the speaker and his attitude toward his subject and toward his hearers. There are as many different qualities of the human voice as there are human emotions, and the quality changes in speaking just as the feelings of the speaker change. The simplest utterance may be given almost any significance. For example, pronounce the commonplace remark It is raining, as follows:

110. Exercise. 1. As if you were sitting comfortably in your room, and happened to glance up from your book.

2. As if you were a small child who had been planning to go to a picnic, and were prevented by the rain.

3. As if you were the mother of the child and felt sorry for the disappointment.

4. As if you had been fighting a forest fire which the rain would check.

5. As if you were the owner of property threatened by a flood, which an increase of water would destroy.

6. As if you were jeering at someone who had been positive that it would not rain.

7. As if you had been told to do something which is impossible to do in the rain.

8. As if it had rained and rained for days, until you were tired of it.

9. In reply to someone who insists upon your going for a walk.

CHANGE OF QUALITY

It is easy to hear the indescribable change of quality that comes into the voice as each emotion colors the words. Change of quality is ordinarily

instinctive and involuntary. For this reason it is useless to lay down any hard and fast rules. However, because a change of quality may be voluntary, some general suggestions may be useful.

111. Neutral quality. A neutral quality of tone ordinarily expresses a lack of feeling of any sort. It is the colorless, dead, wooden tone frequently heard in schoolroom recitations, in "the reading of the minutes of the last meeting," in mechanical statements of any sort. It kills interest and puts an audience to sleep. It is sure to characterize the work of a speaker who has no interest in what he is saying. It may be clear, it may not be unpleasant, but it is not effective. It is useful for colorless reading and speaking because it is not at all exacting, but it should not become a habit. One should not converse nor address an audience as he would recite the multiplication table.

112. Orotund quality. The quality of tone commonly denoted by the somewhat fearsome term orotund is characterized, says the International Dictionary, "by fullness, clearness, strength, and smoothness; ringing and musical." No simpler word exists in the language to express all these ideas. They are all associated with the nobler feelings, so that it is a common precept to employ the orotund quality in passages that express the loftier sentiments. Mechanically such tones are associated with free and open vocal organs. The pleasure derived from hearing the orotund quality

is largely the pleasure derived from hearing any pure and unobstructed musical sound.

113. Exercise. Read the following so as to express in the quality of tone you use the feeling suggested to you by the words:

1. Floris was so overwhelmed with this happiness that he was not able to make a reply, but threw himself down at his father's feet and, amidst a flood of tears, kissed and embraced his knees, asking his blessing and expressing in dumb show his love, duty, and gratitude that were too big for utterance.

2.

3.

4.

Upon my knees

I charm you, by my once commended beauty,
By all the vows of love and that great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one,
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
Why you are heavy.

Let us do our work as well

Both the unseen and the seen;

Make the house where God may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and nature,
Who believe that in all ages

Every human heart is human,

That in even savage bosoms

There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness

Touch God's right hand in the darkness

And are lifted up and strengthened;-
Listen to this simple story.

5. O, Holy Father, friend unseen,

Since on Thine arm Thou bid'st me lean,
Help me throughout life's changing scene,
By faith to cling to Thee.

6. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be OUR COUNTRY, Our Whole Country, and Nothing but Our Country. And by the blessing of God, may that country become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.

7. I have always thought of Christmas . as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. . . . And therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

114. Guttural quality. Another word often used to describe a frequently heard quality of tone is guttural. The guttural quality is usually associated with feelings that are the opposite of those expressed by the orotund-with those which are hateful, malignant, resentful, stingy, and other feelings of active ill-will. Mechanically the guttural quality involves a contraction of the muscles of the throat, the base of the tongue, and the soft palate that prevents a clear, open, resonant tone.

115.

Exercise. Read as directed in 113.

1. What else can I be (than cross) when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon Merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!

2. Seest thou, Isaac, the range of iron bars above the glowing charcoal? On that warm couch thou shalt lie, stripped of thy clothes. One of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil lest the roast should burn. Now, choose betwixt a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver.

3. It's just like you—to talk about my selling Wildfire in that cool way-the last thing I've got to call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever had in my life. And if you'd got a spark of pride in you, you'd be ashamed to see the stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it. But it's my belief you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the pleasure of making somebody feel he'd got a bad bargain.

4.

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature