QUALITIES OF VOICE.

By quality of voice is meant the resonance of vocal sound.

PURE TONE.

Give every man thine ear but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

Rich, not gaudy, for the apparel oft proclaims the man.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion. Evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the Lord understand all things. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

OROTUND.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns; thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon this naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,
And shot toward heaven.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, thou art very great thou art clothed with honor and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind; who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire; who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge, and what a heat,
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

PECTORAL.

You may, if it be God's will, gain our barren and rugged mountains. But, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes; and when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women, and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master!

ASPIRATE.

All heaven and earth are still,-though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep.

Soldiers! You are now within a few steps of the enemy's outpost. Our scouts report them as slumbering in parties around their watch-fires, and utterly unprepared for our approach. A swift and noiseless advance around that projecting rock, and we are upon them, we capture them without the possibility of resistance. One disorderly noise or motion may leave us at the mercy of their advanced guard. Let every man keep the strictest silence, under pain of instant death!

GUTTURAL.

And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?

NASAL.

Kind friends, at your call, I'm come here to sing;
Or rather to talk of my woes;

Though small's the delight to you I can bring,

The subject's concerning my nose.

Some noses are large, and others are small,

For nature's vagaries are such,

To some folks, I'm told, she gives no nose at all,
But to me she has given too much.

FORCE.

Force is the volume or amount of voice used in reading or speaking.

SOFT.

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!

MEDIUM.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling symbal. And though I have the gifts of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

LOUD.

'Tis Heaven's commanding trumpet, long and loud,
Like Sinai's thunder, pealing from the cloud!
While Nature hears, with terror-mingled trust,

The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust.

Freedom calls you! Quick, be ready,—
Think of what your sires have been,—
Onward, onward! strong and steady,—
Drive the tyrant to his den.

On, and let the watchwords be,
Country, home, and liberty!

STRESS.

Stress is the application of force to different parts of a word or an element.

RADICAL.

What man dare, I dare;

Approach thou like the Russian bear,

The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger.
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: Or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword!

MEDIAN.

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams. O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty: the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave.

FINAL.

Blaze, with your serried columns!

I will not bend the knee!

For shackles ne'er again shall bind

The arm which now is free.

THOROUGH.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them,

Volleyed and thundered.

To arms, to arms, ye brave!

The patriot's sword unsheathe;

March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On liberty or death!

COMPOUND.

""Tis green, 'tis green, sir I assure ye,”-
"Green!" cries the other in a fury;
"Why, sir, d'ye think I've lost my eyes?"

TREMOR.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door;
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh! give relief; and Heaven will bless your store.

ΤΙΜΕ.

Time refers to the rate of utterance.

SLOW.

I had a dream that was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.

MEDIUM.

The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination.

The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side we turn our eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon our view.