, the
word _months_ is habitually pronounced by almost everyone as if it
were spelled _munce_. The following list for practice will afford
material to begin with; other lists should be prepared by the teacher.

_Plinth, blithe, sphere, shriek, quote, whether, tipt, depth, robed,
hoofed, calved, width, hundredth, exhaust, whizzed, hushed, ached,
wagged, etched, pledged, asked, dreamt, alms, adapts, depths, lefts,
heav'ns, meddl'd, beasts, wasps, hosts, exhausts, gasped, desks,
selects, facts, hints, healths, tenths, salts, builds, wilds, milked,
mulcts, elms, prob'd'st, think'st, hold'st, attempt'st, want'st,
heard'st, mask'st._

EXERCISE.--Utter the words in the above list in distinct
articulate whispers; then with vocality, softly and gently.
Avoid hissing and mouthing.

While, in reading, distinct enunciation is an excellence to be aimed at,
yet the words of a sentence should not be uttered as if completely
severed from one another. Every sentence falls naturally into _groups_,
the several groups being composed of words related in sense; and for
impressive reading the words of each group should be _implicated_, or
tied together. For example, in the line, _Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I ponder'd, weak and weary_, there are naturally three groups; in
the line, _The quality of mercy is not strain'd_, there is but one. In
these groups the terminal sound of each word is implicated with the
initial sound of the succeeding word. If the terminal sound is a tonic,
or a flowing subtonic, the implication consists of a gentle murmuring
prolongation of the terminal element coalescing with the initial element
of the next word; if the terminal element is a flowing atonic the
prolongation will not be accompanied by a murmur; but in either case the
vocal organs, while prolonging the sound of one word, prepare, as it
were, to begin the next. If the terminal element be one of the abrupt
subtonics the vocal murmur is difficult to produce, and in this case,
and also when the terminal element is an abrupt atonic, there is a
suspension of the voice for a time equal to that occupied by the
murmuring prolongation in the other cases; but the organs keep the
position which they have in finishing the one word until they relax to
take position for the utterance, with renewed exertion, of the opening
sound of the next.

It must be added that this implication is not confined to the component
words of a group; for the sake of