Books: Reciters

Kind, Genial, Harmless Creatures — Their Day Is Done

As the adding machine supplanted the Dickensian bookkeeper, as the automobile did away with landau and phaeton, so the radio, it is said, is rapidly evicting the old-fashioned reciter from his or her diminishing place in the sun. Oh, many are still to be found! Professors of elocution — even in New York, highly-skilled and successful monologists such as Ruth Draper.

But the reciter of our forefathers — the reciter magnificent — the lady of the awe-inspring brow and grave yard...