John Jacob Schlicher was a teacher of secondary school Latin. In this essay he discusses the structure of indirect speech in general, and then applies those principals to indirect speech in Latin. Indirect speech, or the embedding of a quotation in a larger sentence, is a difficult grammatical concept in Latin in which the reported speech can be expressed with an infinitive, indicative, or subjunctive depending on the nature of the original sentence. This essay provides an accessible clarification of the psychology behind the mechanics of indirect speech that will make a useful tool in the Latin teacher's warchest.