THE SPEAKING VOICE AND PRONUNCIATION A generation ago the speaking voice was even less understood than the singing voice.

That the two were intimately connected was but half surmised.

Only an occasional person recognized what is now generally conceded, that a good way to improve the speaking voice is to cultivate the singing voice.
In 1887 I published a paper in the _Independent Practitioner_ defining the singing voice and the speaking voice as identical, and contending that the training for each should be the same so far as tone formation is involved, a conclusion at which I had arrived several years before.
Subsequent experience has only served to confirm this opinion.
The past has produced many good speakers, among them Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Edwin Booth, Wm.

Charles Macready, and Edward Everett.
Of the last Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "It is with delight that one who remembers Edward Everett in his robes of rhetorical splendor, recalls his full blown, high colored, double flowered periods; the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech, with just enough of the nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding-board its proper value in the harmonies of utterance." These examples of correct vocalization, however, were exceptions to the general rule; they happened to speak well, but the physiologic action of the vocal organs which produced such results in those individual cases was not understood, and hence the pupil ambitious to imitate them and develop the best of which his voice was capable had no rule by which to proceed.

Few could speak with ease, still fewer could be heard by a large assembly, and sore throats seemed to be the rule.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGING AND SPEAKING In singing the flow of tone is unbroken between the words, but in speaking it is interrupted.