Elson Grammer School Literature, book 4 | Page 4

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 rampart
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 rampart. 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. 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. To tell him to read
fast or slow 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."
"II. PITCH. By Pitch is meant everything that has to do with the
acuteness or gravity of the tone--in other words, with keys, melodies,
inflections and modulations. When we say of one that he speaks in a
high key, we should be understood as meaning that his pitch is
prevailingly high; and that the reverse is true when we say of one that
he speaks in a low key. While it is true that the key differs in
individuals, yet experience shows that within a note or two, we all use
the same keys in expressing the same states of minds. The question for
us is, what determines the key? It can be set down as a fixed principle,
that controlled mental states are expressed by low keys, while the high
keys are the manifestation of the less controlled mental conditions.
Drills in inflections as such are of very little value, and potentially very
harmful. Most pupils have no difficulty in making proper inflections, so
that for them class drills are time wasted; for those whose reading is
monotonous, because of lack of melodic variety, the best drills are
those which teach them to make a careful analysis of the sentences, and
those which awaken them to the necessity of impressing the thought
upon others. We have learned that when a pupil has the proper motive
in mind and is desirous of conveying his intention to another, a certain
melody will always manifest that intention. The melody, then, is the
criterion of the pupil's purpose. The moment a pupil loses sight of a

phrase and its relation to the other phrases, that moment his melody
betrays him."
"III. QUALITY. Quality manifests emotional states. By Quality we
mean that subtle element in the voice by which is expressed at one time
tenderness, at another harshness, at another awe, and so on through the
whole gamut of feeling. The teacher now knows that emotion affects
the quality of tone. Let him then use this knowledge as he has learned
to use his knowledge of the other criteria. We recognize instinctively
the qualities that express sorrow, tenderness, joy, and the other states of
feeling. When the proper quality does not appear it is because the child
has no feeling, or the wrong feeling, generally the former. There is but
one way to correct the expression, i. e., by stimulating the imagination."
"IV. FORCE. Force manifests the degree of mental energy. When we
speak in a loud voice, there is much energy; when softly, there is little.
Do not tell the child to read louder. If you do, you will get
loudness--that awful grating schoolboy loudness--without a particle of
expression in it. Many a child reads well, but is bashful. When we tell
him to read louder, he braces himself for the effort and kills the quality,
which is the finer breath and spirit of oral expression, and gives us a
purely physical thing--force. Put your weak-voiced readers on the
platform; let them face the class and talk to you, seated in the middle of
the room, and you will get all the force you need. On the whole, we
have too