ding pronunciation,
enunciation, and voice. It is the essential connection of these
elements with English speech that we have been so slow to realize. We
have felt that they were externals, desirable but not necessary
adjuncts,--pretty tags of an exceptional gift or culture. Many an
intelligent school director to-day will say, "I don't care much about
HOW you say a thing; it is WHAT you say that counts." He cannot see
that voice and enunciation and pronunciation are essentials. But they
are. You can no more help affecting the meaning of your words by the
way you say them than you can prevent the expressions of your face from
carrying a message; the message may be perverted by an uncouth habit,
but it will no less surely insist on recognition.

The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human
soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex.
They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure
intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are
enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which
have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves.
The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the
desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,--these
seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal
signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as
will inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired.

There is no "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written
sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing
inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank
of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism,
or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This
is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what."
Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment,
spoken by Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an
uneducated ranchman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the
sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing
qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words
themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's
just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from
the associations of fine habit betrayed