n the home circle, or in the social gathering.

Though a person's descent from Belgravia or Billingsgate is in a great
measure revealed by the propriety of his discourse, yet this refers
principally to those words that are employed by the masses in the
every-day conversations of life, rather than to technicalities and
words related to particular professions, the use of which is generally
confined to the specially instructed. But when a man stands forth as
an orator, a teacher, a minister, or a professor of some college, it
is certainly not unreasonable for those that sit under his
instruction, to expect and demand that his speech should be almost
free from errors.

One occupying such a position may well be excused for occasional
embarrassment, poor voice, unpleasant address, hesitation of delivery,
and various failings and peculiarities that can not be overcome, but
little or no allowance can be made for constantly repeated errors.

Probably there has never been a public speaker so perfect in diction,
that he has not in moments of embarrassment, or when much absorbed in
his subject, been guilty of grammatical inaccuracies or mistakes of
pronunciation; and doubtless he is as often aware of them as his
listeners are, as soon as they drop from his lips, but it would be
foolish to call attention to them by going back to correct them. But
when these offenses are so glaring and so frequently repeated that it
is evident the speaker knows no better, it is no wonder that the
educated hearer often thinks that the teacher had better leave his
position and submit to being taught.

What allowance can an intelligent congregation make for their minister
who has nothing else to do but prepare his sermons, if, besides a
multitude of common English mistakes, he pronounces more than half of
his scriptural names in a manner that is not sanctioned by any
authority?

When the orotund medical professor stands up to address his students, or
to engage in the discussions of a convention, and rolls out technicality
after technicality pronounced in a manner that would be disowned by the
original Latin or Greek, and is totally at variance with established
usage, who would not ask for a little less elegance and a little more
education? If it required a great amount of labor outside of the usual
course of study for professional men to acquire a knowledge of the
pronunciation of words peculiar to the professions, the subject might be
treated wit