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The following rules should be thoroughly understood before proceeding to the examples for analysis.
RULES FOR PAUSING
Pause after:
- The nominative phrase.
- The objective phrase in an inverted sentence.
- The emphatic word or clause of force.
- Each member of a sentence.
- The noun when followed by an adjective.
- Words in apposition.
Pause before:
- The infinitive mood.
- Prepositions (generally).
- Relative pronouns.
- Conjunctions.
- Adverbs (generally).
- An ellipsis.
EXAMPLES
• The passions of mankind frequently blind them.
• With famine and death the destroying angel came.
• He exhibits now and then remarkable genius.
• He was a man contented.
• The morn was clear," the eve' was clouded.
• It is prudent in every man to make early provision against the wants of age and the chances of accident.
• Nations like men fail in nothing which they boldly attempt when sustained by virtuous purpose and firm resolution.
• A people once enslaved may groan ages in bondage.
• Their diadems crowns of glory.
• They cried "Death to the traitors!"
GENERAL EXERCISES IN PAUSING
- The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun.
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.
• However full days or weeks or years have been of annoy
ance, 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.
• Religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by
which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect it
self,-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 determina tion 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 fullness 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.
• Mr. Burke, who was no friend to popular excitement,-
who was no ready tool of agitation, no hot-headed enemy of ex
isting establishments, no undervaluer of the wisdom of our an
cestors, 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!"
Seated one day at the Organ, I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys; I know not what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then; But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
" A Lost Chord/" Adelaide Procter.
- 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 matri mony, 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, san guinary 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.
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