CHAPTER XVII

STUDIES IN PAUSE

1. Honor is the subject of my story.

2. That fire burns is one of the first lessons of childhood.

3. The saying that the third time never fails is old. 4. Some one has called the eye the window of the soul.

5. He is the happy man whose life even now shows somewhat of the happier life to come. WILLIAM COWPER.

1-5. Pause is associated with emphasis and phrasing. Honor is the subject of my story.

the window

That fire burns is one of the first lessons of childhood. The saying that the third time never fails is old. Some one has called the eye of the soul. He is the happy man whose life even now shows somewhat of the happier life to come.

The above are suggestive and not arbitrary indications. Some readers may be impressed with the importance of ideas whose emphatic separateness is not indicated.

Do not tell a pupil he must pause after Honor. Say, "What is the subject of your story?" He will say, "Honor." Then reply, "Read the sentence so that we must see it." If the result is not satisfactory, say, "Try it again; make it plainer." plainer." Again,

6. Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

7. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries.

Drift-Wood

HENRY WADSWORTH LONgfellow.

8. Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

As You Like It. Act II. Scene I-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

9. Here I reign king.

10. After a break of sixty years in the ducal line of the English nobility, James I created the worthless Villiers Duke of Buckingham.

yet.’

"Plainer yet." If necessary, again, "PLAINER YET.”

By the time the class have reached No. 5, they will realize that pause has to do with emphasis and grouping, but that it is the result, not the cause.

6-8. Pause, as associated with the expression of balanced ideas.

9, 10. Pauses are often an aid in difficult expressions.

Here I reign

created the worthless Villiers

king.

Duke of Buckingham.

II. Carthage has crossed the Alps; Rome, the seas. 12. As thy days, so shall thy strength be.

Deuteronomy 33: 25.

13. Trees are trees, and twigs twigs, but man is always growing, till he falls into the grave.

My Novel SIR EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.

14. A Scotch mist became a shower; and a shower, a flood; and a flood, a storm; and a storm, a tempest, thunder and lightning, heavenquake and earthquake.

15. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Of Gardens SIR FRANCIS BACON.

16. Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thoughts is troublesome.

It is but a part of art that can be taught; the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly, inclines to act and speaks seldom or late.

Wilhelm Meister - JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. (Translated by Thomas Carlyle.)

11-17. Pauses resulting from omissions.

Carthage has crossed the Alps; Rome [has crossed] the

seas.

As thy days [are] so shall thy strength be.

15. Moral what? Note the closer relation between the fourth and fifth groups because of the omission of the subject (philosophy) in the fifth group.

17. All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good:

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: Whatever is, is right.

An Essay on Man. Epistle I · ALEXANDER Pope.

18. You have given the command to a person of illustrious birth, of ancient family, of innumerable statues, but of no experience.

19. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,

5

IO

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch

On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

17. Line 1. What is unknown to thee?

Line 2. Note that the relation at the second comma is closer than at the first.

18. Pause preceding an unexpected change.

19. Pauses resulting from collateral thinking and marking momentary completeness.

The old rule that the voice rises at a comma and falls at a period has long since been put away. This

20. They drew him to my very feet-insensible dead. He was carried to the nearest house . . . and every means of restoration tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

21. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

Paul Revere's Ride HENRY WADSWORTH LONGfellow.

long sentence illustrates its fallacy. Read first with rising inflections throughout. Then read, noting the separate stages of progression, seeing the pictures presented, and imagining the acts.

Then he climbed the tower
By the wooden stairs

To the belfry-chamber

And startled the pigeons

of the Old North Church with stealthy tread overhead

from their perch

On the sombre rafters that round him

Masses and moving shapes of shade

By the trembling ladder steep and tall
To the highest window in the wall

Where he paused

made

on the roofs

flowing over all.

Trace progression: tower; belfry-chamber; highest window.

20. Appreciation of the time involved brings pause. Do not miss the atmosphere of the scene.