ely stole a
glance around looking for the apparition described in the weird
ghost story. The secret power that somewhere lay enthralled you.
Was it not in the husky whisper or the hush of restraint? Let
that speaker tell the same story in the middle pitched narrative
tone, and lo! the spell is vanished. If the thunder thrills that
rocked and vibrated through his voice were taken from
Demosthenes, would he have ever driven Eschines into exile?

[Side note: Two advantages of inflection]

The practice of varied cadences in speech has two genuine
advantages--_it saves the speaker from fatigue and the hearers
from weariness_.

When a man varies his tone of voice he breaks up the arrangement
in the group of muscles that till then bore the stress of effort:
a new combination is formed, and the work transferred to fresh
muscles. This brings instant relief. A similar sense of
refreshment comes to his hearers.

In speaking, as in singing, we must have melody, but there is no
melody without variety. People would rush even from a Melba if
she sang every note in the same key. Inflection not only
constitutes the melody of speech, but imparts to it rhetorical
significance and logical force.

The want of success in many a speaker who has both a good voice
and good matter may be found in the fact that his voice, instead
of being as flexible as a piece of whalebone, is as unbending as
a bar of iron; or, worse still, perhaps he adopts the dreary
monotony of the sing-song tone: the two unvarying notes so
suggestive of the up and down movements of a pump-handle. This
"cuckoo" tone would blight the best written sermon.

[Side note: Two impediments to good preaching]

Nothing now remains except to warn the young preacher against the
two most common defects--affectation of voice and word-dropping
at the end of the sentences.

[Side note: An artificial tone of voice]

"Preach," says Dr. Ireland, "in a manner that the people will
understand, and that goes straight to their hearts, and not in
the stilted phraseology of the seventeenth century sermon." Sage
advice! The comic stage has set the world laughing at the
grotesque inflections of the parson preacher; but is his
counterpart never found amongst ourselves. Is the Catholic pulpit
free from speakers whose ridiculous cadences at once class them
amongst the disciples of the Rev. Mr. Spalding?

[Side note: Artificiality means failure]

We have met priests, typical of a considerab