Pause

“ There is a breathlessness here that comes from a slowing-down rather than a quickening, from a pause, from a moment of perilous silence in which the only sound or sensation is the painful throbbing of the human heart. ”

“ A pause of greater or less duration is always required whenever an interruption occurs in the progress of a thought, or the uniform construction of a sentence, as in the case of the dash, the exclamation, the parenthesis, etc. In these cases the mind is supposed to be arrested by the sudden change of sentiment or passion. It is necessary in most cases to make a short pause just before the parenthesis, which read more rapidly, and in a more subdued tone; when the parenthesis is concluded, resume your former pitch and tone of voice. ”

“ She is about to lead him towards the door. What means this pause? Thou lingerest—thou art dumb— Thy looks are terror-fraught—a shudder creeps Through all my frame—declare thy tidings!—speak! Where is she? ”

“ There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. ”

“ The use of the pause in story-telling is one of the subtlest and most important elements that contribute to the final effect. The proper placing of the pause will follow unconsciously as a consequence when the structure of the story is realized in distinct episodes and the proper emphasis given mentally to the most important details of action, while less emphasis in thought is given to subordinate parts. ”

“ Here pause we for the present—as even then That awful pause, dividing life from death, Struck for an instant on the hearts of men, Thousands of whom were drawing their last breath! A moment—and all will be life again! ”

“ The attention of your audience will act in quite the same way. Recognize this law and prepare for it—by pausing. Let it be repeated: the thought that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred. What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the "seventh day." ”

“ Pause. The time element of English verse is affected also by different kinds of pauses. Three kinds may be distinguished, two of which belong properly to prose rhythm as well. (1) The logical pause is that cessation of sound which separates the logical components of speech. It helps hold together the members of a unit and separates the units from each other, and never occurs unless a break in the meaning is possible. ”

“ And yet there was a pause, which was only filled by that curious sound when a crowd of people gasp or sigh; and if every man had been a rock it could not have been more impossible to move backwards or forwards. ”

“ 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 a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. ”

“ Repose is more complete than rest; a pause is a momentary cessation of activity; a black-smith finds a temporary rest while the iron is heating, but he does not yield to repose; in a pause of battle a soldier rests on his arms ”

“ No pause is allowed us for reflection: Horrid sentiment, furious guilt and compunction, air-drawn daggers, murders, ghosts, and inchantment, shake and possess us wholly. In the mean time the process is completed. ”

“ And observe what we may lose through that habit of ours of uncritical obedience to duty; see what may leave us for ever in that fatal pause, caused by the surprise of the challenge to our narrow experience and knowledge, the pause in which we allow habit to overcome adventurous instinct! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The duration of each of these pauses or rests is equal to that of the short rhetorical pause; subject, of course, to be increased by the pause of sense.
“‘The cæsural pause may fall,’ says Blair, ‘in heroic verse, after the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, or the seventh syllable.’
“The placing it is the poet’s business: it is the Elocutionist’s to mark it in delivery. But if its introduction would be absolutely repugnant to sense and just elocution, the poet must bear the fault, and his line lose some portion of its melody by the omission; for sense cannot be sacrificed to sound. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. PAUSES. "A pause is often more eloquent than words." The common pauses necessary to be made, according to the rules of punctuation, are too well known to require any particular notice here, they serve principally for grammatical distinctions, but in public reading or speaking other and somewhat different pauses are required.
The length of the pause in reading must be regulated by the mood and expression and consequently on the movement of the voice, as fast or slow ”

“ Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour. ”

“ There comes a happy pause, for human strength
Will not endure to dance without cessation;
And every one must reach the point at length
Of absolute prostration. ”

“ When we pause we suspend our speech, but continue our thought. It is a resting place for us better to conceive of the importance either of the thought just expressed or of the one that follows. The mind is busy re-creating a new idea for the one who is listening. Pausing gives time for the speaker to get the new idea and it also gives time for the auditor to hear the new idea. It often occurs that we are more impressive during the interval of pausing than during the interval of speech. ”

“ The pause offers more difficulties for the poet, and more opportunities; since the line is so short, and the rimes reinforce the regular metrical pause at the end of the line, important grammatical pauses cannot well occur in the middle of the line without danger of breaking the rhythm. The logical pause must, therefore, usually coincide with the metrical and thus emphasize unduly the line unit. ”

“ I need not after that (snuff) expression of your (sniff) feelings (pause) , undulate on the advantage such a character is of to the country, or in promoting (pause) cheerful hospitality in all its (pause) branches, and drawing society into sociable communications; therefore I think I shall (pause) offer a toast most, most heartily acceptable (sniff) to all your (snuff) feelings, when I propose, in a bumper toast, the health of our most—most distinguished and—and hospitable host—guest, I mean—Major Yammerton, and his harriers! ”

“ The Mysterious Person made a pause—the pause of settling things. [There are people who seem to think that the only really adequate way to settle a thing, in this world, is for them to ask a question about it.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ He allows for the sense of mass and of detail with proper proportion, allows also for the interval of escape in mood, crediting the value of the pause with the ability to do its prescribed work for the eye and ear perfectly, and when he is finished he retires from the scene carefully to the beating of the drums, leaving the emotion to round itself out gradually until he disappears, and silence completes the picture for the eye and the brain. ”

“ 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 [35] pause, unless it completely choke the utterance. In the example quoted above from Julius Caesar there is no doubt considerable emotion during the pause ”

“ What is the Cæsura pause?
A rhythmic pause occurring in a verse.
143. How many rules should be observed in the use of the Cæsura?
Three.
144. Give Rule 1.
The pause should be near the middle of the verse.
145. Give Rule 2.
It should never divide a word.
146. Give Rule 3.
Should not separate words from their modifiers, as adjectives from nouns, adverbs from verbs, etc.
147. Do all verses have the Cæsura pause?
They do if over three feet in length.
148. What is meant by a Foot in verse?
A certain portion of a line divided according to accent.
[pg 71]
149. ”

“ Those who will not do so have chosen the place of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done but let them remain there undisturbed, working that treadmill which they believe to be the utmost activity of existence. ”

“ In this life of ours which, under modern conditions, is lived at so great a speed, there is a growing need for a periodical pause wherein the mind may adjust the relationship of the things that have been to those that are. ”

“ The conclusion of a book in an epic poem, or of an act in a play, cannot be altogether arbitrary; nor be intended for so slight a purpose as to make the parts of equal length. The supposed pause at the end of every book, and the real pause at the end of every act, ought always to coincide with some pause in the action. ”

“ They shorten in passing whenever we are so fully occupied with their content as not to note the actual time itself. A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass 'ere we know it.' On the contrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity. ”

“ Thus we see that, if the mind is working, a pause occurs after a word while we are making a mental image or trying to realize the idea more fully, and also often before we express an important idea, in order to prepare the mind of the listener for what is to come. ”

“ Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations. ”

“ A very different atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a school-girl's escapade or set apart for a poet's meditation. And the voice by its use of pause can preserve or destroy either atmosphere. Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will find the result is that overemphasis which has brought such discredit upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple change in her programme. ”

“ Pauses may be used in reading to simulate an appropriate labor of utterance, as when the mind is supposed to be overcome by sorrow, or disturbed by anger. At such times also, they serve as fit rests for the voice in its efforts to express the disturbed condition of the mind, and as appropriate avenues for the escape of emotion otherwise than by vocality, as by sibling. ”

“ The idea that pauses belong to measure, is an other radical error of the foregoing note. There are more pauses in poetry than in prose, but none of them are properly "parts" of either. Humphrey says truly, "Feet are the constituent parts of verse."—English Prosody, p. 8. But L. Murray says, "Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of verse."—Octavo Gram., p. ”

“ In length, for example, they should correspond with the movement of which they may be said to form a part; when the movement is slow, as in the expression of awe, reverence, and the like, they are naturally long; in the brisk movement required to interpret the livelier emotions, they should be short. As a mode of emphasis pause serves to fix the attention of the hearer,—either backward upon a word or phrase, that the mind may dwell upon it, or forward to awaken curiosity and expectation: it is evident then that a frequent use of it for this purpose would destroy its value. ”

“ Pauses, whether in reading or in public discourse, ought always to be formed after the manner in which we naturally form them in ordinary, sensible conversation; and not after the stiff, artificial manner which many acquire at school, by a mere mechanical attention to the common punctuation. ”

“ Sandford was appalled by the discovery he had made, which had never entered his mind before. Ah! a pause in one’s means of making one’s living, a sudden stop in the wheels of one’s life, is a little alarming, a little exciting, perhaps a discouragement, perhaps a sharp and keen stimulant at other times: at forty, even at{65} fifty, it may be the latter ”