d readily
and to read well are accomplishments acquired only after many days, weeks
even, of practise.

Foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our
speech, and in general, this reproach is just, for there are many persons
who do scanty justice to the vowel-elements of our language. Although
these elements constitute its music they are continually mistreated. We
flirt with and pirouette around them constantly. If it were not so,
English would be found full of beauty and harmony of sound. Familiar with
the maxim, "Take care of the vowels and the consonants will take care of
themselves,"--a maxim that when put into practise has frequently led to
the breaking-down of vowel values--the writer feels that the common custom
of allowing "the consonants to take care of themselves" is pernicious. It
leads to suppression or to imperfect utterance, and thus produces
indistinct articulation.

The English language is so complex in character that it can scarcely be
learned by rule, and can best be mastered by the study of such idioms and
phrases as are provided in this book; but just as care must be taken to
place every accent or stress on the proper syllable in the pronouncing of
every word it contains, so must the stress or emphasis be placed on the
proper word in every sentence spoken. To read or speak pleasingly one
should resort to constant practise by doing so aloud in private, or
preferably, in the presence of such persons as know good reading when they
hear it and are masters of the melody of sounds. It was Dean Swift's
belief that the common fluency of speech in many men and most women was
due to scarcity of matter and scarcity of words. He claimed that a master
of language possessed a mind full of ideas, and that before speaking, such
a mind paused to select the choice word--the phrase best suited to the
occasion. "Common speakers," he said, "have only one set of ideas, and one
set of words to clothe them in," and these are always ready on the lips.
Because he holds the Dean's view sound to-day, the writer will venture to
warn the readers of this book against a habit that, growing far too common
among us, should be checked, and this is the iteration and reiteration in
conversation of "the battered, stale, and trite" phrases, the like of
which were credited by the worthy Dean to the women of his time.

Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence. Speech
is the harvest of t