Sir, I answered the gentleman’s speech because I happened to hear it, and because I chose to answer that speech which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impressions.
I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer of the bill. I found a responsible endorser before me, and it was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just responsibility without delay.
But, sir, this interrogatory of the honorable member was only introductory to another. He proceeds to ask whether I had turned upon him in this debate from the consciousness that I should find an overmatch if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Missouri.
Transitions in emotion do not differ in principle from those we have been considering. The student must pursue the same method with these as with the others, expressing the first emotion until he comes to the break, making then an elliptical paraphrase, and then presenting the new emotion. An excellent model is the following speech of King Lear.
The aged monarch has, in a fit of rage, cast adrift his youngest child, and his eldest has turned him from her home. He turns in despair to his remaining daughter, assured that he will here receive a filial welcome. To his surprise, she refuses to meet him; says she is sick and travel-weary; and his amazed feeling finds vent in an uncontrolled explosion of passion:
Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!—
Fiery? what quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,
I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Gloucester. Well, my good lord, I have inform’d them so.