"Talking has been clearly explained and successfully imitated by artificial contrivances. We know that the moist membranous edges of a narrow crevice (the glottis) vibrate as the reed of a clarionet vibrates, and thus produce the human _bleat_. We narrow or widen, or check or stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus _articulate_, or break into joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and kind of interruption, as the 'babble' of the brook with the shape and size of its impediments--pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper, is to articulate without _bleating_, or vocalizing; to _coo_, as babies do, is to _bleat_, or vocalize, without articulating. Machines are easily made that bleat not unlike human beings. A bit of India-rubber tube tied around a piece of glass tube, is one of the simplest voice-uttering contrivances. To make a machine that articulates, is not so easy." [The Italics are Dr. Holmes's.] It is not the _humorist_ Holmes, however, who has said this, as one would suppose that it was, but it is the writer, scientist, and thinker, who was in dead earnest when he gave unto the world this "definition of the gift of speech." Any comment on my part would but weaken the sense of the ludicrous this "explanation" of so great a subject, even from a mere mechanical standpoint, must arouse in the reader. Yet Dr. Holmes's "explanation" is not any more preposterous than that of many other scientists of the present day. Teachers have said that, not being a teacher, I could not know anything about the voice. As if _they_ had the sole patent right to the voice, and others held their voices but from them, in fee! I, however, took the liberty of looking into my own voice and trying to find out whence it came and what it was made of. It is not much of a voice, to be sure; yet it has the common attributes of all voices. Besides, I should like to know who, in truth, _is_ a teacher. He who over a narrow path follows the footsteps of others, or he who strikes out boldly for the root and the truth of a matter, and, disregarding precedents, goes down to the very bowels of the earth, if need be, to bring it to the surface? The knowledge of even the best of us is not much more than some froth on the surface of the well of truth. Yet that froth is all these timid souls have dared to examine. They have not had the courage to dive down deep into its fathomless flood. Many a truth has been taught by those who had been considered innocent of any knowledge thereof. I am one of these "innocents," and, on the whole, am not sorry for not having been imbued more with the knowledge, or supposed knowledge, of the present day.