Excerpt from A Handbook of American Pageantry Franklin through philosophy, Edison through his electrical wonders. Expression is power; that is, the sending out of impressions we have received. A thousand feel an impression Where one can properly express it. This ability may be acquired through right teaching and practice and concentration. To this end, the pageant is a training school in which a person may improve himself in conveying his thoughts and feelings through words, tones and action. The pageant on its dramatic side arouses emotion and will, and tends to evolve individual personality. Pageantry is opportunity for self-discovery. It typ ifies in a broad sense the love of life itself, and should stand, as does the American mag azine Life, for the finer old-fashioned sentiment and picturesqueness and shun screech ing modernism. The illustrations are selected from a thousand photographs, each one chosen for a special illustrative purpose or bearing upon the theme. Some of the reproductions are from scenes which do not conform to the definition of a pageant given in this book, but which were commonly and locally known as such. When a pageant was written by one person and staged by another, the name of the former is given because the author usually works for pleasure, the director for money. The writer of this book contemplates issuing a larger, more comprehensive work on pageantry, and would be pleased to communicate with persons having attractive or unusual photographs for sale. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.