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4. An ability to speak amidst a noise that is sufficient to render the human voice nearly or quite inaudible.

5. An ability to speak better in the dark than in the light. 6. An ability to speak in a measured manner.

7. An ability to speak in a drawling manner.

8. An ability to speak with the mouth more or less distorted. 9. An ability to speak in any key, either higher or lower than that in which the stammerer usually converses.

10. An ability to speak with a halloo.

11. An ability to speak when the attention is divided or arrested by some object or circumstance more or less irrelevant to the subject.

12. An ability to speak in concert or simultaneously. Every one who has learned to sing, knows how much easier it is to sing in concert than alone. All the exercises, therefore, for the cure of stammering, should, at first, be conducted in concert.

Stammering may be considered a fault in elocution, the result of defective education, and is confirmed by habit. If children were properly instructed in speaking and reading, this affection of the vocal organs would, probably, seldom or never occur. Hence, no mode of treatment that is not founded in just elocution or the correct exercise of the organs of speech for the purposes of vocal expression, can be relied on. This must appear obvious to every intelligent and reflecting mind. The stammerer must be taught how to give language the pitch, time, and force which the sense requires. To effect this, his muscles of speech, which have long been refractory, must be trained till they are brought under the control of volition, and like a well-marshalled troop of soldiers, made to act in harmonious concert.

Oral language may be resolved into certain sounds which are its elements. Now there are certain positions of the organs of speech more favourable than others for the production of the elements. The stammerer should be made thoroughly acquainted with these positions, and, in connexion with them, should be required to exercise his voice in the most energetic manner upon all the elements singly, till he can utter them without hesitation. He should also utter them in various combinations, not only according to the laws of syllabication, but in every irregular way. The vowels should be exploded from the throat with great force; and they should be sung, as well as pronounced with the rising and falling inflection, through every interval of pitch within the compass of the voice.

The pupil should be drilled in various exercises whose highest peculiarity is time and force. Time may be measured by means of the Metronome, by beating with the hand, and by marching.*

* Also by beating with the dumb-beus.

Pitch, time, and force, are the elements of expression, and a proper combination of them in reading and speaking, constitutes good elocution. When, therefore, the stammerer becomes master of these elements, as well as the elements of the language, he may com mence speaking and reading. In his first attempts at conversation, both teacher and pupil should speak in a deliberate manner, with a full, firm tone of voice, and in a very low pitch.

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The stammerer should now commit to memory a short piece which requires to be spoken with explosive force; for example, Satan's speech to his legions." The members of the class should stand at a sufficient distance from each other to prevent their hands coming in contact when their arms are extended. They should then pronounce the speech in concert, after the teacher, and accompany it with appropriate gesticulation. It should be repeated again and again, till each pupil can give it proper expression, both as regards voice and gesture. Each pupil should then, in turn, take the place of the teacher and give out the speech to the class. To prevent the pupil's stammering, while he is performing the teacher's part, the teacher himself should play an accompaniment on the violoncello, violin, organ, drum, or some other instrument. At first the notes should be made very loud; but if the effort of the pupil, standing out of the class, is likely to be successful, they should gradually be made softer and softer, and, finally, the accompaniment omitted altogether. This piece should be pronounced alternately with one which requires to be spoken with long quantity and in a low pitch, as "Ossian's Address to the Sun."

When the pupil has mastered these two kinds of reading, he may take up dignified dialogue, and, lastly, conversational pieces. He should drawl out difficult words, which are generally those having short vowels preceded by labials, dentals, and gutturals.

In very bad cases of stammering, the pupil should first sing the words, then drawl them, then pronounce them with very long quantity, and thus gradually approximate to common speaking.

As soon as the pupils can speak without stammering, they should recite singly in a very large room, or in the open air, at a distance from the audience, which, at first, should consist of the members of the class only. A few visiters should be occasionally introduced, and the number should be gradually increased. In this way the stammerer will soon acquire sufficient confidence to speak before a large assembly. In some cases it may be expedient for the stammerer to recite before an audience in a dark room; but as he acquires confidence, light should be gradually admitted.

Stammerers, instead of speaking immediately after inspiration, as they should do, often attempt to speak immediately after expiration, when, of course, they have no power to speak. The lungs, like a bellows, perform their part in the process of speaking, best, when plentifully supplied with air. This is an important fact, and should

be remembered, not only by stammerers, but also by those who have occasion to read or speak in public. Loud speaking, long-continued, with the lungs but partially distended, is very injurious to these organs it is apt to occasion a spitting of blood, which is not unfrequently a precursor of pulmonary consumption. But loud speaking, with proper management of the breath, is a healthful exercise: be sides strengthening the muscles which it calls into action, it pro motes the decarbonization of the blood, and, consequently, exerts a salutary influence on the system generally. [See additional remarks, in Appendix at the end of the volume, where will be found an account of the new surgical operation for the radical cure of stammering, which has been performed, with more or less success, both in Europe and in this country.]

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SECTION II.

PITCH.

[graphic]

ITCH is the degree of the elevation of sounds.

As pitch regards the elevation of sounds, it respects their acuteness and gravity. I use the term pitch in its widest signification. In the science of music, it is used not only in the sense in which I employ it, but it also has a special application: in the latter, it is applied to the medium note, the regulating note to which instruments are brought by the act of tuning. When applied in this sense, it is termed concert-pitch. The note which has been adopted, by common consent, as the pitch-note, is A, the open note of the second string of the violin: it is written in the second space of the treble staff.

A lax division of pitch is into high and low; in other words, into acute and grave; (those notes being called high, or acute, which are above the natural pitch of the voice; and those low, or grave, which are below it)

Strictly speaking, the application of high and low, to pitch, is without philosophic foundation: it has originated, not from any

principles in the acuteness and gravity of sound, but from the relative position of the notes in the graphic scale. This is obvious from the fact that the degrees of the scale may be exemplified in a horizontal line, by varying the forms of the graphic notes, as was done by the Greeks.

An exact division of pitch, as demonstrated by the diatonic scale, is into tones and semitones.*

The word tone, as here employed, signifies a certain degree of difference in pitch between two notes, as that between the first and second note of the scale. But in some cases we use the word tone, as synonymous with note; for instance, in some persons the tones of the voice are more musical than in others - that is, the notes

of the voice.

The diatonic scale consists of seven sounds, moving discretely from grave to acute, or from acute to grave, by different degrees of pitch, of which the semitone may be the common measure, or divisor, without a fraction. The scale, however, is not complete without the octave, which is a repetition of the first note in the eighth degree.

The notes do not ascend by equal degrees of pitch, but by tones and semitones; the semitones occurring between the third and fourth, and seventh and eighth. The order of the scale, therefore, is as follows: two tones and a semitone, three tones and a semitone. And should it be desirable to extend the series of sounds, the eighth note of the first octave will become the first note of the second octave; the eighth note of the second octave, the first note of the third, and so on.

In teaching the pupil to "raise and fall the eight notes," as it is called, the monosyllables, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si,† may be employed.

Diag. 4 is a graphic representation of the scale. The heavy, horizontal, parallel lines, represent the notes; and the spaces between them, the consecutive intervals of the scale.

* DIATONIC [Greek, da, by or through, and Tovos, sound]. Ascending or descending by sounds whose proximate intervals are not more than a tone, nor less than a semitone.

† Pronounced Dỏ, Rả, Mẻ, Fả, Söl, Lá, Sẻ.

1-8-1-Do

-7--Si

-6--La

|-5--Sol

-4--Fa-

-3--Mi

THE DIATONIC SCALE. (Diag. 4.)

-2--Re

|-1-|-Do-

An interval is a difference in pitch. Intervals are either discrete, or concrete. A discrete interval is the difference in pitch between any two notes which vary from each other in acuteness and gravity. A concrete interval is that portion of the scale through which the voice slides on a concrete of speech.

The difference in pitch between the first and second note of the scale, is called the interval of a tone, or second; between the second and third, a tone; between the third and fourth, a semitone; between the fourth and fifth, a tone; between the fifth and sixth, a tone; between the sixth and seventh, a tone; between the seventh and eighth, a semitone.

The difference in pitch between the first and third note of the scale, is called the interval of a third; between the first and fourth, the interval of a fourth; between the first and fifth, the interval of a fifth; between the first and sixth, the interval of a sixth; between the first and seventh, the interval of a seventh; between the first and eighth, the interval of an octave.

The intervals between the first and third, fourth and sixth, and fifth and seventh, are called major thirds; because they contain two tones, or four semitones; but as the intervals between the second and fourth. third

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