“Foolish Flavius, flushing feverishly, fiercely found fault with
    Flora’s frivolity.[7]”

    Mary’s matchless mimicry makes much mischief.

    Seated on shining shale she sells sea shells.

    You youngsters yielded your youthful yule-tide yearnings
    yesterday.

2.  Sound the l in each of the following words, repeated in sequence: 

    Blue black blinkers blocked Black Blondin’s eyes.

3.  Do you say a bloo sky or a blue sky?

4.  Compare the u sound in few and in new.  Say each aloud, and decide which is correct, Noo York, New Yawk, or New York?

5.  Pay careful heed to the directions of this chapter in reading the following, from Hamlet.  After the interview with the ghost of his father, Hamlet tells his friends Horatio and Marcellus that he intends to act a part: 

    Horatio.  O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet.  And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd so’er I bear myself,—­ As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,—­ That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber’d thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could, an if we would,” Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be, an if there might,” Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note That you know aught of me:  this not to do, So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.

—­Act I. Scene V.

6.  Make a list of common errors of pronunciation, saying which are due to faulty articulation, wrong accentuation, and incomplete enunciation.  In each case make the correction.

7.  Criticise any speech you may have heard which displayed these faults.

8.  Explain how the false shame of seeming to be too precise may hinder us from cultivating perfect verbal utterance.

9.  Over-precision is likewise a fault.  To bring out any syllable unduly is to caricature the word.  Be moderate in reading the following: 

THE LAST SPEECH OF MAXIMILIAN DE ROBESPIERRE

The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant!  Were I such they would grovel at my feet.  I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful.  Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support; there would be a covenant between them and me.  Tyranny must have tools.  But the enemies of tyranny,—­whither does their path tend?  To the tomb, and to immortality!  What tyrant is my protector?  To what faction do I belong?  Yourselves!