is unusual.

Now the speaker who says "_IT IS A MATTER OF CHOICE_" is putting too
much emphasis upon things that are of no more importance to metropolitan
readers than a dog bite, and when he fails to emphasize "choice" he is
like the reporter who "passes up" the man's biting a dog. The ideal
speaker makes his big words stand out like mountain peaks; his
unimportant words are submerged like stream-beds. His big thoughts stand
like huge oaks; his ideas of no especial value are merely like the grass
around the tree.

From all this we may deduce this important principle: _EMPHASIS_ is a
matter of _CONTRAST_ and _COMPARISON_.

Recently the _New York American_ featured an editorial by Arthur
Brisbane. Note the following, printed in the same type as given here.

=We do not know what the President THOUGHT when he got that message, or
what the elephant thinks when he sees the mouse, but we do know what the
President DID.=

The words _THOUGHT_ and _DID_ immediately catch the reader's attention
because they are different from the others, not especially because they
are larger. If all the rest of the words in this sentence were made ten
times as large as they are, and _DID_ and _THOUGHT_ were kept at their
present size, they would still be emphatic, because different.

Take the following from Robert Chambers' novel, "The Business of Life."
The words _you_, _had_, _would_, are all emphatic, because they have been
made different.

He looked at her in angry astonishment.

"Well, what do _you_ call it if it isn't cowardice--to slink off
and marry a defenseless girl like that!"

"Did you expect me to give you a chance to destroy me and poison
Jacqueline's mind? If I _had_ been guilty of the thing with
which you charge me, what I have done _would_ have been
cowardly. Otherwise, it is justified."

A Fifth Avenue bus would attract attention up at Minisink Ford, New
York, while one of the ox teams that frequently pass there would attract
attention on Fifth Avenue. To make a word emphatic, deliver it
differently from the manner in which the words surrounding it are
delivered. If you have been talking loudly, utter the emphatic word in a
concentrated whisper--and you have intense emphasis. If you have been
going fast, go very slow on the emphatic word. If you have been talking
on a low pitch, jump to a high one on the emphatic word. If you have
been talking on a high pitch, take a low one on your emph