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tender emotion, all naturally assume the rising inflection. Indirect questions, the completion of the sense, all expressions that do not suggest a continuance of expression to bring out the thought, require a falling inflection.

It would be useless to present a thorough analysis of this subject without many examples, but all who purpose to excel as public speakers should thoroughly practice the examples given by some extended work on this subject, and test for themselves the effect on their own mind and heart of the directions given. Practice is needed to give compass to the voice in its intonations as well as in its volume, for if all the various modulations of voice have been once thoroughly made in practice, they will be likely spontaneously to arise in actual work.

26. Attention to Rule need not embarrass a Speaker.— Whately says that, a speaker's "attention being fixed on his own voice, the inevitable consequence would be that he would betray more or less his studied and artificial delivery." Not at all. Apprentices are always awkward till they become familiar with their tools. No man is a first-class speaker till he becomes so absorbed in his subject as to lose all active selfconsciousness, but then, in the highest heat of earnestness, he will act not only according to nature, but according to previously-formed habits of position, voice, intonation, gesticulation, and all other modes of expression. It would be well therefore to study and execute all the variations of voice pointed out in some elementary treatise on the subject, repeatedly and

*

thoroughly, till the vocal apparatus is rendered flexible and manageable, and then, when actually speaking an original production, utterly to abandon all thought of intonation. The great deficiency of many speakers arises from the fact that they have never actually made all the various sounds that full speaking requires, and therefore when a passion is excited it has no adequate mode of representation. In this sense many public speakers are partially dumb. Their vocabulary of intonation is narrow. Their voice and body are poor and inefficient machines. They may have power, but it is concealed from others, perhaps from themselves. As gymnastic exercises train the body for any demand for exertion that may arise in practical life, so a rigid and thorough investigation and practice of all the various kinds and degrees of voice secures to the speaker an exhaustless reservoir from which he may draw as the occasion demands. It would be well even for accomplished and successful speakers frequently to review the elements of Elocution, and to keep themselves in practice, just as the most successful musicians do in their art.

27. True Eloquence requires a noble Character.-But Elocution embraces an element still higher than the mechanical part, and an intellectual appreciation of the power of voice and manner. It is pre-eminently a virtue, and summons to its aid all modes of legitimate influence by which mind acts upon mind. A

*Part I. of the "Fifth Reader of the School and Family Series, by Marcius Willson," contains an excellent summary and illustration of the elements of Elocution.

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speaker needs to be respected by his hearers for sin cerity, ability, earnestness, and power. He must be, or be believed to be, what he seems. Otherwise he

is only an actor, and though he may be eloquent as such, the people are merely amused or entertained. Words spoken stammeringly and awkwardly by a man of solid worth have great power which no graces of enunciation can communicate to a man of intellectual imbecility or moral unworthiness. On this subject Daniel Webster well said:

28. Opinion of Webster on this Subject.-"When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence indeed, does not consist in speech; it can not be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they toil for it in vain; words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they can not compass it; it must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation-all may aspire after it; they can not reach it: it comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force."

29. Opinion of Milton.-Milton also, whose training in the schools was the best that his country and age could afford, eloquently says:

"For me, readers, although I can not say that I am utterly untrained in those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted with those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have written in any learned tongue; yet true eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth; and that whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words (by what I can express), like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places."

30. Extemporaneous Speaking.- Here may be a proper place again to urge the value of extemporaneous speaking. Reading should not encroach upon the domain of oratory. Good extemporaneous speaking requires thorough preparation. It is well, in the process of training for it, to write out, in full, passages, if not entire addresses, to be spoken, and thoroughly to commit them to memory. Soon it will be easy to commit to memory the thoughts and facts, leaving the language to be at least partly spontaneous, and also to interpolate entirely extemporaneous passages. Thus the art can be acquired by study and practice.

Extemporaneous speakers will be likely occasionally to fail, and often to fall below their desires and what they believe to be their ability, but the joys and influence of success will more than compensate for these disappointments.

Too great facility in extemporaneous speech often

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defeats the highest success. Naturally easy speakers, as they are termed, who extemporize volubly without study, are usually narrow in their range, shallow in their thoughts, and repetitious, and bring a reproach on their art. Speakers who discard the use of the manuscript before the audience should spend more labor in preparation than would be necessary previously to write out their addresses.

The following

31. Practical Rules of Elocution. rules embrace the most valuable general principles of Elocution:

(1.) Be thoroughly prepared for the work which you intend to perform. If to read the production of another person, let it be studied beforehand, so that you are sure of comprehending and feeling fully the thoughts and emotions of the author. If to read your own production, be as independent as possible of the manuscript. If to speak from memory, let it be so well committed as to require no conscious effort to recall it. If to speak extemporaneously, be sure that you have an abundant supply of material on hand, with the general arrangement or order thoroughly at command. Whoever faithfully obeys this rule, when possible, will be ready to make an efficient speech, even when he has no opportunity to prepare for it.

(2.) As far as possible be unwearied, and in good physical and mental condition, and be deliberate and self-possessed, remembering that if you have a right to speak, it is too late when on the floor to entertain any doubts about the matter, and that self-possession is a prime requisite of successful oratory.