If you wish to tell me the fact that _yesterday was cloudy_, or that _the
days are shorter in winter than in summer_, you find it wholly impossible
to do this by means of Natural language.

To communicate, then, your thoughts, or even the mental pictures we have
called ideas, you need a language more nearly perfect.

This language is made up of words.

These words you learn from your mothers, and so Word language is your
mother-tongue. You learn them, also, from your friends and teachers, your
playmates and companions, and you learn them by reading; for words, as you
know, may be written as well as spoken.

This Word language we may, from its superiority, call +Language Proper+.

Natural language, as was said, precedes this Word language, but gives way
as Word language comes in and takes its place; yet Natural language may be
used, and always should be used, to assist and strengthen Word language. In
earnest conversation we enforce what we say in words, by the tone in which
we utter them, by the varying expression of the face, and by the movements
of the different parts of the body.

The look or the gesture may even dart ahead of the word, or it may
contradict it, and thus convict the speaker of ignorance or deception.

The happy union of the two kinds of language is the charm of all good
reading and speaking. The teacher of elocution is ever trying to recall the
pupil to the tones, the facial expression, and the action, so natural to