Book II.

SUCCESSFUL SELECTIONS.

"Recitation, sufficiently varied so as to include pieces of chaste wit, as well as of pathos, beauty, and sublimity, is adapted to our present intellectual progress. The drama appeals more strongly to the passions than recitation; but the latter brings out the meaning of the author more. Shakespere, worthily recited, would be better understood than on the stage."-CHANNING.

"A good reader summons the mighty dead from their tombs and makes them speak to us."-EMERSON.

PREFACE.

The selections of this book have becn chosen for their special fitness for public use, as well as general practice. They have all been proven "successful" by performers of excellent reputation. They cover a wide range of work, and I feel assured that each student will find here something to suit. There are many books of selections, but few of these books furnish more than two or three pieces that are in favor with a general audience. Then, again, not many of such books afford good material for practice and development in different lines of work. We have here a collection affording widest range. The pathetic, humorous, serious, lively, dramatic, didactic, character, sketch, dialects, imitative,—in short, almost every variety of work for public entertainment.

With the hope that the selections may prove truly "successful" in the hands of students, they are respectfully submitted.

BYRON W. KING.