If this law were put upon our statute books there would not be, five years from to-day, a dissenting voice raised against it from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Let it not be understood that there are no occasions when the phrase “from the Atlantic to the Pacific” would not be uttered with scarcely any pause after Atlantic. This phrase, and others like it, may have become a mere commonplace to describe extent; but in such a passage as the above, where the speaker is hyperbolically expressive, he no doubt intends to convey the idea that not one objection would be heard even in all the three thousand miles between the oceans. If the student will stop for a moment to analyze his own consciousness while uttering this sentence, he will scarcely fail to see the vast extent of territory separating the two oceans.
Many writers on the subject have given emotion as a reason for the pause. Strictly speaking, however, emotion, as distinct from thinking, seldom or never is the cause of the pause, unless it completely choke the utterance. In the example quoted above from Julius Caesar there is no doubt considerable emotion during the pause; but it is the thought, and not the emotion arising out of it, that leads to the silence.
The following excerpt is from the speech of Satan in Paradise Lost. Satan has been cursing his lot and the author of his punishment. Finally, his judgment tells him that he himself, and not God, is responsible for the downfall. The pauses, indicated by the vertical lines, are suggestive of the proper rendition. Of course, the pauses vary in duration from the briefest cessation of voice to pauses of considerable length:
Nay, | curs’d be thou; | since against his | thy will
Chose freely | what it now | so justly rues.
Me | miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, | and infinite despair? |
Which way I fly | is Hell; | myself | am Hell;
And in the lowest deep | a lower deep |