amples for our purpose at this point is the essay where the
appeal is, primarily, at least, an intellectual appeal. For my own
suggestive analysis and for our preliminary study in vital thinking I
have chosen paragraphs from Emerson's essays because Emerson's almost
every paragraph is an essay in miniature. The story is told of the
gentle seer that once in the midst of a lecture he dropped all the pages
of his manuscript over the front of the pulpit. The incident disturbed
his auditors greatly until they saw Mr. Emerson gather up the leaves and
without any effort at rearrangement in the old order begin to read as
though nothing had happened. Every sentence was almost equally pertinent
to the main theme, and suffered not from a new juxtaposition. So in
printing extracts from this source we feel no sense of incompleteness.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

Let us read this passage from Emerson's _Experience_:

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of
the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It
is not the part of men, but of fanatics--or of mathematicians, if
you will--to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not
worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in
want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us
husband them. Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as
five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise,
and our own, to-day. I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed
that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad
justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our
actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as
the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole
pleasure for us.

If you do not think your way through this paragraph clearly, concisely,
logically, intensely, when you read it aloud your voice will betray you.
In what way? Your tone will lack resonance, your speech will lack
precision, your pitch will be monotonous, your touch will be uncertain,
your inflections will be indefinite. Your reading will be unconvincing,
because it will fail in lucidity and variety. In approaching this
passage let us study first the question of proper emphasis. What is
emphasis? The dictionaries tell us that, in delivery, it is a special
stress of the voice on a given word. But we must use it