The last kind of break we shall speak about in this lesson is that which occurs between the stanzas of a poem or between the paragraphs of a prose selection. I need not give any examples here, for you will find them on every page of your reader. All I need do is tell you that the new paragraph or the new stanza generally begins with a new thought. So you must be sure to get that new thought, and hold it well in mind, before you try to express it.
In closing this lesson I want to show you that you may learn how to read such examples as we have had, if you will but be careful. You must be sure to get each new picture before you utter a word. Take the first example. You have read the first line, “There’s a good time coming, boys,” and you are just about to repeat it. Now think what you are going to say, and just as you come to the word “good,” imagine you hear a knocking, and say, “Come in.” If you will only think what the words mean and see the picture, there will be no trouble about reading the example well.
A few examples for class use are appended. The teacher may easily invent suitable contexts:
My servant-boy, with a reserve gun, was ten or twelve yards off—a long way at such a moment.
It would make the reader pity me to learn that, after having labored hard, I could not make above two large earthen, ugly things (I can not call them jars) in about two months’ labor.
The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou “poor Inhabitant below,”
At this dread moment,—even so—
Might we together
Have sate and talked where gowans blow,