HOW TO CORRECT FAULTS IN PRONUNCIATION.

When you hear an intelligent person pronounce a word differently from the way you pronounce it, or have reason to suspect that your pronunciation of some word or of words is incorrect, as soon as possible afterward consult the highest authority, a standard dictionary. This is the easiest, the shortest, and the best way to settle all questions concerning pronunciation. Write down every word that you habitually or occasionally mispronounce, in some page set apart for that purpose, and twice or oftener every day pronounce them carefully and correctly. If this practice be faithfully observed, the pronunciation of such words will soon be greatly improved, and the fault will eventually be entirely overcome.

One of the most profitable exercises in pronunciation is that of reading aloud daily a few columns of words from a pronouncing dictionary, marking with a pencil the words you have been accustomed to mispronounce or to hear mispronounced. Commit them to memory, and speak them correctly several times every day until the ear can recognize and the organs of speech and voice instantly' pronounce each and every word correctly.

MODULATION.

Modulation means variation of the speaking tones of the voice. Good modulation is such a variation in pitch, force, inflection, movement, and the other elements of vocal expression as will bring out the sense and feeling clearly and fully, and at the same time be pleasing to the ear.

Monotony is the opposite of modulation. To acquire skill in modulation, avoid monotony, whether in inflection, pitch, stress, force, quantity, quality or movement.

The best direction that can be given to the student concerning modulation is: notice those tones and modulations of others to which you listen with pleasure; try to reproduce them, and practice upon them until you can command them at will. The speaker's or reader's own taste and judgment furnish the best standard by which to test his modulation.

""Tis not enough the voice be sound and clear:
'Tis modulation that must charm the ear;
That voice all modes of passion can express
Which marks the proper word with proper stress;
But none emphatic can that speaker call
Who lays an equal emphasis on all."

INFLECTION.

Inflection signifies a sliding of the voice from a higher to a lower, or from a lower to a higher key. It is important to be able to distinguish the difference between the rising and the falling inflections, and still more important to be able to give them with ease and accuracy, from the short slide, which indicates the absence of feeling or interest, to the slide, either upward or downward, that denotes highest interest or most intense feeling.

There are, in fact, but two slides or inflections to the voice the rising and the falling. The circumflex and the innumerable modifications of the equal and the unequal waves, are merely movements in which the voice both rises and falls on the same word.

EXERCISES IN INFLECTION.

Questions that can be answered by yes or no generally require the rising slide, especially on the word or words that are given with emphasis.

EXAMPLES OF RISING SLIDE.

1. Is the doctor at home?

2. How old are you?

3. Have you decided to go?
4. Is Mr. Simpson a lawyer?

5. Do you think he is in earnest?

6. Is he a person who can be relied on?

7. Will you dine with me to-morrow?

Remarks. The answer to the direct question generally requires the downward slide on the words distinguished by emphasis.

The rising inflection either denotes a direct question, negation, or emotion, or qualified or conditional affirmation. The tones of pathos and of grief usually have the rising slide.

EXERCISES IN FALLING SLIDE.

When the question begins with a pronoun or adverb it terminates with the falling slide, and can not be answered by yes or no.

EXAMPLES.

1. Who made thee thy brother's keeper?

2. When will the next lecture be given?

3. What did you think of the President's message?

4. Which of the candidates do you think will be elected? 5. Where do you live?

6. When will the next meeting be held?

7. Who told you that he was sick?

8. Why do you not answer me?

QUESTION AND ANSWER.

Ask and answer each question first in a conversational tone, as if addressing an intimate acquaintance, then give it with gradually increasing expression of interest or feeling, and always with directness and naturalness of manner.

K. N. E.-5.

Give several answers to each question, and always in your own words and your own way.

EXAMPLES.

1. Are they Hebrews? So am I.

2. Are they Israelites? So am I.

3. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I.

4. Hold you the watch to-night?

We do, my lord.

Arm'd, say you?
Arm'd, my lord.

From top to toe?

My lord, from head to foot.

Then saw you not his face?

O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.

What, look'd he frowningly?

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Pale, or red?

Nay, very pale.

CONTRASTED SLIDES.

When the disjunctive or, connects words or clauses, it generally has the rising slide before it and the falling after

it.

EXAMPLES.

1. Will you study French or German?

2. Which did he most resemble, his father or his mother?

3. Shall I come with a rod or in love?

4. Did he say he would or that he would not do it?

5. Is temperance a principle or a habit?

6. Did they confess or deny?

7. Who will attend to the matter, you or your brother?

8. How is your sick friend, better or worse?

NEGATIVE OPPOSED TO AFFIRMATIVE.

Every sentence or member of a sentence which contains the word no or not, or the affix un, is called negative. The negative member generally takes the rising, and the affirmative member the falling inflection.

EXAMPLES.

1. Conscript fathers, I do not rise to waste the night in words: let that plebeian talk.

2. Eloquence is not vociferation.

3. Life is real, life is earnest,

And the grave is not its goal.

4. It can not be that our free nation will long endure the vulgar dominion of ignorance and profligacy.

5. True charity is not a meteor which occasionally glares, but a luminary which, in its orderly and regular course, dispenses a benignant influence.

6. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall have been broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I could fathom the depths of the abyss below.

7. We do not pray to instruct or advise God, nor to tell him news or inform him of our wants, nor do we pray by dint of agreement to persuade God and bring him to our bent, but because prayer is a better instrument of bettering, ennobling, and perfecting our souls. 8. They are not just who do no wrong, but he who will not wrong me when he may-he is truly just.

9. 'Tis not the wide phylactery,

Nor stubborn fast, nor stated prayers,

That make men saints: we judge the tree
By what it bears.

MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES FOR PRACTICE IN THE SLIDES.

1. Who told you that he said so?

2. Where will the next meeting of the society be held?

3. Did you ever see the President?

4. Tell him I will be there either on Monday or on Tuesday. 5. I said honesty, not modesty.

6. Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream,

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

7. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves— that we are underlings.