may compare their abstract meanings to two circles, thus:

But 'as fast as words are put together,' we are told, 'they lose the extent of meaning they had when separate, and fuse themselves into each other's meaning,' a process which may be represented thus:

OLD
MAN

Here all that might have been associated with old in the abstract, such as old dog, old town, old tree, old horse, and all that might have been associated with man, such as tall man, short man, young man, wise man, strong man, disappear, and nothing is perceived but the single meaning, composite though it is in form, oldman, the equivalent French for which is, as it happens, expressed by one word, vieillard.

Take, again, the following colloquial expression: 'I want what I can't get.' Let the group of words, whatI-can't-get, stand in the speaker's mind for apple. Now, just as this word 'apple' is in meaning indivisible, so is

its equivalent what-I-can't-get. The grammarian calls the single word a noun; and the group, a sentence; and because it performs the function of a noun, a NOUNsentence. But the reader entirely merges the latter feature in the former, and will no more separate the words of 'what-I-can't-get' than he would the syllables of 'ap-ple,'

Again: In the sentence, 'I found it there,' the idea signified by the adverb there is one and indivisible. But I may express this idea by a phrase, and say: 'I found it on-the-shelf,' or by a sentence, and say, 'I found it where-I-left-it.' Each of these adverbial expressions -word, phrase, sentence-is one and indivisible.

And again: In the phrase, 'Our Heavenly Father,' the idea expressed by the adjective, Heavenly, may be conveyed by the equivalent adjective-phrase in-Heaven, or, as it is in the Lord's Prayer, by the adjective-sentence, which-art-in-Heaven, which again is indivisible.

These groups of words, whether phrases or sentences, occupy the place and do the work of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, and are in grammar appropriately named after the part of speech whose function they perform.

Now pauses enable the speaker to isolate these groups of words so that their unity of meaning may be more distinctly felt; while by their duration they denote the more or less intimate relation which the parts they separate bear to one another.

The POSITION of the pause, then, is determined by the grammatical structure of the sentence, and never varies.

The DURATION will vary with the subject-matter, and will be regulated by the reader's taste and feeling.

RULES ON PAUSE.

152. First and foremost, it should be borne in mind that all noun, adjective, and adverb phrases and sentences must, in accordance with the foregoing principle, be pronounced as single pollysylabic words, whether separated by pauses, or not, from the words they affect.

153. The subject of a sentence, if a single word, does not require to be separated from the verb by any pause whatever :

Sin degrades a man.

Except for heightening the effect of emphasis:

'And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.'

2 Samuel, xii. 7.

154. But when the subject is a phrase or sentence, the whole 'polysyllabic' group must be followed by a marked pause:

All-sinful-practices degrade the nature of man.

That-we-are-ourselves-sinful should make us ready to forgive.

155. The object, when a single word, cannot be separated from the verb without breaking grammatical government:

'The labour we delight in physics pain.'-Macbeth, ii. 3.

156. When the object is composite, a slight pause will, in cases of extreme complexity, aid in bringing into relief the unity of the polysyllabic group.

I thought

ten-thousand-swords-must-have-leaped-from-their-scab. bards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.'-BURKE.

157. An adjective sentence, when restrictive, can

not be separated from the noun it affects, seeing that it forms an integral part of it.

'The labour we-delight-in physics pain.'-Macbeth, ii. 3.

158. An adjective sentence, when conjunctive, must, however, be separated by a slight pause from the noun it affects.

'Our then dictator,

Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight.'-Cor. ii. 2.

159. An adverb phrase, or sentence, requires special care in order to avoid ambiguity arising from its dependence upon some remote verb, adjective, or adverb :

'Read it not, noble lords:

But tell the traitor, in-the-highest-degree,

He has abused your powers.'-Coriolanus, v. 6.

Here the phrase in-the-highest-degree is in danger of being taken as an adjective to traitor. Its dependence upon the verb abused must be shown by lengthening the pause after traitor, and omitting the pause after the phrase itself.

Compare:

'Avoid thee, fiend, with-cruel-hand

Shake not the dying sinner's sand.'-Marmion.

160. Sub-pauses.-The unity of the noun, adjective, and adverbial group will be broken, and slight subpauses introduced, only when such groups are themselves modified by phrases or subordinate sentences:

'He-that-would-pass-the-latter-part-of-his-life - with - honour-anddecency must when-he-is-young consider-that-he-shall-one-daybe-old-and-remember when-he-is-old that-he-has-once-been-young.'

Pauses not only contribute to perspicuity in delivery, but enable a reader to regain expended breath, and, should

he be reading at sight, to gather up by a fore-running of the eye the sense of the succeeding member.

161. Emotional Pause. However important the foregoing rules may be, the student must always remember that a delicate 'feeling' will on occasions dictate a pause even between words grouped together in close grammatical relationship. Sterne felt this when, in his well-known sarcasm on Criticism, he referred to the superlative elocution of Garrick : ""And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night ?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically: betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus— stopping as if the point wanted settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three-fifths by a stopwatch, my lord, each time.” "Admirable grammarian! But in suspending his voice, was the sense suspended likewise? did no expression of attitude fill up the chasm ? was the eye silent? did you narrowly look? I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord." "Excellent observer!" This emotional pause occurs most frequently in the pathetic and passionate language of the drama :

'O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these-butchers.'
Julius Cæsar, iii. 1.

'If thou dost slander her, and-torture me,

Never pray more.'-Othello, iii. 3.

'For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping killed;
murdered.'-Richard II. iii. 2.

All