The following selections should be read with the animation and with the expression of laughter which the sense requires : I. Sir Harcourt fallen desperately in love with me? With me! That is delicious ! Ah-ha! ha! ha! I see my cue. I'll cross his scent-I'll draw him after me. Ho! ho! won't I make love to him? Ha!-Here they come to dinner. I'll commence my operations on the governor immediately. Ha! ha ha! how I will enjoy it! London Assurance, Act III., Sc. 1. Boucicault. 2. Ye'll be now't but skeen and boans, if you stop here long eneaf. Haw! haw! haw! 3. 4. When lads and lasses merry be, With possets and with junkets fine, I eat their cakes and sip their wine! I puff and snort, And out the candles I do blow: They shriek-Who's this? I answer naught but ho, ho, ho! Or ghost shall wag, Or cry, 'ware goblins! where I go, But Robin I Their feats will spy, And send them home with hoo, hoo, hoo! Robin Goodfellow. 5. Dickens. At all those "What are you looking at, Oliver ? handkerchiefs?—There are a good many of 'em, ain't there? We've just looked 'em out ready for the wash. Ho, ho, ho ;-ōo, hoo, hoo, hoo!" The Miser, in Oliver Twist. Dickens. For further practice, see "The Funny Story," found among the "Selections." INFLECTION. CHANGES in pitch are made in two ways, by skip and by slide. The former is technically called the discrete, the latter the concrete movement of the voice. The discrete predominates in Music, the concrete in Speech. In elocution, the slides of the voice are called inflections, and are the principal means by which the lights and shades of thought and feeling are expressed. The rising and falling slides are capable of innumerable combinations. The The rising inflection appeals, the falling asserts. rising defers to the judgment of the person addressed, the falling declares the judgment of the speaker. The rising inflection is marked thus (), the falling thus (). The union of these two gives the falling circumflex; the union of the falling and the rising inflections gives the rising circumflex. The union of the falling circumflex and the rising circumflex gives the compound rising circumflex; the union of the rising circumflex and the falling circumflex gives the compound falling circumflex. It will be noticed that the final direction of the slide determines the name of the inflection. The slides of voice vary in length from a half-tone to an octave or more, depending on the degree of energy. The inflections of the voice vary with every change of thought and emotion, thus giving "the lights and shades" to expression in reading. No absolute or infallible directions can be given for the employment of inflections, but the following may serve as GENERAL RULES: I. POSITIVE ideas take the falling slide. II. NEGATIVE and CONDITIONAL ideas take the rising slide. EXAMPLES UNDER FIRST RULE : 1. False Wizard, avaunt'! I have marshaled my clan`; Their swords are a thousand`, their bosoms are one`! Lochiel's Warning. 2. Silence that dreadful bell'! it frights the isle From her propriety`. Othello, Act II., Sc. 3. 3. Campbell. Shakespeare. Strike! till the last armed foe expires; Marco Bozzaris. 4. Be just', and fear not`. Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's`, Halleck. Thy God's`, and truth's`; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, Thou fall'st a blessed martyr'. 2. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess be hind'. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, hen the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder'. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depths of the abyss below'; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be preserved', but how tolerable might be the condition of the people, when it shall be broken up and destroyed. 3. If we fail, it can be no worse for us'. Webster. 4. I will wait for you in the corridor, if you do not stay too long'. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES: 1. Is it you, or you? It is you, and not you. 2. It is in studying as in eating—he that does it gets the benefit, and not he that sees it done'. 3. Not that I loved Cæsar less', but Rome more'. 4. Psalm of Life. 5. Not enjoyment', and not sorrow', Longfellow. Whence the wind blows, where the wind goes. Magdalena. My liege! What page, man, in the last court grammar Made you a plural? Count, you have seized the hireling,— Sire, shall I name the master'? Richelieu, Act IV., Sc. 1. Bulwer. 8. How many waste their lives and fritter away their manhood and womanhood in the everlasting query, "" What'll they think?" It arranges all their household, fashions their drawing-rooms, their feasts, their equipage, their garments, their sociality, their religion, their everything! Poor hampered souls! Society abounds in such. Men are often enough of the lot, but women oftener. They have lost all desire to be independent. It is how will the Priggses look at it, that determines them. They must do just as the Priggses do. Out upon the Priggses and all their retinue! Let us have done with "What'll they think?" and bury it with the corpses of the bowing, scraping, cringing, and fawning of feudal days, and universal slave ages. What'll They Think? 9. O, did you hear what Master Walter says! Where what things are, is naught to what they show; Where friendship and esteem, that ought to be The Hunchback, Act I., Sc. 2. 7. Sheridan Knowles. |