STRESS.
In expressing your emotions, the voice is ejected in various ways; perhaps in a jerky or trembling or flowing manner, as may be, depending on the kind of emotion you feel. This is called "Stress;" and you have learned how, mechanically, to make it. Radical Stress is used when you try to impress upon others your exact meaning. Practise it with that thought in your mind. Median Stress is used in appeal to the best affections, and expresses agreeable emotions. The swell comes on emphatic words. Terminal Stress is used in expressions of anger, petulance, impatience, and the like. Thorough Stress is used in calling to persons at a long distance, but has little place in expression. It is frequently substituted by bad readers or speakers for Median or Terminal Stress. Compound Stress is used in strong passion; and being a compound of Radical and Terminal Stress, and used with circumflex inflections, it combines the meaning of them all, as sarcasm, irony, &c., mixed with anger, impatience, doubt, &c. Tremolo Stress is used in excessive emotion; as joy, anger, sorrow, in excess, would cause the voice to tremble. You should practise this in order to avoid it, as, when Tremolo does not proceed from real excess of feeling, it has a very ludicrous effect. Practise the following exercises by thinking and feeling the idea and emotion.
RADICAL STRESS.
1. Hark, hark! the lark sings mid the silvery blue:
Behold her flight, proud man, and lowly bow.
2. There is the act of utterance, a condition that exists between you and myself. I speak, and you hear; but how? The words issue from my lips, and reach your ears; but what are those words? Volumes of force communicated to the atmosphere, whose elastic waves carry them to fine recipients in your own organism. But still I ask, How? How is it that these volumes of sound should convey articulate meaning, and carry ideas from my mind into your own?
3. I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are and all you hope to be,—resist every object of disunion; resist every encroachment upon your liberties; resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.
MEDIAN STRESS.
1. The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein:
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
2. Oh divine, oh delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious, and imperishable the hope which it inspires. Can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit; to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame?
3. How sleep the brave who sink to rest
With all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
It there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than blooming Fancy ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
There Honor walks, a pilgrim gray,
To deck the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall a while repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there.
TERMINAL STRESS.
1. I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak:
I'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more:
I'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool,
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors.
2. Nor sleep nor sanctuary,
Being naked, sick, nor fane nor capitol,
The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice,
Embarkments all of fury, shall lift up
Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst
My hate to Marcius: where I find him, were it
At home upon my brother's guard,—even there,
Against the hospitable cannon, would I
Wash my fierce hand in his heart.
3. A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?
Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,
Delivered strongly through my fixèd teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave:
My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;
Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;
My hair be fixed on end, as one distract;
Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban;
And even now my burdened heart would break,
Should I not curse them.
THOROUGH STRESS.
1. "Ho, Starbuck and Pickney and Tenterden!
Run for your shallops, gather your men,
Scatter your boats on the lower bay!"
2. "Run! run for your lives, high up on the land!
Away, men and children! up quick, and be gone!
The water's broke loose! it is chasing me on!"
3. They strike! Hurrah! the fort has surrendered!
Shout, shout, my warrior-boy,
And wave your cap, and clap your hands for joy!
Cheer answer cheer, and bear the cheer about.
Hurrah, hurrah, for the fiery fort is ours!
"Victory, victory, victory!"
COMPOUND STRESS.
1. Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward,
Thou little valiant great in villany!
Thou wear a lion's hide! doff it for shame,
And hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs.
2. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and, if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
3. Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar, chafèd with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitchèd battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpet's clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to the ear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
TREMOLO STRESS.
1. There's nothing in this world can make me joy:
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
2. O men with sisters dear!
O men with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives.
Stitch, stitch, stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.
3. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.