Say this: "Fair sír, you spát on me on Wednesday lást; V. THE FALSETTO. The falsetto is the thin, sharp, high-pitched tone produced when the voice breaks, or gets above its natural compass. It is used by men when they imitate the voices of women and children. It is the tone suitable for the expression of old age, sickness, feebleness, pain, and helpless terror. 1. "My child! my child!" with sobs and tears, 2. "Billy-where are you, Billy, I say? Come, Billy, come home to your best of mothers!" 3. And even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, "Hurrah!" 4. Mr. Orator Puff had two tones in his voice, The one squeaking thus, and the other down so; In each sentence he uttered he gave you your choice; For one half was B alt, and the rest G below. Oh! oh! Orator Puff, One voice for an orator's surely enough! "Oh! save!" he exclaimed, in his he-and-she tones, "Help me out! help me out! I have broken my bones!" "Help you out!" said a stranger, who passed, "what a bother! Why, there's two of you there; can't you help one another?" Oh! oh! Orator Puff, One voice for an orator's surely enough! 5. And in a coaxing tone he cries, And baby with a laugh replies, VI. THE SEMITONE. When the voice slides through the interval of a semitone only, it gives the plaintive tones expressive of sadness, grief, or pathetic entreaty. If the inflection runs through the interval of a tone and a half—a minor third in music-it becomes more plaintive, and marks a stronger degree of pathos or sadness; and when the inflection extends into the minor fifth, it denotes still stronger pathetic feeling. The semitone, then, is the plaintive tone in reading, corresponding to the minor key in music. It should be used delicately, for, in excess, it runs into the whine, or becomes the affectation of cant. SEMITONE DRILL. 1. Sound the vocals, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, three times, on the interval between C and C sharp; then on the minor third; then on the minor fifth. 2. Count from one to twenty on the same notes as above. EXAMPLES OF SEMITONE. 1. O come in life, or come in death, O lost my love, Elizabeth. 2. For I am poor and miserably old. 3. How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and will say to him "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, no more worthy to be called thy son: make and am me as one of thy hired servants!" 4. MY CHILD. I can not make him dead! His fair sunshiny héad Is ever bounding round my study chàir; Yet, when my eyes, now dim With tears, I turn to him, I walk my parlor floor, And, through the open dóor, I hear a footfall on the chamber stàir; To give the boy a cáll; And then bethink me that he is not there! PIERPONT. 5. HIAWATHA. O the long and dreary Winter! O the cold and cruel Winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, O the famine and the fever! All the earth was sick and famished; Hungry was the sky above them, And the hungry stars in heaven Like the eyes of wolves glared at them! "Give your children food, O Father! Through the far-resounding forest, 66 Minnehaha! Minnehaha!" 6. BABIE BELL. It came upon us by degrees, LONGFELLOW. We saw its shadow ere it fell, We shuddered with unlanguaged pain, We cried aloud in our belief, 7. MACBETH. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 16 ALDRICH. SHAKESPEARE. 8. NEW YEAR'S EVE. You'll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade; And you'll come sometimes and see me where I am lowly laid. I shall not forget you, mother; I shall hear you when you pass, With your feet above my head in the long and pleasant grass. Good-night, good-night! When I have said good-night for evermore, And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door, Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been. 66 TENNYSON'S May Queen. 9. FROM BERTHA IN THE LANE." [This extract should be read with subdued force, slow movement, and prevailing poetic monotone and semitone.] Colder grow my hands and feet;- And, dear Bertha, let me keep On my hand this little ring- Let me wear it out of sight, |