PAUSES.

Pauses are supensions of the voice between words and sentences. No definite rules can be given to guide the reader or speaker in the use of pauses. Their length and frequency can be determined only by the sentiment.

Unimpassioned didactic thought demands but moderate pauses; gay, lively and joyous thought very short pauses; solemnity, sublimity, grandeur and reverence, long pauses; while impassioned thought may demand long or short pauses.

A pause should always be made before and after an emphatic word.

It will be hardly necessary to say that the pauses referred to are not indicated by the marks of punctuation. These may or may not harmonize with the rhetorical pauses.

EXAMPLES: I. DIDACTIC THOUGHT.

Moderate Pauses.

[From "Expression."- Winthrop.]

A woman's voice can tell a long history of sorrow in a single word. This wonderful instrument, our voice, alters its timbre with every note it yields, as the face changes with every look, until at last the dominant emotion is master, and gives quality to tone and character to expression..

Every look, tone, gesture of a man is a symbol of his complete nature. If we apply the microscope severely enough we can discern the fine organism by which the soul sends itself out in every act of the being. And the more perfectly developed the creature the more significant, and yet the more mysterious, is every habit, and every motion mightier than habit, of body and soul.

II. SOLEMNITY.

Long Pauses.

[From "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty."-Shelley |

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard nor seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit, fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

III. SOLEMNITY AND SUBLIMITY.
Very Long Pauses.

[From "Hamlet's Soliloquy."-Shakspeare.]

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die; to sleep;
No more: and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die; to sleep;

To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear ·
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns-puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

IV. ANIMATED.

Short Puuses.

[From "L'Allegro."-Milton.]

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures;

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim with daisies pied:
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes.

V. LIVELY, ANIMATED DESCRIPTION.

Very Short Pauses.

[From "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."--Browning.]

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he:

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"God-speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;

66 Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through·

Behind shut the postern, the light sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

The careful observance of the " "rhetorical" pause is one of the chief means of distinctness in the expression of thought. In narration and description, and in plain didactic style, it is equally important that the successive sounds of the voice should be relieved from each other in portions best adapted to present the component parts of the whole in a clear, distinct, impressive manner, according to their comparative length and importance. The thought or sentiment which is thus communicated falls on the ear with a definite and satisfactory succession of sounds, which the mind easily receives and appreciates. The parts being thus exactly given, each takes its own due weight, and at the same time enhances the effect of the whole. The result is that the communication is fully understood and makes its just impression.

Young readers in particular are often deficient in this most striking and impressive of all the effects of appropriate reading and recitation. It becomes, therefore, a matter of great moment in practice to cultivate the habit of watching the effect of full and long pauses introduced at appropriate places. Without these the most solemn passages of Scripture, and the poetry of Milton and of Young, produce no effect, comparatively, on the mind; while reading, aided by their "expressive silence," seems to be inspired with an unlimited power over the sympathies of the soul.

SECTION XLVII.

EMPHASIS.

Emphasis is a peculiar utterance given to words and phrases, by which they are rendered specially significant. This may be given by an increase of Force or Stress, by a change in Quality, Form, Pitch, or Movement, or

by a change in the combination of two or more of these attributes.

Variety and power of emphasis require control of all the previously discussed elements of utterance. The kind and degree of emphasis which is to be given can only be determined by the sentiment, and the occasion or circumstances of the delivery. Where the whole passage is of an earnest or impassioned character the emphatic words require greater prominence.

The highly-wrought emphasis of impassioned oratory would be wholly out of place in a parlor reading of the same speech, and in large audiences a much stronger emphasis is in place than in small ones.

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Emphasis is in speech what coloring is in painting. It admits of all possible degrees, and must, to indicate a particular degree of distinction, be more or less intense according to the ground word or current melody of the discourse."

An attentive analysis of Emphasis will discover the fact that in the utterance of any emphatic word or phrase no one mode of emphasis alone prevails, but that a greater or less combination of modes always exists. In Emphasis of Force, though Force may largely predominate as an element of Emphasis, still it will generally be combined with Stress and Pitch, and Emphasis of Pitch will be combined with Force and Stress.

The same will be equally true of all other modes. The following illustrations indicate the predominant mode of emphasis in each.

SECTION XLVIII.

EMPHASIS OF FORCE.

Emphasis of force is the utterance of certain words or phrases with an increase or decrease of the prevailing