of any other instrument, we apply the utmost skill for the perfect
adjustment or coordination of all the means of control. We do this for
the attainment of power, for the conserving of energy, for the insuring
of endurance and ease of operation. This is the end in the training of
the voice. It is to avoid friction. It is to prevent nervous strain,
muscular distortion, and failing power, and to secure easy response to
the will of the speaker. The point not wholly understood or heeded is
that, as a rule, the unpleasing voice is an indication of ill
adjustment and friction. It denotes a mechanism wearing on itself--it
means a voice that will weaken or fail before its time--a voice that
needs repair.

Since speech is to express a speaker's thought, training in speech
should not be altogether dissociated from training in thinking. It
ought to go hand in hand, indeed, with the study of English, from first
to last. But training in voice and in the method of speech is a
technical matter. It ought not to be left to the haphazard treatment,
the intense spurring on, of vocally unskilled coaches for speaking
contests. Discussions about the teaching of speaking are often very
curious. We are frequently told by what means a few great orators have
succeeded, but we are hardly ever informed of the causes from which
many other speakers have been embarrassed or have failed. A book or
essay is written to prove, from the individual experience of the
author, the infallibility of a method. He was able to succeed, the
argument runs, only by this or that means; therefore all should do as
he did. It seems very plausible and attractive to read, for instance,
that to succeed in speaking, it is only necessary to plunge in and be
in earnest. But another writer points out that this is quite absurd;
that many poor speakers have not lacked in intense earnestness and
sincerity; that it isn't feeling or intense spirit alone that insures