mind is employed in seeking, picturing, and weighing the ensuing thought. His audience will follow his mental process and share with him his search for words, pictures, and lines of reasoning. It is said of Webster that upon one occasion, in a public address, the word he wanted did not readily come. He discarded one after another, until finally he found the word that precisely expressed his meaning, whereupon the audience broke out into spontaneous applause. Nowhere is the "eloquence of silence" more manifest than in this matter of pausing. Frequently it is during these intervals that speaker and auditor are drawn together into closest relationship, and what is termed "personal magnetism" is most deeply felt. Pausing is a physiological and psychological manifestation of the principle of action and reaction that underlies all vocal expression. Time must be provided in which to replenish the lungs. The listening ear demands relief from an otherwise incessant flow of sound. Clearness insists upon proper divisions of thought. Pausing gives additional interest by keeping the hearer in a state of expectancy. It is particularly valuable in expressing emphasis, spontaneity, and deep feeling. In short, it gives justness, freshness, clearness, and poise to spoken language. The following rules should be thoroughly understood before proceeding to the examples for analysis: Pause after: RULES FOR PAUSING1 1. The nominative phrase. 2. The objective phrase in an inverted sentence. 1 J. E. Frobisher, Voice and Action, p. 102. 3. The emphatic word or clause of force. 4. Each member of a sentence. 5. The noun when followed by an adjective. 6. Words in apposition. Pause before: 7. The infinitive mood. 9. Relative pronouns. 10. Conjunctions. 11. Adverbs (generally). 12. An ellipsis. EXAMPLES 1. The passions of mankind' frequently blind them. 4. He was a man contented. 12 5. The mornR was clear, the eve" was clouded. 6. It is prudent in every man' to make early provision against the wants of age1 and the chances of accident. 7. Nations" like men fail in nothing" which they boldly attempt" when sustained by virtuous purpose" and firm resolution. 8. A people1 once enslaved' may groan" ages in bondage. 9. Their diadems12 crowns of glory. 10. They cried "Death to the traitors!" GENERAL EXERCISES IN PAUSING 1. The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done. "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes." BOURDILLON. 2. However full days or weeks or years have been of annoyance, unrest, trouble, even sin, the miracle may be wrought in any life on any morning, by which all the unrest, the trial, the sorrow shall be lifted, the burden removed, and the soul caught up to ineffable joy and life and light. LILIAN WHITING. 3. Religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself, religion, that voice of the deepest human experience, does not only enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail; but also, in determining generally in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with that which culture-culture seeking the determination of this question through all the voices of human experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution-likewise reaches. Religion says: The kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. "Sweetness and Light." MATTHEW ARNOLD. 4. Mr. Burke, who was no friend to popular excitement,who was no ready tool of agitation, no hot-headed enemy of existing establishments, no undervaluer of the wisdom of our ancestors, no scoffer against institutions as they are,-has said, and it deserves to be fixed in letters of gold over the hall of every assembly which calls itself a legislative body,-"Where there is abuse, there ought to be clamor; because it is better to have our slumber broken by the fire-bell, than to perish amid the flames in our bed!" 5. Seated one day at the Organ, I know not what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then; "A Lost Chord." ADELAIDE PROCTER. 6. The storm had long given place to a calm the most profound, and the evening was pretty far advanced-indeed supper was over, and the process of digestion proceeding as favorably as, under the influence of complete tranquillity, cheerful conversation, and a moderate allowance of brandy and water, most wise men conversant with the anatomy and functions of the human frame will consider that it ought to have proceeded, when the three friends, or as one might say, both in a civil and religious sense, and with proper deference and regard to the holy state of matrimony, the two friends (Mr. and Mrs. Browdie counting as no more than one), were startled by the noise of loud and angry threatenings below stairs, which presently attained so high a pitch, and were conveyed besides in language so towering, sanguinary and ferocious, that it could hardly have been surpassed, if there had actually been a Saracen's head then present in the establishment, supported on the shoulders and surmounting the trunk of a real, live, furious, and most unappeasable Saracen. DICKENS. 7. Hail to thee, blithe spirit! That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. |