Speaking clearly. Improving voice and articulation: Фонетический практикум. Фомиченко Л.Г. - 79 стр.

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lady, right in front of you — your own mother. I repeat — your own
mother! That’s the model you ought to imitate! There, now you see —
it was all because of you, you silly child, that our guest was on his
knees in front of me — proposing — then you blunder in. / / You
come snooping around, just as though you’d completely out of your
mind. Just for that, I refused him! [Gogol «The Inspector General»]

      The most tolerable and useful all-purpose rate is 140 to 180
w. p. m. If you have to handle material that expresses sorrow, gravity,
meditation, or material that is technical — aim for the lower end of
the range: 140 w. p. m.
      If your material expresses happiness, humour, or, on occa-
sion, wrath, target the upper end of the range: 180 w. p. m.
      Purely conversational situations? 150 to 180 w. p. m. is excellent.
      Have to deliver a speech? Our best public speakers find that 160
w. p. m. is a congenial and efficient average.
      This selection contains 180 words; the diagonals are placed after
the 140th word.

      Practice at the different rates until you feel natural and at ease.

       Just how different are college students of today from students of
the Middle Ages? Not much. They complained much more about food
than we do. For a five-year period at the University of Paris, however,
a lot of students discovered they could eat well and cheaply. Near the
campus were the shops of a pieman and a barber. The pieman specialized
in meat pies. Students could chi p in and buy one and have a filling,
delicious, inexpensive meal. The barber had the sharpest and fastest
razor in Paris. So skilled was he that a client coming into his shop at
the end of the day never felt the blade that shaped his beard until it slit
his throat. The body was then dropped through a trap door into a cellar
which connected with that of the pieman. / / You’ve guessed the rest.
But one day a neighbourhood dog got into the baker’s backyard and dug
up human bones. He took them home; his owner was a constable. The
two men were caught and burned alive at the stake.