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.

8. Is it anybody's business if a gentleman should choose To wait upon a lady, if the lady don't refuse?

9. For the kingdom of God is not in words, but in power. 10. Does Napoleon deserve praise or censure?

11. Are you guilty or not guilty?

12. Would you do a handsome thing without a return? Do it, then, for an infant that is not sensible of the obligation. Would you do it for the public good? Do it, then, for an honest artificer. 13. Did he pitch his voice high or low? He pitched it very high, not low.

Remarks. The general rules relating to the inflections may be understood, and the power possessed in a remarkable degree to exemplify them, but without a clear understanding and a right appreciation of each passage, it can not be rendered correctly.

Concentrate the vocal force in each of the preceding examples chiefly on the emphatic words, but render the whole passage as if expressing your own thoughts and sentiments. When a passage is given with great force and energy, be careful not to let the voice recoil on the emphatic words, but so use the voice as to fulfill all the conditions of a perfect slide-namely, a full opening, a gradual decline, and a delicate vanish.

PITCH.

Pitch signifies the place in the musical scale on which a sound is uttered, or it may refer to the pervading pitch of voice in reading or speaking. The following distinctions may be made in pitch: Very low, low, middle or conversational, high, and very high.

The pitch of a sound is entirely different, both from its force and its quantity. The variations in pitch of which the human voice is capable are very great. Melody and expression depend mainly on the variations in pitch.

To acquire the power of changing the pitch or key at pleasure, exercise your voice with the utmost force consistent with purity of tone, in all the keys in which you can control it, from the lowest to the highest, on the elementary sounds, on several successive short or long words, and upon short passages.

Many of the keys on which you practice would neither be proper nor pleasant in speaking, but the exercise of the voice in this way will rapidly increase its compass. Having practiced this and other exercises in pitch until you can speak with ease in different keys, then deliver a variety of passages, each of which requires to be given in a different key. In reading or speaking to a small audience, or in a small room, the pitch of the voice should be that which we employ in ordinary conversation. This pitch being the most natural, will render the delivery more easy to the speaker and more pleasant to the hearers. In addressing a large audience, the speaker should commence in his conversational tone, but as he proceeds and becomes more animated, the force of voice will naturally increase, and the voice will unconsciously glide into a higher tone. When a speaker becomes intensely in earnest, vehement, and impassioned, his key-note will be elevated several notes above the one on which he commenced.

HIGH AND VERY HIGH PITCH.

EXAMPLES.

1. Fire! Fire! Fire!

2. Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy!

3. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

4. Up drawbridge, grooms! what, warder, ho!

Let the portcullis fall.

5. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse.

6. Bursts the storm on Phocis' walls!

Rise!-or Greece forever falls.

7. To arms! To arms! To arms! a thousand voices cried.