Elocution as a Collegiate Course of Study.

Mr. Sargent spoke before a large audience last night in behalf of elocution as a collegiate course of study. He began by giving some statistics of the study of elocution in this country, showing that his art had already gained a firm foothold, and was rapidly advancing to the position of science. Elocution with us is only about fifty years old, less than twenty-five years in the colleges. There are now in America 3,000 teachers and 150,000 students of elocution. More college men are needed in the profession to raise it to its proper ranks. Very few of the colleges, in their curriculum, give more than toleration to this very important study. Princeton, Boston University, Cornell, are valuable exceptions to this, and Hamilton was the first of the colleges to offer inducements for proficiency in the art of oratory.

The production of plays by students is to be praised; as showing a movement in the right direction. Dramatic societies should not be scorned, however, they rend a passion to tatters. Education should join hands with elocution and thus repay to the theatre the inspiration which the theatre has long given to education. Elocution in its broadest sense applies to all those recreations of voice and body which arouse or exhibit the passions or any of our wide range of feelings. Without thorough training in these things, a man is not prepared to make the best use of his four years of college training.