tones, and even in ordinary conversation there is a difference
of from three to six semi-tones, as I have found in my
investigations, and in some persons the range is as high as one
octave.

--WILLIAM SCHEPPEGRELL, _Popular Science Monthly_.


By pitch, as everyone knows, we mean the relative position of a vocal
tone--as, high, medium, low, or any variation between. In public speech
we apply it not only to a single utterance, as an exclamation or a
monosyllable (_Oh!_ or _the_) but to any group of syllables, words, and
even sentences that may be spoken in a single tone. This distinction it
is important to keep in mind, for the efficient speaker not only changes
the pitch of successive syllables (see Chapter VII, "Efficiency through
Inflection"), but gives a different pitch to different parts, or
word-groups, of successive sentences. It is this phase of the subject
which we are considering in this chapter.


_Every Change in the Thought Demands a Change in the Voice-Pitch_

Whether the speaker follows the rule consciously, unconsciously, or
subconsciously, this is the logical basis upon which all good voice
variation is made, yet this law is violated more often than any other by
_public_ speakers. A criminal may disregard a law of the state without
detection and punishment, but the speaker who violates this regulation
suffers its penalty at once in his loss of effectiveness, while his
innocent hearers must endure the monotony--for monotony is not only a
sin of the perpetrator, as we have shown, but a plague on the victims as