this

peat the All.] 7. Pause in twelfth line? [After heart; because the two accents on great heart compel us to pause.] 8. Pause in the thirteenth line? [After daily -to separate the time when from the place where.] 9. Pause in the fourteenth line? After the word there.] 10. Pause in the sixteenth? [A slight pause after owed.] 11. How ought, Bring me this man to be said? [Very slowly: Bring-me man.] 12. Pause in the twentieth line? After worse-and a slight pause also after far.] 13. Pause in the twenty-second line? [Slight pause after eyes.] 14. Pause in the twenty-fifth line? [After felt-to introduce the description of Haroun's feelings.] 15. Pauses in the twenty-sixth line? [A strong pause after vengeance and a slighter pause after mightiest-the mightiest vengeance.] 16. Pause in the twenty-eighth line? [After another.] 17. Pause in the twenty-ninth line? [After frenzied.] 18. Pause in the thirtieth line? [After judgment—with a slight rising inflection on caliph's.] 19. In the thirty-first? [After gifts, and a slight pause after so.] 20. In the thirty-second? [After richest-to indicate the value of the gem, and to call the attention of the listener to its value.] 21. In the thirty-third ? [A slight pause after giver.] 22. Are there any pauses in the last three lines which are independent of the punctuation? [No.]

5. QUESTIONS ON EMPHASIS.-1. What are the two most emphatic words in the second line? [Poor and peer.] 2. In the third line? [Dead and unjust.] 3. In the fifth line? [Good and bad.] 4. In the sixth? [No and living.] 5. In the seventh? [Death.] 6. In the ninth? [He.] 7. In the eleventh ? [Scorn and grief.] 8. In the twelfth? [Both the words great.] 9. In the sixteenth ? A slight emphasis on divine.] 10. In the seventeenth ? [This.] 11. In the nineteenth? Welcome.] 12. In the twentieth? [Far.] 13. In the twenty-fourth? [Great, and self, and how.] 14. In the twenty-fifth? [This.] 15. In the twenty-sixth? [Mightiest.] 16. In the twenty-seventh? One.] 17. In the twenty-eighth ? [Another and half.] 18. In the thirtieth ? [Caliph's.] 19. In the thirty-first? [Gifts.] 20. In the thirty-second? [Richest.] 21. In the thirty-third ? [Fit.] 22. In the last ? [This, too, and thee.]

6. QUESTIONS OF CAUTION. (There are many words which the verse-accent strikes, but which the sense-accent, or emphasis, must be most careful to avoid.) -1. What word in the second line must we take care not to accent? [Without, and we must pause at friend and run on to fear.] 2. In the third line? [By: to avoid this, we must make a slight pause at slain, and hurry on to doom unjust.] 3. In the sixth line? [From: we must utter from-that-day, as one word, with the accent on the second syllable.] 4. In the ninth line? [But: we avoid this accent by having a long pause after All.] 5. In the twelfth line? [His: we must make a slight pause after for, and pass quickly on to the important words great heart.] 6. In the seventeenth line? [Me: to avoid the accent, we must make a pause after bring, and put an emphasis on this "Bring-me this man."] 7. In the twenty-fourth? [His and can: to avoid the first accent, we hurry on to the important words great self; to avoid the second, we put an emphasis on how, and make a long pause after it.] 8. In the twenty-fifth? [On: to avoid it, we go on quickly to the important words sóul, like, this.] 9. In the thirty-first? [And to avoid it, we make a long pause after Go, and pass on quickly to the important word gifts.] 10. In the thirty-second? [In.] 11. In the thirty-third ? [As: to avoid it, we must pause after giver, and hurry on to the important word fit.] 12. In the thirty-fourth? [Cried: to avoid this verse-accent, we make a long pause after "Gifts!" and hurry the words cried-the-friend.]

After all this questioning, the class is now in a fit state of mind to read the poem with the fullest and truest appreciation of every line. One of the pupils may now be called upon to read, while the others

listen with shut books. Every member of the class should take notes when the reader makes a wrong emphasis, or omits a pause, or reads too fast-or does anything to prevent the full expression of the meaning.

This may seem to be a long and tedious process to ensure good reading. But if a class or pupil has learned to read three or four poems in this thoughtful and careful way, the reading of all others will be very easy, and the noticing of all the minor points upon which good reading depends will become immediate and "instinctive." The work of learning to read will have been done—provided this training is gone through with thorough conscientiousness, and provided the story or subject-matter is such as the pupil perfectly understands and has real sympathy with.

The same procedure may be followed with a piece of prose, though it will not be necessary to treat prose in so elaborate a way. For there are in prose no instances of contradiction between two sets of accents-between the verse-accent and the sense-accent (or emphasis); and prose, moreover, lends itself more easily to a simple level, and natural style of reading. The prose passage read, however, ought to be carefully and thoroughly examined, until it has rendered up the whole-even the smallest part of its meaning. It will not be necessary for the teacher to tell the story—as that, if the subject of reading be a story, will easily tell itself; but he should give any information or explanations that may be required to enable the class to understand it. The course of treatment will then be the same as that followed with the poetry; and it should follow the same order. Thus :

1. INTRODUCTION (consisting of necessary information and explanations.)

2. QUESTIONS ON THE STORY. (These should be very minute, and may be answered at first from the book.)

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3. QUESTIONS ON THE MEANINGS. (With younger classes, strict 'meanings" and self-consistent definitions need not be demanded; it is enough if the child shows some understanding of the passage.)

4. QUESTIONS ON THE PAUSES. (The book must always be open

during these questions.)

5. QUESTIONS ON EMPHASIS. (These questions relate to emphasis in the subordinate clauses, as well as in the principal sentence.) 6. QUESTIONS OF CAUTION. (These questions are-for the most part-only needed in reading poetry.

After the lesson has been thus treated, and after it has been read aloud to the satisfaction of the teacher—who, at this stage, should not have his book open,-it is an excellent exercise to call upon the class to volunteer to tell the story in their own words. This gives them a command of language, and enables the speaker to correct any stiffness or hardness in his manner of reading. The common recommendation in books on "Elocution" is "read as you would speak;" but this is enormously difficult, and is indeed to be regarded as the ultimate triumph of the art. If such a triumph is ever to be reached, it will be by inducing the pupil to attempt the reproduction of a lesson in his own words and in his own way. At first this plan should be employed only with regard to a phrase; then the statement in his own words of a whole sentence should be asked for; then the statement of a whole paragraph; and, last of all, the narration of a whole story.

PAUSES are the slight stops which a good reader instinctively makes between the groups of words into which a sentence naturally falls. Take the sentence "The people in the garden were unable to play croquet any longer." There are evidently two pauses necessary here, as the sentence divides itself into three groups of words"The people in the garden

longer."

were unable to play croquet

any

It is plain, from the above example alone, that we make a great many pauses in a sentence which are not represented by stops (commas, semicolons, etc.) at all; and that, if we attended to the stops only, the reading would be very bad-and sometimes unintelligible. Books on "Elocution" give a large number of rules for pauses; but a conscious attention to such rules at the time of reading would only defeat their own end, and make the reading stiff and unpleasant. If the meaning and bearing of each sentence are understood and appreciated, the pupil will have an exact and instinctive knowledge of when and how long to pause.

Pauses are generally, and not incorrectly, divided into (a) Pauses of Sense and (b) Pauses of Feeling.

* Sometimes called Logical Pauses.

C

(a) A Pause of Sense is required when we wish to stop off each separate group of words, or to call the attention of the hearer to the emphatic word in the sentence. As:—

(b) The Pause of Feeling is dictated, as its name indicates, by the state of feeling of the reader. Thus:

For Heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,

And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

How some have been dethroned,—some slain in war,—
Some poisoned by their wives,-some sleeping killed;

It must be carefully noted that a merely mechanical or artificial attention must not be paid to these pauses. On this head, Mr. Sheridan Knowles's remarks are of great value: "Give the sense of what you read: MIND is the thing. Pauses are essential only where their omission would obscure the sense. The reader who, in the act of delivering himself, is studiously solicitous about parcelling out his words, is sure to leave the best part of his work undone. He delivers words, not thoughts. Deliver thoughts, and words will take care enough of themselves. I repeat it-BE IN EARNEST." If we fully understand the sentence we are reading—if we have mastered the THOUGHT of it; and if we fully sympathize with the subject-if we have mastered the FEELING,-then it is plain that we shall not want any artificial rules to tell us how to read it. At the same time, it is the duty of the teacher to ask, or of the pupil to ask himself, what are the necessary pauses in each sentence and in each clause, because only in that way can it be proved to the satisfaction of both teacher and pupil that the sentence is really understood.

A difficulty for the young reader often arises from the fact that the sense of a line of poetry does not always end with the line, but flows over into another. For example, in the poem of LUCY GRAY, we have many verses like the following: