Study the next excerpt as you did the preceding. The speaker is telling of his uncle who had at first laughed and then grown suddenly serious at a piece of news of how the speaker-then a boy-had pelted the Jews.

No, boy, we must not (so began

My uncle--He's with God long sinceA-petting me, the good old man!)

We must not (and he seemed to wince, And lost that laugh whereto had grown

His chuckle at my piece of news,

How cleverly I aimed my stone)

I fear we must not pelt the Jews!

-Browning: Baldinucci.

A final example will drive home the contention that many long sentences complicated with subordinate groups will give up their meaning with a little careful study, and furthermore that when we recognize the source of the difficulty the vocal expression becomes relatively easy. In Henry VIII, Cardinal Campeius is begging Queen Katherine to listen patiently to the plea of the Duke of York, which up to that time she had scorned to do; and moreover had bitterly attacked him, saying he was her enemy. It is printed with and without the particular marking to emphasize the fact that what type does not do (except occasionally when an author italicizes) we must do for ourselves: learn to appreciate the different thought values:

Most honour'd madam,

My Lord of York, out of his noble nature,
Zeal and obedience he still bore your Grace,

(Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure
Both of his truth and him, which was too far)
Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace,

His service and his counsel.

Most honor'd madam,

—III, i.

My Lord of York, out of his noble nature,
Zeal and obedience he still bore your Grace,
(Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure
Both of his truth and him, which was too far)
Offers, as I do,in a sign of peace,
His service and his counsel.

REVIEW EXERCISES

As adders held

In a strong grasp writhe to be free and sting,
The hostile tribes had writhed while Rohab's hand
Held them in clutch of steel; but now at last,
When Rohab left the spear to thirst, the sword
To rust undrawn, and heard no sound more harsh
Than the lute's pleading; now that Lutra's love
To him was all in all, to which mere crown

And throne and people counted naught,-there rose A hundred murmurs sinister-the stir

And rustle of his foes who knew their time

Had come.

-ARLO BATES: The Sorrow of Rohab.

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears what might have been, in its exact similarity

of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Lancelot had so particularly described.-PoE: The Fall of the House of Usher.

The second of Chanticleer's two wives, ever since Phoebe's arrival, had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwards appeared, by her inability to lay an egg. One day, however, by her selfimportant gait, the side-way turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,—croaking to herself, all the while, with inexpressible complacency, it was made evident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued her, carried something about her person, the worth of which was not to be estimated either in gold or precious stones. Shortly after, there was a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the matter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon Phoebe found a diminutive egg-not in the regular nest-it was far too precious to be trusted there-but cunningly hidden under the currant-bushes on some dry stalks of last year's grass. -HAWTHORNE: The House of the Seven Gables.

Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time—and yet a moment's hush-somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill-and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-way of the President's box, a sudden figure, a man raises himself with hands and feet, and stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet), falls out of position, catching his boot-heel in the copious

drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happen'd (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then), and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife-walks along not much back from the footlights-turns fully toward the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity-launches out in a firm and steady voice the words, Sic semper tyrannis-and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears.-WHITMAN.

CHAPTER V

INVERSION

We have seen that we must group carefully before we can hope to understand. But here is a sentence in which although the grouping is simple, there is a distinctly new problem:

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,.
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
-LONGFELLOW: Paul Revere's Ride.

What is the difficulty? The groups are inverted, that is, not arranged in the order of everyday conversation. It is rare that we find the subject of a sentence at the end, and hence in this illustration, we may miss the meaning unless we rethink it something as follows: Meanwhile, Paul Revere, impatient to mount and ride, booted and spurred, walked, with a heavy stride, on the opposite shore.

Sometimes the inversion may be only a word or two, as in the following:

Him the Almighty power

Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky.

-MILTON: Paradise Lost.

Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part?-THACKERAY: Nil Nisi Bonum.