sentences involved, and the words themselves necessarily larger and less familiar, the rate must be lessened if the audience is to grasp the ideas. It is well known that few persons can readily think in terms abstract or unfamiliar. Such expressions, phrases, and images must be translated in the hearer's mind into familiar terms and pictures before the truth conveyed by them can be understood. This takes time, and the speaker should make his rate so moderate that time will be allowed for the process. 101. Attention. Furthermore the attention of listeners is not constant. Psychologists tell us that the attention of an audience fluctuates, and that the skillful speaker will take this fact into consideration, alternating heavy with light, slow with fast. For a more extended discussion of this subject students are referred to The Psychology of Public Speaking, by Walter Dill Scott, Chapter vii. 102. To lessen rate. "But," it is frequently asked, "how can I speak as slowly as 100 words a minute?" The answer is: Not by drawling words, but by letting the periods of pause lengthen and occupy their proper space. One old-fashioned country school mistress known to the writer used to have her pupils in reading count slowly and audibly at each comma, "one," at each semicolon, "two" at each period, question mark, or exclamation point, "three." This mechanical device, while not adding to the euphony of the reading, taught the scholars to "mind the pauses," and when they had advanced to the stage of development where they were permitted to count to themselves, the reading was pleasing and intelligible. While this method is not advocated for general adoption, the effects that it produced are most commendable. "Silence is golden" in reading as elsewhere. WHEN TO CHANGE RATE 103. Normal rate. Normal rate (100 to 125 words a minute) is used in reading or speaking passages a. that are unemotional. b. that are not greatly involved in thought or language. 104. Increased rate. Rate is increased in a. passages expressing outbursts of uncontrolled emotion. b. passages expressing lightness and rapidity of action or thought, usually in short sentences. c. passages wholly concrete and easily understood. 105. Slow rate. Rate is lessened in a. passages expressing restrained, repressed feeling. b. passages expressing dignity, deliberateness, hesitancy, and the like. c. passages that are abstract and involved, usually in long sentences. 106. Exercise. Read at normal rate: 1. Andrè's story is the one overmastering romance of the Revolution. American and English literature is full of eloquence and poetry in tribute to his memory and sympathy for his fate. After the lapse of a hundred years there is no abatement of interest. What had this young man done to merit immortality? 2. Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log huts; with the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farmhouses and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. 3. Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea, and a shady sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it. Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. 4. As I saw the last blue lines of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation before I opened another. 5. At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. 107. Exercise. Read at slow rate: 1. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the bat tle, and for his widow and orphans, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. 2. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. 3. 4. Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking; Days of danger, nights of waking. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll. 5. He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered among us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar he sat upon his throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. 108. Exercise. Read at fast rate: 1. Stop the news! Already the village church bells were beginning to ring the alarm. In the awakening houses lights flashed from window to window. Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal guns flashed and echoed. The watch dogs barked; the cocks crew. Stop the news! Stop the sunrise! 2. We see them as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war, marching down the streets of great cities, through the towns and across the prairies, down to the fields of glory, to do or die for the eternal right. 3. Come! Do you say a pound? Not you, for you haven't got it. Do you say ten shillings? Not you, for you owe more to the tallyman. Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll heap 'em all on the footboard of the cart-there they are! razors, flat-irons, frying-pan, watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and lookingglass take 'em all away for four shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble. 4. 5. Yell'd on the view the opening pack; The awakened mountain gave response. Their peal the merry horns rung out, Like adder darting from his coil, Like wolf that dashes through the toil, Like mountain-cat who guards her young, QUALITY 109. Quality, more than any other characteristic of human speech, shows the personality of |