ink of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking!
That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a
confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its
ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his
definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask.
Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a
ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audience in one
of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought
has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarrassed
sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have
learned the meaning of an _empty pause_.

On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of those
_fateful_ moments when your voice pauses because your thought is so
vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to
fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of
expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop,
then you will learn the meaning of a _true pause_.

Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon
the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The
definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis
includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running
commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of
the text he interprets. The words reveal the thought; your valuation of
that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal
vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your
emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are
uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal
vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of
the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.

Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element
of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our
vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It
behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary
as to its other elements.

Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.

EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRL

At midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a
purely private