p. 75 | GRACEFUL SPEECH

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 7, 1878

GRACEFUL SPEECH.

The value, to a young lady, of a copious, elegant, and expressive vocabulary, can hardly be overestimated. Were she never to use the pen in epistolary or rhetorical composition, the beauty and charm of cultivated conversation would be a power that would add to her influence more than all the jewels that Tiffany ever handled. Add to this the fact that woman's tongue is her principal weapon—next to her eye, at least. In appeal and menace, in raillery and scorn, in love and guidance, in song and prayer, what is there to equal a woman's speech?

While nature does much, reading and writing do more in cultivating fluency and felicity of speech. Read the best English, and avoid the cheap and sensational literature of the day. Avoid vulgarity and slang in conversation. Use the same care in purity of language while talking familiarly in private, that is taken in public speech. But the best training is heart training. Here, as in oratory, it is out of the heart the mouth speaketh. If the law of kindness is within the heart, there will be “milk and honey on the tongue.”—Sel.