or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is
the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as
true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by a
Lord Rosebery and by a man from White chapel or an uneducated ploughman,
is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment comes to the
mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound
which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words themselves retain all
their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear
enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations
of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech. And, further,
the immense personal equation shows itself in the beauty and power of
the vocal expressiveness, which carries shades of meaning, unguessed
delicacies of emotion, intimations of beauty, to every ear. In the other
case, the thought is clouded by unavoidable suggestions of ignorance and
ugliness, brought by the pronunciation and voice, even to an
unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by inaccurate inflection and
uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst of all, the personal
atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost in transmission
through a clumsy, ill-fitted medium.

The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the
same when spoken. And it is the spoken sentence which is the original
and the usual mode of communication.

The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a matter
of "how," and to which we are awakening, must be corrected chiefly, at
least at first, by the elementary schools. The home is the ideal place
for it, but the average home in many districts is no longer a possible
place for it. The child of parents poorly educated and bred in limited
circumstances, the child of powerful provincial influences, must all