Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/114

104 that slipshod kind which is mostly used in ordinary conversation, is an art, and as such has to be learned, often with much labor. The complicated muscular actions, the nice nervous adjustments, the combination of these into one harmonious effort directed to a particular end, and, finally, the mastery of all these movements till they can be produced automatically without a direct and continuous exercise of will-power, form a complex process which takes years to learn, and which by many is even then very imperfectly acquired. Good speaking is a higher development of the art, which bears the same relation to speech as ordinarily heard that the horsemanship of an Archer or a Cannon bears to the performance of a costermonger's boy on the paternal donkey.

A man who speaks well not only makes himself intelligible to his hearers without difficulty to them, but with a minimum of effort on his own part. If the voice is properly used, the throat hardly ever suffers, but wrong production is a fertile source of discomfort and even disease in that region. It should be clearly understood that public speaking, in addition to its intellectual aspects, is a physical performance which requires "wind" and "muscle" and the perfect management of one's bodily resources, like any other athletic feat. To attempt to speak in public without previous training is like trying to climb the Matterhorn without preparation, and is just as certain to end in failure if not disaster.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the training of the voice should begin almost in the cradle. I do not, of course, mean that a baby should be taught to squall according to rule, or that the prattle of children should be made a laborious task. But I wish to insist on the importance of surrounding the child, as soon as it begins to lisp, with persons who speak well. "All languages," as old Roger Ascham says, "both learned and mother tongues, are begotten and gotten solely by imitation. For as ye use to hear so ye learn to speak; if you hear no other ye speak not yourself; and whom ye only hear of them ye only learn." Quintilian says: "Before all ... let the nurses speak properly. The boy will hear them first, and will try to shape his words by imitating them." This applies chiefly to pronunciation and the correct use of words; but much might also be done for the right management of the voice if every child could grow up among people who speak well. I should be disposed to make it an essential point in the selection of a nurse or governess that she should have a good voice as well as a refined accent.

In antiquity the training of an orator was almost as elaborate an affair as the training of a race-horse is with us. Not only the voice, but the whole man, physical, intellectual, and moral, was carefully prepared, with conscientious minuteness of detail, for