How to Improve the Falling and Monotone Inflections of Your Speech

Inflections are glides of the voice from one pitch to another, and may be Rising, Falling or Circumflex.

Falling inflection denotes completion of sense and is used in positive clauses, in interrogative clauses not answered by "yes" or "no," and in emphatic language.

Monotone, a single unvaried sound, may be used very effectively to express awe, reverence, dignity and power. It is particularly useful where a maximum amount of carrying power is desired, as in speaking in large buildings.

Here are some excerpts for you to practice your falling and monotone inflections:

FALLING

1. Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I indeed may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

2. The charge is utterly, totally and meanly false!
"Invective against Corry." GRATTAN.

3. How far, 0 Catiline! wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the nightly watch posted to secure the Palatium? Nothing, by the city guards ? Nothing, by the rally of all good citizens ? Nothing, by the assembling of the Senate in this fortified place? Nothing, by the averted looks of all here present?

CICERO .

MONOTONE

1. Holy! holy! holy! Lord God of Sabbath!

2. In all time, Calm or convulsed,-in breeze, or gale, or storm,- Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime,-
The image of Eternity,-the throne Of the Invisible;- . . . . thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone

3. Methought I heard a voice cry-"Sleep no more,
Macbeth doth murder sleep-the innocent sleep:
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in Life's feast."
Still it cried "Sleep no more!" to all the house:
"Glamis hath murdered Sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more!-Macbeth shall sleep no more!"

"Macbeth." SHAKESPEARE.

4. King John. ... If the midnight bell
Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,
Sound on into the drowsy race of night;
If this same were a churchyard where we stand,
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;
Or if that surly spirit, Melancholy,
Had baked thy blood, and made it heavy, thick,
(Which else runs tickling up and down the veins,
Making that idiot, Laughter, keep men's eyes,
And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,
A passion hateful to my purposes),
Or if that thou could'st see me without eyes,
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply
Without a tongue, using conceit alone,
"Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words,
Then, in despite of brooding, watchful day,
I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.

"King John." SHAKESPEARE