Did you walk into the city yesterday?  No, I went the day before.

ABSOLUTE EMPHASIS.

Sometimes a word is emphasized simply to indicate the importance of the idea.  This is called absolute emphasis.

Examples.

  To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek! 
  Woe unto you, PHARISEES!  Hypocrites! 
  Days, months, years, and ages shall circle away.

Remark.—­In instances like the last, it is sometimes called the emphasis of specification.

RELATIVE EMPHASIS.

Words are often emphasized in order to exhibit the idea they express as compared or contrasted with some other idea.  This is called relative emphasis.

Examples.

A friend can not be known in prosperity; an enemy can not be hidden in adversity.

It is much better to be injured than to injure.

Remark.—­In many instances one part only of the antithesis is expressed, the corresponding idea being understood; as,

A friendly eye would never see such faults.

Here the unfriendly eye is understood.

King Henry exclaims, while vainly endeavoring to compose himself to rest,

“How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!”

Here the emphatic words thousand, subjects, and asleep are contrasted in idea with their opposites, and if the contrasted ideas were expressed it might be in this way: 

  While I alone, their sovereign, am doomed to wakefulness.

EMPHATIC PHRASE.

Sometimes several words in succession are emphasized, forming what is called an emphatic phrase.

Examples.

Shall I, the conqueror of Spain and Gaul, and not only of the Alpine nations but of the Alps themselves—­shall I compare myself with this half—­year—­captain?

Shall we try argument?  Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years.

  And if thou said’st I am not peer
  To any lord in Scotland here,
  Lowland or Highland, far or near,
  Lord Angus-thou-hast-lied!

Emphatic pause.

The emphatic expression of a sentence often requires a pause where the grammatical construction authorizes none.  This is sometimes called the rhetorical pause.  Such pauses occur chiefly before or after an emphatic word or phrase, and sometimes both before and after it.

Examples.

Rise—­fellow-men! our country—­yet remains! 
By that dread name we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her—­to live—­with her—­to die.

But most—­by numbers judge the poet’s song: 
And smooth or rough, with them is—­right or wrong.

He said; then full before their sight
Produced the beast, and lo!—­’t was white.