Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INFLECTION OR SLIDES. An inflection or slide of the voice is a glide from high to low or vice versa. Elementally there are two inflections: the falling and the rising. The rising inflection indicates a question asked. The falling indicates an assertion made. They picture two distinct actions of thought. The falling inflection or downward slide pictures the thought as coming to a stop; of separating itself from what may follow. It signifies completion; it is retrospective; it is assertive and declares the will of the speaker. The rising inflection, or upward slide pictures the thought as not having reached a conclusion. It connects the thought with something yet to come. It signifies incom- pletion and defers to the will of the hearer. Sometimes these two conditions of the thought become interwoven, complex, — a mixed desire to ask a question and make an assertion, the question so mixed with the assertion of the speaker's opinion that a circumflex inflection, or a waving slide results, as "You are not angry? What have I done?" Finally there is the suspensive condition of the thought indicated by the monotone. Examples for Practice. FALLING INFLECTIONS OK DOWNWARD SLIDES. 1. It is this accursed American war that has led us, step by step, into all our present misfortunes and national dis- 14 INFLECTION OB SLIDES. graces. What was the cause of our wasting forty millions of money, and sixty thousand lives? The American war! What was it that produced the French rescript and a French war? The American war! What was it that produced the Spanish manifesto and a Spanish war? The American war! What was it that armed forty-two thousand men hi Ireland with the arguments carried on the points of forty thousand bayonets? The American war! For what are we about to...