CHAPTER X
VALUES
This feature of expression is one of the most vital. It has to do with the value of each phrase of the sentence and each phase of the whole selection. With every change of thought and emotion comes another form of expression, and these different forms we may call Values. We apply the term Transition to the act of passing from one shade of thought or feeling to another. All transitions are not necessarily emotional, and yet those most significant are certainly of this character. Let us first consider a few examples not strongly marked with emotion:
“Three quarters round your partners swing!”
“Across the set!” The rafters ring,
The girls and boys have taken wing,
And have brought their roses out!
’Tis “Forward six!” with rustic grace,
Ah, rarer far than—“Swing to place!”
Than golden clouds of old point lace,
They bring the dance about.
In the foregoing we have a picture of the country dance. We hear the figures called out by the old fiddler, and see the ever-varying changes of The Money Musk. Study the lines so as to be able to bring out the calls clearly, noting the two distinct calls at the opening, and the abrupt break in the sixth line.
The next extract presents a wife confiding to a friend the story of her courtship. Her husband is a true knight, and would perhaps resent it to have even his bravery form the subject of conversation. The story has reached its conclusion when the speaker says:
Our elder boy has got the clear
Great brow; tho’ when his brother’s black
Full eyes show scorn, it—
and she is probably about to add some such statement as, “It behooves one to look out,” when suddenly the husband appears on the scene. With a woman’s ready wit, she breaks off the sentence abruptly, saying:
Gismond here?
And have you brought my tercel back?
I was just telling Adela
How many birds it struck since May.
We might put into words what passes through her mind. She is about to add something further concerning the eyes of her boy, when she hears the sound of feet along the walk. Expecting her husband, the concluding words of her sentence pass from her mind as she turns to see the visitor. It is Gismond. He must not know that she has been speaking of him. The tercel in his hand gives her the opportunity of opening the conversation, which she is quick to do, adroitly pretending that it was of that very tercel she and her friend had been conversing before his arrival.
One more illustration of this kind will suffice. A tender, loving woman is talking to her husband. He is a learned poet, and perhaps just a trifle of a pedant. He is most minute and exact in all he does, ever losing sight of the spirit in the letter. The wife is the true poet, caring nothing for the archæology and philology and the geography, but quick to perceive the inner meaning of the poetic. He has told her a story in the past, and she is going now to tell it back to him with a new moral.
Here is the first stanza:
What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
—Said you found me somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin?
When the woman comes to “somewhere,” she finds she has forgotten the source of the original story. That means so much to him! It is so important! With a quizzical look, she pretends to rack her brains for the missing information, knowing all the time she will not find it, and knowing equally well that it makes no difference in the story. Then, with a coy expression and a look of mock humility on her face, she lets fall her eyes, meekly acknowledging her awful guilt, and stands prepared to accept her just punishment, saying, Scold me! I deserve it. I have sinned; my punishment is just.
Many students find it no easy task to make these transitions naturally. Some do not make them at all, but run the two phases of thought or emotion together. Others anticipate the coming idea, and hurry the last two or three words before the break. The proper training is to write or think out the incomplete sentence, then let it more or less quickly vanish from the mind as the new conception grows clearer, without betraying the fact that one is conscious of a coming interruption. For instance, in the second example, one must read up to and through “it” without the slightest suggestion of the coming of Gismond, and even think the conclusion of the sentence. Then hear or suddenly see Gismond just as the word “it” falls from the lips, and dismissing from the mind the former idea, conclude with the joyous, wifely welcome and question.
It might be proper to remark here that the same principle applies to the reading of dialogue. Except in rare cases the reader should not in any way anticipate the speech of one character while rendering the words of another.
For those who do not intend to become readers, but who would be preachers or lawyers, the practice here recommended will prove of great value. Too many speakers, in their excitement on the one hand and in their spiritlessness on the other, glide along line after line in one monotonous drift. A study of these exercises will teach the necessity of transitions, and train in the control of the mental action in this regard,—a control antecedent to that most important requisite, variety. After almost every paragraph or stanza there is more or less of change in the thought, and the apprehension of this change will be sufficient to modulate the vocal expression.
Even where there is no abrupt change in the flow of ideas, there is often a gradual transition from one emotion to another, and these transitions may occur several times within one paragraph. Take the following excerpt from Webster’s reply to Hayne. It is one paragraph; but it is divided into four smaller paragraphs, each of which is a marked “phase” of the thinking. Practice in the analysis of selections to determine these phases is the best and only rational training in transitions. But its value does not stop here; for the student not only makes transitions, but is led, through careful analysis, to discern shades of meaning and emotion he might otherwise overlook:
Sir, the gentleman inquires why he was made the object of a reply. Why was he singled out? If an attack has been made on the East he, he assures us, did not begin it; it was made by the gentleman from Missouri.
Sir, I answered the gentleman’s speech because I happened to hear it, and because I chose to answer that speech which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impressions.
I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer of the bill. I found a responsible endorser before me, and it was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just responsibility without delay.
But, sir, this interrogatory of the honorable member was only introductory to another. He proceeds to ask whether I had turned upon him in this debate from the consciousness that I should find an overmatch if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Missouri.
Transitions in emotion do not differ in principle from those we have been considering. The student must pursue the same method with these as with the others, expressing the first emotion until he comes to the break, making then an elliptical paraphrase, and then presenting the new emotion. An excellent model is the following speech of King Lear.
The aged monarch has, in a fit of rage, cast adrift his youngest child, and his eldest has turned him from her home. He turns in despair to his remaining daughter, assured that he will here receive a filial welcome. To his surprise, she refuses to meet him; says she is sick and travel-weary; and his amazed feeling finds vent in an uncontrolled explosion of passion:
Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!—
Fiery? what quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,
I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Gloucester. Well, my good lord, I have inform’d them so.
Lear. Inform’d them! Dost thou understand me, man?
Gloucester. Ay, my good lord.
Lear. The King would speak with Cornwall; the dear father
Would with his daughter speak; commands her service:
Are they inform’d of this?—My breath and blood!
Fiery? the fiery Duke? Tell the hot Duke that—
No, but not yet: may be he is not well:—
—King Lear, Act ii., Sc. 4.
and he then proceeds to find excuses for her action, and that of her husband, the Duke of Cornwall. There is hardly a more pathetic incident in a most pathetic play than this, in which the old man, past his eightieth year, after holding undisputed sway through his long reign, is at last compelled to temporize. He is about to send a message to the Duke, the character of which is easily judged from his previous language. If that message is sent, Lear will be alone in the world. But suddenly his fearful position flashes upon him. The threat dies upon his lips, gradually blending into apology and conciliation.
EXAMPLES OF EMOTIONAL TRANSITIONS.
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:
Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through.
—Julius Caesar, Act iii., Sc 2.
He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood
Speechless; and then he utter’d one sharp cry:
“O boy—thy father!”—and his voice choked there.
And then a dark cloud pass’d before his eyes,
And his head swam, and he sank down to earth.
—Sohrab and Rustum. M. Arnold.
“Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!
Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.
But choose a champion from the Persian lords
To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man.”
As in the country, on a morn in June,
When the dew glistens on the pearlèd ears,
A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy—
So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa said,
A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons ran
Of pride and hope for Sohrab, whom they loved.
But as a troop of peddlers from Cabool,
Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,
The vast sky-neighboring mountain of milk snow;
Crossing so high, that, as they mount, they pass
Long flocks of traveling birds dead on the snow,
Choked by the air, and scarce can they themselves
Slake their parch’d throats with sugar’d mulberries—
In single file they move and stop their breath,
For fear they should dislodge the o’erhanging snows—
So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.
—Sohrab and Rustum. M. Arnold.
Note how, after the words, “whom they loved,” the atmosphere changes from that of joy to that of dread and scorn—scorn at the cowardice of the Persians, and the dread that the speaker would sympathetically feel as he recounted the deed.
This too thou know’st, that while I still bear on
The conquering Tartar ensigns through the world,
And beat the Persians back on every field,
I seek one man, one man, and one alone—
Rustum, my father; who I hoped should greet,
Should one day greet, upon some well-fought field,
His not unworthy, not inglorious son.
So I long hoped, but him I never find.
Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask.
Let the two armies rest to-day; but I
Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords
To meet me man to man; if I prevail,
Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall—
Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin.
Dim is the rumor of a common fight,
Where host meets host, and many names are sunk;
But of a single combat fame speaks clear.
—Sohrab and Rustum. M. Arnold.
STUDIES IN “PHASES.”
This extract from Tennyson’s Charge of the Heavy Brigade contains five distinct phases, or strata, ending respectively with the words, “fight,” “close,” “then,” “thousands,” and “Brigade.”
The trumpet, the gallop, the charge, and the might of the fight!
Thousands of horsemen had gather’d there on the height,
With a wing push’d out to the left and a wing to the right,
And who shall escape if they close? but he dash’d up alone
Thro’ the great gray slope of men,
Sway’d his saber, and held his own
Like an Englishman, there and then;
All in a moment follow’d with force
Three that were next in their fiery course,
Wedged themselves in between horse and horse,
Fought for their lives in the narrow gap they had made—
Four amid thousands! and up the hill, up the hill,
Gallopt the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade.
As when a boar
Or lion mid the hounds and huntsmen stands,
Fearfully strong, and fierce of eye, and they
In square array assault him, and their hands
Fling many a javelin;—yet his noble heart
Fears not, nor does he fly, although at last
His courage cause his death; and oft he turns,
And tries their ranks; and where he makes a rush
The rank gives way;—so Hector moved and turned
Among the crowd, and bade his followers cross
The trench.
—The Iliad.
Hector, thou almost ever chidest me
In council, even when I judge aright.
I know it ill becomes the citizen
To speak against the way that pleases thee,
In war or council,—he should rather seek
To strengthen thy authority; yet now
I will declare what seems to me the best:
Let us not combat with the Greeks, to take
Their fleet; for this, I think, will be the end,—
If now the omen we have seen be meant
For us of Troy who seek to cross the trench;—
This eagle, flying high upon the left,
Between the hosts, that in his talons bore
A monstrous serpent, bleeding, yet alive,
Hath dropped it mid our host before he came
To his dear nest, nor brought it to his brood;—
So we, although by force we break the gates
And rampart, and although the Greeks fall back,
Shall not as happily retrace our way;
For many a Trojan shall we leave behind,
Slain by the weapons of the Greeks, who stand
And fight to save their fleet. Thus will the seer,
Skilled in the lore of prodigies, explain
The portent, and the people will obey.
—The Iliad.
And thus King Priam supplicating spake:—
“Think of thy father, an old man like me,
Godlike Achilles! On the dreary verge
Of closing life he stands, and even now
Haply is fiercely pressed by those who dwell
Around him, and has none to shield his age
From war and its disasters. Yet his heart
Rejoices when he hears that thou dost live,
And every day he hopes that his dear son
Will come again from Troy. My lot is hard,
For I was father of the bravest sons
In all wide Troy, and none are left me now.
Fifty were with me when the men of Greece
Arrived upon our coast; nineteen of these
Owned the same mother, and the rest were born
Within my palaces. Remorseless Mars
Already had laid lifeless most of these,
And Hector, whom I cherished most, whose arm
Defended both our city and ourselves,
Him didst thou lately slay while combating
For his dear country. For his sake I come
To the Greek fleet, and to redeem his corse
I bring uncounted ransom. O revere
The gods, Achilles, and be merciful,
Calling to mind thy father! happier he
Than I; for I have borne what no man else
That dwells on earth could bear,—have laid my lips
Upon the hand of him who slew my son.”
He spake: Achilles sorrowfully thought
Of his own father. By the hand he took
The suppliant, and with gentle force removed
The old man from him. Both in memory
Of those they loved were weeping. The old king,
With many tears, and rolling in the dust
Before Achilles, mourned his gallant son.
Achilles sorrowed for his father’s sake,
And then bewailed Patroclus, and the sound
Of lamentation filled the tent. At last
Achilles, when he felt his heart relieved
By tears, and that strong grief had spent its force,
Sprang from his seat; then lifting by the hand
The aged man, and pitying his white head
And his white chin, he spake these wingèd words:
—The Iliad.
It is especially in the reading of description that the study of values will prove most beneficial. There are very few readers who can make description interesting, and their failure is in most cases due to the monotony arising from their inability to perceive and make palpable the different values. The reply of Achilles to Priam becomes most interesting reading when values are carefully observed.
Great have thy sufferings been, unhappy king!
How couldst thou venture to approach alone
The Grecian fleet, and show thyself to him
Who slew so many of thy valiant sons?
An iron heart is thine. But seat thyself,
And let us, though afflicted grievously,
Allow our woes to sleep awhile, for grief
Indulged can bring no good. The gods ordain
The lot of man to suffer, while themselves
Are free from care. Beside Jove’s threshold stand
Two casks of gifts for man. One cask contains
The evil, one the good, and he to whom
The Thunderer gives them mingled sometimes falls
Into misfortune, and is sometimes crowned
With blessings. But the man to whom he gives
The evil only stands a mark exposed
To wrong, and, chased by grim calamity,
Wanders the teeming earth, alike unloved
By gods and man. So did the gods bestow
Munificent gifts on Peleus from his birth,
For eminent was he among mankind
For wealth and plenty; o’er the Myrmidons
He ruled, and, though a mortal, he was given
A goddess for a wife. Yet did the gods
Add evil to the good, for not to him
Was born a family of kingly sons
Within his house, successors to reign.
One short-lived son is his, nor am I there
To cherish him in his old age; but here
Do I remain, far from my native land,
In Troy, and causing grief to thee and thine.
Of thee, too, aged king, they speak, as one
Whose wealth was large in former days, when all
That Lesbos, seat of Macar, owns was thine.
And all in Phrygia and the shores that bound
The Hellespont; men said thou didst excel
All others in thy riches and thy sons.
But since the gods have brought this strife on thee
War and perpetual slaughter of brave men
Are round thy city. Yet be firm of heart,
Nor grieve forever. Sorrow for thy son
Will profit nought; it cannot bring the dead
To life again, and while thou dost afflict
Thyself for him fresh woes may fall on thee.
—The Iliad.
The subject may be presented to the class somewhat in the manner of the following lesson:
Suppose you were very busy studying your reading lesson, and you were just about to read aloud a sentence like this:
There’s a good time coming, boys,
A good time coming!
But when you came to the second “good,” let us suppose somebody knocks at the door and you say, “Come in.” What has happened in your reading? You have broken off one thought suddenly and another has come in its place. Let us see how such a sentence would look:
There’s a good time coming, boys,
A good—Come in.
Now, what is the difference between this sentence and those we studied in our last lesson? It is this: In the former lesson the new thought that was thrown in was really a part of the principal thought; but in this the new thought has no connection with the principal idea. In the previous lesson the group that was thrown in was a kind of explanation; in this lesson, the first picture is driven entirely out of mind by the second.
Breaks in the thought are of many kinds, and it is very necessary that you should be on the look-out for them. Here is an example of a kind you will find quite often:
“Halt!” The dust-brown ranks stood fast.
“Fire!” out blazed the rifle-blast.
The words “halt” and “fire” are commands given by the general; the sentence that follows each of these words tells us what happened after the commands were given.
Another kind of break is found in those selections in which there are two or more persons speaking. As in this: “Frank said, ‘Will you go to school with me?’ and his brother said, ‘No, I don’t like it.’ ‘Not like school?’ replied Frank, who was very much surprised, ‘I would rather go there than anywhere I know.’” You can see plainly that there is a break when the reader changes from one person to another.
The last kind of break we shall speak about in this lesson is that which occurs between the stanzas of a poem or between the paragraphs of a prose selection. I need not give any examples here, for you will find them on every page of your reader. All I need do is tell you that the new paragraph or the new stanza generally begins with a new thought. So you must be sure to get that new thought, and hold it well in mind, before you try to express it.
In closing this lesson I want to show you that you may learn how to read such examples as we have had, if you will but be careful. You must be sure to get each new picture before you utter a word. Take the first example. You have read the first line, “There’s a good time coming, boys,” and you are just about to repeat it. Now think what you are going to say, and just as you come to the word “good,” imagine you hear a knocking, and say, “Come in.” If you will only think what the words mean and see the picture, there will be no trouble about reading the example well.
A few examples for class use are appended. The teacher may easily invent suitable contexts:
My servant-boy, with a reserve gun, was ten or twelve yards off—a long way at such a moment.
It would make the reader pity me to learn that, after having labored hard, I could not make above two large earthen, ugly things (I can not call them jars) in about two months’ labor.
The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou “poor Inhabitant below,”
At this dread moment,—even so—
Might we together
Have sate and talked where gowans blow,
Or on wild heather.
In the above, Wordsworth laments that the death of Burns should have deprived them of the joy of communion. Note the force of the semicolon after “flow,” and the pathos of “even so.” The following lines are from the same poem:
Too frail to keep the lofty vow
That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed—“The Vision” tells us how—
With holly spray,
He faltered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.
Now, when the Hare came to the top of the field, the Hedgehog cried out, “Hallo! here I am. Where have you been all this while?” But the Hare was out of his wits, and cried out, “Once more—turn about, and away!” “By all means,” answered the Hedgehog; “for my part, as often as you please.”
Young Harry was a lusty drover—
And who so stout of limb as he?
His cheeks were red as ruddy clover;
His voice was like the voice of three.
Old Goody Blake was old and poor;
Ill-fed she was, and thinly clad;
And any man who passed her door
Might see how poor a hut she had.
There is a change of feeling in almost every stanza of the following poem. If the pupils can grasp its meaning it will be an excellent exercise in training them to perceive the relative values. It may be well to delay the study of this selection until after the principle of the next two chapters has been thoroughly grasped and put into practice:
On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay th’ untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.
By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
And furious every charger neighed,
To join the dreadful revelry.
Then shook the hills, with thunder riven;
Then rushed the steed, to battle driven;
And, louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.
But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden’s hills of stainèd snow,
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
’Tis morn, but scarce yon lurid sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulph’rous canopy.
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!
Few, few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier’s sepulcher.
—Hohenlinden. Campbell.