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ON HEARING THE BELLS RING ON THE PASSAGE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY.

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PAUSES.

Pauses are the intervals produced between words, claases. sentences, and paragraphs, by those divisions of utterance which correspond to the divisions of meaning.

When a pause is made after any mark of punctuation, it is called a Grammatical or Sentential Pause.

A pause required simply by the sentiment is called a Rhetorical

Pause.

The frequency with which pauses are to be introduced, must be determined by the sentiment. There may be the mark of punctuation, unnoticed in the reading, - - as in the example, "Yes, sir!" pronounced like a word of two syllables, accented on the first;or there may be a long rhetorical pause where no grammatical stop is used, as, "Leave Marmion here alone. . . to die."

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"Vocal pauses are uniformly the result of emphasis, every emphatic word having, as it were, an attractive power, by which it clusters round it more or less of the words preceding or following it. The cessation of the voice, called a pause, is but a natural and necessary consequence of the organic effort used in uttering such a collection of sounds, embracing, as it always does, at least one syllable which demands a great impulse of the organs, and exhausts, in some cases of great energy in language, the supply of breath required for utterance.". Russell.

"A Pause is often more eloquent than words."

A pause is generally made before or after an emphatic word; as,

"A judicious silence . . is always better than truth spoken without charity." - Francis de Sales.

A slight pause is generally required between the nominative and the verb, particularly when the nominative has an adjunct prefixed, or the verb an adjunct affixed; as, is a joy forever." - Keats.

"A thing of beauty

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Parenthetical or intervening phrases are separated from the rest of the sentence by pauses; as,

"Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men,

...

sleeping, but never dead,

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." - James Russell Lowell.

A short pause takes place where the parts of a sentence might be transposed; as,

Where we disavow

Being keeper to our brother, . . . we're his Cain." — Mrs. Browning

Relative pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, adverbs, and all other parts of speech used for transition or connection, are preceded by a short pause; as,

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The conjunction BUT, when used in descriptive or argumentative passages, generally requires a short pause after it; as,

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but . . . the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Emerson.

In passionate passages, no pause is required after the disjunctive; as, "It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives." — Hood.

A short pause takes place at an ellipsis or omission of words; as,

"Remember so to regard the absent who are out of hearing as virtually under the protection of that law of Jewish charity — . . . (which says,)

Thou shalt not curse the deaf.""

When a maxim or quotation is introduced, it should be preceded by a short pause; as,

...

To thine own self be true;

Shakespeare.

"This above all,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'

"There is a well-known saying of Hobbes, the far-reaching significance of which you will more and more appreciate in proportion to the growth of your own intellect:

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a word stands for the fact which it represents; to the fool it is itself the fact "-John Stuart Mill.

A pause is used at a period, to mark the completion of

sense; as,

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"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Emerson.

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A long pause - several times the usual length of that at a period is required between paragraphs, particularly when these contain important divisions of a subject or a discourse.

The comparative length of this pause depends upon the character of the subject, as grave and serious, or familiar and light,— and on the length and importance of paragraphs, as principal or subordinate. In general it should not be shorter than twice the length of the pause usually made at a period.

Pauses serve the double purpose of dividing what would tend to confuse the ear by the concurrence of incongruous sounds,—and of grouping together the different divisions of sense which naturally belong to each other, presenting both the sound and the sense more clearly and distinctly to the ear and mind. Pausing thus performs the same office to clauses and sentences that syllabication does to words, serving to divide the sound into relative portions, and aiding to preserve clearness and distinctness between them.

In equable and calm expression, the pauses are moderate; in energetic language, when didactic or argumentative, the pauses are rendered long by the force of emphasis preceding them; in strong and deep emotion, they run to the extremes of brevity and of length, as the tone of passion is abrupt and rapid, or slow and interrupted in utterance. Awe and solemnity are expressed by long cessations of the voice; grief also, when deep and suppressed, requires frequent and long pauses.

The common defect in regard to pauses, is, that they are made too short for clear and distinct expression.

Feeble utterance, hurried articulation, and defective emphasis, generally combine to produce this fault in young readers and speakers; the pauses being in proportion to the accustomed force of utterance, or energy of articulation and emphasis.

"The manner of a good reader or speaker is distinguished by clearness, impressiveness, and dignity, arising from the full con

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