CHAPTER IX

SUBORDINATION

The analysis for determining the central idea must have led the student to discern subordinate ideas. As a rule, the expression of these will not be difficult, but there are certain phases of subordination that require special study. We have noted that in our desire to impress the leading thought upon another we have used significant inflection, or force or time. It must follow then that the relatively unimportant words will be read in a manner less striking. In the following speech of Portia, observe how naturally we slight the relatively unimportant ideas:

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

There will be degrees of subordination, of course: the above marking is meant only to draw attention to the purely instinctive process as a result of which the vocal modulations manifest the relative degrees of thought value.

It is something of an art to touch lightly upon the unimportant and yet not to slur it. We are not advocating that the teacher should at any length dwell upon this, though it is well for him to recognize this feature of expression. There are two reasons for this: first, in the earlier stages of reading there is a tendency to overemphasize; second, in the later stages, the unimportant words are hurried, with the result that the reading becomes indistinct.

As there are slighted words in every phrase, so there are slighted phrases and clauses in many sentences. We are all acquainted with the time-honored advice concerning the manner in which one should read words in parentheses: “Lower the voice and read faster.” It is not to be denied that the average parenthetical thought is expressed in that way, but there are many examples in which the injunction will not apply. Whether the key will be raised or lowered, and whether the time will be accelerated or retarded, will depend entirely upon the mental attitude of the reader. To illustrate: “The battle of Waterloo,--the most important battle of the nineteenth century,--ended the career of Napoleon.” If one has been speaking of the great importance of this battle, and takes for granted that his audience recognizes this importance, he will probably lower the key in the subordinate sentence, and read it faster; but otherwise he would read it more slowly (as a result of the importance of the thought), even if he did not raise the key. This leads us to the conclusion that a phrase or clause may be grammatically subordinate and yet of the greatest importance. The degree of importance determines how it shall be read, and not arbitrary rules. The main result to be obtained in this step is the training of the student’s mind in apprehending thought-modulation; to enable him to weigh the thought in order that he may perceive more clearly the relative values of the various phrases. This perception leads in expression to that most desirable phase of utterance--variety.

A few simple illustrations are added as examples of what may be used for class drill. The more difficult illustrations may be used for advanced classes, and for practice by the teacher himself:

And children, coming home from school, Look in at the open door;

And, with his hard, rough hand, he wipes A tear out of his eyes.

However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and, as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots, being to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised.

Though I succeeded so poorly in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things with better success, such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and anything my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them very hard.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes, and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and sweetness of Beth’s nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth’s unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by the exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty.[12]

It was past two o’clock when Jo, who stood at the window thinking how dreary the world looked in its winding-sheet of snow, heard a movement by the bed, and, turning quickly, saw Meg kneeling before their mother’s easy-chair, with her face hidden.

In what school did the worthies of our land--the Washingtons, Henrys, Franklins, Rutledges--learn those principles of civil liberty?

Next to the worship of the Father of us all--the deepest and grandest of human emotions--is the love of the land that gave us birth.

I am not--I need scarcely say it--the panegyrist of England.

I have returned,--not, as the right honorable member has said, to raise a storm,--I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of gratitude to my country.

May that God (I do not take his name in vain), may that God forbid it.

One day--shall I forget it ever?--_ye_ were present--I had fought long and well.

I was about to slay him, when a few hurried words--rather a welcome to death than a plea for life--told me he was a Thracian.

One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the 19th of this month--Hancock and Adams were both at Lexington.

And are we to speak and act like men who have sustained no wrong? We! Six millions of--what shall I say?--citizens?

Among the exploits of marvelous and almost legendary valor performed by that great English chieftain--who has been laid aside uncoroneted, and almost unhonored because he would promote and distinguish the men of work in preference to the men of idleness--among his achievements not the least wondrous was the subjugation of the robber tribes of the Cutchee Hills in the north of Scinde.

But if there is one man here--I am speaking not of shapes and forms, but of feelings--if there is one here that feels as men were wont to feel, he will draw the sword.

And you--you, who are eight millions strong--you, who boast at every meeting that this island is the finest which the sun looks down upon--you, who have no threatening sea to stem, no avalanche to dread--you, who say that you could shield along your coast a thousand sail, and be the princes of a mighty commerce--you, who by the magic of an honest hand, beneath each summer sky, might cull a plenteous harvest from your soil, and with the sickle strike away the scythe of death--you, who have no vulgar history to read--you, who can trace, from field to field, the evidences of civilization older than the Conquest--the relics of a religion far more ancient than the Gospel--you, who have thus been blessed, thus been gifted, thus been prompted to what is wise and generous and great--you will make no effort--you will perish by the thousand, and the finest island that the sun looks down upon, amid the jeers and hooting of the world, will blacken into a plague spot, a wilderness, a sepulcher.

In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the advice of his dearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal commands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human prudence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned away from the broad fair highway to wealth, position, and distinction, that the hands of a king opened before him, and, casting his lot with the sect weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths that were tangled with trouble, and lined with pitiless thorns of persecution, he walked into honor and fame, and the reverence of the world, such as royalty could not promise and could not give him.

No one venerates the Peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say that the Peerage solicited _me_,--not I the Peerage. Nay, more,--I can say, and _will_ say, that, as a Peer of Parliament, as Speaker of this right honorable House, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his Majesty’s conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England,--nay, even in that character alone in which the noble Duke would think it an affront to be considered, but which character none can deny me, as a MAN,--I am at this moment as respectable--I beg leave to add--I am as much respected,--as the proudest Peer I now look down upon.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth He sang, his genius “glinted” forth, Rose like a star that touching earth, For so it seems, Doth glorify its humble birth With matchless beams.

The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow, The struggling heart, where be they now? Full soon the aspirant of the plow, The prompt, the brave, Slept, with the obscurest, in the low And silent grave.

True friends though diversely inclined; But heart with heart and mind with mind, Where the main fibers are entwined, Through Nature’s skill, May even by contraries be joined More closely still.

Sighing I turned away; but ere Night fell, I heard, or seemed to hear, Music that sorrow comes not near, A ritual hymn, Chanted in love that casts out fear By Seraphim.

Too frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow Was wreathed--“The Vision” tells us how-- With holly spray, He faltered, drifted to and fro, And passed away.

The five preceding stanzas are from Wordsworth’s poem, _At the Grave of Burns_.

In the illustrations that follow, the student will note three distinct degrees of importance of thought; in other words, there is the main idea, its modifier, and the modifier of the modifier. The vocal expression of these illustrations will be affected just to the extent that the student appreciates the value of the different phrases.

At Atri in Abruzzo, a small town Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown, One of those little places that have run Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun, And then sat down to rest, as if to say, “I climb no farther upward, come what may,” The Re Giovanni, now unknown to fame, So many monarchs since have borne the name, Had a great bell hung in the market-place.

It is my purpose, therefore, believing that there are certain points of superiority in modern artists, and especially in one or two of their number, which have not yet been fully understood, except by those who are scarcely in a position admitting the declaration of their conviction, to institute a close comparison between the great works of ancient and modern landscape art.

Many students who find no difficulty in silently reading such extracts as the above, will often fail in their vocal expression because of the fact that the latter is more deliberate; and consequently they may lose the trend of the main thought in rendering the explanatory and parenthetical portions. To overcome this difficulty, they are advised to read the sentence, with the omission of all but the most essential idea; then let them add one idea after another to the main idea, until the sentence is read correctly in its entirety. In the last example quoted, the main idea is, “It is my purpose ... to institute a close comparison between the great works of ancient and modern landscape art.” Read this three or four times, until the idea is clearly apprehended. Now read the sentence, omitting “and especially in one or two of their number,” until this larger thought is grasped; after which let the sentence be read as a whole.

Following the usual plan, a class lesson is added:

“When I was in Paris (which is in France), I saw a great many pretty things.”

Read this sentence carefully and you will find something we have not had before: a group of words in parenthesis.

You notice, we should have very good sense without this group. Read it: “When I was in Paris I saw a great many pretty things.”

So you see, the words “which is in France” are not so important as the rest of the sentence. You might say they were thrown in after you had thought of the other idea.

Now, I want you to read the sentence aloud, leaving out the group, “which is in France.” After you have done this five or six times, then read the whole sentence, keeping in mind that the words in parenthesis are not very important, but just thrown in to let people know that you mean Paris in France, and not some other Paris.

The groups that are thrown in are not always put in parenthesis. But that does not make any difference in the reading. Here are a few examples. I want you to practice on them just as you did on the first example in this lesson.

1. “The king of England, who was a very brave man, won several victories over the French.”

2. “The largest school in our city, which is Chicago, has more than five hundred children in it.”

3. “During the Christmas vacation, which lasts ten days, I went to see my grandmother.”

4. “Frank did all his mother asked him to do; but William, because he was careless and disobedient, gave his mother and teacher a great deal of trouble.”

This last example makes very clear what we have been studying in this lesson. You see plainly that the words, “because he was careless and disobedient,” are put in simply to explain why William gave a great deal of trouble.

You must be very careful about this kind of sentence, because there are a great many of them on every page, and you will be sure to miss them if you are careless.

The teacher should ask the pupils to bring in other examples, and have them read in the class. He should also select examples from the reading book.