BY — PREFACE — CONTENTS — PART I — PART II — PART 1 — 1. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS ARISING FROM EXPERIENCE — EXERCISE — EXERCISE — SUMMARY — II. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS FURNISHED BY IMAGINATION — EXERCISES — SUMMARY — III. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS ACQUIRED THROUGH LANGUAGE — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISE — EXERCISES — EXERCISE — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — SUMMARY — IV. THE PURPOSE OF EXPRESSION — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISE — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — EXERCISES — SUMMARY
COMPOSITION-RHETORIC
STRATTON D. BROOKS Superintendent of Schools, Boston, Mass.
AND
MARIETTA HUBBARD Formerly English Department, High School La Salle, Illinois
* * * * *
NEW YORK - CINCINNATI - CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
1905
STRATTON D. BROOKS.
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London.
* * * * *
Brooks's Rhet.
W.P. 10
To MARCIA STUART BROOKS Whose teaching first demonstrated to the authors that composition could become a delight and pleasure, this book is dedicated……
The aim of this book is not to produce critical readers of literature, nor to prepare the pupil to answer questions about rhetorical theory, but to enable every pupil to express in writing, freely, clearly, and forcibly, whatever he may find within him worthy of expression.
Three considerations of fundamental importance underlie the plan of the book:—
First, improvement in the performance of an act comes from the repetition of that act accompanied by a conscious effort to omit the imperfections of the former attempt. Therefore, the writing of a new theme in which, the pupil attempts to avoid the error which occurred in his former theme is of much greater educational value than is the copying of the old theme for the purpose of correcting the errors in it. To copy the old theme is to correct a result, to write a new theme correctly is to improve a process; and it is this improvement of process that is the real aim of composition teaching.
Second, the logical arrangement of material should be subordinated to the needs of the pupils. A theoretical discussion of the four forms of discourse would require that each be completely treated in one place. Such a treatment would ignore the fact that a high school pupil has daily need to use each of the four forms of discourse, and that some assistance in each should be given him as early in his course as possible. The book, therefore, gives in Part 1 the elements of description, narration, exposition, and argument, and reserves for Part II a more complete treatment of each. In each part the effort has been made to adapt the material presented to the maturity and power of thought of the pupil.
Third, expression cannot be compelled; it must be coaxed. Only under favorable conditions can we hope to secure that reaction of intellect and emotion which renders possible a full expression of self. One of the most important of these favorable conditions is that the pupil shall write something he wishes to write, for an audience which wishes to hear it. The authors have, therefore, suggested subjects for themes in which high school pupils are interested and about which they will wish to write. It is hoped that the work will be so conducted by the teacher that every theme will be read aloud before the class. It is essential that the criticism of a theme so read shall, in the main, be complimentary, pointing out and emphasizing those things which the pupil has done well; and that destructive criticism be largely impersonal and be directed toward a single definite point. Only thus may we avoid personal embarrassment to the pupil, give him confidence in himself, and assure him of a sympathetic audience—conditions essential to the effective teaching of composition.
The plan of the book is as follows:—
1. Part 1 provides a series of themes covering description, narration, exposition, and argument. The purpose is to give the pupil that inspiration and that confidence in himself which come from the frequent repetition of an act.
2. Each theme differs from the preceding usually by a single point, and the teaching effort should be confined to that point. Only a false standard of accuracy demands that every error be corrected every time it appears. Such a course loses sight of the main point in a multiplicity of details, renders instruction ineffective by scattering effort, produces hopeless confusion in the mind of the pupil, and robs composition of that inspiration without which it cannot succeed. In composition, as in other things, it is better to do but one thing at a time.
3. Accompanying the written themes is a series of exercises, each designed to emphasize the point presented in the text, but more especially intended to provide for frequent drills in oral composition.
4. Throughout the first four chapters the paragraph is the unit of composition, but for the sake of added interest some themes of greater length have been included. Chapter V, on the Whole Composition, serves as a review and summary of the methods of paragraph development, shows how to make the transition from one paragraph to another, and discusses the more important rhetorical principles underlying the union of paragraphs into a coherent and unified whole.
5. The training furnished by Part 1 should result in giving to the pupil some fluency of expression, some confidence in his ability to make known to others that which he thinks and feels, and some power to determine that the theme he writes, however rough-hewn and unshapely it may be, yet in its major outlines follows closely the thought that is within his mind. If the training has failed to give the pupil this power, it will be of little advantage to him to have mastered some of the minor matters of technique, or to have learned how to improve his phrasing, polish his sentences, and distribute his commas.
6. Part II provides a series of themes covering the same ground as Part I, but the treatment of these themes is more complete and the material is adapted to the increased maturity and thought power of the pupils. By means of references the pupils are directed to all former treatments of the topics they are studying.
7. Part II discusses some topics usually treated in college courses in rhetoric. These have been included for three reasons: first, because comparatively few high school pupils go to college; second, because the increased amount of time now given to composition enables the high school to cover a wider field than formerly; and third, because such topics can be studied with profit by pupils in the upper years of the high school course.
8. It is not intended that the text shall be recited. Its purpose is to furnish a basis for discussion between teacher and pupils before the pupils attempt to write. The real test of the pupils' mastery of a principle discussed in the text will be their ability to put it into practice.
Any judgment of the success or failure of the book should be based upon the quality of the themes which the pupils write. Criticisms and suggestions will be welcomed from those who use the book.
The authors wish to express their obligation for advice and assistance to
Professor Edward Fulton, Department of Rhetoric, University of Illinois;
Messrs. Gilbert S. Blakely and H. E. Foster, Instructors in English,
Morris High School, New York; Miss Elizabeth Richardson, Girls' High
School, Boston; Miss Katherine H. Shute, Boston Normal School; Miss E.
Marguerite Strauchon, Kansas City High School.
The selections from Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Warner, Burroughs, Howells, and Trowbridge are used by permission of and by special arrangement with Hoaghton, Mifflin, and Company, publishers of their works.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Harper and Brothers; The Century
Company; Doubleday, Page, and Company; and Charles Scribner's Sons for
permission to use the selections to which their names are attached: to the
publishers of the Forum, Century, Atlantic Monthly, McClure's, Harper's,
Scribner's, and the Outlook for permission to use extracts: and to
Scott, Foresman, and Company; D. Appleton and Company; Henry Holt and
Company; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Thomas Y. Crowell and Company; and Benjamin
H. Sanborn and Company for permission to use copyrighted material.
1. Expression of Ideas arising from Experience
II. Expression of Ideas furnished by Imagination
III. Expression of Ideas acquired through Language
IV. The Purpose of Expression
V. The Whole Composition
VI. Letter Writing
VII. Poetry
VIII. Description
IX. Narration
X. Exposition
XI. Argument
Appendix
I. Elements of Form
II. Review of Grammar
III. Figures of Speech
IV. The Rhetorical Features of the Sentence
V. List of Synonyms
VI. List of Words for Exercise in Word Usage
Index
+1. Pleasure in Expressing Ideas.+—Though we all enjoy talking, we cannot write so easily as we talk, nor with the same pleasure. We seldom talk about topics in which we are not interested and concerning which we know little or nothing, but we often have such topics assigned to us as subjects for compositions. Under such conditions it is no wonder that there is little pleasure in writing. The ideas that we express orally are those with which we are familiar and in which we are interested, and we tell them because we wish to tell them to some one who is likewise interested and who desires to hear what we have to say. Such expression of ideas is enjoyed by all. If we but choose to express the same kinds of ideas and for the same reason, there is an equal or even greater pleasure to be derived from the expression of ideas in writing. The purpose of this book is to show you how to express ideas clearly, effectively, and with pleasure.
+2. Sources of Ideas.+—We must have ideas before we can express them. There are three sources from which ideas arise. We may gain them from experience; we may recombine them into new forms by the imagination; and we may receive them from others through the medium of language, either by conversation or by reading.
Every day we add to our knowledge through our senses. We see and hear and do, and thus, through experience, acquire ideas about things. By far the greater part of expression has to do with ideas that have originated in this way. The first chapter in this book is concerned with the expression of ideas gained through experience.
We may, however, think about things that have not actually occurred. We may allow our minds to picture a football game that we have not seen, or to plan a story about a boy who never existed. Nearly every one takes pleasure in such an exercise of the imagination. The second chapter has to do with the expression of ideas of this kind.
We also add to our knowledge through the medium of language. Through conversation and reading we learn what others think, and it is often of value to restate these ideas. The expression of ideas so acquired is treated in the third chapter.
+3. Advantages of Expressing Ideas Gained from Experience.+—Young people sometimes find difficulty in writing because they "have nothing to say." Such a reason will not hold in regard to ideas gained from experience. Every one has a multitude of experiences every day, and wishes to tell about some of them. Many of the things which happen to you or to your friends, especially some which occur outside of the regular routine of school work, are interesting and worth telling about. Thus experience furnishes an abundance of material suitable for composition purposes, and this material is of the best because the ideas are sure to be your own. The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and seldom worth doing.
Ideas acquired through experience are not only interesting and your own, but they are likely to be clear and definite. You know what you do and what you see; or, if you do not, the effort to express your ideas so that they will be clear to others will make you observe closely for yourself.
Still another advantage comes from the fact that your experiences are not presented to you through the medium of language. When experience furnishes the ideas, you are left free to choose for yourself the words that best set forth what you wish to tell. The things of your experience are the things with which you are most familiar, and therefore the words that best apply to them are those which you most often use and whose meanings are best known to you.
Because experience supplies an abundance of interesting, clear, and definite ideas, which are your own and which may be expressed in familiar language, it furnishes better material for training in expression than does either imagination or reading.
+4. Essentials of Expression.+—The proper expression of ideas depends upon the observance of two essentials: first, you should say what you mean; and second, you should say it clearly. Without these, what you say may be not only valueless, but positively misleading. If you wish your hearer to understand what occurred at a certain time and place, you must first of all know yourself exactly what did occur. Then you must express it in language that shall make him understand it as clearly as you do. You will learn much about clearness, later; but even now you can tell whether you know what is meant by each sentence which you hear or read. It is not so easy to tell whether what you say will convey clearly to another the meaning you intend to convey, but you will be helped in this if you ask yourself the questions: "Do I know exactly what happened?" "Have I said what I intended to say?" "Have I said it so that it will be clear to the listener?"
+Oral Composition 1.+—Report orally on one of the following:—
1. Were you so interested in anything yesterday that you told it to your parents or friends? Tell the class about it.
2. Tell about something that you have done this week, so that the class may know exactly what you did.
3. Name some things in which you have been interested within the last two or three months. Tell the class about one of them.
4. Tell the class about something that happened during vacation. Have you told the event exactly as it occurred?
+5. Interest.+—In order to enjoy listening to a story we must take an interest in it, and the story should be so told as to arouse and maintain this interest. As you have listened to the reports of your classmates you have been more pleased with some than with others. Even though the meaning of each was clear, yet the interest aroused was in each case different. Since the purpose of a story is to entertain, any story falls short of its purpose when it ceases to be interesting. We must at all times say what we mean and say it clearly; but in story telling especially we must also take care that what we say shall arouse and maintain interest.
+6. The Introduction.+—The story of an event should be introduced in such a manner as to enable the hearer to understand the circumstances that are related. Such an introduction contributes to clearness and has an important bearing upon the interest of the entire composition. In order to render our account of an event clear and interesting it is usually desirable to tell the hearers when and where the event occurred and who were present. Their understanding of it may be helped further by telling such of the attendant circumstances as will answer the question, Why? If I begin my story by saying, "Last summer John Anderson and I were on a camping trip in the Adirondacks," I have told when, where, and who; and the addition of the words "on a camping trip" tells why we were in the Adirondacks, and may serve to explain some of the events that are to follow. Even the statement of the place indicates in some degree the trend of the story, for many things that might occur "in the Adirondacks" could not occur in a country where there are no mountains. Certainly the story that would follow such an introduction would be expected to differ from one beginning with the words, "Last summer John Anderson and I went to visit a friend in New York."
It is not always necessary to tell when, where, who, and why in the introduction, but it is desirable to do so in most cases of oral story telling. These four elements may not always be stated in incidents taken from books, for the reader may be already familiar with them from the preceding portions of the book. The title of a printed or written story may serve as an introduction and give us all needed information. In relating personal incidents the time element is seldom omitted, though it may be stated indirectly or indefinitely by such expressions as "once" or 'lately.' In many stories the interest depends upon the plot, and the time is not definitely stated.
Notice what elements are included in each of the following introductions:—
1. Saturday last at Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place, nearly three hundred people were gathered together to see an experiment or two tried on some persons accused of witchcraft.
2. On the morning of the 10th instant at sunrise, they were discovered from Put-in-Bay, where I lay at anchor with the squadron under my command.
3. It was on Sunday when I awoke to the realization that I had quitted civilization and was afloat on an unfamiliar body of water in an open boat.
4. Up and down the long corn rows Pap Overholt guided the old mule and the small, rickety, inefficient plow, whose low handles bowed his tall, broad shoulders beneath the mild heat of a mountain June sun. As he went—ever with a furtive eye upon the cabin—he muttered to himself, shaking his head.
5. After breakfast, I went down to the Saponey Indian town, which is about a musket shot from the fort.
6. The lonely stretch of uphill road, upon whose yellow clay the midsummer sun beat vertically down, would have represented a toilsome climb to a grown and unencumbered man. To the boy staggering under the burden of a brimful carpet bag, it seemed fairly unscalable; wherefore he stopped at its base and looked up in dismay to its far-off, red-hot summit.
7. One afternoon last summer, three or four people from New York, two from Boston, and a young man from the Middle West were lunching at one of the country clubs on the south shore of Long Island, and there came about a mild discussion of the American universities.
8. "But where is the station?" inquired the Judge.
"Ain't none, boss. Dis heah is jes a crossing. Train's about due now, sah; you-all won't hab long fer to wait. Thanky, sah; good-by; sorry you-all didn't find no birds."
The Judge picked up his gun case and grip and walked toward his two companions waiting on the platform a few yards away. Silhouetted against the moonlight they made him think of the figure 10, for Mr. Appleton was tall and erect, and the little Doctor short and circular.
9. I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew,
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through.
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
—Browning.
+Oral Composition II.+—Relate orally to the class some incident in which you were personally concerned.
The following may suggest a subject:— 1. How I made friends with the squirrels. 2. A trick of a tame crow. 3. Why I missed the train. 4. How a horse was rescued. 5. Lost and found. 6. My visit to a menagerie.
(When preparing to relate this incident ask yourself first whether you know exactly what happened. Consider then how to begin the story so that your hearer will know when and where it happened and who were there. Include in the beginning any statement that will assist the reader in understanding the events which follow.)
+7. The Point of a Story.+—It is not necessary that a story be concerned with a thrilling event in order to be interesting. Even a most commonplace occurrence may be so told that it is worth listening to. It is more important that a story have a point and be so told that this point will be readily appreciated than that it deal with important or thrilling events. The story should lead easily and rapidly to its point, and when this is reached the end of the story should not be far distant. The beginning of a story will contain statements that will assist us in appreciating the point when we come to it, but if the point is plainly stated near the beginning, or even if it is too strongly suggested, our story will drag.
At what point in the following selection is the interest greatest?
During the Civil War, I lived in that portion of Tennessee which was alternately held by the conflicting armies. My father and brothers were away, as were all the other men in the neighborhood, except a few very old ones and some half-grown boys. Mother and I were in constant fear of injury from stragglers from both armies. We had never been disturbed, for our farm was a mile or more back from the road along which such detachments usually moved. We had periods of comparative quiet in which we felt at ease, and then would come reports of depredation near at hand, or rumors of the presence of marauding bands in neighboring settlements.
One evening such a rumor came to us, and we were consequently anxious. Early next morning, before the fog had lifted, I caught sight of two men crossing the road at the far end of the orchard. They jumped over the fence into the orchard and disappeared among the trees. I had but a brief glimpse of them, but it was sufficient to show me that one had a gun over his shoulder, while the other carried a saber.
"Quick, Mother, quick!" I cried. "Come to the window. There are soldiers in the orchard."
Keeping out of sight, we watched the progress of the men through the orchard. Our brief glimpses of them through the trees showed that they were not coming directly to the house, but were headed for the barn and sheds, and in order to keep out of sight, were following a slight ravine which ran across the orchard and led to the back of the barns.
Mother and I were very much excited and hardly knew what to do. Finally it was determined to hide upstairs in hopes that the men were bent on stealing chickens or pigs, and might leave without disturbing the house. We locked the doors and went upstairs, taking with us the old musket and the butcher knife. We could hear the men about the barn, and after what seemed an interminable time we heard them coming towards the house.
Though shaking all over, I summoned courage enough to go to the window and look out of a hole in the shade. As the men came into sight around the corner, I screamed outright, but from relief rather than fear, for the men were not soldiers, but Grandpa Smith and his fourteen-year-old grandson. They stopped at the well to get a drink, and when we opened the window, the old man said, "We're just on our way to mow the back lot and stopped to grind the scythe on your stone. We broke ours yesterday."
Then he picked up the scythe which in the fog I had taken for a saber, while the grandson again shouldered his pitchfork musket.
What effect would it have on the interest aroused by the preceding story to begin it as follows?
"One morning during the Civil War, I saw two of my neighbors, Grandpa Smith and his grandson, crossing our orchard, one carrying a scythe and the other a pitchfork."
Why is the expression, "before the fog had lifted," used near the beginning of the story? Would a description of the appearance of the house, the barn, or the persons add to the interest aroused by the story? Is it necessary to add anything to the story?
In each of the following selections decide where the interest reaches its climax. Has anything been said in the beginning of any of them which suggests what the point will be, or which helps you to appreciate it when you come to it?
1. The next evening our travelers encamped on a sand bar, or rather a great bank of sand, that ran for miles along one side of the river. They kept watch as usual, Leon taking the first turn. He seated himself on a pile of sand and did his best to keep awake; but in about an hour after the rest were asleep, he felt very drowsy and fell into a nap that lasted nearly half an hour, and might have continued longer had he not slid down the sand hill and tumbled over on his side. This awoke him. Feeling vexed with himself, he rubbed his eyes and looked about to see if any creature had ventured near. He first looked towards the woods, for of course that was the direction from which the tigers would come; but he had scarcely turned himself when he perceived a pair of eyes glancing at him from the other side of the fire. Close to them another pair, then another and another, until, having looked on every side, he saw himself surrounded by a complete circle of glancing eyes. It is true they were small ones, and some of the heads which he could see by the blaze were small. They were not jaguars, but they had an ugly look. They looked like the heads of serpents. Was it possible that a hundred serpents could have surrounded the camp?
Brought suddenly to his feet, Leon stood for some moments uncertain what to do. He believed that the eyes belonged to snakes which had just crept out of the river; and he feared that any movement on his part would lead them to attack him. Having risen to his feet, his eyes were above the level of the blaze, and he was able in a little while to see more clearly.
He now saw that the snakelike heads belonged to creatures with large oval bodies, and that, besides the fifty or more which had come up to look at the fire, there were whole droves of them upon the sandy beach beyond. As far as he could see on all sides, the bank was covered with them. A strange sight it was, and most fearful. For his life he could not make out what it meant, or by what sort of wild animals he was surrounded.
He could see that their bodies were not larger than those of small sheep; and, from the way in which they glistened in the moonlight, he was sure they had come out of the river. He called to the Indian guide, who awoke and started to his feet in alarm. The movement frightened the creatures round the fire; they rushed to the shore, and were heard plunging by hundreds into the water.
The Indian's ear caught the sounds, and his eye took in the whole thing at a glance.
"Turtles," he said.
"Oh," said the lad; "turtles, are they?"
"Yes, master," answered the guide. "I suppose this is one of their great hatching places. They are going to lay their eggs in the sand."
—Captain Mayne Reid.
Would the preceding incident be interesting if we were told at the beginning that the boy and the Indian had encamped near a hatching place of turtles?
2. Not every story that reads like fiction is fact, but the Brooklyn Eagle assures its readers that the one here quoted is quite true. The man who told it was for many years an officer of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company in Illinois, and had annual passes over all the important railroads in the country. His duties took him to Springfield, the state capital, and as he generally went by the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis road, the conductors on that line knew him so well that they never asked to see his pass.
"One day I received a telegram summoning me to meet one of the officers of my company at Aurora the next morning. I had only a short time to catch my train to Chicago, and in my haste left my passbook behind. I did not find this out until I reached Chicago, and was about to take the last train for Aurora that night. Then I saw that the conductor, a man brought over from the Iowa division, was a stranger, and the fact that I would need my pass reminded me that I did not have it.
"I told the conductor the situation, but he said he could not carry me on my mere representation that I had a pass.
"Why, man," said I, "I am an officer of the company, going to Aurora on company business, and this is the last train that will get me there in time. You must take me."
"He was polite, but firm. He said he was a new man on this division, and could not afford to make any mistakes.
"When I saw that he was determined, I rushed off to the telegraph office; but it was too late to catch anybody authorized to issue passes, so I settled it in my mind that I must go by carriage, and the prospect of an all-night ride over bad roads through the dark was anything but inviting. Indeed, it was so forbidding that I resolved to make one more appeal to the conductor.
"You simply must take me to Aurora!" I said, with intense earnestness.
"I can't do it," he answered. "But I believe you are what you represent yourself to be, and I will lend you the money personally. It is only one dollar and twelve cents."
"Well, sir, you could have knocked me down with the flat side of a palm-leaf fan. I had more than two thousand dollars in currency in my pocket, but it had never for an instant occurred to me that I could pay my fare and ride on that train. I showed the conductor a wad of money that made his eyes stick out.
"I thought it was funny," said he, "that a man in your position couldn't raise one dollar and twelve cents. It was that that made me believe you were playing a trick to see if I would violate the rule."
"The simple truth was, I had ridden everywhere on passes so many years, that it did not occur to me that I could ride in any other way."
+Oral Composition III.+[Footnote: Oral compositions should be continued throughout the course. A few minutes may be profitably used once or twice each week in having each member of the class stand before the class and relate briefly some incident which he has witnessed since the last meeting of the class. Exercises like those on page 53 also will furnish opportunities for oral work.]—Relate to the class some personal incident suggested by one of the following subjects:—
1. A day with my cousin. 2. Caught in the act. 3. A joke on me. 4. My peculiar mistake. 5. My experience on a farm. 6. My experience in a strange Sunday school. 7. What I saw when I was coming to school.
(In preparation for this exercise, consider the point of your story. What must you tell first in order to enable the hearers to understand the point? Can you say anything that will make them want to know what the point is without really telling them? Can you lead up to it without too long a delay? Can you stop when the point has been made?)
+8. Theme Writing and Correcting.+—Any written exercise, whether long or short, is called a theme throughout this book. Just as one learns to skate by skating, so one learns to write by writing; therefore many themes will be required. Since the clear expression of thought is one of the essential characteristics of every theme, theme correction should be primarily directed to improvement in clearness. The teacher will need to assist in this correction, but the really valuable part is that which you do for yourself. After you leave school you will need to decide for yourself what is right and what is best, and it is essential that you now learn how to make such decisions.
To aid you in acquiring a habit of self-correction, questions or suggestions follow the directions for writing each theme. In Theme I you are to express clearly to others something that is already clear to you.
+Theme I.+-Write a short theme on one of the subjects that you have used for an oral composition.
(After writing this theme, read it aloud to yourself. Does it read smoothly? Have you told what actually happened? Have you told it so that the hearers will understand you? Have you said what you meant to say? Consider the introduction. Has the story a point?)
+9. The Conclusion.+—Since the point of a story marks the climax of interest, it is evident that the conclusion must not be long delayed after the point has been reached. If the story has been well told, the point marks the natural conclusion, and a sentence or two will serve to bring the story to a satisfactory end. If a suitable ending does not suggest itself, it is better to omit the conclusion altogether than to construct a forced or flowery one. Notice the conclusion of the incident of the Civil War related on page 18.
+Theme II.+-Write a short theme suggested by one of the following subjects:—
1. A school picnic. 2. A race. 3. The largest fire I have seen. 4. A skating accident. 5. A queer mistake. 6. An experience with a tramp.
(Correct with reference to meaning and clearness. Consider the introduction; the point; the conclusion.)
+10. Observation of Actions.+—Many of our most interesting experiences arise from observing the actions of others. A written description of what we have observed will gain in interest to the reader, if, in addition to telling what was done, we give some indication of the way in which it was done. A list of tools a carpenter uses and the operations he performs during the half hour we watch him, may be dull and uninteresting; but our description may have an added value if it shows his manner of working so that the reader can determine whether the carpenter is an orderly, methodical, and rapid worker or a mere putterer who is careless, haphazard, and slow. Two persons will perform similar actions in very different ways. Our description should be so worded as to show what the differences are.
+Theme III.+—Write a theme relating actions.
Suggested subjects:—
1. A mason, blacksmith, painter, or other mechanic at work.
2. How my neighbor mows his lawn.
3. What a man does when his automobile breaks down.
4. Describe the actions of a cat, dog, rabbit, squirrel, or other
animal.
5. Watch the push-cart man a half-hour and report what he did.
(Have you told exactly what was done? Can you by the choice of suitable words show more plainly the way in which it was done? Does this theme need to have an introduction? A point? A conclusion?)
+11. Selection of Details.+—You are at present concerned with telling events that actually happen; but this does not mean that you need to include everything that occurs. If you wish to tell a friend about some interesting or exciting incident at a picnic, he will not care to hear everything that took place during the day. He may listen politely to a statement of what train you took and what you had in your lunch basket, but he will be little interested in such details. In order to maintain interest, the point of your story must not be too long delayed. Brevity is desirable, and details that bear little relation to the main point, and that do not prepare the listener to understand and appreciate this point, are better omitted.
+Theme IV.+—Write about something that you have done. Use any of the following subjects, or one suggested by them:—
1. My first hunt. 2. Why I was tardy. 3. My first fishing trip. 4. My narrow escape. 5. A runaway. 6. What I did last Saturday.
(Read the theme aloud to yourself. Does it read smoothly? Have you said what you meant to say? Have you expressed it clearly? Consider the introduction; the point; the conclusion. Reject unnecessary details.)
+12. Order of Events.+—The order in which events occur will assist in establishing the order in which to relate them. If you are telling about only one person, you can follow the time order of the events as they actually happened; but if you are telling about two or more persons who were doing different things at the same time, you will need to tell first what one did and then what another did. You must, however, make it clear to the reader that, though you have told one event after the other, they really happened at the same time.
In the selection below notice how the italicized portions indicate the relation in time that the different events bear to one another.
At the beach yesterday a fat woman and her three children caused a great commotion. They had rigged themselves out in hired suits which might be described as an average fit, for that of the mother was as much too small as those of the children were too large. They trotted gingerly out into the surf, wholly unconscious that the crowd of beach loungers had, for the time, turned their attention from each other to the quartet in the water. By degrees the four worked out farther and farther until a wave larger than usual washed the smallest child entirely off his feet, and caused the mother to scream lustily for help. The people on the beach started up, and two or three men hastened to the rescue, but their progress was impeded by the crowd of frightened girls and women who were scrambling and splashing towards the shore. The mother's frantic efforts to reach the little boy were rendered ineffectual by the two girls, who at the moment of the first alarm had been strangled by the salt water and were now clinging desperately to her arms and attempting to climb up to her shoulders. Meanwhile, the lifeboat man was rowing rapidly towards the scene, but it seemed to the onlookers who had rushed to the platform railing that he would never arrive. At the same time a young man, who had started from the diving raft some time before, was swimming towards shore with powerful strokes. He now reached the spot, caught hold of the boy, and lifted him into the lifeboat, which had at last arrived.
Such expressions as meanwhile, in the meantime, during, at last, while, etc., are regularly used to denote the kind of time relations now under discussion. They should be used when they avoid confusion, but often a direct transition from one set of actions to another can be made without their use. Notice also the use of the relative clause to indicate time relations.
+Theme V.+-Write a short theme, using some one of the subjects named under the preceding themes or one suggested by them. Select one which you have not already used.
(Have you told enough to enable the reader to follow easily the thread of the story and to understand what you meant to tell? If your theme is concerned with more than one set of activities, have you made the transition from one to another in such a way as to be clear to the reader? Have you expressed the transitions with the proper time relations? What other questions should you ask yourself while correcting this theme?)
1. There is a pleasure to be derived from the expression of ideas.
2. There are three sources of ideas: experience, imagination, language.
3. Ideas gained from experience may be advantageously used for composition purposes because— a. They are interesting. b. They are your own. c. They are likely to be clear and definite. d. They offer free choice of language.
4. The two essentials of expression are—
a. To say what you mean.
b. To say it clearly.
5. A story should be told so as to arouse and maintain interest.
Therefore,—
a. The introduction usually tells when, where, who, and why.
b. Every story worth telling has a point.
c. Only such details are included as are essential to the
development
of the point.
d. The conclusion is brief. The story comes to an end shortly
after the point is told.
6. Care must be taken to indicate the time order, especially when two or
more events occur at the same time.
7. The correction of one's own theme is the most valuable form of
correction.
+13. Relation of Imagination to Experience.+—All ideas are based upon and spring from experience, and the imagination merely places them in new combinations. For the purpose of this book, however, it is convenient to distinguish those themes that relate real events as they actually occurred from those themes that relate events that did not happen. That body of writing which we call literature is largely composed of works of an imaginative character, and for this reason it has sometimes been carelessly assumed that in order to write one must be possessed of an excellent imagination. Such an assumption loses sight of the fact that imaginative writings cover but one small part of the whole field. The production of literature is the business of a few, while every one has occasion every day to express ideas. It is evident that by far the greater part of the ideas we are called upon to express do not require the use of the imagination, but exercises in writing themes of an imaginative character are given here because there is pleasure in writing such themes and because practice in writing them will aid us in stating clearly and effectively the many ideas arising from our daily experiences.
+14. Advantages and Disadvantages of Imaginative Theme Writing.+—Ideas furnished by the imagination are no less your own than are those furnished by experience, and the same freedom in the choice of language prevails. Such ideas are, however, not likely to be so clear and definite. At the time of their occurrence they do not make so deep and vital an impression upon you. If not recorded as they occur, they can seldom be recalled in the original form. Even though you attempt to write these imaginary ideas as you think them, you can and do change and modify them as you go along. This lack of clearness and permanent form, while it seems to give greater freedom, carries with it disadvantages. In the first place the ideas are less likely to be worth recording, and in the second place it is more difficult to give them a unity and directness of statement that will hold the attention and interest of the reader until the chief point is reached.
+15. Probability.+—Not everything that the imagination may furnish is equally worth expressing. If you choose to write about something for which imagination supplies the ideas, you may create for yourself such ideas as you wish. Their order of occurrence and their time and place are not determined by outward events, but solely by the mind itself. The events are no longer real and actual, but may be changed and rearranged without limit. An imaginative series of events may conform closely to the real and probable, or it may be manifestly improbable. Which will be of greater interest will depend upon the reader, but it will be found that the story which comes nearest to reality is most satisfactory. In relating fairy tales we confessedly attempt to tell events not possible in the real world, but in relating tales of real life, however imaginary, we should tell the events so that everything seems both possible and probable. An imaginative story, in which the persons seem to be real persons who do and say the things that real persons do and say, will be found much more satisfactory than a story that depends for its outcome on something manifestly impossible. He who really does the best in imaginative writing is the one who has most closely observed the real events of everyday life, and states his imaginary events so that they seem real.
+Theme VI.+—Write a short theme, using one of the subjects below. You need not tell something that actually happened, but what you tell should be so told that your readers will think it might have happened.
1. A trip in a sailboat. 2. The travels of a penny. 3. How I was lost. 4. A cat's account of a mouse hunt. 5. The mouse's account of the same hunt. 6. My experience with a burglar. 7. The burglar's story.
+16. Euphony.+—Besides clearness in a composition there are other desirable qualities. To one of these, various names have been applied, as "euphony," "ease," "elegance," "beauty," etc. Of two selections equally clear in meaning one may be more pleasing than the other. One may seem harsh and rough, while the other flows along with a satisfying ease and smoothness. If the thought that is in our mind fails to clothe itself in suitable language and appropriate figures, we can do little by conscious effort toward improving the beauty of the language; but by avoiding choppy sentences and inharmonious combinations of words and phrases, we may remove from our compositions much that is harsh and rough. That quality which we call ease or euphony is better detected by the ear than by the eye, and for this reason it has been suggested that you read each theme aloud to yourself before presenting it to the class. Such a reading will assist you to determine whether you have made your meaning clear and to eliminate some of the more disagreeable combinations.
+17. Variety.+—Of the many elements which affect the euphony of a theme none is more essential than variety. The constant repetition of the same thing grows monotonous and distasteful, while a pleasing variety maintains interest and improves the story. For the sake of this variety we avoid the continual use of the same words and phrases, substituting synonyms and equivalent expressions if we have need to repeat the same idea many times.
Most children begin every sentence of a story with "and," or perhaps it is better to say that they conclude many sentences with "and-uh," leaving the thought in suspense while they are trying to think of what to say next. High school pupils are not wholly free from this habit, and it is sometimes retained in their written work. This excessive use of and needs to be corrected. An examination of our language habits will show that nearly every one has one or more words which he uses to excess. A professor of rhetoric, after years of correcting others, discovered by underscoring the word that each time it occurred in his own writing that he was using it twice as often as necessary. Got is one of the words used too frequently, and often incorrectly.
1. In the following selection notice how each sentence begins. Compare it with one of your own themes.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my woodpile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, and the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with each other. Having once got hold, they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants; that it was not a duellum, but a bellum,—a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and the dying, both red and black.
It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed—the only battlefield I ever trod while the battle was raging…. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.—Thoreau.
2. Examine one of your own themes. If some word occurs frequently, underscore it each time, and then substitute words or expressions for it in as many places as you can. If necessary, reconstruct the sentences so as to avoid using the word in some cases. Notice how these substitutions give a variety to your expression and improve the euphony of your composition.
Theme VII.—Write a short story suggested by one of the following subjects:—
1. The trout's revenge. 2. A sparrow's mistake. 3. A fortunate shot. 4. The freshman and the professor. 5. What the bookcase thought about it.
(Correct with reference to meaning and clearness. Cross out unnecessary ands. Consider the beginnings of the sentences. Can you improve the euphony by a different choice of words?)
18. Sentence Length.—Euphony is aided by securing a variety in the length of sentences. In endeavoring to avoid the excessive use of and, some pupils obtain results illustrated by the following example:—
Jean passed through the door of the church. He saw a child sitting on one of the stone steps. She was fast asleep in the midst of the snow. The child was thinly clad. Her feet, cold as it was, were bare.
A theme composed wholly of such a succession of short sentences is tedious. Especially when read aloud does its monotony become apparent. Though the thought in each sentence is complete, the effect is not satisfactory to the reader, because the thought of the whole does not come to him as fast as his mind can act. Such an arrangement of sentences might be satisfactory to young children, because it would agree with their habits of thought; but as one grows in ability to think more rapidly, he finds that longer and more complicated sentences best express his thoughts and are best understood by those for whom he writes. We introduce sentences of different length and different structure, because they more clearly express the thought of the whole and state it in a form more in accordance with the mental activity of the hearer. When we have done this, we at the same time secure a variety that avoids monotony.
In attempting to avoid a series of short sentences, care should be taken not to go to the other extreme. Sentences should not be overloaded. Too many adjectives or participles or subordinate clauses will render the meaning obscure. The number of phrases and clauses that may safely be introduced will be determined by the ability of the mind to grasp the meaning readily and accurately. It is sometimes quite as important to separate a long sentence into shorter ones as it is to combine short ones into those of greater length.
Notice in the following selection the different ways in which several ideas have been brought into the same sentence without rendering the meaning obscure:—
Loki made his way across a vast desert moorland, and came, after three days, into the barren hill country and among the rugged mountains of the South. There an earthquake had split the rocks asunder, and opened dark and bottomless gorges, and hollowed out many a low-walled cavern, where the light of day was never seen. Along deep, winding ways, Loki went, squeezing through narrow crevices, creeping under huge rocks, and gliding through crooked clefts, until he came at last into a great underground hall, where his eyes were dazzled by a light that was stronger and brighter than the day; for on every side were glowing fires, roaring in wonderful little gorges, and blown by wonderful little bellows.
+Theme VIII.+—Write a story suggested by one of the following subjects:—
1. School in the year 2000. 2. The lost door key. 3. Our big bonfire. 4. Kidnapped. 5. A bear hunt. 6. A mistake in the telegram. 7. How Fido rescued his master.
(Can you render the meaning more clear by uniting short sentences into longer ones, or by separating long sentences into shorter ones? Can you omit any ands? How many of the sentences begin with the same word? Can you change any of those words? Pick out the words which show the subordinate relation of some parts to others. Do all of the incidents in your story seem probable?)
+19. Conversation.+—It must not be inferred from the preceding section that short sentences are never to be used. They are quite as necessary as long ones, and in some cases, such as the portraying of strong emotion, are more effective. Even a succession of short sentences may be used with good results to describe rapid action. In conversation, also, sentences are generally short, and often grammatically incomplete, though they may be understood by the hearer. Sometimes this incompleteness is justified by the idiom of the language, but more often it is the result of carelessness on the part of the speaker. The hearer understands what is said either because he knows about what to expect, or because the expression is a familiar one. Such carelessness not only causes the omission of words grammatically necessary, but brings about the incorrect pronunciation of words and their faulty combination into sentences.
You speak much more often than you write. Your habits of speech are likely to become permanent and your errors of speech will creep into your written work. It is important therefore that you watch your spoken language. Occasions will arise when the slang expressions that you so freely use will seem inappropriate, and it will be unfortunate indeed if you find that you have used the slang so long that you have no other words to take their place. An abbreviated form of gymnasium or of mathematics may not attract attention among your schoolmates, but there are circles where such abbreviations are not used. By watching your own speech you will find that some incorrect forms are very common. Improvement can be made by giving your attention to one of them, such as the use of guess, or of got, or of don't and doesn't.
In making a written report of conversation you should remember that short sentences predominate. A conversation composed of long sentences would seem stilted and made to order. What each person says, however short, is put into a separate division and indented. Explanatory matter accompanying the conversation is placed with the spoken part to which it most closely relates. Notice the indentations and the use of quotation marks in several printed reports of conversation.
+20. Ideas from Pictures.+—If you look at a picture and then attempt to tell some one else what you see, you will express ideas gained by experience. A picture may, however, cause a very different set of ideas to arise. Look at the picture on page 38. Can you imagine the circumstances that preceded the situation shown by the picture? Or again, can you not begin with that situation and imagine what would be done next? If you write out either of the series of events, the theme, though suggested by the picture, will be composed of ideas furnished by the imagination. In the writing of a story suggested by a picture, the situation given in the picture should be made the point of greatest interest, and should be accounted for by relating a series of events supposed to have preceded it.
+Theme IX.+—Write a story that will account for the condition shown in the picture on page 38.
(Correct with reference to clearness and meaning. Do you need to change the sentence length either for the sake of clearness or for the sake of variety? Cross out unnecessary ands. Underscore got and then each time you have used them. Can the reader follow the thread of your story to its chief point?)
[Illustration]
+21. Vocabulary.+—A word is the symbol of an idea, and the addition of a word to one's vocabulary usually means that a new idea has been acquired. The more we see and hear and read, the greater our stock of ideas becomes. As our life experiences increase, so should our supply of words increase. We may have ideas without having the words with which to express them, and we may meet with words whose meanings we do not know. In either case there is chance for improvement. When you have a new idea, find out how best to express it, and when you meet with a new word, add it to your vocabulary.
It is necessary to distinguish between our reading vocabulary and our writing vocabulary. There are many words that belong only to the first. We know what they mean when we meet them in our reading, but we do not use them in our writing. Our speaking vocabulary also differs from that which we employ in writing. We use words and phrases on paper that seldom appear in our speech, and, on the other hand, many of the words that we speak do not appear in our writing. There is, however, a constant shifting of words from one to another of these three groups. When we meet an unknown word, it usually becomes a part of our reading vocabulary. Later it may appear in our written work, and finally we may use it in speaking. We add a word to our reading vocabulary when we determine its meaning, but we must use it in order to add it to our writing and speaking vocabulary. A conscious effort to aid in this acquisition of words is highly desirable.
A limited vocabulary indicates limited ideas. If one is limited to awfully in order to express a superlative; if his use of adjectives is restricted to nice, jolly, lovely, and elegant; if he must always abominate and never abhor, detest, dislike, or loathe; if he can only adore and not admire, respect, revere, or venerate,—then he has failed, indeed, to know the possibilities and beauties of English. Such a language habit shows a mind that has failed to distinguish between ideas. The best way to study the shades of meaning and the choice of words is in the actual production of a theme wherein there is need to bring out these differences in meaning by the use of words; but some help may be gained from a formal study of synonyms and antonyms and of the distinction in use and meaning between words which are commonly confused with each other. For this purpose such exercises are given in the Appendix.
+22. Choice of Words.+—Even though our words may express the proper meaning, the effect may not be a desirable one unless we use words suited to the occasion described and to the person writing. Pupils of high school age know the meaning of many words which are too "bookish" for daily use by them. Edward Everett Hale might use expressions which would not be suitable for a freshman's composition. Taste and good judgment will help you to avoid the unsuitable or grandiloquent.
The proper selection of words not only implies that we shall avoid the wrong word, but also that we shall choose the right one. A suitable adjective may give a clearer image than is expressed by a whole sentence; a single verb may tell better how some one acted than can be told by a lengthy explanation. Since narration has to do with action, we need in story telling to be especially careful in our choice of verbs.
What can you say of the suitability of the words in the following selection, taken from an old school reader?
Mrs. Lismore. You are quite breathless, Charles; where have you been running so violently?
Charles. From the poultry yard, mamma, where I have been diverting myself with the bravado of the old gander. I did not observe him till he came toward me very fiercely, when, to induce him to pursue me, I ran from him. He followed, till, supposing he had beaten me, he returned to the geese, who appeared to receive him with acclamations of joy, cackling very loud, and seeming actually to laugh, and to enjoy the triumph of their gallant chief.
Emma. I wish I had been with you, Charles; I have often admired the gambols of these beautiful birds, and wondered how they came by the appellation of silly, which is generally bestowed on them. I remember Martha, our nursery maid, used often to call me a silly goose. How came they to deserve that term, mamma? they appear to me to have as much intelligence as any of the feathered tribe.
Mrs. Lismore. I have often thought with you, Emma, and supposed that term, like many others, misapplied, for want of examining into the justice of so degrading an epithet.
+23. Improbability.+—Up to this point we have been concerned with relating events that could exist, though we knew that they did not. We may, however, imagine a series of events that are manifestly impossible. There is a pleasure in inventing improbable stories, and if we know from the beginning that they are to be so, we enjoy listening to them. Such tales are more satisfactory to young persons than to older ones, as is shown by our declining interest in fairy stories as we grow older.
By limiting the improbability to a part of the story, it is possible to give an air of reality to the whole. Though the conditions described in a story about a trip to the moon might be wholly impossible, yet the reader for the time being might feel that the events were actually happening if the characters in the story were acting as real men would act under similar circumstances. In stories such as those of Thompson-Seton, where the animals are personified, the impossibilities are forgotten, because the actions and situations are so real. In fairy stories and similar tales neither characters nor actions are in any way limited by probability.
+Theme X.+—Write a short story suggested by one of the subjects below.
Make either the characters or their surroundings seem real.
1. A week in Mars.
2. Exploring the lake bottom.
3. The cat's defense of her kittens.
(a) As told by the cat.
(b) As told by the dog.
4. How the fox fooled the hound.
5. Diary of a donkey.
6. A biography of Jack Frost.
(Correct with reference to meaning and clearness and two other points to be assigned by the teacher.)
+24. How to Increase One's Vocabulary.+—In your daily work do what you can to add words to your reading vocabulary, and especially to increase your writing vocabulary. In the conversation of others and in reading you will meet with many new words, and you should attempt to make them your own. To do this, four things must be attended to:—
1. Spelling. Definite attention should be given to each new word until its form both as written and as printed is indelibly stamped upon the mind. In your general reading and in each of the subjects that you will study in the high school you will meet unfamiliar words. It is only by mastering the spelling of each new word when you first meet it that you can insure yourself against future chagrin from bad spelling. A part of the time in each high school subject may well be devoted to the mastering of the words peculiar to that subject.
2. Pronunciation. The complete acquisition of a word includes its pronunciation. In reading aloud and in speaking, we have need to know it, and faulty pronunciation is considered an indication of lack of culture.
3. Meaning. This includes more than the ability to give the definition as found in the dictionary. It is possible to recite such definitions glibly without in reality knowing the meaning of the word defined. It is necessary to connect the word definitely and permanently in our mind with the idea for which it is the symbol and to be able to distinguish the idea clearly from others closely related to it.
4. Use. The actual use of a word is very important. If a word is to come into our speaking and writing vocabulary, we must use it. It is important that the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning be determined when you first meet the word, and it is equally important that the word be used soon and often.
+Theme XI.+—Write a short story suggested by one of the following subjects. It may be wholly improbable, if you choose.
1. The good fairy. 2. Mary's luck. 3. The man in the moon. 4. The golden apple. 5. A wonderful fountain pen. 6. The goobergoo and the kantan.
(Correct with reference to meaning and clearness and two other points to be assigned by the teacher.)
1. The clear expression of the ideas connected with our daily experiences is of greater importance to most of us than is the production of literature.
2. Ideas furnished by imagination may be advantageously used for
composition purposes, because—
a. They are your own.
b. They offer free choice of language.
They are less desirable than those gained from experience, because—
a. They generally lack clearness and permanency.
b. They are less likely to be worth recording.
c. It is more difficult to give them that unity and directness of
statement that will keep the interest of the reader.
3. An imaginative series of events may seem probable or improbable. He who most closely observes real life and states his imaginary events so that they seem real will succeed best in imaginative writing.
4. Euphony is a desirable quality in a composition.
5. Variety aids euphony. It is gained by— a. Avoiding the repetition of the same words and phrases. b. Beginning our sentences in various ways. c. Using sentences of different lengths.
6. Conversation is usually composed of short sentences.
7. Pictures may suggest ideas suitable for use in compositions.
8. Our reading, writing, and speaking vocabularies differ. Each should be increased. With each new word attention should be given to— a. Spelling. b. Pronunciation. c. Meaning. d. Use.
+25. Language as a Medium through Which Ideas are Acquired.+—We have been considering language as a means of expression, an instrument by which we can convey to others the ideas which come to us from experience and imagination. We shall now consider it from a different point of view. Language is not merely a means of expressing ideas, but it is also a medium through which ideas are acquired. It has a double use: the writer must put thought into language; the reader must get it out. A large part of your schooling has been devoted to acquiring ideas from language, and these ideas may be used for purposes of composition. Since it is absolutely necessary to have ideas before you can express them, it will be worth while to consider for a time how to get them from language.
+26. Image Making.+—Read the following selection from Hawthorne and form a clear mental image of each scene:—
At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and venerable woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt the ax, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides around the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon…. A war party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs.
Did you form clear mental images? Can you picture them all at the same time, or must you turn your attention from one image to another? The formation of the proper mental images will be aided by making a persistent effort to create them.
Many words do not cause us to form images; for example, goodness, innocence, position, insurance; but when the purpose of a word is to set forth an image, we should take care to get the correct one. In this the dictionary will not always help us. We must distinguish between the ability to repeat a definition and the power to form an accurate image of the thing defined. The difficulty of forming correct images by the use of dictionary definitions is so great that the definitions are frequently accompanied by pictures.
Notice the different mental images that come to you as you read each of the following selections. Distinguish words that cause images to arise from those that do not.
1. Before these fields were shorn and tilled,
Full to the brim our rivers flowed;
The melody of waters filled
The fresh and boundless wood;
And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,
And fountains spouted in the shade.
—Bryant: An Indian at the Burial Place of his Fathers.
2. At that moment the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the driftwood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of the scout and Uncas. When their foes, who leaped over the black rocks that divided them, with long bounds, uttering the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the rifle of Hawkeye slowly rose among the shrubs and poured out its fatal contents. The foremost Indian bounded like a stricken deer and fell headlong among the clefts of the island.
—Cooper: Last of the Mohicans.
3. The towering flames had now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies, one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the courtyard. The vanquished of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighboring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky red. The maniac figure of the Saxon Ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chosen, tossing her arms abroad with wild exaltation as if she reigned empress of the conflagration which she had raised. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gave way and she perished in the flames which had consumed her tyrant.
—Scott: Ivanhoe.
4. Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
—Longfellow: The Village Blacksmith.
5. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door;
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more."
—Edgar A. Poe: The Raven.
6. Where with black cliffs the torrents toil,
He watch'd the wheeling eddies boil,
Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes
Beheld the River Demon rise;
The mountain mist took form and limb
Of noontide hag or goblin grim.
—Scott: Lady of the Lake.
7. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick, bushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped around the waist—several pairs of breeches, the outer ones of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with his load.
—Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle.
+27. Complete and Incomplete Images.+—Some sentences have for their purpose the presentation of an image, but in order to form that image correctly and completely, we must be familiar with the words used. If an unfamiliar word is introduced, the mind may omit entirely the image represented, or may substitute some other for it. Notice the image presented by this sentence from Henry James: "Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls around her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand." If the meaning of rococo is unknown to you, the image which you form will not be exactly the one that Mr. James had in mind. The pearls and the dress may stand out clearly in your image, but the fan will be lacking or indistinct. The whole may be compared to a photograph of which a part is blurred. If your attention is directed to the fan, you may recall the word rococo, but not the image represented by it. If your attention is not called to the fan, the mind is satisfied with the indistinct image, or substitutes for it an image of some other fan. Such an image is therefore either incomplete or inaccurate.
An oath in court provides that we shall "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but, in forming images, it is not always possible to hold our minds to such exactness. We are prone to picture more or less than the words convey. In fact, in some forms of prose, and often in poetry, the author purposely takes advantage of this habit of the mind and wishes us to enlarge with creations of our own imagination the bare image that his words convey. Such writing, however, aims to give pleasure or to arouse our emotions. It calls out something in the reader even more strongly than it sets forth something in the writer. This suggestiveness in writing will be considered later, but for the present it will be well for you to bear in mind that most language has for its purpose the exact expression of a definite idea. Much of the failure in school work arises from the careless substitution of one image for another, and from the formation of incomplete and inaccurate images.
A. Make a list of the words in the following selections whose meanings you need to look up in order to make the images exact and complete. Do not attempt to memorize the language of the definition, but to form a correct image.
1. The sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse, on ranges of whitewashed outbuildings, and on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks.
2. In his shabby frieze jacket and mud-laden brogans, he was scarcely an attractive object.
3. In a sunlit corner of an old coquina fort they came suddenly face to face with a familiar figure.
4. Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all:
"Forever—never!
Never—forever!"
—Longfellow: The Old Clock on the Stairs.
5. There was a room which bore the appearance of a vault. Four spandrels from the corners ran up to join a sharp cup-shaped roof. The architecture was rough, but very strong. It was evidently part of a great building.
6. The officer proceeded, without affecting to hear the words which escaped the sentinel in his surprise; nor did he again pause, until he had reached the low strand, and in a somewhat dangerous vicinity to the western water bastion of the fort.
7. She stood on the top step under the porte-cochère, on the extreme edge, so that the toes of her small slippers extended a little over it. She bent forward, and then tipped back on the high, exiguous heels again.
8. Before the caryatides of the fireplace, under the ancestral portraits, a valet moves noiselessly about, arranging the glistening silver service on the long table and putting in order the fruits, sweets, and ices.
9. No sooner is the heavy gate of the portal passed than one sees from afar among the leafage the court of honor, to which one comes along an alley decorated uniformly with upright square shafts like classic termae in stone and bronze. The impression of the antique lines is striking: it springs at once to the eyes, at first in this portico with columns and a heavy entablature, but lacking a pediment.
B. Read again the selections beginning on page 46. Do you form complete images in every case?
C. Notice in each of your lessons for to-day what images are incomplete. Bring to class a list of the words you would need to look up in order to form complete images. Do not include all the words whose meanings are not clear, but only those that assist in forming images.
+Theme XII.+—Form a clear mental image of some incident, person, or place. Write about it, using such words as will give your classmates complete and accurate images. The following may suggest a subject:—
1. A party dress I should like. 2. My room. 3. A cozy glen. 4. In the apple orchard. 5. Going to the fire. 6. The hand-organ man. 7. A hornets' nest. 8. The last inning. 9. An exciting race.
(Consider what you have written with reference to the images which the reader will form. Do you think that when the members of the class hear your theme, each will form the same images that you had in mind when writing? Notice how many of your sentences begin in the same way. Can you rewrite them so as to give variety?)
+28. Reproduction of Images.+—If we were asked to tell about an accident which we had seen, we could recall the various incidents in the order of their occurrence. If the accident had occurred recently, or had made a vivid impression upon us, we could easily form mental images of each scene. If we had only read a description of the accident, it would be more difficult to recall the image; because that which we gain through language is less vitally a part of ourselves than is that which comes to us through experience.
When called upon to reproduce the images suggested to us by language, our memory is apt to concern itself with the words that suggested the image, and our expression is hampered rather than aided by this remembrance. The author has made, or should have made, the best possible selection of words and phrases. If we repeat his language, we have but memory drill or copy work; and if we do not, we are limited to such second-class language as we may be able to find.
Word memory has its uses, but it is less valuable than image memory. It is necessary to distinguish carefully between the images that a writer presents and the words that he uses. If a botany lesson should consist of a description of fifteen different leaves, a pupil deficient in image memory will attempt to memorize the language of the book. A better-trained pupil, on meeting such a term as serrated, will ask himself: "Have I ever seen such a leaf? Can I form an image of it?" If so, his only task will be to give the new name, serrated, to the idea that he already has. In a similar way he will form images for each of the fifteen leaves described in the lesson. The language of the book may help him form these images, but he will make no attempt to commit the language to memory. With him, "getting the lesson" means forming images and naming them, and reciting the lesson will be but talking about an image that he has clearly in mind. Try this in your own lessons.
If we are called upon to reproduce the incidents and scenes of some story that has been read to us, our success will depend upon the clearness of the images that we have formed. Our efforts should be directed to making the images as definite and vivid as possible, and our memory will be concerned with the recalling of these images in their proper order, and not with the language that first caused them to appear.
1. Report orally some interesting incident taken from a book which you have recently read. Do not reread the story. Use such language as will cause the class to form clear mental images.
2. Report orally upon some chapter selected from Cooper's Last of the Mohicans or Scott's Ivanhoe.
3. Read a portion of Scott's Lady of the Lake, and report orally what happened.
4. Report orally some incident that you have read about in a magazine. Select one that caused you to form images, and tell it so that the hearers will form like images.
+Theme XIII.+—Reproduce a story read to you by the teacher.
(Before writing, picture to yourself the scenes and recall the order of their occurrence. If it is necessary to condense, omit events of the least importance.)
+29. Comparison.+—Writing which contains unfamiliar words fails to call up complete and definite images. It is often difficult to form the correct mental picture, even though the words in themselves are familiar. Definitions, explanations, and descriptions may cause us to understand correctly, but our understanding usually can be improved by means of a comparison. We can form an image of an object as soon as we know what it is like.
If I wished you to form an image of an okapi, a lengthy description would give you a less vivid picture than the statement that it was a horselike animal, having stripes similar to those of a zebra. If an okapi were as well known to you as is a horse, the name alone would call up the proper image, and no comparison would be necessary. By means of it we are enabled to picture the unfamiliar. In this case the comparison is literal.
If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, our language becomes figurative, and usually takes the form of a simile or metaphor. Similes and metaphors are of great value in rendering thought clear. They make language forceful and effective, and they may add much to the beauty of expression.
We may speak of an object as being like another, or as acting like another. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, and is directly stated, the expression is a simile. Similes are introduced by like, as, etc.
He fought like a lion.
The river wound like a serpent around the mountains.
If two things are essentially different, but yet have a common quality, their implied comparison is a metaphor. A metaphor takes the form of a statement that one is the other.
"He was a lion in the fight."
"The river wound its serpent course."
Sometimes inanimate objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals are given the attributes of human beings. Such a figure is called personification, and is in fact a modified metaphor, since it is based upon some resemblance of the lower to the higher.
This music crept by me upon the waters.
Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he is worth to
season.
Nay, he's a thief, too; have you not heard men say,
That time comes stealing on by night and day?
—Shakespeare.
+30. Use of Figures of Speech.+—The three figures of speech, simile, metaphor, and personification, are more frequently used than are the others. Figures of speech are treated in a later chapter, but some suggestions as to their use will be of value to beginners.
1. Never write for the purpose of using figures of speech. Nearly everything that we need to say can be well expressed in plain, bare English, and the ability to express our thoughts in this way is the essential thing. If a figure that adds to the force and clearness of your expression occurs to you, use it without hesitation. A figure may also add to the beauty of our expression. The examples to be found in literature are largely of this character. If well used, they are effective, but the beginner should beware of a figure that is introduced for decorative purposes only. An attempt to find figures of speech in ordinary prose writing will show how rarely they are used.
2. The figures should fit the subject in hand. Some comparisons are appropriate and some are not. If the writer is familiar with his subject and deeply in earnest, the appropriate figures will rise spontaneously in his mind. If they do not, little is gained by seeking for them.
3. The effectiveness of a comparison, whether literal or figurative, depends upon the familiarity of the reader with one of the two things compared. To say that a petrel resembled a kite would be of no value to one who knew nothing of either bird. Similarly a figure is defective if neither element of the comparison is familiar to the readers.
4. Suitable figures give picturesqueness and vivacity to language, but hackneyed figures are worse than none.
5. Elaborate and long-drawn-out figures, or an overabundance of short ones, should be avoided.
6. A figure must be consistent throughout. A comparison once begun must be carried through without change; mixing figures often produces results which are ridiculous. The "mixed metaphor" is a common blunder of beginners. This fault may arise either from confusing different metaphors in the same sentence, or from blending literal language with metaphorical. The following will serve to illustrate:—
1. [Confused metaphor.] Let us pin our faith to the rock of perseverance and honest toil, where it may sail on to success on the wings of hope.
2. [Literal and figurative blended.] Washington was the father of his country and a surveyor of ability.
3. When the last awful moment came, the star of liberty went down with all on board.
4. The glorious work will never be accomplished until the good ship "Temperance" shall sail from one end of the land to the other, and with a cry of "Victory!" at each step she takes, shall plant her banner in every city, town, and village in the United States.
5. All along the untrodden paths of the future we see the hidden footprints of an unseen hand.
6. The British lion, whether it is roaming the deserts of India, or climbing the forests of Canada, will never draw in its horns nor retire into its shell.
7. Young man, if you have the spark of genius in you, water it.
Are the images which you form made more vivid by the use of the figures in the following selections?
1. She began to screech as wild as ocean birds.
2. And when its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended;
And as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o'er the sea—
3. As a demon is hurled by an angel's spear,
Heels over head, to his proper sphere—
Heels over head and head over heels,—
Dizzily down the abyss he wheels,—
So fell Darius.
—J.T. Trowbridge.
4. In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.
—Hawthorne.
5. Poverty, treading close at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last.
—Hawthorne.
6. Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
—George Eliot.
7. Nearing the end of the narrative, Ben paced up and down the narrow limits of the tent in great excitement, running his fingers through his hair, and barking out a question now and then.
8. A sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
—Lowell.
9. In days of public commotion every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat.
—Macaulay.
10. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery.
—Macaulay.
11. And close behind her stood
Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men,
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
And labor. Each was like a Druid rock,
Or like a spire of land that stands apart
Cleft from the main and wall'd about with mews.
—Tennyson.
12. But bland the smile that, like a wrinkling wind On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines.
—Tennyson.
13. The rush of affairs drifts words from their original meanings, as ships drag their anchors in a gale, but terms sheltered from common use hold to their moorings forever.
—Mill.
+Theme XIV.+—Write a story suggested by the picture on page 59 or by one of the following subjects:—
1. A modern fable.
2. The willow whistle.
3. How I baked a cake.
4. The delayed picnic.
5. The missing slipper.
6. A misdirected letter.
7. A ride on a raft.
8. The rescue of Ezekiel.
9. A railway experience.
10. A soldier's soldier.
(Do you think the reader will form the images you wish him to form? Consider what you have written with reference to climax. (See Section 7.) Have you needed to use figures? If so, have you used them in accordance with the suggestions on page 55? If you have used the word only, is it placed so as to give the correct meaning?)
+31. Determination of Meaning Requires More than Image Making.+—The emphasis laid upon image making should not lead to the belief that this is all that is necessary in order to determine what is meant by the language we hear or read. Image making is important, but much of our language is concerned with presenting ideas of which no mental pictures can be formed.
[Illustration]
This very paragraph will serve as an illustration of such language. Our understanding of language of this kind depends upon our knowledge of the meanings of words, upon our understanding of the relations between word groups, or parts of sentences, and especially upon our appreciation of the relations in thought that sentences bear to one another. Each of these will be discussed in the following pages. Later it will be necessary to consider the relations in thought existing among paragraphs.
+32. Word Relations.+—In order to get the thought of a sentence, we must understand the relations that exist between the words and word groups (phrases and clauses) that compose it. If the thought is simple, and expressed in straightforward terms, we grasp it readily and without any conscious effort to determine these relations. If the thought is complex, the relations become more complicated, and before we are sure that we know what the writer intends to say it may be necessary to note with care which is the main clause and which are the subordinate clauses. In either case our acquiring the thought depends upon our understanding the relations between words and word groups. We may understand them without any knowledge of the names that have been applied to them in grammar, but a knowledge of the names will assist somewhat. These relations are treated in the grammar review in the Appendix and need not be repeated here.
+33. Incomplete Thoughts.+—We have learned (Section 27) that the introduction of unfamiliar words may cause us to form incomplete images. When the language is not designed to present images, we may, in a similar way, fail to get its real meaning if we are unfamiliar with the words used. If you do not know the meaning of fluent and viscous, you will fail to understand correctly the statement, "Fluids range from the peculiarly fluent to the peculiarly viscous." If we wish to think precisely what the writer intended us to think, we must know the meanings of the words he uses. Many of us are inclined to substitute other ideas than those properly conveyed by the words of the writer, and so get confused or incomplete or inaccurate ideas. The ability to determine exactly what images the writer suggests, and what ideas his language expresses, is the first requisite of scholarship and an important element of success in life.
A. The first step in acquiring knowledge is to determine what it is that we do not know. Just which word or words in each of the following sentences keep you from understanding the full meaning of the sentence? Notice that a dictionary definition will not always make the meaning clear.
1. It is really more scientific to repeat a quotation from a political speech correctly, or to pass on a story undistorted, than it is to know of the rings of Saturn or the striation of diatoms.
2. The process of testing a hypothesis requires great caution in order to prevent mistakes.
3. The aërial foliage stem is the most favorable for studying stem structure.
4. Taken collectively, isotherms indicate the distribution of mean temperature over the region embraced in the map.
5. Vibrations of the membrane of the tympanum are "damped" by the ossicles of the middle ear, which also receive and pass on the auditory tremors to the membrane closing the oval window.
6. In the battle which followed, the mobile Roman legion, arranged in open order three ranks deep, proved its superiority over the massive Macedonian phalanx.
7. The narrow and dissected forms have been attributed to the scarcity of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the water.
B. Make a list of words in your lessons in other subjects for to-day that you need to look up in order to understand the lessons. This should be done daily, whether assigned or not.
34. +Choice of Words Adapted to the Reader.+—Words familiar to the reader should be used. Since the reader's ability to understand the thought of a paragraph depends to some extent upon his understanding of the words employed, it is necessary for the writer to choose words that will be understood by those whom he addresses. Of course we cannot tell whether a particular word will be understood by our readers, but, in case there is doubt, it is well to substitute one that is more likely to be understood. When you have written anything, it is well to ask yourself the question, Have I used words with which the reader is probably familiar?
+Theme XV.+—-Write a theme about one of the following subjects, using words that you think will be understood by your readers:—
1. How we breathe. 2. How to make a kite. 3. The causes of the seasons. 4. Why wood floats on water. 5. The use of baking powder. 6. The difference between arithmetic and algebra.
(Have you said what you meant to say? Have you used words that your reader will understand? Find your longest sentence. Is its meaning clear? Notice the short sentences. Should some of them be united into a longer one?)
+35. Word Selection.+—There are many shades of meaning which differ but little, and a careful writer will select just the word that best conveys his thought. The reader needs to be no less careful in determining the exact meaning that the writer intends to convey. Exercises in synonyms are thus of double importance (Section 21).
Another source of error, both in acquiring and expressing thought, arises from the confusion of similar words. Some similarity of spelling causes one word to be substituted for another. There are many words and expressions that are so often interchanged that some time may be spent with profit upon exercises in determining their correct usage. These usually consist of brief reports to the class that set forth the meanings of the words, show their uses, and illustrate their differences.
In preparing such reports, determine the meaning of the words from as many sources as are available. The usual meaning can be determined from the dictionary. A fuller treatment is given in some dictionaries in a chapter on faulty diction. Additional material may be found in many of the text-books on rhetoric, and in special books treating of word usage. After you are sure that you know the correct use, prepare a report for the class that shall make that use clear to others. In the simplest form this will consist of definitions and sentences in which the words are correctly used. The following examples, handed in by pupils, will serve to illustrate such reports:—
1. A council is an assembly of persons convened for consultation or deliberation. Counsel is used to indicate either (1) an opinion as the result of consultation or (2) a lawyer engaged to give advice or to act as advocate in court. Lewis furnishes the following example of the use of these two words: "The plaintiff's counsel held a council with his partners in law, and finally gave him as his best counsel the advice that he should drop the suit; but, as Swift says, 'No man will take counsel, but every man will take money,' and the plaintiff refused to accept the advice unless the counsel could persuade the defendant to settle the case out of court by paying a large sum."
2. The correct meaning of transpire may perhaps be best understood by considering its derivations. It comes from trans, through, and spiro, to breathe, from which it gets its meaning, to escape gradually from secrecy. It is frequently used incorrectly in the sense of to happen, but both Webster and the Standard dictionary condemn this use of the word. The latter says that it is often so misused especially in carelessly edited newspapers, as in "Comments on the heart-rending disaster which transpired yesterday are unnecessary, but," etc. When transpire is correctly used, it is not a synonym of happen. A thing that happened a year ago may transpire to-day, that is, it may "become known through unnoticed channels, exhale, as it were, through invisible pores like a vapor or a gas disengaging itself." Many things which happen in school, thus become known by being passed along in a semi-secret manner until nearly all know of them though few can tell just how the information was spread. Transpire may properly be applied to such a diffusion of knowledge.
+Theme XVI.+—Report as suggested above on any one of the following groups of words:—
1. Allude, mention. 2. Beside, besides. 3. Character, reputation. 4. Degrade, demean, debase. 5. Last, latest, preceding. 6. Couple, pair. 7. Balance, rest, remainder.
(Have you made clear the correct use of the words under discussion? Can you give examples which do not follow the dictionaries so closely as do the illustrative reports above?)
NOTE.—Lists of words suitable for exercises similar to the above are given in the Appendix. The teacher will assign them to such an extent and at such times as seems desirable. One such lesson a week will be found profitable.
+36. Sentence Relations.+—What we read or hear usually consists of several sentences written or spoken together. The meaning of any particular sentence may depend upon the sentence or sentences preceding. In order to determine accurately the meaning of the whole, we must understand the relation in thought that each sentence bears to the others. Notice the two sentences: "Guns are dangerous. Boys should not use them." Though the last sentence is independent, it gets its meaning from the first.
In the following selection consider each sentence apart from the others. Notice that the meaning of the whole becomes intelligible only when the sentences are considered in their relations to each other.
Once upon a time, a notion was started, that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occasion. When the time came, everybody had his ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of Boo,—the word agreed upon,—that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fiji Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation.—Holmes.
Gutenberg did a great deal of his work in secret, for he thought it was much better that his neighbors should know nothing of what he was doing. So he looked for a workshop where no one would be likely to find him. He was now living in Strasburg, and there was in that city a ruined old building where, long before his time, a number of monks had lived. There was one room in the building which needed only a little repairing to make it fit to be used. So he got the right to repair the room and use it as his workshop.
In all good writing we find a similar dependence in thought. Each sentence takes a meaning because of its relation to some other. The personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives, adverbial phrases indicating time or place, conjunctions, and such expressions as certainly, however, on the other hand, etc., are used to indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ambiguity. Care must be taken to use them so as to keep the meaning clear, and your own good sense will help you in this more than rules. Notice in your reading how frequently expressions similar to those mentioned above are used.
+Theme XVII.+—Write a theme suggested by one of the following subjects:—
1. The last quarter. 2. An excursion with the physical geography class. 3. What I saw while riding to town. 4. The broken bicycle. 5. An hour in the study hall. 6. Seen from my study window.
(Are your sentences so arranged that the relation in thought is clear? Are the personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives used so as to avoid ambiguity? Does your story relate real events or imaginary ones? If imaginary events are related, have you made them seem probable?)
+37. Getting the Main Thought.+—In many cases the relation in thought is not directly indicated, and we are left to determine it from the context, just as we decide upon the meaning of a word because of what precedes or follows it. In this case the meaning of a particular sentence may be made clear if we have in mind the main topic under discussion. Many pupils fail in recitations because they do not distinguish that which is more important from that which is less so. If a dozen pages of history are assigned, they cannot master the lesson because it is too long to be memorized, and they are not able to select the three or four things of importance with which it is really concerned. Thirty or forty minor details are jumbled together without any clear knowledge of the relations that they bear either to one another or to the main thoughts of the lesson.
In the following selection but three things are discussed. Determine what they are, but not what is said about them.
In all the ages the extent and value of flood plains have been increased by artificial means. Dikes or levees are built to regulate the spread and flow of the water and to protect the land from destructive floods. Dams and reservoirs are constructed for the storage of water, which is led by a system of canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may become as productive as that of the Nile.
Streams are the easiest routes of travel and commerce. A river usually furnishes from its mouth well up toward its source a smooth, graded highway, upon which a cargo may be transported with much less effort than overland. If obstructions occur in the form of rapids or falls, boat and cargo are carried around them. It is often easy to pass by a short portage or "carry" from one stream system across the divide to another. In regions which are not very level the easiest grades in every direction are found along the streams, and the main routes of land travel follow the stream valleys. In traversing a mountainous region, a railroad follows the windings of some river up to the crest of the divide, which it crosses through a pass, or often by a tunnel, and descends the valley of some stream on the other side.
Man is largely indebted to streams for the variety and beauty of scenery. Running water itself is attractive to young and old. A landscape without water lacks its chief charm. A child instinctively finds its way to the brook, and the man seeks beside the river the pleasure and recreation which no other place affords. Streams have carved the surface of the land into an endless variety of beautiful forms, and a land where stream valleys are few or shallow is monotonous and tiresome. The most common as well as the most celebrated beauty of scenery in the world, from the tiny meanders of a meadow brook to the unequaled grandeur of the Colorado canyons, is largely due to the presence and action of streams.
—Dryer: Lessons in Physical Geography.
In the above selection we find that each group of sentences is related to some main topic. A more extended observation of good writing will give the same result. Men naturally think in sentence groups. A group of sentences related to each other and to the central idea is called a +paragraph.+
+38. Topic Statement.+—In the three paragraphs of the selection on page 67, notice that the first sentence in each tells what the paragraph is about. In a well-written paragraph it is possible to select the phrase or sentence that states the main thought. If such a sentence does not occur in the paragraph itself, one can be framed that will express clearly and concisely the chief idea of the paragraph. This brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of a paragraph is called the topic statement.
In order to master the thought of what we read we must be able to select or to make the successive topic statements, and in order to express our own thoughts clearly we must write our paragraphs so that our readers may easily grasp the topic statement of each.
When expressed in the paragraph, the topic statement may be a part of a sentence, a whole sentence, or it may extend through two sentences. It is usual to place the topic statement first, but it may be preceded by one or more introductory sentences, or even withheld until the end of the paragraph. For emphasis it may be repeated, though usually in a slightly different form.
Determine the topic statements of the following paragraphs. If one is not expressed, make one.
1. No less valuable is the mental stimulus of play. The child is trained by it to quick perception, rapid judgment, prompt decision. His imagination cunningly suggests a thousand things to be done, and then trains the will and every power of body and mind in the effort to do them. The sports of childhood are admirably adapted to quicken the senses and sharpen the wits. Nature has effective ways in her school of securing the exercise which is needed to develop every mental and every bodily power. She fills the activity brimful of enjoyment, and then gives her children freedom, assured that they will be their own best teachers.
—Bradley
2. Our Common Law comes from England, and originated there in custom. It is often called the unwritten law, because unwritten in origin, though there are now many books describing it. Its principles originated as habits of the people, five hundred, eight hundred, years ago, perhaps some of them back in the time when the half-savage Saxons landed on the shores of England. When the time came that the government, through its courts, punished the breach of a custom, from that time the custom was a law. And so the English people acquired these laws, one after another, just as they were acquiring at the same time the habits of making roads, using forks at table, manufacturing, meeting in Parliament, using firearms, and all the other habits of civilization. When the colonists came to America, they brought the English Common Law with them, not in a book, but in their minds, a part of their life, like their religion.
—Clark: The Government.
3. Accuracy is always to be striven for but it can never be attained. This fact is only fully realized by scientific workers. The banker can be accurate because he only counts or weighs masses of metal which he assumes to be exactly equal. The Master of the Mint knows that two coins are never exactly equal in weight, although he strives by improving machinery and processes to make the differences as small as possible. When the utmost care is taken, the finest balances which have been constructed can weigh 1 lb. of a metal with an uncertainty less than the hundredth part of a grain. In other words, the weight is not accurate, but the inaccuracy is very small. No person is so stupid as not to feel sure that the height of a man he sees is between 3 ft. and 9 ft.; some are able by the eye to estimate the height as between 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 8 in.; measurement may show it to be between 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 7 in., but to go closer than that requires many precautions. Training in observation and the use of delicate instruments thus narrow the limits of approximation. Similarly with regard to space and time, there are instruments with which one millionth of an inch, or of a second, can be measured, but even this approximation, although far closer than is ever practically necessary, is not accuracy. In the statement of measurements there is no meaning in more than six significant figures, and only the most careful observations can be trusted so far. The height of Mount Everest is given as 29,002 feet; but here the fifth figure is meaningless, the height of that mountain not being known so accurately that two feet more or less would be detected. Similarly, the radius of the earth is sometimes given as 3963.295833 miles, whereas no observation can get nearer the truth than 3963.30 miles.
—Mill: The Realm of Nature. (Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's
Sons.)
4. The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all the inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial prejudices, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were for almost every practical purpose farther from Reading than they are now from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they are now from Vienna.
—Macaulay: History of England.
5. He touched New England at every point. He was born a frontiersman. He was bred a farmer. He was a fisherman in the mountain brooks and off the shore. He never forgot his origin, and he never was ashamed of it. Amid all the care and honor of his great place here he was homesick for the company of his old neighbors and friends. Whether he stood in Washington, the unchallenged prince and chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the kingliest man of his time in the presence of kings, his heart was in New England. When the spring came, he heard far off the fife bird and the bobolink calling him to his New Hampshire mountains, or of the waves on the shore at Marshfield alluring him with a sweeter than siren's voice to his home by the summer sea.
—George F. Hoar: Daniel Webster.
6. Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-colored leaves and the glow of Indian summer. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Erelong the sun hardly rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day; only at noon they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red, fiery glow, as of a sunset, burns along the horizon and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells.
—Longfellow: Rural Life in Sweden.
7. Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance, with their eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralyzed or alienated; and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material amusement, and not one thought to rub against another while they wait for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuffbox is empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright on a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson. (Copyright, by Charles Scribner's Sons.)
B. Examine the themes which you have written. Does each paragraph have a topic statement? Have you introduced sentences which do not bear upon this topic statement? Are the paragraphs real ones treating of a single topic, or are they merely groups of sentences written together without any close connection in thought?
+Theme XVIII.+—State two or three advantages of public high schools over private boarding schools. Use each as a topic statement and develop it into a short paragraph.
(Add to each topic statement such sentences as will prove to a pupil of your own age that the topic statement states a real advantage. Include in each paragraph only that which bears upon the topic statement. Consider the definition of a paragraph on page 68. Does this definition apply to your paragraphs?)
+39. Reproduction of the Thought of a Paragraph.+—Our ability to reproduce the thought of what we read will depend largely upon our ability to select the topic statements. In preparing a lesson for recitation it is evident that we must first determine definitely the topic statement of each paragraph. These may bear upon one general subject or upon different subjects. The three paragraphs on page 67 are all concerned with one subject, the uses of rivers. A pupil preparing to recite them would have in mind, when he went to class, an outline about as follows:—
General subject: The uses of rivers.
First topic statement: The fertility of flood plains is improved by
irrigation.
Second topic statement: Streams are the easiest routes of travel and
commerce.
Third topic statement: Man is indebted to streams for beauty of scenery.
While such a clear statement is the first step toward a proper understanding of the lesson, it is not enough. In order to understand thoroughly a topic statement, we need explanation or illustration. The idea is not really our own until we have thought about it in its relations to other knowledge already in our possession. In order to know whether you understand the topic statements, the teacher will ask you to discuss them. This may be done by telling what the writer said about them, or by giving thoughts and illustrations of your own, but best of all, by doing both. It is necessary, then, to know in what way the writer develops each topic statement.
Read the following paragraph:—
The most productive lands in the world are flood plains. At every period of high water, a stream brings down mantle rock from the higher grounds, and deposits it as a layer of fine sediment over its flood plain. A soil thus frequently enriched and renewed is literally inexhaustible. In a rough, hilly, or mountainous country the finest farms and the densest population are found on the "bottom lands" along the streams. The flood plain most famous in history is that of the river Nile in Egypt. For a distance of 1500 miles above its mouth this river flows through a rainless desert, and has no tributary. The heavy spring rains which fall upon the highlands about its sources produce in summer a rise of the water, which overflows the valley on either side. Thus the lower Nile valley became one of the earliest centers of civilization, and has supported a dense population for 7000 years. The conditions in Mesopotamia, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are similar to those along the lower Nile, and in ancient times this region was the seat of a civilization perhaps older than that of Egypt. The flood plains of the Ganges in India, and the Hoang in China, are the most extensive in the world, and in modern times the most populous. The alluvial valley of the Mississippi is extremely productive of corn, cotton, and sugar cane.
—Dryer: Lessons in Physical Geography.
Notice that the first sentence gives the topic statement, flood plains are productive. The second and third sentences tell why this is so, and the rest of the paragraph is given up to illustrations.
In preparing this paragraph for recitation the pupil should have in mind an outline about as follows:—
Topic statement: Flood plains are the most productive lands in the world.
1. Reasons.
2. Examples: (a) Bottom lands.
(b) Nile.
(c) Tigris and Euphrates.
(d) Ganges.
(e) Hoang.
(f) Mississippi.
In order to make such an outline, the relative importance of the ideas in the paragraph must be mastered. A recitation that omitted the topic statement or the reasons would be defective, while one that omitted one or more of the examples might be perfect, especially if the pupil could furnish other examples from his own knowledge. The illustration about bottom lands is a general one, and should suggest specific cases that could be included in the recitation. The details in regard to the Nile might be included if they happened to be recalled at the time of the recitation, but even the omission of all mention of the Nile might not materially detract from the value of the recitation. The effort to remember minor details hinders real thought-getting power.
It is better not to write this outline. The use of notes or written outlines at the time of the recitation soon establishes a habit of dependence that renders real scholarship an impossibility. With such an analysis of the thought clearly in mind, the pupil need not attempt to remember the language of the writer.
A. Complete the partial outline given for the paragraph below. Which of the illustrations might be omitted from a recitation? For which can you furnish different illustrations?
Mountain ranges have great influence upon climate, political geography, and commerce. Many of them form climatic boundaries. The Cordilleras of western America and the Scandinavian mountains arrest the warm, moist, western winds which rise along those great rock barriers to cooler altitudes, where their water vapor is condensed and falls as rain, so that the country on the windward side of the mountains is wet and that on the leeward side is dry. Mountain chains stretching east and west across central Asia protect the southern part of the continent from frigid arctic winds. The large winter tourist traffic of the Riviera is due to the mountains that shield this favored French-Italian coast from the north and northeast continental winds, giving it a considerably warmer winter's temperature than that of Rome, two and a half degrees farther south. As North America has no mountain barriers across the pathway of polar winds, they sweep southward even to the Gulf of Mexico and have twice destroyed Florida's orange groves within a decade. Mountain ranges are conspicuous in political geography because they are the natural boundary between many nations and languages, as the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the Alps between Austria and Italy, and the Himalayas between Tibet and India. Mountains sometimes guard nations from attack by the isolation they give, and therefore promote national unity. Thus the Swiss are among the few peoples in Europe who have maintained the integrity of their state. Commercially, mountains are of great importance as a source of water, which they store in snow, glaciers, and lakes. Snow and ice, melting slowly on the mountains, are an unfailing source of supply for perennial rivers, and thus promote navigation. Mountains are the largest source of water-power, which is more valuable than ever now that electricity is employed to transmit it to convenient centers for use in the industries. A large part of the mining machinery in the United States is run by water power. Switzerland, which has no coal, turns the wheels of its mills with water. Mountains supply most of the metals and minerals, and are therefore the scene of the largest mining industry. They are also among the greatest sources of forest wealth. Though the slopes are not favorable for agriculture they afford good pasturage, and the débris of the rocks washed into the valleys and plains by mountain torrents supplies good soil. Thus the Appalachians have been worn down to a comparatively low level, and the soil formed from their rock particles is the basis of large husbandry. The scenic attractions of many mountain regions is a source of large revenue. The Alps attract crowds of tourists, who spend about twenty million dollars a year in Switzerland and Austria, and give to many thousands of persons.
—Adams: Commercial Geography.
OUTLINE (to be completed)
Mountain ranges have great influence upon—
I. Climate.
Why?
Where?
a, b, etc.
II. Political geography.
Why?
Where?
a, b, etc.
III. Commerce.
Why?
Where?
a, b, etc.
B. Make an outline of the following paragraph:—
1. The armor of the different classes was also accurately ordered by the law. The first class was ordered to wear for the defense of the body, brazen helmets, shields, and coats of mail, and to bear spears and swords, excepting the mechanics, who were to carry the necessary military engines and to serve without arms. The members of the second class, excepting that they had bucklers instead of shields and wore no coats of mail, were permitted to bear the same armor and to carry the sword and spear. The third class had the same armor as the second, excepting that they could not wear greaves for the protection of their legs. The fourth had no arms excepting a spear and a long javelin. The fifth merely carried slings and stones for use in them. To this class belonged the trumpeters and horn blowers.
—Gilman: Story of Rome.
C. In preparing your other lessons for to-day, make outlines of the paragraphs.
+Theme XIX.+—Reproduce the thought of some paragraph read to you by the teacher.
(Do not attempt to remember the language. Try to get the main thought of what is read and then write a paragraph which sets forth that same idea. Use different illustrations if you can.)
NOTE.—This theme may be repeated as many times as seems desirable.
+40. Importance of the Paragraph.+—Emphasis needs to be laid upon the importance of the paragraph. Our ability to express our thoughts clearly depends, to a large extent, upon our skill in constructing paragraphs. The writing of correct sentences is not sufficient. Though each of a series of sentences may be correct, they may, as a whole, say but little, and that very poorly; while another set of sentences, which cluster around some central idea, may set it forth most effectively. It is only by giving our sentence groups that unity of thought which combines them into paragraphs that we make them most effective. A well-constructed paragraph will make clear some idea, and a series of such paragraphs, related to each other and properly arranged, will set forth the sum of our thoughts on any subject.
+41. Paragraph Length.+—The proper length of a paragraph cannot be determined by rule. Sometimes the thought to be presented will require several sentences; sometimes two or three will be sufficient. A single illustration may make a topic statement clear, or several illustrations may be required. The writer must judge when he has included enough to make his meaning understood, and must avoid including so much that the reader will become weary. Usually a paragraph that exceeds three hundred words will be found too long, or else it will contain more than one main idea, each of which could have been presented more effectively in a separate paragraph.
+42. Indentation.+—In written and printed matter the beginning of a paragraph is indicated by an indentation. Indentation does not make a paragraph, but we indent because we are beginning a new paragraph. Indentation thus serves the same purpose as punctuation. It helps the reader to determine when we have finished one main thought and are about to begin another. Beginners are apt to use indentations too frequently. There are some special uses of indentation in letter writing, printed conversation, and other forms, but for ordinary paragraph division the indentation is determined by the thought, and its correct use depends upon clear thinking. Can the following selection be improved by reparagraphing?
Outside in the darkness, gray with whirling snowflakes, he saw the wet lamps of cabs shining, and he darted along the line of hansoms and coupés in frantic search for his own.
"Oh, there you are," he panted, flinging his suit case up to a snow-covered driver. "Do your best now; we're late!" And he leaped into the dark coupé, slammed the door, and sank back on the cushions, turning up the collar of his heavy overcoat.
There was a young lady in the farther corner of the cab, buried to her nose in a fur coat. At intervals she shivered and pressed a fluffy muff against her face. A glimmer from the sleet-smeared lamps fell across her knees.
Down town flew the cab, swaying around icy corners, bumping over car tracks, lurching, rattling, jouncing, while its silent occupants, huddled in separate corners, brooded moodily at their respective windows.
Snow blotted the glass, melting and running down; and over the watery panes yellow light from shop windows played fantastically, distorting vision.
Presently the young man pulled out his watch, fumbled for a match box, struck a light, and groaned as he read the time.
At the sound of the match striking, the young lady turned her head. Then, as the bright flame illuminated the young man's face, she sat bolt upright, dropping the muff to her lap with a cry of dismay.
He looked up at her. The match burned his fingers; he dropped it and hurriedly lighted another; and the flickering radiance brightened upon the face of a girl whom he had never before laid eyes on.
"Good heavens!" he said, "where's my sister?"
The young lady was startled but resolute. "You have made a dreadful mistake," she said; "you are in the wrong cab—"
+Theme XX.+—Write a theme using one of the subjects below:—
1. A personal incident.
2. The advantages and disadvantages of recesses.
3. Complete the story commenced in the selection just
preceding.
(Make a note of the different ideas you may discuss. Which are important enough to become topic statements? Which may be grouped together in one paragraph? In what order shall they occur? After your theme is written, consider the paragraphs. Does the definition apply to them? Are any of them too short or too long?)
+43. Reasons for Studying Paragraph Structure.+—A knowledge of the way in which a paragraph is constructed will aid us in determining the thought it contains. There are several methods of developing paragraphs, and usually one of these is better suited than another to the expression of our thought. Attention given to the methods used by others will enable us both to understand better what we read, and to employ more effectively in our own writing that kind of paragraph which best expresses our thought. Hence we shall give attention to the more common forms of paragraph development.
+44. Development by Giving Specific Instances.+—If you hear a general statement, such as, "Dogs are useful animals," you naturally think at once of some of the ways in which they are useful, or of some particular occasion on which a dog was of use. If a friend should say, "My dog, Fido, knows many amusing tricks," you would expect the friend to tell you some of them. A large part of our thinking consists of furnishing specific instances to illustrate general ideas which arise. Since the language we use is but the expression of the thoughts we have, it happens that many of our paragraphs are made up of general statements and the specific instances used to illustrate these statements. When the topic sentence is a general statement, we naturally seek to supply specific instances, and the writer will most readily make his meaning clear by furnishing such illustrations. Either one or many instances may be used. The object is to explain the topic statement or to prove its truth, and a good writer will use that number of instances which best accomplishes his purpose.
In the following selection notice how the topic statement, set forth and repeated in the first part of the paragraph, is illustrated in the last part by means of several specific instances:—
Nine tenths of all that goes wrong in this world is because some one does not mind his business. When a terrible accident occurs, the first cry is that the means of prevention were not sufficient. Everybody declares we must have a new patent fire escape, an automatic engine switch, or a high-proof non-combustible sort of lamp oil. But a little investigation will usually show that all the contrivances were on hand and in good working order; the real trouble was that somebody didn't mind his business; he didn't obey orders; he thought he knew a better way than the way he was told; he said, "Just this once I'll take the risk," and in so doing, he made other people take the risk too; and the risk was too great. At Toronto, Canada, not long ago, a conductor, against orders, ran his train on a certain siding, which resulted in the death of thirty or forty people. The engineer of a mill, at Rochester, N.Y., thought the engine would stand a higher pressure than the safety valve indicated, so he tied a few bricks to the valve to hold it down; result—four workmen killed, a number wounded, and a mill blown to pieces. The City of Columbus, an iron vessel fitted out with all the means of preservation and escape in use on shipboard, was wrecked on the best-known portion of the Atlantic coast, on a moonlight night, at the cost of one hundred lives, because the officer in command took it into his head to save a few ship-lengths in distance by hugging the shore, in direct disobedience to the captain's parting orders. The best-ventilated mine in Colorado was turned into a death trap for half a hundred miners because one of the number entered with a lighted lamp the gallery he had been warned against. Nobody survived to explain the explosion of the dynamite-cartridge factory in Pennsylvania, but as that type of disaster almost always is due to heedlessness, it is probable that this instance is not an exception to the rule.
—Wolstan Dixey: Mind Your Business.
A. Which sentences make the general statements, and which furnish specific instances, in the following paragraphs?
My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy. Another traveler, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever pointed pencil, the cataract was made to thunder. In a little talk which we had together, he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as to widen the American falls, and contract those of the Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who declared that, upon the whole, the sight was worth looking at; there certainly was an immense water power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horseshoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down—down— down—struck upon the fragment of the Table Rock.
—Hawthorne: My Visit to Niagara.
No wonder he learned English quickly, for he was ever on the alert—no strange word escaped him, no unusual term. He would say it over and over till he met a friend, and then demand its meaning. One day he came to me with a very troubled face. "Madame," he said, "please tell me why shall a man, like me, like any man, be a 'bluenose'?"
"A what?" I asked.
"A 'bluenose.' So he was called in the restaurant, but he seemed not offended about it. I have looked in my books; I can't find any disease of that name."
With ill-suppressed laughter I asked, "Do you know Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland?"
"I hear the laugh in your voice," he said; then added, "Yes, I know both these places."
"They are very cold and foggy and wet," I explained.
But with brightening eyes he caught up the sentence and continued:
"And the people have blue noses, eh? Ha! ha! Excuse me, then, but is a milksop a man from some state, or some country, too?"
At tea some one used the word "claptrap." "What's that?" quickly demanded the student in our midst. "'Claptrap'—'clap' is so (he struck his hands together); 'trap' is for rats—what is, then, 'claptrap'?"
"It is a vulgar or unworthy bid for applause," I explained.
"Bah!" he contemptuously exclaimed. "I know him,—that cheap actor who plays at the gallery. He is, then, in English a 'clap-trapper,' is he not?"
It was hardly possible to meet him without having a word or a term offered thus for explanation.
—Clara Morris: Alessandro Salvini ("McClure's").
B. Write six sentences which might be developed into paragraphs by giving specific instances.
+Theme XXI.+—Write a paragraph by furnishing specific instances for one of the following topic statements:—
1. Nine tenths of all that goes wrong in this world is because some one does not mind his business.
2. It requires a man of courage and perseverance to become a pioneer.
3. Even the wisest teacher does not always punish the boy who is most at fault.
4. It is impossible to teach a dog many amusing tricks.
5. Even so stupid a creature as a chicken may sometimes exhibit much intelligence.
6. Carelessness often leads into difficulty.
7. Our school clock must see many interesting things.
8. Our first impressions are not always our best ones.
9. I am a very busy lead pencil, for my duties are numerous.
10. Dickens's characters are taken from the lower classes of people.
11. Some portions of the book I am reading are very interesting.
(Do your specific instances really illustrate the topic statement? Have you said what you intended to say? Can you omit any words or sentences? Have you used and or got unnecessarily?).
+45. Development by Giving Details.+—Many general statements lead to a desire to know the details, and the writer may make his idea clearer by giving them. The statement, "The wedding ceremony was impressive," at once arouses a desire to know the details. If a friend should say, "I enjoyed my trip to the city," we wish him to relate that which pleased him. These details assist us in understanding the topic statement, and increase our interest in it. Notice in the paragraphs below how much is added to our understanding of the topic statement by the sentences that give the details:—
1. I left my garden for a week, just at the close of a dry spell. A season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the transformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairly jumped forward. The tomatoes, which I left slender plants, eaten of bugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of them had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out of the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes—I will not speak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus. There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it had sprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my head.
—Warner: My Summer in a Garden.
2. The wedding ceremony was solemn and beautiful, in the church on the estate. At the door of the palace stood the mother of the bride, to greet her return from the ceremony with the blessing, "May you always have bread and salt," as she served her from a loaf of black bread, with a salt cellar in the center, as is the Russian custom for prince and peasant. Just at this dramatic moment a courier dashed up with a telegram from the Czar and Czarina, and their gifts for the bride,—a magnificent tiara and necklace of diamonds. The other presents were already displayed in a magnificent room; but we saw their splendor through the glass of locked cases,—a precaution surprising to an Englishwoman. The large swan of forcemeat was the only reminder of boyar customs at the rather Parisian feast. Wine was served between the courses, with a toast; while guests in turn left their seats to express their sentiments to bride and groom, who stood to receive them.
—Mary Louise Dunbar: The Household of a Russian Prince
("Atlantic Monthly ").
+Theme XXII.+—Write a paragraph by giving details for one of the following topic statements:—
1. There were many interesting things on the farm where I spent my summer vacation.
2. The sounds heard in the forest at night are somewhat alarming to one who is not used to the language of the woods.
3. I am always much amused when the Sewing Circle meets at my mother's house.
4. Good roads are of advantage to farmers in many ways.
5. A baseball game furnishes abundant opportunity to exercise good judgment.
6. I remember well the first time that I visited a large city.
7. I shall never forget my first attempt at milking a cow.
8. The haunted house is a square, old-fashioned one of the colonial type.
9. A mouse suddenly entering the class room caused much disturbance.
10. A freshman's trials are numerous.
(Do the details bear upon the main idea? If the paragraph is long and rambling, condense by omitting the least important parts. By changing the order of the sentences, can you improve the paragraph?)
+46. Details Related in Time-Order.+—The experiences of daily life follow each other in time, and when we read of a series of events we at once think of them as having occurred in a certain time-order. To assist in establishing the correct time-order, the writer should generally state the details of his story in the order in which they occurred. The method of showing time relations for simultaneous events has been discussed in Section 11.
If the narrative is of considerable length, it may be divided into paragraphs, each dealing with some particular stage of its progress. The time relations among the sentences within the paragraph and among the paragraphs themselves should be such that the reader may readily follow the thread of the story to its main point. Narrative paragraphs often do not have topic sentences.
In the following selection from Black Beauty notice how the time relations give unity of thought both to the paragraphs and to the whole selection:—
He hung my rein on one of the iron spikes, and was soon hidden among the trees. Lizzie was standing quietly by the side of the road, a few paces off, with her back to me. My young mistress was sitting easily, with a loose rein, humming a little song. I listened to my rider's footsteps until he reached the house, and heard him knock at the door.
There was a meadow on the opposite side of the road, the gate of which stood open. As I looked, some cart horses and several young colts came trotting out in a very disorderly manner, while a boy behind was cracking a great whip. The colts were wild and frolicsome. One of them bolted across the road and blundered up against Lizzie. Whether it was the stupid colt or the loud cracking of the whip, or both together, I cannot say, but she gave a violent kick and dashed off into a headlong gallop. It was so sudden that Lady Anne was nearly unseated, but she soon recovered herself.
I gave a long, shrill neigh for help. Again and again I neighed, pawing the ground impatiently, and tossing my head to get the rein loose. I had not long to wait. Blantyre came running to the gate. He looked anxiously about, and just caught sight of the flying figure now far away on the road. In an instant he sprang to the saddle. I needed no whip, no spur, for I was as eager as my rider. He saw it; and giving me a free rein, and leaning a little forward, we dashed after them.
For about a mile and a half the road ran straight, then bent to the right; after this it divided into two roads. Long before we came to the bend my mistress was out of sight. Which way had she turned? A woman was standing at her garden gate, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking eagerly up the road. Scarcely drawing rein, Lord Blantyre shouted, "Which way?" "To the right!" cried the woman, pointing with her hand, and away we went up the right-hand road. For a moment we caught sight of Lady Anne; another bend, and she was hidden again. Several times we caught glimpses of the flying rider, only to lose her again. We scarcely seemed to gain ground upon her at all.
An old road mender was standing near a heap of stones, his shovel dropped and his hands raised. As we came near he made a sign to speak. Lord Blantyre drew the rein a little. "To the common, to the common, sir! She has turned off there."
I knew this common very well. It was, for the most part, very uneven ground, covered with heather and dark-green bushes, with here and there a scrubby thorn tree. There were also open spaces of fine, short grass, with ant-hills and mole turns everywhere—the worst place I ever knew for a headlong gallop.
We had just turned on to the common, when we caught sight again of the green habit flying on before us. My mistress's hat was gone, and her long brown hair was streaming behind her. Her head and body were thrown back, as if she were pulling with all her remaining strength, and as if that strength were nearly exhausted. It was clear that the roughness of the ground had very much lessened Lizzie's speed, and there seemed a chance that we might overtake her.
While we were on the highroad, Lord Blantyre had given me my head; but now, with a light hand and a practiced eye, he guided me over the ground in such a masterly manner that my pace was scarcely slackened, and we gained on them every moment.
About halfway across the common a wide dike had recently been cut and the earth from the cutting cast up roughly on the other side. Surely this would stop them! But no; scarcely pausing, Lizzie took the leap, stumbled among the rough clods, and fell.
—Anne Sewell: Black Beauty.
+Theme XXIII.+—Write a brief narrative giving unity to the paragraphs by means of the time relations.
Suggested subjects:—
1. An adventure on horseback. 2. A trip with the engineer. 3. A day on the river. 4. Fido's mishaps. 5. An inquisitive crow. 6. The unfortunate letter carrier. 7. Teaching a calf to drink. 8. The story of a silver dollar. 9. A narrow escape. 10.An afternoon at the circus. 11.A story accounting for the situation shown in the picture on page 90.
(Do you need more than one paragraph? If so, is each a group of sentences treating of a single topic? Can the reader follow the thread of your story? Leave out details not essential to the main point.)
+47. Order of Details Determined by Position in Space.+—The order of presentation of details may be determined by the position that the details themselves occupy in space. In description we wish both to give a correct general impression of the thing described, and to make certain details clear. The general impression should be given in the first sentence or two and the details should follow. The effectiveness of the details will depend upon their order of presentation. When one looks at a scene the eye passes from one object to another near it; similarly when one is recalling the scene the image of one thing naturally recalls that of an adjoining one. A skillful writer takes advantage of this habit of thinking, and states the details in his description in the order in which we would naturally see them if we were actually looking at them. By so doing he most easily presents to our minds the image he wishes to convey.
[Illustration]
In the following paragraphs notice that we get first an impression of the general appearance, to which we are enabled to add new details as the description proceeds.
The companion of the church dignitary was a man past forty, thin, strong, tall, and muscular; an athletic figure, which long fatigue and constant exercise seemed to have left none of the softer part of the human form, having reduced the whole to brawn, bones, and sinews, which had sustained a thousand toils, and were ready to dare a thousand more. His head was covered with a scarlet cap, faced with fur, of that kind which the French call mortier, from its resemblance to the shape of an inverted mortar. His countenance was therefore fully displayed, and its expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not of fear, upon strangers. High features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive, had been burnt almost into negro blackness by constant exposure to the tropical sun, and might, in their ordinary state, be said to slumber after the storm of passion had passed away; but the projection of the veins of the forehead, the readiness with which the upper lip and its thick black mustache quivered upon the slightest emotion, plainly intimated that the tempest might be again and easily awakened. His keen, piercing, dark eyes told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued and dangers dared, and seemed to challenge opposition to his wishes, for the pleasure of sweeping it from his road by a determined exertion of courage and of will; a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance and a sinister expression to one of his eyes, which had been slightly injured on the same occasion, and of which the vision, though perfect, was in a slight and partial degree distorted.
The upper dress of this personage resembled that of his companion in shape, being a long monastic mantle; but the color, being scarlet, showed that he did not belong to any of the four regular orders of monks. On the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a cross of a peculiar form. This upper robe concealed what at first view seemed rather inconsistent with its form, a shirt, namely, of linked mail, with sleeves and gloves of the same, curiously plaited and interwoven, as flexible to the body as those which are now wrought in the stocking loom out of less obdurate materials. The fore part of his thighs, where the folds of his mantle permitted them to be seen, were also covered with linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, or thin plates of steel, ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armor. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person.
He rode, not a mule, like his companion, but a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war horse, which a squire led behind, fully accoutered for battle, with a chamfron or plaited headpiece upon his head, having a short spike projecting from the front. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-ax, richly inlaid with Damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed headpiece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. A second squire held aloft his master's lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole, or streamer, bearing a cross of the same form with that embroidered upon his cloak. He also carried his small triangular shield, broad enough at the top to protect the breast, and from thence diminishing to a point. It was covered with a scarlet cloth, which prevented the device from being seen.
—Scott: Ivanhoe.
Notice also how the description proceeds in an orderly way from one thing to another, placing together in the description those which occur together in the person described. Just as we turn our eyes naturally from one thing to another near it in space, so in a paragraph should our attention be called from one thing to that which naturally accompanies it. If the first sentence describes a man's eyes, the second his feet, and a third his forehead, our mental image is likely to become confused. If a description covers several paragraphs, each may be given a unity by placing in it those things which are associated in space.
A. If you were to write three paragraphs describing a man, which of the following details should be included in each paragraph?
(a) eyes, (b) shoes, (c) size, (d) complexion, (e) general appearance, (f) hair, (g) carriage, (h) trousers,(i) mouth, (j) coat, (k) nose.
B. Make a list of the details which might be mentioned in describing the outside of a church. Arrange them in appropriate groups.
C. In the following paragraphs which sentences give the general outline and which give details? Are the details arranged with reference to their position in space? Can the paragraph be improved by rearranging them?
1. We came finally to a brook more wild and mysterious than the others. There were a half dozen stepping-stones between the path we were on and the place where it began again on the opposite side. After a few missteps and much laughter we were landed at last, but several of the party had wet feet to remember the experience by. We found ourselves in a space that had once been a clearing. A tumbledown chimney overgrown with brambles and vines told of an abandoned hearthstone. The blackened remnants of many a picnic camp fire strewed the ground. A slight turn brought us to the spot where the Indian Spring welled out of the hillside. The setting was all that we could have hoped for,—great moss-grown rocks wet and slippery, deep shade which almost made us doubt the existence of the hot August sunshine at the edge of the forest, cool water dripping and tinkling. A half-dozen great trees had been so undermined by the action of the water long ago that they had tumbled headlong into the stream bed. There they lay, heads down, crisscross—one completely spanning the brook just below the spring—their tangled roots like great dragons twisting and thrusting at the shadows. The water trickled slowly over the smooth rocky bottom as if reluctant to leave a spot enchanted. A few yards below, the overflow from Indian Spring joined the main stream, and their waters mingled in a pretty little cataract. We went below and looked back at it. How it wrinkled and paused over the level spaces, played with the bubbles in the eddies, and ran laughing and turning somersaults wherever the ledges were abrupt.
—Mary Rodgers Miller: The Brook Book. (Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday,
Page & Co.)
2. Rowena was tall in stature, yet not so much so as to attract observation on account of superior height. Her complexion was exquisitely fair, but the noble cast of her head and features prevented the insipidity which sometimes attaches to fair beauties. Her clear blue eyes, which sat enshrined beneath a graceful eyebrow of brown, sufficiently marked to give expression to the forehead, seemed capable to kindle as well as to melt, to command as well as to beseech. Her profuse hair, of a color betwixt brown and flaxen, was arranged in a fanciful and graceful manner in numerous ringlets, to form which art had probably been aided by nature. These locks were braided with gems, and being worn at full length, intimated the noble birth and free-born condition of the maiden. A golden chain, to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal, hung around her neck. She wore bracelets on her arms, which were bare. Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale sea-green silk, over which hung a long loose robe, which reached to the ground, having very wide sleeves, which came down, however, very little below the elbow. This robe was crimson, and manufactured out of the very finest wool. A veil of silk, interwoven with gold, was attached to the upper part of it, which could be, at the wearer's pleasure, either drawn over the face and bosom after the Spanish fashion, or disposed as a sort of drapery round the shoulders.
—Scott: Ivanhoe.
+Theme XXIV.+—Write a paragraph and arrange the details with reference to their association in space.
Suggested subjects:—
1. Ichabod Crane. 2. Rip Van Winkle. 3. The man who lives near us. 4. A minister I met yesterday. 5. Our family doctor. 6. The gymnasium. 7. A fire engine. 8. The old church. 9. The shoe factory. 10. Some character in the book you are reading.
(Which sentence gives the general impression and which sentences give the details? Are the details arranged with reference to their real space order? Should others be added? Can any be omitted? Will the reader form the mental image you wish him to form?)
+48. Development by Comparison.+—In Section 29 we found that comparison, whether literal or figurative, aided us in forming mental images of objects. In a similar way events and general principles may be explained by making suitable comparisons. We are continually comparing one thing with another. Every idea tends to recall other ideas that are similar to it or in contrast with it. When an unfamiliar idea is presented to us we at once seek to associate it with similar ideas already known to us. A writer, therefore, will make his meaning clear by furnishing, the desired comparisons. If these are familiar to us, they enable us to understand the new ideas presented. Even when both ideas in the comparison are unfamiliar, each may gain in clearness by comparison with the other.
In comparing two objects, events, or principles we may point out that they are not alike in certain respects. A comparison that thus emphasizes differences, rather than likenesses, becomes a contrast. The contrast may be given in a single sentence or in a single paragraph, but often a paragraph or more may be required for each of the two ideas contrasted.
Notice how comparisons and contrasts are used in the following paragraphs:—
1. Niagara is the largest cataract in the world, while Yosemite is the highest; it is the volume that impresses you at Niagara, and it is the height of Yosemite and the grand surroundings that make its beauty. Niagara is as wide as Yosemite is high, and if it had no more water than Yosemite has, it would not be of much consequence. The sound of the two falls is quite different: Niagara makes a steady roar, deep and strong, though not oppressive, while Yosemite is a crash and rattle, owing to the force of the water as it strikes the solid rock after its immense leap.
2. It is not only in appearance that London and New York differ widely. They also speak with different accents, for cities have distinctive accents as well as people. Tennyson wrote about "streaming London's central roar"; the roar is a gentle hum compared with the din which tingles the ears of visitors to New York. The accent of New York is harsh, grating, jarring. The rattle of the elevated railroad, the whir of the cable cars, the ringing of electric-car bells, the rumble of vehicles over the hard stones, the roar of the traffic as it reëchoes through the narrow canyons of down-town streets, produce an appalling combination of discords. The streets of New York are not more crowded than those of London, but the noise in London is subdued. It is more regular, less jarring and piercing. The muffled sounds in London are due partly to the wooden and asphalt pavements, which deaden the sounds. London must be soothing to the New Yorker, as the noise of New York is at first disconcerting to the Londoner.—Outlook.
3. Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places.
—Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies.
+Theme XXV.+—Write a paragraph using comparison or contrast.
Suggested topics:—
1. The school, a beehive. 2. The body, a steam engine. 3. Two generals about whom you have read. 4. Girls, boys. 5. Two of your studies. 6. Graded school work, high school work. 7. Animal life, plant life. 8. Two of your classmates.
(Have you used comparison or contrast? Have you introduced any of the other methods of development? Have you developed the paragraph so that the reader will understand fully your topic statement? Omit sentences not really needed.)
+49. Development by Stating Cause and Effect.+—We are better satisfied with our understanding of a thing if we know the causes which have produced it or the effects which follow it. Likewise we feel that another has mastered the topic statement of a paragraph if he can answer the question, Why is this so? or, What will result from this? When either is stated, we naturally begin to think about the other. The idea of a topic statement may, therefore, be satisfactorily developed by stating its causes or its effects. A cause may be stated and the effects given or the effects may be made the topic statement for which we account by giving its causes.
The importance of the relation of cause and effect to scientific study is discussed in the following paragraph from Mill:—
The relation of cause and effect is the fundamental law of nature. There is no recorded instance of an effect appearing without a previous cause, or of a cause acting without producing its full effect. Every change in nature is the effect of some previous change and the cause of some change to follow; just as the movement of each carriage near the middle of a long train is a result of the movement of the one in front and a precursor of the movement of the one behind. Facts or effects are to be seen everywhere, but causes have usually to be sought for. It is the function of science or organized knowledge to observe all effects, or phenomena, and to seek for their causes. This twofold purpose gives richness and dignity to science. The observation and classifying of facts soon become wearisome to all but the specialist actually engaged in the work. But when reasons are assigned, and classification explained, when the number of causes is reduced and the effects begin to crystallize into essential and clearly related parts of one whole, every intelligent student finds interest, and many, more fortunate, even fascination in the study.
—Mill: The Realm of Nature. (Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's
Sons.)
A. In your reading, notice how often the effects are indicated by the use of some one of the following expressions: as a result, accordingly, consequently, for, hence, so, so that, thus.
B. Which sentences state causes and which state effects in the following paragraphs?
1. The power of water to dissolve most minerals increases with its temperature and the amount of gases it contains. Percolating water at great depths, therefore, generally dissolves more mineral matter than it can hold in solution when it reaches the surface, where it cools, and, being relieved of pressure, much of its carbonic acid gas escapes to the atmosphere or is absorbed by aquatic plants or mosses. Hence, deep-seated springs are usually surrounded by a deposit of the minerals with which the water is impregnated. Sometimes this deposit may even form large hills; sometimes it forms a mound around the spring, over the sides of which the water falls, while the spray, evaporating from surrounding objects, leaves them also incrusted with a mineral deposit. Percolating water evaporating on the sides and roof of limestone caverns, leaves the walls incrusted with carbonate of lime in beautiful masses of crystals. Water slowly evaporating as it drips from the roof of caverns to the floor beneath leaves a deposit on both places, which gradually grows downward from the roof as a stalactite, and upward from the floor as a stalagmite, until these meet and form one continuous column of stone.
—Hinman: Eclectic Physical Geography.
2. The frequent use of cigars or cigarettes by the young seriously affects the quality of the blood. The red blood corpuscles are not fully developed and charged with their normal supply of life-giving oxygen. This causes paleness of the skin, often noticed in the face of the young smoker. Palpitation of the heart is also a common result, followed by permanent weakness, so that the whole system is enfeebled, and mental vigor is impaired as well as physical strength. Observant teachers can usually tell which of the boys under their care are addicted to smoking, simply by the comparative inferiority of their appearance, and by their intellectual and bodily indolence and feebleness. After full maturity is attained the evil effects of commencing the use of tobacco are less apparent; but competent physicians assert that it cannot be safely used by those under the age of forty.
—Macy-Norris: Physiology for High Schools.
3. In many other ways, too, the Norman Conquest affected England. For example, before long all the best places in the Church were filled with foreigners. But most of the new bishops and abbots were far superior in morals and education to the Englishmen whom they succeeded. They were also devoted to the Pope of Rome, and soon made the English National Church a part of the Roman Catholic Church. But William, while willing to bow to the Pope as his chief in religious matters, refused to give way to him in things which concerned only this world. No former English king had done that, he knew, and no more would he. This union with the Roman Catholic Church was of the greatest benefit to England, as it brought her once more into connection with the educated men of Europe. Indeed, Lanfranc, the Conqueror's Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the best and wisest men of his day.
—Higginson and Channing: English History for American Readers.
+Theme XXVI.+—Develop one of the following topic statements into paragraphs by stating causes or effects:—
1. A government which had no soldiers to call upon in an emergency would not last long.
2. One of the first needs of a new country is roads.
3. The number of people receiving public support is smaller in this country than in Europe.
4. An efficient postal system is a great aid to civilization.
5. A straight stream is an impossibility in nature.
6. Mountain ranges have great influence upon climate.
7. The United States holds first place as a manufacturing nation.
8. There are many swift rivers in New England.
9. Towns or cities are located at the mouths of navigable rivers.
(Which sentences state causes and which state effects? Would the effects which you have stated really follow the given causes?)
+50. Development by Repetition.+—The repetition of a thought in different form will often make plain that which we do not at first understand. This is especially true if the repetitions are accompanied by new comparisons. In every school the teacher makes daily use of repetition in her efforts to explain to the pupils that which they do not understand. In a similar way a writer makes use of this tendency of ours, and develops the idea of the topic sentence by repetition. Each sentence should, however, do more than merely repeat. It should add something to the central idea, making this idea clearer, more definite, or more emphatic. If repetition is excessive and purposeless, it becomes a fault.
Repetition may extend through the whole paragraph, or it may be used to explain any sentence or any part of a sentence. It may tell what the thing is or what it is not, and in effect becomes a definition setting limits to the original idea.
Notice how the idea in the topic statement of each of the following paragraphs is repeated in those which follow:—
1. No man ever made a complete new system of law and gave it to a people. No monarch, however absolute or powerful, ever had the power to change the habits of a people to that extent. Revolution generally means, not a change of law, but merely a change of government officials; even when it is a change from monarchy to democracy. Our Revolution made practically no changes in the criminal and civil laws of the colonies.
—Clark: The Government.
2. People talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty to do just what a man likes. I call that man free who fears doing wrong, but fears nothing else. I call that man free who has learned the most blessed of all truths,—that liberty consists in obedience to the power, and to the will, and to the law that his higher soul reverences and approves. He is not free because he does what he likes; but he is free because he does what he ought, and there is no protest in his soul against the doing.
—Frederick William Robertson.
3. This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they had lived from childhood, and where they were as much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book. Nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears.
—Theodore Roosevelt: The Winning of the West.
4. Public enterprises, whether conducted by the municipality or committed to the public service corporation, exist to render public services. Streets are public highways. They exist for the people's use. Nothing should be placed in them unless required to facilitate their use by or for the people. Only the general need of water, gas, electricity, and transportation justifies the placing of pipes and wires and tracks in the streets. The public need is the sole test and measure of such occupation. To look upon the streets as a source of private gain, or even municipal revenue, except as incidents of their public use, is to disregard their public character. Adequate service at the lowest practicable rates, not gain or revenue, is the test. The question is, not how much the public service corporation may gain, but what can be saved to the people by its employment.
—Edwin Burrett Smith: The Next Step in Municipal Reform
("Atlantic Monthly").
+Theme XXVII.+—Develop one of the following topic statements into a paragraph, using the method, of repetition as far as possible:—
1. It is difficult to become angry with one who is always good-natured.
2. It is gloomy in the woods on a rainy day.
3. The government is always in need of honest men.
4. Rural free delivery of mail will have a great effect on country life.
5. Not every boy in school uses his time to the best advantage.
6. Haste is waste.
7. Regular exercise is one of the essentials of good health.
(Have the repetitions really made the idea of the topic sentence clearer or more emphatic or more definite? What other methods of development have you used?)
+51. Development by a Combination of Methods.+—A paragraph should have unity of thought, and, so long as this unity of thought is kept, it does not matter what methods of development are used. A dozen paragraphs taken at random will show that combinations are very frequent. Often it will be difficult to determine just how a paragraph has been developed. In general, however, it may be said that an indiscriminate mixture of methods is confusing and interferes with unity of thought. If more than one is used, it requires skillful handling to maintain such a relation between them that both contribute to the clear and emphatic statement of the main thought.
The paragraph from Dryer, page 74, shows a combination of cause and effect with specific illustrations; that from Wolstan Dixey, page 81, shows a combination of repetition with specific instances.
What methods of paragraph development, or what combinations of methods, are used in the following selections?
1. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his power, or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Dürer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done"; Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. And they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, and incredibly merciful.
—Ruskin.
2. The first thing to be noted about the dress of the Romans is that its prevalent material was always woolen. Sheep raising for wool was practiced among them on an extensive scale, from the earliest historic times, and the choice breeds of that animal, originally imported from Greece or Asia Minor, took so kindly to the soil and climate of Italy that home-grown wool came even to be preferred to the foreign for fineness and softness of quality. Foreign wools were, however, always imported more or less, partly because the supply of native wools seems never to have been quite sufficient, partly because the natural colors of wools from different parts varied so considerably as to render the art of the dyer to some extent unnecessary. Thus, the wools of Canusium were brown or reddish, those of Pollentia in Liguria were black, those from the Spanish Baetica, which comprised Andalusia and a part of Granada, had either a golden brown or a grayish hue; the wools of Asia were almost red; and there was a Grecian fleece, called the crow colored, of which the natural tint was a peculiarly deep and brilliant black.
—Preston and Dodge: 'The Private Life of the Romans.
3. Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled, and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe. Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out; churches, halls, and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which drew artists from all parts of the world.
—Taylor: Views Afoot.
4. In all excursions to the woods or to the shore the student of ornithology has an advantage over his companions. He has one more, avenue of delight. He, indeed, kills two birds with one stone and sometimes three. If others wander, he can never get out of his way. His game is everywhere. The cawing of a crow makes him feel at home, while a new note or a new song drowns all care. Audubon, on the desolate coast of Labrador, is happier than any king ever was; and on shipboard is nearly cured of his seasickness when a new gull appears in sight.
—Burroughs: Wake Robin.
+Theme XXVIII.+—Write a paragraph, using any method or combination of methods which best suits your thought. Use any of the subjects hitherto suggested that you have not already used.
(Is every sentence related to the topic statement so that your paragraph possesses unity? What methods of development have you used?)
+52. The Topical Recitation.+—In conducting a recitation the teacher may ask direct questions about each part of a paragraph or she may ask a pupil to discuss some topic. Such a topical recitation should be an exercise in clear thinking rather than in word memory, and in order to prepare for it, the pupil should have made a careful analysis of the thought in each paragraph similar to that discussed on page 74. When this analysis has been made he will have clearly in mind the topic statement and the way it has been developed, and will be able to distinguish the essential from the non-essential elements.
A topical recitation demands that the pupil know the main idea and be able to develop it in one of the following methods, or by a combination of them: (1) by giving specific instances, (2) by giving details, (3) by giving comparisons or contrasts, (4) by giving causes or effects, and (5) by repetition.
Thoughts so mastered are our own. We understand them and believe them; and consequently we can explain them, or describe them, or prove them to others. We can furnish details or instances, originate comparisons, or state causes and effects. When ideas gained from language have thus become our own, we do not need to remember the language in which they were expressed, and not until then do they become proper material for composition purposes.
+53. Outlining Paragraphs.+—Making an outline of a paragraph that we have read brings the thought clearly before our mind. In a similar way we may make our own thoughts clear and definite by attempting to prepare in advance an outline of a paragraph that we are about to write. Arranging the material that we have in mind and deciding upon the order in which we shall present it, will both help us to understand the thought ourselves, and enable us to present it more effectively to others.
A. Prepare for recitation the following selection from Newcomer's introduction to Macaulay's Milton and Addison:—
There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind that set his work far apart from other work in the same field,—the faculties of organization and illustration. He saw things in their right relation and he knew how to make others see them thus. If he was describing, he never thrust minor details into the foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got ahead of his story." The importance of this is not sufficiently recognized. Many writers do not know what organization means. They do not know that in all great and successful literary work it is nine tenths of the labor. Yet consider a moment. History is a very complex thing: divers events may be simultaneous in their occurrence; or one crisis may be slowly evolving from many causes in many places. It is no light task to tell these things one after another and yet leave a unified impression, to take up a dozen new threads in succession without tangling them and without losing the old ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion. Such is the narrator's task, and it was at this task that Macaulay proved himself a past master. He could dispose of a number of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for example, runs his account of the dramatist Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman." On the other hand, when it is a question of a great crisis, like the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of the highest dramatic power.
This faculty of organization shows itself in what we technically name structure; and logical and rhetorical structure may be studied at their very best in his work. His essays are perfect units, made up of many parts, systems within systems, that play together without clog or friction. You can take them apart like a watch and put them together again. But try to rearrange the parts and the mechanism is spoiled. Each essay has its subdivisions, which in turn are groups of paragraphs. And each paragraph is a unit. Take the first paragraph of the essay on Milton: the word manuscript appears in the first sentence, and it reappears in the last; clearly the paragraph deals with a single very definite topic. And so with all. Of course the unity manifests itself in a hundred ways, but it is rarely wanting. Most frequently it takes the form of an expansion of a topic given in the first sentence, or a preparation for a topic to be announced only in the last. These initial and final sentences— often in themselves both aphoristic and memorable—serve to mark with the utmost clearness the different stages in the progress of the essay.
Illustration is of more incidental service, but as used by Macaulay becomes highly organic. For his illustrations are not farfetched or laboriously worked out. They seem to be of one piece with his story or his argument. His mind was quick to detect resemblances and analogies. He was ready with a comparison for everything, sometimes with half a dozen. For example, Addison's essays, he has occasion to say, were different every day of the week, and yet, to his mind, each day like something—like Horace, like Lucian, like the "Tales of Scheherezade." He draws long comparisons between Walpole and Townshend, between Congreve and Wycherley, between Essex and Villiers, between the fall of the Carlovingians and the fall of the Moguls. He follows up a general statement with swarms of instances. Have historians been given to exaggerating the villainy of Machiavelli? Macaulay can name you half a dozen who did so. Did the writers of Charles's faction delight in making their opponents appear contemptible? "They have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, that Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that the Earl of Northumberland cudgeled Henry Marten, that St. John's manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a red nose." Do men fail when they quit their own province for another? Newton failed thus; Bentley failed; Inigo Jones failed; Wilkie failed. In the same way he was ready with quotations. He writes in one of his letters: "It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can." Thus we see his mind doing instantly and involuntarily what other minds do with infinite pains, bringing together all things that have a likeness or a common bearing.
It is precisely these talents that set Macaulay among the simplest and clearest of writers, and that accounts for much of his popularity. People found that in taking up one of his articles they simply read on and on, never puzzling over the meaning of a sentence, getting the exact force of every statement, and following the trend of thought with scarcely a mental effort. And his natural gift of making things plain he took pains to support by various devices. He constructed his sentences after the simplest normal fashion, subject and verb and object, sometimes inverting for emphasis, but rarely complicating, and always reducing expression to the barest terms. He could write, for example, "One advantage the chaplain had," but it is impossible to conceive of his writing, "Now, amid all the discomforts and disadvantages with which the unfortunate chaplain was surrounded, there was one thing which served to offset them, and which, if he chose to take the opportunity of enjoying it, might well be regarded as a positive advantage." One will search his pages in vain for loose, trailing clauses and involved constructions. His vocabulary was of the same simple nature. He had a complete command of ordinary English and contented himself with that. He rarely ventured beyond the most abridged dictionary. An occasional technical term might be required, but he was shy of the unfamiliar. He would coin no words and he would use no archaisms. Foreign words, when fairly naturalized, he employed sparingly. "We shall have no disputes about diction," he wrote to Napier, Jeffrey's successor; "the English language is not so poor but that I may very well find in it the means of contenting both you and myself."
B. Recite upon some topic taken from your other lessons for the day. Let the class tell what method of development you have used.
C. Make a collection of well-written paragraphs illustrating each of the methods of development.
+Theme XXIX.+—Write two paragraphs using the same topic statement, but developing each by a different method.
Suggested topic statements:—
1. The principal tools of government are buildings, guns, and money.
2. The civilized world was never so orderly as now.
3. Law suits take time, especially in cities; sometimes they take years.
4. There is a difference between law and justice.
5. We cry for a multitude of reasons of surprising variety.
6. In the growth of a child nothing is more surprising than his ceaseless activity.
7. Education for the children of a nation is a benefit to the whole nation.
(Have you said what you intended to say? What methods of development have you used? Is the main thought of the two paragraphs the same even though they begin with the same sentence?)
1. Language is (1) a means of expressing ideas, and (2) a medium through which ideas are acquired.
2. The acquisition of ideas by means of language requires:—
a. That we know the meanings of words, and so avoid forming
incomplete images (Section 27) and incomplete thoughts (Section
33).
b. That we understand the relations in thought existing among words,
phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs (Section 32).
3. Ideas acquired through language may be used for composition purposes—
a. Provided we form complete and accurate images and do not confuse
the image with the language that suggested it (Section 28).
b. Provided we make the main thoughts so thoroughly our own that we
can furnish details and instances, originate comparisons, or
state causes and effects, and thus become able to describe them
or explain them, or prove them to others (Section 52).
Until both a and b as stated above are done, ideas acquired
through language are undesirable for composition purposes.
4. Comparisons aid in the forming of correct images. They may be literal
or imaginative. If imaginative, they become figures of speech.
5. Figures of speech. (Complete list in the Appendix.)
a. A simile is a direct comparison.
b. A metaphor is an implied comparison.
c. Personification is a modified metaphor, assigning human
attributes to objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals.
6. Suggestions as to the use of figures of speech. a. Never write for the purpose of using them. b. They should be appropriate to the subject. c. One of the two things compared must be familiar to the reader. d. Avoid hackneyed figures. e. Avoid long figures. f. Avoid mixed metaphors.
7. Choice of words.
a. Use words presumably familiar to the reader.
b. Use words that express your exact meaning. Do not confuse similar
words.
e. Avoid the frequent use of the same word (Section 17).
8. Ambiguity of thought must be avoided. Care must be exercised in the
use of the forms which show relations in thought between sentences,
especially with pronouns and pronominal adjectives (Section 36).
9. A paragraph is a group of sentences related to each other and to one
central idea.
10. The topic statement of a paragraph is a brief comprehensive summary of
the contents of the paragraph.
11. Methods of paragraph development. A paragraph may be developed—
a. By giving specific instances (Section 44).
b. By giving details (Section 45). The order in which the details
are told may be determined by—
(1) The order of their occurrence in time (Section 46).
(2) Their position in space (Section 47).
c. By comparison or contrast (Section 48).
d. By stating cause and effect (Section 49).
e. By repetition (Section 50).
f. By any suitable combination of the methods stated above.
12. The topical recitation demands—
a. That the pupil get the central idea of the paragraph and be able
to make the topic statement.
b. That he be able to determine the relative importance of the
remaining ideas in the paragraph.
c. That he know by which of the five methods named above the
paragraph has been developed.
d. That he be able to furnish details, instances, and comparisons of
his own. (See Sections 37, 38, 39, 52, 53.)
+54. Kinds of Composition.+—When considered with reference to the purpose in the mind of the writer, there are two general classes of writing,—that which informs, and that which entertains. The language that we use should make our meaning clear, arouse interest, and give vividness. Writing that informs will lay greatest emphasis on clearness, though it may at the same time be interesting and vivid. We do not add to the value of an explanation by making it dull. On the other hand, writing that entertains, though it must be clear, will lay greater emphasis on interest and vividness. That language is best which combines all three of these characteristics. The writer's purpose will determine to which the emphasis shall be given.
Composition is also divided into description, narration, exposition, and argument (including persuasion). These are called forms of discourse. It will be found that this division is also based upon the purpose for which the composition is written. You have occasion to use each of these forms of discourse daily; you describe, you narrate, you explain, you argue, you persuade. You have used language for these purposes from your infancy, and you are now studying composition in order to acquire facility and effectiveness in that use. When this chapter is completed, you will have considered each of the four forms of discourse in an elementary way. A more extended treatment is given in later chapters.
A. To which of the two general classes of composition would each of the following belong?
1. A business letter.
2. The story of a runaway.
3. A description of a lake written by a geologist.
4. A description of a lake written by a boy who was camping near it.
5. A letter to a friend describing a trip.
6. A text-book on algebra.
7. An application for a position as stenographer.
8. A recipe for making cake.
9. How I made a cake.
10. How to make a kite.
11. A political speech.
12. A debate.
B. Could a description be written for the purpose of entertaining? Could the same object be described for the purpose of giving information?
C. To which general class do narratives belong? Explanations? Arguments?
+55. Discourse Presupposes an Audience.+—The object of composition is communication, and communication is not concerned with one's self alone. It always involves two,—the one who gives and the one who receives. If its purpose is to inform, it must inform somebody; if to entertain, it must entertain somebody. To be sure, discourse may be a pleasure to us, because it is a means of self-expression, but it is useful to us because it conveys ideas to that other somebody who hears or reads it. We describe in order that another may picture that which we have experienced; we narrate, events for the entertainment of others; we explain to others that which we understand; and we argue in order to prove to some one the truth of a proposition or to persuade him to action. Thus all discourse, to be useful, demands an audience. Its effective use requires that the writer shall give quite as much attention to the way in which that reader will receive his ideas as he gives to the ideas themselves. "Speaking or writing is, therefore, a double-ended process. It springs from me, it penetrates him; and both of these ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what I mean? That is an important question. Is what I say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by him who hears? This is a question of quite as great consequence and much more likely to be forgotten…. As I write I must unceasingly study what is the line of least intellectual resistance along which my thought may enter the differently constituted mind; and to that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling my meaning. Will this combination of words or that make the meaning clear? Will this order of presentation facilitate swiftness of apprehension or will it clog the movement?"[Footnote: Professor George Herbert Palmer: Self-cultivation in English.]
In the preceding chapters emphasis has been laid upon the care that a writer must give to saying exactly what he means. This must never be neglected, but we need to add to it a consideration of how best to adapt what we say to the interest and intelligence of our readers. It will become clear in writing the following theme that the discussion of paragraph development in Chapter III was in reality a discussion of methods of adapting our discourse to the mental habits of our readers.
+Theme XXX.+—Write a theme showing which one of the five methods of paragraph development proceeds most nearly in accordance with the way the mind usually acts.
(This theme will furnish a review of the methods of paragraph development treated in Chapter III. If possible, write your theme without consulting the chapter. "Think it out" for yourself. After the theme has been written, review paragraph development treated in Chapter III. Can you improve your theme? What methods of development have you used?)
+56. Selecting a Subject.+—Sometimes our theme subjects are chosen for us, but usually we shall need to choose our own subjects. What we should choose depends both upon ourselves and upon those for whom we write. The elements which make a subject suitable for the reader will be considered later. In so far as the writer is concerned, two things determine the suitableness of a subject:—
First, the writer's knowledge of the subject. We cannot make ideas clear to others unless they are clear to us. Our information must be clearly and definitely our own before we can hope to present it effectively. This is one of the advantages possessed by subjects arising from experience. Any subject about which we know little or nothing, should be rejected. We must not, however, reject a subject too soon. When it is first thought of we may find that we have but few ideas about it, but by thinking we may discover that our information is greater than it at first seemed. We may be able to assign reasons or to give instances or to originate comparisons or to add details, and by these processes to amplify our knowledge. Even if we find that we know but little about the subject from our own experience, we may still be able to use it for a composition subject by getting our information from others. We may from conversation or from reading gain ideas that we can make our own and consequently be able to write intelligently. Care must be taken that this "reading up" on a subject does not fill our minds with smatterings of ideas that we think we understand because we can remember the language in which they were expressed; but reading, supplemented by thinking, may enable us to write well about a subject concerning which on first thought we seem to know but little.
Second, the writer's interest in the subject. It will be found difficult for the writer to present vividly a subject in which he himself has no special interest. Enthusiasm is contagious, and if the writer has a real interest in his subject, he is likely to present his material in such a manner as to arouse interest in others. In our earlier years we are more interested in the material presented by experience and imagination than in that presented by reading, but as we grow older our interest in thoughts conveyed to us by language increases. As we enlarge our knowledge of a subject by reading and by conversation, so we are likely to increase our interest in that subject. A boy may know but little about Napoleon, but the effort to inform himself may cause him to become greatly interested. This interest will lead him to a further search for information about Napoleon, and will at the same time aid in making what he writes entertaining to others.
A. About which of the following subjects do you now possess a sufficient knowledge to enable you to write a paragraph? In which of them are you interested? Which would you need to "read up" about?
1. Golf. 2. Examinations. 3. Warships. 4. Wireless telegraphy. 5. Radium. 6. Tennis. 7. Automobiles. 8. Picnics. 9. Printing. 10. Bees. 11. Birds. 12. Pyrography. 13. Photography. 14. Beavers. 15. Making calls. 16. Stamp collecting. 17. The manufacture of tacks. 18. The manufacture of cotton. 19. The smelting of zinc. 20. The silver-plating process.
B. Make a list of thirty things about which you know something.
C. Bring to class a list of five subjects in which you are interested.
D. Make a list of five subjects about which you now possess a sufficient knowledge to enable you to write a paragraph.
+Theme XXXI.+—Write a short theme: Select a suitable subject from the lists in the preceding exercise.
(What method or methods of paragraph development have you used? Have your paragraphs unity of thought?)
+57. Subject Adapted to Reader.+—We may be interested in a subject and possess sufficient knowledge to enable us to treat it successfully, but it may still be unsuitable because it is not adapted to the reader. Some knowledge of a subject and some interest in it are quite as necessary on the part of the reader as on that of the writer, though in the beginning this knowledge and interest may be meager. The possibility of developing both knowledge and interest must exist, however, or the writing will be a failure. It would be difficult to make "Imperialism" interesting to third grade pupils, or "Kant's Philosophy" to high school pupils. Even if you know enough to write a valuable "Criticism" of Silas Marner, or a real "Review" of the Vicar of Wakefield, the work is time wasted if your readers do not have a breadth of knowledge sufficient to insure a vital and appreciative interest in the subject. You must take care to select a subject that is of present, vital interest to your readers.
+58. Sources of Subjects.+—Thought goes everywhere, and human interest touches everything. The sources of subjects are therefore unlimited; for anything about which we think and in which we are interested may become a suitable subject for a paragraph, an essay, or a book. Such subjects are everywhere—in what we see and do, in what we think and feel, in what we hear and read. We relate to our parents what a neighbor said; we discuss for the teacher an event in history, or a character in literature; we show a companion how to make a kite or work a problem in algebra; we consider the advantages of a commercial course or relate the pleasures of a day's outing,—in each case we are interested, we think, we express our thoughts, and so are practicing oral composition with subjects that may be used for written exercises.
+59. Subjects should be Definite.+—Both the writer and the reader are more interested in definite and concrete subjects than in the general and abstract ones, and we shall make our writing more interesting by recognizing this fact. One might write about "Birds," or "The Intelligence of Birds," or "How Birds Protect their Young," or "A Family of Robins." The last is a specific subject, while the other three are general subjects. Of these, the first includes more than the second; and the second, more than the third. A person with sufficient knowledge might write about any one of these general subjects, but it would be difficult to give such a subject adequate treatment in a short theme. Though a general subject may suggest more lines of thought, our knowledge about a specific subject is less vague, and consequently more usable. We really know more about the specific subject, and we have a greater interest in it. The subject, "A Family of Robins," indicates that the writer knows something interesting that he intends to tell. Such a subject compels expectant attention from the reader and aids in arousing an appreciative interest on his part.
On first thought, it would seem easier to write about a general subject than about a specific one, but this is not the case. A general subject presents so many lines of thought that the writer is confused, rather than aided, by the abundance of material. A skilled and experienced writer possessing a large fund of information may treat general subjects successfully, but for the beginner safety lies only in selecting definite subjects and in keeping within the limits prescribed. The "Women of Shakespeare" might be an interesting subject for a book by a Shakespearean scholar, but it is scarcely suitable for a high school pupil's theme.
+60. Narrowing the Subject.+—It is often necessary to narrow a subject in order to bring it within the range of the knowledge and interest of ourselves and of our readers. A description of the transportation of milk on the electric roads around Toledo would probably be more interesting than an essay on "Freight Transportation by Electricity," or on "Transportation." The purpose that the writer has in mind, and the length of the article he intends to write, will affect the selection of a subject. "Transportation" might be the subject of a book in which a chapter was given to each important subdivision of it; but it would be quite as difficult to treat such a subject in three hundred words as it would be to make use of three hundred pages for "The Transportation of Milk at Toledo."
A general subject may suggest many lines of thought. It is the task of the writer to select one about which he knows something or can learn something, in which both he and his readers are interested, or can become interested, and for which the time and space at his disposal are adequate.
A. Arrange the subjects in each of the following groups so that the most general ones shall come first:—
1. The intelligence of wild animals.
How a fox escaped from the hounds.
How animals escape destruction by their enemies.
Animals.
2. The benefits that arise from war.
The defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons by Marius.
War.
The value of military strength to the Romans.
3. Pleasure.
A summer outing in the Adirondacks.
Value of vacations.
Catching bass.
B. Narrow ten of the following subjects until the resulting subject may be treated in a single paragraph:—
1. Fishing. 2. Engines. 3. Literature. 4. Heroes of fiction. 5. Cooking. 6. Houses. 7. Games. 8. Basketball. 9. Cats. 10. Canaries. 11. Sympathy. 12. Sailboats. 13. Baseball. 14. Rivers. 15. Trees.
C. A general subject may suggest several narrower subjects, each of which would be of interest to a different class of persons; for example—
General subject,—Education.
Specific subjects,—
1. Methods of conducting recitations. (Teachers.)
2. School taxes. (Farmers.)
3. Ventilation of school buildings. (Architects.)
In a similar way, narrow each of the following subjects so that the resulting subjects will be of interest to two or more classes of persons:—
Subjects Classes 1. Vacations. 1. Farmers. 2. Mathematics. 2. High School Pupils. 3. Picnics. 3. Ministers. 4. Civil service. 4. Merchants. 5. Elections. 5. Sailors. 6. Botany. 6. Girls. 7. Fish. 7. Boys.
+Theme XXXII.+—Write a paragraph about one of narrowed subjects.
(Does your paragraph have unity of thought? What methods of development have you used? Have you selected a subject which will be of interest to your readers?)
+61. Selecting a Title.+—The subject and the title may be the same, but not necessarily so. The statement of the subject may require a sentence of considerable length, while a title is best if short. In selecting this brief title, it is well to get one which will attract the attention and arouse the curiosity of a reader without appearing obviously to do so. A peculiar or unusual title is not at all necessary, though if properly selected such a title may be of value. Care must be taken not to have the title make a promise that the theme cannot fulfill. If it does, the effect is unsatisfactory.
A. Discuss the appropriateness of the titles for the subjects in the following:—
1. Title: "My Kingdom for a Horse."
Subject: An account of a breakdown of an automobile at an inconvenient
time.
2. Title: A Blaze of Brilliance.
Subject: Description of a coaching parade.
3. Title: A Brave Defense.
Subject: An account of how a pair of birds drove a snake away from
their nest.
4. Title: The Banquet Book.
Subject: Quotations designed for general reference, and also as an
aid in the preparation of the toast list, the after-dinner
speech, and the occasional address.
5. Title: Dragons of the Air.
Subject: An account of extinct flying reptiles.
6. Title: Rugs and Rags.
Subject: A comparison of the rich and the poor, from a socialistic
point of view.
7. Title: Lives of the Hunted.
Subject: A true account of the doings of five quadrupeds and three
birds.
8. Title: The Children of the Nations.
Subject: A discussion of colonies and the problems of colonization.
B. Supply an appropriate title for a story read by the teacher.
C. Suggest a title, other than the one given it, for each magazine article you have read this month.
+62. Language Adapted to the Reader.+—A writer may select a subject with reference to the knowledge and interest of his readers; he may develop his paragraphs in accordance with the methods studied in Chapter III, and yet he may fail to make his meaning clear, because he has not used language suited to the reader. Fortunately, the language that we understand and use is that which is most easily understood by those of equal attainments with ourselves. It therefore happens that when writing for those of our own age and attainments, or for those of higher attainments, we usually best express for them that which we make most clear and pleasing to ourselves. But if we write for younger people, or for those of different interests in life, we must give much attention to adapting what we write to our readers. Before writing it is well to ask, For whom am I writing? Then, if necessary, you should modify your language so that it will be adapted to your readers. Can you tell for what kind of an audience each of the following is intended?
In the field both teams played faultless ball, not the semblance of an error being made. Besides backing up their pitchers in this fashion, both local and visiting athletes turned sensational plays.
The element of luck figured largely in the result. In the first inning Dougherty walked and Collins singled. Dougherty had third base sure on the drive, but stumbled and fell down between second and third, and he was an easy out.
Boston got its only run in the second. Parent sent the ball to extreme left for two bases. He stole third nattily when catcher Sugden tried to catch him napping at the middle station. Ferris scored him with a drive to left. St. Louis promptly tied the score in its half. Wallace opened with a screeching triple to the bulletin board. At that he would not have scored if J. Stahl had not contributed a passed ball, Heidrick, Friel, and Sugden, the next three batters, expiring on weak infield taps. The Browns got the winning run in the sixth on Martin's triple and Hill's swift cut back of first. Lachance knocked the ball down and got his man at the initial sack, but could not prevent the tally.
—Boston Herald.
His name was Riley, and although his parents had called him Thomas, to the boys he had always been "Dennis," and by the time he had reached his senior year in college he was quite ready to admit that his "name was Dennis," with all that slang implied. He had tried for several things, athletics particularly, and had been substitute on the ball nine, one of the immortal second eleven backs of the football squad, and at one time had been looked upon as promising material for a mile runner on the track team.
But it was always his luck not quite to make anything. He couldn't bat up to 'varsity standard, he wasn't quite heavy enough for a Varsity back, and in the mile run he always came in fresh enough but could not seem to get his speed up so as to run himself out, and the result was that, although he finished strong and with lots of running in him, the other fellows always reached the tape first, even though just barely getting over and thoroughly exhausted.
Now "Dennis" had made up his mind at Christmas time that he actually would have one more trial on the track, and that his family, consisting of his mother and a younger brother, both of them great believers in and very proud of Thomas, should yet see him possessed of a long-coveted "Y."
So he went out with the first candidates in the spring, and the addition of the two-mile event to the programme of track contests gave him a distance better suited to his endurance. There were a half-dozen other men running in his squad, and Dennis, from his former failures, was not looked upon with much favor, or as a very likely man. But he kept at it. When the first reduction of the squad was made, some one said, "Denny's kept on just to pound the track." With the middle of March came some class games, and Dennis was among the "also rans," getting no better than fourth place in the two-mile. The worst of it was that he knew he could have run it faster, for he felt strong at the finish, but had no burst of speed when the others went up on the last lap. But in April he did better, and it soon developed that he was improving. The week before the Yale-Harvard games he was notified that he was to run in the two-mile as pace maker to Lang and Early, the two best distance men on the squad. Nobody believed that Yale would win this event, although it was understood that Lang stood a fair chance if Dennis and Early could carry the Harvard crack, Richards, along at a fast gait for the first mile.
So it was all arranged that Early should set the pace for the first half mile, and Dennis should then go up and carry the field along for a fast second half. Then, after the first mile was over, Early and Dennis should go out as fast as they could, and stay as long as they could in the attempt to force the Harvard man and exhaust him so that Lang could come up, and, having run the race more to his liking, be strong enough to finish first.
The day of the games came, and with it a drenching rain, making the track heavy and everybody uncomfortable. But as the inter-collegiates were the next week, it was almost impossible to postpone the games, and consequently it was decided to run them off. As the contest progressed, it developed that the issue would hang on the two-mile event, and interest grew intense. When the call for starters came, Dennis felt the usual trepidation of a man who is before the public for the first time in a really important position. But the feeling did not last long, and by the time he went to his mark he had made up his mind that that Harvard runner should go the mile and a half fast at any rate, or else be a long way behind.
At the crack of the pistol the six men went off, and, according to orders, during the first mile Early and Dennis set the pace well up. Richards, the Harvard man, let them open up a gap on him in the first half-mile, and, being more or less bothered by the conditions of the wet track, he seemed uncertain whether the Yale runners were setting the pace too high or not, and in the second half commenced to move up. In doing this his team mates gradually fell back until they were out of it, and the order was Dennis, Early, Richards, and Lang. At the beginning of the second mile, Early, whose duty it was to have gone up and helped Dennis make the pace at the third half-mile, had manifestly had enough of it, and, after two or three desperate struggles to keep up, was passed by Richards. When, therefore, they came to the mile and a half, Dennis was leading Richards by some fifteen yards, and those who knew the game expected to see the Harvard man try to overtake Dennis, and in so doing exhaust himself, so that Lang, who was running easily in the rear, could come up and in the last quarter finish out strong. Dennis, too, was expecting to hear the Harvard man come up with him pretty soon, and knew that this would be the signal for him to make his dying effort in behalf of his comrade, Lang. As they straightened out into the back stretch Richards did quicken up somewhat, and Dennis let himself out. In fact, he did this so well that as they entered upon the last quarter Richards had not decreased the distance, and indeed it had opened up a little wider. But where was Lang? Dennis was beginning to expect one or the other of these two men to come up, and, as he turned into the back stretch for the last time, it began to dawn upon him, as it was dawning upon the crowd, that the pace had been too hot for Lang, and, moreover, that Yale's chance depended on the despised Dennis, and that the Harvard runner was finding it a big contract to overhaul the sturdy pounder on the wet track. But Richards was game, and commenced to cut the gap down. As they turned into the straight, he was within eight yards of Dennis. But Dennis knew it, and he ran as he had never run before. He could fairly feel the springing tread of Richards behind him, and knew it was coming nearer every second. But into the straight they came, and the crowd sprang to its feet with wild yells for Dennis. Twenty yards from home Richards, who had picked up all but two yards of the lead, began to stagger and waver, while Dennis hung to it true and steady, and breasted the tape three yards in advance, winning his "Y" at last!
—Walter Camp: Winning a "Y" ("Outlook")
In which of the preceding accounts were you more interested? Which made the more vivid impression? Which would be better suited for a school class composed of boys and girls? Which for a newspaper report?
In attempting to relate a contest it is essential that the writer know what really happened, and in what order it happened, but his successful presentation will depend to some extent upon the consideration given to adapting the story to the audience. A person thoroughly conversant with the game will understand the technical terms, and may prefer the first account to the second, but those to whom the game is not familiar would need to have so much explanation of the terms used that the narration would become tedious to those already familiar with the terms. In order to make an account of a game interesting to persons unfamiliar with that game, we must introduce enough of explanation to make clear the meaning of the terms we use.
+Theme XXXIII.+—Write a theme telling some one who does not understand the game about some contest which you have seen.
Suggested subjects:—
1. A basket ball game. 2. A football game. 3. A tennis match. 4. A baseball game. 5. A croquet match. 6. A golf tournament. 7. A yacht race. 8. A relay race.
(Have you introduced technical terms without making the necessary explanations? Have you explained so many terms that your narrative is rendered tedious? Have you related what really happened, and in the proper time order? Have your paragraphs unity? Can you shorten the theme without affecting the clearness or interest? Does then occur too frequently?)
+Theme XXXIV.+—Write a theme, using the same subject that you used for
Theme XXXIII. Assume that the reader understands the game.
(Will the reader get the whole contest clearly in mind? Can you shorten the account? Compare this theme with Theme XXXIII.)
+63. Explanation of Terms.+—Any word that alone or with its modifiers calls to mind a single idea, is a term. When applied to a particular object, quality, or action, it is a specific term; but when applied to any one of a class of objects, qualities, or actions, it is a general term. For example: The Lake, referring to a lake near at hand, is a specific term; but a lake, referring to any lake, is a general term. In Theme XXXIII you had occasion to explain some of the terms used. If, in telling about a baseball game, you mentioned a particular "fly," your statement was description or narration; but if some one should ask what you meant by "a fly," your answer would be general in character; that is, it would apply to all "flies," and would belong to that division of composition called exposition. Exposition is but another name for explanation. It is always concerned with that which is general, while description and narration deal with particular cases. We may describe a particular lake; but if we answer the question, What is a lake? the answer would apply to any lake, and would be exposition. Explanation of the meaning of general terms is one form of exposition.
+64. Definition by Synonyms.+—If we are asked to explain the meaning of a general term, our reply in many cases will be a brief definition. Often it is sufficient to give a synonym. For example, in answer to the question, What is exposition? we make its meaning clearer by saying, Exposition is explanation.
Definition by synonym is frequently used because of its brevity. In the smaller dictionaries the definitions are largely of this kind. For example: to desert, to abandon; despot, tyrant; contemptible, mean or vile; to fuse, to blend; inviolable, sacred. Synonyms are, however, seldom exact, but a fair understanding of a term may be gained by comparing it with its synonyms and discussing the different shades of meaning. Such a discussion, especially if supplemented by examples showing the correct use of each term, is a profitable exercise in exposition. For example:—
Both discovery and invention denote generally something new that is found out in the arts and sciences. But the term discovery involves in the thing discovered not merely novelty, but curiosity, utility, difficulty, and consequently some degree of importance. All this is less strongly involved in invention. But there are yet wider differences. One can only discover what has in its integrity existed before the discovery, while invention brings a thing into existence. America was discovered. Printing was invented. Fresh discoveries in science often lead to new inventions in the industrial arts. Indeed, discovery belongs more to science; invention, to art. Invention increases the store of our practical resources, and is the fruit of search. Discovery extends the sphere of our knowledge, and has often been made by accident.
—Smith: Synonyms Discriminated.
If exactness is desired, this is obtained by means of the logical definition, which will be discussed in a later chapter.
+Theme XXXV.+—Explain the meaning of the words in one of the following groups:_—
1. Caustic, satirical, biting. 2. Imply, signify, involve. 3. Martial, warlike, military, soldierlike. 4. Wander, deviate, err, stray, swerve, diverge. 5. Abate, decrease, diminish, lessen, moderate. 6. Emancipation, freedom, independence, liberty. 7. Old, ancient, antique, antiquated, obsolete. 8. Adorn, beautify, bedeck, decorate, ornament, 9. Active, alert, brisk, lively, spry.
+65. Use of Simpler Words.+—In defining terms by giving a synonym we must be careful to choose a synonym which will be most likely to be understood by our listeners, or our explanation will be of no avail. For instance, in explaining the term abate to a child, if we say it means to diminish, and he is unfamiliar with that word, he is made none the wiser by our explanation. If we tell him that it means to grow less, he will, in all probability, understand our explanation. Very many words in our language have equivalents that may be substituted, the one for the other. Much of our explanation to children and to those whose attainments are less than our own consists in substituting common, everyday words for less familiar ones.
Give familiar equivalents for the following words:—
1. emancipate. 2. procure. 3. opportunity. 4. peruse. 5. elapsed. 6. approximately. 7. abbreviate. 8. constitute. 9. simultaneous. 10. familiar. 11. deceased. 12. oral. 13. adhere. 14. edifice. 15. collide. 16. suburban. 17. repugnance. 18. grotesque. 19. equipage. 20. exaggerate. 21. ascend. 22. financial. 23. nocturnal. 24. maternal. 25. vision. 26. affinity. 27. cohere. 28. athwart. 29. clavicle. 30. omnipotent. 31. enumerate. 32. eradicate. 33. application. 34. constitute. 35. employer. 36. rendezvous. 37. obscure. 38. indicate. 39. prevaricate.
+66. Definitions Need to be Supplemented.+—The purpose of exposition is to make clear to others that which we understand ourselves. If the mere statement of a definition does not accomplish this result, we may often make our meaning clear by supplementing the definition with suitable comparisons and examples. In making use of comparisons and examples we must choose those with which our readers are familiar, and we must be sure that they fairly represent the term that we wish to illustrate.
+Theme XXXVI.+—Explain any one of the following terms. Begin with as exact a definition as you can frame.
1. A "fly" in baseball. 2. A "foul" in basket ball. 3. A "sneak." 4. A hero. 5. A "spitfire." 6. A laborer. 7. A capitalist. 8. A coward. 9. A freshman. 10. A "header."
(Is your definition exact, or only approximately so? How have you made its meaning clear? Can you think of a better comparison or a better example? Can your meaning be made clearer, or be more effectively presented, by arranging your material in a different order?)
+67. General Description.+—We may often make clear the meaning of a term by giving details. In describing a New England village we might enumerate the streets, the houses, the town pump, the church, and other features. This would be specific description if the purpose was to have the reader picture some particular village; but if the purpose was to give the reader a clear conception of the general characteristics of all New England villages, the paragraph would become a general description.
Such a general description would include all the characteristics common to all the members of the class under discussion, but would omit any characteristic peculiar to some of them. For example, a general description of a windmill includes the things common to all windmills. If an object is described more for the purpose of giving a clear conception of the class of which it is a type than for the purpose of picturing the object described, we have a general description. Such a description is in effect an enlarged definition, and is exposition rather than description. It is sometimes called scientific description because it is so commonly employed by writers of scientific books.
Notice the following examples of general description:—
1. Around every house in Broeck are buckets, benches, rakes, hoes, and stakes, all colored red, blue, white, or yellow. The brilliancy and variety of colors and the cleanliness, brightness, and miniature pomp of the place are wonderful. At the windows there are embroidered curtains with rose-colored ribbons. The blades, bands, and nails of the gayly painted windmills shine like silver. The houses are brightly varnished and surrounded with red and white railings and fences.
The panes of glass in the windows are bordered by many lines of different hues. The trunks of all the trees are painted gray from root to branch. Across the streams are many little wooden bridges, each painted as white as snow. The gutters are ornamented with a sort of wooden festoon perforated like lace. The pointed façades are surmounted with a small weathercock, a little lance, or something resembling a bunch of flowers. Nearly every house has two doors, one in front and one behind, the last for everyday entrance and exit, the former opened only on great occasions, such as births, deaths, and marriages. The gardens are as peculiar as the houses. The paths are hardly wide enough to walk in. One could put his arms around the flower beds. The dainty arbors would barely hold two persons sitting close together. The little myrtle hedges would scarcely reach to the knees of a four-year-old child.
2. Ginseng has a thick, soft, whitish, bulbous root, from one to three inches long,—generally two or three roots to a stalk,—with wrinkles running around it, and a few small fibers attached. It has a peculiar, pleasant, sweetish, slightly bitter, and aromatic taste. The stem or stalk grows about a foot high, is smooth, round, of a reddish green color, divided at the top into three short branches, with three to five leaves to each branch, and a flower stem in the center of the branches. The flower is small and white, followed by a large, red berry. It is found growing in most of the states in rich, shady soils.
3. As a general proposition, the Scottish hotel is kept by a benevolent-looking old lady, who knows absolutely nothing about the trains, nothing about the town, nothing about anything outside of the hotel, and is non-committal regarding matters even within her jurisdiction. Upon arrival you do not register, but stand up at the desk and submit to a cross-examination, much as if you were being sentenced in an American police court.
Your hostess always wants twelve hours' notice of your departure, so that she can make out your bill—a very arduous, formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page and pay it.
—Hotels in Scotland ("Kansas City Star").
+Theme XXXVII.+—Write a general description of one of the following:—
1. A bicycle. 2. A country hay barn. 3. A dog. 4. A summer cottage. 5. An Indian wigwam. 6. A Dutch windmill. 7. A muskrat's house. 8. A robin's nest. 9. A blacksmith's shop. 10. A chipmunk. 11. A threshing machine. 12. A sewing circle.
(The purpose is not to picture a particular object, but to give a general notion of a class of objects. Cross out everything in your theme that applies only to some particular object. Have you included enough to make your meaning clear?)
+Theme XXXVIII.+—Using the same title as for Theme XXXVII, write a specific description of some particular object.
(How does it differ from the general description? What elements have you introduced which you did not have in the other? Which sentence gives the general outline? Are your details arranged with regard to their proper position in space? Will the reader form a vivid picture—just the one you mean him to have?)
+68. General Narration.+—Explanations of a process of manufacture, methods of playing a game, and the like, often take the form of generalized narration. Just as we gain a notion of the appearance of a sod house from a general description, so may we gain a notion of a series of events from a general narration. Such a narration will not tell what some one actually did, but will relate the things that are characteristic of the process or action under discussion whenever it happens. Such general narration is really exposition.
A. Notice that the selection below is a generalized narration, showing what a hare does when hunted. In it no incident peculiar to some special occasion is introduced.
She [the hare] generally returns to the beat from which she was put up, running, as all the worlds knows, in a circle, or sometimes something like it, we had better say, that we may keep on good terms with the mathematical. At starting, she tears away at her utmost speed for a mile or more, and distances the dogs halfway; she then turns, diverging a little to the right or left, that she may not run into the mouths of her enemies—a necessity which accounts for what we call the circularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and stratagem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of her track.
—Richard Atton.
B. The selection below narrates an actual hunt. Notice in what respects it differs from the preceding selection.
Sir Roger is so keen at this sport that he has been out almost every day since I came down; and upon the chaplain's offering to lend me his easy pad, I was prevailed on yesterday morning to make one of the company. I was extremely pleased, as we rid along, to observe the general benevolence of all the neighborhood towards my friend. The farmers' sons thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old knight as he passed by; which he generally requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry after their fathers and uncles.
After we had rid about a mile from home, we came upon a large heath, and the sportsmen began to beat. They had done so for some time, when, as I was at a little distance from the rest of the company, I saw a hare pop out from a small furze brake almost under my horse's feet. I marked the way she took, which I endeavored to make the company sensible of by extending my arm; but to no purpose, till Sir Roger, who knows that none of my extraordinary motions are insignificant, rode up to me and asked me if puss was gone that way? Upon my answering "Yes," he immediately called in the dogs, and put them upon the scent. As they were going off, I heard one of the country fellows muttering to his companion, that 'twas a wonder they had not lost all their sport, for want of the silent gentleman's crying, "Stole away."
This, with my aversion to leaping hedges, made me withdraw to a rising ground, from whence I could have the pleasure of the whole chase, without the fatigue of keeping in with the hounds. The hare immediately threw them above a mile behind her; but I was pleased to find, that instead of running straight forwards, or, in hunter's language, "flying the country," as I was afraid she might have done, she wheeled about, and described a sort of circle round the hill, where I had taken my station, in such manner as gave me a very distinct view of the sport. I could see her first pass by, and the dogs some time afterwards, unraveling the whole track she had made, and following her through all her doubles. I was at the same time delighted in observing that deference which the rest of the pack paid to each particular hound, according to the character he had acquired among them: if they were at a fault, and an old hound of reputation opened but once, he was immediately followed by the whole cry; while a raw dog, or one who was a noted liar, might have yelped his heart out without being taken notice of.
The hare now, after having squatted two or three times, and been put up again as often, came still nearer to the place where she was at first started. The dogs pursued her, and these were followed by the jolly knight, who rode upon a white gelding, encompassed by his tenants and servants, and cheering his hounds with all the gayety of five and twenty. One of the sportsmen rode up to me, and told me that he was sure the chase was almost at an end, because the old dogs, which had hitherto lain behind, now headed the pack. The fellow was in the right. Our hare took a large field just under us, followed by the full cry in view. I must confess the brightness of the weather, the cheerfulness of everything around me, the chiding of the hounds, which was returned upon us in a double echo from two neighboring hills, with the hallooing of the sportsmen, and the sounding of the horn, lifted my spirits into a most lively pleasure, which I freely indulged because I was sure it was innocent. If I was under any concern, it was on account of the poor hare, that was now quite spent, and almost within the reach of her enemies; when the huntsman getting forward, threw down his pole before the dogs. They were now within eight yards of that game which they had been pursuing for almost as many hours; yet on the signal before mentioned they all made a sudden stand, and though they continued opening as much as before, durst not once attempt to pass beyond the pole. At the same time Sir Roger rode forward, and alighting, took up the hare in his arms; which he soon after delivered up to one of his servants with an order, if she could be kept alive, to let her go in his great orchard; where it seems he has several of these prisoners of war, who live together in a very comfortable captivity. I was highly pleased to see the discipline of the pack, and the good nature of the knight, who could not find in his heart to murder a creature that had given him so much diversion.
—Budgell: Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.
+Theme XXXIX.+—Explain one of the following by the use of general narration:—
1. Baking bread. 2. How paper is made. 3. How to play tennis (or some other game). 4. Catching trout. 5. Life at school. 6. How to pitch curves.
(Have you arranged your details with reference to their proper time-order?
Have you introduced unnecessary details? Have your paragraphs unity?
Underscore then each time you have used it.)
+69. Argument.+—Especially in argument is it evident that language presupposes an audience. The fact that we argue implies that some one does not agree with us. The purpose of our argument is to convince some one else of the truth of a proposition which we ourselves believe, and he who wishes to succeed in this must give careful attention to his audience. The question which must always be in the mind of the writer is, What facts shall I select and in what order shall I present them in order to convince my reader? The various ways of arguing are more fully treated in a later chapter, but a few of them are given here.
+70. The Use of Explanation in Argument.+—In preparing an argument we must consider first the amount of explanation that it will be necessary to make. We cannot expect one to believe a proposition the meaning of which he does not understand. Often the explanation alone is sufficient to convince the hearer. Suppose you are trying to gain your parents' consent to take some course of study. They ask for an explanation of the different courses, and when they know what each contains they are already convinced as to which is best for you.
If you are trying to convince a member of your school board that it would be well to introduce domestic science into the high school, and he already understands what is meant by the term "domestic science," you not only waste time in explaining it, but you make him appear ignorant of what he already understands. With him you should proceed at once to give your reasons for the advisability of the introduction of this branch into your school. On the other hand, if you are talking with a member who does not understand the term, an explanation will be the first thing necessary. It is evident, therefore, that the amount of explanation that we shall make depends upon the previous knowledge of the audience addressed. If we explain too much, we prejudice our case; and if we explain too little, the reader may fail to appreciate the arguments that follow.
The point of the whole matter, then, is that explanation is the first step in argument, and that in order to determine the amount necessary we must consider carefully the audience for which our argument is intended.
+71. Statement of Advantages and Disadvantages.+ An argument is often concerned with determining whether it is expedient to do one thing or another. Such an argument frequently takes the form of a statement of the advantages that will follow the adoption of the course we recommend, or of the disadvantages that the following of the opposite course will cause.
If a corporation should ask for a franchise for a street railway, the city officials might hold the opinion that a double track should be laid. In support of this opinion they would name the advantageous results that would follow from the use of a double track, such as the avoidance of delays on turnouts, the lessening of the liability of accidents, the greater rapidity in transportation, etc. On the other hand, the persons seeking the franchise might reply that a double track would occupy too much of the street and become a hindrance to teams, or that the advantages were not sufficient to warrant the extra expense.
Concerning such a question there can be no absolute decision. We are not discussing what is right, but what is expedient, and the determination of what is expedient is based upon a consideration of advantages or disadvantages. In deciding, we must balance the advantages against the disadvantages and determine which has the greater weight. If called upon to take one side or the other, we must consider carefully the value of the facts counting both for and against the proposition before we can make up our mind which side we favor.
You must bear in mind that a thing may not be an advantage because you believe it to be. That which seems to you to be the reason why you should take some high school subject, may seem to your father or your teacher to be the very reason why you should not. In writing arguments of this kind you must take care to select facts that will appeal to your readers as advantages.
Notice the following editorial which appeared in the Boston Latin School Register shortly after a change was made whereby the pupils instead of the teachers moved from room to room for their various recitations:—
The new system of having the classes move about from room to room to their recitations has been in use for nearly a month, and there has been sufficient opportunity for testing its practicability and its advantages. There is no doubt that the new system alters the old form of recesses, shortening the two regular ones, but giving three minutes between recitations as a compensation for this loss. Although theoretically we have more recess time than formerly, in the practical working out of the system we find that the three minutes between recitations is occupied in gathering up one's books, and reaching the next recitation room; besides this, that there is often some confusion in reaching the various classrooms, and that there are many little inconveniences which would not occur were we sitting at our own desks. On the other hand, as an offset to these disadvantages, there is the advantage of a change of position, and a respite from close attention, with a breathing spell in which to get the mind as well as the books ready for another lesson. The masters have in every recitation their own maps and reference books, with which they can often make their instruction much more forceful and interesting. Besides that, they have entire control of their own blackboards, and can leave work there without fear of its being erased to make room for that of some other master. The confusion will doubtless be lessened as time goes on and we become more used to the system. Even the first disadvantage is more or less offset by the fact that the short three-minute periods, although they cannot be used like ordinary recesses, yet serve to give us breathing space between recitations and to lessen the strain of continuous application; so that, on the whole, the advantages seem to counterbalance the disadvantages.
What advantages and disadvantages can you think of for each of the following propositions? State them orally.
1. All telephone and telegraph wires in cities should be put under ground.
2. The speed of bicycles and automobiles should be limited to eight miles
per hour.
3. High school football teams should not play match games on regular
school days.
4. High school pupils should not attend evening parties excepting on
Fridays and Saturdays.
5. Monday would be a better day than Saturday for a school holiday.
6. The school session should be lengthened.
+Theme XL.+—Write two paragraphs, one of which shall give the advantages and the other the disadvantages that would arise from the adoption of any one of the following:
1. This school should have a longer recess.
2. This school should have two hours for the noon recess.
3. This school should be in session from eight o'clock until one o'clock.
4. All the pupils in this school should be seated in one room.
5. The public library should be in the high school building.
6. The football team should be excused early in order to practice.
7. This school should have a greater number of public entertainments.
+72. Explanation and Argument by Specific Instances.+—Often we may make the meaning of a general proposition clear by citing specific instances. If these instances are given for the purpose of explanation merely, the paragraph is exposition. If, however, the aim is not merely to cause the reader to understand the proposition, but also to believe that it is true, we have argument. In either case we have a paragraph developed by specific instances as discussed in Section 44. Notice how in the following paragraph the author brings forward specific cases in order to prove the proposition:—
Nearly everything that an animal does is the result of an inborn instinct acted upon by an outward stimulus. The margin wherein intelligent choice plays a part is very small…. Instinct is undoubtedly often modified by intelligence, and intelligence is as often guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not hesitate long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence—the lower form of which we call cunning—and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and cry about a hawk, or an owl, or boldly attack him, they show intelligence in its simpler form, the intelligence that recognizes its enemies, prompted again by the instinct of self-preservation. When a hawk does not know a man on horseback from a horse, it shows a want of intelligence. When a crow is kept away from a corn-field by a string stretched around it, the fact shows how masterful is its fear and how shallow its wit. When a cat or a dog or a horse or a cow learns to open a gate or a door, it shows a degree of intelligence—power to imitate, to profit by experience. A machine could not learn to do it. If the animal were to close the door or gate behind it, that would be another step in intelligence. But its direct wants have no relation to the closing of the door, only to the opening of it. To close the door involves an afterthought that an animal is not capable of. A horse will hesitate to go upon thin ice or frail bridges. This, no doubt, is an inherited instinct which has arisen in its ancestors from their fund of general experience with the world. How much with them has depended upon a secure footing! A pair of house-wrens had a nest in my well-curb; when the young were partly grown and heard any one enter the curb, they would set up a clamorous calling for food. When I scratched against the sides of the curb beneath them like some animal trying to climb up, their voices instantly hushed; the instinct of fear promptly overcame the instinct of hunger! Instinct is intelligence, but it is not the same as acquired individual intelligence; it is untaught.
John Burroughs: Some Natural History Doubts ("Harper's").
What facts or instances do you know which would lead you to believe either the following propositions or their opposites?
1. Dogs are intelligent.
2. Only excellent pupils can pass the seventh grade examination.
3. Some teachers do not ask fair questions on examination.
4. Oak trees grow to be larger than maples.
5. Strikes increase the cost to the consumer.
6. A college education pays.
7. Department stores injure the trade of smaller stores.
8. Advertising pays.
+Theme XLI.+—Write a paragraph, proving by one or more examples one of the propositions in the preceding exercise:
(Do your examples really illustrate what you are trying to prove? Do they show that the proposition is always true or merely that it is true for certain cases? Would your argument cause another to believe the proposition?)
+73. The Value of Debate.+—Participation in oral debate furnishes excellent practice in accurate and rapid thinking. We may choose one side of a question and may write out an argument which, considered alone, and from our point of view, seems convincing, but when this is submitted to the criticism of some one of opposite views, or when the arguments in favor of the other side of the question are brought forward, we are not so sure that we have chosen the side which represents the truth. The ability to think "on one's feet," to present arguments concisely and effectively, and to reply to opposing arguments, giving due weight to those that are true, and detecting and pointing out those that are false, is an accomplishment of great practical value. Such ability comes only from practice, and the best preparation for it is the careful writing out of arguments.
+74. Statement of the Question.+—The subject of debate may be stated in the form of a resolution, a declarative sentence, or a question; as, "Resolved that the recess should be lengthened," or "The recess should be lengthened," or, "Should the recess be lengthened?" In any case, the affirmative must show why the recess should be lengthened, and the negative why it should not be lengthened.
In a formal debate the statement of the question and its meaning should be definitely determined in advance. Care must be taken to state it so that no mere quibbling over the meanings of terms can take the place of real arguments. Even if the subject of debate is so stated that this is possible, any self-respecting debater will meet the question at issue fairly and squarely, preferring defeat to a victory won by juggling with the meanings of terms.
+75. Is Belief Necessary in Debate?+—If we are really arguing for a purpose, we should believe in the truth of the proposition which we support. If the members of the school board were discussing the desirability of building a new schoolhouse, each would speak in accordance with his belief. But if a class in school should debate such a question, having in mind not the determination of the question, but merely the selection and arrangement of the arguments for and against the proposition in the most effective way, each pupil might present the side in which he did not really believe.
Consider each of the following propositions. Do you believe the affirmative or the negative?
1. This city needs a new high school building.
2. All the pupils in the high school should be members of the athletic association.
3. The school board should purchase an inclosed athletic field.
4. The street railway should carry pupils to and from school for half fare.
5. There should be a lunch room in this school.
6. Fairy stories should not be told to children.
+Theme XLII.+—Write a paragraph telling why you believe one of the propositions in the preceding exercise:
(What questions should you ask yourself while correcting your theme?)
+76. Order of Presentation.+—If you were preparing to debate one of the propositions in the preceding exercise, you would need to have in mind both the reasons for and against it. Next you would consider the order in which these reasons should be discussed. This will be determined by the circumstances of each debate, but generally the emphatic positions, that is, the first and the last, will be given to those arguments that seem to you to have the greatest weight, while those of less importance will occupy the central portion of your theme.
+77. The Brief.+—If, after making a note of the various advantages, examples, and other arguments that you wish to use in support of one of the propositions in Section 75, you arrange these in the order in which you think they can be most effectively presented, the outline so formed is called a brief. Its preparation requires clear thinking, but when it is made, the task of writing out the argument is not difficult. When the debate is to be spoken, not read, the brief, if kept in mind, will serve to suggest the arguments we wish to make in the order in which we wish to present them. The brief differs from the ordinary outline in that it is composed of complete sentences. Notice the following brief:—
Manual Training should be substituted for school athletics.
Affirmative
1. The exercise furnished by manual training is better adapted to the
developing of the whole being both physical and mental; for—
a. It requires the mind to act in order to determine what to do
and how to do it.
b. It trains the muscles to carry out the ideal of the mind.
2. The effect of manual training on health is better; for—
a. Excessive exercise, harmful to growing children, is avoided.
b. Dangerous contests are avoided.
3. The final results of manual training are more valuable; for—
a. The objects made are valuable.
b. The skill of hand and eye may become of great practical value
in after life.
4. The moral effect of manual training is better; for—
a. Athletics develops the "anything to win" spirit, while manual
training creates a wholesome desire to excel in the creation
of something useful or beautiful.
b. Dishonesty in games may escape notice, but dishonesty in
workmanship cannot be concealed.
c. Athletics fosters slovenliness of dress and manners, while
manual training cultivates the love of the beautiful.
5. The beneficial results of manual training have a wider effect upon the
school; for—
a. But comparatively few pupils "make the team" and receive the
maximum athletic drill, while all pupils can take manual
training.
+78. Refutation or Indirect Argument.+—In debate we need to consider not only the arguments in favor of our own side, but also those presented by our opponents. That part of our theme which states our own arguments is called direct argument, and that part in which we reply to our opponents is called indirect argument or refutation. It is often very important to show that the opposing argument is false or, if true, has been given an exaggerated importance that it does not really possess. If, however, the argument is true and of weight, the fact should be frankly acknowledged. Our desire for victory should not cause us to disregard the truth. If the argument of our opponent has been so strong that it seems to have taken possession of the audience, we must reply to it in the beginning. If it is of less weight, each separate point may be discussed as we take up related points in our own argument. Often it will be found best to give the refutation a place just preceding our own last and strongest argument.
From the foregoing it will be seen that each case cannot be determined by rule, but must be determined for itself, and it is because of the exercise of judgment required, that practice in debating is so valuable. A dozen boys or girls may, with much pleasure and profit, spend an evening a week as a debating club.
+Theme XLIII.+—Prepare a written argument for or against one of the propositions in Section 75.
(Make a brief. Re-arrange the arguments that you intend to use until they have what seems to you the best order. Consider the probable arguments on the other side and what reply can be made. Answer one or two of the strongest ones. If you have any trivial arguments for your own side, either omit them or make their discussion very brief.)
+79. Cautions in Debating.+—When we have made a further study of argument we shall need to consider again the subject of debating. In the meantime a few cautions will be helpful.
1. Be fair. A debate is in the nature of a contest, and is quite as interesting as any other contest. The desire to win should never lead you to take any unfair advantage or to descend to mere quibbling over the statement of the proposition or the meanings of the terms. Win fairly or not at all.
2. Be honest with yourself. Do not present arguments which you know to be false, in the hope that your opponent cannot prove their falsity. This does not mean that you cannot present arguments in favor of a proposition unless you believe it to be true, but that those you do present should be real arguments for the side that you uphold, even though you believe that there are weightier ones on the other side. Do not use an example that seems to apply if you know that it does not. You are to "tell the truth and nothing but the truth," but in debate you may tell only that part of the "whole truth" which favors your side of the proposition.
3. Do not allow your desire for victory to overcome your desire for truth. Do not argue for the sake of winning, nor develop the habit of arguing in season and out. In the school and outside there are persons who, like Will Carleton's Uncle Sammy, "were born for arguing." They use their own time in an unprofitable way, and what is worse, they waste the time of others. They are not seeking for truth, but for controversy. It is quite as bad to doubt everything you hear as it is to believe everything.
4. Remember that mere statement is not argument. The fact that you believe a proposition does not make it true. In order to carry weight, a statement must be based on principles and theories that the audience believes.
5. Remember that exhortation is not argument. Entreaty may persuade one to action, but in debate you should aim to convince the intellect. Clear, accurate thinking on your own part, so that you may present sound, logical arguments, is the first essential.
+Theme XLIV.+—Prepare a written argument for or against one of the following propositions:—
1. Boys who cannot go to college should take a commercial course in the high school.
2. Novel reading is a waste of time.
3. Asphalt paving is more satisfactory than brick.
4. Foreign skilled labor should be kept out of the United States.
5. Our own town should be lighted by electricity.
6. Athletic contests between high schools should be prohibited.
(Consider your argument with reference to the cautions given in Section 79.)
1. The purpose of discourse may be to inform or to entertain.
2. The forms of discourse are— a. Description. b. Narration. c. Exposition. d. Argument (Persuasion).
3. Discourse presupposes an audience, and we must select a subject and use language adapted to that audience.
4. The suitableness of a subject is determined—
a. By the writer's knowledge of the subject.
(1) This may be based on experience, or
(2) It may be gained from others through conversation and
reading.
b. By the writer's interest in the subject.
(1) This may exist from the first, or
(2) It may be aroused by our search for information.
c. By adaptability of the subject to the reader. It should be of
present, vital interest to him.
5. Subjects.
a. The sources of subjects are unlimited.
b. Subjects should be definite. They often need to be narrowed in
order to be made definite.
c. The title should be brief and should be worded so as to arouse
a desire to hear the theme.
6. Exposition is explanation.
7. We may make clear the meaning of a term— a. By using synonyms. b. By using simpler words. c. By supplementing our definitions with examples or comparisons.
8. General description includes the characteristics common to all members
of a class of objects.
9. General narration is one form of exposition. It relates the things that
characterize a process or action whenever it occurs.
10. Argument.
a. Explanation is the first step in argument.
b. A statement of advantages and disadvantages may assist us to
determine which side of a question we believe.
c. Specific instances may be used either for explanation or
argument.
11. Debate.
a. The subject of the debate may be stated in the form of a
resolution, a declarative sentence, or a question.
b. The most important arguments should be given the first and last
positions.
c. A brief will assist us in arranging our arguments in the most
effective order.
d. The refutation of opposing arguments should usually be placed
just before our own last and strongest argument.
e. Cautions in debating.
(1) Be fair.
(2) Be honest with yourself.
(3) Do not allow your desire for victory to overcome your
desire for truth.
(4) Remember that mere statement is not argument.
(5) Remember that exhortation is not argument.