BOOKS BY S. S. CURRY, Ph.D., Litt.D.
More than any man of recent years, Dr. Curry has represented sane and
scientific methods in training the Speaking Voice. Dr. Shailer Mathews,
University of Chicago.
Of eminent value. Dr. Lyman Abbott.
Books so much needed by the world and which will not be written unless
you write them. Rev. C. H. Strong, Rector St. John's Church, Savannah.
Foundations Of Expression. A psychological method of developing
reading and speaking. 236 practical
problems. 411 choice passages adapted to classes in reading and speaking.
$1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
LeSSOns in Vocal Expression. The expressive modulations of the
voice developed by studying and
training the voice and mind in relation to each other. Definite problems and
progressive steps. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
Imagination and Dramatic Instinct. Function of imagination
---^ --__. and assimilation in the
vocal interpretation of literature and speaking. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20,
postpaid.
Mind and Voice. Principles and Methods in Vocal Training. 456 pp.
' $1.50; to teachers, $1.20 postpaid.
Browning and the Dramatic Monologue. Nature and pecu-
^ _______ __, liarities of Brown-
ing's poetry. Principles involved in rendering the monologue. Introduction to
Browning, and to dramatic platform art. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
Province Of Expression. Principles and Methods of developing de-
_ livery. An introduction to the study of
natural languages, and their relation to art and development. $1.50; to teachers
$1.20, postpaid.
Vocal and Literary Interpretation of the Bible, introduc-
n tion by
Prof. Francis G. Peabody, D. D., of Harvard University. $1.50; students'
edition, $0.60, postpaid.
Classics for Vocal Expression. Gems from the best authors for
- voice and interpretation. In use
in the foremost schools and colleges. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
Spoken English. A psychological method of developing reading, con-
_ 2 versation and speaking. A book for junior students or
teachers. 320 pages. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
Little Classics for Oral English. Companion to Spoken Eng-
- hsh. Introductory questions
and topics. May be used with Spoken English or separately. Questions and
topics
pages.
The Smile. Introduction to action through an example. $1.00. To mem-
- bers of The Morning League, $0.75, postpaid.
HOW tO Add Ten Years tO Your Life. Nature of training with
,____________________.____-_- short, practical program.
$1.00. To members of The Morning League, $0.75, postpaid.
Write to Dr. Curry about the Morning League; Summer Terms; Home
Studies; School of Expression; new books, or for advice regarding your life
work. Address: Book Department, School of Expression, 308 Pierce Bldg.,
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
.
topics correspond. Fresh and beautiful selections from best authors. 384
pages. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
THE SMILE
IF YOU CAN DO NOTHING ELSE
YOU CAN SMILE
BY
S. S. CURRY
Smile awhile,
And while you smile,
Another smiles,
And soon there's miles
And miles of smiles,
And life's worth while
Because you smile.
Author not known to me.
SCHOOL OF EXPRESSION
Book Department, Copley Square
BOSTON
C1
Copyright
by
S. S. CURRY
1915
* s
To Those Who
By Loyal Thought, Word or Deed
Have Founded
The School of Expression.
One lifted a stone from my rocky road, *
One carried awhile my heavy load,
One lifted his candle when all was dark,
One heard the song of the morning lark;
A look, and I knew a brother was near,
Only a smile, but it banished my fear.
Ah ! little you thought of the help you gave
But the little you did was mighty to save!
Also to Those Who
By Look, Smile or in any Way
Will Aid
In Giving to the School a Permanent Home.
rt ? ft O
CONTENTS
Page
Foreword ;....; 5
I. Our First Expression 9
II. Qualities of Expression 24
III. The Expressive Process 32
IV. Smile or Scowl 35
V. Smile or Frown 40
VI. Sign or Symbol 47
VII. Man's Elemental Languages 50
VIII. Does a Smile Represent or Manifest? ... 57
IX. Gesture, Position or Bearing 62
X. The Smile and Beauty . 72
XL Can the Smile Be Developed? 77
XII. Modes of Improving the Smile 90
XIII. The Smile as an Educational Aid .... 107
XIV. Negative or Positive? 115
XV. The Smile and Health 118
XVI. Ethics of Amusement 122
XVII. The Smile and Success 135
XVIII. Higher Functions and Influences .... 138
A Personal Afterword , 146
FOREWORD
Most people, even orators and actors, have
peculiar conceptions, not to say misconceptions,
of action as a language.
One proof of this is found in the fact that the
word " gesture," which names the least important
of all phases of action, is the common name ap-
plied by most people to all the expressive move-
ments, attitudes and bearings of the body.
The ordinary person has about as clear an im-
pression of what pantomimic expression means
as the little girl who was asked to define the word
" chivalry " and said it was what she felt when
she was cold.
To me action is man's first language and the
one primarily concerned in the revelation of
character. Action, however, is a subject as diffi-
cult to discuss as it is to understand. It can
never be explained and taught as other subjects.
John Stuart Mill said that one who knows but
a single language is apt to take words for things.
This principle applies more to the primary modes
of man's expression, words, tones and action as
different languages, than to Italian and French.
If to think an idea in French as well as English
frees a man from confusing an idea with its sym-
bol and gives him a better understanding of truth,
how much more will ability to realize the func-
tion of voice modulations and of the action of the
body lead to a more adequate realization? Action
as a language is more distinct in function and
eF" <: FORE WORD
meaning from words than English is from French,
or French is from German. To be able to think
the language of action prevents taking a mere
word or symbol of an idea as a complete expres-
sion. If this be true, to understand pantomime
is one of the important phases of education. Ac-
tion, however, is totally neglected at the present
time. One reason for this neglect is the difficulty
of understanding the subject or of even realizing
its point of view. It has been so long regarded
as of no importance, as only a kind of decorative
adjunct without meaning, that it is difficult to
awaken people to think in action, or to recognize
it as having a great function in the revelation of
human experience.
A realization of our action is necessarily a
realization of the motives of our lives. It helps us
to understand our fellow-men and to enter into
sympathetic touch with them. Not without reason
does action usually have dramatic as the qualify-
ing adjective.
In this little book I have endeavored to talk
simply with the reader on something that has
always been a necessary part of himself, some-
thing that he must practise every hour, not to say
every moment of his life, something we all prac-
tise, most of us thoughtlessly, even chaotically.
Some readers may object to the disconnected
character of the book, but right or wrong, the in-
tention has been to drop only a hint here and
there. The subject is too large for exhaustive
treatment. The peculiar nature of the subject
also prevents its adequate treatment in words. A
mere intimation to stimulate observation of self
and others seems almost the only method of dis-
cussing it. What is said in the book is less im-
FOREWORD
portant than what it aims to lead the reader to
find for himself.
Verbal explanations of art must be given out-
side of its temple. Everyone one must go alone
into the sacred threshold and catch a vision for
himself. A teacher can only inspire and awaken
expectations and point out the door. Criticisms
of poetry are only valuable when on the poetic
plane. Explanations of pictures or statues or
music are helpful only when they indicate points
of view.
In the same way action as a language is so dis-
tinct from words that it can never be explained
by mere writing. Has there ever been a phrase so
pointed, so fine, as to translate a smile?
One reason why action is such an important ^
element in education is the fact that it gives the
human mind such a different point of view. If
we can understand the differences between our
own primary languages, words, tones and action,
we are prepared in almost the only way possible to
appreciate the fact that every art is a language, a
peculiar language which can never be translated
into any other art. If an art does not say some-
thing that no other art can say it is not an art at
all. A man of culture is a man who can read all
of the artistic languages of his race.
The reader may console himself that the book
is not more broken. In writing it I tried to intro-
duce certain hints that would spontaneously cause
a smile in order that the reader might have an
example involuntarily awakened for his observa-
tion. A friend of mine who looked over the
copy protested that these humorous attempts
were undignified so I have made many modifica-
tions.
FOREWORD
Seriously, the real continuity and theme of the
book must be felt through observation of life.
One of my friends wrote regarding my " Brown-
ing and the Dramatic Monologue " : " Here is
another book by Curry, explaining the obvious."
If to him " Browning " was as obvious as Mother
Goose, what will he say if he happens to look
through this? He will no doubt be reminded of
Ben King's poem
"Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash 'tis gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on."
One of Ben King's most intimate friends, who
was with him when he wrote this said to him,
" It is too silly to be anything but ridiculous."
Still, how many thousands have read the poem
with delight.
If the reader will not reject the book but begin
a closer observation of self and others, perhaps he
may catch a hint of something he has not thought
of before, and may find a key to some of the pe-
culiar movements in our time, and to a better
understanding of himself.
At any rate, it is an honest endeavor to furnish
a key to self-study, self-control, and a help to a
truer realization of the point of view of other peo-
ple. These are most important factors in success.
Moreover it is written to aid an undertaking,
which to the writer is important. If, perchance,
the fact that it is a gift to an institution be of in-
terest to the reader he is asked not to skip the
afterword.
THE SMILE
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION
"Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.
" Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate."
From " Geraint and Enid " Tennyson.
A Black Forest tradition considers it a good
omen if both father and mother are present when
their child first smiles. According to Delsarte, a
smile is the first conscious expression of a human
being.
Some close observers tell us that the smile is
also the last expression that is left upon the human
countenance. Who has not heard, a few hours
after death, someone remark, " How pleasant
the face looks!"
Even when death has been painful, after a few
hours the contortions disappear, and the most
important element of the smile is seen about the
outer corners of the eyes. After about twenty-
four hours the muscles begin * lose their activity,
but the last expressive attitude to vanish is the
primary element of a smile.
9
10 THESMILE
So the first conscious awakening and the last
good-bye of the spirit are expressed by a smile.
The smile is the acceptance of life. It is a
coming into sympathetic touch with others, the
first thanksgiving for service rendered, the first
recognition by the little child of the love of its
mother. It marks the awakening of the inner
life, the first conscious joy. A man smiles when
he discovers that power is inborn, when he comes
to know that he has been weak because he looked
for power outside of himself.
The smile is embodied in the highest poetry of
the race. All myths of morning embody the
smile, Daphne, the rosy-fingered Aurora, and
Athena born from a stroke of fire on the forehead
of the sky all reflect the smile.
In the best Greek art, the smile, kind and
sincere, almost unseen, is held by all as the
deepest expression of the Greek idea of Deity.
Primitive peoples, living near the heart of
nature, have always felt that the smile has great
significance.
In the centre of New England is a great lake
containing over three hundred islands. The
Indians looked down upon it from the Red Hill or
from the height of Ossippee and called it Winne-
pesaukee, the " smile of the Great Spirit." Happy
were those Indians who caught the first expression
of the Infinite and Eternal Goodness, an expres-
sion of which Plato caught a glimpse, the expres-
sion which all good and great men have felt as
they looked upon the beautiful face of the earth
and sky.
It is but a hint of the Infinite and Eternal
goodness of which the universe is the celebra-
tion.
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 11
Why in our day is the smile rarely if ever con-
sidered seriously? Why is it regarded as a mere
accident?
Is it not because all modes of expression are
neglected except words?
Since printing was invented, written words
have been worshipped as about the only lan-
guage at least verbal expression is in general
the only language seriously studied, and in our
day, even this is usually studied as a mere con-
vention as an objective, mechanical thing.
To the modern scholar, a smile has no meaning
at all it is only a vague indefinite sign of physical
feeling.
Again and again it has been said by reformers
that all education is the development of char-
acter.
To the ancients, especially the Romans, the
development of oratory was one of the highest
phases of education, and Cicero has said, " Oratory
is a good man speaking well."
Darwin made a study of expression because the
actions or elements of the smile seemed to con-
flict with his hypothesis. His studies of expres-
sion, however, were confined to animals rather
than to men. His observations regarding human
expression were endeavors to identify them with
animal movements. His attention was always
fixed, consciously or unconsciously, on his theory
of natural selection.
Expression is a necessary part of us. Asleep or
awake we are always revealing the deep secrets of
our motives and lives. Expression is the evidence
to us of the very faculties of our being.
To improve the smile, one must improve the
disposition and deepen one's sympathy with
12 THESMILE
his fellow-men. It is the character of man that
makes the smile, and the man himself must be
improved to improve it. However, there are cer-
tain things which can be done to the smile directly.
There is, so to speak, technical training for the
smile.
A lawyer recognizes the fact that he must know
every phase of the law thoroughly, but he rarely
thinks of his own voice and body, the tools he
must use in pleading every case.
The queen of society gives great care to every
detail of dress and to her complexion, but rarely
gives a thought to her voice, and often leaves it
blotched worse than ink could spot her cheek.
Even the minister regards his voice and body
as of little importance compared with a knowledge
of Arabic or Egyptology.
Here are the instinctive languages born with
us all. Why do we despise th^m?
Here is a mirror in which all may behold the
very heart of man, yet how few ever think
of it!
In a university, the Department of Astronomy
is usually the best endowed. Is this because it is
easier to secure money for the study of something
that is at a great distance from us? Why are we
interested in what is far away? Why does the past
always look brighter than the present? Why do
some people think that all good things lie only
in the future or far away? Why is Heaven, by
many, located in the remotest nook of the uni-
verse?
Seemingly, man is more interested in every-
thing else than he is in himself. The use of a
child's own face, or body or even speech is about
the last thing we think of in its education.
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 13
People recognize the necessity of these simple
acts of expression, but they feel the necessity
only through a kind of instinct. When they try
to understand these things by reasoning, how
rarely do they show any results of true observa-
tion any real grasp of the simplest facts of
nature.
O ye, who seek so earnestly to help your fellow-
men and seem to feel that your efforts are failures,
look nearer home for the cause.
O ye, who long with a noble yearning to please
others, to meet your fellow-men and women and
to contribute to their happiness, why ask some-
one, saying, " Look me over. Am I all right? "
That is well, but why stop there? Why not
study those deep emotions and their outward
motions, those conditions and modes of being
and those modulations of voice and actions of
body which express them? Why neglect those lan-
guages that speak louder and more continuously,
and that make a stronger and deeper impression
than your dress, your hair, or your skin? Why
not study the qualities of the voice and speech
that are not external and artificial, but simple
and true?
Why not eliminate awkwardness from your
walk, as well as from your dancing, and the con-
strictions and affectations from your face and
body? Why not study the most simple and most
characteristic actions of the human being?
In endeavoring to understand something of the
primary nature of human expression, let us begin
with a simple example. Without an example,
you may explain, argue and theorize, and though
the listener may say that he understands you, he
will make a remark which shows he totally mis-
14 THESMILE
understands your point. An example is especially
necessary in any subject which is not understood.
Although expression is natural to us all, it is some-
thing that is little understood.
Possibly no subject in the world is so frequently
misunderstood as man's own simplest modes of
expression, such as the mobility of his face, the
simplest movements of his body their nature,
their cause and importance in the development of
his character.
And what is the best example?
From whatever point of view we study it, the
smile seems to be the simplest and best specimen
for our observation. It is not only first, it is com-
mon to the human race. Every human being
smiles and is pleased to meet a smile.
The smile is distinctive of the human being.
The horse and cow, it is true, can show their
pleasure to a limited extent. The cat and more
particularly the dog can use the tail as a means
of expression. But only man can smile.
If a man could be found who had never smiled,
he certainly would be a curiosity.
As an example, therefore, the smile is universal
and open to everyone for observation, in all of its
many varieties.
May we not, reader, you and I together, study
some of the means other than words by which
human beings come to understand each other?
" In each is all." Every true observer has been
led to recognize that there is a mysterious relation-
ship everywhere. There is a oneness pervading
all objects all life.
It is this unity, possibly, which has caused man
to invent the word " universe."
We find this co-operation present in exact
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 15
proportion to the presence of life. The higher
any organism, the greater the unity the higher
the race of beings, the more it seems akin to
everything else.
Everywhere we seem to find a few basic prin-
ciples which are universal.
Accordingly, a true example enables us to look
into the very heart of a subject. How quickly
does it clear up confusion and help one to see what
before was hard to understand !
Tennyson's shortest poem, which is possibly his
greatest and most significant illustrates this law.
" Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower; but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
Some scientists try to find the elements of an
incipient smile in the monkey; I myself have
watched a monkey alone for a long time and tried
in every way to discover some faint trace of a
smile. Either I was blind or I totally misunder-
stood the animal's grimaces. This monkey was un-
usually intelligent. He had been trained to open
a box. This box was given to a university pres-
ident to open and it took him thirty minutes; it
took the monkey only five minutes ; so its trainers
boasted that this monkey could outdo a college
president.
Accordingly I went in with great expectations.
I was alone with the monkey. He regarded me
with curiosity. I tried every trick and cut up all
kinds of " monkey shines." I think my perform-
ance would have " made a horse laugh," but that
16 THESMILE
monkey sat up there and many " a ghastly wink
he wunk " but not " a sickly smile he smole."
Hence, I can see no reason for doubting the
old Greek definition of man, as " the animal that
laughs."
The question, however, whether animals can
smile, has nothing to do with the present dis-
cussion. The theme before us is the smile of the
human being, its nature and importance, its uses
in human life, how we can improve it, or how we
can use it as a means of improving ourselves.
One other question, it will be noticed, will be
carefully avoided. Namely, the cause of the
smile. Some of the most serious books in the
language, some of the driest, some that never
can awaken a smile, have been devoted to the
question, " What is the cause of laughter? "
Books discussing wit and humor are notoriously
lacking in that which is discussed. They bring
yawns but who ever heard of one awakening a
smile unless it be one of derision? They certainly
do not teach by example.
Several objectors rise as a matter of course.
" The smile," says one, " is the most affected
action of a human being. As long as the smile is
unconscious, involuntary, it is all right but as
soon as one thinks about it, or studies it, it be-
comes artificial and affected."
" Observe the smile of many men in business.
It is affected, it never changes, it is the same for
everybody."
" Observe many society people ; they have a
smile which they put on when they go out to call
and a special Sunday face that they wear to
church. Many teachers have a professional
smile. Speakers, lecturers and even actors wear
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 17
a certain smile as a conventional part of their
make-up."
All this is very true, and much more might be
said. The finest things, however, those that are
most natural, most beautiful, have been most per-
verted, and the very fact that the perversion of the
smile is one of the worst things in human expres-
sion, only proves its importance. The fact that
the smile must be spontaneous and free, that it
cannot be affected nor arranged by rule nor
adjusted by imitation, is true of all modes of
natural expression.
In these very objections is found the typical
character of the smile and the necessity that its
nature and qualities should be observed.
The fact that we can get at it only indirectly,
for the most part, brings up one of the greatest
problems in human education. Perhaps we might
learn from a study of the smile certain great
lessons in human development which are often
overlooked.
It is not true that the smile is superficial. It
reveals most definitely and adequately the attitude
of a human being. The greater the man, the
greater and more wonderful his smile. The
deeper, the broader the human sympathy, the
more it is shown by the human countenance.
Another objector speaks up and says, "The
smile is vague and indefinite. You can smile a
thousand different ways ; not one of them has any
distinct meaning."
It will be granted that there are innumerable
smiles, the sarcastic smile, the sneering smile,
the incredulous smile, the approving smile, the
critical smile; but the meaning of the smile is not
vague or accidental.
18 THESMILE
Everyone can at once recognize the difference
between a sarcastic smile and a genuine smile;
between the smile of love and the smile of hate;
the smile of incredulity and the smile of confi-
dence; the patronizing smile and the affected
smile ; and a hundred other species. Under them
all, human instinct recognizes a normal smile and
measures others by this ideal. The very perver-
sion of the smile depends for its meaning upon a
universal conception of a true smile.
There is, a normal smile and we know it as we
know that truth is truth.
Some critics say we do not know a truth when
we meet it, but we do know a truth as we know
light from darkness. Among the innumerable
perversions of beauty, love, and truth it is aston-
ishing how universal is the fundamental concep-
tion of right and beauty, and this is still more
true of the realization of the fundamental smile,
a smile that really is unperverted, uncontaminated
by any mixture, a smile that expresses joy and love.
The smile of everyone in the universe is dif-
ferent from that of everyone else, and yet all
have the same fundamental, distinctive elements
in common, and everyone recognizes a true smile
and its meaning.
" Oh," you say, " the smile is such a small,
such an insignificant thing."
It may be small but it is not insignificant. What
do you mean by significance? The word comes
from " sign." A thing is significant in proportion
as it stands for something beyond itself, as it
suggests some meaning.
Significance is almost synonymous with ex-
pression. A word, an action, or a voice modulation
is expressive in proportion as it is significant. An
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 19
act is expressive in proportion as it signifies some-
thing.
There can be no worse mistake than making
the word " insignificant " synonymous with
" small," or confusing significance with bigness.
A turn of the palm upward may mean heaven; a
turn of it downward may mean the other place.
The simplest expansion of the body may mean
courage; the shrinking of the chest may mean
surrender.
' The Kingdom of God cometh not with observa-
tion." No great art work, no great truth, no great
deed comes with show. The real significant things
are all small. It is the big things, the showy
things that are insignificant.
One man went up to the top of a hill to pray for
rain and another went up to eat and drink. It is
of very little consequence, you say, that one man
went up to dinner and the other went up to pray,
but all their lives Elijah and Ahab were doing
these two things.
In all history the smallest act, that which seemed
to most people the least significant, has caused a
great war or ended one or prevented one. A
statesman's word to the ambassador of a foreign
country, " Among friends there is no last word,"
may or may not have prevented a war, but in the
history of the race, such kindly remarks, simple
as they may seem, have warded off the greatest
catastrophes.
The mistake of considering little things as
unimportant is close to the universal mistake re-
garding the lack of importance of the simpler acts
of expression in general. " We are too apt to
assume," says Ex-President Taft, " that manners
are nothing but the surface of life, that they really
20 THESMILE
don't enter into what constitutes the real things of
existence. In this we make a profound error. We
forget that life is not made up of great crises, and
that the sterner virtues are not constantly called
into operation. Home life is not full of grand-
stand plays. The happiness of those with whom
we have to do is very seldom affected by events of
capital importance. Our day-to-day pursuit of
happiness is colored and influenced and crowned
by the little things, by the smaller amenities or
the absence of them in dealing with our fellow-
beings."
What is it that makes significance? The pri-
mary question is whether an act is accidental or
fundamental. Fundamentals are few, while ac-
cidental things are practically innumerable.
The hand became such from the necessity of
executing a few primary movements, yet it can
perform a thousand actions of secondary impor-
tance.
There are a few movements of the foot which are
fundamental and necessary to expression, yet a
man can move his feet in a thousand ways which
have no real significance.
The human head can roll around in a great num-
ber of ways, yet very few of these movements have
necessary significance; but when they are under
his control, then the man has power.
Therefore a few fundamental actions are the
basis of all bodily expression.
If these are right the innumerable accidental or
secondary actions will be right. If the elementals
are wrong or weak the accidentals will necessarily
be perverted. The true method of improving ex-
pression depends upon an understanding of these
elemental actions and their development.
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 21
An expansion of the torso when properly co-
ordinated with certain contractions of the balls of
the feet, is a part of the expression of uprightness.
This is a fundamental characteristic of man.
" Man," said Sir William Turner, " is the only
animal with a vertical spine." If this is true, then
the counterpoise curves of the spine must be of
fundamental importance.
A great many gymnastic exercises, instead of
developing these curves, actually destroy them.
Games throw the man into a thousand different
attitudes. He may work for years to master some-
thing that is merely accidental to human nature,
some exhibitional feat which actually destroys the
grace of his movements and may even tend to
shorten his life.
On the other hand, he who studies the few
fundamental normal actions of the human body
and develops them will not only secure grace and
power of expression, but may add years to his life.
When a man's courage wakens, when he be-
comes conscious that he is really an expression of
infinite life, his body straightens in obedience to
the active will. Then the smile follows as the
ultimate expression of dignity, power and self-
control.
The smile, simple as it is,^ is a fundamental
human expression, revealing a person's motives
and his attitude toward life.
Let no man, therefore, sneer at the smile be-
cause it is apparently commonplace and seemingly
insignificant.
A smile indicates the incipient loss of faith in
extravagance and mere feats of exhibition. When
we begin to see things in their proper perspective,
when we begin to recognize ourselves as we really
22 THESMILE
are, and come into truer relations with our fellow-
men, we instinctively greet the new revelation
with a welcoming smile.
We learn to recognize the really good man by
the character of his smile.
Look into the face of a great man. The greater
the man, the deeper his smile; the more it has of
the simplicity of the little child, the more it is filled
/ with something of its primitive meaning. VA true,
genuine smile seems to flow all over the face.
When Phillips Brooks smiled, his countenance
seemed transfigured. A newspaper reporter once
wrote of him: "Phillips Brooks passed through
Pie Alley to-day and the place was bathed in sun-
shine for half an hour."
In the smile of Professor Charles Eliot Norton
was a sort of scintillation a number of scintilla-
tions a general undulation that quickly ran all
over his forehead and the place where there had
once been hair, back into where there was hair,
and was lost like jolly young children scampering
into a wood.
I saw Gladstone's smile but once, and that from
the gallery of the House of Commons ; but even the
memory of it comes with something of the effect of
an electric current.
And who would dare undertake to express the
smile of Emerson or the benignant Jove-like beam
on the face of Bronson Alcott?
Greatness has always seemed most great in the
smile, but if one would understand the smile, and
realize anything of its expressive power, he must
observe it in all classes of men. There are smiles
that are never doubted by a man's fellow-beings.
Let us, then, study the smile to find something
of the general characteristics and importance of
OUR FIRST EXPRESSION 23
human expression, its primary laws, its value in
revealing the spirit of human art and the nature of
the process of developing character, its intimation
of the meaning of the universe and the ultimate
destiny of life.
n
QUALITIES OF EXPRESSION
V
The smile as a simple and elementary expres-
sion embodies certain characteristics which be-
long to all expression, from the most childlike
recital to the most finished oration, from the sim-
plest song to the sublimest epic, from the simplest
illustration to the most exalted painting, from the
humblest memorial to the grandest monument.
Therefore as a human act which is easily stud-
ied, it enables a careful student to observe the
nature and character of the universal laws of all
expression and all art.
The study of the smile will show us, for one
thing, that expression is not intrinsically a physical
thing, that it transcends the merely physical.
There is no such thing as " physical expression."
Expression is a revelation of mind dominating
the body revealing itself through the body as a
medium.
Expression has aptly been called " the motion .
of emotion." Purely volitional movements are \
not necessarily expressive. Our word " emotion "
is so named because it gives rise to motion.
As a consequence of its mental character, the
smile acts from within outward. The least ob-
servation shows us the general application of this
fact. A universal fact has been called a law.
Accordingly this is a general law of all natural
expression.
24
QUALITIES OF EXPRESSION 25
The flower blooms from within. The leaves of
the tree are the " outerance," or (as we contract
the word) utterance or expression of life emanating
from the root.
The bird sings from a full heart and the kitten
plays because of an exuberance of life.
Whatever is natural acts from an inner fullness
and inner depth of life. The general term for this
law is " spontaneity." The animal moves from
within a machine is actuated from without.
A human being is a wonderful co-ordination of
spontaneous and deliberative elements. The
deliberatives are greatly overestimated, the use
of them makes a man a machine, and again, a man
is mechanical in proportion to his suppression of
the spontaneous and the exaggeration of the
deliberative elements.
On the other hand, a man is impulsive and
chaotic when he suppresses the deliberative and re-
lies entirely upon the spontaneous. A perfect man
must have both elements in sympathetic union.
In an endeavor to develop expression I have
come upon what to me has been a most important
principle. We can direct our attention to funda-
mental acts making them more deliberative and
conscious, thus increasing their vigor and intensity,
and in this way we indirectly stimulate the sponta-
neous elements. The fundamental elements
seem to be intended to be deliberative and volun-
tary and conscious. The secondary elements are
necessarily more spontaneous. In this way we can
bring into co-ordination all the spontaneous and
deliberative elements in human nature. This
prevents the man from being artificial or mechan-
ical on the one hand, or chaotically impulsive on
the other.
26 THESMILE
In all artistic education, or the development of
man's appreciation of the best in literature and
art, in making a speaker, reader, or artist of any
kind we find such co-ordination necessary.
There are innumerable or perverted smiles, but
close examination soon reveals the fact that the
spontaneous co-ordinate elements are absent.
The natural man is spontaneous. All external
action is the expression of the underlying activities
of nature.
A smile, like the blooming of a flower or the
singing of a bird, should be easy and spontaneous.
A deliberative, labored smile is never genuine.
The same is true of all expression.
Exaggeration of the analytic and scientific at the
expense of natural feeling and creative endeavor,
is to-day common in nearly every class of educa-
tional institution. In fact, every modern repres-
sive method in education, being necessarily cold,
critical and dry, tends toward the production of
mere machines.
What can be less edifying than a deliberate,
mechanical smile? Nowhere are affectation and
mere mechanical manipulation more displeasing.
We encounter all these unpleasant facts in the
study oMaughter.
A genuine smile is always spontaneous. It is
something that comes to us. The affected, delib-
erate, hypocritical smile all faulty smiles which
are usually shown by their one-sidedness, violate
this law. They do not come from within outward.
It is difficult to smile deliberatively. We permit
ourselves to do so.
Have we then no control over our smiles? On
the contrary we can cultivate an attitude of mind
that will bring a smile. We can take the point of
QUALITIES OF EXPRESSION 27
view, in looking at any subject, that will awaken a
smile. Even in the darkest hour we can often look
at things and see the bright side of the situation
and smile in the face of the worst difficulties.
Again the genuine smile is simple. By " sim-
plicity " is meant the directness between cause and
effect. Nature has no effect which is exaggerated
beyond its cause.
The same is true of the genuine smile. Much
laughter, as will be shown later, is either forced
or permitted to explode too quickly. The fruit is
plucked before it is ripe. The smile should ever
support and transcend the laugh.
This law of simplicity is also universal, not only
obtaining in all nature, but governing all true
art.
The simpler language is, the more it expresses.
The simpler the writer, the simpler the artist, the
greater is the degree of his manifestation. In fact,
Professor Norton once said to me, " You can count
on your fingers the poets and artists of the race
who have been able to be simple."
Such are Homer and Phidias. From .flSschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides, the three great trage-
dians, we can imagine one who could be as simple
as Homer. Virgil must be reckoned in our list
because he was able to be so simple in the realm of
beauty. We must also include Dante. From
Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci
we must imagine one as we did from the three
leading Greek tragedians. We must recognize
them though no one of them could be so simple as
Dante or Phidias. We must add Cervantes and
Shakespeare. All other poets and artists stand
upon a lower level.
Professor Norton's words made a deep impres-
28 THESMILE
sion upon me. The very simplest and most
elemental acts of men are always most expres-
sive.
Another law of expression is repose. Repose
is not mere stability; certainly not inactivity;
it is not a lack of power, but a reserve and control
of power.
True repose is seen in the eagle on the wing, not
in the over-fed pig asleep in its sty. It means
activity at the centre, not at the surface. It means
possibility of movement and action, a suggestion
of what may be done, rather than a direct and
immediate demonstration. The sense of possi-
bility transcends the sense of actuality.
Repose is found in proportion as the attitude
transcends the emotion, and the bearing trans-
cends the attitude. Laughter, or a mere sudden
jerk of the countenance, does not suggest repose;
but when there is a deep diffusion of feeling all
over the face and body, when we feel that life is
kindled within, then we have a sense of power
and a smile is its expression.
The smile should be untrammeled. Constric-
tions of the face may hinder, selfish emotions may
localize and pervert it, but the smile when sincere,
flows all over the face, and in fact all over the body.
If the impression which causes the smile is deep
enough, it breaks down all barriers, penetrates all
the hidden organs of the body and stimulates every
part.
Again, a smile shows itself to be a true act of
expression in the fact that there are many simulta-
neous elements in harmony. The true smile is not
local. A mere local smile at the corner of the
mouth is a grin. A genuine smile is indicated by
certain little wrinkles at the outer corner of the eye
QUALITIES OF EXPRESSION 29
especially of the lower eyelid, and by the diffusion
of life all over the countenance.
In fact, if we examine the fundamental character
of a smile, we find it possesses a variety of parts
simultaneously correlated in a certain unity.
Usually the term co-ordination refers to a great
many elements brought into play by one impulse
a great many parts moving simultaneously and
spontaneously from an inward cause. Every true
expression, therefore, is dependent upon the co-
ordination of many elements. True expression,
like life, depends upon a certain organic unity.
In fact this is the test to apply to the genuineness
not only of the smile, but of any expression. A
mere local movement is meaningless, artificial and
mechanical. Only those expressions which are
the outward sign of the inward fullness of life
within are free and spontaneous.
The whole secret of developing expression,
according to the methods which have been adopted
at the School of Expression, is the discovery of
fundamental actions, conditions and elements
which are not accidental or superficial, but central,
those which are distinctive of any agent or any
function; and also the primary mental actions
which cause these and which can be so accentuated
that a great variety of elements are brought into
higher unity and efficiency.
The exercise of what is accidental secures only
weak and inadequate, mechanical and artificial
results.
The stimulation, development and exercise of
the fundamental brings power and naturalness,
makes the man more a man and gives him con-
trol of the very fountain head of expression.
The study of the smile not only reveals co-
30 THESMILE
ordinations of all parts of the face, but we dis-
cover deeper co-ordinations in every part of the
body. Emotion causes a diffusion of activity to the
most vital parts of man's organism, and brings
many parts into spontaneous and simultaneous
activity.
As has been said, there is a union of the delib-
erative and the spontaneous. In fact, the sponta-
neous is always present in all natural expression.
In all true art the spontaneous is always in the
ascendancy.
While we can control the deliberative elements
only by directing our will, not to accidental but to
fundamental elements, the spontaneous elements
are awakened indirectly.
When the deliberative is directed to the acciden-
tal, or the external, all is weakness and super-
ficiality. And yet, in all true expression and art
it is necessary to arouse the spontaneous elements.
They can be awakened by directing the delib-
erative attention to the few fundamental actions
upon which all expression depends.
Let us go deeper. A study of laughter shows
that thinking and feeling are co-ordinate. A
smile may be controlled, regulated, guided and
reserved, and at the same time, be easy, sponta-
neous and free.
In an uncultured person, as will be shown later,
mirth breaks out in a sudden guffaw and roar of
laughter.
The smile indicates a deep, harmonious union
and balance of thought and feeling.
The man is feeling what he thinks and thinking
what he feels. This balance of the primary
elements of human nature causes the countenance
and whole body to unfold like a flower. It makes
QUALITIES OF EXPRESSION 31
the smile gradual and gives dignity to the entire
body.
Here we find one of the points in favor of the
importance of expression in education. Expres-
sion reveals not the degree of information of the
human mind, but the attitude of soul, the co-
ordination of the primary elements of man's being.
One-sided expressions will always show lack of
co-ordination and unity in being.
Expression will show whether one is able to
command the right union of his different powers
and faculties, and who will deny that these are
primary elements in the development of human
character?
m
THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS
The study of the smile reveals not only the
qualities, but the very processes of expression.
How should we produce tone? As easily as we
smile.
In the deepest processes of expression, think
of the way you smile the ease, simplicity, direct-
ness and spontaneity. In the same way the singer
should produce his tone and the speaker use his
voice.
Tones become harsh, nasal, throaty, flat and
unpleasant because of constrictions in the throat
during the attempts at sound production. You
would not produce a smile in the same way, nor
could you. After a study of the co-ordinate laws
of nature, the discovery of fundamental elements
and the training of these, the tone will flow as
easily as the smile and will share the life of the
soul as does the countenance.
The same applies to all vocal expression. If
we concentrate our attention and allow the sponta-
neous energies of thinking and feeling to dominate
conversation or reading, then inflection, change of
pitch, tone-color and movement will begin to
manifest life, tenderness and sympathy. They
will reveal our inmost imaginings and truly inter-
pret our deepest experiences.
Again, in observing the characteristics of the
smile, we find in it the basis of the laws of all the
arts.
32
THE EXPRESSIVE PROCESS 33
The painter will seek and labor for the true
expression, but at the climax the right element
seems to come to him; that which gives the true
expression to his picture seems almost an accident.
It comes, he hardly knows how or when.
No true artist paints by rule.
If a building lacks unity it is unsatisfactory.
If a statue does not seem as simple, as direct, as
inevitable an utterance as the smile, it is stiff,
rigid and mechanical. There is something wrong
with it.
A song must be simple. A great poem must
come forth with all the spontaneity and natural-
ness of the smile.
Imagination, in fact all the emotions and higher
faculties act spontaneously. True animation is
but the response of our sensibilities to thinking.
The sharing of all our powers in a simultaneous
process is what gives human nature its fullness of
life and energy.
This unity is a living process of co-ordination
and will be found a part of our nature.
The struggle to master the mode of expression
in any art is necessary, but when the artist has
done his best, he gives his highest endeavors to
the great creative impulses that spring up in the
heart of every individual.
We are called. Every human being is called,
every human being is equipped and endowed in
accordance with the great law of the universe.
He that is faithful over a few things will become
ruler in many things. He who smiles receives in
his soul the fullness of joy and becomes greater
than he that overcometh a city.
The study of the smile reveals to us that true
expression is not primarily physical but mental,
34 THESMILE
a process working from within outward sponta-
neous, but with a deliberative element, that is,
free and not artificial or labored; that it is always
a co-ordinate union of many elements which can
never be complete without the genuine action of
thinking, feeling and imagination, as well as will ;
that all faculties are in some degree concerned
in every simple and true act of expression. We
find this law a universal one. It is a governing
principle in every art.
A true picture has all the unity of a smile. We
must feel in a song the absence of mere mechanical
performance. We must feel a certain fullness and
emanation of human expression.
In performing upon a musical instrument, we
must lose the sense of the instrument and feel all
the depth of love, joy and human passion.
The characteristics or qualities of expression
are also the characteristics of all great art. Why
do our art schools so rarely study the smile or any
action or voice modulation? They merely study
drawing. This is important, but observation must
be trained. There must be a knowledge of the
universal laws of expression in the pupil's own
face and body. Why endeavor to secure a knowl-
edge of expression by studying the mere objective
records found in music, painting and sculpture?
If all of us understood more thoroughly the
meaning of our simplest movements, men would
model, draw and paint better and play better upon
the flute and violin. We should sing better and
construct better buildings. All the arts are one in
principle and are governed by the same laws.
IV
SMILE OR SCOWL
Sometimes we can best see the nature and im-
portance of a thing by looking at its opposite. One
of the opposites of the smile is the scowl. The
contraction of the brow expresses antagonism;
the smile, sympathy. The scowl denotes dis-
approval and dissatisfaction; the smile, approval
and satisfaction. The scowl signifies discontent
and annoyance, the smile contentment and enjoy-
ment. The scowl implies that we are bored, the
smile that we are entertained and amused.
The smile imparts thankfulness and receptivity,
a welcome to what another is saying; the scowl
implies the shut door, that we are not listening,
or caring.
The smile denotes that we are looking up; the
scowl that we are looking down. The smile sug-
gests an acceptance of the plans of the universe, a
loyalty and welcome to the onward movement of
things; the scowl that the universe is all wrong,
the scowler antagonistic because he was not con-
sulted in its creation.
The smile expresses a certain courageous con-
fidence in the ultimate triumph of good ; the scowl
an unwillingness to accept conditions, and it often
shows antagonism of the man to himself.
The scowl and the smile are born of spiritual
attitude, or of our choice of point of view.
Have we no control over our points of view?
Can we choose to scowl or smile? This is really
35
36 THESMILE
a serious question. Henri Bergson in his book on
" Laughter," translated from the French, and
James Sully, in his able " Essay on Laughter," and
I believe all great authors who have studied the
smile, contend that the smile is social rather than
moral in its character. Primarily, possibly, the
smile is social. It expresses a man's relation to
his fellow-men. It is born of the social and sym-
pathetic instinct.
However, the question as to whether we shall
smile or scowl is one of the great tests of human
life and human character. If a man is free he can
do the one or refuse to do the other. At any
moment in life, if the character of the man is
great enough, he can smile or frown.
Is not this the real problem of the ages brought
to a fundamental point where we can see the two
paths? Is it not the problem in the depths of every
life and soul?
Let each one go back carefully in his experiences
to some real battlefield of his life. Was there not
a crucial moment when he could have smiled or
frowned, when he deliberately took his choice?
The insult came. The awakened impulse was
to meet scowl with scowl. Could we not have
obeyed David Crockett's rule and first have been
sure we were right before we spoke? We could
have risen to a higher plane of confidence, love
and sympathy, and even pity, for the man who had
misunderstood. We could have seen behind the
scowl the real man who would regret his words;
to-morrow we could have appealed from Philip
drunk to Philip sober.
We do not allow ourselves to stop and scowl
back at the drunken man's words they are un-
noticed.
SMILE OR SCOWL 37
A great woman is said to have remarked, " Only
a gentleman could insult me, and he will not."
Accordingly the voice of the insulter must be
unheeded and unheard.
By simply smiling you can make yourself im-
mune from antagonism. No sign of anger will be
left on the face of your would-be antagonist.
On the other hand, meet frown with frown and
a fire is kindled, and how great a forest may be
kindled by how small a fire!
Truly love is the secret of life. Obedience to
the Master's rule would settle all human difficul-
ties. If we would but do unto others as we would
have them do unto us, we should eliminate all
contentions.
Scowl or smile?
How simple, how insignificant, seem these two
acts of the countenance ; yet, how far reaching the
result!
Can we control them?
That depends upon how quickly we begin ; upon
the spontaneity with which we can resist tempta-
tion and change our point of view.
To turn an impulse to scowl into a cause for a
smile we must turn our attention to a higher love ;
we must go into the citadel of our hearts and there
keep watch and there enthrone a universal sym-
pathy; we must be so deeply imbued with these
emotions that the right impulse can replace the
wrong one.
All human action or expression starts in an idea,
in an impulse which at a certain moment we wel-
come or reject. Once we welcome a point of view
or indulge an impulse, control may be difficult ; but
in its first inception it is as easy as a turn of the
hand, it is simply a change in the attitude of our
being.
38 THESMILE
The real centre of all our battles is in the mind,
in our power to control our attention, to be able
to change the current of thought at the very be-
ginning. We can change feeling at the very start,
as we can change the direction of a stream easily,
and in fact only, near the fountain head.
Crossing the Rocky Mountains on the Canadian
Pacific Railroad I awoke one morning at early
dawn. The train had stopped and I looked out
to catch a glimpse of the mountains before sunrise.
Just before my eyes, in rustic letters, spanning a
small stream, were the words " The Great Di-
vide."
This stream was divided into two parts; one
flowing east and the other west. One of these
branches flowed into the Red River of the North
and found its way to Hudson's Bay and the Atlantic
Ocean; the other found the Columbia River and,
after thousands of miles, emptied into the Pacific
Ocean.
With a shovelful of dirt I could have turned the
stream so that the whole would have gone either
to the Atlantic or to the Pacific.
Smile or scowl? That is the question of the
ages ; it is one of the greatest problems and goes
deep into the nature of self-command in every
living soul.
The smile or scowl is born simply of an attitude
of the soul. Can we change that? Let us discuss
the question: can we command our thinking or
point of view?
Say what we may, there is a moment when we
can reject the frown and choose the smile.
One implies looking up, the other looking down.
One hints at a willingness to use things for the
best, with expectancy of the best. One implies
SMILE OR SCOWL 39
love, loyalty to life. The other implies unwilling-
ness, antagonism and hate.
Accordingly, the smile indicates the turning-
point in life, it indicates the Great Divide between
the upward and the downward path. The smile
foretells victory. The ability to smile marks the
greatest human power.
SMILE OR FROWN
The smile is opposed not only to the scowl, but
also to the frown and to something for which we
hardly have a name shall we call it a droop of
the countenance or a whine? The whine means
rather the vocal expression of the frown, but it is
a good word.
The smile means not only sympathy, joy, love,
it means also courage, the sense of resolution, the
power and readiness to face difficulties, a loyal
acceptance of life and all its problems, and a
thankfulness that we have been assigned a difficult
r6le.
The whine expresses dissatisfaction with our
part in life and a cowardly shrinking from diffi-
culties.
In the smile there is a lifting of the whole coun-
tenance. All the elevating muscles are active.
Someone has said that all progress depends
upon intelligent discontent.
Is this true?
Even dissatisfaction with wrong conditions is
best expressed by love, by a smile.
If a man strike you on the right cheek, turn the
other.
Even righteous indignation against wrong is
best expressed, not by a scowl or a frown, but by
the expression of a higher point of view and a
smile for the realization of better conditions.
How easy it is for a human being to drop the
40
SMILE OR FROWN 41
corners of the mouth; how common is such a
gloomy " signal " on the street!
Not one in a thousand carries the mouth in its
normal position, a horizontal line, in correspond-
ence with the intention of the Creator.
Some can remember the old covered wagon of
the pioneer moving " out West," sometimes it was
drawn by oxen and sometimes by horses. " Out
West " this old wagon was called a " prairie-
schooner." As you watched it disappear in the
distance, the rear end of the old wagon looked as
if it were weeping for the old home it was leaving.
The corners of its mouth were very low, indeed.
If we are to judge the men and women we meet
by the corners of the mouth, they seem to be
moving onward with discontent for the past, and a
premonition of some coming horror ! On all sides
we see this expression of discouragement.
If there were some way by which the corners of
the mouth could be elevated, it would be one of the
greatest blessings that could come to the race.
The only thing that can lift the corners of the
mouth is the smile.
The smile eliminates discontent, the want of
self-reliance, and all such infirmities of the will.
There is a story that relates how, at one time,
the devil made up his mind to retire from business.
He felt he had done enough and that he should
give others a chance. So he arranged all his tools
and advertised them for sale. Among the display
was a very small tool, seemingly of no importance.
One of the devils who was more careful and
thoughtful than the others picked this up, and
noticed that the price was higher than for any other.
He went to the devil and inquired the reason.
" Why, that," replied the devil, " is the most
42 THESMILE
valuable instrument I have. It will open doors to
me that otherwise would be completely closed.
No one thinks it belongs to me. That is Dis-
couragement."
The story goes on further to say that the price
of that little tool was so great that it is still in
the possession of the devil.
The power of discontent and discouragement
to degrade human character is not sufficiently
appreciated, nor is the importance of triumphing
over disappointments fully realized.
Some great writer has wisely said that to suc-
ceed in this world a man must be a " good loser."
That is, a man must be able to smile after the
greatest defeat. .
As is well known, one of the greatest leaders of
this country, who had performed great services for
the nation, when defeated for the presidency
turned against his friends, became dissatisfied
with life and died of a broken heart. The same
has been true of two other men nominated for the
presidency. They were unable to laugh at their
defeat. Had any one of these men been able to
smile he would have received merited honor from
all the country. Such a defeat was an accident
and might have been made an opportunity, if the
men had been able to rise above it.
On the other hand, one who looks out smiling
from his great defeat is welcomed in every com-
pany both by those who voted for him and those
who voted against him. The smile that was not
quenched by defeat, that smile that arose victo-
rious over it, indicated manhood of a high char-
acter. A man who can smile after defeat can
never be defeated. He will turn what may seem
the worst of defeats into the grandest victory. He
SMILE OR FROWN 43
who is able, in the face of apparent failure, to rise
and smile, achieves a greater victory than that of
being elected to a high office.
Such failures are to be found in all walks of life,
rendered such by some very important defeat.
The same defeat on the contrary, has made many
men and has given them a greater triumph.
There is no greater sign of power than the
ability to smile and change the point of view
change the plans of a whole life. One possessing
such ability always becomes not only popular but
strong in his character.
Such a man, a defeated candidate, has been
called to lecture all over the country, in all the
great schools. He has received many more invita-
tions to lecture than he can accept. He is received
everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm.
Coming to a great university to lecture, the boys
cheered him for several minutes. It happened
to be the day after a national election. He smiled
at them and said, " Why should you cheer me? I
was not elected to anything yesterday."
He is welcomed by every class of men, members
of all parties, because he has preserved the genial,
kindly smile that indicates the greatness of the man.
Many times every day we must choose whether
we are to smile or frown, whether we are to smile
or whine; whether we are to assume a positive,
loving, courageous attitude toward the events of
life, toward our fellow-men or to sink into a
state of antagonism, discouragement, and lack of
faith.
" Smile and the world smiles with you,
Whine and you whine alone."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote " laugh " instead
of "smile" and "weep" instead of "whine;"
44 THE SMILE
But as she wrote it the statement is not true. The
popularity of such words, the fact that they may
be quoted thousands of times does not make them
true. What man or woman do you meet on the
street who does not have a more serious look on
account of Belgium, Servia and Poland.
The innocent sufferers do not weep alone. All
the world that is sane weeps with those who suffer
from no fault of their own. As I venture to correct
the lines they are true, universally true.
People do not always take such lines exactly
as they are printed. The pessimism of the original
lines is not realized by people who quote them and
their meaning to the common heart is, I am sure,
what is here printed. Unconsciously they sub-
stitute " whine " for " weep." Not only has the
writer of a poem poetic license but the reader
also. A man must become a poet to appreciate
poetry.
The whine like all forms of sin separates one
from his fellow- men. !< Whoso finds me will slay
me," cried Cain when he was made to realize that
he was a murderer, and he also felt that he was
separated from God. " From thy face shall I be
hid," he exclaimed in his agony and he was right.
A whine or frown or scowl or a grouch of any kind
separates one from men and God.
A smile on the contrary expresses sympathy.
By a smile one comes into touch with others. In
its very nature a smile is a recognition of others, a
sign of willingness to share the life of one's fellow-
men. It is a welcome to your neighbor's thought
a signal that you desire to commune with him.
Fortunate, indeed, is it that men do not meet
" frown " with " frown " that they do not sym-
pathetically participate in every unmanly whine.
SMILE OR FROWN 46
The dignity and the glory of the race is seen in ^
the fact that we meet smile with smile. It proves
that love and sympathy are held as something
supreme in the human heart.
The tendency to reflect the expression of our
fellow-beings is too well known to require dis-
cussion. If a friend meets us with a smile, we
smile back, but if somebody approaches us with
an angry frown, how quickly we are thrown into a
corresponding mood !
But there is such a thing as holding our thinking
on a higher plane, always looking out with love and
kindliness, sympathy and compassion toward
everyone. The kindly look and the gentle smile
may be made the means of the greatest victories.
Someone may dispute this and say that in a
certain condition of anger, or even discourage-
ment, it is impossible to smile. That depends
upon our strength of character. We can turn our
attention in any direction we choose. We can
look toward that which is beautiful. We can
choose a point of view from which we can see the
absurdity of anger.
The smile always comes from looking on the
bright side, the side that is right, the side that is
infinite, the side that is divine.
While the smile is primarily spontaneous, though
it may seem as natural and involuntary as any act
of expression, still, we can choose to smile, or we
can repress a smile we can crush it into a frown.
Under certain conditions, it is easier to frown than
to smile under difficulties when insulted; but
if we can smile, we have gained a victory over the
worst. We can smile as if we were saying to a
person, " You will not say so to-morrow " ; " You
do not really think so "; "It is not your real self
46 THESMILE
that is speaking " ; " You will be sorry in a few
hours " ; " Sometime you will understand me
better, and know that what you have said is un-
just." Some such remark as these is implied in
the smile of victory, the smile that denotes that a
person is looking upward. Man walks in the direc-
tion in which his eyes are looking if he walks with
ease. The smile indicates the direction in which
we are looking and that we are looking upward.
We are looking out from the point of view of affec-
tion and love. Before us there are two roads. The
straight and narrow road leads upward. That is
the direction of the true soul, even in the midst
of difficulties.
The broad road is downward, and the frown
always leads that way.
The ability to smile under most trying circum-
stances is a measure of power.
VI
SIGN OR SYMBOL
What does the smile mean and whence comes
its meaning? In its most primitive character, as
we first find it on the face of a little child, it means
recognition of love. It means the joyous accept-
ance of life. It means a realization of one's own
individuality, the affirmation of one's own identity.
Looking at the smile as a language, we find it
to be a sign, not a symbol. In our age, symbols
have been regarded as the only language. That
which has no symbolic value, is considered un-
worthy of our attention.
The importance of a symbol can hardly be over-
estimated. The wireless operator, on account of a
universal agreement upon a symbol of three letters,
can send out the vibrations which make known
that a ship is in danger, thus saving thousands of
lives.
It is through words as symbols, that knowledge
and information have been embodied so that every-
one may read and understand.
' Symbols are conventional ; they stand for ideas.
By them men can convey their ideas and opinions.
But, shall the importance of signs be overlooked?
The sign is natural ; it is universal ; it is direct ; it
is immediate. It is a simple emanation ; it calls for
no conventional agreement. It is a straight appeal
to human instinct.
Signs appeal to both eye and ear at the same
47
48 THESMILE
i/
time. The sign to the ear and the sign to the eye,
the modulation of the tone and the action must
agree in their testimony, or all expression is
chaotic. This agreement is the most fundamental
thing in all expression.
Can we not see that the sign is necessary to the
interpretation of the symbol? Could there have
been a symbol without a sign?
In all great poetry the symbol is used in a double
sense, not only as a symbol but also as a sign. A
great writer a great master of style uses words
in such a way that they become more than mere
symbols, and begin to live and breathe with some-
thing of the character of signs.
It is a fundamental law of all true expression
that the sign must transcend the symbol, that a
true symbol is always based on some kind of
natural sign.
The symbol is intellectual. It is external,
mechanical. The sign can manifest deeper con-
ditions than words can symbolize.
How poorly do words express emotions! The
sign at once reveals feeling and the deepest emo-
tions in such a way that they are read by all men.
A symbol is the result of purely conventional
agreement and is subject to grammatical rules.
While the sign is definite, and may stand for a
specific idea, a specific impression, it reveals the
attitude of the man, the elements of his impres-
sions, his experiences.
The sign is natural and obeys Nature's laws and
is filled with Nature's own !ife.
The smile in nature cannot be separated from
the individual. It is never like that of the cat in
Wonderland, left, while the cat itself vanishes.
Words are symbols, on the contrary, or such
SIGN OR SYMBOL 49
things as smiles with the cat gone. They may
remain as a reminder only; but the sign must be
full of life. The smile can never be separated
from life, it never can be disconnected from its
cause, it cannot be printed; art alone can truly
suggest it. The smile always partakes of the life
and spirit that manifests it. The smile may be
vague in representing opinions or ideas; but it is
not vague in its revelation of character of the
human spirit. Its presentation is representative.
It gives its meaning from no mere agreement
among men ; but by a universal law founded in the
nature of things.
Have you never tried to comfort someone in
sorrow for example a mother who has lost her
child? If, in the midst of your struggles to comfort
by words, some neighbor should come in and grasp
the sufferer in her arms, revealing her sympathy
by natural signs, then you would feel like taking
off your shoes, for the ground on which you stand
is holy.
vn
MAN'S ELEMENTAL LANGUAGES
We find that man's primary languages divide
themselves into two groups, one appealing to the
ear, and the other to the eye. Natural signs which
appeal to the eye, we call action. The modulations
of the voice, the inflection, the tone-color, move-
ments or emotional modifications of rhythm, we
call vocal expression. Some deny the dignity of
languages to these two but each group discharges
a distinct function as well as do words. By words
we reveal our opinions and symbolize our ideas;
by tone we reveal our feelings, our degree of con-
viction, our degree of earnestness, our point of
view, the different shades and degrees of emotion.
By action the character of the speaker himself is
shown. Not only is the language of action the
first language, it is also the language of conditions.
If an action is wrong the tones of the voice cannot
be right. Action reveals not the impression but
the effect and the way we receive the impression.
It, therefore, establishes the very conditions of the
color of the voice, the modulations of tone. Action
itself supports all the other languages. It is the
language to which the appeal of the little child is
made. It is the language by which all true earnest-
ness is tested.
Human expression is, therefore, threefold. It
consists of words, tones and action. The two
natural languages, though appealing to totally
50
MAN'S ELEMENTAL LANGUAGES 61
different senses, are vitally united to the words or
symbols.
Observe closely the marvellous unity of these
three languages. They are co-ordinated. They
never can be separated completely without great
loss. Each one reveals something different from
the others. This is the reason why they coalesce
into an organic unity, one is strong where the
others are weak. They are perfect only when
united.
Thus, in the union of these signs, " By the
mouth of two or three witnesses every word is
established."
These three languages show simultaneously
what a man thinks, what he feels and what he is.
We know his ideas, his opinions, his thoughts,
best by his words. We realize his convictions, his
emotions, his experiences best by the modulations
of his voice, and we know his character and his
motives best through his actions.
The smile belongs of course, to the language of
action. It may be taken as a type of all action, be-
cause it is a primitive, elemental and universal
characteristic of the human being. Although ac-
tion has never been adequately explained, and
though books written upon action are among the
most unsatisfactory books written on any sub-
ject, yet, of all languages, action is the most
directly and most easily read. It is an imme-
diate appeal to instinct. Can we find a for-
eigner who is so foreign as not to know the
meaning of a smile? The fact that language can-
not symbolize ideas leads many to disparage it.
For this very reason, however, when we look at it
from its primitive character as a sign, we find it
more full of meaning than any other language of
62 THESMILE
mankind. Its meaning is filled with more force
and directness. We find also another most im-
portant fact: action furnishes the most adequate
means for the study of character. It is the most
unconscious of languages and the most sponta-
neous, and belongs to the whole body; hence it
reveals motives, conditions and attitudes of being
at which other modes of expression merely hint.
The smile is the least mechanical, the least artifi-
cial, the least objective of all languages unless we
except the modulations of the voice, which may
also be subjective.
So subjective is pantomimic expression that
it seems completely united to feeling. It can
hardly be studied and certainly it cannot be
developed apart from the experience that causes
it.
Accordingly, the true and normal smile must be
realized in the study of joy, in the observation of
love and sympathy, or as the agent of the positive
emotions.
Its great force as a language is shown by its
power to contradict words.
With a frown, say to a little child, " Come here,
you little angel " ; then with a smile and with the
consequent involuntary softening of the tone, say,
" Come here, you little rascal." Here the sign
contradicts the symbol, and the child, as well as
everyone else will take the sign before the
symbol.
Demosthenes, according to tradition, when
asked what was the most important element in
speaking, replied, " Action " ; when asked what
was the second most important element, he an-
swered, " Action," and when asked the third, he
still answered, "Action." Action has been so
MA N'S ELEMENTAL LANGUAGES. 53
misunderstood that many have been astounded at
this statement and have denied that Demosthenes
ever made it, or, if he did, they think that he meant
something different from pantomimic expression.
A very prominent man once said in my presence
that by " action " Demosthenes meant living and
doing things. After many years of studying ex-
pression, I believe that Demosthenes meant
exactly what he said. He restricted the statement
in order to emphasize what others, possibly even
in that day, misunderstood, or at least the im-
portance of which they failed to appreciate.
Certainly action is not appreciated in our day.
It is the most direct of all languages, the most
simple. It reveals itself through the whole body ; it
appeals to the eye most quickly of all our senses.
It is not local like a pronounced word. It expresses
the deepest conditions of man's being. Without
action, such voice modulations as tone-color and
texture are impossible.
Pantomime precedes speech. It shows the re-
ceiving of impressions. Words express the giving
of an idea or concept ; action shows the beginning
of the impression; words are only a label giving
its name or direction.
Of course by action is not meant gesture, or
some " signal of distress " by the hands or arms.
True action is as simple as the smile, something
as vitally connected with our beings as the simple
expansion of the body or movement on the feet, or
any action directly caused by experience.
Pantomime determines even the conditions of
all modulations of the voice. Without action, tone-
color would be impossible, hence, vocal expression
cannot be separated from pantomimic expression.
The man who sneers at action as something found
64 THESMILE
only among savages, fails to comprehend one of the
deepest characteristics of human nature.
Action expresses the character of the speaker.
Real earnestness and conviction are not shown by
the loudness of the tone, or the number of words,
but by this most conditional of all languages.
Though vocal expression is regarded by many as
directly and vitally connected with words, yet the
tones of the voice are really more vitally united to
action than they are to words. It is the diffusion
of feeling throughout the body that not only pro-
duces action and modulations of the tones, but
colors the voice.
Most voice modulations are dependent on action.
When one tries to depend merely upon words,
or the modulations of the tone, speech becomes
mechanical and artificial.
Inflection reveals the attitude of the mind and
discharges a more intellectual function. Hence, it
is more closely connected with words than is tone-
color.
Inflection, however, is a gesture of the voice as a
significant movement of the hand is an inflection
of the body.
It is difficult or impossible to make a good
bodily gesture with the wrong vocal inflection
even these are vitally connected. But the qual-
ities of the voice are entirely dependent, not upon
the gesture but upon the diffusion of emotion into
the texture of the body, upon the expressive at-
titude of all parts of the body directly related and
co-ordinated with the sympathetic retention of the
breath. Such facts show us that a man's three
languages are necessary to one another. No one
of them can be repressed or discarded with im-
punity. Yet, they are as opposite to each other as
MAN'S ELEMENTAL LANGUAGES 55
a man's two hands. To some, the two hands are
exactly alike, and they are more alike possibly than
any other two objects in the world; yet at every
point they are directly opposite. Nothing as ugly
as two right hands on the same body has ever been
produced, and it is the direct opposition in their
similarity that enables them to come together in
unity. In a way, each of these three languages,
while simple and expressive of the same thing, re-
veals a different phase of impression, a different
aspect of human life and experience, and because
of this very difference, they become mutually
necessary and can be co-ordinated for the same
ends.
Because each language says something no one
of the others can possibly say, their unity is made
possible and necessary.
Pantomime is the outflow of the awakening of
thought. It manifests the inception of the thought,
not the finished realization. It reveals the initia-
tion, the stimulation, the life of the man himself.
In teaching, whenever I have been in serious
doubt of a pupil's needs, I have always studied his
pantomime. That is a language that never lies ; a
language that is most unconscious and therefore
most vitally expressive.
Because the smile is not a symbol, because it is
not an objective thing, because it cannot be sep-
arated from the man and printed like a word, it is
often overlooked.
This very separation of words from the process
of thinking may make a word the emptiest of all
things. A word, a phrase, needs to be interpreted
by the living voice. The smile, the sign must be
restored to the symbol, or the symbol will be
meaningless.
66 THESMILE
How often do we wrongly quote a thought from
someone by missing a word? But still more fre-
quently do we miss the natural signs he used, the
action, the smile, and so we miss his experience
and the spirit with which he spoke.
vm
DOES A SMILE REPRESENT OR MANIFEST?
Is a smile representative or manifestative?
There are two modes of expression. They are
found in both tone and action, but we see them
especially marked in human action. Representa-
tion is objective, descriptive and illustrative. It is
deliberative. Manifestation on the other hand, is
spontaneous, frequently unconscious. It never
describes. It is an outward sign of inner activity,
an outward revelation or emanation of something
within. Representative action belongs more
especially to the hands the external agents.
Manifestation belongs to all bodily agents. The
smile is a characteristic example of manifestation.
It is only a mock smile when one man employs it
to represent the smile of another. In all expres-
sion, manifestation must transcend representation,
and the smile possibly illustrates this.
The tendency to exaggerate the importance of
representation in action is a great mistake. Action
has been regarded, not only as representative, but
imitative, objective and external.
The smile should teach us that signs are pri-
marily manifestative. Manifestation is the motion
of emotion, the texture of a condition, the position
of a disposition, the modulation of a mode. Its
cause always lies within. Any effort to give it the
character of a symbol is an affectation and vitiates
its true nature. An attempt, such as has so often
67
58 THESMILE
been made, to make all action stand for something
external, develops weakness and artificiality.
Manifestation reveals directly and immediately
man's degree of realization, his deepest expe-
riences, the primary habits of his life.
It is because action is primarily manifestative
that the relation of signs to symbols is so impor-
tant. Symbols, being representative, may become
purely objective and cold in comparison with the
living, manifestative sign. A speech or play, even
a great poem, implies a living voice, which can be
interpreted only by living, manifestative signs
such as the modulations of voice and body. Man-
ifestation must always transcend representation
in perfect and artistic expression.
Here we see also the true nature of delivery.
This is a supplementing of words as representative
symbols of man's highest embodiment of ideas,
with manifestative signs of feeling, of disposition,
of the inner spirit, which is found in the highest
poetry and literature.
Manifestation and representation must both be
found in true unity to have perfect human expres-
sion in any form, in oratory, in acting or in literary
interpretation. Even highest literature itself em-
ploys and suggests this union.
"Our human speech is naught,
Our human testimony false, our fame
And human estimation words and wind.
Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
' Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,
Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith ! '
REPRESENT OR MANIFEST 59
Say this as silvery as tongue can troll
The anger of the man may be endured,
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him
Are not so bad to bear but here's the plague,
That all this trouble comes of telling truth,
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,
Nor recognizable by whom it left;
While falsehood would have done the work of truth.
But Art, wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind, Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever the Adante dived,
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye, and save the soul besides."
True art is not merely symbolic. It is the smile
of the human soul. If it has not the character of
the smile it will be mechanical, artificial and will
never move the world.
The sign manifests the life of the individual. On
one hand the smile may be so used as to embody
the thought of a thousand years ; on the other hand,
it may die the moment it is born, but it shows the
love of man, the real pulsating motives behind his
words. The greater the writer, the greater the
artist, the more definitely does he suggest the
necessity and character of the true companion,
the sign.
Those who sneer at action and say it belongs
only to the savage part of humanity, and hence
must be repressed as something outgrown, should
study the smile. How ridiculous must their opin-
ion appear when we consider the significance of the
simplest facial changes or bodily expansions, or
the simple attitudes of the head or motions of the
60 THESMILE
hand. What would the intercourse of human
beings become were it not for the constant play
of the face and the subtle actions and positions of
all parts of the body.
The tendency to make all action of the body and
even voice modulation, representative, descriptive,
or symbols rather than signs, is one of the greatest
mistakes ever made in human education. De-
scriptive expression lacks true character of the
deepest expression. It discards the fundamental
facts of modulations of being through voice and
body.
Human words, great as they are, necessary as
they are, to express human ideas, opinions and
thoughts, fall short in the manifestation of human
feeling.
We find here an indication of the necessity of
human art. Every art expresses something that
no other art can say. Unless it can do this, it is
not an art at all. Human language is as complex
as the human faculties and experiences which
are the cause of all expression. This complexity
shows the necessity of the artistic point of view;
art is a necessity of man's higher faculties.
The higher experiences must not only transform
symbols into figures, but they imply the awakening
of higher realization and require certain modula-
tions of voice and body to express them. In the
same way all the arts are necessary to reveal the
deep causes of human experiences and give higher
interpretation to human language. This has been
well shown in Browning's "The Ring and the
Book." When a man is inwardly stirred and sin-
cerely speaks out, then his art rises to poetry or to
the dignity of a sign or a smile. " The look," said
Balzac, " the voice, the respiration and the attitude
REPRESENT OR MANIFEST 61
or walk are identical. But as power has not been
given to man to stand guard at once over these
four different simultaneous expressions of his
thought, watch that one which speaks but the
truth, and you will know the whole man." Do we
not all agree with Emerson when he says " Nature
tells every secret once? Yes, but in man she tells
it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien,
face and parts of the face, and by the whole action
of the machine."
IX
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING
To understand any habitual and more or less
permanent expression of the face we must study
further into the nature of action. One of the most
important distinctions or divisions of pantomimic
expression is found in its degree of permanence.
Pantomime may be divided into gesture, attitude
and bearing.
A gesture is an expressive motion. It expresses
something transitory, some feeling that is on the
surface.
An attitude expresses a condition, an emotion
that dominates us for a time; a feeling that lays
hold of our deeper nature; a feeling that is not
local or superficial, but one that permeates our
whole being.
A bearing is an action that expresses that which
is more permanent ; that which has become a part
of our character; it is the permanent result of
some emotion that we have frequently cherished,
the result of habitual emotions and attitudes.
The bearing thus expresses character.
Every experience we pass through tends to
create a condition favorable to its return. Feelings
that recur frequently, therefore, establish certain
tendencies or bearings which underlie all other
expressions, whether gestures or attitudes.
As a rule the individual is unconscious of his
bearing. It has become such a permanent part
62
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING 63
of him that he becomes aware of it only occasion-
ally, and by comparing himself with other men ; or
by the intuition which lies back of consciousness
of his higher possibilities or ideals. Here we find
that a study of action reveals to us the deepest
process of our development, a process that goes
on from the cradle to the grave. By turning away
from certain experiences, and cherishing those
that are opposite or higher, we begin the process of
our more ideal development.
Notwithstanding all that may be said regarding
education as an acquisition of knowledge, even as
the attainment of culture, there is a deeper proc-
ess, the formation of character. That is the
highest part of education. All educational training
must centre in this process of establishing right
habits as expressed in normal bearings right dis-
positions and motives, right tendencies in being
and their expression in the bearing of the
body.
There is a tendency in our day for the young man
to leap to his profession, to despise the college
course and turn to the professional school. The
young man is more ambitious to become a lawyer
or a doctor or a business man than he is to develop
his personality.
Bearing is seldom thought of in relation to
speaking. The speaker in fact is apt to think of
that which is most emotional and most superficial.
Speakers, we find as a rule, have more faith in
gestures than in attitudes.
If, however, we observe carefully, we may note
that, although the gestures may be very significant
and attitudes still more so, it is the bearing which
possesses the deepest and highest expressive
value. A transitory feeling is less important than
64 THESMILE
an emotion that remains for a time, and even this
is less important than those feelings which have
become vital motives, a real part of the permanent
character.
Almost alone of all languages, a man's nature is
expressed by his action and especially by his
bearing which transcends all action.
Is a smile an attitude, a gesture or a bearing?
It may be any one of them. Certain giggles and
grimaces are gestures, whereas a loving smile may
express the attitude of a man.
The most important element of the smile, how-
ever, is that which is usually entirely overlooked,
a certain permanent attitude toward life, toward
others, a kindly bearing which may not be recog-
nized as a smile, but if studied may be taken as
a condition favorable to a smile.
That the condition may become a bearing may
be easily proved by a few illustrations.
One of my most delightful remembrances is
of an occasional glimpse of Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes upon the street. One day I came upon
him looking into a store window, with all the
smiling interest of a boy. I stood at a distance and
gazed on him with admiration.
A few times I have seen him crossing the Com-
mon. He seemed to be one animated smile from
the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. The
smile seemed to be there always as a bearing. It
was a smile in repose. There was no grin, that
horrible mockery of a smile. It was the deep,
genuine, simple revelation of the heart of a child
which he was able to keep through all the serious
work of a man's life.
By invitation of one of my students I once
attended a lecture on anatomy by Dr. Holmes at
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING 65
the Harvard Medical School. It was one of his
most serious lectures. There was no joke in it
from first to last. The subject was the larynx,
and the young medical friend who accompanied me
thought I would be particularly interested in the
subject. How happy every student in that class
seemed! I saw the eager faces all about me.
The Professor's remarks were expressive of cheer-
fulness and sympathy. I wanted to see if he had
the professional air that most lecturers have; the
mask which the minister puts on when he ascends
to the pulpit ; that the teacher usually assumes be-
fore his class; that the employer wears when he
goes into the factory. There was nothing of the
kind, only a genuine, simple, hearty, loving
bearing. I saw the man himself with a cheerful-
ness so deep that it became seriousness. It was
the same smile he wore when he stood up before
an audience once and said :
" Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to fill the
place of Judge Gray. Now you all know that is
impossible. All I can hope to do is to rattle around
in it a little."
Judge Gray, as is well-known, was a very large
man. He and Phillips Brooks and Bishop Mc-
Vicker, who were all unusually large men, were
once walking through a village in Europe. The
natives gazed at them in astonishment and in-
quired whence they came. Someone replied,
" Those are Americans ; they are rather small men
in their own country."
Another story is told of these three men who
were once in London. A man was lecturing on
the degeneracy of the race. Among his illustra-
tions he said, " Look at the Americans. They are
thin and lank, and small in stature." At the close
66 THESMILE
of the lecture there was a chance for questions.
One of the Americans arose and said :
" Ladies and gentlemen: I am an American and
you can see for yourself if I am an illustration of
the gentleman's principles." Another of the fa-
mous trio then arose and said, " I also am an Amer-
ican. You can take me as another specimen."
When the third man arose the situation was too
much for the audience and the laughter was un-
controllable.
I once heard Dr. Holmes introduce Matthew
Arnold. " I am reminded," he said, " of two
Americans, a big man and a little man, who met
a mob in London. The big man gave his coat to
the little man to hold while he demonstrated his
strength in subduing the mob. The mob gave
three cheers for the big man ; then someone cried,
' Three cheers for the little man who held the coat.'
Now, ladies and gentlemen, the man who was to
hold the coat to-night was Reverend Phillips
Brooks."
Then there was another noble character Dr.
Edward Everett Hale. Whoever saw him crossing
the Common, or walking along Tremont Street to
the Lend-a-Hand office without feeling a thrill of
joy? His countenance was expanded even when
he seemed to be thinking over some deep problem.
He felt happiness in all that lay about him an
interest in every human being.
I once heard him tell about passing two girls in
front of the old Public Library. He overheard one
of them say, " Look at that bright, beautiful room.
I wonder if it is a club and what kind of people go
in there." He said, " I am not accustomed to
speak to ladies on the street, but I broke my rule
for once. I stepped up to the girls and said, ' That
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING 67
building is open to anybody and everybody. There
is no person who walks the streets of Boston who
will not find welcome there.' '
In his statue in the Public Garden, his benignant
smile is lacking. Possibly it was too much for
human art to catch and reproduce the beaming,
loving seriousness of that face.
However, the representation may be a little
more successful than the horrible burlesque of
Phillips Brooks near Trinity Church, which is the
worst caricature of a joyous, smiling, loving face
that has ever been thrust upon an innocent pub-
lic.
I never pass Trinity Church without steeling my
face and looking off at a distance that I may be
spared the sight of that monstrosity.
Modern art contends that the smile must be
necessarily avoided or it will become a mere
simper and destroy all dignity.
Does not the art of our day acknowledge in such
a statement its own weakness?
How long did Leonardo da Vinci work to master
the smile of Mona Lisa?
Observe also the wonderful smile on the por-
traits of Franz Hals. These are the deepest bear-
ings of the character and in no case do they de-
tract from its dignity.
Sargent has worked hard to master the tech-
nique of this great artist and he is regarded the
greatest technician of the present day; but he
falls short of Franz Hals in the mastery of the
smile.
Recent art has made great advances, especially
in landscape. The smile of the fields and the
skies is better rendered than ever before. But
why neglect the expression of the human body?
68 THESMILE
Why overlook the transcendent glory of the human
face?
After all its great advances, is our art lacking
in the ability to portray such an elemental expres-
sion as a smile? Has it failed, after all, to attain
the simple power and dignity of the Greeks? Is it
still too external, mechanical and exhibitional to
rise to the dignity of the great masters?
What art school really studies the expression of
the human countenance? What art student ever
discriminated between gesture, attitude and bear-
ing, or even knew enough about expression to
know that there are such things? The modern
ignorance of human expression is so great that
it extends even to our artists.
The great art school is yet to come : an institu-
tion that will study every phase of human expres-
sion; one that will recognize that the student of
only one art becomes narrow, opinionated and
artificial; that to be only a painter is not to be an
artist. A sculptor or a performer on a musical
instrument may have expert technique and yet be
purely perfunctory. He only is an artist who is
able to see, as the great masters saw, expression
in its different forms.
Expression is far deeper and broader than any of
its modes, however important these may be. A
mere elocutionist is no better than a mere actor,
a mere pianist or a mere painter.
Why can art never have all the dignity, all the
seriousness, all the weight, all the faith and love
of the human soul embodied in the smile? Who
ever heard of an art school studying a smile and
its meaning, and trying to realize its beauty?
Once in New York I saw the crowd staring at a
man with flowing white hair and a soft hat, who
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING 69
was passing along Broadway. It was Henry Ward
Beecher. His beaming smile of sympathy seemed
to be an emanation of intense joy. His whole
face seemed to express his pleasure in the doings
of ordinary men.
Another remarkable face, which was a delight
to everyone who looked upon it, was that of Joseph
Jefferson. The simplicity, of his character, and his
childlike love were in his countenance. Every
feature seemed permeated with the spirit of a
smile, joy and contentment, love and admiration
for nature and his fellow-men.
It was not difficult for a smile to appear and run
instantly all over such a face. The smile seemed
to be hiding beneath his features. To print one
of his stories never satisfies one who heard him
tell it.
Once when about to buy a farm in New Jersey
he asked the owner whether the water would not
all evaporate through such gravelly soil. The old
farmer replied that, on the contrary, the soil would
not only hold the water, but would draw water by
something which from the farmer's lips sounded
like " caterpillary attraction." In telling a story,
Jefferson never laughed. His countenance only
beamed with the spirit of joy and laughter. You
felt laughter not only as an attitude but more as a
perpetual bearing, showing a joyous outlook upon
life, a point of view full of affection and tender-
ness for everything and everybody.
Such examples as Henry Ward Beecher on
Broadway, Phillips Brooks, Edward Everett Hale
and Dr. Holmes crossing Boston Common ; Jeffer-
son, Gladstone in London, John Bright in Man-
chester indicate how certain men may wear, in
their ordinary intercourse with their fellow-men, a
70 THESMILE
smile which expresses a deep childlike trust that,
as Plato puts it, " the eternal is true and good."
This habitual bearing must be carefully dis-
tinguished from any affected attitudes of the face.
The true bearing can be seen only when the
man is alone or in his home or among his most
familiar friends, for a bearing is always involun-
tary and unconscious.
Some men in business affect a cast-iron un-
changing smile which is the same for all occasions.
You feel that it is not a true bearing but a mere
affectation based on selfishness. You feel that
they are only trying to bias your judgment to get
your money.
The smile, even when it is a bearing, is full of
life and vigor. It changes in all sorts of ways, it
kindles with another's thought, is always sym-
pathetic, is never dominating but based on love.
You find it is all your own. Certainly there is not
the least affectation about it. The true smile, as a
bearing, seems ready for communion, for enjoy-
ment. It suggests a spirit looking for good things,
for beautiful things ; looking for somebody to help,
somebody with whom he can share the joys of life.
The right kind of smile, born of a sympathetic
attitude, born of true gladness at meeting every
stranger, is one of the fundamental requisites of
all truly great men.
Some assume a smile when in society. Every-
one feels that this is unsatisfactory. One has an
intuition that this is not the habitual, daily smile
of the individual, but is involuntarily forced beyond
the real heart's feeling. This forced smile, or pre-
tence of being pleased, is one of the great causes
of the degradation and the superficiality of human
character.
GESTURE, POSITION OR BEARING 71
Of course every person should be pleased to
meet his fellow-men, but this pleasure can be
easily forced and pretended when it is not the
real feeling. Here we find the very basis, the
very start of superficiality and hypocrisy. Many
assume an artificial and affected smile in the
attempt to appear at ease. But it is only the love
and joy and a generous sharing in the life of others,
expressed in a certain emanation in the face, a
readiness to smile, that puts one's self and others
at ease. We achieve ease of bearing only when we
are perfectly honest and direct, when we have
learned to respect both the highest and the lowest
as members of one great family.
The antithesis of ease is awkwardness. It is
awkwardness that is most feared by the society
woman. One of them has said, " Awkwardness is
never forgiven in this world or any other."
May we not learn a lesson regarding awkward-
ness from the study of the smile?
It is through the smile that awkwardness first
vanishes. Awkwardness is born of fear, the
fear of doing the wrong thing. It results from not
feeling at home, from not being able to come into
touch with others. The true smile expresses
grace and repose.
X
THE SMILE AND BEAUTY
We here encounter a very important question.
Why do people wear such serious faces on the
street? Someone will say, " Because life is seri-
ous." " Therefore you see," they continue, " the
superficiality of the smile. No sensible person
goes around with a grin on his face. When one
happens to smile to himself on the street, he is
laughed at. Life is serious, thus men demand
that the habitual attitude of the face should be
solemn."
Is there no explanation of the fact that the atti-
tude of discouragement and the attitude, which is
almost a frown and certainly expresses discourage-
ment, is the conventional attitude worn on the
street? Is this a social requirement? Is it that
life is so filled with gloom that such a vinegar
aspect has become general? Or is it fear? Is it
because a man feels he has enemies? Is it lack
of sympathy? Is it because the average man in
the midst of his illusions allows negative condi-
tions to make their home in his heart and face?
He does brighten up for a moment when he
meets a friend. Sometimes the smile lasts for a
whole block, then he suddenly thinks someone is
laughing at him, and gives the corners of his mouth
a jerk downward into their accustomed gloom and
gradually allows the serious mood which expresses,
to use a phrase which Kipling has called detest-
able," The battle of life." Why should we re-
72
THE SMILE AND BEAUTY 73
press all our better feelings merely because we
are in public or in the company of strangers? Con-
ventional politeness demands that a stranger be
treated as a superior. The moment he speaks to
you on the street you give him your attention and
bow with deference, direct him kindly or even go
with him, if necessary, to point out the way.
Once, while walking alone through the Forest
of Fontainebleau, trying to find the village of
Barbazon where the great artists Rousseau,
Millet and others had lived, I inquired the way of a
French gentleman who was on horseback. I saw
from his smile how difficult was the task. I asked
him to give me general direction, and this he indi-
cated to me kindly and carefully.
I trudged on, feeling grateful for such careful
instructions. At length I came to a point where it
seemed, a dozen roads branched from one little
circle. As I stood in doubt, wondering which road
to take, the same gentleman galloped up, waved
his hand toward the one I was to take, bowed
and rode away.
Once on a hasty trip through old Heidelberg,
I felt I was near the old University and must see
the place where so many great men had taught.
My friends were in a hurry, so we accosted the
only person near us, a passing lady, and asked
her for directions. She motioned for us to follow.
Possibly our broken German indicated that she
would not be understood even if she should ex-
plain. Noticing that she turned out of her way,
we tried to apologize and asked her not to trouble
herself. She shook her head and hurried on. At
a corner she suddenly waved her hand toward the
university buildings and was gone before we had
time to thank her.
74 THESMILE
An American and his wife were once dining in a
restaurant on a Parisian boulevard. Suddenly the
lady fainted. Her husband picked her up in his
arms and carried her, as best he could, across the
sidewalk, motioning to a cab. A passing stranger
saw him, ran, brought the cab, and helped place
the lady in it. When the American turned to
thank the stranger, he caught sight of him lifting
his hat with a kind smile as he disappeared in the
crowd. They never met before or afterwards, but
how such a look lingers in the memory !
Such kind acts occur in every nation and every
community. They are beautiful and are recog-
/ nized as beautiful. Why should we not cultivate
a more kindly attitude toward men, and the smile,
expressing a readiness to do such deeds, instead
of that cold, severe, critical bearing, which is con-
sidered appropriate for the street?
Does the conventional gloomy face really ex-
press the spirit of the human heart? It certainly
does not express man's aspirations or the ideal
toward which he is striving. Do men habitually
hide their better selves? Do they conceal what
they are trying to be? Is a solemn face a mere
conventionality?
This conventional, ironclad face is certainly not
beautiful. People will pose before a glass and
carefully arrange their hair and examine critically
every article of dress to appear to others as beau-
tiful as possible. We all know that there is no
greater ambition with many people than to appear
beautiful before others. Then why neglect the
greatest source of beauty? Why daub the face
with poison and neglect the smile? True beauty
is not regularity of feature or softness of the skin.
But, alas! how many regard beauty as only
THE SMILE AND BEAUTY 75
" skin deep." True beauty belongs to the soul.
It is created out of the affections, the sympathies,
the emotions and the attitude toward life.
" Quite the ugliest face I ever saw," says Whit-
tier, " was that of a woman whom the world calls
beautiful. Through its 'silver veil ' the evil and un-
gentle passions looked out hideous and hateful.
On the other hand, there are faces, which, the multi-
tude, at the first glance, pronounce homely, unattrac-
tive, and such as 'Nature fashions by the gross/
which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill ;
not for the world would I have one feature changed ;
they please me as they are; they are hallowed by
kind memories; they are beautiful through their
associations; nor are they any the less welcome
that, with my admiration of them, 'the stranger
intermeddleth not.' '
The greatest beauty of the human face is its
power to express the feelings of the heart. With-
out expression the countenance is cold and life-
less. The mobility of the features, allowing the
smile to permeate every part, reveals the highest
elements of human nature. It shows that deep
in the heart there is the constant attitude of sym-
pathy; the wish to share, not to dominate; not to
secrete and possess but to live in union with
others ; to spread, not terror and antagonism, but
joy and love. When such emotions are really felt,
the face and form kindle and the thought shines
through the countenance. The smile is the key
that unlocks the door to beauty and loveliness.
Who does not remember faces that according
to the world's standard were not beautiful? That
is, their features were not regular and well pro-
portioned. They lacked delicacy and softness of
skin, yet the whole countenance seemed alive with
76 THESMILE
beautiful thoughts, genuine sympathies and ex-
alted feelings.
There were Jenny Lind, Charlotte Cushman,
William Warren; there are Sembrich and hun-
dreds of others, whose kindly faces live for a gen-
eration in the thoughts and feelings of those who
have seen them. Such faces may be found in
every walk of life. Who does not know of some
good woman who has been a mother to the whole
neighborhood? Who has not known faces that
could never be photographed?
It is the power to express, which creates real
beauty, something all can cultivate.
The smile, or rather the underlying cause of
the smile, is the supreme beautifier of the human
countenance. True beauty is an emanation of
life, joy, peace, contentment, and sympathy with
one's kind.
XI
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED?
Can we develop the smile? Does it lie within
the province of education? One of our great artists
has said, " No man can teach expression. He
can teach only its grammar." According to this
theory you can teach the painter only drawing, the
use of his tools, the nature of colors and how to
mix them. You can teach the musician only his
piano or violin or flute. Is this true? Is there no
awakening of ideals which is an essential part of
education? The very word " education " means
to draw out. Is there no stimulation of the imagi-
nation which is a necessary part of the develop-
ment of any artist? Is it possible that art educa-
tion is merely a mechanical process?
How often are sad examples of modern art edu-
cation found. A young woman, with high ideals,
deep artistic nature and feeling, entered one of
the leading so-called art schools. For the better
part of a year she was compelled to draw only from
a cast. The drudgery began to pall ; art became to
her a mechanical thing; she lost her aspirations,
her ideals. Her artistic instincts were dulled.
She had no relief from that one mechanical per-
formance. She had no study of expression, noth-
ing was given to her to awaken her creative im-
agination, her emotional energies, her love of
beauty, her power of insight into fundamental ele-
ments or causes of beauty. She had no study of
herself, no study of the different modes by which
77
78 THESMILE
imagination and emotion are unfolded. How few
artists are made by such a process! How many
are unmade by such drudgery ! Such a mechanical
process may be some explanation of the fact that
processes of art expression are so little prized in
education. Can you teach expression? Assuredly,
if you can teach anything. No one can say that
students of painting do not have to learn to draw.
Every art has a technique which must be mas-
tered ; there is even a technique of speaking. But
with a mastery of technique the actions of the
mind must be awakened, the deeper insight, the
intuitions. No amount of grammar can teach a
man to think.
Technique is the true mode of revealing mental
actions. It is the best way of conveying impres-
sions.
Every art is a mode of thinking. The student
must learn not merely grammar. He must learn
to think. Grammar is but an outward shell, hard
and mechanical, the result of formulation. Woe
to the man who clamps these on the backs of stu-
dents before the real life is awakened, before the
soul has seen any vision. The same mistake is
made in many of our public schools even more
than in our art schools. Too much attention is
paid to mere mechanical rules.
To acquire correct and beautiful English, boys
and girls must be inspired with the desire to ex-
press; they must receive true impressions; they
must be awakened by contact with great literature.
When their imaginations are awakened, when they
have seen something beautiful and are asked to
describe it, they are led to the desire to express it
well. In this way they discover the simple rules
of grammar.
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 79
On the contrary, the mechanical teacher of gram-
mar turns all attention to mere words. The stu-
dent has nothing to say but there is an endeavor
to teach him to say it in correct English, thus he
loses all real interest, and there is no awakening
of the desire to express.
The aim and the first step of all education is to
awaken, to inspire. To speak correctly we must
think correctly. The great law of education is like
the smile, which must come from within outward.
The highest education is a sharing of the uni-
versal life. Each human being as an individual is
a centre of conscious identity, but this does not
mean that the individual is shut up in some corner.
To live at all we must communicate. A universal
conception of the immortal life is that it is one of
love.
You can improve a smile only according to the
laws of all development. You can awaken a man's
better nature. You can enkindle a higher love.
You can make him more conscious of his ideals
and give him more courage to feel them. You can
stimulate aspirations. You can give him a better I/'
point of view of life, a higher conception of his
race. This causes the smile to be deeper, to dif-
fuse itself all over the face and body and become
a permanent part of his countenance.
Of course we cannot force a smile. The smile
can never be improved by rule. It cannot be built
or constructed. It has np grammar but it can
be awakened. The improvement of the smile de-
pends upon a deeper and truer view of life, upon
better health and a healthier vision, upon encour-
agement to enjoyment, upon greater sympathy
with ome's kind, upon increase of faith, confidence
in truth and in men.
80 THESMILE
The problem of improving the smile is the same
problem of all human education. Education must
awaken the very depths of our being. It cannot
proceed mechanically or by rule. All human edu-
cation must simply awaken and direct the impulses
of nature.
The secret of FroebeFs teaching, according to a
critic and advocate of his method, consists in bring-
ing such objects around the child as will stimulate
spontaneous activity.
According to this all education is primarily an
awakening; that exercise is the most important
which will most effectually quicken the human
powers and bring them into co-ordinate activity.
The smile can be developed; and its develop-
ment shows the right processes of all education.
If you believe that a smile cannot be improved
observe closely the smile of a baby. Its first smile
is local, but watch the child daily for some weeks.
What a transformation, slow but decided! Every
day some deeper action becomes apparent, some
additional part of his face is filled with joy and love
until at last there is no part that does not beam
with feeling. Many men retain the constricted
smile of early childhood. None of their smiles
have ever visited their foreheads. There is simply
action at the corners of the mouth and that is all.
Activity at the outer corners of the eyes, and es-
pecially of the lower eyelid, is weak. Sometimes
the lips are drawn back in a constricted and
tightened way and become cramped and set upon
the teeth.
The majority of people have constrictions in
their smiles, constrictions that could be easily
removed if the facial muscles receive the proper
rhythmic treatment. The fingers may be laid
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 81
gently upon the face at those points where there
are constrictions and the muscles may be gently
moved or kneaded so the part may be set free and
the emotion allowed to diffuse its action through
the whole face.
How does this slow transformation take place?
In the same way that development proceeds in us
all. The whole face gradually becomes more
responsive. Each little muscle awakens. Na-
ture's great process, the localization of function,
rapidly progresses.
The improvement in the looks is astonishing.
Of all beautifiers the smile is the greatest, but it
must be genuine; it must bring every feature of
the face into co-ordination ; every muscle must be
stimulated to act simultaneously. The develop-
ment of the smile need not lead to affectation. If
the process is properly carried on affectation may
be avoided. It is one of the faults to be removed.
There are assumed smiles all around us.
All expression implies a certain giving up of the
muscles and parts of the body to the diffusion of
feeling.
Some men's hands are cramped and constricted.
Feeling causes little more than a jerk of the mus-
cles of the arm. By relaxing the hand feeling and
emotion will be diffused into every part. We can
train the hand from a mere constricted pair of
nippers or paws into a sympathetic sequence of
unfolding actions more beautiful than the flower.
We can feel every finger receiving its quota of
tenderness and co-ordination, bringing it into ac-
tion and unity natural to the human hand. Pos-
sibly there is nothing else in all the universe that
can perform that action. Certainly there is nothing
in this world that can compare with it.
82 THESMILE
" Oh ! " you say, " everybody can do that." No,
indeed. It sometimes takes us weeks at the
School of Expression to secure that sympathetic
modulation, and when it comes, what a change!
Channels are opened that allow pent-up feeling a
mode of expression; it is not alone the hand that
is free, it is the student's whole being.
The hand is the flower of expression. The fin-
gers are its petals.
And the human face : into how few does feeling
flow and diffuse itself equally over every part !
Yes, the smile is universal, but what a ghastly,
one-sided lot of smiles are found in the world !
How few, when they smile, smile with the whole
countenance ! Of course the diffusion of the smile
into every feature cannot come from deliberation ;
that would only result in artificiality. We must
smile with the entire face. To do this we must
allow the face to smile. When the deliberative
usurps the spontaneous, we have artificiality and
affectation. When the spontaneous usurps the
deliberative, we have chaos. Is there no way in
which we can manipulate the face, strengthen in-
ternal emotion, open a channel for its outflow,
until the whole face can be filled and moulded with
this imaginative and emotional life?
If we begin early, can we not bring all the fea-
tures of the face into greater unity? Can we not
make them harmonious by manipulation with the
fingers? Something of the kind can be done for
I have seen it, but the greatest need is that the
man be awakened and his emotion stimulated.
We cannot produce the effect without the cause.
Let man be simple. Let him look on the world
in a natural, unaffected and sympathetic way,
the way any true human being should; if he per-
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 83
ceives but one little streak of sunshine, then he
will smile. The development of the smile, how-
ever, must go still farther. Wrong habits are a
matter of acquirement. For example: there is
everywhere danger of premature expression. Im-
pulsiveness is not the same as spontaneity. The
latter employs a co-ordination of man's primary
faculties and powers. It employs reserve, the
co-ordination of emotions until they diffuse ac-
tively into all parts of the body.
What is spontaneity, and especially what is it in
the smile?
One of the worst faults, and one of the earliest,
is a kind of jerk of the body intended for a laugh.
Not only does the laugh displace the smile but it
is a sign of weakness, and the result is characteris-
tic of all forced expression. The muscles are set
into action and the whole body is jerked, or more
frequently, given a series of jerks. A boy or girl
gives up prematurely to the desire to be pleased,
or share laughter with older people, with the result
that there is a loud gush of breath, a contortion of
the body and other abnormal actions.
Such an outward thrust of breath or cramp of the
body is a sign of weakness. Such tendencies
and there are many of them too should be cor-
rected as early as possible. Here is the time to
begin to develop character.
The smile must be easy, natural, simple. It
must not be forced, not chaotic. Even children
while full of joy must be trained to eliminate ex-
plosive laughter.
The smile must precede and support laughter.
Support is one of the greatest laws of expression.
It means that central action must justify one that
is superficial ; that primary action such as the smile
84 THE SMILE
must support secondary actions such as laughter.
All true laughter begins in a smile which must pre-
cede and support it.
" You have in you there," says Emerson " a
noisy, sensual savage, which you are to keep down,
and turn all his strength to beauty. For example
what a seneschal and detective is laughter! It
seems to require several generations of education
to train a squeaking or a shouting habit out of a
man. Sometimes, when in almost all expressions
the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of
him, a coarse nature still betrays itself in his con-
temptible squeals of joy. It is necessary for the
purification of drawing-rooms that these enter-
taining explosions should be under strict control.
Lord Chesterfield had early made this discovery,
for he says, ' I am sure that since I had the use of
my reason, no human being has ever heard me
laugh.' I know that there go two to this game, and,
in the presence of certain formidable wits, savage
nature must sometimes rush out in some dis-
order."
Emerson and Chesterfield recognized the dan-
ger of vulgarity in laughter. It is the one act to
which we are liable to give up, to prematurely and
unreservedly abandon ourselves. Yet they pos-
sibly went too far.
Mr. Frank Sanborn tells a story of how he once
went to walk with Emerson in the woods, and he
tried to make him laugh. Beginning very quietly
and composedly he endeavored to take him by
surprise with the following story: A man came in
at 4 o'clock in the morning. As he came in his
wife cried out, " Why are you coming in so late
as this? It is four o'clock." " My dear," replied
the man, "it is one o'clock." " It is four o'clock,
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 85
the clock has just struck four," replied his wife.
" My dear," he answered, " it struck one, I heard
" it strike one repeatedly."
Emerson, taken by surprise at the last word,
turned away from Mr. Sanborn and placed his
hand over his mouth and came as near laughing
as he ever did.
While the control of laughter, in transmuting
it into a smile, is one of the greatest marks of
culture yet the hearty laugh brings health and
strength.
However, the laugh which is reserved and re-
tained in the middle of the body, which is, so to
speak, an internal laugh rather than an external,
has a far better effect upon the health than the
quick abandon and the open boisterous laugh.
One method of improving the laugh, accordingly,
is to transform it into a smile, to transform it into
an intense increase of the breathing and an inward
intense activity.
Another point may be noted. The laugh to
which we quickly abandon ourselves, is soon
over, while the laugh which we reserve and con-
trol gives us a deeper laugh and stays longer.
Never allow anything to make us negative. Let
us be always positive; let us keep in our hearts
only positive emotions. What a change that would
make in our lives !
Observe the effect of positive emotions upon
life:
A scientist started a series of wonderful in-
vestigations which were unfortunately interrupted
by lack of support for his great laboratory. He
showed that negative emotions exercised a dele-
terious influence upon the metabolism in the cells
of the human body, while joy, love, courage and
86 THESMILE
all the positive emotions stimulated all that goes
towards normal functioning in all the organs of the
body.
He took two women. One meditated for a
month over all the bad things that had happened
to her in her life ; the other meditated over all the
good things that had happened to her. One kept
her thoughts negative ; the other kept her thoughts
positive.
At the first of the month a most careful ex-
amination was given in all vital conditions. At the
close of the month another careful examination
was given. One had decreased 18 per cent. ; the
other had increased 25 per cent, in all that made for
health, strength and the enjoyment of life.
It is because the smile expresses positive emo-
tion that it is so important to life. " Laugh and
grow fat " is one of the oldest and truest of the
proverbs. The smile expresses not only mental
and moral health, but physical strength. What-
ever we do, we should do cheerfully and with a
smile. If a man walks with the exhilaration of the
smile and with joy, he grows stronger and stronger.
If he hangs his head, he expresses in his body a
negative attitude ; he grows weary after a few steps.
Primitive peoples smile imperfectly. Unculti-
vated people laugh but rarely smile. Their pleas-
ure is often exploded at once into a jerky roar of
laughter.
In the cultivated person, on the contrary, there
is a slow, keen realization of the situation, and a
deeper co-ordination of all the faculties of the
mind and body, and the smile seems to radiate
through the whole countenance. The presence of
the smile is, therefore, a mark of refinement and
culture.
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 87
The extravagant laugh is marked by the absence
of the smile and it always indicates a lack of depth
and refinement.
In a sense, therefore, the smile is the deeper
part of nature, and in another sense, it is the sub-
limest character of art. In fact we find the smile
the perfect gauge of culture.
One of the great requisitions of expression is
self-control. No emotion can become intense un-
less it is reserved. It is like an engine, if the
steam is allowed to have free vent it will never
give the power necessary to move the train of cars.
The same is true of all joy, love, emotion. Lack
of reserve means lack of control. The true smile
shows the power of the mind in the face. Explo-
sion of laughter, with no preceding smile, is indica-
tive of weakness rather than of joy and turns any
man into a noisy savage. Everyone should strug-
gle to keep down this savage, which still survives
in every plane of life, and in all literature. It takes
a great deal of discipline and thoughtful culture
and contact with the best society to eliminate the
gush and the squeak and the blow from our laugh-
ter. In proportion to the precedence of the smile,
its dignity, depth and diffusion over the whole
face, may we determine the culture of the
man.
As I have pointed out before in a certain sense a
smile is the expression of the whole nature. One
of the first things that impressed me in my early
childhood was " Uncle Jim's " tremendous laugh.
His " Yahw, yahw " could be heard a mile, but
there was very little smile. In contrast to this the
smile, that most impressed me, was that of Profes-
sor Charles Eliot Norton, which went all over his
face and forehead. What a difference, a differ-
88 THESMILE
ence in culture, in refinement, and in harmonious
development of the higher faculties !
To my mind, therefore, the improvement of the
smile would consist in bringing it more around the
eyes, in giving flexibility to all parts of the face,
in cultivating reserve and avoiding that sudden
impulsive explosion which is characteristic of the
" giggles."
Dr. Stanley Hall, in observing smiles, said that
the smile of some men begins around the corners
of the eyes and that the smile of others began at
the corners of the mouth. The smiles beginning
at the mouth are, to those beginning at the corners
of the eyes, as seven to five. This overlooks the
question as to which is the more cultivated. The
smile of the more cultivated people begins around
the eyes. Dr. Hall has also overlooked those
people who co-ordinate perfectly the corners of the
eye with the mouth. The corner of the eye is not
sufficiently responsive in many people, and this is
the reason for the smile's beginning with the
mouth.
Do we not find here an explanation why many
have condemned the laugh as vulgar?
This explains why Lord Chesterfield rejoiced
that no one had ever heard him laugh.
Emerson also condemned laughter, and seemed
to go further, sometimes, in almost condemning
the smile. He has written :
" Said a wise mother, ' Beware, girls, lest you
smile, for then you show all your faults/ '
Ah, Mr. Emerson, are you sure that any wise
mother ever said that? Does not a smile rather
conceal than record the faults; does it not rather
show the virtues?
CAN THE SMILE BE DEVELOPED? 89
Once we can smile at our own follies, or at the
follies of others, we are in a way to deliver our-
selves from them. In fact, it is one of the first
means we have of ridding ourselves of our faults,
to be able to laugh at them. In a certain sense,
laughter objectifies to us something that is wrong,
and when we can laugh at it, we put it out of coun-
tenance.
Laughter is the result of discovering that wrong
is a delusion and a sham. The sense of humor is
a discovery of the hollo wness of evil.
Of course, there can be faults in the smile, even
in laughter, but many have gone too far in con-
demning laughter. Pascal regarded it as wicked.
But, on the contrary, the hearty ringing laugh is a
joy to all who hear it. Once we laugh at our own
faults we are in the way to correct ourselves of
them. When we laugh at the faults of others it
is the first step toward separating them from our-
selves and avoiding temptation.
Laughter has been recommended as the best
physical exercise for the health. It certainly is a
good exercise for the voice. It centres the breath-
ing, opens the throat and diffuses joy through the
body.
Savages seldom smile, and their laughter is
jerky and explosive. Gloomy people who never
laugh are generally poor in health.
Hearty laughter should be the climax of the
smile. Joy and laughter supported by the smile
are beautiful and lovely.
The true smile eliminates superficiality and arti-
ficiality. The many people who condemn laughter
do not understand its relation to the smile.
xn
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE
In all our endeavors to develop the smile, we find
the same numerous false and the few true methods
which we find in the development of all true modes
of expression. Some of these false modes of
teaching expression may be seen more clearly to
be false in the light of the smile. The first of these
false methods is imitation. The little child cer-
tainly does not laugh from imitation. I have
watched little tots only a few weeks old laugh to
themselves over some object, such as a red ball
hung at a distance.
Unconscious imitation later may do a great deal
to pervert laughter. Imitation, as a rule, has more
ability to degrade than to develop. The smile of
the little child certainly does not improve by imi-
tation. It is a pure manifestation of a sense of
pleasure and happiness.
Observe what a poor, hollow mockery is the imi-
tation of someone's laughter.
If the laugh is a " horse laugh," or is in any
way affected or abnormal, its imitation is easy, but
even in such a case it is only a perversion of the
original.
How hard, how impossible, is the imitation of a
good, hearty, genuine laugh, or even of the simple
smile.
The laugh of each individual is peculiar to him-
self ; it is an original possession, a part of every-
one's personal identity.
90
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 91
Why has imitation, from time immemorial, been
the chief method in teaching expression? We can
trace protests against it through all the great
teachers of speaking, and yet it is still practised
by many in this enlightened day. Sad to say, it is
popular. People like it; it seems so easy, so nat-
ural. Whoever stops to think that only the ex-
ternals and accidentals, the oddities and peculiari-
ties of a man can be imitated? Though imitation
tends to degrade all true expression, as well as
character itself, modern culture still encourages it.
It has great weaknesses, but many seem to think
that it is the only way possible in art.
There is nothing that has a more superficializing
effect upon human feeling and human intuition,
true vigor and originality of thinking, than imita-
tion.
Whenever a man succeeds as an actor or public
reader, he feels that his method and what brought
success to him is of fundamental importance, is
an original discovery and that it belongs to all the
race.
While the great artist has learned to know
better and realizes that his greatest discovery is
his own personal element in his work, the second-
rate actor feels that he can do humanity a great
service by teaching it to do just as he does. Grant-
ing that he does everything well, which is not the
case; the fact generally being that he does some
one thing well, he forgets that everyone else has a
different temperament, a different personality, a
different point of view, and that art necessarily
implies a decided and original point of view. He
forgets that other people have voices of totally
different quality, pitched in a different key and of
a different range, and that the actions of their
92 THESMILE
bodies are different. " Imitation," says Emerson,
" is suicide," and there is no place where this ap-
plies more than in the work of expression.
The imitator in art, painting, sculpture, in ex-
pression 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 crea-
tion 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 dis-
couragement 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 exhibi-
tion, not expression; manipulation, not manifes-
tation.
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 con-
trol every element in the smile. How truly arti-
ficial is the result.
Yet this method is exactly what mechanical
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 93
elocution has tried to employ. It has endeavored
to make every element of delivery deliberative.
It has tried to make man give every inflection ac-
cording to some rule. Everyone must be con-
scious and volitional. No room is left for the
spontaneous emanation which is the very funda-
mental 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 en-
couraged. We can allow it to become the spon-
taneous 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 expres-
sion is ridiculous. No wonder elocution has be-
come the synonym of artificiality.
A theory may sound well but it needs to be
tested by fact. Let us take the theories of me-
chanical 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, ~V \
we may by careful observation, study and ex-
periment, come to understand something of its
nature or meaning; we may comprehend better
its elements, its expressive value. In short, we
94 THESMILE
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 un-
fold 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 con-
trolled and allowed to diffuse itself through the
whole body and the face. We can allow our whole
nature to respond properly to the deeper influ-
ences; we can study our faces and see the signif-
icance 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 -conscious-
ness in this, but a certain element of self-con-
sciousness 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 observa-
tion of Nature, by listening to the winds among the
MODESOF IMPROVING THE SMILE 95
trees, the murmuring of the brooks and the sing-
ing 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 awak-
ened. 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 en-
deavors 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 instru-
ment in tune. The means must be at his com-
mand. 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 in-
strument 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
96 THESMILE
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 lan-
guages 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 con-
temptuously.
" What is the use of studying such things? "
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 97
has been heard more than once. The use of
studying such things ! How else can thought and
feeling be co-ordinated? How else can thought
and imagination be brought into sympathetic
union? How else can the harmony of man's whole
being be established? How else can man realize
the dignity of all art and the necessity of human
expression as the very foundation of society?
We receive education from two sources, im-
pression and expression, and the two are co-
ordinated, as in true respiration the taking of
breath must be co-ordinated with the giving out of
breath.
For so-called schools of art not to include the
primary modes of expression is most astounding.
Everyone, of course, will acknowledge that
there is a difference between a smile and a picture.
The smile is more a part of ourselves. It is more
spontaneous. The picture is a deliberative crea-
tion, while the smile is a simple, spontaneous
manifestation. There is a right and a wrong
method of painting a picture, a right way to draw
things and a wrong way to color.
And yet in a picture there is also something
spontaneous, at the climax the artist feels the
total inadequacy of the means he employs to ac-
complish the results he wishes.
It is not wholly deliberative. He cannot always
give the exact reason for doing something in a
specific way, or explain how he brings all into a
sympathetic oneness. The last climax comes in
all its unity with something of the spontaneity of
the human smile, or the whole picture is wrong.
He may call this tone and speak of the tone of
the picture as a result of feeling, but it can never
result from a formula or receipt. It must come, as
THE SMILE
all true expression comes at the last, with the im-
mediateness of a natural sign.
There is a right and wrong way in every art,
and is there not a right and wrong way to smile?
Are there no jerky constrictions of the body, no
twitches of the face that are wholly meaningless;
are there no constricted members that can be
set free?
Is the feeling causing the smile reposeful, rest-
ful and reserved or controlled? Can there be no
holding back of the feelings until they become
diffused through the whole body and the smile be
thus improved?
Who has not heard a sudden outburst of laugh-
ter, the laugh indicating an undisciplined nature,
uncultivated feeling, and an untrained voice?
Perhaps the smile is one of the most normal of
human actions. Certainly, it has no grammar.
He who said, " You can never teach expression;
you can teach only its grammar," knew as little
of what true expression is as he knew what true
education is. The grammar of expression, or the
language of signs, is exactly what cannot be taught.
To teach expression we must awaken certain
conditions and must secure command of those
conditions.
If the face is normal, the muscles all over it are
harmoniously developed; if the nervous system
is healthful and the mind free and sympathetic,
if there is a sense of humor and a sense of love
for one's fellow-men, then the smile will come of
itself.
Even the painter of a picture who at the climax
of its revelation is thinking of his grammar, will
fail. He will miss the spontaneous elements of
the smile.
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 99
Grammar must be studied,. but forgotten. The
study of grammar is on the very outward periphery
of all study of language, especially of signs. It
must become a part of one's being. Grammar
must become a habit of daily intercourse in speech,
and this is still more true of the painter, the sculp-
tor, the actor and the speaker.
One of the hardest things to teach is action ; as it
is the most unconscious language, calling con-
scious attention to it is very apt to be injurious. It is
very difficult to develop that which is spontaneous.
One method is to show students the necessity
of emphasizing the reception of an impression ; by
sustaining attention and allowing the mind to
create its own ideas in its own ways, and then
giving up voice and body to the direct effect of the
impression. Then let expression true and genuine
immediately follow.
The results of this are surprising. Not only
those who had no action have been so awakened
that there was more expressive movement, but
those who had too much and chaotic action have
been brought into emotive repose. This sentence
from Emerson applies to all expression but it is a
special application to the smile:
" The muscles, not spontaneously moved but
moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight
about the outline of the face, with the most dis-
agreeable sensation."
One of the chief methods of improving the smile
is by nature study. A true observation of plants,
trees and bushes requires us to come face to face
sympathetically with simple objects. Thus we
come to feel the smile that permeates the skies
and hills, the fields and woods. A loving observer
seems to catch the spirit of nature's life.
100 THESMILE
The father and mother should take the children
to the woods. Nature is the great school-house.
It seems to be filled with smiles. From every
nook and corner there is a kindly invitation which
every little child longs to accept. Who has not felt
the smile in the spring-time, the joyous gleam
across the snow in winter? Who has not heard
the glad twitter of the birds, the laughter of the
streams? It is Wordsworth who has taught us
the true joy of nature.
The child is free to laugh in the fields, free to
run and shout and laugh as heartily as it pleases,
free to enjoy its life. There its senses are awak-
ened by the expansive activity of nature.
Why? Because the trees and flowers, the songs
of the birds and the rippling of the waters awaken
a smile that will welcome the deepest truth and
the most abstract statement. Nature is especially
adapted to awaken the best in a human being.
If teachers were allowed to take the children
for half the time out into the presence of nature,
during the other time they would learn double.
"Through primrose tufts, in that green bower
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
"The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure;
But the least motion which they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
"The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there."
Ah, yes ! the smile and the joy open the avenue
of truth. The unfolding of the child is as natural
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 101
as the blooming of the flower. How unfortunate
it is that we make children hate education, poetry,
and even truth.
Awaken the smile and the door is open to receive
the most serious thought. Provoke the frown and
all doors shut.
There also are tragedies in nature. A lady
looked out of her window every day at two robins
who had a nest in a tree. It pleased her to watch
them. When the little robins came her enjoyment
increased. One day the male robin came home
and called to his mate, but he called in vain ; a cat
had taken her from him. After hours of mournful
calling he came and looked at his motherless
children and went to work. As a young robin will
eat his weight every day in red worms the task
was no light one. But he fulfilled it and brought
them all up to the time when he stood proudly
over them on a limb and forced them to take their
first lesson in flying. One little fellow decidedly
objected. The nest was all right for him. But
Master Robin got behind him and boosted him
out with his head. The father watched them one
by one fly to a neighboring tree, watching all the
while for the horrible cat. Great was his exulta-
tion as the timid one at last made the flight vic-
toriously.
Erasmus Wilson, of Pittsburgh, who has de-
lighted generations with his observations, has
told a sadder story still. A robin had not only lost
its mate but also one of its legs in a battle with a
cat. Yet with only one leg, with hard toil and
work he brought up the family. Through all this
fearful task laid upon him, even in rain and in
storm, a lady who watched him and tried to help
him a little in his great task, said that he would
102 THE SMILE
take a little time every day to perch on the top
of a tree on his one leg and sing, triumphing over
his trials and misfortunes. What heroic courage,
what gratitude, what devotion, what love, what
joy, can well up in the hearts of these blessed
citizens of the woods !
I once took a course in nature study with Pro-
fessor Hodge. I was working very hard on some
psychological problems, and I wanted the spirit
of enjoyment; I wanted a little guidance, a better
understanding of the way to study nature.
One day we would go straight ahead, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, to gather mos-
quito eggs that we might watch them hatch out.
Another day he would say, " Let us see what we
may happen to find." Once we came to an old
apple tree and found upon one of its limbs a lady
bug. What was she doing? We gazed in admira-
tion as we were made to realize her great service.
We never interrupted nor disturbed her and I
remember her with delight, in the tree she was
serving.
Such a walk with Professor Hodge was an event
in a lifetime. The simplest object became a sub-
ject of deep, serious study. He is a true teacher
who can direct the attention of others to the
deepest truths in the least things.
Keep the heart full of great literature, of beauti-
ful pictures, and keep high ideals. Come to the
right source of enjoyment. Read only good books,
great books. Look only at great and beautiful pic-
tures. Associate as far as possible with the best
people, with those having high ideals, with those
whose hearts are full of joy and love and sympathy.
Avoid with all possible care the man who is sour,
and above all live true to the heart of nature.
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 103
Light is thrown upon the proper development
of smile and laughter and the correction of faults,
by the distinction which has already been made
between the three kinds of action, gestures,
attitudes, and bearings.
The smile of the young child is sudden and local
at first, but the face becomes more and more re-
sponsive. That which was gesture becomes sym-
pathetic attitude and modulation of the whole
countenance. The smile becomes more reposeful
and permanent. We see before us a revelation
of the process of formation of character.
If expressions of pain or displeasure are culti-
vated, the growth of the smile is retarded, and
the face may take on permanent perversions as
bearings. If, on the other hand, joy and love and
tenderness are made to fill the heart the face
gradually takes on the bearing of the smile.
This development of right bearings in the little
child is not even a question of health nor a question
of intelligence, but simply one of love and freedom
to express itself. It is chiefly a question of right
co-ordinations with the kindly face of the mother
or nurse. Self-indulgence, constant answering of
every whim will quickly develop perversions.
These bearings in the face will become the
bearings of the whole body, expressing and un-
folding the being of the child. They color all ex-
pression and form character.
Two persons may act the same part, speak the
same words, but how differently! What is the
cause of the difference? Every man gives some-
thing of himself. The bearing, in spite of all a
man can do, emanates with the words he speaks.
" If I had said that," bitterly sneered a man of
one who was moving a crowd, " nobody would
104 THESMILE
have listened to it." The sarcastic sneer uncon-
sciously told the reason. Character fills the sim-
plest words with life.
Speaking has a technique, but Cicero implied
that speaking was something more, "it is a good
man speaking well."
Every child begins to develop a smile or frown
or scowl as a permanent bearing. Why leave all
to chance? Why forget the importance of early
impressions and experiences? Why overlook the
fact that the formation of bearing is simply an
expression of the formation of character?
Can the smile be so deepened as to become a
bearing? This is exactly what takes place in the
unfolding of lovely characters.
Under the perverted smile, the conventional set
smile that seems to want to please you, you may
feel the hate. It is more like a mere gesture, an
assumed gesture at that. It is not an attitude;
it is a kind of attitudinizing.
The deep, true, genuine smile that we enjoy is
a gesture, an attitude and a bearing all at the same
time. A bearing expressing habitual sympathy
and joy, an attitude indicating a present specific
experience.
For a time, a bearing expresses habitual emo-
tions, those which are the motives of character,
which have become characteristic and show the
type to which a man belongs.
Bearings are deeper than motions or attitudes.
Men are less conscious of them. They are signs,
not of present experience which emanates atti-
tudes, but of the trend of all his experiences,
emotions which he has most indulged, attitudes
which express the moods and feelings, motives
and conditions which he has most cherished.
MODES OF IMPROVING THE SMILE 105
It is interesting to note the difference between
wit and humor. The smile which proceeds from
wit is more of a gesture; the smile that results
from humor is rather an attitude or bearing. Wit
is brisk in action and brings quick response, while
humor is more gradual, it permeates the whole
man and awakens a deeper pleasure.
Wit is sharp and cutting; humor is always sym-
pathetic. Wit laughs; humor smiles. Everyone
to become humorous must remain himself. Hu-
mor is a just sense of the interrelation of things
and of one's own individuality to the world. Hu-
mor is one of the most sacred of emotions. It
brings a victory to the human being.
Irish wit, as is well known, though often sym-
pathetic and at times having great humor, usually
has a little sting to it. Observe this in the follow-
ing characteristic Irish story :
A lawyer named O'Hara was pleading a case
before a judge, when a donkey outside began to
bray. " One at a time, brother O'Hara, one at a
time," said the judge. A little later, when the
judge was making his charge, the same donkey,
now a little farther away, brayed again. The
lawyer broke in and said, " Will your honor please
to repeat that last remark? There is such an
echo in this room that I was not able to hear what
you said."
Thackeray had more wit, Dickens had more
humor. Wit awakens a sudden, jerky laugh, and
humor is the real source of the smile.
Dickens made the world smile sympathetically
with the poorest boy or man on the streets of Lon-
don. The greater education of people leads toward
humor rather than toward wit, toward the smile
rather than toward explosive laughter. Laughter
106 THESMILE
is almost like a gesture. There is little bearing
in it, but the smile may become a part of the whole
countenance, become one of the most characteris-
tic bearings of a face.
We must never forget that all true education
is the acquisition of bearings. Our sudden emo-
tions become motives; our exalted visions which
come at moments, may be so cherished as to be-
come part of our character. Thus, expression is
a mirror of educational processes.
Sudden transitory emotions become settled
into the deep conditions of our lives. Hence, the
importance of such little acts, as smiles and laugh-
ter. The choice we make adds to the dignity of
our mirth. Boisterous laughter is softened. The
smile is deepened and made a part of our inner-
most life.
XIII
THE SMILE AS AN EDUCATIONAL AID
We under- estimate the importance of laughter
and the first smile that is gesture. The true smile
must begin as a gesture before it can become a
bearing. It is necessary to practice all modes of
expression in order to develop the bearings. Ex-
pression is one of the most important means of
unfolding and developing character. We can
develop a deep and beautiful bearing of the smile
on the face only by the practice of joy. We must
cherish love and joy in the heart; we must be
interested in others. Such an attitude is produc-
tive of smiles and laughter, and when accom-
panied by reserve, constant meditation and a
serious study of nature, literature and our fellow-
men, the smile will gradually become first an atti-
tude, then a bearing.
Not only can we educate the smile, but the smile
is a great help to education.
In the first place, if a teacher will study the
smile of a little child he can frequently discern
inner conditions which act as a hindrance to the
unfolding of the child's nature. Whenever we
note what has been called by Scott that " contor-
tion of the visage intended to be a smile," it may
not be, as indicated, a suggestion of hypocrisy. It
indicates sometimes constrictions or fear. The
child may have been too greatly repressed and
needs to be made to feel at home with others.
107
108 THESMILE
Frequently children are like plants in a dark cellar.
There is need of fellowship, encouragement, a
chance to put forth endeavor. A smile of apprecia-
tion may awaken a smile of conscious realization.
Is it not one of the highest functions of educa-
tion to awaken joy?
I was astounded lately to hear an official of a
great art museum say, " Our museum is not an
educational institution. It does not exist to give
people knowledge."
What a narrow conception of education did this
man have ! He was asked, " What does it try to
give people? " " Joy," he answered. But does
it give people joy? When people go into an art
museum and fail to get the point of view of a pic-
ture they begin to feel a sense of distance, and
to me in many of our art museums the faces are
very sad. " Before the art of Pizarro," said Philip
Gilbert Hammerton, " I feel like a stranger who
needs to be introduced." If before the interesting
art of one of his contemporaries a great art critic
could feel in that way and so frankly confess it,
what must be the feeling of the ordinary man in
one of our art museums? Does he not need an
introduction? Does he not need to be awakened
in some way, introduced to what he ought to re-
ceive, what he should enjoy?
If the art museum is not an educational institu-
tion, must it not remain a mere show? The word
" education " must be widened. The art museum
should exist to educate people's imagination and
cultivate their taste, to awaken feeling, to educate
ideals, to develop power to perceive beauty and
is this not one of the highest phases of education?
The art museum exists for the average man, for
the whole community. It is intended to render a
THE SMILE AN EDUCATIONAL AID 109
great educational service not merely to school
children in their study of history, but to inspire
them to realize the spirit of the historical events
they have studied. Whoever comes in touch with
the spirit of Greece by the mere perusal of a
record of events? These are necessary, but they
must be supplemented by other great works of
art, those things which embody the spirit. We
can never learn to know Greece so long as we re-
main in ignorance of the Parthenon, the Iliad and
the (Edipus. Just as we frequent a library to
understand something of the Greek literature,
we should visit a museum to feel the spirit of
their great art. A man by taking a Greek poem
home with him may meditate over it and come
into a realization of its beauty, but it requires the
same concentration and sympathy to appreciate
an art work which quite as directly, if not more
immediately, reveals the spirit and life of a people.
Education is not the mere acquisition of facts.
A museum of natural history serves a great end,
but because an art museum does not present facts
in the same manner may it not be in a higher sense
educational?
It gives more than facts : it awakens the imagi-
nation, the feelings and the sympathies. It leads
to a deeper and truer understanding of the possi-
bilities of human nature.
Is it not one of the highest aims of education to
awaken the enjoyment of people, to teach them
what to enjoy and how to enjoy? It cannot be
taught by dictation; can be accomplished only by
the direction of attention.
The teacher performs the simple act of introduc-
tion, but leaves the student to study deeper. The
best and highest art, no less than Nature herself,
110 THESMILE
requires an introduction to most men and women.
It should be and can be introduced to children.
The time is coming when there will be a great
transformation of the art museums, when they
will be less a treasure house or mausoleum of art
works for the few, but rather a place where great
pictures and statues will be recognized as some-
thing to be seen by all and felt by all, such a place
too where everyone will be introduced to great art
in a way that will lead to a true appreciation.
True art is a temple into which everyone must
enter in solitude, but a true teacher can indicate
the path. In one sense art is an expression of the
racial in us and to develop the race in us art is
necessary.
Expression is necessary to the growth and de-
velopment of every human being. Have you ever
seen a child that never played? I remember one
especially. She had been a mother to many little
brothers and sisters. Her father was a poor
workman. Her mother, according to some minds,
was not what she ought to have been, she drank
whenever she had a chance. The whole woe of
the family had fallen upon this little girl. How
sad was her face! How serious! I never saw it
light up with a smile. Like an angel of mercy she
served patiently without a murmur, father and
mother and every member of the family. There
was no frown, no antagonistic look from her soft
eyes. Only a look of submission, of endurance
without one ray of hope. Before that sad face you
felt as a stranger. You stood before the beautiful
rosebud, withered before it ever bloomed.
Do you make enough of joy in education? I
once heard a leading man say, " I attended term
after term under the instruction of one who felt
THE SMILE AN EDUCATIONAL AID 111
he must drive the information into us by force,
one who never smiled. Then there came one who
was full of smile. He was not so good a scholar
as the other, it was said, but I learned more under
him in one month than under the other in all the
years I had been studying with him."
I have thought that sometimes the children
need more help, more sympathetic contact, in
their games than in their studies.
It is in their games that normal feelings are
awakened; there they can smile and enjoy the
success of others, laugh at their own failures. The
game is born of deep human instinct. Certainly
we know the child is more serious at play than at
work.
Certainly, the right smile, the right laugh at the
right time is one of the greatest and most im-
portant achievements in education.
In a certain sense we cannot teach anything.
" No man," said Schlegel, " can give anything
to his fellow-man but himself."
What, after all, is teaching?
As I look back over my past life and think of
some of the fifty great teachers I have had, I
rarely remember the particular things they taught
me. The things I remember are some side issues
which bore only indirectly if at all upon the sub-
ject under discussion.
It was the contact with their great souls that
meant something to me, the awakening that
came to me from a touch with their personalities.
No teacher ever gave a good lesson in which he
did not learn something himself. The best lesson
was given when he learned most himself.
Is not teaching, after all, a contact of soul with
that great truth of which each of us knows so
112 THESMILE
little? Is not teaching a sharing in discovery?
Teaching is not giving to another, but a receiving
by both of us of a higher vision of the truth. One
may know much more than the other of some sub-
ject, but, as they face it, truth is ever regarded
by the one who knows most about it as superior
to himself. One may know a little more than
another of some truth as they face it, but the one
who knows the most will be the most teachable
and will be apt to learn most.
When two people stand side by side, both get
a higher vision than one can alone; this is true
teaching.
So-called instruction is the very lowest kind of
teaching. It has its place but it regards merely
the approaches to truth ; simply how to investigate ;
what kind of books to read; what part of nature
to study ; how to conduct an experiment and a hint
as to what man must look for in his own observa-
tions.
Truth is a great temple into which each person
must go alone, but two can approach the temple
and may be very near to each other, but will only
be partially conscious in their sublimest moments
of the meaning and importance of truth to each
other.
How little can be given from one human being
to another by dictation, by domination! Educa-
tion is a leading out, an unfolding, an awakening.
It is the bringing of an individual into conscious-
ness of himself and a consciousness of his source,
and the consciousness of his brothers.
Teach a smile? Yes, it is the one thing that
brings soul near to soul, the basis of all teaching.
The smile denotes the union of two beings learn-
ing from and with each other.
THE SMILE AN EDUCATIONAL AID 113
In the old days, especially in the time of the
Romans, education was a very cruel process.
One old teacher of the Middle Ages has recorded
faithfully the number of whippings and other
forms of punishment he had given as if it were
the greatest of virtues and the highest aim of his
life.
If we look through the reforms in education we
will find a great change. No longer do we call
the pedagogue " the servant who drives the un-
willing student to school," as the etymology of
the word indicates. He is a companion and friend
who leads the pupil to something that becomes a
mutual delight and joy. It is from the teacher
who is loved that the student learns.
Not only is the smile an aid to education; it is
now a necessity. Love is the fulfilment of the
law, not only of the spirit but the development
of human relationship.
An old adage tells us, " Love is blind." This
is untrue. " Love," says Emerson, " is not a
hood, but an eye waterer."
The smile also denotes teachableness. Of all
virtues teachableness is perhaps the supreme.
Any teacher has seen one of great ability outdone
by another of lesser ability simply because one
was teachable, tried hard and developed, the
other with pride for smartness grew less and less
profound, more and more brilliant, but never un-
folded or caught the higher vision.
Carlyle has recorded a peculiar fable which
illustrates something which is often overlooked,
that the pupil who learns and grows most quickly
may not be of so true and profound a nature as
the one who is slower to unfold.
" What is the use of thee, thou gnarled sapling?"
114 THE SMILE
said a young larch tree to a young oak. " I grow
three feet in a year, thou scarcely so many inches ;
I am straight and taper as a reed, thou straggling
and twisted as a loosened withe."
" And thy duration," answered the oak, " is
some third part of a man's life and I am appointed
to flourish for a thousand years. Thou art felled
and sawed into paling, where thou rottest and
art burned with a single summer; of me are
fashioned battle ships, and I carry mariners and
heroes into unknown seas."
" The richer a nature," continues Carlyle,
" the harder and slower its development. Two
boys were once of a class in the Edinburgh gram-
mar school. John ever trim, precise, and dux;
Walter ever slovenly, confused and dolt. In due
time, John became Baillie John of Hunter-Square,
and Walter became Sir Walter Scott of the Uni-
verse. The quickest and completest of all vege-
tables is the cabbage."
XIV
NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE?
All human emotions may be divided into two
classes ; positive and negative.
The smile is primarily positive. It expresses a
positive attitude of the mind.
It is important to distinguish the positive from
the negative emotions.
The negative feeling tends to kill itself. It is
short lived. It poisons everyone. It brings pain
and sickness, and shortens life.
A positive emotion brings health and peace.
It assimilates, strengthens, and expresses power.
It brings greater pleasure ; it brings union with our
fellow-men and permanent satisfaction with our-
selves. It deepens experience and prolongs life.
Positive emotions seem to place man in his right
relation in the universe.
The most important positive emotions are,
probably, love and joy.
Joy, love, courage, these are realizations of
one's birthright.
Negative emotions, on the contrary, deny man
his birthright. Fear, hate, grief, cause us to whine
and degrade us; they remove our candlestick out
of its place so that our light ceases to shine.
The true smile expresses the positive emotions ;
is always positive, not negative. It is the very
contradiction of all negative emotions.
Life is a positive thing. A crown not to be won
115
116 THESMILE
by mere denials. " Thou shall not " belongs to the
old dispensation ; " Blessed," to the new.
People seem to think that sin is the most real
thing in this world, that darkness is more real
than light.
Not so; we can bring light through a tube or
along a wire but how can we transmit darkness?
If we turn off the light, its absence becomes dark-
ness; but when we turn on the light again the
darkness vanishes. How then, dare we say that
darkness is as real as light that evil is as sub-
stantial as good?
Here is one of the greatest lessons to be learned
in life.
Ulysses, or to use his Greek name, Odysseus,
stopped the ears of his sailors with wax and tied
himself to a mast that he might hear but not yield
to the seductive song of the sirens. Orpheus sailed
by in safety with no rope about him and with no
wax in his ears, because his soul was filled with
sweeter music than even the sirens could utter.
He who has cultivated a love for his race and whose
soul is filled with sympathy and tenderness can
smile at an insult.
There is a parable of an empty heart in the
New Testament which is seldom read and then
possibly, rarely understood.
A man seems to have cast out " the unclean
spirit " by resolutions or by his own will.
Then he walketh through dry places, seeking
rest and findeth none. Then he saith, " I will
return to my house from whence I came out."
And when he is come he findeth it empty, swept,
and garnished. Then he goeth and taketh seven
other spirits more wicked than himself, and they
enter and dwell therein. And the last state of
NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE? 117
that man is worse than the first. The trouble
was that the man's heart was empty.
He who can smile is victor over himself, over
his lower impulses; and he also becomes victor
over all his antagonists. He wins a victory that
does not crush his enemies, but makes them
better, makes them ashamed of their degrada-
tion, and turns them into friends.
Surely the smile is one of the most powerful
weapons in life's path.
It is moral, it is ethical, it is spiritual. It is one
of the most potent tools given to the race to con-
quer hatred and antagonism.
XV
THE SMILE AND HEALTH
The distinction between the positive and the
negative in human feeling explains a fact that is
almost universally recognized, namely, that cheer-
fulness and the smile are necessary to health.
Some of the oldest and truest proverbs, born out
of the very heart of the race, refer to the necessity
of enjoyment to health.
It is a well-known fact that the most successful
physicians accomplish much of the good results
which follow from their ministrations by the genial
smile and the cheerful voice they carry into the
sick room. Their presence brings courage and
confidence.
I have heard recently of a physician, in fact, of
a class of physicians, who give no medicine at all
but prescribe only laughter.
The smile and laughter directly express health.
The presence of the smile is the test of the health
of a little child. The true smile not only expresses
physical health, but expresses mental and moral
health as well.
How does the smile or laughter affect the
health?
In the first place, they cause activity in the ex-
tensor or expansive muscles ; they increase breath-
ing; they stimulate circulation; they bring all the
vital functions and organs into harmonious ac-
tivity.
118
THE SMILE AND HEALTH 119
There are really but three actions of the human
body expansion, contraction and modulation.
Expansion expresses life, joy, exultation, courage ;
contraction expresses intellectual effort, control,
repression, uneasiness, and fear.
Modulation, which is more or less a union of
expansion and contraction, but in fact, a normal
union with expansion in a natural ascendency and
only enough contraction to regulate and guide,
expresses sympathy, tenderness, gentleness and
love. It manifests a perfect balance between
thinking and feeling between spontaneous ac-
tions and deliberative regulations between the
work of that which is finite and that which is more
the result of the infinite. Modulation is a sym-
pathetic union of man's highest realizations,
love, contentment, and poetic exultation.
Accordingly, normal modulation is expressive
not only of physical but also of spiritual health.
In order to develop in all parts of the body modula-
tion, which is seen to its perfection in the ideal
smile, it is necessary to accentuate harmoniously
all the expansive activities of the body. This de-
velops not only grace, power of expression, but
also health.
Laughter seems to be not only the most im-
mediate expression of health, but the most direct
expression of life,
Take, for example, a so-called " cold." What
better remedy for a cold than to go away by one-
self and laugh for half an hour. This laughter
stimulates the circulation and removes congestion
from local parts. Hot lemonade heats the centre
of the body and thus stimulates circulation and
in a similar way carries off congestion. From a
hot lemonade and especially from drugs poured
120 THESMILE
into the stomach there is always danger of re-
action and we take, as everybody says, " more
cold."
Laughter has no abnormal re-action. The re-
sults are more permanent. In proportion to the
spiritual character of the remedy applied will there
be an absence of reactionary tendencies. I have
never come in contact with physicians who pre-
scribe nothing but laughter, but I have well
realized the results of laughing heartily and con-
tinuously for many minutes. Nothing will stimu-
late circulation more or have a better effect upon
the nervous system; nothing will agitate equally
well and move to normal activity the vital organs.
There is really no reason for being sick. It is
a negative condition, the result of a negative state
of mind and the true remedy is to establish a posi-
tive condition of mind.
Laughter should not be performed in a me-
chanical, perfunctory way. True laughter results
from imagination, sympathy, courage, confidence,
and a realization that error is absolutely ridiculous,
that only truth is permanent and real.
When tempted to become despondent or angry
we should look at the ridiculous side of things,
we should realize and express sympathy rather
than antagonism, joy rather than discouragement.
We can see the ridiculous side of a situation and
by training our sense of humor we may no longer
be victims of folly and illusion.
When we laugh with a man or even at him he
soon sees the ridiculousness of the situation him-
self. There is nothing so contagious as laughter.
The greatest difficulties have been conquered by
a smile or a joyous laugh.
There is one time in the day when we especially
THE SMILE AND HEALTH 121
need laughter, and that is on awakening and on
retiring. In a companion book these profound
questions of how to wake and how to go to sleep
are discussed, but we need line upon line to em-
phasize the importance of these hours and the
importance of laughter.
On first waking up the birds sing their sweetest
song and all the animals seem to awaken with
greatest joy. Rarely, however, is this true of man.
Many wake up with a whine with the very op-
posite of a smile.
How greatly is the man to be pitied who dresses
with a whine and a frown on his face, and who
comes down to breakfast and has to have a hot
cup of coffee to wake him up, his voice in a
wheeze and his body collapsed and not ready to
do its work. The poor stomach must be made a
lever to bring the man into wakefulness, when a
smile and a few stretches could do the work and
do it better as the sunshine makes the world.
Begin the day as the bird, with a song and a
word of praise, or as the old cow does, in giving
the stretches which she seems to enjoy so much.
Every cell and fibre seems to laugh at the instinc-
tive exertion.
XVI
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT
To cause people to smile is the aim of the art
of entertainment, of amusement.
Is there any principle that will furnish a ra-
tional test of the difference between a low and a
high amusement?
Over thirty years ago, I was calling with some
friends upon the poet Whittier. Celia Thaxter
came in from a visit to a woman's reformatory.
" How hast thou succeeded?" said Mr. Whittier.
" Oh! " she exclaimed, " I never saw such a lot
of blank faces. I could not awaken the least re-
sponse at first, but I read the * Shorn Lamb *
and to use a sailor's phrase, that ' fetched them ' :
I pleased them, anyway."
" If thou hast pleased them," replied the great-
hearted poet, " thou hast done them good."
Here, then, is a principle that came to me as I
looked into that kindly face : if a man is pleased
above the plane of his daily experiences in the
direction of his ideal, he receives good. If he is
pleased below the average plane of his experience,
he receives harm.
Browning has said that the ideal of the worst
man in the world is higher than the actual of the
best man in the world. No matter who the man
may be, if he is pleased in the direction of his ideals
he is awakened and inspired and helped.
There is a low sensual smile, a pure intellectual
smile, and a deeper, spiritual smile.
122
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 123
Blessed is he who multiplies and especially
elevates the smiles of his fellow-men !
Can we do anything for the man, or with him,
till we have made him smile? When we displease
anyone we shut him out from ourselves. Is it such
a degraded and weak thing, therefore, to endeavor
to please our fellow- men?
Does not the kind of smile that is awakened
depend upon what we have in view and the way
we do it?
May it not be the first and most necessary step
toward the effort of human elevation?
This aspect of the smile brings us to an impor-
tant distinction, which is often overlooked. What
is the difference between the effect of a low amuse-
ment and that of a high amusement? Is there any
way in which we can rank the character of enter-
tainments? Is there anything that will guide us
in distinguishing between what is known in Eng-
land as the " legitimate " from the " illegitimate "
drama?
Smiles may be produced by low means as well
as by higher methods. While the higher methods
are most important in the elevation of the race, in
awakening the ideals of young minds, stimulating
in them better, deeper and purer human sym-
pathies, low amusements, which may seem to
please more quickly are among the most influen-
tial means for the degradation of character that
can be found. Next to low actions themselves,
the sympathetic contemplation of that which is
coarse, or whatever perverts the smile, poisons
the very fountain head of human experience and
ideals.
The play, according to Shakespeare, is the thing.
What are the forms of the drama? What is
124 THE SMILE
the principle that separates these forms? Which
of these appeals to the higher nature, which to the
lower, and why?
Drama is usually divided into four forms:
burlesque, farce, comedy, tragedy. What dis-
tinguishes these from one another?
A mode of expression which may be truly inter-
preted and genuinely artistic in burlesque, may
be utterly out of place in comedy; things permis-
sible in comedy may be absolutely out of place in
tragedy.
Can no light be thrown upon the distinctions
between burlesque, farce, comedy and tragedy,
by the smile?
Artists sometimes present sublime things in
such an exaggerated and extravagant way as to
pervert them. It is but a step from the sublime to
the ridiculous and it is very easy for the crude ar-
tist, who lacks ideals or a high conception of his
art, to take that step. Artists are more apt to
do this in the higher than in the lower forms of
art. The higher the art, the more liable the artist
is to fail.
Some men think that because they happen to
be reading " Macbeth " or " Hamlet " they are,
therefore, in the realm of the highest art.
An amateur actor, after he had murdered cer-
tain lines from " Hamlet," at which the audience
howled and hissed, stood in the wings and ex-
claimed in anger, " Listen to the vulgar mob howl-
ing at Shakespeare."
A little burlesque might have revealed to him
that he was not in the sphere of Shakespeare's
tragedy at all. He rendered those sublime lines
in a spirit which tended toward burlesque.
The dramatic arts are the most potent for good
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 125
or evil of all forms of art. They concern the smiles
and the tears of human beings. How can we
distinguish between what is low and what is
high?
Let me further illustrate some of these forms
of the drama. Once, a company devoted to dra-
matic burlesque staged a scene from "Romeo
and Juliet" in an endeavor to caricature the ex-
travagance of modern stage setting and scenery.
The actor repeated Romeo's words, " By yonder
moon I swear." Laying his hands upon his breast,
he looked around for the moon, but for some
reason it had not risen, so he called out, "You
moon man, pull up the moon," whereupon the
moon suddenly arose pulled up by a string. The
actor went on repeating the words in his extrava-
gant manner.
Here was a true criticism from the burlesque
point of view. It caricatured the extravagance in
the production of even Shakespeare in our day.
The burlesque is a necessary mode of criticism.
It is a necessary mode of criticism upon art.
It is a blessed thing that sometimes a friend,
instead of weeping with us, laughs at us. Thus
even burlesque becomes a part of life.
In the newspapers of to-day caricature serves a
very wonderful purpose. It gives not only the
quickest but often the deepest criticism upon some
situation or character.
Another form of dramatic art is farce. Farce is
the laughing, not so much at people, as at a situa-
tion. It is extravagant, but not founded on the
caricature of characters. It is very close to bur-
lesque and is often confused with it.
The power to laugh at a situation is one of the
greatest powers in the human heart. How many
126 THESMILE
unpleasant things have been averted; how many
times has a brave man controlled himself by being
able to see the ridiculous element in the situation ;
and how many of the worst things in the world
have vanished when laughed at !
When we laugh with a man we are on a higher
plane of art than when we laugh at him or at a
ridiculous situation. This is why comedy is so
high a form of art why it is serious. It is founded
in a more genuine, sympathetic way than burlesque
or farce. In comedy we laugh with the character
represented. The subject is not a caricature of
any art work or poor artistic endeavor, nor is it the
expression of a ridiculous situation. Its subject
is the lives and peculiarities of specific types of
human beings.
Garrick, when asked whether he preferred to
act in tragedy or in comedy, replied, " I can act
tragedy every day in the week, but comedy is
serious business."
The highest form of dramatic art is tragedy.
In comedy we laugh with people; in tragedy we
weep with them. Both are serious and bring us
into the very highest phases of human sym-
pathy.
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
comedy and tragedy. The Merchant of Venice,
for example, is called a comedy. Henry A. Clapp,
a dramatic critic, contends that it is a tragedy.
Taking the first four acts and omitting the last,
there is much to be said in favor of this view.
The character of Shylock is serious. It represents
perversion of a national character. According to
Aristotle, the determining factor, that which de-
cides the dignity of art, is a " higher truth and a
higher seriousness." The distinction between
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 127
comedy and tragedy is sometimes settled by a
very easy scheme. Tragedy is a play in which
someone is killed, and comedy, one in which no
one is killed. According to this, the Merchant
of Venice would be considered a comedy.
Compare this play with Cymbeline. Merely be-
cause Cloten is killed, Cymbeline is regarded by
most people as a tragedy. The fact is overlooked
that everyone is glad that Cloten is killed. He
richly deserved his end. Certainly his death
would not make Cymbeline a tragedy. If it is a
tragedy, it must be on account of the seriousness
of the character of Imogen.
In the highest Shakespearean tragedy we both
laugh and weep with men. The same is often true
of his comedies. The difference must be decided
by the predominance of smiles or tears. Both
may be dignified.
A smile may be almost as supreme as a tear.
A smile may shine through tears and yet not de-
grade them. Both may express sympathy, and
they are closely conjoined in human life. The
distinction between comedy and tragedy may,
after all, be somewhat academic. Shakespeare
certainly has not left their distinction clearly
marked.
Melodrama, though extremely popular, is a
low form of dramatic art. Why? Because it lacks
a smile. The audience is kept under a strain by
a most serious situation. It may cause tears, until
at the last everything is so completely changed
that the relief hardly brings a smile. The trans-
formation is often so sudden and so foreign to real
truth that we are unable to smile. Sometimes we
may actually laugh at the artificiality of the situa-
tion. Thus, melodrama may become a kind of
128 THESMILE
tragical farce. It is the situation and not the char-
acter that is mainly at stake.
The drama reflects in its deepest and truest
aspect two sides of human endeavor: one, victory
through man's effort or through fortuitous circum-
stances; the other the seeming failure but real
victory which may come through death. Human
victory may be gained in either way.
Melodrama is really a juggling with tragedy,
the reducing of tragedy to mere situation and cir-
cumstance ; it is human art monkeying with human
destiny.
Colley Gibber once rewrote the tragedy of King
Lear. He killed the villain, Edmund. Cordelia
lived. The king of France he got rid of. Edgar
and Cordelia were wedded and become respec-
tively King and Queen of England. This pro-
cedure pleased the superficiality of a superficial
age. But how untrue to life and to Shakespeare
himself.
Melodrama is not a serious form of art. There
can be no great art without truth or true interpre-
tation, manifestation or reflection of truth.
Primarily there are only two forms of the drama,
comedy and tragedy. Both of these reflect human
history. Comedy reflects the joyous outcome of
heroic endeavor, the transformation wrought by
time and circumstances. Tragedy also reveals
victory, but the victory which comes through
death.
It is easy to find the highest dignity of man or
his lowest degradation in the character of his
smile. The vulgar story which seems to be the
chief source of amusement to many minds, de-
grades both the relator and the listener. It is
a good principle to remember that all true art lies
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 129
above man's actual experience in the direction of
his ideals. Whatever lies below the ordinary
plane of his feeling, whatever seems to please him
below his habitual level of thought and emotion
tends to ruin his character.
The coarse smile is the worst of all perversions.
Every form of art has its place. There is such a
thing as artistic burlesque. As I have said, bur-
lesque is the lowest form of dramatic art. It is a
kind of criticism; it may help people to discover
weaknesses in some art which ought to be of a
higher type but which is on a low plane.
We may have farce of a high order. The theme
of farce is not character but situation, and in it
there are ridiculous situations. They pass beyond
the bounds of comedy into that of farce, and ar-
tistic farce makes us conscious of this. In farce we
laugh at a man; in comedy we laugh with him.
Comedy, therefore, is not a low form of art because
it is true and awakens a noble smile. It illustrates
more of the deep things of our nature. In tragedy,
if there is a smile, it is like the fool in King Lear;
beneath his smile we hear the sob and feel treas-
ured tears.
Another test of the dignity or lack of dignity
in all the arts, but especially those which cause
the smile, is simplicity. The burlesque is extrava-
gant, so is farce, so is melodrama. Hence, they
are of a lower order, while comedy and tragedy
are simple, true and genuine. Hence, they belong
to a higher rank. It is a question of truth to life;
it is a question of truthfully mirroring human ex-
perience. Those who interpret human character
must interpret correctly. Truth alone has power
to elevate and ennoble.
Public readers, so-called impersonators, as
130 THE SMILE
well as actors, would do well to consider carefully
the dignity of their art.
Impersonators and reciters of all sorts, extrava-
gant and untruthful interpreters, have almost
ruined the noble art. Charlotte Cushman and
others gave, forty years ago, high ideals for the
platform. Sydney Lanier and others expressed
enthusiasm over the possibilities of the new dra-
matic art ; but there came along a lot of self-styled
impersonators who tried to imitate all the methods
of the stage, who failed to recognize the difference
between the dramatic stage and dramatic plat-
form art, and did not follow Charlotte Cushman,
who was artist enough to appreciate the greatness
of the difference.
All sorts of unnatural extravagance and false
interpretations have followed, working great harm.
Many readers have either cut down the popular
plays or used popular stories or low- class literature
and are in danger of degrading the whole work of
vocal interpretation. The artistic and simple in-
terpretation of literature, the rendering of Brown-
ing's monologues, the recognition that these forms
of dramatic platform art have wonderful possibili-
ties is one of the artistic advancements of our
time. Readers, however, must be careful to rise
to the dignified study of the art, so that they may
truthfully interpret the best in literature. The
old and more solid dramas must not be replaced
by superficial things, in an endeavor to be popular.
We must not cease to hold to the fact that each
art tells something which no other art can say,
and must respect its own independence.
A great artistic age is always shown in the effect
of art upon the simplest things. The Greeks
could make a common jug more beautiful than
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 131
moderns do their public monuments. The frag-
ments of their every-day utensils often fill the
modern mind with wonder.
If we are to be an artistic people, the time
usually worse than wasted in every household,
should be devoted by all to endeavoring to make
something beautiful, or in some way to realize
the ideal. Every child should be awakened to
create something ideal.
What greater joy is to be found than in seeing
something beautiful unfolding before our eyes,
under our own hands?
William Morris said, " Art is joy put into our
work." That is to say, in the vocabulary of this
book, art is working with a smile. Work that may
be drudgery to some men, when joy is put into
the heart of it, becomes a fine art.
Here is a carpenter making a chair. He carves
the head of a dog on the end of its square arm,
and lo, you have a thing of beauty, something
that has higher value because you have the delight
of the man in his work.
Some people think that art is something very
exceptional, very rare, unusual, something only
for the wealthy. On the contrary, art belongs to
every-day life. It is working in obedience to the
imagination under the stimulus of an ideal. It is
putting love, affection and delight into the things
we do. It is giving expression to our better selves,
to our higher feelings, not doing things perfunc-
torily just because we have to. Art is work with
a smile of joy.
Dishwashing may seem to be the furthest re-
moved from art, but one that loves beauty does
not look at the dirt, but at the dish that is being
separated from what does not belong to it.
132 THESMILE
' What are you doing? " said a neighbor to a
man who stood with a hose pouring the water upon
a pile of dishes on his lawn. " I am cleaning up,
the missus comes home to-morrow." He was no
artist. He was working under compulsion.
The ideal sweeper sees the clean room under the
dirt the desk as a clean place for work, not for
chaos and litter. (I am glad the reader cannot
see my desk at this time).
Old Teufelsdroeckh was wrong. Dirt and con-
fusion in a room where one works are a hindrance,
not a help. " Art," somebody has said, " is the
removal of rubbish."
A wise man understood the matter perfectly
when he said to a literary worker, " Your illusion
of overwork is due to such a vast number of un-
finished things around you. Take hold of one
thing and stick to it until it is finished. Then you
will feel rested and like a new man. Nothing else
will help you."
The true artist sees the beautiful book that is
to come forth from a vast number of scratched and
dirty sheets.
Life is the greatest of all the arts, and expression
is next to it because action and voice modulations,
the true natural languages, are the direct signs of
the motive springs of life. Tones and actions in
their unity as interpreting words are closer to
nature than is possible for any other art.
There is an element of truth in what some
people say, that vocal expression is not art at all,
that action of the body and the modulations of the
voice are too near to Nature, that they cannot be
sufficiently objectified to make art. They are
only the material of art.
All art, however, is near to nature, the nearer the
ETHICS OF AMUSEMENT 133
better. It is not the objectifying of art that makes
it art. Nor is it the permanent record of expres-
sion. Art is art on account of the depth of our ex-
perience it expresses and the truthfulness of its
revelation, whether it lives a thousand years or
dies the moment it is born.
We must, however, recognize that it is through
the glory of these languages and their artistic
control that we do get so close to Nature. But
for this very reason there is great danger of violat-
ing artistic principles.
The other arts are a little more artificial and
objective, and external. Even song, though hav-
ing a normal basis, has modulations of pitch which
are not found in the more natural modulations in
speech.
The other arts are, therefore, reflections or
records of expression. They are human endeavors
to embody objectively and permanently the pro-
cesses and modes of expression in Nature.
Hence, the laws of the arts are found, as I say
again and again, in some natural expression, such
as the smile. Expression is the direct effect of the
activity of being upon the action of the body.
The more immediately the emotion causes the
outward motion, the greater the significance or
expressiveness.
This is what the smile teaches us regarding ex-
pression. It manifests directly immediately
the true understanding of the nature of human
life; a certain sense of gladness to meet even
difficulties, to regard the hill of difficulty before
us not as an obstacle but an opportunity; and a
teachable and receptive attitude toward life.
The walk that is a deep co-ordination of joy
and expansion expresses courage and the fact
134 THE SMILE
that at every moment there is breathed into the
man the breath of life, that his creation is an
eternal act of an eternal being, that he moves for-
ward with confidence and strength.
Human art must reflect this intimacy between
cause and effect. In proportion as it does so, will
it produce the desired impression, not only to
entertain, but to arouse and inspire.
It seems a most commonplace assertion to say
that in all the arts, man must find their central
laws and principles in the most direct of all modes
of expression.
xvn
THE SMILE AND SUCCESS
This is the age for books on success. Every-
body has to get off some kind of lecture on effi-
ciency or write a work on salesmanship. By ac-
cident I made an investigation of one of the most
illustrious schools of salesmanship in the country.
I saw advertised a little book which I wished,
and as I looked up and saw the sign in a large
city I thought I would go in and purchase it. I
was also a little curious at the moment to see
what the institution was like, and to have a
practical example of their marvellous theories.
I entered the door and was met by a handsome
attendant ; I asked for the book, or if she could tell
me in what department I might find it. The at-
tendant did not know of any such department, but
talked about the greatness of the institution, and
called a gentleman to whom I repeated my simple
request. He told me about their methods of
teaching salesmanship and of the great work they
were doing for people. To them I was only an
applicant a supposed victim. I tried to disabuse
his mind by telling him I simply called to purchase
a book, but he turned me over to another gentle-
man who began a similar talk about the institution
and the efficiency of their methods of teaching
salesmanship. For the third time I stated my
errand, and he turned from me a little disgusted
and called another gentleman who came up and
started to give me another lecture on the sub-
135
136 THE SMILE
ject of efficiency. A little impatiently I inquired
whether they had the book that was advertised.
He looked at me in disgust, and I was about to
pass out, when a young clerk arose in a very simple
manner and said he would try to find the book.
He returned in a few moments with it, and I
went out a sadder but a wiser man.
With the exception of the humbler clerk a
stenographer or typewriter or bookkeeper it was
really the worst example of salesmanship that I
ever saw, and I have seen some pretty bad ex-
amples in different cities of the world.
What is the real secret of salesmanship? It is
no affected grin, no artificial or affected manner.
It is no tremendous theories. It is a readiness to
serve, simple attention and listening to what the
other says, sympathetically endeavoring to give
the person what he wishes. If we realize that,
we can give him the information that he seeks.
It is a question of coming into sympathetic touch
with other men. The whole secret of it is found
in the simplicity, sincerity and genuineness of
the human smile.
If anyone can be taught to come into sym-
pathetic touch with his fellow-men, and be able to
think with them, to offer his services and listen to
what another has to say, if he can be taught to
smile genuinely, sincerely and naturally, he will
get more of a key to salesmanship than all these
profound courses and exaggerated theories can
give. In our day we have so overworked the word
" efficiency " that some people say they wish they
might never hear it again.
The one secret of success is simplicity. Not a
conventional smile, one that has lost its meaning,
but one resulting from a sincere desire to serve.
THE SMILE AND SUCCESS 137
The great thing that makes us successful in
life is the same thing that makes us happy. That
which develops the sympathetic side of our char-
acter will transform the smile into a bearing.
Only this morning I stepped into an electric car to
go down town. There was no one in it but the
conductor, and I made a remark to him about the
weather. It was a very commonplace remark,
certainly it gave no information, and had the same
shallowness of all such remarks about the weather.
But I was glad, for my good friend looked at me
with a sympathetic smile and said, " Yes, we can
hardly expect July weather this time of year. I
don't see any mosquitoes flying around."
That hearty remark and smile made me happier
all the day.
Really, something may be said for people's talk-
ing about the weather. If it breaks the ice of
modern conventionality, it may be a good thing.
Certainly the simple greetings between neigh-
bors do not deserve the sarcasm which is usually
poured out upon the common-placisms about the
weather.
Simple as a smile is, it reveals some of the
deepest feelings of the human heart. A smile is
a recognition of our own individuality, a joyous
realization of our identity ; it manifests the attitude
of our being toward our fellow-men, toward life
and all things. It means sympathy, love, joy,
fellowship, willingness to receive as well as willing-
ness to give that which is good.
XVIII
HIGHER FUNCTIONS AND INFLUENCES
So intertwined is the human smile with human
endeavor, human character, that almost innu-
merable are the points which might be narrated,
upon which a study of the smile throws light.
Think what a right understanding of the point
of view means in the elevation of the race. What
a great gain it would be if we could appreciate the
point of view of the Oriental. This is the one
thing to which man must come and he must come
to it through the appreciation of human art, of
human poetry and the study of the depths of hu-
man experience as revealed in expression. Then
the races may so understand each other and enter
into so much sympathy that the Federation of the
World will be realized and universal peace will
come.
Americans have boasted greatly of being able
to enter into sympathetic touch with all the world.
It was an American admiral who sailed in and
brought the Japanese into touch with the modern
world. But the Japanese brought something
which the whole civilized world should properly
prize. Only a few have devoted themselves in-
tensely to the understanding of their great art;
their subtle poetry, and the depth and intensity
of their character.
One of my most honored classmates, nearly
forty years ago, was a Japanese gentleman, who
138
FUNCTIONS AND INFLUENCES 139
has done great service to his country, and is now
a most prominent member of the House of Lords.
He wrote in my notebook once this beautiful little
poem:
" Four seas, all brothers."
" Only four words," you say. " Can you call a
single line a poem? " someone asks. Yes, it is a
poem complete, and one who will pause and really
think may get the Japanese point of view and
realize how great a poem it is, its shortness adding
not only to its sublimity but to the depth of its
meaning and the impression it produces upon us.
The four seas around Japan broaden out into
one great ocean. So he, an Oriental, and I an
Occidental, different in training and temperament,
down deep in our hearts were brothers. So all
nations, though seemingly so different and nar-
rowed into such different channels, yet as we
penetrate into the depths of their hearts, all are
brothers.
I have listened to lectures on Japanese art
which totally failed to realize the first step toward
its appreciation.
A great art critic once wrote : " No one can do a
man a greater service than to give him a new
point of view." This is true not only in art but in
life, not only of individuals but of nations.
There have been smiles that have gone over a
whole nation. There have been frowns that have
been caught up by a whole race. Alas, who can
measure race prejudice, its depth and degrada-
tion, or realize its cost and unhappiness.
A war between mighty nations, a war of long
years costing billions of dollars and destroying
millions of lives, may hang upon a smile or a frown !
140 THESMILE
The narrow smile of selfishness and egotism,
of self-satisfaction, of pleasure at other's pain,
these are passing away. The time is coming, if it
is not already here, when a smile can be felt over
the whole world, snared in by all peoples, nations,
tongues and languages.
There have been periods in the history of the
Christian religion which made a virtue of sadness
and gloom. One great unbeliever, who studied
deep into the whole history of Christianity, de-
fined it as the " worship of sorrow."
He was far away from the truth. Even of the
Master it was said, " Who for the joy that was
set before you endured the cross." It is the glory
of the religion that it brings joy out of sorrow. It
is victory over sorrow. It is a method of destroy-
ing the cause of sorrow. Has anyone ever counted
the references to joy in the New Testament?
At the grave of Lazarus, as the eyes of the
Master were lifted in prayer, what did He say?
"I thank Thee."
How often are men taught to pray " with thanks-
giving." " Rejoice ever more, pray without ceas-
ing." Men speak continually on the importance
of the last half of this verse. Why forget the first?
Thanksgiving and joy open the human heart; by
them higher things enter into the human being.
Joy is the fundamental principle of the universe.
Paradoxical as it may seem, joy is the most serious
and lasting of all emotions unless it be love.
The smile is the sign of faith. But what is faith?
There are three views regarding it. To some faith
is simply belief. This is the lowest possible ele-
ment of faith. A man may believe all kinds of
lies and falsehoods. One may receive a telegram
that his father is dead, and have all the agony be-
FUNCTIONS AND INFLUENCES 141
cause he believes the message. Another telegram
comes telling him that it is a mistake, the house
was burned but his father was not in the room
where they thought he was, and he was safe.
He who believes that faith is trying to make
oneself believe a thing whether it be true or not
destroys more faith than he can ever awaken.
Some go further and say that faith is under-
standing, that all belief is bad, necessarily bad,
no matter whether it is belief in good or in bad.
True faith must have a rational basis, and can
result only from a definite and true understanding
of principle.
Still others hold that the primary element of
faith is trust, others, a matter of instinct. A little
child takes its mother's hand and feels courage and
confidence. Faith, to such persons, is a kind of
intuition, a yielding of self to something they feel
to be greater than themselves.
Still another may think that the highest element
of faith is synonymous with loyalty, a certain
loyalty to creed, a loyal acceptance of the plans
of our human nature, the plans of the whole world,
the plan of the powers that are above us. This
loyalty implies a determination to make a heroic
realization, an acceptance of difficulties, not a
whining search for something easier, not an
antagonistic resistance to what we feel is not good.
All of these contain elements of faith. Belief
is merely instinctive; it is hardly worthy of faith
until it rises to understanding. After a man under-
stands, then he must trust ; he must say, " Not my
will but Thine " ; may that be done which is better
and higher. I will accept that which is true at all
hazards.
Again, the element of loyalty is a necessary
142 THE SMILE
part of faith. If we are not loyal to our convic-
tions, loyal to that which we accept, we are weak.
We are lacking in faith and power.
Faith may go so far that there is a loyal accept-
ance of life and its greatest battles.
" He that doeth the will shall know the doc-
trine." That is, he who loyally accepts what he
feels his duty and proceeds to give himself for
truth in loyal devotion to the weak, in loyal sacri-
fice for the liberty and the good of his fellow-man,
such a man can smile and will rise into an under-
standing of the inner mystic spirit of the uni-
verse.
The smile shows the universal presence of
cheerfulness and its necessity to human nature.
Without cheerfulness, what human success is
possible? How can human character ever be un-
folded and built up?
The smile is the basis of all expression of the
human face, and the face is the highest unfold-
ment of an organism. If we study all expression
of man and animals, the human face and its smile
is the climax.
Let us, therefore, learn a practical, every-day
lesson for all success in life from our observation
of the smile, and cry out as our perpetual expres-
sion with Carlyle:
" Give us, O give us, the man who sings at his
work! He will do more in the same time, he
will do it better, he will persevere longer. One
is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches
to music. The very stars are said to make har-
mony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous
is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past
calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to
be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous,
FUNCTIONS AND INFLUENCES 143
a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness,
beautiful because bright."
The spirit of our time is shown by our prophets
and poets. The work of these has become more
and more joyous during the last few years. More
and more do men feel that the smile indicates the
ultimate victory of truth and right, of law and
liberty. Among all our prophets of better things
no truer or more hopeful interpreter can be found
than Edwin Markham. Joy fills all of his works.
How we are thrilled by these lines from " The
Song of the Followers of Pan."
"Our bursting bugles blow apart
The gates of the cities as we go;
We bring the music of the heart
From secret wells in Lillimo.
"We break in music on the moms
Sing of the flower to stirring roots;
Apollo's cry is in the horns,
And Hermes' whisper in the flutes."
We feel his spirit in the very subjects of his
poems. Notice especially the title of his last
book, "The Shoes of Happiness." The "Joy
of the Morning " is as simple and sincere as the
voices of childhood.
"I hear you, little bird,
Shouting a-swing above the broken wall.
Shout louder yet, no song can tell it all.
Sing to my soul in the deep, still wood :
'Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word :
I'd tell it too if I could."
Clinton Scollard, another poet, who has cheered
a generation with joy and hope, has expressed
the significance of his own work and the spirit
of all song in " The Prolog " to the recently pub-
144 THESMILE
lished collection of his poems. He has given the
lesson in such a beautiful and artistic form that
it will go home to every heart :
"I spoke a traveler on the road
Who smiled beneath his leaden load,
* How play you such a blithesome part? '
* Comrade, I bear a singing heart ! '
"I questioned one whose path with pain
In the grim shadows long had lain,
* How face you thus life's thorny smart? f
' Comrade, I bear a singing heart ! '
"I hailed one whom adversity
Could not make bend the hardy knee,
' How such brave seeming? Tell the art ! '
' Comrade, I bear a singing heart ! '
"Friend, blest be thou if thou canst say
Upon the inevitable way
Whereon we fare, sans guide or chart
' Comrade, I bear a singing heart ! ' '
If someone sneers at you, smile. If you are
taunted do not answer. If you are reviled, " revile
not again." It requires high moral courage to
keep still, to carry a smile upon the face, but you
" are doing a great work and cannot come down."
The downward road is always broad and easy;
the upward road is straight and narrow.
If someone wishes to throw mud, say to him : " I
have built a bridge across all that muddy swamp.
I could easily come down and wield a shovel. I
think I could cover you up. But I am using my
mud for a different purpose. Look at the lilies
growing out of that muddy swamp. The more
mud at the bottom if it is only at the bottom
the stronger and more beautiful the lilies. If you
throw your mud you are but exhausting your own
FUNCTIONS AND INFLUENCES 145
soil, destroying your own lilies. I mean to keep
the mud where it belongs and watch my lilies
bloom."
Whatever misfortune may seem to come to you,
smile on. If some great danger seems to come up
before you, meet it with a smile. A smile is the
truest road to victory.
"Smile, once in a while,
'Twill make your heart seem lighter,
Smile, once in a while,
Twill make your pathway brighter.
"Life's a mirror, if we smile,
Smiles come back to greet us;
If we're frowning all the while
Frowns forever meet us."
Nixon Waterman.
A PERSONAL AFTERWORD
All men have ideal aspirations ; they really long
to improve their health, to understand themselves
better, to increase their efficiency, their satisfac-
tions and successes.
" The Smile " and " How to Add Ten Years to
Your Life " are intended as helps to initiate some
simple practical studies and exercises such as will
aid all to realize their highest possibilities.
Everyone in whom these books awaken any
response will, it is hoped, feel himself or herself
a member of a mystic brotherhood with those
who are endeavoring to double the joys and the
helpfulness of life. Those who wish to do so are
invited to be enrolled as members of the Morning
League.
Each member of the League is expected on
awakening in the morning to put out of his mind
any negative thought and to turn his attention to
something which lies in the direction of his ideals ;
to something that will ennoble him and purify his
consciousness, and to spend from ten to twenty
minutes on some simple exercises. And, also,
to spend a similar amount of time in a similar
way on retiring at night.
By properly using these sacred minutes of life
which are usually devoted to negative thoughts,
worry, or discouragement, astonishing results have
already been secured. Health, strength, grace,
ease of bearing, use of the voice, cheerfulness,
interest in life in all its phases, have been greatly
improved.
146
A PERSONAL AFTERWORD U7
The suggestions are no experiment. The prin-
ciples have been demonstrated again and again,
not only at the School of Expression, but through
all the ages.
Many who have never attended the School of
Expression have expressed a desire for the results
which they have seen accomplished in the stu-
dents of the School. This League has been or-
ganized and these books written to carry some
simple exercises into the home and to the bedside
of everyone, to bring the work and the spirit of
the School to all.
Every method of training, in fact, every educa-
tional institution must be tested by direct applica-
tion to everyday life. I have often said that the
School of Expression is a state of mind rather
than a place. This has been taken as a joke, but
it was serious.
The endowment of the School of Expression
which has been contributed by Sir Henry Irving
and Prof. Alexander Melville Bell and others, is
small. Our humble rooms, much as we love
them, are inadequate. Anyone who looks at these
as the institution makes a great mistake.
The greatest endowment of the School of Ex-
pression can never be localized; few can realize
it. It is the loyalty, the fidelity to principles of
those it has trained. The great work in life that
these are doing, its methods, its exercises, and
the use of these in all parts of the world, the help
it has given and is giving is, in reality, its endow-
ment.
These books have been written and presented
to the School, not merely to the Trustees, or to
the Executive Committee, nor even to the gradu-
ates, but to all who have in any way shared in
148 A PERSONAL AFTERWORD
what the School of Expression embodies. While
these books have been written to increase the
endowment, to erect a more adequate home, a
higher purpose is to increase the number of its
friends, to widen the interest in its function in
education and to allow all to share in the bene-
ficial effects of its methods of training.
Last year someone went through the records to
find out how many had been taught during one
year and where they came from. It was found that
three hundred and fifteen had been taught and
these came from forty-three states and six prov-
inces of Canada, and from two foreign countries.
Perhaps no institution of its size reaches such a
widely extended territory. The influence of the
School is not small. It is a richly endowed in-
stitution if we take endowment in the true sense
of the interest awakened in its work.
The aims of these books may be intimated as,
first, an endeavor to reach all those who have
been trained and inspire them to go forward, to
continue faithful to their principles and their own
work of self-development; to bring all these into
a greater unity of endeavor; to make themselves
feel a part of the little institution; to give them
something that they can do, not only for the good
of the institution, but of themselves and of the
world; to reach those who know something of its
work and give them the privilege of sharing in the
benefits of the institution; and, last of all, to se-
cure permanency, a more adequate home, and a
larger endowment for this school which is con-
sidered the head-quarters for the advancement of
an important department of education.
We have before us as a kind of objective motto
"$100,000 from 100,000 people." But we do
A PERSONAL AFTERWORD 149
not ask this as a gift. We propose to give every-
one who joins our League more than the worth
of their money.
The price of the books, for example, is lower
than is usually charged for such books. It is
to be hoped that by the number sold we may
add something from the net returns to the en-
dowment fund. Some of us hold before us, also,
a picture of a row of pennies one step apart ex-
tending from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico as a kind of
mark for the little school which some regard as
too small to write its name.
You, Reader, are invited to share in our en-
deavors. The money is not the main thing. We
are endeavoring to improve voices, grace and ease
of the body, flexibility of the mind, dramatic in-
sight into the motives of one's fellow-men, and
the stimulation of all those powers concerned in
the sympathetic participation in the life of all the
members of our race which bring greater satisfac-
tion and success. Keep, therefore, the money
part in the background, and endeavor to begin
efforts to realize your own higher ideals and to
awaken others at the same time to recognize the
necessity of organization, of higher unity, of an
objective embodiment of our ideals in a building,
an endowed institution that will stand for a pe-
culiar and unique work which has come to us and
is for the good of mankind.
If you wish to join the Morning League send the
names of at least ten persons who need the work,
or who will enjoy being members of such a band,
or who are interested in any way in our endeavors.
Write me for information, and, if you wish, send
the price of one or more of the books. Address
160 A PERSONAL AFTERWORD
Office of Morning League, Room 301, Pierce
Building, Copley Square, Boston.
The League invites you not only to become a
member but a leader. A member is one who
works especially for self -improvement ; a leader
is one who wishes also to share actively in extend-
ing the influence of the League and in doing some
special work to carry out its aims.
" The Smile " will be ready August 16. " How
to Add Ten Years to Your Life," August 25. Each
of these books will be 75c.
" Browning and the Dramatic Monologue " and
"Spoken English" are both $1.10 to members
of the League.
Write to me or to the School of Expression,
Morning League, 301 Pierce Building, Copley
Square, Boston, Mass.
The Morning League of the School of Expression
is a band of the students, graduates and friends of the School
of Expression who are trying to keep their faces toward the
morning.
If you wish to join, when you wake GET UP OUT OF THE
RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED, that is, stretch, expand, breathe
deeply and laugh. Fill with joyous thoughts and their active
expressions the first minutes of the day.
Note the effect, and consider yourself initiated.
Try as far as possible EVERY DAY to realize the League's
UNFOLDMENT SUGGESTIONS
1. SMILE whenever tempted to frown; look for and enjoy the best around
you.
2. THINK, feel or realize something in the direction of your ideals and,
in some way, unite your ideals with your everyday work and play.
3. SEE, hear or read, i. e., receive an impression from something beautiful
in nature, art, music, poetry, literature or the lives of your fellowmen.
4. EXPRESS the best that is in you and awaken others to express the best
in them.
5. SERVE some fellow being by listening, by kind look, tone, word or deed.
6. SHARE in some of the great movements for the betterment of the race.
That is, use your principles of expression to help hi such movements as:
1. Expression hi Life (text book, "The Smile"); 2. Expression and Health
(text book, "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life") ; 3. Expression and Educa-
tion hi the Nursery; Mothers' Clubs; 4. Voice in the Home; 5. Reading hi the
Public Schools; 6. Speaking hi High Schools and Colleges; 7. Speaking Clubs;
8. Browning Clubs (text book, "Browning and the Dramatic Monologue");
9. Dramatic Clubs; 10. Religious Societies; 11. Boy Scouts; 12. Campfire Girls;
13. Peace Movements; 14. Women's Clubs; and Suffrage Organizations;
15. Reforms; 16. Teachers' Clubs; 17. School of Expression Summer Terms;
18. Preparation for the School of Expression; 19. Home Studies; 20. Advanced
Steps of the School of Expression.
Send your name and address with ten nominations for
members with $1.50 for the two League text books, "The
Smile " and " How to Add Ten Years to Your Life," and
you will be recorded a member. One set of books will do for
a family, other books at teachers' or introductory prices.
There are no fees. The entire net returns from the League
books will be devoted to the endowment of the School of
Expression, the Home of the League.
Write frankly and freely asking any counsel, and making
any suggestions to the President of the League.
Dr. S. S. CURRY, 307 Pierce Bldg.
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
MORNING LEAGUE QUESTIONS FOR REPORT
Text-books" The Smile " and " How to Add Ten Years to
Your Life "
Those who will study these books carefully and report
the results of their practice and self-studies, or answer any
of the following questions will receive a personal letter of
advice. It is not necessary to repeat the questions. Simply
use figures.
1. What is your occupation or profession?
2. How many hours a day do you work?
3. How many hours a day do you play?
4. Do you work and play regularly?
5. Do you enjoy your work, that is, do you unite the spirit
of your play with your work?
6. What do you honestly regard as your greatest hindrance
in life?
7. Have you been able to smile when tempted to frown?
8. Have you, with Socrates, controlled some feeling by ex-
pressing the opposite?
9. Can you look upon difficulties as opportunities?
10. In the study of your own inner life have you found the
" Great Divide "? See page 38.
11. Do you know what it means to be " led by the spirit"?
12. Do you think more over your hopes and helps than over
your hindrances?
13. Do you enjoy talking about your difficulties and troubles?
14. How far does the spirit of the smile penetrate your life?
15. Does the smile predominate in your intercourse with
others?
16. How many hours are you out of doors each day?
17. Do you positively enjoy intercourse with Nature?
18. In what phase of Nature study are you most interested?
19. Do you take regular walks and have direct contact with
Nature?
20. Do you feel your courage increase in meeting difficulties?
21. Do you take more interest in the weaknesses or in the
strong points of people?
(For other questions, see " How to Add Ten Years to Your
Life ")
Province Of Expression. Principles and method
. of developing delivery.
An Introduction to the study of the natural languages, and
their relation to art and development. By S. S. Curry, Ph.D.,
Litt.D. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20, postpaid.
Your volume is to me a very wonderful book, it is so deeply philosophic,
and so exhaustive of all aspects of the subject. . . . No one can read your
book without at least gaining a high ideal of the study of expression. You have
laid a deep and strong foundation for a scientific system. And now we wait
for the superstructure. Professor Alexander Melville Bell.
It is a most valuable book, and ought to be instrumental in doing much
good. Professor J. W. Churchill, D.D.
A book of rare significance and value, not only to teachers of the vocal arts,
but also to all students of fundamental pedagogical principle. In its field I
know of no work presenting in an equally happy combination philosophic
insight, scientific breadth, moral loftiness of tone, and literary felicity of ex-
position. William F. Warren, D.D., LL.D., of Boston University.
Lessons in Vocal Expression. Th e expressive
_________________---_-_-_------- modulations of
the voice developed by studying and training the voice and
mind in relation to each other. Eighty-six definite problems
and progressive steps. By S. S. Curry, Ph.D., Litt.D. $1.25;
to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
It ought to do away with the artificial and mechanical styles of teaching.
Henry W. Smith, A.M., Professor of Elocution, Princeton University.
Through the use of your text-book on vocal expression, I have had the past
term much better results and more manifest interest on the subject than ever
before. A. H. Merrill, A.M., late Professor of Elocution, Vanderbilt University.
The subject is handled in a new and original manner, and cannot fail to
revolutionize the old elocutionary ideas. Mail and Empire, Toronto.
It is capital, good sense, and real instruction. W. E. Huntington, LL.D.,
Ex-President of Boston University.
Imagination and Dramatic Instinct. Fur ">
tionof
the imagination and assimilation in the vocal interpretation
of literature and speaking. By S. S. Curry, Litt.D. $1.50;
to teachers, $1.20, postpaid.
Dr. Curry well calls the attention of speakers to the processes of thinking
in the modulation of the voice. Every one will be benefited by reading his
volumes. . . . Too much stress can hardly be laid on the author's ground
principle, that where a method aims to regulate the modulation of the voice
by rules, then inconsistencies and lack of organic coherence begin to take the
place of that sense of life which lies at the heart of every true product of art.
On the contrary, where vocal expression is studied as a manifestation of the
processes of thinking, there results the truer energy of the student's powers
and the more natural unity of the complex elements of his expression. Dr.
Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook.
Address : Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg.,
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
Mind and Voice. Principles underlying all phases of
Vocal Training. The psychological
and physiological conditions of tone production and scientific
and artistic methods of developing them. A work of vital
importance to every one interested in improving the qualities
of the voice and in correcting slovenly speech. 456 pages.
By S. S. Curry, Litt.D. $1.50, postpaid. To teachers, $1.25,
postpaid.
It is indeed a masterly and stimulating work. Amos R. Wells, Editor Chris-
tian World.
It is a book that will be of immense help to teachers and preachers, and to
others who are using their vocal organs continuously. As an educational
work on an important theme, the book has a unique value. Book News
Monthly.
There is pleasure and profit in reading what he says. Evening Post (Chi-
cago).
Fills a real need in the heart and library of every true teacher and student
of the development of natural vocal expression. Western Recorder (Louis-
ville).
Get it and study it and you will never regret it. Christian Union Herald
(Pittsburg).
Foundation Of Expression. Fundamentals of a
psychological method
of training voice, body, and mind and of teaching speaking and
reading. 236 problems; 411 choice passages. A thorough
and practical text-book for school and college, and for private
study. By S. S. Curry, Litt.D. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10,
postpaid.
It means the opening of a new door to me by the master of the garden.
Frank Putnam.
Mastery of the subject and wealth of illustration are manifest hi all your
treatment of the subject. Should prove a treasure to any man who cares
for effective public speaking. Professor L. O. Brastow, Yale.
Adds materially to the author's former contributions to this science and art,
to which he is devoting his life most zealously. Journal of Education.
May be read with profit by all who love literature. Denis A. McCarthy,
Sacred Heart Review.
It gets at the heart of the subject and is the most practical and clearest
book on the important steps in expression that I have ever read. Edith W.
Moses.
How splendid it is; it is at once practical in its simplicity and helpfulness
and inspiring. Every teacher ought to be grateful for it. Jane Herendeen,
Teacher of Expression in Jamaica Normal School, N. Y .
Best, most complete, and up-to-date. Alfred Jenkins Shriver, LL.B.,
Baltimore.
Public speakers and especially the young men and women in high schools,
academies, and colleges will find here one of the most helpful and sug-
gestive books by one of the greatest living teachers of the subject, that
was ever presented to the public. John Marshall Barker, Ph.D., Professor
in Boston University.
Address: Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg.,
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
Browning and the Dramatic Monologue.
Nature and peculiarities of Browning's poetry. How to un-
derstand Browning. The principles involved in rendering the
monologue. An introduction to Browning, and to dramatic
platform art. By S. S. Curry, Litt.D., $1.25; to teachers,
$1.10, postpaid.
It seems to me to attack the central difficulty in understanding and reading
Robert Browning's poetry. ... It opens a wide door to the greatest poetry of
the modern age. The Rev. John R. Gow, President of the Boston Browning
Society.
A book which sheds an entirely new light on Browning and should be read
by every student of the great master; indeed, everyone who would be well in-
formed should read this book, which will interest any lover of literature.
Journal of Education.
Spoken English. A method of co-ordinating impres-
sion and expression in reading,
conversation, and speaking. It contains suggestions on the
importance of observation and adequate impression, and
nature study, as a basis to adequate expression. The steps
are carefully arranged for the awakening of the imagina-
tion and dramatic instinct, right feeling, and natural, spon-
taneous expression. 320 pages. By S. S. Curry, Litt.D.,
Ph.D. Price, $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
Every page had something that caught my attention. You certainly have
grasped the great principle of vocal expression. Edwin Markham.
Those who aim at excelling in public utterance and address may well possess
themselves of this work. Journal of Education.
The specialist in reading will wish to add it to his book-shelf for permanent
reference. Normal Instructor.
A masterly presentation of ideas and expression as applied in a wide range
of excellent selections. The World's Chronicle.
Little Classics for Oral English. A compan-
- ion to Spok-
en English. The problems correspond by sections with
Spoken English. The books may be used together or sep-
arately. The problems are arranged in the form of ques-
tions which the student can answer properly only by rightly
rendering the passages. It is a laboratory method for spoken
English, to be used by the first year students in High School
or the last years of the Grammar School. 384 pages. By
S. S. Curry, Litt.D. Price, $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid.
I am using Little Classics for Oral English in two classes and believe it is
the most satisfactory text that I have used. The students seem to be able to
get easily the principles from your questions and problems. Elva M. Forn-
crook, St. Nor. Sch., Kalamazoo, Mich.
A fine collection of fine things especially suited to young people. Every
teacher of reading and English in our secondary schools ought to have the
book. Prof. Lee Emerson Basse tt, Leland Stanford University, Cal.
Address: Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg.,
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
What Students and Graduates Think
of the School of Expression
"We know that there is something BIG here. If only we can
get it out to the world." Caroline A. Hardwick (Philosophic
Diploma), Instructor in Reading and Speaking, Wellesley
College.
"At no other institution is it possible to secure the training
one secures at the School of Expression. It is far broader
than a mere training for speaking. It is a fundamental train-
ing for life." Florence E. Lutz (Philosophic Diploma),
Instructor in Pantomime, New York City.
"The School of Expression taught me how to LIVE. I
think its training of the personality is its greatest work."
F. M. Sargent (Dramatic Artist's Diploma).
"I feel deeply indebted to the School for some of the best
and most lasting inspiration I have received for my own work
as a teacher of my fellow-men." Luella Clay Carson, Pres.
of Mills College.
"The success I have attained in my profession as a reader, I
owe directly to the advanced methods of the School of Ex-
pression." Caroline Foye Flanders (Artistic Diploma),
Public Reader, Manchester, N. H.
"The School of Expression of Boston is the most thorough
and best in the country. It is different from all other schools.
I wish I could talk to any who intend taking a course of study.
I would say, Go to the School of Expression and if there is
anything in you, they will bring it out ; they will teach you to
know youself ; they will show you what you are in comparison
with what you may become, and they will begin with the cause
and start from the bottom." Hamilton Colman, Member
Richard Mansfield Co.
"When I was your student you held before me intellectual
and ethical ideals which I am still trying to realize." Charles
L. White, D.D., Ex-President Colby College.
"The same principles of education which have installed
manual training in public schools are even more applicable to
the training of men's souls to rational self-expression. Dr.
Curry will some day be recognized to have been an educational
philosopher for having championed principles no less true of
the spoken word than of every form of creative self-expres-
sion." Dean Shailer Mathews, University of Chicago.
"The whole world ought to learn about the School of Ex-
pression and your discoveries." Rev. J. Stanley Durkee
(Speaker's Diploma), Boston.
S DUE ON
RETURN
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
202 Main Library
LOAN PERIOD 1
HOME USE
2
3
4
5
6
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405
6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk
Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW~
A1IIO DiSC MAR 1 5 '90
,
'
*
-
REC.ILLMAY19
978
DEC 2 8
FORM NO OD 6 40m 10 '77 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
RFPICFIFV (~A QAT)f\
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
X
576238
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
