near enough to hear Everett and Secretary Seward discuss the speech the moment that it was delivered. In reply to a question from the Secretary, he heard Everett say: 'It is not what I expected of him. I am disappointed.'

Seward in his turn exclaimed: He has made a failure, and

I am sorry for it. His speech is not equal

to him.' As if to obtain confirmation of his opinion, he turned to Lamon himself with the question of the moment, and Lamon replied, I am sorry to say that it does not impress me as one of his great speeches.'

"He insists that Lincoln himself shared the disappointment. His own remark to the Marshal on the stand, almost immediately

after he had done speaking, was, 'Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure, and the people are disappointed.' It appears from Mr. Lamon's explanation that Lincoln often used the word 'scour' to characterize whatever seemed to him to lack merit or permanence.

"It is not possible, according to Marshal Lamon, to account for the silence of the people by supposing that the President's address had deeply touched the hearts of those who listened. He insists that Mr. Lincoln himself took the lack of hearty demonstrations of approval immediately after its close as certain proof that it was not well received.' Back in Washington, Lincoln said again to Lamon: 'I tell you, Hill, that speech fell on the audience like a wet blanket. I am distressed about it. I ought to have prepared it with more care." And Marshal Lamon testifies that, so far as he knows, the President never referred to the speech 'without some expression of unqualified regret that he had not made the speech better in every way.

HAVE WOMEN THE DRAMATIC FACULTY?

In Poet Lore, a clever woman decides that few human beings, either men or women, possess a dramatic faculty, that is, "the power of creating human characters and relationing them to one another in such a way that all events and situations shall seem to be the inevitable outcome of the interplay of one individual upon another, at the same time that an artistic unity of design is preserved and a dramatic motive unfolded.' She thinks Shakespeare's insight into human motives unsurpassed except it be by Browning or by Ibsen.

That women, especially in these latter days, have a share of this dramatic faculty, she maintains thus:

"George Eliot's 'Spanish Gypsy,' of course, does not fulfil all the demands of the definition above given, for in form it is rather a dramatic novel than a true drama; still, in the characters of Fedalma and Zarca, we have two distinct and well-developed individualities. With remarkable consistency each of these characters is made to fulfil a nature which was the inevitable outcome of inheritance and environment. **

"In America, the best dramatic work so far has been by women. I refer to that of Emma Lazarus in 'The Dance to Death,' Miss Wilkins in 'Giles Corey,' Mrs. RivesChanler in Athelwold,' and Miss Monroe in Valeria. The last, especially, shows an insight into character, a grasp of the possibilities of dramatic form, and a poetic sensitiveness, that fills us with hope for the dramatic future not only of women, but of America.

"Eminent among dramatic writers in England to-day, praised by critics in high places, is Michael Field, whc, we lately learn, is two women, an aunt and a niece, who work together."

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE IN MOUTH-GESTURE.

In the November number of the Fortnightly Review, Prof. A. R. Wallace, F. R. S., maintains that some of the essential characteristics of human speech have been obscured, and the features that contribute largely to its inherent intelligibility have been overlooked by philologists. They have discovered, largely by tracing the affinities and the laws of growth and the modification of existing and recently-extinct languages, what they hold to be the roots or the fundamental units of each of the great families of languages-roots supposed to be, for the most part, conventional, or, if possessing in the beginning of language any natural meaning, one so obscured by successive changes of form and structure as to be now usually undiscoverable.

Prof. Wallace thinks that in our own language, and probably in all others, a number of the most familiar words are so constructed as to proclaim their meaning more or less distinctly, sometimes by imitative sounds, but in a large number of cases by the shape or movements of the various parts of the mouth used in pronouncing them, and by the peculiarities in breathing or in vocalization, which may express a meaning quite independent of mere sound-imitation.

He says:

"My attention was first directed to this subject [of speech or mouth-gesture], by noticing that when Malays were talking together, they often indicated direction by pouting out their lips. They would do this either silently, referring to something already spoken or understood, or more frequently when saying disana (there) or itu (that), thus avoiding any further explanation of what was meant. At the time, I did not see the important bearing of this gesture; but many years afterward, when paying some attention to the imitative origin of language, it occurred to me that, while pronouncing the words in question impressively, the mouth would be opened and the lips naturally protruded, while the same thing would occur with our corresponding English there and that; and when I saw further that the French là and cela, and the German da and das, had a similar openmouthed pronunciation, it seemed probable that an important principle was involved.

"The next step was made on meeting with the statement that there was no apparent reason why the word go should not have signified the idea of coming, and the word come the idea of going; the implication being that these, like the great bulk of words of every language, were pure conventions and essentially meaningless; or, that if they once had a natural meaning, it was now wholly lost and undecipherable. But, with the case of there and of that, in my mind, it seems to me clear that there was a similar open-mouthed sound in go, with the corresponding meaning of motion away from the person speaking, and this view was rendered more probable on considering the

word with an opposite meaning, come, where we find that the mouth has to be closed and the lips pressed together, or drawn inward, implying motion toward the speaker. The expressiveness of these two words is so real and intelligible that a deaf person would be able to interpret the mouth-gestures with great facility. The fact that words of similar meaning in several other European languages are equally expressive lends strong support to this view. Thus, for go, we have the French va, the Italian vai, the German geh, and the Anglo Saxon gân, all having similar open-mouthed sounds; while the corresponding words for come-venez, vieni, komm, and kuman-are all pronounced with but slight movements of the mouth and the lips, or even with the lips closed.

"If, now, we assume that the word-gestures here described afford us indications of the primitive and the fundamental expressiveness of what may be termed natural, as opposed to mere conventional speech, we shall be prepared to find that the same principle has been at work in the formation of many other simple words, though in some cases its application may be less obvious. We must, however, always bear in mind that, though to us words are for the most part mere conventions, they were not so to primitive man. He had, as it were, to struggle hard to make himself understood, and would, therefore, make use of every possible indication of meaning afforded by the positions and the motions of mouth, lips, or breath, in pronouncing each word; and he would lay stress upon and exaggerate these indications, not slur them over as we do."

A few pairs of words will show how real and important the principle is in the English language:

In to the lips are protruded almost as much as in go (always supposing we are speaking the broad vowel impressively and with energy), while from requires only a slight motion of the lips, ending with complete closure; in out we have an energetic expiration and an outward motion of the lips, while in is pronounced wholly inside the mouth, and does not require the lips to be moved at all after the mouth is opened; in down we have a quick, downward movement of the lower jaw, which is very characteristic, since the word cannot be spoken without it; while in up the quick movement is upward, after having opened the mouth as slowly as we please."

Note the expressive breathing without lipmotion in air, wind, blow; the continuous sound marked by the terminal letter in roar, hum, buzz; the abrupt sound of the terminals of rap, tick, grunt; the different motions expressed by the indefinitely continuous terminals of swing, slide, or the abrupt kick. Minute differences of quality between sounds are represented by the light and moderately sharp tap, the much sharper snap, the fuller and broader clap, with the less abrupt flap, the duller flop, and the softer and still duller thud.

common

M

ME. F. ROENA MEDINI is one of those women whose successes are awarded to her with a hearty good-will that has nothing but love behind it. She is ever a marvel to her friends, and is always surprising them with some new talent or acHer life is one of great accomplishment. tivity, yet fatigue seems to be laid aside like a mantle, and under a strain that would overcome the average woman, she will appear in public after twelve hours' work with a countenance that lights up till it is not only a pleasure to hear her voice, but also a pleasure to look at the sweetness of her face and the sunshine of her smile. Whatever she undertakes-whether it be a songrecital of her own, a lecture on vocal subjects, or the conducting of a large chorusPerhaps her deepest pleasure is found in those moments which she can spare for literary work. Her writings always find a ready market, for they are at once practical, instructive and chatty. She is also a fine horsewoman, and can swim and actively enjoy almost any sport. Recently she surprised everybody by giving a reading. Her voice filled the large auditorium with perfect ease, and the result of her attempt was entirely satisfactory.

is a success.

Mme. Medini was educated vocally by the old Lamperti. She also speaks enthusiastically of her work with Mme. Elpina Lamperti, the daughter-in-law and assistant teacher of il maestro, of whom she writes: "I owe [to Mme. Lamperti] a world of patient and inspiring assistance in conquering the difficulties of the first steps, and this is everything." The care and patience bestowed on her preparatory work by Mme. Lamperti is, in turn, given to each pupil by Mme. Medini. Her work is synonymous with conscientiousness.

Mme. Medini is the supervisor of music in the public schools of Helena. Two thousand boys and girls in that city consider her their especial property and adore her. She is also the leading soprano in the Unitarian Church, teaches a large class of private pupils, conducts concerts, and has just been engaged to take charge of a dramatic club whose members have found in her the only person who, can coach and at the same time play with them. Yet all this is but a small part of her duties. She is constantly writing and planning future literary work. Recently she finished a volume of sonnets. Her work, "The What and How of Vocal Culture,' is known to all vocal students. It is a delightfully-written book, with just enough of the personal in it to make the reader feel that the writer has been through the many trials that beset the path of the student and that she has not forgotten those early days, but is a sympathetic counsellor-almost a personal friend. The book is the outcome of long study with Francesco Lamperti, and of much experience as a singer and a teacher of singing. The exercises, with their analyses, have been arranged for the use of pupils, and the

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work is intended to be of practical help to those that would improve and correctly use their singing-voices. There are eighteen chapters, discussing, among other things, "The Power of Imagination," Breathing," The Emission of Voice,' Enunciation," Accent," Long Life of Singers and Speakers," etc. There is also an elaborate analysis of voice-production, with the author's special and original marking of the well-known song, "Last Rose of Summer." The book has been noted extensively by the press, and has helped many a vocal student over barriers to artistic singing. Mme. Medini is a rapid writer when her pen touches paper. Some of her work is planned months ahead, while some of it is the outcome of the inspiration of the moment, called out by an article just read. Her present effort is the series of articles,

The Vocal Stage-Aspirant and the Teacher," now appearing in this magazine. It contains information helpful to every singer.

Mme. Medini has come in contact with many of the world's great artists. When Ovide Musin heard her sing. to his violin accompaniment, "Una Voce" and Proch's Variations from memory, he exclaimed: "A truly perfect fioratura, and a voice rich and sympathetic."

Among the many notices of her writings are the following of her last book. "Edalaine:"

There is a fascination in the metrical form for lovers of verse, and Edalaine' deserves a prominent position on the poetic shelf."-Detroit Free Press.

Its dignity of style, purity of purpose, and philosophical truth make it readable to the lovers of prose and poetry."-N. Y. World.

"The sentiments in it are exalted and expressed in well-constructed verse."-Philadelphia Item.

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The muse chooses the simplicity of everyday life, and does not permit Pegasus to carry his rider beyond the ordinary vision."-St. Louis Republican.