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HOW TO TEACH
READING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BY
S. H. CLARK, Ph.B.
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
_Author of “How to Read Aloud” and Associate Author of “Principles
of Vocal Expression, Mental Technique and Literary Interpretation”_
CHICAGO
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
1898
Copyright 1898,
By SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
PRESS OF
THE HENRY O. SHEPARD CO.,
CHICAGO.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 7
INTRODUCTION 9
Chapter I. The Criterion of Time 19
II. The Criterion of Pitch 42
III. The Criterion of Quality 80
IV. The Criterion of Force 101
V. The Mental Attitude of the Reader 117
VI. Grouping 128
VII. Succession of Ideas 132
VIII. Central Idea 138
IX. Subordination 149
X. Values 157
XI. Emotion 172
XII. Atmosphere 184
XIII. Contrasts 205
XIV. Climaxes 212
XV. Concluding Remarks on Method 224
XVI. Literary Interpretation 231
INDEX 291
PREFACE
This book is intended as a manual for teachers of reading in the
public schools. In its preparation the theory was, first, that
the teacher should have a thorough knowledge of how thought and
feeling are expressed--in other words he must have the criteria
of expression; and, second, that he should have a definite graded
method of instruction, in which the simple shall precede the
complex, and in which one element, and one only, shall be presented
at a time.
The book is, therefore, an endeavor to assist the teacher of
reading, first, by explaining the psychology of the criteria
of expression; second, by presenting a practical method of
instruction; and, third, by discussing certain definite principles
of literary interpretation.
Parts of this book have been given to the public by the author,
in _Principles of Vocal Expression_ and _How to Read Aloud_, the
latter of which is now out of print. The interest in these two
books is a cause for gratitude and it is hoped the present manual
may serve its purpose equally well.
S. H. CLARK.
INTRODUCTION
It is universally conceded that the public schools fail to give
children much power as readers. One authority asserts that,
after the child’s twelfth year, his ability as a reader steadily
declines. (Up to that time he is gradually acquiring greater
mastery over words, and so, in a sense, may be said to be
improving.) Testimony can be added that, by the time he reaches the
university, the average student cannot read at all.
Many remedies have been suggested, from which two may be selected
as typical. One is to call the attention of the child to the
mechanics of vocal expression--to inflection, force, movement, and
so forth. The other (that commonly employed), to tell the child to
get the thought. It cannot be denied that both methods have, in
isolated cases, been productive of some good, yet, on the whole,
they have been well-nigh barren of results. Let us inquire briefly
into the causes.
The mechanical method fails, especially with younger people,
because it is dry, technical, unstimulating, and, in the main,
uninteresting. It deals with rules for the use of the different
elements of vocal expression, telling the child he must use a
rising inflection here, a falling inflection there; that he must
read parenthetical phrases and clauses in lower pitch and faster
time; that this emotion should be manifested in normal quality,
that emotion in orotund quality; and so on through weary, dreary
rules and principles, the study of which has seldom done any
good and oftentimes much harm. The “get-the-thought” method is a
revolt against the other plan. Recognizing the fact that drills
in the elements have done nothing toward elevating the standard
of reading, the conscientious principal or superintendent tells
his teachers that they must see to it that the scholars get the
thought. This is a step in the right direction, but it must be
acknowledged that it does not produce results. And the chief
reasons for this are two. First, for one cause or another the
finer shades of meaning escape too many teachers. Second, very
few teachers have received the necessary training to enable them
to discern quickly with what mental conditions various forms of
vocal expression are associated. In other words, they have not
the criteria of vocal expression; and, in consequence, helpful
criticism is impossible.
Why have previous methods of teaching reading practically failed?
There are three reasons: first, the lack of appreciation of the
best literature on the part of the teacher; second, the complexity
of vocal expression; and third, the intangibility of vocal
expression.
Appreciation of the meaning and beauty of literature is the first
requisite of a successful teacher of reading; and yet there is
little opportunity afforded the teacher to get this appreciation.
Is it not true that too many teachers have no love for real
literature? The fault is not theirs, but that of the method of
teaching literature that substitutes grammar, philology, history,
and lectures about literature for the study of the meaning and
beauty of the literature itself. One may safely assert that
thousands of children would be better readers, even with the
present faulty methods, if their teachers had a genuine interest
in the best literature. Of what avail is it to put good literature
into the schoolbooks if its merit does not appeal as well to the
instructor as to the pupil? The stream can rise no higher than its
source. There is, however, a rapidly growing sentiment against the
substitution of parsing, history, philology, or ethics for genuine
literary training. We are coming to recognize that literature is
art, beauty, spirit; and, when this recognition becomes general, we
shall have better teachers and better readers. For there is nothing
that so stimulates our vocal expression as the desire to impress
upon others the beauty and feeling of what has impressed ourselves.
Complexity may be defined by illustration. A phrase may be read
fast or slowly; in high or low key; with one melody or another;
with loud or subdued force; with this quality of voice or with
that. Now all these elements are present at one time; so that,
without proper training, the teacher is unable to discriminate
between them and hence unable to give the needful correction,
without which there can be no progress.
Intangibility may be explained by showing what is meant by a
tangible subject. The spelling lesson is tangible; the arithmetic
lesson is tangible. A mistake is easily recognized and corrected.
Three months after a paper on these subjects has been handed in,
the teacher can go back to it and examine it. But vocal expression
is evanescent, and, by the untrained, can be recalled imperfectly,
if at all, and then only a short time after it has been heard. In
the presence of the combined difficulties due to complexity and
intangibility, the teacher is appalled; and, conscientious though
he be, he gives up in despair. The teaching becomes perfunctory;
the children lose interest; and there is the end of reading.
Reading, which should be the brightest and most inspiring of
lessons, degenerates into a humdrum, dry-as-dust time-killer. Good
reading is as rare as the classical bird. No idea of a pupil’s
reading ability can be gained from a knowledge of the class he is
in. He is no better reader in the highest public-school grade than
he is in the grade two or three below the highest. The teacher has
come to recognize the futility of his efforts; and so, in many
class rooms, the time set apart for reading is given up to language
lessons, composition, and other studies, valuable in themselves,
but only incidentally helpful in increasing the pupil’s reading
power.
It may be asked, what objects are to be attained as a result of
reading lessons? There are two. First, to give us the power to
extract thought from the printed page. After we leave school, our
information is gained from books; and what we get from these is
largely determined by our school training. Our system of education
has a great deal to answer for when it fails to provide this
training. The value of vocal expression is not to be depreciated,
but of the utmost importance is the ability to get the author’s
meaning. Our teaching, from the primary grade to the university, is
lamentably weak in this direction. A well-known college professor,
in response to a school superintendent’s question as to what would
better the preparation of secondary-school students for college,
replied: “For Heaven’s sake, teach them how to read.” Another
college instructor--a learned authority on geology--states that
he finds occasion to remark to his classes about once a month,
“It’s a great thing to be able to read a page of English.” No one
who examines the reading in our schools can fail to be struck,
not so much with the absence of expressive power, as with the
absence of mental grasp. We are so anxious to get on that we are
content with skimming the surface, and do not take the time to get
beneath it. The reading lesson should be, primarily, a thinking
lesson, and every shade of thought should be carefully determined,
no matter how long a time may be consumed. The habit of hurrying
over the page, which is so prevalent, is clearly an outgrowth of
schoolroom methods. Careless of all the future, we are too prone
to push the pupil along, ignoring the simplest and most evident of
psychological laws, that thought comes by thinking, and thinking
takes time.
One tires of the universal excuse for the laxity of our methods:
we have not the time. The reply to teacher, superintendent, and
school board is, we have no time to teach a subject poorly. If
thought-getting--genuine thought-getting--were insisted on from
the outset, without doubt the work which now requires six or
seven years to accomplish could be done in five. How much thought
power has the public-school graduate? Very little. And yet, if
all lessons--history, geography, arithmetic, and the rest--were
made thought lessons, a child of fourteen would be on the road to
educating himself when he left school. Is it not pitiful to see
a bright boy or girl spending three or four hours a day in the
preparation of his lessons, and then coming to class only to find
that he has wasted and worse than wasted his time? In taking leave
of this theme, the teacher is urged to ponder these noble words of
a noble man, “When thou readest, look steadfastly with the mind at
the things the words symbolize. If there be question of mountains,
let them loom before thee; if of the ocean, let its billows roll
before thy eyes. This habit will give to thy voice even pliancy
and meaning. The more sources of interest we have, the richer is
our life. To hold any portion of truth in a vital way is better
than to have its whole baggage stored merely in one’s memory.” And,
again, “He who thinks for himself is rarely persuaded by another.
Information and inspiration he gladly receives, but he forms his
own judgment. Arguments and reasons which, to the thoughtful, sound
like mockery, satisfy the superficial and ignorant.” And there is
no better way to develop such a thinking person than by careful
training in reading.
Most readers, like good-natured cows,
Keep browsing and forever browse;
If a fair flower come in their way
They take it too, nor ask, “What, pray!”
Like other fodder it is food,
And for the stomach quite as good.
Training in thought-getting is, then, the first result to be
expected from the reading lesson. The second is the power of
adequate vocal expression. The temptation to enlarge upon the
many benefits to body, voice, mind, and soul, to say nothing of
the practical worldly benefits of vocal expression, is resisted.
It is taken for granted that they are recognized; so that we pass
on to the discussion of a plan that may help us to get these
benefits; prefacing the discussion with the statement that the evil
results of our present laxity are not to be laid at the door of
the individual teacher, but at that of the educational system in
general.
This work makes no pretensions to treat in any detail reading as an
art. Its sole object is to present the ideal of the reading lesson
and suggest ways and means by which that ideal may be brought
somewhat nearer to our grasp than it is at present. Nevertheless,
to those who may desire to study reading as an art, it can be
safely said, that we must first be good readers before we can
be artists; and since this is so, there should be much gain to
them from a careful, definite study of the fundamental principles
herein set forth. For special teachers of elocution, also, it is
hoped that the book may prove of some value, as dealing with those
elements without the understanding of which successful teaching of
advanced work is impossible.
Vocal culture, in the ordinary sense of the word, finds no place
in this discussion. The reason for this omission will appear in
the following pages. This much, however, may be stated here;
except under particularly favorable circumstances, very little can
be done in voice training in our public schools; but by the plan
herein presented, the voices of our children may be made truly
expressive, and that, after all, is of more value to them than mere
technical facility.
While the subject of primary school reading is not discussed
directly, the primary teacher should derive considerable assistance
from the book, inasmuch as it aims to present the standard of
criticism and the psychology of reading. With him rests to a great
extent the success of any method of oral expression. That he should
have a clear conception of the goal of the reading lessons and the
manner of reaching it is therefore beyond dispute.
The book has a double purpose. First, to assist the teacher to
teach reading; second, to help the teacher to improve his own
reading. The latter purpose explains the amount of illustrative
matter, and also the fact that some of this is beyond the grasp of
young and immature minds.
PART ONE
THE CRITERIA OF VOCAL EXPRESSION
CHAPTER I
THE CRITERION OF TIME
It must be clear that no progress can be made in the teaching of
any subject unless the teacher possess a definite standard of
criticism; and, furthermore, it must be granted that the teacher
of reading does not possess this standard. We have a standard in
spelling, in arithmetic, in geography, but none in reading--at
least none clearly apprehended and scientifically applied. It is,
therefore, the purpose of the first part of this book to present
those elements of vocal expression--the four criteria--a knowledge
of which is indispensable to any progress in the teaching of
reading. These are, Time, Pitch, Quality, and Force, the first of
which we now proceed to study in detail.
In Professor Raymond’s admirable work, _The Orator’s Manual_, there
appear these significant words: “The relative time apportioned to
a word indicates the _mind’s measurement_ of it,--represents the
speaker’s judgment as to the amount of meaning or importance that
it conveys.” A moment’s thought must convince us of the truth of
this statement. Making due allowance for certain speakers, who, for
one cause or another, have an unusually slow or fast utterance,
the principle laid down by Professor Raymond is, without doubt,
psychologically sound. In fact, it is a platitude; but like many
another platitude, its truth is so close to us that we fail to
perceive its meaning and application. An additional proof of the
soundness of this principle is found in music. A solemn dirge, a
funeral march, an anthem of praise is rendered in slow time; while
moderate and fast time seem the fitting expression of the lighter
moods.
Time, then, refers to the rate of vocal movement. It may be fast,
or moderate, or slow, according to the amount of what may be called
the collateral thinking accompanying the reading of any given
passage. To put it another way: a phrase is read slowly because
it means much; because the thought is large, sublime, deep. The
collateral thinking may be revealed by an _expansive paraphrase_.
For instance, in the lines
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried,
why do we read slowly? The paraphrase answers the question. It
was midnight. There lay our beloved leader, who should have been
borne in triumphal procession to his last resting place. Bells
should have tolled, cannon thundered, and thousands should have
followed his bier. But now, alas! by night, by stealth, without
even a single drum tap, in fear and dread, we crept breathless to
the ramparts. This, or any one of a hundred other paraphrases, will
suffice to render the vocal movement slow. And so it is with all
slow time. Let it be remembered that a profound or sublime thought
_may_ be uttered in fast time; but that when we dwell upon that
thought, when we hold it before the mind, the time must necessarily
be slow.
The succeeding passages will have a prevailingly slow movement.
Measure the thought carefully, and think the expansive paraphrase.
These drills are not to train us to read slowly (for any one can do
that), but to think largely. The movement will take care of itself.
It is further urged that the student give considerable attention to
this part of the subject; for the time so spent will be valuable
not only as it results in expressive movement, but because it is
only through meditation that the fullest insight into the meaning
of a passage can be acquired. Hence, dwelling for a long period
upon a phrase or sentence gives opportunity for the enkindling of
the imagination and emotion. It has been frequently found that
where a student’s movement was out of harmony with the sentiment
of the passage, his emotional interpretation was equally poor.
A farther careful study of the text to improve the movement has
generally resulted in the improvement of the emotional expression.
Mr. Speaker: The mingled tones of sorrow, like the
voice of many waters, have come unto us from a sister
State--Massachusetts--weeping for her honored son. The State I
have the honor in part to represent once endured, with yours, a
common suffering, battled for a common cause, and rejoiced in a
common triumph. Surely, then, it is meet that in this the day of
your affliction we should mingle our griefs.
Search creation round, where can you find a country that presents
so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? Who shall say
for what purpose mysterious Providence may not have designed her!
Who shall say that when in its follies or its crimes, the Old
World may have buried all the pride of its power, and all the
pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined
renovation in the New! When its temples and its trophies shall
have mouldered into dust,--when the glories of its name shall be
but the legend of tradition, and the light of its achievements
live only in song, philosophy will revive again in the sky of her
Franklin, and glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington.
Often have I swept backward, in imagination, six thousand years,
and stood beside our great ancestor, as he gazed for the first
time upon the going down of the sun. What strange sensations must
have swept through his bewildered mind, as he watched the last
departing ray of the sinking orb, unconscious whether he should
ever behold its return.
Wrapped in a maze of thought, strange and startling, he suffers
his eye to linger long about the point at which the sun has
slowly faded from view. A mysterious darkness creeps over the
face of Nature; the beautiful scenes of earth are slowly fading,
one by one, from his dimmed vision.
You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history, not with
your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when
Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocion for
the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, La
Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate
flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown as the ripe
fruit of our noonday, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will
write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier,
the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Figure to yourself a cataract like that of Niagara, poured in
foaming grandeur, not merely over one great precipice of two
hundred feet, but over the successive ridgy precipices of two or
three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand feet
high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down with a continuous
din of far greater sublimity than the sound of the grandest
cataract. The roar of the falling mass begins to be heard the
moment it is loosened from the mountain; it pours on with the
sound of a vast body of rushing water; then comes the first great
concussion, a booming crash of thunders, breaking on the still
air in mid-heaven; your breath is suspended, and you listen and
look; the mighty glittering mass shoots headlong over the main
precipice, and the fall is so great that it produces to the
eye that impression of dread majestic slowness of which I have
spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than Niagara. But if
you should see the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five
thousand feet above you in the air, there would be the same
impression. The image remains in the mind, and can never fade
from it; it is as if you had seen an alabaster cataract from
heaven. The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara,
because of the preceding stillness in those Alpine solitudes. In
the midst of such silence and solemnity, from out the bosom of
those glorious, glittering forms of nature, comes that rushing,
crashing thunder-burst of sound! If it were not that your soul,
through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of
the vision as, through the sense of hearing, with that of the
audible report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your
hands, and fall prostrate, as at the voice of the Eternal.
How lovely are thy dwellings fair!
O Lord of Hosts, how dear
The pleasant tabernacles are
Where thou dost dwell so near!
My soul doth long and almost die
Thy courts, O Lord, to see,
My heart and flesh aloud do cry,
O living God, for thee.
There even the sparrow, freed from wrong,
Hath found a house of rest;
The swallow there, to lay her young,
Hath built her brooding nest;
Even by thy altars, Lord of Hosts,
They find their safe abode;
And home they fly from round the coasts
Towards thee, my King, my God.
The following will illustrate fast movement. Let there be no
attempt to accelerate the speed, but let the thought and emotion
themselves govern that. No examples are given to illustrate
moderate time, since the student gets sufficient practice of this
kind in almost everything he reads.
Gloriously, Max! gloriously! There were sixty horses in the
field, all mettle to the bone; the start was a picture--away we
went in a cloud--pell-mell--helter-skelter--the fools first,
as usual, using themselves up. We soon pass them--first your
Kitty, then my Blueskin, and Craven’s colt last. Then came the
tug--Kitty skimmed the walls--Blueskin flew over the fences--the
colt neck-and-neck, and half a mile to run--at last the
colt balked a leap and went wild. Kitty and I had it all to
ourselves--she was three lengths ahead as we breasted the last
wall, six feet, if an inch, and a ditch on the other side. Now,
for the first time, I gave Blueskin his head--Ha, ha! Away he
flew like a thunderbolt--over went the filly--I over the same
spot, leaving Kitty in the ditch--walked the steeple, eight miles
in thirty minutes, and scarcely turned a hair.
Nice clothes I get, too, traipsing through weather like this!
My gown and bonnet will be spoiled. Needn’t I wear ’em, then?
Indeed, Mr. Caudle, I _shall_ wear ’em. No, sir! I’m not going
out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows! it
isn’t often that I step over the threshold.
Before a quarter pole was pass’d,
Old Hiram said, “He’s going fast.”
Long ere the quarter was a half,
The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh;
Tighter his frightened jockey clung
As in a mighty stride he swung,
The gravel flying in his track,
His neck stretched out, his ears laid back,
His tail extended all the while
Behind him like a rat-tail file!
Off went a shoe,--away it spun,
Shot like a bullet from a gun;
The quaking jockey shapes a prayer
From scraps of oaths he used to swear;
He drops his whip, he drops his rein,
He clutches fiercely for the mane;
He’ll lose his hold,--he sways and reels,--
He’ll slide beneath those trampling heels!
The knees of many a horseman quake,
The flowers on many a bonnet shake,
And shouts arise from left and right,
“Stick on! stick on!” “Hould tight! hould tight!
Cling round his neck; and don’t let go,--
That pace can’t hold,--there! steady! whoa!”
Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled,
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov’n in circles. They that heard it sigh’d,
Panted hand-in-hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.
Then the music touch’d the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem’d to fail,
Storm’d in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As ’twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbb’d and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round.
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash’d together in blinding dew;
Till, kill’d with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter’d headlong from the sky.
Let it not be supposed that any one of the foregoing extracts is
to be read in uniformly slow or uniformly fast time; that will
change with each variation in the importance of the thought.
Without attempting to force any interpretation upon the student,
an illustration is appended in which he may note how the relative
importance of the ideas affects the rate of movement in the various
phrases.
_Med._ Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
_Med._ What tributaries follow him to Rome,
_Fast._ To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?
_Slow._ You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless
things!
_Very slow._ O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
_Med. and fast._ Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
_Fast._ Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,
_Fast._ To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
_Med._ Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
_Med._ The livelong day, with patient expectation,
_Med._ To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
_Med._ And when you saw his chariot but appear,
_Fast._ Have you not made an universal shout,
_Fast._ That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
_Fast._ To hear the replication of your sounds
_Fast._ Made in her concave shores?
_Slow._ And do you now put on your best attire?
_Med._ And do you now cull out a holiday?
_Med._ And do you now strew flowers in his way,
_Fast._ That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? Begone!
_Med._ Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
_Slow._ Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
_Slow._ That needs must light on this ingratitude.
It must be evident that it is very difficult to suggest by a word
the rate of speed at which one should render a given line. Fast
and slow are relative terms. Certain speakers would consider slow
reading what another would consider moderate. Yet there is on the
whole a pretty general agreement as to the use of these terms. With
this statement, we may proceed to an analysis of the selection to
justify the marking.
The citizens of Rome have just declared to the tribunes, enemies
of Caesar, why the people are making holiday: “We make holiday to
see Caesar, and to rejoice in his triumph.” Whereupon Marullus,
one of the tribunes, begins his speech, endeavoring to convince
the mob that there is absolutely nothing Caesar has done to
merit this ovation. After the word “tributaries,” the time is
accelerated for the reason that all that follows, to the end of
the query, is virtually repetitious, being included in the idea of
tributaries. The indicated marking of lines four and five needs
no justification. “Knew you not Pompey?” is a question containing
reproach. The latter element will tend to retard the movement.
“Many a time and oft” is repetitious; he is simply reminding
them of well-known facts. When the speaker reaches “yea, to
chimney-tops,” the importance of the idea is at once manifest in
the slower time, which continues to “arms,” when it again changes
to medium and fast. The student may find it a good drill to examine
the remaining lines, to see whether he agrees with or differs from
the time-markings.
Thus far we have been considering the element of time without
regard to details. It is now necessary to note that time may be
affected in two ways: by quantity and by pause. By dwelling upon
the words the time may be retarded, and the same effect may be
produced by frequent or long pauses. In the former instance, the
mind is dwelling upon the thought while the voice is giving it
expression; and in the latter, the mind is dwelling upon the idea
or the collateral thought between the words or groups. The two
methods may be illustrated in the following extract: “Our Father,
which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” One may read this with
but one pause, after “Heaven”; or he may appropriately pause after
“Father,” “Heaven,” and “hallowed.”
GROUPING
Study carefully the following extract, and then read it aloud:
But when the gray dawn stole into his tent,
He rose, and clad himself, and girt his sword,
And took his horseman’s cloak, and left his tent,
And went abroad into the cold wet fog,
Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa’s tent.
We notice a tendency to break up the sentence into groups of
varying length. This tendency is more or less instinctive; and
while there may be some difference of opinion as to the number of
groups, yet it must be conceded that there is a definite underlying
principle, which admits of no exception. For instance, one might
read the fourth line as if it were but one group; another, with
virtually the same idea in mind, might divide it into two groups
at the word “abroad.” On the other hand, no one would read in this
way: “And went abroad into the”--“cold wet fog through”--“the dim
camp to Peran-Wisa’s tent.”
Read the following sentences aloud carefully, and it will be
noticed that the same principle of grouping obtains:
The star of Napoleon was just rising to its zenith as that of
Washington was passing away.
The name and memory of Washington will travel with the Silver
Queen of Heaven through sixty degrees of longitude, nor part
company with her till she walks in her brightness through the
Golden Gate of California, and passes serenely on to hold
midnight court with her Australian Stars.
The reading of these illustrations shows that grouping is entirely
independent of punctuation. It is true that the spoken group
may coincide with the grammatical group, but that is merely an
accident. We group as we do, not because of punctuation marks, but
for more fundamental and less conventional reasons. The function
of the punctuation mark is to assist the reader in getting the
author’s thought. The following example will illustrate this:
The slaves who were in the hold of the vessel had been captured
in Africa.
It is plain that the clause introduced by “who” is a restrictive
one, and implies that there were other slaves on the vessel besides
those mentioned. If we now insert commas after “slaves” and
“vessel,” the sentence becomes equivalent to, The slaves, and they
were all in the hold of the vessel, had been captured in Africa.
Note, again, how the sense would be obscured if the author had
omitted the comma after “all” in this extract:
For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,
Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate.
We are not like swimmers in the sea, but poised on the top of a
huge wave of fate, as swimmers in the sea are poised on waves of
water.
To prove that grouping is independent of punctuation, let the
student read aloud the following illustrations:
But, look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow.
I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; and, as I told you, he put
it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking he would have had
it ... and, for mine own part, I dare not laugh.
In the two preceding extracts, the reader would hardly pause after
“But,” “you,” and the “and’s.”
While we are on the subject of punctuation, it may be advisable
to look at a few examples in which the understanding of the force
of punctuation vitally affects the reading. In these lines from
Tennyson’s _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, students
carelessly connect the phrase “sad and slow” with “Lead out the
pageant.” As a matter of fact, a moment’s thought must show us
that the opening sentence is complete in itself, and that “sad and
slow” modifies “go.” A careful reading of the text would reveal
this, but a mind that had been trained to observe these matters of
punctuation would have observed at once that the colon separated
the two ideas, and, further, that the word modified by “sad and
slow” was to be sought further on. Here is the passage:
Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits a universal woe,
Let the long long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music flow,
The last great Englishman is low.
Another passage, from _The Merchant of Venice_, is equally
interesting and instructive. Shylock says:
Yet his means are in supposition; he hath an argosy bound to
Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand moreover upon the
Rialto, he hath a third to Mexico, a fourth for England; and
other ventures he hath, squandered abroad.
Seven students out of ten read the last sentence as if “hath
squandered” were the verb. The comma after “hath” shows this to be
a mistake, and, moreover, denotes a shade of meaning that is very
significant of Shylock’s character.
The object in giving these illustrations has been to free the
student from a very common misconception that the group is
determined by the punctuation mark, and, further, to draw his
attention to the necessity of scanning the punctuation with the
utmost care. As a rule, the words are in themselves sufficient
index of the author’s meaning; but, as in the cases cited, there
are times when carelessness regarding punctuation leads to serious
and ridiculous misunderstanding. The punctuation will make the
sense clear wherever such help is necessary; but after that,
as far as grouping is concerned, the student need give it no
further attention. In order to impress the fact that grouping and
punctuation are independent of each other, the following examples
should be thoughtfully considered and then read aloud:
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
And as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
Note that “only” modifies “greatest,” and hence should be separated
from “are.” If the sentence were prose, it would read, “And as only
the greatest are,” in which case there would be no difficulty in
the reading. As it is, we must bring out the relation by careful
grouping.
The first object of a free people is the preservation of their
liberty; and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining
constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power.
Soon after William H. Harrison’s nomination, a writer in one of
the leading administration papers spoke of his “log cabin” and
his use of “hard cider,” by way of sneer and reproach....
It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder
brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised amid the
snowdrifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that, when
the smoke rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen
hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man’s habitation
between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada.
The following example is an excellent one to illustrate the
necessity of paying careful attention to grouping:
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos.
It is to be remarked that the spirit did not teach the shepherd
“in the beginning,” but “how the Heav’ns and Earth rose” in
the beginning, “out of Chaos.” If we turn this last sentence
into prose, it will assist us in getting the poet’s meaning and
consequently in giving the correct rendition.
THE PAUSE AS AN EXPRESSIVE ELEMENT
In the study of grouping, the student noticed that the groups
were separated by pauses of varying duration. It may be said that
the pauses were the results of the grouping rather than that the
grouping was the result of the pauses. In other words, the pause
could hardly be called expressive.
We are now to study the pause as an expressive element. No definite
rule can be laid down for pausing; that is determined, to a large
extent, by the temperament, the nature of the thought, and the
occasion. It must be borne in mind, however, that the pause is not
mere silence. A very little observation will show us that while
the voice ceases, the thought continues to manifest itself in
pantomimic expression. What is it, then, that determines the pause?
The answer has a twofold aspect. First, pausing is an instinctive
process, and comes as the result of certain psychological
processes. We think in ideas, not in individual words, and these
ideas are separated in our minds by pauses of varying length.
We do not stop to consider whether or no we shall pause between
the phrases of a sentence; the pause, as has been stated, comes
instinctively, and is a manifestation of psycho-psychological
action. In the second place, the pause is made as the result, to
a greater or less degree, of collateral thinking. In other words,
any given idea may call up another train of thought, with which
the mind may engage itself, and such engagement would find actual
expression in the pause. It must be remembered that the collateral
thinking may take the mind backward or forward. According to the
amount of this collateral thinking will be the duration of the
pause.
An extract from the play of _Julius Caesar_ will illustrate this
point. In the fifth act, Brutus and Cassius have taken their
“everlasting farewell,” and Brutus ends the interview with these
words:
Why then, lead on.--O, that a man might know
The end of this day’s business, ere it come!
But it sufficeth, that the day will end,
And then the end is known.
The first four words of this speech are addressed to the onlookers.
The word “on” takes the mind of the thoughtful and considerate
leader to the battlefield where the fate of Rome is to be decided.
He perceives that the future of his beloved city hangs trembling in
the balance. The appearance on the preceding night of the ghost of
Caesar, warning him that it will see him at Philippi, fills Brutus
with apprehension. And then, how many of his followers, now so
ready to do battle under his standard, will, ere night, lie cold in
death upon the bloody field! All this and more passes through his
mind, and his solicitude and apprehension manifest themselves in
his features and in his body. Then even the stoical Brutus cannot
repress his anxiety, which we note in the words, “O, that a man
might know.” This extract, therefore, well illustrates what was
said above,--that the pause, as we here consider it, is not mere
silence, but cessation of voice while the expression continues in
the body. In the second place, it is plain that the collateral
thinking determines the length of the pause.
Another element that determines the duration of the pause is the
distance apart of the thoughts separated by the pause. Let us
illustrate this:
If this law were put upon our statute books there would not be,
five years from to-day, a dissenting voice raised against it from
the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Let it not be understood that there are no occasions when the
phrase “from the Atlantic to the Pacific” would not be uttered with
scarcely any pause after Atlantic. This phrase, and others like
it, may have become a mere commonplace to describe extent; but in
such a passage as the above, where the speaker is hyperbolically
expressive, he no doubt intends to convey the idea that not one
objection would be heard even in all the three thousand miles
between the oceans. If the student will stop for a moment to
analyze his own consciousness while uttering this sentence, he will
scarcely fail to see the vast extent of territory separating the
two oceans.
Many writers on the subject have given emotion as a reason for
the pause. Strictly speaking, however, emotion, as distinct from
thinking, seldom or never is the cause of the pause, unless it
completely choke the utterance. In the example quoted above from
_Julius Caesar_ there is no doubt considerable emotion during the
pause; but it is the thought, and not the emotion arising out of
it, that leads to the silence.
The following excerpt is from the speech of Satan in _Paradise
Lost_. Satan has been cursing his lot and the author of his
punishment. Finally, his judgment tells him that he himself, and
not God, is responsible for the downfall. The pauses, indicated
by the vertical lines, are suggestive of the proper rendition. Of
course, the pauses vary in duration from the briefest cessation of
voice to pauses of considerable length:
Nay, | curs’d be thou; | since against his | thy will
Chose freely | what it now | so justly rues.
Me | miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, | and infinite despair? |
Which way I fly | is Hell; | myself | am Hell;
And in the lowest deep | a lower deep |
Still threat’ning to devour me | opens wide |
To which the Hell I suffer | seems a Heav’n.
But say I could repent | and could obtain |
By act of grace | my former state, | how soon
Would height | recall high thoughts, | how soon unsay |
What feign’d submission | swore.
This | knows my punisher; therefore | as far
From granting | he, as I | from begging | peace.
The student should practice the following examples until he
perceives clearly the force of the preceding principles. The group
is the thought unit, and the proper rendition of the sentence
depends upon our grasp of the units that compose it. Hence, a
conscientious study of the phrasing will lead not only to careful
grouping, but to a grasp of the thought in its entirety that cannot
fail to affect for good the reading of the whole selection:
... and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws.
A piece of work that will make sick men whole.
Danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he.
We are two lions litter’d in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible.
No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits lived inspher’d
In regions mild of calm and serene air.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
And the sunset paled and warmed once more
With a softer, tenderer afterglow;
In the east was moonrise with boats off-shore;
And sails in the distance drifting slow.
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In the minds made better by their presence:
Moses, who spake with God as with his friend,
And ruled his people with the twofold power
Of wisdom that can dare and still be meek,
Was writing his last word, the sacred name
Unutterable of that Eternal Will
Which was and is and evermore shall be.
We stood far off and saw the angels lift
His corpse aloft until they seemed a star
That burnt itself away within the sky.
Messer Bernado del Nero was as inexorable as Romola had expected
in his advice that the marriage should be deferred till Easter,
and in this matter Bardo was entirely under the ascendency of his
sagacious and practical friend. Nevertheless, Bernado himself,
though he was as far as ever from any susceptibility to the
personal fascination in Tito which was felt by others, could
not altogether resist that argument of success which is always
powerful with men of the world.
Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me
very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just
now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you
know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness
the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are
gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but
I cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain,
Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age.
An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic
kind, used to love to hear little nursery stories read over and
over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last
years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor.
I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who
became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later
period of his life.
Whatever Lionel had said to his wife that evening she had found
something to say to him: that Laura could see though not so much
from any change in the simple expression of his little red face
and in the vain bustle of his existence as from the grand manner
in which Selina now carried herself. She was “smarter” than ever
and her waist was smaller and her back straighter and the fall
of her shoulders finer; her long eyes were more oddly charming
and the extreme detachment of her elbows from her sides conduced
still more to the exhibition of her beautiful arms.
At the moment when death so suddenly stayed his course the
greatness of Henry the Fifth had reached its highest point. He
had won the Church by his orthodoxy, the nobles by his warlike
prowess, the whole people by his revival of the glories of Crecy
and Poitiers. In France his cool policy had transformed him from
a foreign conqueror into a legal heir to the crown; his title
of Regent and of successor to the throne rested on the formal
recognition of the estates of the realm; and his progress to the
very moment of his death promised a speedy mastery of the whole
country. But the glory of Agincourt and the genius of Henry the
Fifth hardly veiled at the close of his reign the weakness and
humiliation of the Crown when the succession passed to his infant
son.
PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS
From what has been stated, it must be clear that drills in fast
time or slow time are useless and fraught with much danger of
affectation. Any of us can read slowly or rapidly; that is merely a
matter of mechanics. The object to be attained is the development
of such power of discrimination in the child that the value of
each phrase and sentence shall be carefully determined; and then
the degree of extent, depth, sublimity or grandeur of the thought
will determine the rate of movement. Training in Time for its own
sake is valueless. From the very beginning, the teacher must use
Time as a test, as a standard of criticism; and all corrections
must be made with a clear perception on the part of the teacher of
the psychology of Time. If a child read too rapidly, it is because
his mind is not sufficiently occupied with the thought; if he read
too slowly, it is because he does not get the words; or because he
is temperamentally slow; or because, and this is the most likely
explanation, he is making too much of a small idea.
The only excuse for drills in Time is when a pupil reads everything
at about the same rate. In such a case, in the upper grades, the
teacher may choose certain selections for the proper expression
of which approximately fast or slow movement, as the case may be,
would be required. Then let the teacher, through careful analysis
and question, lead the child to understand the passages as the
teacher understands them, and the proper rate of utterance will
follow. This process may seem slow; but let us bear in mind that
we are dealing with fundamental principles of thinking, and too
much time cannot be spent in building our foundations strong
and solid. Furthermore, if the rate of utterance is not the
instinctive manifestation of the child’s thought measurement, it
is nothing at all. To tell him to read fast or slowly is but to
make him affected, and incidentally, even if unconsciously, to
impress upon him that reading is a matter of mechanics and not of
thought-getting and thought-giving.
In order to teach grouping, various rules have been laid down.
Pupils have committed a long list of these without much practical
benefit. A few of these rules are given to show the mechanical
nature of such a method of teaching. “In every direct period,
the principal pause comes at that part where the sense begins to
form, or the expectation excited by the first member begins to be
answered.” Or, “A loose sentence requires a longer pause between
its first member (usually a period direct or inverted), and the
additional member which does not modify it.” And, again, “Where
the adjective follows the substantive or noun it modifies, and has
modifiers of its own, constituting a descriptive phrase, it should
be separated from its noun by a short pause.” Now, it may be quite
true that these rules are valid, but is it not clear that the
pedagogy which makes use of them in the earlier stages approaches
the subject from the wrong side? It lays stress upon the objective
rather than upon the subjective aspect.
The pause should never be taught merely as pause. If the principles
herein discussed have any meaning, they must surely teach us that
the pause must come spontaneously. The pedagogic point to be
remembered is that the pupil must be trained to extract the thought
piece by piece, and to express it. The pause will then appear
without consciousness. The attempt to teach pauses as such must
result in mechanical silences, during which the face of the pupil
is a perfect blank, the indubitable sign of mental blankness.
It should certainly now be clear that it is wrong to draw the
attention of the pupil to the pause as such, and that it is
useless and often misleading to give him at the beginning rules
of pausing. We must approach the printed page in the spirit with
which we approach one who is speaking to us, and, having grasped
the meaning, repeat the ideas. Then the pauses will come as the
unconscious expression of certain definite mental action.
Perhaps there is no better way of bringing home to the reader the
psychological action lying behind grouping and pausing than by
calling his attention to a chapter from a brief but most attractive
work by Ernest Legouvé, of the _Conservatoire Française_:
To conclude what we have to say on the first portion of our
subject, the material part of reading, we must now occupy
ourselves a little with what may be called punctuation.
The tongue punctuates as well as the pen.
One day, Samson, sitting at his desk, sees himself approached by
a young man apparently pretty well satisfied with himself.
“You wish to take reading lessons, sir?”
“Yes, Monsieur Samson.”
“Have you had some practice in reading aloud?”
“O yes, Monsieur Samson, I have often recited whole passages from
Corneille and Molière.”
“In public?”
“Yes, Monsieur Samson.”
“With success?”
“Well, yes, Monsieur, I think I may flatter myself that far.”
“Take up that book, please. It is Fontaine’s Fables. Open it at
the _Oak and the Reed_. Let me hear you read a line or two.”
The pupil begins:
“The Oak one day, said to the Reed----”
“That’s enough, sir! You don’t know anything about reading!”
“It is because I don’t know much, Monsieur Samson,” replies the
pupil, a little nettled, “it is precisely because I don’t know
much that I’ve come to you for lessons. But I don’t exactly
comprehend how from my manner of reading a single verse----”
“Read the line again, sir.”
He reads it again:
“The Oak one day, said to the Reed----”
“There! You can’t read! I told you so!”
“But----”
“But,” interrupts Samson, cold and dry, “but why do you join the
adverb to the noun rather than to the verb? What kind of an Oak
is an Oak one day? No kind at all! There is no such tree! Why,
then, do you say: _the Oak one day, said to the Reed_? This is
the way it should go: _the Oak (comma) one day said to the Reed_.
You understand, of course?”
“Certainly I do,” replies the other, a new light breaking on him.
“It seems as if there should be an invisible comma after Oak!”
“You are right, sir,” continues the master. “Every passage
has a double set of punctuation marks, one visible, the other
invisible; one is the printer’s work, the other the reader’s.”
“The reader’s? Does the reader also punctuate?”
“Certainly he does, quite independently too of the printer’s
points, though it must be acknowledged that sometimes both
coincide. By a certain cadenced silence the reader marks his
period; by a half silence, his comma; by a certain accent, an
interrogation; by a certain tone, an exclamation. And I must
assure you that it is exclusively on the skillful distribution of
these insensible points that not only the interest of the story,
but actually its clearness, its comprehensibility, altogether
depends.”