ion,
enunciation, and voice. It is the essential connection of these elements
with English speech that we have been so slow to realise. We have felt
that they were externals, desirable but not necessary adjuncts--pretty
tags of an exceptional gift or culture. Many an intelligent person will
say, "I don't care much about _how_ you say a thing; it is _what_ you
say that counts." He cannot see that voice and enunciation and
pronunciation are essentials. But they are. You can no more help
affecting the meaning of your words by the way you say them than you can
prevent the expressions of your face from carrying a message; the
message may be perverted by an uncouth habit, but it will no less surely
insist on recognition.

The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human
soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex.
They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure
intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are
enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which
have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves. The
mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the desire
of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,--these seek far
more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal signs; they
demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as will
inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired.

There is no "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written
sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing
inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank
of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful scepticism,
or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is
the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as
true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by a
Lord Rosebery and by a man from White chapel or an uneducated ploughman,
is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment comes to the
mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound
which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words themselves retain all
their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear
enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations
of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech. And