To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now strew flowers in his way Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, -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, That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, But she may learn; happier than this, 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. Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace- By Hasselt Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! 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 Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, 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; Was no more than his due who brought good news from 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."] It is |