Imatges de pàgina
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To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live-long day with patient expectation
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?

And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Be gone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.

-Julius Cæsar, i., 1.

TONE OF FRANKNESS.

(See Tone Drill No. 104.)

[The tone of Frankness indicates that the speaker is withholding or coloring nothing; that there is a sincere desire to show things exactly as they are.]

Portia to Bassanio.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better; yet for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand
times more rich;

That only to stand high in your account,

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account; but the full sum of me
Is sum of something; which, to term in gross,
Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd:
Happy in this, she is not yet so old

But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn ;
Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself, and what is mine, to you, and yours,
Is now converted; but now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself,
Are yours, my lord. I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,

And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

-Merchant of Venice, iii., 2.

TONE OF EXCITEMENT.

(See Tone Drill No. 88.)

[This tone is always found with some other tone. It denotes that the speaker is roused from his normal state. Every nerve is alive to the spirit of the thing he is telling. The tone finds natural expression in events of stirring action-great uprisings, contests, calamities.]

The Revolutionary Alarm.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

Darkness closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war message from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village, the sea to the backwoods, the plains to the highlands, and it was never suffered to droop till it had

been borne North and South and East and West, throughout the land. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot; its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and, ringing like bugle notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean-river till the responses were echoed from the cliffs at Quebec.

The hills along the Hudson told one another the tale. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York, in one more at Philadelphia, the next it lighted a watch-fire at Baltimore, thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mt. Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina. It moved onward and still onward, through boundless groves of evergreen to Newbern and to Wilmington.

"For God's sake, forward it by night and day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express, which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and despatched it to Charleston, and, through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live-oaks, farther to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky, so that hunters who made their halt in the valley of the Elkhorn commemorated the nineteenth day of April, 1776, by naming their encampment “Lexington." With one impulse the Colonies sprang to arms; with

one spirit they pledged themselves to each other, "to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart the Continent cried, "Liberty or death!"

The Ride to Aix.

ROBERT BROWNING.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.
"Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through.
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace-
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

By Hasselt Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix;" for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalheim a dome-spire sprang white,

And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!”

"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan

Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;

And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all;
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is friends flocking round

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine.
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from
Ghent.

TONE OF INDIFFERENCE.

(See Tone Drill No. 120.)

[The tone of Indifference manifests personal unconcern. allied to Belittling. It says, “It matters nothing to me."]

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