How to Improve
The Rising Inflection of Your Speech

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

Rising inflection indicates suspension of sense, and is used in contingent and negative clauses, in interrogative clauses answered by "yes" or "no," in statements generally accepted as true, in language of entreaty and in parentheses. It is frequently used in expressions of love, tenderness and kindred feeling.

Here are some excerpts for you to practice your rising inflection:

1. When you Athenians become a helpless rabble, without conduct, without property, without arms, without order, without unanimity; when neither general nor any other person hath the least respect for your decrees, when no man dares to inform you of this your condition, to urge the necessary reformation, much less to exert his influence to effect it: then is your constitution subverted.

DEMOSTHENES.

2. If every ducat in six thousand ducats
Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,
I would not draw them: I would have my bond.

"Merchant of Venice ." SHAKESPEARE.

3. Tho he who excels in the graces of writing might have been, with opportunities and application, equally successful in those of conversation; yet, as many please by extemporary talk, tho utterly unacquainted with the more accurate method, and more labored beauties, which composition requires, so it is very possible that men wholly accustomed to works of study, may be without that readiness of conception, and affluence of language, always necessary to colloquial entertainment.

4. If a cool determined courage, that no apparently hopeless struggle could lessen or subdue,-if a dauntless resolution, that shone the brightest in the midst of the greatest difficulties and dangers,-if a heart ever open to the tenderest affections of our nature and the purest pleasures of social intercourse,-if an almost child-like simplicity of character, that, while incapable of craft or dissimulation in itself, yet seemed to have an intuitive power of seeing and defeating the insidious designs and treacheries of others,-if characteristics such as these constitute their possessor a hero, then, I say, foremost in the rank of heroes shines the deathless name of Washington!

5. They tell us, sir, that we are weak,-unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemy shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.

PATRICK HENRY.

6. Has our Maker furnished us with desires which have no correspondent objects, and raised expectations in our breasts with no other view than to disappoint them? Are we to be forever in search of happiness without arriving at it, either in this world or in the next? Are we formed with a passionate longing for immortality, and yet destined to perish after this short period of existence? Are we prompted to the noblest actions, and supported through life under the severest hardships and most trying temptations, by hopes of a reward which is visionary and chimerical?-by the expectation of praises which we are never to realize and enjoy?

7. Oh, save me, Hubert, save me!
For Heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound. Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb. Oh, spare mine eyes,
Tho to no use but still to look upon you.

"King John." SHAKESPEARE

8. If you have wit (which I am not sure that I wish you, unless you have at the same time at least an equal portion of judgment to keep it in good order), wear it like your sword, in the scabbard, and do not brandish it to the terror of the whole company.

CHESTERFIELD .

9. Touch.-How old are you, friend? Will.-Five and twenty, sir.
Touch.-A ripe age. Is thy name William ? Will.-William, sir.
Touch.-A fair name. Wast born i' the forest here?
Will-Ay, sir, I thank God.
Touch.-Thank God! a good answer. Art rich?
Will-Faith, sir, so so.
Touch.-So so is good, very good,-very excellent good: and yet it is not; it is but so so.

SHAKESPEARE.

10. And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a heavenly light, by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head and see it in its beautiful serenity beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence without which I were nothing bears me company. Agnes, 0 my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!

"David Copperfield." DICKENS.