4. "Who but the locksmith could have made such music? A gleam of sun shining through the unsashed window and checkering the dark workshop with a broad patch of light fell full upon him, as though attracted by his sunny heart."

5. "Portia. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am; though for myself alone,

I would not be ambitious in my wish,

To wish myself much better; yet, for you,

I would be trebled twenty times myself;

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich;"

6. "Listen to the water-mill;

Through the livelong day,

How the clicking of its wheels
Wears the hours away!
Languidly the autumn wind
Stirs the forest leaves,

From the fields the reapers sing,
Binding up their sheaves;

And a proverb haunts my mind,
As a spell is cast;

'The mill can never grind

With the water that is past.'

7. "Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is good steadily hastening towards immortality. And the vast all that is called evil I saw hastening to merge itself, and become lost and dead."

8. "When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies; God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts: who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

9. "We one day descried some shapeless object drifting at a distance. At sea, everything that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed off by the waves.

"There was no trace by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long sea-weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought I, are the crew? Their struggle has long been over. They have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest. Their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the deep. Silence,

oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one can tell the story of their end."

10. "Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar when I put

out to sea;

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home."

11. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."

ARTICULATION.

1. Lovely art thou, O Peace! and lovely are thy children, and lovely are the prints of thy footsteps in the green valleys.

2. Steel clanging sounded on steel. Helmets are cleft on high; blood bursts and smokes around. As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high; as the last peal of the thunder of heaven; such is the noise of battle.

3. Like leaves on trees the life of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies,

They fall successive, and successive rise:

So generations in their course decay;

So flourish these, when those have pass'd away.

4. To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is an excellent preparative. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy until you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle and novelties of another world.

5. What wak'st thou, Spring?-Sweet voices in the woods, And reed-like echoes, that have long been mute; Thou bringest back, to fill the solitudes,

The lark's clear pipe, the cuckoo's viewless flute,
Whose tone seems breathing mournfulness or glee,
Even as our hearts may be.

13

INFLECTION OR SLIDES.

An inflection or slide of the voice is a glide from high to low or vice versa.

Elementally there are two inflections: the falling and the rising.

The rising inflection indicates a question asked. The falling indicates an assertion made. They picture two distinct actions of thought. The falling inflection or downward slide pictures the thought as coming to a stop; of separating itself from what may follow. It signifies completion; it is retrospective; it is assertive and declares the will of the speaker.

The rising inflection, or upward slide pictures the thought as not having reached a conclusion. It connects the thought with something yet to come. It signifies incompletion and defers to the will of the hearer.

Sometimes these two conditions of the thought become interwoven, complex, a mixed desire to ask a question and make an assertion, the question so mixed with the assertion of the speaker's opinion that a circumflex inflection, or a waving slide results, as "You are not angry? What have I done?"

Finally there is the suspensive condition of the thought indicated by the monotone.

Examples for Practice.

FALLING INFLECTIONS OR DOWNWARD SLIDES.

1. It is this accursed American war that has led us, step by step, into all our present misfortunes and national dis