Speech is so complex an aggregate, such an intermixture and fusion of myriad little things, that no two voices and no two modes of speech can be alike, even when they closely resemble each other; as, we are told, no one has ever succeeded in finding two leaves on the same tree exactly alike. To a large extent, the cause of the unlikeness surely lies in these infinitesimal discrepancies of intonation. GESTURE. Gesture presupposes Bearing. Bearing is the essential; gesture, the desirable, the allowable, the occasional, or the superfluous. To the speaker, and much more to the reader, bearing takes precedence of gesture. The avoidance of excessive, awkward, or eccentric motions, the repose that enables one to stand still and at ease, is more to be desired than grace, strength, variety, or magnificence of action. If the voice conveys its message truly and fully, while face. and bearing sympathize, gesture, unless subdued to a mere rhythmical accompaniment, is often impertinent, and mars and weakens the delivery. Nevertheless, gesture of some sort is almost unavoidable, except by the exercise of painful and unnatural self-restraint. As soon as a person becomes animated and earnest in speech, the nerves and muscles of face and body and limbs are in instant sympathy, and the result is facial expression and gesture, or grimace and contortion. If the speaker compels himself to resist altogether this tendency to gesture, he becomes constrained and rigid in feeling and appearance, and the voice is wanting in sparkle, flexibility, resonance, and life, or is even compressed and strained. Only training and experience can confer the self-mastery that 'suits the action to the word, the word to the action'-the Repose that relegates gesture to its proper secondary place, and in its omission supplies the ease and freedom of bearing that win confidence and respect, and leave the voice untrammeled. In the young speaker, however, superfluous action is preferable to helpless, awkward rigidity; and it is easier to tone down and prune excess than to engraft positive grace |