For years I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation and full meaning with which I was not familiar.

I studied clear enunciation by the hour; indeed as I walked through the streets I recited to myself, aloud, so that I could hear my own enunciation, such poems as Southey's _Cataract of Lodore_, where almost every word terminates in "ing." For I had heard many great English and American speakers whose failure to pronounce this terminal "ing" in such words as coming, going, etc., used to distress me considerably.

Other exercises were the catches, such as "Peter Piper picks a peck of pickled peppers," or "Selina Seamstich stitches seven seams slowly, surely, serenely and slovenly," or "Around a rugged rock a ragged rascal ran a rural race." Then, too, Professor Stokes had composed a wonderful yarn about the memory, entitled "My M-made memory medley, mentioning memory's most marvelous manifestations." This took up as much as three or four pages of this book, every word beginning with m.
It was a marvelous exercise for lingual development.

He also had "The Far-Famed Fairy Tale of Fenella," and these were constantly and continuously recited, with scrupulous care as to enunciation.

My father was an old-time conductor of choral and oratorio societies, and was the leader of a large choir.