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Hence, practice in speaking should be at first on very short passages.

It is best indeed to begin with the appropriate utterance of single words, and to proceed successively to groups, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and entire discourses. It often happens, that one who has had no practice whatever, can speak a single word or group with propriety, but cannot follow it with another, without a falling off in the appropriate tone with which he began.

It should be a rule, not to persevere in practising at any one time, longer than while the mind continues fresh and clear, and the perceptions of the ear remain unconfused.

Longer continuance will be useful merely in strengthening the voice. When this is the principal object, two or three hours at a time may be spent with advantage.

The first practice for learning to sustain the voice, should be with reference to keeping it uniformly adapted to the size of a large room, or to the extent of ground occupied by an audience imagined to be present in the open air. This will be judged of by the ear, and will fatigue the mind but little.

When after a few trials, considerable difficulty remains in sustaining the voice, the fault will probably in every case, be found to result from habits of not taking breath with sufficient fullness and frequency between the groups.

When the voice is adequately sustained for a large room, or when in a small one a consistent elevation of delivery is maintained, the chest is kept always full and heaved up. It never entirely relaxes, except at long pauses which occur in passing from one sentence or paragraph to another.

CHAPTER VI.

EMPHATIC FORCE.

In the preceding chapters we have designedly omitted such general habits in delivery, as render reading or speaking powerful and intensely interesting. The present will be devoted to those which are necessary for force and expression. In the second part of the work, we shall treat briefly of the principles which render particular words emphatic; while in the third we shall classify and describe the general styles into which all expression may be divided.

We are now to consider those mental and physical efforts which are common alike to all the modes of emphasis and enforcement, and to all the varieties of expression.

Before practising any of the examples furnished in this chapter, it will be well first to read over the remarks in its last section, on the Tone of Communicating Thought.

EMPHATIC FORCE is given to those parts of discourse which excite the mind of the speaker to peculiar earnestness, and cause him to make a special effort to awaken the same feelings in those whom he addresses.

It may be thought that no one can be liable to experience difficulty in making the mental and physical exertion required for this purpose. Yet such is not the fact. In no part of delivery do unpractised speakers so much fail, as in this; and in no part do teachers of elocution find it so difficult to develope the capabilities of those whom they instruct. Indeed, it is found on trial that not only are students of elocution unable to give natural and expressive emphasis, so long as they have no command over the speaking voice, but even after this point has been mastered, the delivery will still remain unnatural in regard to emphasis, unless especial attention be directed to the subject.

As continuous speech consists of a succession of repeated efforts on groups of words, it is at first most natural and easy to proceed with uniform regularity, and utter each group with the same force and with no variation in slowness. The strength of voice on all the accents is thus the same, while the pauses do not differ from one another in length, or in the modulation of the voice which precedes them. The proclamations of criers, and the enthusiastic harangues of men entirely destitute of education, afford examples of this sort of delivery. But even in the elocution of speakers of a far higher order, we often witness more or less approximation to this rude mode, whenever their energies are tasked to fill very large rooms. In proportion to the difficulty of making themselves heard, their emphatic words differ less from the others in tone, and the general sound of the voice is more monotonous.

In reading, or in speaking written composition without having first committed it to memory, the difficulty of giving a perpetually varying force, is rendered still greater by the confinement of the eye to the unbroken uniformity of the written or printed lines. These tend to carry the mind and voice mechanically along, and to cause all the words to be uttered with the same force. They likewise make it more difficult for the mind to stop in its onward progress, and exhibit the pauses that are so frequent and important in a natural delivery. The new mode adopted in this treatise, for exhibiting the necessary pauses, will be found of great service, inasmuch as it assists the mind as well as the eye.

It follows from these facts, that in learning to emphasize with natural force, attention must first be given to pausing.

Before the utterance of an emphatic expression, the mind must pause, in order to collect and concentrate its energies, preparatory to the more earnest effort about to be made.

Sometimes the pause will occur immediately before the precise syllable upon which the emphatic force is to be given. This will happen when an emphatic single word is the first of a group, and is one which begins with an accented syllable. For it must be remembered, that when the emphasis is on a single word, it is its accented syllable only that receives the peculiar tone and force that mark the emphasis. But generally, the pause for collecting the requisite mental energy is made before some group, in the middle of which occurs the accented and emphatic syllable.

In the same manner as a pause before emphasizing is required for the mind, so is it for the breath, and for collecting vocal energy in the organs of utterance.

In the first stages of learning to speak, it continually happens that the speaker pauses and fully intends to give a strong emphasis, but finds to his great surprise, that his efforts fail. His voice does not in fact vary at all, or instead of a stronger expression, it even gives a weaker one. The writer recollects an instance of a man of a thoughtful and reflecting turn of mind, who devoted considerable time to preparing himself for delivering a course of written lectures. He evidently took pains in regard to delivery, yet all his emphases were marked by a hesitating feebleness of utterance. Such difficulties result from a want of the habit of taking breath before emphasizing.

The mental and vocal effort, then, by which emphasis is effected, is the following.

Before attempting to utter the group of words which contains the emphatic word, a pause is made, breath is quickly taken, the mind concentrated, and the vocal organs made ready for a new effort.

Emphatic words are generally accompanied also by some variety of the stroke in gesture. If the arm has been hanging at the side, it is during the pause that it is raised.

Yet even when the speaker fails in none of the requisites just described, it sometimes happens that he does not succeed in giving a natural and expressive tone of voice, and a truly significant gesture. His voice and gesture may be forcible, yet mechanical and unmeaning. The remedy for this is in the management of the mind. Speakers are at first liable to utter words without thinking of their meaning. Or if they fix their attention on the meaning, they may still forget that all speaking supposes an audience. Emphasis especially, requires to be directed by its tone and gesture, towards the hearers, and if none are present to be addressed, they must be imagined. To succeed perfectly, then, in emphasizing—

The effort of the mind must be to enforce thoughts and not mere words. The emphatic force must also be earnestly directed towards an audience.

It will be useful to mention, that this vigorous effort to set forth and enforce ideas rather than words, is at first inconsistent with that more leisurely state of mind required for articulation, pronunciation, and in general, the more mechanical parts of delivery. When first studying emphasis and expression, it is best to neglect every other quality of speaking. After a time, skill and self-command will be acquired, by which such qualities as at first require different and opposite states of mind, can be exhibited in natural conjunction.

Since emphasis results from earnestness, it follows that not only are emphatic syllables uttered with more energy, but the voice dwells upon them longer than on those of less importance. Emphatic words take up more time in utterance.

In fact, as will be explained in the section on rhythm, an emphatic word occupies just twice as much time in its delivery, (including the pauses,) as an unemphatic one of the same number of syllables.

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