ELOCUTIONARY DRILL. 195 



find, if I may speak from my own experience and that of other persons 

 from whom I have heard, that, next to regular breathing, the whisper- 

 ing of vowels and consonants is their most speedy and sure road to 

 cure. The declaiming of whole passages in whisper will be found a 

 most beneficial practice ; all exercises in the chai't are given for 

 rendition in both forms. 



The Tables. — The first does not call for special remark. Modu- 

 lation upon one, two, three and four vowels will follow in their natu- 

 ral order. In the lower line of the second table the order of the let. 

 ters is reversed within each group, so that in forming a syllable with any 

 vowel you may begin with a thin and end with an aspirated conson- 

 ant, pav, pof ; or reversely, fib, vup. Difficulty in syllabic formation 

 and enunciation has, generally I think, the following degrees: (1) 

 repetition of the same consonant, pap, bab, faf j (2) a thin alternating 

 with a medial, or a medial alternating with a thin consonant within 

 its group, pav, bop ; tod, dot ; (3) composition of the aspirates with 

 either of the other classes within the group, pev, vup ; buv, vub ; 

 tuth, thut ; duth, thud. The formation of syllables as between group 

 and group, is comparatively easy, the greater interval, I presume, 

 allowing freer play to the parts. 



The third is an attempt at orthoepy. I have made use of the classifi- 

 cation of vowels into long and short not because it is accurate, but 

 because it is convenient. If a word such as pin be emphasized — as 

 once in the House of Commons * call you that a pin 1 ' — it will 

 necessarily be long. I sometimes doubt that our prosody proceeds 

 upon the order of the foot-rale. The intermediate which I call e (ei) 

 is written indiffei-ently, o, u, a, e, i, appears frequently in composition 

 with r as or, ur, er, ir, but, so far as I can ascei-tain, scarcely admits 

 of classification as long or short. According to its use it may be either 

 or of indefinite length. is that vowel-name which we have in common 

 with European peoples. Its position in English is well defined, as 

 in note, and we might have expected it to show marked varieties of 

 length. But not so. Its short form has shot into intermediate d, 

 (awe) while the short sounds of other vowels have remained compara- 

 tively stable. One must go north of the Tweed, at least north of Mr. 

 Oliphant's Great Sundering Line, before he reaches nOht, pOht, hOht. 

 The Scotch have preserved the old English vowel with very great 

 exactness. I give no examples, long or short, of the intermediate u 



