5. Pure quality, moderate force, quick movement, high pitch, radical stress, suggestive quality on many words.
The Wind one morning sprang up from sleep,
Saying, "Now for a frolic, now for a leap,
Now for a mad-cap galloping chase:
I'll make a commotion in every place!"
So it swept with a bustle right through a great town,
Creaking the signs, and scattering down
Shutters, and whisking with merciless squalls
Old women's bonnets and gingerbread-stalls:
There never was heard a much lustier shout
As the apples and oranges tumbled about;
And the urchins, that stand with their thievish eyes
Forever on watch, ran off each with a prize.
Then away to the field it went blustering and humming,
And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming:
It plucked by their tails the grave matronly cows,
And tossed the colts' manes all about their brows;
Till, offended at such a familiar salute,
They all turned their backs, and stood silently mute.
So on it went capering, and playing its pranks;
Whistling with reeds on the broad river's banks;
Puffing the birds as they sat on the spray,
Or the traveller grave on the king's highway.
It was not too nice to hustle the bags
Of the beggar, and flutter his dirty rags:
'Twas so bold, that it feared not to play its joke
With the doctor's wig and the gentleman's cloak.
Through the forest it roared, and cried gayly, "Now,
You sturdy old oaks, I'll make you bow!"
And it made them bow without more ado,
And cracked their great branches through and through.
Then it rushed like a monster on cottage and farm,
Striking their dwellers with sudden alarm,
And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm.
There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps
To see if their poultry were free from mishaps.
The turkeys they gobbled; the geese screamed aloud;
And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd:
There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on,
Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone.
But the wind had passed on, and had met in a lane
With a school-boy who panted and struggled in vain;
For it tossed him and twirled him, then passed, and he stood
With his hat in a pool, and his shoe in the mud.
STYLE.
What you have to say, where you have to say it, when you have to say it, why you have to say it, and to whom you have to say it,—on these depend how you shall say it, or your style. Conversational style is as you would talk in earnest conversation with a friend; Narrative, as you would tell an anecdote or story to a company of friends; Descriptive, as you would describe what you had actually seen; Didactic, as you would state earnestly, decisively, but pleasantly, your knowledge or opinions to others; Public Address, which generally includes the Didactic, Narrative, and Descriptive, is spoken with design to move, to persuade, and instruct, particularly the latter; Declamatory is Public Address magnified in expression, exhibiting more emotion, both in language, and in quality, and fulness of voice; the Emotional or Dramatic, in which the emotions and passions are strongly expressed. In practising these different styles, the quality, pitch, force, and time must be regulated by your thought and feeling, guided, as in transition, by common sense, which will enable you to tell natural from unnatural expression. Practise these few exercises under each head; but you will do better to practise pieces such as are referred to under each head in the "Reading Club."
CONVERSATIONAL.
1. "And how's my boy, Betty?" asked Mrs. Boffin, sitting down beside her.
"He's bad; he's bad!" said Betty. "I begin to be afeerd he'll not be yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have gone to the Power and the Glory; and I have a mind that they're drawing him to them, leading him away."
"No, no, no!" said Mrs. Boffin.
"I don't know why else he clinches his little hand, as if it had hold of a finger that I can't see; look at it!" said Betty, opening the wrappers in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right hand lying closed upon his breast. "It's always so. It don't mind me."
2. Helen.—What's that you read?