r ability to surrender the jaw by placing your fingers
on either side your head in front of the ears at the conjunction of the
jaws, and first open your mouth with intention, noting the action; then
think the word No, and surrender the jaw to the forming of the word,
noting the action or absence of action again.

So much for the set jaw. Ten or fifteen minutes a day--yes, even five
minutes a day of actual practice with the constant thought of surrender,
will reward you. Try it.

And still the channel is not open. There remains that most unruly
member, the tongue. Dora Duty Jones refers all faults of technique in
speech to failure in the management of the tongue. Miss Jones bases her
entire system upon the three words, "On the tongue," in Hamlet's
injunction to the players: speak the speech ... trippingly _on the
tongue_. That this organ plays a vital part in the presentation of
speech is not to be questioned; that it is the chief actor may be
disputed. But whether the tongue is to play a main or a minor part the
training to which Miss Jones would subject it is most interesting, and
_The Technique of Speech_[14] should belong to the library of every
student of expression. The only danger of this training lies in that of
making the tongue a self-conscious actor. What we require of the tongue
is that it shall act as a free agent in modeling the perfect word. Many
of the exercises given by Miss Jones can be safely attempted only after
the preparatory freeing of the organ has been accomplished, but all of
them will eventually repay investigation.

[14] _The Technique of Speech_, by Dora Duty Jones, published by Harper
& Brothers.

Meanwhile the following drill for freeing the tongue ought to develop
the agility we desire:

_First._--Combine _l_ (which may be called the tongue's pet consonant)
with _ae_ and repeat the syllable _la_ with constantly increasing speed
to form the following groups: _lae'_ ... _lae lae lae'_ ... _lae lae lae'_ ...
_lae'_ ... _lae'_.

_Second._--Change the accent over the vowel and repeat the exercise
until all the sounds of _a_ are exhausted in combination with the _l_.

_Third._--Change the vowel and repeat the exercise until all the vowels
have been used in combination with _l_.

_Fourth._--Change the consonant to _d_, then to _t_, then _n_, and
repeat the exercise.

_Fifth._--Follow these exercises on groups of syllables with work on
groups of words of one syllable beginning with _l_,