PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION THIS revision aims to meet the question, "What shall I do to improve my speech?" As the art of speaking and reading is a habit-forming subject, the presentation of specific data takes second place to method. Facts are necessary, of course, but valuable chiefly as they help in the forming of habits. This book holds as its primary aim an organized method of improving speech habits. Accordingly, where a choice arises between an elaboration of information and an understanding of what to practice and how, the book chooses to make it easy to understand how and to offer aid in forming new and useful practices. In particular is kept in mind the announcement that this is a text of "fundamentals," that accordingly it should not attempt to exhaust any of the various subjects touched upon. A balance has been sought between enough details to stimulate lively students and enough range of subjects to serve as "fundamentals." The psychology of speech and of speech training is mostly kept below the surface. Every discussion rests on psychological foundations, but the psychology itself is not featured. There are three basic psychological-or behavior-principles involved: 1. The human body tends to operate as a whole, and is at its best as a whole. 2. Through training, however, the body learns to act by parts: torso, legs, arms, hands, eyes, and all the intricate mechanisms of voice and articulation. 3. These two types, total behavior and special activities, commonly called the emotional and the intellectual types, together constitute what is traditionally called "the mind." Thus the mind is accepted as the event part of life, the happenings of the sensoryneuro-muscular systems; and so mind is to be here understood ag what the body is doing. This assumption underlies all discussior in the text; always present, but kept as much as possible in the background. In other words, the psychology is purely objective: man cannot be said to possess a mind: he is a mind; event, performance, activity, things happening-behavior. For a habit-forming subject, such as the beginning course in speech must be, a text or manual is more to the point than a treatise. This book aims to be manual first and treatise second, if treatise it can be called at all. Accordingly, improvement of habits is placed as more important than increase of information. There is information enough here for a year's course in habit development and advice enough for more than that-possibly too much. But it is essentially a book of advice and practice, and is frankly so 'offered. Another principle observed is that good speaking is a necessary precursor of good debating, good public address, good interpretation, and good acting. A beginning course, by definition, prepares for later study of a more specialized nature. These later courses are in reality the goal of speech study, but are not to be gained at a single bound. This text is for the earlier steps that precede the ultimate flight. So this is offered as a course in "fundamentals of speech"; "speech" in the sense of the practice of good speaking, rather than "Speech" in the sense of the curricular subject. Sincere and grateful thanks are due to many of my colleagues for valuable—if not invaluable-assistance in preparing this revision, and especially the new discussions of voice, pronunciation, and speech sounds. For help in the chapter on "Voice Improvement" I am deeply indebted to Professor Alice M. Mills and Dr. Giles Wilkeson Gray, of the Department of Speech at the University of Iowa. For the discussion of pronunciation and the phonetic approach I owe especial thanks to Professor Sarah T. Barrows, of the University of Iowa, without whose aid I could not have prepared the chapter. She not only gave constant advice, but furnished the discussion of the phonetic alphabet and the use of phonetic script. Also for this discussion I am again indebted to Doctor Gray and very especially to Professor Joseph F. Smith, of the University of Utah, a pupil of Professor Daniel Jones of the University of London. To many others I owe thanks for helpful advice and frank criticism: to Professor John P. Ryan of Grinnell College, to Professor Charles A. Marsh of the University of California at Los Angeles, to Professor H. B. Gough of De Pauw University in particular. An increased number of selections for practice have been added, giving variety and abundance of material for reading and interpretation. Classical writings have been preferred. to modern. When using literature as "études" of speech, especially in a beginning course, there is undoubted value in using the old and tried. Modern material should be more than good to be usable; and this, conjoined with the difficulty of securing it, makes the task of selecting it wisely almost insuperable for this kind of book. Hence this text casts its lot mainly with selections old enough to be reliable and classic enough to be enjoyed. Grateful acknowledgments are made to the following for permission to print selections used in this book: for Henry Ward Beecher's "The Martyr President," from Patriotic Addresses by Henry Ward Beecher, used by permission of The Pilgrim Press; for Phillips Brooks' "O Little Town of Bethlehem," used by permission from Christmas Songs and Easter Carols, copyright by E. P. Dutton & Company; for James Russell Lowell's "The Courtin'," Oliver Wendell Holmes' "The Last Leaf," and "The Boys," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Rainy Day," and "Curfew," all of which are used by permission of, and by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company; Little, Brown & Co. for Samuel Lover's "Rory O'More"; Longmans, Green & Co. for "Pillar of the Cloud," by John Newman; Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. for Kellogg's "Spartacus to the Gladiators" from Elijah Kellogg, The Man and his Work, by Professor W. B. Mitchell and for "Scholar in a Republic," "Daniel O'Connell," "Murder of Lovejoy," an excerpt from "Lost Arts," and "Toussaint as a Soldier," from Wendell Phillips' Speeches, Lectures and Letters; David McKay Company for "Oh Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman; Charles Scribner's Sons for "An Apology for |