[4] Paul Verrier, Essai sur les Principes de la Métrique Anglaise (Paris, 1909), Deuxieme Partie, Livre II, ch. x, pp. 56, 57; and cf. p. 90, n. 1.
[5] A simple experiment will illustrate this. Place two persons back to back, so that they cannot see each other, and have them beat time to an audible melody; as soon as the music ceases they will begin to beat differently. (Verrier, II, p. 65.) The difficulty of keeping even a trained orchestra playing together illustrates the same fact.
[6] "If rhythm means anything to the average individual, it means motor response and a sense of organized time." Patterson, p. 14.
[7] Musicians often 'dot' a note for the sake of emphasizing the accent, especially in orchestral music and with such instruments as the flute, where variations of stress are difficult to produce.
[8] Cf. Patterson, p. 3, " ... the possibility of preserving a certain series of time intervals, but of changing in various ways the nature of the motions or sensations that mark the beats." This may be tested by a simple experiment. With the foot or finger tap evenly, regularly, and rather rapidly. Without changing the regularity of the tapping, but merely by a mental readjustment, the beats may be felt as tum-te, tum-te, tum-te (or te-tum, etc.) or as tum-te-te, tum-te-te, tum-te-te (or te-te-tum, etc.), or even as tum-te-te-te, tum-te-te-te (or te-te-te-tum, etc.). It is but a step from this successive perception of various rhythms from the same objective source to a combined and simultaneous perception of them.
[9] Patterson, p. xx, n. 3.
[10] Experiments have shown that with a little practice one can learn to beat five against seven, and thus actually though unconsciously count in thirty-fives. (Patterson, p. 6.)
[11] Those who are interested will find the scientific experiments discussed in Patterson, ch. i and Appendix III.
[12] When no organization of the irregularity is possible, the language is unrhythmical; and such, of course, is often the case in bad prose and bad verse.