The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1883-05-26
Speaking as an. Art.

Speaking in modern times, and in
England especially, is a more neglected
art than singing. Even inShakspeare'
days there must have been, q state of
things not very dissimilar for he makes
Dogberry, who always manages to state
the wrong proposition, say: s"Readin'
and writin' come by nature" and there
IS a quaintly satiricaf passage in that
graceful and ethereal playable '.Mid-
summer Nights Dream which goes
straight to the point Theseus, IN COM
fnenting on the Clowns blunders Of die
tion, says; viileIsoqo tn parehiys
"Where have come, great clerks have pur-
posed .fAlLt |1q HilIltAl p9t
To greet me with premeditated welcomes;
Where have seen them shiver and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practiced accents in their fears,
End in conclusion d9mbly have broke off,
Not paying me welcome" i' 4iHHf f-t.
N 1t can not be too often reiterated that
speech is essentially an requirement,
and that it must be learned At first,
indeed, it is picked up by imitation in
early childhood, and later on in life is
chance; though much can be done with
little labor to correct defects both of
this and of the handwriting, the two
first things by which a mans intellect
ual status is Judged of. 1t is unlike
singing, in that pleasant and articulate
speaking does not require the gift of a
musical organ, but it is open to all
alike. There exists, however, in some
quarters. a prejudice against fluent
speaking. lnetfableness is held to in
dictate grasp of thoughts; taciturnity to
be the cloak of profundity. This would
be correct if tluency were to supersede
| accuracy; but such an antagonism is by
no means necessary, or it would reach
its natural limit in the case of the sail
or's parrot, which :. could not talk. but
thought the more.
Some other hindrances to correct
speech; require passing comment. In
! the first place, its requirement is too
| much mixed up with recitation and
dramatic representation. Neither eX-
aggeration nor seryile imitation pro-
duces good speaking, the one salient
! feature of which is naturalness and
spontaneity. Evolutionary teaching has
/ also been hindered by an over-cultiva-
! ton Of poetical rhythm, which tends to
reduce speech to a kind of sing-song.
The same may be said of punctuation,
which is not Evolutionary, but gram
NAUTICAL; though the absurd rule has
been formulated to "pause one for the
comma, two for the semicolon, three
for the colon, and four for the full stop"
1t is sufficient to test this pedantic error
/ by reading any piece of nervous or pa
thetic English on the system, and thus
to show its full absurdity.
1t has been said above that whereas
in singing the musical note is pre-
dominant, in speaking it is secondary
and subsidiary to the words; but it still
exists, and its function is well described
by Cicero in his treatise, de Ora
tore. He says: {" Est In d,cendo
ethan q,iiiam cantus obscurior.n An
appreciation of this fact lis of the
greatest value 10 the public. speaker,
since the imperfect regulation of the
laryngea element often renders the
voice indistinct and even inaudible.
Many speakers drop their voices with a
descending infection. and from want
of musical ear fail to raise it again;
others err from excess of noise, and in
their anxiety to be audible shout and
labor, with the result of enveloping
the significant sound in an overwhelm-
ing mass of heterogeneous and mean
ingless vibration. London Nature.