The baby speaks!
But it is not of the baby's learning to speak that we propose to write
here. All babies learn to speak; or, if they do not, we know that it means
a terrible visitation,--a calamity rare, thank God! but bitter almost
beyond parents' strength to bear.
But why, having once learned to speak, does the baby leave off speaking
when it becomes a man or a woman? Many of our men and women to-day need,
almost as much as when they were twenty-four months old, to learn to
speak. We do not mean learning to speak in public. We do not mean even
learning to speak well,--to pronounce words clearly and accurately; though
there is need enough of that in this land! But that is not the need at
which we are aiming now. We mean something so much simpler, so much
further back, that we hardly know how to say it in words which shall be
simple enough and also sufficiently strong. We mean learning to speak at
all! In spite of all which satirical writers have said and say of the
loquacious egotism, the questioning curiosity of our people, it is true
to-day that the average American is a reticent, taciturn, speechless
creature, who, for his own sake, and still more for the sake of all who
love him, needs, more than he needs any thing else under heaven, to learn
to speak.
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