TO THE TEACHER. These exercises should be written by every pupil. The results should be compared in the class, so that all may note the variety of the results obtained. That careless boy studies only when he cannot avoid it. 1. The ship was finished. 2. They felled the pines. 3. The heroes listened. 4. The harper played. 5. My father came. 6. The fates decree. 7. The craven faltered. 8. Edison invented. 9. The poet wrote. 10. The torrent roared. 11. Jason went away. 12. The old man looked. SECTION 53. In the following passage observe how one long sentence is built up on the basis of a simple statement by means of modifiers. See how many simple sentences you can make out of the passage. The Saracen came on at the speedy gallop of an Arab horseman, managing his steed more by his limbs and the inflection of his body than by any use of the reins, which hung loose in his left hand; so that he was enabled to wield the light, round buckler of the skin of the rhinoceros, ornamented with silver loops, which he wore on his arm, swinging it as if he meant to oppose its slender circle to the formidable thrust of the Western lance. SCOTT. SECTION 54. VARIETY AND EMPHASIS. There is another use for variety in sentences. In speaking, we use emphasis to assist the hearer in understanding exactly what we mean. In writing, it is not always easy to indicate such emphasis. Yet, unless the reader knows which words or phrases are meant to be emphatic, he may lose the effect of a whole sentence. In verse the metre is of assistance. In prose we must trust much to the reader's intelligence, but some help is afforded by the order of words. Study the following passages and indicate such words, or groups of words, as seem to you emphatic. Test your opinion by reading each sentence aloud. Do you see anything peculiar about the position of these words? Change the order and note the effect. 1. These, therefore, I can pity. 2. In the night it blew very hard, and a great sea tumbled in upon the shore; but, being extremely fatigued, we in the boats went to sleep. 3. Even in sleep, however, my fancy was still busy; and a dream, so vivid as to leave behind it the impression of reality, thus passed through my mind. 4. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth. 5. Never was such a sudden scholar made. 6. A black day will it be to somebody. 7. Some war, some plague, some famine they foresee. 8. The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear. 9. What a delicious veranda is this to dream in! 10. By good luck I got an excellent place in the best part of the house. 11. There fell a thick and heavy rain, and the ground on which the beleaguering army must needs take up their position was muddy and intersected with many canals. 12. Tier beyond tier, height above height, the great wooded ranges go rolling away westward, till on the lofty sky-line they are crowned with a gleam of everlasting snow. 13. With blackest moss the flower-pots Were thickly crusted, one and all. 14. Far as the eye can reach up the glen, and to the right, it is one horrid waste of gray granite; here and there a streak of yellow grass or a patch of black bog; not a tree or a shrub within the sky-line. SECTION 55. METHODS OF EMPHASIS. Your study of the sentences in Section 54 has shown you that every variation from the simplest order of words makes a difference in emphasis. Thus, in the first example, the object is put before the subject and the verb; in the fifth, an adverb comes first, and the subject follows was; in the tenth, the adverbial modifier by good luck begins the sentence. TO THE TEACHER. Such variations cannot be reduced to hard-andfast rules. The student should "read authors" and observe how they arrange their words and clauses. He may then try to reproduce the simpler effects in his own writing. The hints that follow will be of some assistance. From the outset, however, he should be warned against violent or affected distortions. A word, phrase, or clause is often emphasized by coming before the subject of the sentence. The simple subject and the predicate verb may both become emphatic when they change places in the sentence or clause. This is called "the inverted order." The object may be emphasized by making it precede the verb. The end of a clause or sentence is often an emphatic position. Study the following sentences and notice the position of the emphatic words. 1. Be secret and be safe. 2. Then would come a fit of despondency, almost of despair. 3. Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow To halls deserted, portals gaping wide. 4. It's hard to part with the old farm and the old faces now. 5. Few parliaments have ever been more memorable, or more truly representative of the English people, than the parliament of 1654. 6. False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 7. His eyes grew brighter, his bearing more majestic, his heart softer towards his fellow-creatures. 8. This house is mine. Go! I will never forget and never forgive. Go! 9. A vast confusion of formless rocks crosses the stream, torturing it into a hundred boiling pools and hissing cascades. 10. Young men are fitter to invent than to judge. 11. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king. 12. A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will. 13. Next to being too late, being too soon is the worst plan in the world. 14. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. 15. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose; his complexion olive, his bearing erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. SECTION 56. 1. Pick out of Franklin's "First Day in Philadelphia " (pp. 8-9) five examples of emphasis obtained by the arrangement of the sentences. 2. Study the whole of "The Story of a Fire" (p. 10), with especial attention to the means by which variety and emphasis are secured. 3. Study Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." Pick out the sentences in which emphasis has been secured by unusual arrangement of the parts of the sentence. 4. Write ten simple sentences each of which states some familiar fact or relates some incident which has happened in the schoolroom. See in how many ways you can rewrite each sentence so as to bring the emphasis upon different phases of the thought. 5. Rewrite five sentences in Section 54, and observe the changes in emphasis that result. 6. Study the following stanzas from Campbell's "Hohenlinden." Observe the emphasis secured by varying the order of the sentence. By torch and trumpet fast arrayed, Then shook the hills with thunder riven, And redder yet that light shall glow |