7.  Note the inflections employed in some speech or conversation.  Were they the best that could be used to bring out the meaning?  Criticise and illustrate.

8.  Render the following passages: 

    Has the gentleman done?  Has he completely done?

    And God said, Let there be light:  and there was light.

9.  Invent an indirect question and show how it would naturally be inflected.

10.  Does a direct question always require a rising inflection?  Illustrate.

11.  Illustrate how the complete ending of an expression or of a speech is indicated by inflection.

12.  Do the same for incompleteness of idea.

13.  Illustrate (a) trembling, (b) hesitation, and (c) doubt by means of inflection.

14.  Show how contrast may be expressed.

15.  Try the effects of both rising and falling inflections on the italicized words in the following sentences.  State your preference.

    Gentlemen, I am persuaded, nay, I am resolved to speak.

    It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.

SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE

In the following selections secure emphasis by means of long falling inflections rather than loudness.

Repeat these selections, attempting to put into practise all the technical principles that we have thus far had; emphasizing important words, subordinating unimportant words, variety of pitch, changing tempo, pause, and inflection.  If these principles are applied you will have no trouble with monotony.

Constant practise will give great facility in the use of inflection and will render the voice itself flexible.

    CHARLES I

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow!  We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him!  We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o’clock in the morning!  It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.

    —­T.B.  MACAULAY.

    ABRAHAM LINCOLN