Blog

Sound patterns which are … deficient as echoic stimuli will sometimes serve as supplementary variables, especially if they are repeated in rhythmic fashion. Since the weakness of the echoic stimulus must be matched by special strength from another source, examples of this kind are more clearly “revealing” … Arnold Bennett, in the Old Wives’ Tales, describes a young girl running away from home in a railroad carriage: “And then the long, steady beating of the train over the rails, keeping time to the rhythm of the unanswerable voice within her breast: ‘Why are you here? Why are you here?’” (pp. 259-260)