PRACTICAL EXERCISES IN TIME

The aim of practice in the time elements should be: 1. To gain a feeling for the quantity values of speech. 2. To become proficient in the use of pause.

I.

3. To be able to employ effectively the principles of rate and rhythm.

2.

EXERCISE I. Read the following passages with careful discrimination as to quantity values of individual sounds and syllables. Observe the mellow, easy-flowing sounds of Tennyson's lines and compare them with the harsh, abrupt sounds of the lines from Shakespeare. Note how exactly suited the lines are in each case to the poet's purpose.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western seą,
Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while

my pretty one, sleeps. TENNYSON

The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks

Of prison gates;
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far

And make and mar

The foolish Fates.

SHAKESPEARE, "A Midsummer Night's Dream,” I, ii

EXERCISE II. Read the following passages with definite attention to the principles of pause :

1. To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 't is 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, 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. 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.

SHAKESPEARE, "Hamlet," III, i

2. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!

As I do live by food, I met a fool;

Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,

In good set terms and yet a motley fool.

"Good morrow, fool," quoth I. "No, sir," quoth he,
"Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune":
And then he drew a dial from his poke,

And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock:

Thus we may see,” quoth he, "how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,

And after one hour more 't will be eleven;

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale."

SHAKESPEARE, "As You Like It," II, vii

EXERCISE III. Discriminate carefully as to the rate

of the following passages:

1. So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

The rhythm of poetry

2. I catch another vision. The crisis of battle. a soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death, bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. HENRY W. GRADY

1. God of our fathers, known of old
Lord of our far-flung battle-line
Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold

EXERCISE IV. Try to sense fully the rhythmic elements of the following passages, the first illustrating the rhythm of poetry, the second the rhythm of prose :

Dominion over palm and pine —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

- BRYANT

The tumult and the shouting dies-
The captains and the kings depart -

Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget — lest we forget! — KIPLING

2. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my castle before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray.
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many 's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!". BROWNING

The rhythm of prose

1. Women's colleges are in a very different position from men's colleges. Almost all large fortunes are in the hands of men, and very few men realize as yet the necessity of giving girls a thorough college education. Wealthy men are continually giving large sums to men's colleges. Wealthy women give to men's education in memory of their fathers, husbands, or sons more frequently and in larger amounts than wealthy men give to women's education. Men's colleges also receive large gifts from their alumni. Unlike men's colleges, it is impossible for women's colleges to appeal for funds to their wealthy graduates. Women, especially young women, have not the disposal of much money. They are not engaged in business. Each dollar raised by a college for women represents many times the effort of a dollar raised by a college for men. Women's colleges are one and all inadequately endowed. Extract from an address in the interest of Goucher College by President M. Cary Thomas of Bryn Mawr

ELOQUENCE

2. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities that produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, ome at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, native, original force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities.

Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, — this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, god-like action. WEBSTER

NOTE. The literary excerpts used as illustrations throughout this chapter will be found of much value for reading and practice along with the exercises given above.