[Sidenote: _Gesture._] When you don't wish to use your arm for gesture, let it hang naturally at the side. When the emotion calls for gesture, make it with decision, and let the gesture continue as long as you utter words explaining the meaning of the gesture. Gesture always comes before words, more or less quickly, as may be the kind of emotion. Usually, if the words are quickly spoken, the gesture will be quickly made, and the words will be spoken almost at instant of the gesture. If the words move slow, the gesture will move slow, and there may be a perceptible pause between the gesture and words. [Sidenote: _No rules for gesture._] No stated rules for gesture can be given; for they are as infinite in number and variety as the emotions they express. You will find, however, that gesture may be regulated, as emotional expression of voice is, by means of your intensity of thought and feeling, guided by common sense, and aided by genius. Gesture is a science and art, which, as in speech and song, has elements of emotional expression; and these elements correspond in each. You have in gesture (as said of the others) quality or kind of gesture, force or intensity in gesture, time or the degree of movement in gesture, and pitch, or relative height and depth; and all these have a meaning something like the corresponding elements of song, or speech, or other arts. Long and hard study and practice will be necessary to perfection in this, as in all arts. A graceful habit of gesture, an appropriate expression of eye and face, united to a voice full-toned, musical, and varying in all shades of emotional expression,--what is there more captivating to eye and ear, more pleasing to the senses, more instructive to the mind, more moving to the emotions, if only it is, as Mendelssohn says of all art, expressive of lofty thought? "Every art can elevate itself above a mere handicraft only by being devoted to the expression of lofty thought."
Defects of speech cannot be spoken of at great length in this book. A thorough study of articulation in Parts One and Two will cure any of them where there is no defect in the mouth. The letter _s_ is more often defective than any other letter, it being pronounced like _th_ in _thin_, or whistled. In the first the tongue is too far forward: in the last it is drawn too far back. Cure by imitating somebody who makes it correctly. _R_ is often defective by substituting _w_ for it; as, _wun_ for _run_. Sometimes it is defective by being made with the whole tongue, something as _y_ is made; as, _yun_ for _run_: and cure may be had by imitating the correct sound. Other defects of letters or elementary sounds are less common, and need not be mentioned here.