ty-five_ with the swift fall of
sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly
relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes
of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising
you to do so.

It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a
personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents of his delightful talk
with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present
problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you
ever read _Titan_?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady.
"Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect
the word _Yes_ to call forth the injunction, _Read it again_? What did
her inflection reveal?

However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the
Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's
frail soul through _inflection_ as she crushes letter after letter in
her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words, _Je dechire_,
and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful
voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the
close of this episode of the letters.

No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the
paragraph from Emerson's _Friendship_, quoted in a preceding chapter.
Let us repeat the first sentence again. "Our friendships hurry to short
and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and
dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart." Study, in voicing
this, how to illumine the thought by your contrastive inflection of the
words "wine and dreams" and "tough fiber of the human heart." A
lingering circumflex cadence in uttering the first two words will
suggest the unstable nature of a friendship woven out of so frail a
fabric as wine and dreams, while a swift, strong, straight-falling
inflection on each of the last six words indicates the vigorous growth
of a love rooted in the tough fiber of the human heart.

In _Monna Vanna_ Maurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb
opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene
in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]

[12] From _Monna Vanna_. By Maurice Maeterlinck. Published by Harper &
Brothers.

PRINZIVALLE. Are you in pain?

VANNA. No!

PRINZIVALLE. Will you let me have it [her wound] dressed?

VANNA. No! (Pause.)

PRINZIVA