their
effect upon it will be markedly beneficial.

CHAPTER II

THE SPEAKING VOICE AND PRONUNCIATION

A generation ago the speaking voice was even less understood than the
singing voice. That the two were intimately connected was but half
surmised. Only an occasional person recognized what is now generally
conceded, that a good way to improve the speaking voice is to
cultivate the singing voice.

In 1887 I published a paper in the _Independent Practitioner_ defining
the singing voice and the speaking voice as identical, and contending
that the training for each should be the same so far as tone formation
is involved, a conclusion at which I had arrived several years before.
Subsequent experience has only served to confirm this opinion.

The past has produced many good speakers, among them Henry Clay,
Daniel Webster, Edwin Booth, Wm. Charles Macready, and Edward Everett.
Of the last Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "It is with delight that one
who remembers Edward Everett in his robes of rhetorical splendor,
recalls his full blown, high colored, double flowered periods; the
rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech, with just
enough of the nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding-board its
proper value in the harmonies of utterance." These examples of correct
vocalization, however, were exceptions to the general rule; they
happened to speak well, but the physiologic action of the vocal organs
which produced such results in those individual cases was not
understood, and hence the pupil ambitious to imitate them and develop
the best of which his voice was capable had no rule by which to
proceed. Few could speak with ease, still fewer could be heard by a
large assembly, and sore throats seemed to be the rule.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGING AND SPEAKING

In singing the flow of tone is unbroken between the words, but in
speaking it is interrupted. In singing tone is sustained and changed
from one pitch to another by definite intervals over a wide compass
that includes notes not attempted in speech. In speaking tone is
unsustained, not defined in pitch, is limited to a narrow compass, and
the length of the tones is not governed by the measure of music.

Notwithstanding these differences, singing and speaking tones are
produced by the vocal organs in the same way, are focused precisely
alike, have the same resonance, and are delivered in the same manner.
It has been said that speech differs from son