Evolution of Expression — Volume 1

“A whisper may be more vital, more animated than a shout,” Charles Wesley Emerson insists. The real measure of a speaker, he suggests, is not volume—but whether a thought can quicken another mind.

Written in the late nineteenth century for students and teachers of expression, this first volume begins with a challenge: reading aloud is not a display of technique, but an act of communication between speaker and audience. Emerson urges the student to forget the how and attend to the meaning—to enter a writer’s thought so fully that the desire to share it brings voice and manner to life. Careful analysis matters, but not as a cage: expression must grow freely from understanding, or the form will smother the spirit. Can a reader learn to move an audience simply by learning to think for it?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.