recommends for purchase some article with concealed defect. His conscience and will opposing each other puts the circumflex in the voice. (4) In wheedling and flattery; there is insincerity, too, in this; in complimentary, comfort-making, and coaxing moods. IV. Monotone is reflective. It is expressive of the sublime and allied sentiments of grandeur, awfulness, reverence, etc. The mind is not discriminative. V. Semitone is expressive of the plaintive emotions. It is used in grief, sorrow, etc. VI. The length of a slide is determined by the strength and intensity of the feeling. A chart of the various slides corresponding to their emotions is impossible; and were it possible, I do not see how it could be of practical value. The slides, and all that constitute the tune of the speech, are even more elusive than the feelings of which they are expressive. Faults. I have noted the following faults as more or less common. (1) Habitual rising slides. These keep the audience in continual suspense, and give no rest. We have heard ministers who closed almost all positively constructed sentences with the upward slide. (2) Habitual downward slides. These are tiresome; for the listening mind instinctively rests at the downward slide, when lo! it must up and on, for the thought is not completed. Such delivery is humdrum and tiresome, and heavy in the extreme. (3) Habitual circumflex. This inflection lacks force and dignity. (4) Habitual semitones or minors. (5) Beginning the rising inflection too high, the falling too low. −(1) Use the exercises as given under " Flex Practice. ibility of voice." (2) Train the ear to detect the various inflections. In many persons the ear resists any effort to depart from habitual inflections. (3) Cultivate the ability to mechanically give the inflections at will. (4) These faulty habits are due generally to the moods of the speaker. Of course, then, it is of fundamental importance to attack the moods. Only those who have had the fault, or who have taught Public Speaking, know how persistent is the minor or circumflex habit. It is hardly necessary to add that only by means of the emotions, realized through the ideas, can the various slides be suitably given. SEC. IV. Rhythm. The alternate pulsation and remission with its attendant flow, well marked in pleasing delivery both of prose and verse, are due to the rhythm of speech. In other words, rhythm in speech refers to the periodic recurrence of groups of sounds. It is the nature of the mind, in listening to a series of sounds, even when of uniform loudness and length, to reduce them to groups. A familiar instance of this is the alternate loud and soft sounds attributed to the ticking clock. If one sound of a series be actually louder or longer, and regularly recurrent, the tendency to grasp sounds into groups is promoted, and the gratification of rhythm fully realized. This grouping is actually done in English speech-rhythms, and is mainly accomplished by means of increased loudness or accent at approximately regular intervals; 1 but the accent, as Poe long since pointed out, lengthens the sound of the syllables, so that the rhythm-groups in English are usually doubly marked off, by accent and by length of sound. 1 Moreover, the periodicity of the recurrent group is maintained when silence takes up a part of the group. 1 See Rhythm, by J. B. Mayor. Nursery rhymes, as Mr. Sidney Lanier has well shown, furnish familiar instances of this. The first line of the following quotation from Tennyson sufficiently illustrates the fact: · Break, break, | break | On thy cold, grey stones, | oh seá | And I would that my tongue | could utter | Pausing after "break," each group or bar is co-ordinated with every other group. In the Journal of Psychology for January, 1894, Mr. T. L. Bolton describes some elaborate psychological experiments made in the study of rhythm, from which among others he deduced the following general principles: Rhythmic effects when applied to poetry demand that the accents in a line shall recur at regular intervals; they also require that the succeeding feet in a line shall be of precisely the same character. The introduction of a three-syllable foot into iambic (two-syllable) verse is allowable on this condition only, that the three-syllable foot can be read in the same time as the two-syllable, so that there shall be no disturbance in the temporal sequence of the accents." English rhythms are not chanted, but conform to the idiomatic, spoken form of the language. They are spontaneous and free. Hence, any attempt to give direction for the scansion of English rhythm must be based, not upon the appearance of the printed page, but upon the sound as heard.1 Theories that demand a pause where no pause is logically or emotionally required, that demand an accent on words that are not accented in ordinary speech, and that require that an accented syllable be treated as though 1 See On Rhythm in English Verse, in Papers of Fleming Jenkins: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1887. it were not accented, wholly misapprehend the nature of English rhythm. For applying the principles involved in English rhythm, the following hints are given: — 1. Read according to the idioms of spoken English. Avoid changing the accent to accommodate the meter, or pausing to mark the separated foot. 2. Run through the selection to find out the prevailing foot-group. These groups will co-ordinate with one another. 3. Note exceptional foot-groups that may not be of the prevailing type. To illustrate, trochees, dactyls, and other feet will often be found among groups that are typically iambic. 4. The time of the exceptional foot-group must conform to the time of the prevailing or typical foot-group of the line. If, for instance, it is an anapaest, it must be read in the time given to the iambic, if this is the prevailing foot. 5. The so-called extra syllable at the beginning or end of the line is to be regarded as part of a foot-group of which a pause forms the remaining part. If the extra syllable is accented, pause forms the unaccented part of the group. If the extra syllable, however, is unaccented, the mind attributes accents to the pause in much the same way that it attributes the alternate loud or accented sound to the ticking clock. Filling out the group by means of pause takes place also often in other parts of the line. This frequently gives an extra group to the line. Again, sometimes the sound of a syllable is prolonged to fill out the time of the group. 6. The essential fact is the co-ordination of group with group; this requires that the group have one and only one The beat or stroke must be firmly placed on the accented syllable. accent. 7. Observe that for ordinary ears slight variations do not destroy the effect of rhythm, and that the introduction of exceptional feet gives an agreeable variety, and in this way furthers poetic expression. Variability within certain limits obtains also in the line-group or verse. Verses or Lines. - Rhythmical delivery requires the co-ordination of line with line; that is, that the line be given the same time as that with which it corresponds. The time length, and not the number of syllables, is the determining factor. The rhyming words also aid in marking off the line-group. The rhythmical ear, however, is the main reliance. In spite of all theories, the pausing in the delivery of verse must be according to the logical requirements, and not the exigencies of the line. Run-on lines are to be spoken as such. If the poet has not composed his lines so as to require the middle and final pause, it does violence to language to force it. A speaker, however, will pause without doing violence to the thought, when the dull-eared, controlled only by the logical relations, will not. Reading run-on lines without pause at the end of the line amounts to this: it introduces a line-group of exceptional length. This feature is agreeable rather than otherwise. Many persons are deficient in the rhythmical sense. Το cultivate this sense it will be found decidedly helpful to scan verse according to the principles here laid down. For practice, while omitting any decided effort to read for expression, and still speaking the phrase idiomatically, exaggerate the rhythmical flow. In this practice the reader need not be afraid of "sing-song," for " sing-song" is a matter of melody and not rhythm. - Rhythmical Prose. Because of the allowable irregularities of blank verse, it is difficult to distinguish it from prose. The difference is one of degree only. Mr. Lanier calls prose "a wild variety of verse." To make but one |