"I. TIME. Time, then, refers to the rate of vocal movement. It may be fast,
or moderate, or slow, according to the amount of what may be called the
collateral thinking accompanying the reading, of any given passage. To put
it another way: a phrase is read slowly because it means much; because the
thought is large, sublime, deep. The collateral thinking may be revealed by
an expansive paraphrase. For instance, in the lines

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corse to the rampart we hurried,"

_why_ do we read slowly? The paraphrase answers the question. It was
midnight. There lay our beloved leader, who should have been borne in
triumphal procession to his last resting place. Bells should have tolled,
cannon thundered, and thousands should have followed his bier. But now,
alas, by night, by stealth, without even a single drum tap, in fear and
dread, we crept breathless to the rampart. This, or any one of a hundred
other paraphrases, will suffice to render the vocal movement slow. And so
it is with all slow time. Let it be remembered that a profound or sublime
thought may be uttered in fast time; but that when we dwell upon that
thought, when we hold it before the mind, the time must necessarily be
slow. If a child read too rapidly, it is because his mind is not
sufficiently occupied with the thought; if he read too slowly, it is
because he does not get the words; or because he is temperamentally slow;
or because, and this is the most likely explanation, he is making too much
of a small idea. To tell him to read fast or slow is but to make him
affected, and, incidentally, even if unconsciously, to impress upon him
that reading is a matter of mechanics, and not of thought-getting and
thought-giving."