/ \1 ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, PH.D. FREDERICK ERASTUS PIERCE, PH.D. HENRY NOBLE MACCRACKEN, PH.D. ALFRED ARUNDEL MAY, M.A. THOMAS GODDARD WRIGHT, M.A. OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909. Reprintec August, 1910. Nortoooli $reas J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE THE authors of this book make no claim to originality, save in the general plan of the volume, and in certain applications of familiar principles. Our purpose has been to combine, in one book, a set of directions for good writing, directions based upon sound principles and written, primarily, for the student, with a varied and extensive collection of examples drawn from all the forms of discourse, and inclusive of both brief excerpts and complete essays, arguments, and stories. We have added supplementary material in the several appendices, and a selected list of books which may be used with this manual, or consulted for parallel discussions of the topics here taken up. Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative present differing prob- lems in the teaching of English Composition, and vary in their degree of usefulness with the individual, the course, and the institution. We have endeavored to give to each the propor- tionate space and the kind of treatment which the average student requires. The whole composition, the paragraph, the sentence, and the word have been discussed in their relation to Exposition, because, for the average student, it is the power to explain clearly which is of primary importance. Thus Ex- position has been given a predominant space. The chapter on the Sentence goes into minute detail because the average student, at present, does not understand the structure of the 2064825 vi PREFACE sentence ; the chapter on Narrative deals with constructive problems mainly, because it is in learning to construct a story that he can best make Narrative increase his powers of expres- sion ; the chapter on Description includes literary and esthetic problems because one variety of Description can only thus be taught. An order of succession for these various topics has been chosen after experiment with many classes. Nevertheless, except that Exposition must come first, the teacher will find that the plan of this book permits any arrangement of subjects which his own experience may have led him to desire. Ac- knowledgments of the kindness of various publishers will be found in the foot-notes to many selections. Our indebtedness to the authorities in rhetorical theory is too extensive for specific reference. The bibliography in Appendix VIII is but a partial confession of obligations to earlier workers in the field. The chapter on the Sentence in this book is the work of Mr. May ; the chapters on Argument, on Exposition, and the Whole Composition have been prepared by Dr. Pierce ; those on Nar- rative and the Paragraph by Professor Canby ; those on Descrip- tion and the Word by Dr. MacCracken ; Mr. Wright has added certain appendices, selected extracts, and prepared the manu- script for the press. All the authors, however, have united in the criticism, in the elaboration, and in the revision of every part of the volume. CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION PART I. EXPOSITION CHAPTER I. NATURE AND PURPOSE OF EXPOSITION . . . . j CHAPTER II. UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION .... 3 The Future of the English Tongue 9 T. R. Lounsbury. The Art of Seeing Things II John Burroughs. CHAPTER III. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 16 Chronological Arrangement 18 The Ground-Bait 18 Izaak Walton. Downfall and Refuge of Ancient Civilization .... 21 John Henry Newman. Simple to Complex Arrangement 28 Method of Scientific Investigation 29 T. H. Huxley. The Construction of Underground Tunnels .... 32 Benjamin Brooks. Books 34 A. C. Benson. Second Nature 41 Grant Allen. Enumeration .48 The Attitudes of Men toi.ua rd Immortality .... 48 G. L. Dickinson. Transition Sentences and Paragraphs 51 viii CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER IV. EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 53 Present Relations of the Learned Professions to Political Gov- ernment 55 William H. Taft. Games 66 A. C. Benson. CHAPTER V. THE PARAGRAPH . 76 , . . ... .76 Unity . ' ; . . .88 Coherence 89 89 Specimen Paragraphs 90 CHAPTER VI. THE SENTENCE in Unity in Simple Sentences .. . . .113 Compound Sentences . "5 Complex Sentences 118 Loose and Periodic Sentences 125 Coherence 128 Emphasis 134 CHAPTER VII. THE RIGHT WORD 148 Good Use 149 Effectiveness I5 1 Truth Force ...... i53 Suggestive Power 159 PART II. ARGUMENTATION CHAFFER VIII. THE BRIEF !6 4 Phrasing the Proposition . . . . . . . . i6c The Introduction to the Brief 166 The Body of the Brief !6g CHARIER IX. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT FROM THE BRIEF 181 Type I. Arguments of Theory or Fact 181 The Origin of the Yosemite Valley 1 82 Josiah Dwight Whitney. CONTENTS ix PAGE Type II. Arguments of Policy 187 The Liverpool Speech 188 Henry Ward Beecher. The Training of the Intellect 203 Woodrow Wilson. Refutation 209 The Value of the Pacific Cruise of the United States Fleet, 1908 21 1 Captain A. T. Mahan. PART III. DESCRIPTION CHAPTER X. DESCRIPTION . .221 Unity 229 Coherence ........... 235 Emphasis 237 Suggestion .237 Comparison and Contrast ........ 240 Description and Narration 246 Specimens of Description ......... 248 Translations from the Odyssey : 1. Odysseus gets to Land 248 2. The Home of Eumaeus ....... 249 The Gallon Hill . , 250 R. L. Stevenson : Picturesque Notes. Rome from the Tarpeian ....... 255 Nathaniel Hawthorne : Marble Faun. Desolate Scene in Spain 256 George Borrow : Bible in Spain. London Bridge . . . . . . . . .257 George Borrow : Lavengro. Approach of Autumn 259 William Morris : Earthly Paradise. Netley Abbey 260 Horace Walpole : Letters. A Hot Night 260 Rudyard Kipling : Man Who Would Be King. The Island of Guernsey 261 Victor Hugo : Les Travailleurs de la Mer. Description of an Interior ....... 262 Nathaniel Hawthorne: House of Seven Gables. Description of a Person ........ 263 Howard Pyle : Robin Hood. Sketches of Character and Personality ..... 264 X CONTENTS PART IV. NARRATIVE PAGE CHAPTER XI. SIMPLE NARRATIVE 272 And the Crowd Cheered 277 New York Sun. A Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal .... 285 Daniel Defoe. CHAPTER XII. THE STORY . . . 298 Unity 299 The Cask of Amontillado 3 Edgar Allan Poe. Coherence 307 La Grande Breteche 310 Honore de Balzac. Emphasis ........... 33 The Man who Was 333 Rudyard Kipling. Character and Setting in Narrative 346 Conclusion 347 Markheim . 348 Robert Louis Stevenson. APPENDICES I. TRANSITIONAL WORDS WITHIN THE PARAGRAPH . . .365 II. EXERCISES IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE 367 Exercises in the Unity of the Sentence : A. Sentences for Analysis 367 B. Sentences for Synthesis 372 C. Sentences for Revision 374 Exercises in Coherence ........ 376 Exercises in Emphasis 378 Loose and Periodic Sentences 380 III. EXERCISES IN THE USE OF WORDS 383 IV. SPECIMEN BRIEF 386 V. EXERCISES IN DESCRIPTION 389 VI. SUGGESTIONS FOR EXERCISES IN NARRATIVE WRITING . . 391 VII. PUNCTUATION 395 Exercises in Punctuation 401 VIII. SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS FOR REFERENCE .... 403 INTRODUCTION To write well is to put one's mind in communication with the minds of others. To write well is to solve a triple problem, and a successful solution will depend upon how far one masters the three branches of this problem, straight thinking, adequate ex- pression, and good form. Straight thinking is probably the most important of all; cer- tainly it must come first. You must know what you wish to say and what you wish to accomplish by saying it before you put pen to paper, or you will seldom write well. Carlyle, who knew how to write well even if he did not always do so, once said, " As for good composition, it is mainly the result of good thinking, and improves with that, if careful observation as you read attends it." Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, puts this truth even more forcibly in his essay on authorship and style: "Obscurity and vagueness of expression are at all times and everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they arise from vagueness of thought. . . . When a right thought springs up in the mind, it strives after clearness of expression, and it soon attains it, for clear thought easily finds its appropriate expression. A man who is capable of thinking can express himself at all times in clear, comprehensible, and unambiguous words. Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambiguous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they wish to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still struggling to put itself into thought." It is certainly true that you must have straight thinking and thus well-ordered thought before you are ready to write. Adequate expression is the next step in composition, and it is adequate expression chiefly which a book like this one is designed to teach. The "mute, inglorious Milton" of Gray's Elegy was presumably a man who had thought, but had not learned to express himself. The theory of expression is simple. The difficulty lies xi xii INTRODUCTION in the application of this theory to thoughts, ideas, feelings which are weighty enough to be worth writing about. It is quite true that any hard worker could learn adequate expression for himself, since the principles which govern it are, after all, only those which logical thought and common sense would be sure to develop. It is also true that one can learn shorthand, Latin, painting, or civil engineering without a teacher, even without a text-book, but we are well aware that such a method is wasteful of time, and therefore inefficient. The chapters which follow constitute a set of directions and a selection of models for Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative, which, if properly used, should save time in learning to write. Good form in writing is like good form in dress. It is bad form to wear a flannel shirt with a dress coat or a white lawn tie with a sack suit. It is quite as bad form to punctuate badly, to mis- spell, or to make mistakes in grammar, even if the clearness of your writing is not thereby seriously impaired. Actually, of course, misspelling, grammatical errors, and bad punctuation do usually affect clearness, sometimes utterly changing the sense. But, from either point of view, they are fatal to good writing. Such re- mainders of illiteracy, for no gentler name can be applied, should have disappeared before the writer has reached the age when he must know how to express difficult and comprehensive thoughts. For various reasons this Utopian condition does not yet exist. Therefore, we have included practical advice, for those who need it, in sections upon punctuation and upon the use of words in the appendix, sections which those who require them should study in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of any course in English Composition. The perfect bloom of good writing is style. But " unto him who hath shall be given." However essential it may be for the literary man, a style is not the most important thing for the average writer. Think clearly, express your thoughts in the most effective manner, be sure that your book, your article, your report, or your theme is given the good form which it deserves. When you can do all this, and not before, you can begin to think of style. ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE ENGLISH COMPOSITION PART I EXPOSITION CHAPTER I NATURE AND PURPOSE OF EXPOSITION ALL writing is usually divided into four great classes : Exposi- tion, Argument, Narrative, and Description. We begin with Ex- position and will discuss the others later. Exposition is the art of stating facts clearly, so that a reader will understand them. It may explain some knotty point, or it may set forth some very simple matter which this reader had never heard of before; but in either case its distinctive mark is this quality of clear statement of facts. Its aim is, not to tell an interesting story, not to create a vivid pic- ture, not to argue its readers into doing this or that, but merely to make the reader understand how matters are. If you should describe the appearance of an automobile rushing down the street, what you wrote would be Description. On the other hand, if you should describe the way in which the machinery of such an auto- mobile worked, your theme would be Exposition. In the first case you are simply giving a vivid picture of the machine as it looks to you; in the second you are explaining the actual facts about the machine. Again, if you will compare any text-book, such as the one before you, for instance, with any novel, you will see at once the difference between Exposition and Narrative. The great aim of Exposition, as shown in such a text-book, is to be clear; that of Narrative, as illustrated by the novel, is to be interesting. The first has given you knowledge ; the second has caused you pleasure. Exposition is the most practical of all forms of writing. The power of clear expression is something required by every man in 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION every walk of life. Not only is it necessary in lectures and maga- zine articles, but it is indispensable in reports and prospectuses, and helpful even in such everyday matters as explaining machinery to a green workman, or explaining one's plans to friends. Like most useful gifts, it is not born in the majority of men, but must be acquired by practice. This quality in expository writing, this ability to make clear as crystal to another man just what you wish him to see, depends chiefly on the observance of three very important principles of rhetoric. These principles are usually called Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis. A great deal of skill is sometimes required in ap- plying them to particular subjects, but at bottom they are quite simple. Unity consists merely in "sticking to your subject," in having one thing to say and saying it without rambling over all creation. Coherence means merely taking things up in a clear order; or, to use the words of the proverb, not "putting your cart before your horse." Emphasis is nothing more than making your reader see what things are important and what ones are merely side-issues. So commonplace do these directions sound that the student may think that they are not worth observing, or that he knows them already ; but as a matter of fact, they contain the whole secret of clear expression, and not one undergraduate in ten follows them properly in his natural method of writing. Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis may be applied to the theme as a whole, to the separate paragraphs in the theme, or to the separate sen- tences in the paragraph. We cannot, however, do all this at once; consequently we will apply them to the whole theme first, and take up the paragraph and sentence later. CHAPTER II UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION WHEN a man starts out to write a theme, he should realize at the very beginning that he is trying to say something which his reader wishes to know. He must say it clearly, or his reader will not understand it; and he must go right to the point and say that and that only, for his reader's time is money and must not be wasted. In order to do this, he should have a very clear idea in his own mind of just what he is going to say before he pens a single sentence. In other words, he should write a theme as a man builds a house. He should decide what kind of theme he needs and draw up a plan for it before he begins to write, just as an architect decides what kind of house is needed and draws up a plan for it before the building is begun. Suppose that you are about to write a theme. The first thing to do is to choose a subject. This should always be small enough so that you can handle it in a theme of the required length, say four or five hundred words. A subject like My Preparatory School, for example, would be a great deal too big for a short theme. It would include an account of the buildings, the courses of study, the athletics, the various instructors, the history of the institution, the books in the library, and a host of other things, not excepting even those nocturnal undergraduate activities which we lonely members of the faculty dream about, but never see. A whole book as long as Tom Brown at Rugby could be drawn from a mere fragment of such a topic. On the other hand, a subject such as My Favorite Sports at Rogers School is small enough to handle in a short theme. You should also write your essay about something which you already understand and in which you are interested. " Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh." It is a great mis- take to suppose that all composition is necessarily dry. Every 3 4 ENGLISH COMPOSITION intelligent boy has subjects upon which he likes to talk; and writing is nothing more than talking on paper. The difference between a dry subject and one that you like is the difference be- tween a pump and an artesian well. In the first case you pump up your ideas laboriously with sweat and lamentations; in the second case you make an opening, and the ideas come spouting out of themselves. After you have chosen your subject, the next thing is to draw up an outline of those things which you wish to say about it. This is very important. If you begin to write before drawing up an outline, you will be sure to wander aimlessly around and talk through four hundred words without getting anywhere; if you have your outline beforehand, you will know, when you begin to write, just where you are going, and start straight for the mark. Suppose your subject is The Reason Why I Came to St. Oswald's School. Now you are not trying to fill up three pages of paper that would be simply wasting your own time and your reader's ; you are trying to make somebody realize just what your reasons were for coming to St. Oswald's because this somebody is actually anxious to know those reasons. Consequently, you must tell him everything which you can about that one subject because he wishes to know it; and you must not mix in anything about any other subject, because that would simply confuse him and waste his time. By including everything which bears on the subject and excluding everything which does not, you are following the law of Unity, which is one of the three important principles mentioned before. Your first outline would probably be something like this : 1. Value of an education. 2. Life at grammar school. 3. First impressions of St. Oswald's. 4. Friends who went there. 5. Good teachers. 6. Nice class of fellows. 7. Pleasant situation. Now, with this outline before you, sit down and think over each item carefully, to see whether or not it belongs in your theme according to the principle of Unity. You are giving your rea- sons for coming to St. Oswald's. If you have any heading there UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 5 which does not contain a reason why you came to St. Oswald's, it should be crossed out; it does not bear on the one main point which your reader wishes to know, and its presence there will only confuse him. Obviously your life at grammar school is not a reason why you came to St. Oswald's, hence that should go out. It is of no more use there than an idle man in a racing shell. The same is true of the value of an education. You can get an educa- tion in a host of ways and at a host of places. It may be a reason why you went to some high school ; but it could hardly be a reason why you went to the particular school of St. Oswald's, when fifty other schools would have educated you just as well. If your first impressions of St. Oswald's influenced you in coming there, that heading would be retained; but if you had made up your mind to come there before you ever saw the place, your first impressions would have nothing to do with your coming. You would there- fore cross this out or not, according to circumstances. Next, when you are sure that nothing but real reasons for com- ing to St. Oswald's remains in your list, ask yourself if you have included all those reasons. If you have not, you should do so. Unity demands the subject and the whole subject, as well as nothing but the subject. If you examine your own mind care- fully, you may find that you went to St. Oswald's partly because it sent most of its men to Atwater College, and you had decided beforehand to go to Atwater. If that is the case, this point should be included in your list, which now would stand as follows : 1. Friends who went there. 2. Good teachers. 3. Nice class of fellows. 4. Pleasant situation. 5. The fact that most of my class would enter Atwater with me. Now you are ready to commence writing. And here at the very start I must sound a warning to which all beginners should listen. Most young writers think that they must begin a theme with a rather vague and shadowy thing called an Introduction. Just what this Introduction is, and just what useful purpose it serves, is usually as much of a mystery to these youthful writers as it is to their readers; but with a grim sense of duty they insist on putting it in. The result is frequently a violation of Unity at 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION the very outset. Your only object in writing a theme is to tell something and to tell it clearly; and the sooner you start about the work, the better. There are cases in which some kind of an introduction makes your start clearer for the reader; and when this is so, anything which helps the reader understand is a good thing; but in most undergraduate themes nothing of the kind is needed. The proper way to open any ordinary essay is to begin writing about your first topic in your very first sentence. For example, the theme on St. Oswald's School should start out some- thing like this : " One reason why I went to St. Oswald's School was because many of my friends had been there before me. My oldest brother had graduated there in etc." Similarly, if you were describing the different methods of catching trout, you would begin with the first step in the process or the first precaution to be taken in actual trout fishing; and rambling preliminary remarks which did not tell how to catch trout would no more belong at the beginning of your essay than would the story of Jonah and the whale. You are telling your reader how to do one particular thing; and the sooner you get launched, the better. After you are well started, the simplest way for the present is to write one paragraph on each of your headings, and when this is done the theme is finished. The matter of paragraphs will be taken up in detail later. But all through the theme as you write it you must apply to everything you say the principle of Unity. Every sentence, every part of a sentence even, which does not in some way help to explain your reasons for coming to St. Oswald's School should be excluded. This rule may seem unreasonably strict at first, but it is founded on sound common sense and years of experience. You cannot follow an instructor's lecture if dis- tracting sounds keep coming in from outside; neither can you follow the main thread of a man's essay if he allows distracting ideas, which have nothing to do with his subject, to keep stealing in. The principle of Unity as outlined above is very simple in theory ; in practice it is sometimes rather hard to follow. Frequently a writer starts to explain something about his theme, finds some- thing else apparently connected with that, and a third something with the second, and so is gradually drawn away from his subject UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 7 before he realizes it. For instance, if he were writing the above theme on St. Oswald's School and taking up its pleasant situation as one reason why he came there, he would be very apt, unless he were careful, to write it somewhat as follows : Another reason why I came to St. Oswald's was because it is very pleasantly situated among the hills of State. This type of scenery seemed doubly attractive to me as I had always lived on the prairies. There everything is fiat and uninteresting for mile after mile, so much so that your eye gets tired of seeing it. IT is DEPRESSING TO LIVE IN SUCH A COUNTRY; AND i DO NOT INTEND EVER TO LIVE THERE AGAIN. Here the first two sentences belong in the theme, the sentence in italics is beginning to ramble, and the sentence in capitals is completely off the track. The only way to avoid digressions like this is to keep your main topic constantly in mind, and stop short the moment that you feel you are beginning to go off on a tangent. There is also another consideration under the head of Unity which is perhaps the most important of all and which young writers are most inclined to overlook. This is that you must not only have everything you say connected with your main subject, but you must also show your reader that it is connected. You must always remember that the people for whom you write are not mind readers; they cannot see what you thought, they can see only what you say. Frequently you will include in your theme some topic which, as you thought of it, really belongs there, but which is so unfortunately worded that it sounds to the reader like a digression. There is a connection between this heading and the main subject of your essay, and you yourself see this con- nection perfectly ; but you have not shown this connection in your writing, and, consequently, your readers would not see it. For example, suppose that your subject is My Reasons for Preferring Football to Crew, and that one of your reasons is the fact that your preparatory school was not near any convenient body of water where you could row. Now suppose you wrote the paragraph as follows : I was educated at the Dean School. It lies among the hills of Ver- mont without any body of water near it. There is nothing bigger than a trout stream within ten miles. 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION This would at once strike your reader as a bad digression in a theme on your reasons for preferring football. The thought in your mind as you wrote was : " There was no water near, con- sequently I couldn't row; consequently I didn't grow to like rowing as well as football" ; but all that your reader sees is a useless state- ment about Dean School when you were talking of something else. The idea in the italicized words, which is precisely the con- necting link between this subtopic and the subject of your whole theme, has not been told to him at all. The paragraph should have been written somewhat like this : Another reason for my presence is found in my training at pre- paratory school. Dean School has an admirable football field, and, as we played there every day, of course we grew fond of the sport. On the other hand, there is no lake or navigable stream within ten miles of the place ; consequently we had no chance even to learn to row, much less to form any liking for it. Naturally the tastes which I formed there in my teens have clung to me ever since. Here the italicized phrases help to show the reader that all this is one of the causes why you prefer football. This art of making your reader see that certain doubtful topics really do belong in your theme has no generally accepted name. For the sake of conven- ience you may, if you wish, call it Evidence of Unity or Indication of Unity. This Evidence of Unity is very important as a practical matter; for bright men, who would be too intelligent to be guilty of actual digressions, frequently write whole paragraphs that sound like digressions because the connection is not brought out. Of course one fault is just as bad as the other, for both seem the same to the reader; and the only value which a theme can have lies in the fact that it makes something clear to the man who reads it. Now if you are certain that everything in your theme belongs there and that the reader can see why it belongs there, you have fulfilled the requirements of Unity for the theme as a whole and are ready to consider Coherence and Emphasis. Before taking these up, however, it will be well to examine the following extracts which illustrate the value both of having Unity and of showing it. L'XITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION g THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE T. R. LOUNSBURY This brings us directly to the discussion of a question with which the general history of English may properly conclude: What is to be the future of our tongue? Is it steadily tending to become corrupt, as constantly asserted by so many who are la- boriously devoting their lives to preserve it in its purity? The fact need not be denied, if by it is meant, that, within certain limits, the speech is always moving away from established usage. The history of language is the history of corruptions. The purest of speakers uses every day, with perfect propriety, words and forms, which, looked at from the point of view of the past, are improper, if not scandalous. But the blunders of one age become good usage in the following, and, in process of time, grow to be so consecrated by custom and consent, that a return to practices theoretically correct would seem like a return to barbarism. While this fur- nishes no excuse for lax and slovenly methods of expression, it is a guaranty that the indulgence in them by some, or the adoption of them by all, will not necessarily be attended by any serious injury to the tongue. Vulgarity and tawdriness and affectation, and numerous other characteristics which are manifested by the users of language, are bad enough ; but it is a gross error to suppose that they have of themselves any permanently serious effect upon the purity of national speech. - They are results of imperfect train- ing; and, while the great masters continue to be admired and read and studied, they are results that will last but for a time. The causes which bring about the decline of a language are, in truth, of an entirely different type. It is not the use of particular words or idioms, it is not the adoption of peculiar rhetorical devices, that contribute either to the permanent well-being or corruption of any tongue. These are the mere accidents of speech, the fashion of a time which passes away with the causes that gave it currency. Far back of these lie the real sources of decay. Language is no better and no worse than the men who speak it. The terms of which it is composed have no independent vitality in themselves: it is the meaning which the men who use them put into them, that 10 ENGLISH COMPOSITION gives them all their power. It is never language in itself that be- comes weak or corrupt : it is only when those who use it become weak or corrupt, that it shares in their degradation. Nothing but respect need be felt or expressed for that solicitude which strives to maintain the purity of speech; yet when unaccompanied by a far-reaching knowledge of its history, but, above all, by a thorough comprehension of the principles which underlie the growth of language, efforts of this kind are as certain to be full of error as they are lacking in result. There has never been a time in the history of Modern English in which there have not been men who fancied that they foresaw its decay. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century on, our literature, whenever it touches upon the character of the vehicle by which it is conveyed, is full of the severest criticism; and its pages are crowded with unavailing protests against the introduction of that which now it hardly seems possible for us to do without, and, along with these, with mournful com- plaints of the degeneracy of the present, and with melancholy forebodings for the future. So it always has been ; so it is always likely to be. Yet the real truth is, that the language can be safely trusted to take care of itself, if the men who speak it take care of themselves; for with their degree of development, of cultivation, and of character, it will always be found in absolute harmony. In fact, it is not from the agencies that are commonly supposed to be corrupting that our speech at the present time suffers; it is in much more danger from ignorant efforts made to preserve what is called its purity. Rules have been and still are laid down for the use of it, which never had any existence outside of the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. By these rules, so far as they are observed, freedom of expression is cramped, idiomatic peculiarity destroyed, and false tests for correctness set up, which give the ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in others ; while the real error lies in their own imperfect acquaintance with the best usage. One illustration will be sufficient of multitudes that might be cited. There is a rule of Latin syntax that two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English, of which it is no more true than it is of modern German. There is nothing in the usage of the past, from the very earliest times, to UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION u authorize it ; nothing in the usage of the present to justify it, except so far as the rule itself has tended to make general the practice it imposes. The grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers and speakers, has, from the very earliest period, allowed the widest discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for these latter are always tem- porary in their character, and are sure to be left behind by the ad- vance in popular cultivation, or forgotten through the change in popular taste. THE ART OF SEEING THINGS* JOHN BURROUGHS There is nothing in which people differ more than in their powers of observation. Some are only half alive to what is going on around them. Others, again, are keenly alive : their intelligence, their powers of recognition, are in full force in eye and ear at all times. They see and hear everything, whether it directly concerns them or not. They never pass unseen a familiar face on the street ; they are never oblivious of any interesting feature or sound or object in the earth or sky about them. Their power of attention is always on the alert, not by conscious effort, but by natural habit and disposition. Their perceptive faculties may be said to be always on duty. They turn to the outward world a more highly sensitized mind than other people. The things that pass before them are caught and individualized instantly. If they visit new countries, they see the characteristic features of the people and scenery at once. The impression is never blurred or confused. Their powers of observation suggest the sight and scent of wild animals; only, whereas it is fear that sharpens the one, it is love and curiosity that sharpens the other. The mother turkey with * From Leaf and Tendril, by John Burroughs. Used by special ar- rangement with the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 12 ENGLISH COMPOSITION her brood sees the hawk when it is a mere speck against the sky; she is, in her solicitude for her young, thinking of hawks, and is on her guard against them. Fear makes keen her eye. The hunter does not see the hawk till his attention is thus called to it by the turkey, because his interests are not endangered; but he outsees the wild creatures of the plain and mountain, the elk, the ante- lope, and the mountain sheep, he makes it his business to look for them, and his eyes carry farther than do theirs. We may see coarsely and vaguely, as most people do, .noting only masses and unusual appearances, or we may see finely and discriminatingly, taking in the minute and the specific. In a col- lection of stuffed birds, the other day, I observed that a wood thrush was mounted as in the act of song, its open beak pointing straight to the zenith. The taxidermist had not seen truly. The thrush sings with its beak but slightly elevated. Who has not seen a red squirrel or a gray squirrel running up and down the trunk of a tree ? But probably very few have noticed that the position of the hind feet is the reverse in the one case from what it is in the other. In descending they are extended to the rear, the toe-nails hooking to the bark, checking and controlling the fall. In most pictures the feet are shown well drawn up under the body in both cases. People who discourse pleasantly and accurately about the birds and flowers and external nature generally are not invariably good observers. In their walks do they see anything they did not come out to see? Is there any spontaneous or unpremeditated see- ing? Do they make discoveries? Any bird or creature may be hunted down, any nest discovered, if you lay siege to it; but to find what you are not looking for, to catch the shy winks and gestures on every side, to see all the by-play going on around you, missing no significant note or movement, penetrating every screen with your eye-beams that is to be an observer; that is to have " an eye practiced like a blind man's touch," a touch that can distinguish a white horse from a black, a detective eye that reads the faintest signs. When Thoreau was at Cape Cod, he noticed that the horses there had a certain muscle in their hips inordinately developed by reason of the insecure footing in the ever- yielding sand. Thoreau's vision at times fitted things closely. During some great fete in Paris, the Empress Eugenie and Queen UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 13 Victoria were both present. A reporter noticed that when the royal personages came to sit down, Eugenie looked behind her before doing so, to see that the chair was really there, but Victoria seated herself without the backward glance, knowing there must be a seat ready; there always had been, and there always would be, for her. The correspondent inferred that the incident showed the difference between born royalty and hastily made royalty. I wonder how many persons in that vast assembly made this ob- servation ; probably very few. It denoted a gift for seeing things. If our powers of observation were quick and sure enough, no doubt we should see through most of the tricks of the sleight-of- hand man. He fools us because his hand is more dexterous than our eye. He captures our attention, and then commands us to see only what he wishes us to see. In the field of natural history, things escape us because the actors are small, and the stage is very large and more or less veiled and obstructed. The movement is quick across a background that tends to conceal rather than expose it. In the printed page the white paper plays quite as important a part as the type and the ink ; but the book of nature is on a different plan : the page rarely presents a contrast of black and white, or even black and brown, but only of similar tints, gray upon gray, green upon green, or drab upon brown. By a close observer I do not mean a minute, cold-blooded specialist, "a fingering slave, One who would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave," but a man who looks closely and steadily at nature, and notes the individual features of tree and rock and field, and allows no subtile flavor of the night or day, of the place and the season, to escape him. His senses are so delicate that in his evening walk he feels the warm and the cool streaks in the air, his nose detects the most fugitive odors, his ears the most furtive sounds. As he stands musing in the April twilight, he hears that fine, elusive stir and rustle made by the angleworms reaching out from their holes for leaves and grasses ; he hears the whistling wings of the woodcock 14 ENGLISH COMPOSITION as it goes swiftly by him in the dusk ; he hears the call of the killdee come down out of the March sky ; he hears far above him in the early morning the squeaking cackle of the arriving blackbirds pushing north; he hears the soft, prolonged, lulling call of the little owl in the cedars in the early spring twilight; he hears at night the roar of the distant waterfall, and the rumble of the train miles across the country when the air is "hollow"; before a storm he notes how distant objects stand out and are brought near on those brilliant days that we call "weather-breeders." When the mercury is at zero or lower, he notes how the passing trains hiss and simmer as if the rails or wheels were red-hot. He reads the subtile signs of the weather. The stars at night forecast the com- ing day to him ; the clouds at evening and at morning are a sign. He knows there is the wet-weather diathesis and the dry-weather diathesis, or, as Goethe said, water affirmative and water negative, and he interprets the symptoms accordingly. He is keenly alive to all outward impressions. When he descends from the hill in the autumn twilight, he notes the cooler air of the valley like a lake about him ; he notes how, at other seasons, the cooler air at times settles down between the mountains like a vast body of water, as shown by the level line of the fog or the frost upon the trees. The modern man looks at nature with an eye of sympathy and love where the earlier man looked with an eye of fear and super- stition. Hence he sees more closely and accurately; science has made his eye steady and clear. To a hasty traveler through the land, the farms and country homes all seem much alike, but to the people born and reared there, what a difference ! They have read the fine print that escapes the hurried eye and that is so full of meaning. Every horizon line, every curve in hill or valley, every tree and rock and spring run, every turn in the road and vista in the landscape, has its special features and makes its own im- pression. Scott wrote in his journal : " Nothing is so tiresome as walking through some beautiful scene with a minute philosopher, a botanist, or a pebble-gatherer, who is eternally calling your attention from the grand features of the natural picture to look at grasses and chuckie-stanes." No doubt Scott's large, generous way of looking at things kindles the imagination and touches the sentiments more UNITY IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 15 than does this minute way of the specialist. The nature that Scott gives us is like the air and the water that all may absorb, while what the specialist gives us is more like some particular element or substance that only the few can appropriate. But Scott had his specialties, too, the specialties of the sportsman; he was the first to see the hare's eyes as she sat in her form, and he knew the ways of grouse and pheasants and trout. The ideal observer turns the enthusiasm of the sportsman into the channels of natural history, and brings home a finer game than ever fell to shot or bullet. He too has an eye for the fox and the rabbit and the mi- grating water-fowl, but he sees them with loving and not with murderous eyes. CHAPTER III COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION LET us suppose that you are writing a theme on How to Play Baseball. You have already jotted down a number of headings ; and, according to the principle of Unity, you have crossed out such as do not belong there. We will assume that the resulting outline is something like this : 1. Foul-strike rule. 2. Various ways in which men can be put out. 3. Object of the game, i.e., method of scoring. 4. Method of playing by innings. 5. Shape and details of diamond. 6. Number and petition of players. 7. Duties of the umpire. Now if you should write seven paragraphs in the same order as these seven headings your theme would be anything but clear. You have observed Unity; but something else besides Unity is needed. It is true that a theme taken up in the above order might be fairly intelligible to you or to any one who, like you, knew base- ball already; but you must always assume that you are writing for some one who does not understand your subject. In real life you will seldom write articles explaining to a man what he already knows. If he knew, you would not need to tell him. Your actual writing in the practical work of life will consist in explaining things to people who wish to understand them but as yet do not, and who have turned to you for help. Now assume that you are explaining baseball to some one so ignorant of the game that he needs to have it explained, some foreigner, for instance, from a country where the game is unknown. You can see at once that the above out- line would throw him into hopeless confusion. You begin to talk about the foul-strike rule. He cannot follow 16 COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 17 you, for he does not know the meaning of either " foul " or " strike." These would come under Topic 2, and you have not taken that up yet. So your foreigner fails to get anything out of No. i. If you come next to the way in which men are put out, your victim fares no better. You try to explain that a man is put out if he is caught off his base. What is a " base "? Your foreigner doesn't know; for you were to explain this under No. 5, and you haven't reached that yet. You would meet with exactly the same trouble under No. 3, the methods of scoring. You try to explain that every run around the bases and home counts one. What are the "bases" and where is "home"? All these things belong under No. 5; and as you have not gone as far as that yet your foreigner is hopelessly in the dark. He probably has a wild vision in his mind of thirty or forty men rushing around the bases of the grandstands in a two-mile race for the home of their parents. Obviously, the whole trouble here lies in the fact that you have taken up your topics in the wrong order. As they stand now, none of the earlier ones can be understood until the later ones have been explained first. If you change the order and take the topics up in the following manner, your theme at once becomes clear from start to finish; for now every topic paves the way for the ones which come after: 1. Shape and details of the diamond. 2. Object of the game. 3. Number and position of players. 4. Method of playing by innings. 5. Various ways in which men can be put out. 6. Duties of the umpire. 7. Foul-strike rule. Now just as Unity consists in putting into a theme those things and those only which belong there, so Coherence consists in ar- ranging these topics or headings in that order which will make the whole theme clearest to the reader. You must put yourself in his place, try to realize what he does and does not know, and lead him on gradually from one thing to another. There is no cast-iron rule as to the order which you should choose so as to have good Coherence. The test is always this, whether 1 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION or not your order is one which your reader can follow. There are, however, three forms of arrangement which are commonly in use, and a writer should usually take one of these. The first of these arrangements is the chronological; that is, it takes up the different events as they happened in order of time. This is the simplest method, and, where it can be used, is generally the best. For instance, if you were telling another man how to build a canoe, you would take up the different steps in your theme one after the other in the same order which you would follow when building a canoe yourself. Frequently, moreover, good writers explain the significance of some great movement by tracing its growth in history. It would be impossible, for example, to make a foreigner understand the nature of our negro problem unless we traced it down historically and pointed out how the present situa- tion grew out of past events. The following extracts from Izaak Walton and Cardinal Newman illustrate different applications of this method. THE GROUND-BAIT IZAAK WALTON You shall take a peck, or a peck and a half, according to the greatness of the stream and deepness of the water where you mean to angle, of sweet gross-ground barley malt, and boil it in a kettle ; one or two warms is enough, then strain it through a bag into a tub, the liquor whereof hath often done my horse much good; and when the bag and malt is near cold, take it down to the water- side about eight or nine of the clock in the evening, and not before ; cast in two parts of your ground-bait, squeezed hard between both your hands: it will sink presently to the bottom, and be sure it may rest in the very place where you mean to angle : if the stream run hard or move a little, cast your malt in handfuls a little the higher upwards the stream. You may, between your hands, close the malt so fast in handfuls, that the water will hardly part it with the fall. Your ground thus baited and tackling fitted, leave your bag with the rest of your tackling and ground-bait, near the sporting-place COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 19 all night, and in the morning, about three or four of the clock, visit the water-side, but not too near, for they have a cunning watchman, and are watchful themselves too. Then gently take one of your three rods, and bait your hook ; casting it over your ground-bait, and gently and secretly draw it to you till the lead rests about the middle of the ground-bait. Then take a second rod, and cast in about a yard above, and your third a yard below the first rod; and stay the rods in the ground; but go yourself so far from the water-side, that you perceive nothing but the top of the floats, which you must watch most diligently. Then when you have a bite, you shall perceive the top of your float to sink suddenly into the water: yet, never- theless, be not too hasty to run to your rods, until you see that the line goes clear away, then creep to the water-side, and give as much line as you possibly can : if it be a good carp or bream, they will go to the farther side of the river ; then strike gently, and hold your rod at a bent a little while ; but if you both pull together, you are sure to lose your game, for either your line, or hook, or hold will break; and after you have overcome them, they will make noble sport, and are very shy to be landed. The carp is far stronger and more mettlesome than the bream. Much more is to be observed in this kind of fish and fishing, but it is far better for experience and discourse than paper. Only thus much is necessary for you to know, and to be mindful and careful of, that if the pike or perch do breed in that river, they will be sure to bite first, and must first be taken. And for the most part they are very large; and will repair to your ground-bait, not that they will eat of it, but will feed and sport themselves among the young fry that gather about and hover over the bait. The way to discern the pike and to take him, if you mistrust your bream-hook for I have taken a pike a yard long several times at my bream-hooks, and sometimes he hath had the luck to share my line may be thus: Take a small bleak, or roach, or gudgedn, and bait it, and set it alive among your rods two feet deep from the cork, with a little red worm on the point of the hook; then take a few crumbs of white bread, or some of the ground-bait, and sprinkle it gently amongst your rods. If Mr. Pike be there, then the little fish will 20 ENGLISH COMPOSITION skip out of the water at his appearance, but the live-set bait is sure to be taken. Thus continue your sport from four in the morning till eight, and if it be a gloomy windy day they will bite all day long. But this is too long to stand to your rods at one place, and it will spoil your evening sport that day, which is this: About four of the clock in the afternoon repair to your baited place ; and as soon as you come to the water-side, cast in one-half of the rest of your ground-bait, and stand off; then whilst the fish are gathering together, for there they will most certainly come for their supper, you may take a pipe of tobacco ; and then in with your three rods, as in the morning: you will find excellent sport that evening till eight of the clock ; then cast in the residue of your ground-bait, and next morning by four of the clock visit them again for four hours, which is the best sport of all; and after that, let them rest till you and your friends have a mind to more sport. From St. James's-tide until Bartholomew-tide is the best; when they have had all the summer's food, they are the fattest. Observe, lastly, that after three or four days' fishing together, your game will be very shy and wary, and you shall hardly get above a bite or two at a baiting; then your only way is to desist from your sport about two or three days; and in the meantime, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a tuft of green but short grass as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one as many little red worms as will near cover all the turf; then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the middle thereof, and through the turf, placed on the board or trencher, with a string or cord, as long as is fitting, tied to a pole, let it down to the bottom of the water, for the fish to feed upon without disturbance about two or three days; and after that you have drawn it away, you may fall to and enjoy your former recreation. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 21 DOWNFALL AND REFUGE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZA- TION JOHN HENRY NEWMAN There never was, perhaps, in the history of this tumultuous world, prosperity so great, so far-spreading, so lasting, as that which began throughout the vast Empire of Rome, at the time when the Prince of Peace was born into it. Preternatural as was the tyranny of certain of the Caesars, it did not reach the mass of the population; and the reigns of the Five good Emperors, who succeeded them, are proverbs of wise and gentle government. The sole great exception to this universal happiness was the cruel persecution of the Christians ; the sufferings of a whole world fell and were concentrated on them, and the children of heaven were tormented, that the sons of men might enjoy their revel. Their Lord, while His shadow brought peace upon earth, foretold that in the event He came to send "not peace but a sword"; and that sword was first let loose upon His own people. " Judgment com- menced with the House of God;" and though, as time went on, it left Jerusalem behind, and began to career round the world and sweep the nations as it travelled on, nevertheless, as if by some paradox of Providence, it seemed at first, that truth and wretched- ness had " met together," and sin and prosperity had " kissed one another." The more the heathens enjoyed themselves, the more they scorned, hated, and persecuted their true Light and true Peace. They persecuted Him, for the very reason that they had little else to do; happy and haughty, they saw in Him the sole drawback, the sole exception, the sole hindrance, to a universal, a continual sunshine; they called Him "the enemy of the human race": and they felt themselves bound, by their loyalty to the glorious and immortal memory of their forefathers, by their tra- ditions of state, and their duties towards their children, to trample upon, and, if they could, to stifle that teaching, which was des- tined to be the life and mould of a new world. But our immediate subject here is, not Christianity, but the world that passed away; and before it passed, it had, I say, a tranquillity great in proportion to its former commotions. Ages 22 ENGLISH COMPOSITION of trouble terminated in two centuries of peace. The present crust of the earth is said to be the result of a long war of elements and to have been made so beautiful, so various, so rich, and so useful, by the discipline of revolutions, by earthquake and lightning, by mountains of water and seas of fire; and so in like manner, it required the events of two thousand years, the multiform fortunes of tribes and populations, the rise and fall of kings, the mutual collision of states, the spread of colonies, the vicissitudes and the succession of conquests, and the gradual adjustment and settle- ment of innumerous discordant ideas and interests, to carry on the human race to unity, and to shape and consolidate the great Roman Power. And when once those unwieldy materials were welded together into one mass, what human force could split them up again? what "hammer of the earth" could shiver at a stroke a solidity which it had taken ages to form? Who can estimate the strength of a political establishment, which has been the slow birth of time ? and what establishment ever equalled pagan Rome? Hence has come the proverb, "Rome was not built in a day:" it was the portentous solidity of its power that forced the gazer back upon an exclamation, which was the relief of his astonishment, as being his solution of the prodigy. And, when at length it was built, Rome, so long in building, was "Eternal Rome": it had been done once for all ; its being was inconceivable beforehand, and its not being was inconceivable afterwards. It had been a miracle that it was brought to be; it would take a second miracle that it should cease to be. To remove it from its place was to cast a mountain into the sea. Look at the Palatine Hill, penetrated, traversed, cased with brickwork, till it appears a work of man, not of nature; run your eye along the cliffs from Ostia to Ter- racina, covered with the debris of masonry; gaze around the bay of Baiae, whose rocks have been made to serve as the foundations and the walls of palaces; and in those mere remains, lasting to this day, you will have a type of the moral and political strength of the establishments of Rome. Think of the aqueducts making for the imperial city, for miles across the plain ; think of the straight roads stretching off again from that one center to the ends of the earth; consider the vast territory round about it strewn to this COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 23 day with countless ruins ; follow in your imagination its suburbs, extending along its roads, for as much, at least in some directions, as forty miles ; and number up its continuous mass of population, amounting, as grave authors say, to almost six million; and an- swer the question, how was Rome ever to be got rid of? why was it not to progress ? why was it not to progress forever ? where was that ancient civilization to end? Such were the questionings and anticipations of thoughtful minds, not specially proud or fond of Rome. "The world," says Tertullian, "has more of cultivation every day, and is better furnished than in times of old. All places are opened up now; all are familiarly known; all are scenes of business. Smiling farms have obliterated the notorious wilderness; tillage has tamed the forest land; flocks have put to flight the beasts of prey. Sandy tracts are sown; rocks are put into shape; marshes are drained. There are more cities now, than there were cottages at one time. Islands are no longer wild ; the crag is no longer frightful; everywhere ' there is a home, a population, a state, and a livelihood." Such was the prosperity, such the promise of progress and permanence, in which the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, the Macedonian conquests had terminated. Education had gone through a similar course of difficulties, and had a place in the prosperous result. First, carried forth upon the wings of genius, and disseminated by the energy of individual minds, or by the colonizing missions of single cities, Knowledge was irregularly extended to and fro over the spacious regions, of which the Mediterranean is the common basin. Introduced, in course of time, to a more intimate alliance with political power, it received the means, at the date of Alexander and his successors, both of its cultivation and its propagation. It was formally rec- ognized and endowed under the Ptolemies, and at length became a direct object of the solicitude of the government under the C.xsars. It was honoured and dispensed in every considerable city of the Empire; it tempered the political administration of the conquering people; it civilized the manners of a hundred bar- barian conquests; it gradually reconciled uncongenial, and as- sociated distant countries, with each other; while it had ever ministered to the fine arts, it now proceeded to subserve the useful. 24 ENGLISH COMPOSITION It took in hand the reformation of the world's religion; it began to harmonize the legends of discordant worships; it purified the mythology by making it symbolical; it interpreted it, and gave it a moral, and explained away its idolatry. It began to develop a system of ethics, it framed a code of laws: what might not be expected of it, as time went on, were it not for that illiberal, un- intelligible, fanatical, abominable sect of Galileans ? If they were allowed to make play, and get power, what might not happen? There again Christians were in the way, as hateful to the philos- opher, as to the statesman. Yet in truth it was not in this quarter that the peril of civilization lay : it lay in a very different direction, over against the Empire to the North and North-east, in a black cloud of inexhaustible barbarian populations : and when the storm mounted overhead and broke upon the earth, it was those scorned and detested Galileans, and none but they, the men-haters and God-despisers, who, returning good for evil, housed and lodged the scattered remnants of that old world's wisdom, which had so persecuted them, went forth valiantly to meet the savage destroyer, tamed him without arms, and became the founders of a new and higher civilization. Not a man in Europe now, who talks bravely against the Church, but owes it to the Church, that he can talk at all. But what was to be the process, what the method, what the in- struments, what the place, for sheltering the treasures of ancient intellect during the convulsion, of bridging over the abyss, and of linking the old world to the new? In spite of the consolidation of its power, Rome was to go, as all things human go, and vanish forever. In the words of inspiration, " Great Babylon came in remembrance before God, and every island fled away, and the mountains were not found." All the fury of the elements was directed against it; and, as a continual dropping wears away the stone, so blow after blow, and revolution after revolution, sufficed at last to heave up, and hurl down, and smash into fragments, the noblest earthly power that ever was. First came the Goth, then the Hun, and then the Lombard. The Goth took possession, but he was of noble nature, and soon lost his barbarism. The Hun came next; he was irreclaimable, but did not stay. The Lombard kept both his savageness and his ground ; he appropriated to him- COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 25 self the territory, not the civilization of Italy, fierce as the Hun, and powerful as the Goth, the most tremendous scourge of Heaven. In his dark presence the poor remains of Greek and Roman splendour died away, and the world went more rapidly to ruin, material and moral, than it was advancing from triumph to triumph in the time of Tertullian. Alas ! the change between Rome in the hey-day of her pride, and in the agony of her judgment ! Tertullian writes while she is exalted; Pope Gregory when she is in humilia- tion. He was delivering homilies upon the Prophet Ezekiel, when the news came to Rome of the advance of the Lombards upon the city, and in the course of them he several times burst out into lamentations at the news of miseries, which eventually obliged him to cut short his exposition. "Sights and sounds of war," he says, "meet us on every side. The cities are destroyed; the military stations broken up; the land devastated; the earth depopulated. No one remains in the country ; scarcely any inhabitants in the towns ; yet even the poor remains of human kind are still smitten daily and without inter- mission. Before our eyes some are carried away captive, some mutilated, some murdered. She herself, who once was mistress of the world, we behold how Rome fares: worn down by manifold and incalculable distresses, the bereavement of citizens, the attack of foes, the reiteration of overthrows, where is her senate ? where are her people? We, the few survivors, are still the daily prey of the sword and of other innumerable tribulations. Where are they who in a former day revelled in her glory ? where is their pomp, their pride, their frequent and immoderate joy ? youngsters, young men of the world, congregated here from every quarter, where they aimed at a secular advancement. Now no one hastens up to her for preferment ; and so it is with other cities also ; some places are laid waste by pestilence, others are depopulated by the sword, others are tormented by famine, and others are swallowed up by earthquakes." These words, far from being a rhetorical lament, are but a meager statement of some of the circumstances of a desolation, in which the elements themselves, as St. Gregory intimates, as well as the barbarians, took a principal part. In the dreadful age of that great Pope, a plague spread from the lowlands of Egypt to the 26 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Indies on the one hand, along Africa across to Spain on the other, till, reversing its course, it reached the eastern extremity of Europe. For fifty-two years did it retain possession of the infected atmos- phere, and, in Constantinople, during three months, five thousand, and at length ten thousand persons, are said to have died daily. Many cities of the East were left without inhabitants ; and in several districts of Italy there were no labourers to gather either harvest or vintage. A succession of earthquakes accompanied for years this heavy calamity. Constantinople was shaken for above forty days. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the earthquake of Antioch, crowded, as the city was, with strangers for the festival of the Ascension. Berytus, the Eastern school of Roman jurisprudence, called, from its literary and scientific im- portance, the eye of Phoenicia, shared a similar fate. These, how- ever, were but local visitations. Cities are indeed the homes of civilization, but the wide earth, with her hill and dale, open plain and winding valley, is its refuge. The barbarian invaders, spread- ing over the country, like a flight of locusts, did their best to destroy every fragment of the old world, and every element of revival. Twenty-nine public libraries had been founded at Rome; but, had these been destroyed, as in Antioch, or Berytus, by earthquakes or by conflagration, yet a large aggregate of books would have still survived. Such collections had become a fashion and a luxury in the latter Empire, and every colony and municipium, every larger temple, every pnetorium, the baths, and the private villas, had their respective libraries. When the ruin swept across the country, and these various libraries were destroyed, then the patient monks had begun again, in their quiet dwellings, to bring together, to arrange, to transcribe and to catalogue; but then again the new visitation of the Lombards fell, and Monte Cassino, the famous metropolis of the Benedictines, not to mention monas- teries of lesser note, was sacked and destroyed. Truly was Christianity revenged on that ancient civilization for the persecutions which it had inflicted on Christianity. Man ceased from the earth, and his works with him. The arts of life, architecture, engineering, agriculture, were alike brought to nought. The waters were let out over the face of the country ; arable and pasture lands were drowned; landmarks disappeared. Pools and COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 27 lakes intercepted the thoroughfares; whole districts became pestilential marshes; the strong stream, or the abiding morass, sapped and obliterated the very site of cities. Here the mountain torrent cut a channel in the plain; there it elevated ridges across it; elsewhere it disengaged masses of rock and earth in its precipitous passage, and, hurrying them on, left them as islands in the midst of the flood. Forests overspread the land, in rivalry of the waters, and became the habitation of wild animals, of wolves, and even bears. The dwindled race of man lived in scattered huts of mud, where best they might avoid marauder, and pestilence, and inunda- tion ; or clung together for mutual defence in cities, where wretched cottages, on the ruins of marble palaces, overbalanced the security of numbers by the frequency of conflagration. In such a state of things, the very mention of education was a mockery, the very aim and effort to exist was occupation enough for a mind and body. The heads of the Church bewailed a uni- versal ignorance, which they could not remedy; it was a great thing that schools remained sufficient for clerical education, and this education was only sufficient, as Pope Agatho informs us, to enable them to hand on the traditions of the Fathers, without scientific exposition or polemical defence. In that Pope's time, the great Council of Rome, in its letter to the Emperor of the East, who had asked for Episcopal legates of correct life and scientific knowledge of the Scriptures, made answer, that, if by science was meant knowledge of revealed truth, the demand could be supplied; not, if more was required; "since," continue the Fathers, "in these parts, the fury of our various heathen foes is ever breaking out, whether in conflicts, or in inroads and rapine. Hence our life is simply one of anxiety of soul and labour of body ; of anxiety, because we are in the midst of the heathen; of labour, because the maintenance, which used to come to us as ecclesiastics, is at an end; so that faith is our only substance, to live in its possession our highest glory, to die for it our eternal gain." The very pro- fession of the clergy is the knowledge of letters : if even these lost it, would others retain it in their miseries, to whom it was no duty ? And what then was the hope and prospect of the world in the gen- erations which were to follow? "What is coming? what is to be the end?" Such was the 28 ENGLISH COMPOSITION question, that weighed so heavily upon the august line of Pontiffs, upon whom rested "the solicitude of all the churches," and whose failure in vigilance and decision in that miserable time would have been the loss of ancient learning, and the indefinite postpone- ment of new civilization. What could be done for art, science, and philosophy, when towns had been burned up, and country devastated? In such distress, islands, or deserts, or the mountain- top have commonly been the retreat, to which in the last instance the hopes of humanity have been conveyed. Thus the monks of the fourth century had preserved the Catholic faith from the tyranny of Arianism in the Egyptian desert ; and so the inhabitants of Lombardy had taken refuge from the Huns in the shallows of the Adriatic ; so too just then the Christian Goths were biding their time to revenge themselves on the Saracens, in the mountains of Asturias. Where should the Steward of the Household deposit the riches, which his predecessors had inherited from Jew and heathen, the things old as well as new, in an age, in which each succeeding century threatened them with woes worse than the centuries which had gone before ! Pontiff after Pontiff looked out from the ruins of the Imperial City which were to be his ever- lasting, ever-restless throne, if perchance some place was to be found, more tranquil than his own, where the hope of the future might be lodged. They looked over the Earth, towards great cities and far provinces, and whether it was Gregory, or Vitalian, or Agatho, or Leo, their eyes had all been drawn in one direction, and fixed upon one quarter for that purpose, not to the East, from which the light of knowledge had arisen, not to the \Vest, whither it had spread, but to the North. The second arrangement for Coherence is from the simple to the complex. The outline on baseball already given illustrates this method. Here you start with the most simple and obvious matters on which the others depend, and gradually lead up from these to the more complicated part of your subject. For example, if you were explaining the mechanism of a modern battle-ship, you would start with the size and shape of the main hull, which is a comparatively simple matter. Next you would take up the location of guns and armor, which would be a little harder to follow but COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 29 still not very difficult. The complicated engines, etc., which would be the least easy to understand, should come last. Ac- cording to this arrangement your reader's knowledge of the subject is steadily increasing as he reads ; consequently, while he can grasp only simple points at the beginning, he can master hard ones at the end. A slight variation of this "simple to complex" order is found in going from the known to the unknown. Frequently you take up a subject about which your readers already know some- thing, but not all. Here you would naturally start with the things that they already understand fairly well, then go on to that about which they had known a very little, and finish with the things about which before they had known nothing at all. This, for instance, would be your order if you were explaining the fine points of some game to a friend who had seen it played but had never mastered it. The following extracts illustrate various modifications of the "simple to complex" arrangement. METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION T. H. HUXLEY The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the ex- pression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working ; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight. You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar example. You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that 30 ENGLISH COMPOSITION men of science work by means of Induction and Deduction, and that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other things, which are called Natural Laws, and Causes, and that out of these, by some cunning skill of their own, they build up Hypotheses and Theories. And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow- men ; but if you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your lives. There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be de- lighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a com- plex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing of course in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena. A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Sup- pose you go into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple, you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hard and green. You take up another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The shopman offers you a third; but, before biting it, you examine it, and find that it is hard and green, and you immediately say that you will not have it, as it must be sour, like those that you have already tried. Nothing can be more simple than that, you think ; but if you will take the trouble to analyze and trace out into its logical ele- ments what has been done by the mind, you will be greatly sur- prised. In the first place, you have performed the operation of Induction. You found that, in two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together with sourness. It was so in COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 31 the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True, it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from ; you generalize the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where you get hardness and greenness. You found upon that a general law, that all hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, "All hard and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour." That train of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, and has all its various parts and terms, its major premiss, its minor premiss, and its conclusion. And, by the help of further reasoning, which, if drawn out, would have to be exhibited in two or three other syllogisms, you arrive at your final determination, "I will not have that apple." So that, you see, you have, in the first place, established a law by Induction, and upon that you have founded a Deduction, and reasoned out the special conclusion of the par- ticular case. Well now, suppose, having got your law, that at some time afterwards you are discussing the qualities of apples with a friend : you will say to him, " It is a very curious thing, but I find that all hard and green apples are sour ! " Your friend says to you, "But how do you know that?" You at once reply, "Oh, because I have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to be so." Well, if we were talking science instead of common sense, we should call that an Experimental Verifica- tion. And, if still opposed, you go further, and say, " I have heard from the people in Somersetshire and Devonshire, where a large number of apples are grown, that they have observed the same thing. It is also found to be the case in Normandy, and in North America. In short, I find it to be the universal experience of mankind wherever attention has been directed to the subject." Whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very unreasonable man, agrees with you, and is convinced that you are quite right in the conclusion you have drawn. He believes, although perhaps he does not know he believes it, that the more extensive Verifications are, that the more frequently experiments have been made, and results of the same kind arrived at, that the more varied the conditions under which the same results are attained, the more 32 ENGLISH COMPOSITION certain is the ultimate conclusion, and he disputes the question no further. He sees that the experiment has been tried under all sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and people, with the same result; and he says with you, therefore, that the law you have laid down must be a good one, and he must believe it. In science we do the same thing ; the philosopher exercises precisely the same faculties, though in a much more delicate man- ner. In scientific inquiry it becomes a matter of duty to expose a supposed law to every possible kind of verification, and to take care, moreover, that this is done intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the case of the apples. And in science, as in common life, our confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of our experimental verifications. For instance, if you let go your grasp of an article you may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to the ground. That is a very common verification of one of the best established laws of nature that of gravitation. The method by which men of science establish the existence of that law is exactly the same as that by which we have established the trivial proposition about the sourness of hard and green apples. But we believe it in such an extensive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because the uni- versal experience of mankind verifies it, and we can verify it our- selves at any time ; and that is the strongest possible foundation on which any natural law can rest. THE CONSTRUCTION OF UNDERGROUND TUNNELS 1 BENJAMIN BROOKS Sir Marc Brunei appeared early in the last century to the city of London after that town had overflowed its bridges for genera- tions, and he presented a scheme for driving a tunnel under the Thames through the comparatively soft clay. Everybody knew that so large a hole as a tunnel could not be dug and kept open under the Thames; but if a short, portable piece of completed tunnel could be continuously pushed ahead and added to from 1 From The Web-foot Engineer. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 33 behind, what then? He conceived a steel contrivance just a trifle bigger around than the tunnel was to be, shaped in about the proportions of a baking-powder can, with no bottom and no top, but having a diaphragm or partition across the middle of it. When this had been sunk down and started on the line of the tunnel, the forward part of the shell would hold up the overhanging mud sufficiently so that men could work through little doorways in the partition, digging the earth from in front and loading it into cars to be carried out behind; and at the same time, on the interior of the after portion, other men could bolt together the steel or iron sec- tions of the tunnel lining. A short section having been completed in this manner, the whole machine could push itself ahead with a kick that is, with power- ful hydraulic jacks pressing against the completed part of the tunnel. Imagine having forced a large, empty sugar barrel hori- zontally into a bank of earth, first having knocked out both heads. By crawling into the barrel a man could, with considerable dis- comfort and perspiration, dig away the earth some little distance in advance of the barrel, and, given something to kick against, he could push himself and his barrel farther into the cavity he had dug. Now, if another man were to hand him the necessary staves and internal hoops, he could build a second and slightly smaller barrel partly inside of the first one. He might then do more digging and more pushing ahead, until he had proceeded far enough to build a second small barrel and fit it tightly to the end of the first small barrel. In this way, since a small barrel always lapped partly inside of the big one in which he worked, the earth could never cave in and cut him off from daylight; and so long as he was provided with staves, hoops, food, water, and air, he could burrow on indefinitely. Such, in a nutshell, was the idea of this web-foot 1 engineer, Sir Marc Brunei, in 1824 the simplest, best, most ingenious idea that has occurred to engineers in many years. The great cities had waited for it so long that they accepted it ravenously. Tunnels burrowed under the Thames, the Seine, the Hudson. Poor old tunnels that had set out without it and gone bankrupt at the 1 The phrase " web-foot engineer " here means an engineer who plans underground work, tunnels, foundations, etc. D 34 EXGLISH COMPOSITION discouraging rate of a few inches a week, took on a new lease of life and set out again at many feet a day ; and they are going yet all day and all night, steadily, blindly, but surely, on under the rivers to set the cities free. Of course the original idea has to be modified somewhat for every particular tunnel and for each variety of mud. If the mud is full of gravel and boulders, the forward half of the machine has to be worked under compressed air to balance the pressure of earth and water; and the workers have to be provided with safety locks in case of a sudden inrush of water. If you invert a glass in a bowl of water and press it down, the water will not rise to any extent in the glass. On this principle, little inverted steel pockets are made for the men to retreat into in case of accident and keep their heads above water until assistance can come. If, on the other hand, the earth is tough and regular, instead of being dug out by miners the way is cut automatically with a large rotary cutter. If it is softer still and too mushy to be counter- balanced by compressed air, then the top of the forward shield is made very long, so as to let the mud cave in on a long slant and still not fall from above. When it gets to the consistency of por- ridge, as it is at the bottom of the Hudson, it is found possible to force the shield ahead without any digging, merely letting the mud ooze through the partition doors and shoveling it into the cars. BOOKS ' A. C. BENSON It is a great problem, as life goes on, as duties grow more de- fined, and as one becomes more and more conscious of the short- ness of life, what the duty of a cultivated and open-minded man is with regard to general reading. I am inclined to think that as one grows older one may read less; it is impossible to keep up with the vast output of literature, and it is hard enough to find 1 A portion of the essay on Books in A. C. Benson's From a College Window: New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Used by the kind permission of the publishers. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 35 time to follow even the one or two branches in which one is specially interested. Almost the only books which, I think, it is a duty to read, are the lives of great contemporaries; one gets thus to have an idea of what is going on in the world, and to realise it from different points of view. New fiction, new poetry, new travels are very hard to peruse diligently. The effort, I confess, of begin- ning a new novel, of making acquaintance with an unfamiliar scene, of getting the individualities of a fresh group of people into one's head, is becoming every year harder for me; but there are still one or two authors of fiction for whom I have a predilection, and whose works I look out for. New poetry demands an even greater effort ; and as to travels, they are written so much in the journalistic style, and consist so much of the meals our traveller obtains at wayside stations, of conversations with obviously reticent and even unintelligent persons; they have so many photogravures of places that are exactly like other places, and of complacent people in grotesque costumes, like supers in a play, that one feels the whole thing to be hopelessly superficial and unreal. Imagine a journalistic foreigner visiting the University, lunching at the station refreshment-room, hurrying to half-a-dozen of the best- known colleges, driving in a tram through the main thorough- fares, looking on at a football match, interviewing a Town Coun- cillor, and being presented to the Vice-Chancellor what would be the profit of such a record as he could give us ? What would he have seen of the quiet daily life, the interests, the home-current of the place? The only books of travel worth reading are those where a person has settled deliberately in an unknown place, really lived the life of the people, and penetrated the secret of the landscape and the buildings. I wish very much that there was a really good literary paper, with an editor of catholic tastes, and half-a-dozen stimulating specialists on the staff, whose duty would be to read the books that came out, each in his own line, write reviews of appreciation and not of contemptuous fault-finding, let feeble books alone, and make it their business to tell ordinary people what to read, not saving them the trouble of reading the books that are worth read- ing, but sparing them the task of glancing at a good many books that are not worth reading. Literary papers, as a rule, either 36 ENGLISH COMPOSITION review a book with hopeless rapidity, or tend to lag behind too much. It would be of the essence of such a paper as I have de- scribed, that there should be no delay about telling one what to look out for, and at the same time that the reviews should be de- liberate and careful. . . But I think as one grows older one may take out a licence, so to speak, to read less. One may go back to the old restful books, where one knows the characters well, hear the old remarks, survey the same scenes. One may meditate more upon one's stores, stroll about more, just looking at life, seeing the quiet things that are happening, and beaming through one's spectacles. One ought to have amassed, as life goes on and the shadows lengthen, a good deal of material for reflection. And, after all, reading is not in itself a virtue ; it is only one way of passing the time ; talking is another way, watching things another. Bacon says that reading makes a full man ; well, I cannot help thinking that many people are full to the brim when they reach the age of forty, and that much which they afterwards put into the overcharged vase merely drips and slobbers uncomfortably down the side and foot. The thing to determine then, as one's brain hardens or softens, is what the object of reading is. It is not, I venture to think, what used to be called the pursuit of knowledge. Of course, if a man is a professional teacher or a professional writer, he must read for professional purposes, just as a coral insect must eat to enable it to secrete the substances out of which it builds its branching house. But I am not here speaking of professional studies, but of general reading. I suppose that there are three motives for reading the first, purely pleasurable; the second, intellectual; the third, what may be called ethical. As to the first, a man who reads at all, reads just as he eats, sleeps, and takes exercise, be- cause he likes it; and that is probably the best reason that can be given for the practice. It is an innocent mode of passing the time, it takes one out of oneself, it is amusing. Of course, it can be carried to an excess ; and a man may become a mere book-eater, as a man may become an opium-eater. I used at one time to go and stay with an old friend, a clergyman in a remote part of Eng- land. He was a bachelor and fairly well off. He did not care about exercise or his garden, and he had no taste for general COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 37 society. He subscribed to the London Library and to a lending library in the little town where he lived, and he bought, too, a good many books. He must have spent, I used to calculate, about ten hours of the twenty-four in reading. He seemed to me to have read everything, old and new books alike, and he had an astonish- ing memory; anything that he put into his mind remained there exactly as fresh and clear as when he laid it away, so that he never needed to read a book twice. If he had lived at a University, he would have been a useful man; if one wanted to know what books to read in any line, one had only to pick his brains. He could give one a list of authorities on almost every subject. But in his country parish he was entirely thrown away. He had not the least desire to make anything of his stores, or to write. He had not the art of expression, and he was a distinctly tiresome talker. His idea of conversation was to ask you whether you had read a number of modern novels. If he found one that you had not read, he sketched the plot in an intolerably prolix manner, so that it was practically impossible to fix the mind on what he was saying. He seemed to have no preferences in literature whatever; his one desire was to read everything that came out, and his only idea of a holiday was to go up to London and get lists of books from a bookseller. That is, of course, an extreme case ; and I cannot help feeling that he would have been nearly as usefully employed if he had confined himself to counting the number of words in the books he read. But, after all, he was interested and amused, and a per- fectly contented man. As to the intellectual motive for reading, it hardly needs discuss- ing; the object is to get clear conceptions, to arrive at a critical sense of what is good in literature, to have a knowledge of events and tendencies of thought, to take a just view of history and of great personalities ; not to be at the mercy of theorists, but to be able to correct a faulty bias by having a large and wide view of the progress of events and the development of thought. One who reads from this point of view will generally find some particular line which he intends to follow, some special region of the mind where is he desirous to know all that can be known ; but he will, at the same time, wish to acquaint himself in a general way with other departments of thought, so that he may be interested in sub- 38 ENGLISH COMPOSITION jects in which he is not wholly well-informed, and be able to listen, even to ask intelligent questions, in matters with which he has no minute acquaintance. Such a man, if he steers clear of the con- tempt for indefinite views which is often the curse of men with clear and definite minds, makes the best kind of talker, stimulat- ing and suggestive ; his talk seems to open doors into gardens and corridors of the house of thought; and others, whose knowledge is fragmentary, would like to be at home, too, in that pleasant palace. But it is of the essence of such talk that it should be natural and attractive, not professional or didactic. People who are not used to Universities tend to believe that academical per- sons are invariably formidable. They think of them as possessed of vast stores of precise knowledge, and actuated by a merciless desire to detect and to ridicule deficiencies of attainment among unprofessional people. Of course, there are people of this type to be found at a University, just as in all other professions it is possible to find uncharitable specialists who despise persons of hazy and leisurely views. But my own impression is that it is a rare type among University Dons; I think that it is far com- moner at the University to meet men of great attainments com- bined with sincere humility and charity, for the simple reason that the most erudite specialist at a University becomes aware both of the wide diversity of knowledge and of his own limitations as well. Personally, direct bookish talk is my abomination. A know- ledge of books ought to give a man a delicate allusiveness, an apti- tude for pointed quotation. A book ought to be only incidentally, not anatomically, discussed; and I am pleased to be able to think that there is a good deal of this allusive talk at the University, and that the only reason that there is not more is that professional demands are so insistent, and work so thorough, that academical persons cannot keep up their general reading as they would like to do. And then we come to what I have called, for want of a better word, the ethical motive for reading; it might sound at first as if I meant that people ought to read improving books, but that is exactly what I do not mean. I have very strong opinions on this point, and hold that what I call the ethical motive for reading is the best of all indeed the only true one. And yet I find a great COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 39 difficulty in putting into words what is a very elusive and delicate thought. But my belief is this. As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. I see that many people find the world dreary and, indeed, there must be spaces of dreariness in it for us all, some find it interesting; some surprising; some find it entirely satisfactory. But those who find it satisfactory seem to me, as a rule, to be tough, coarse, healthy natures, who find success at- tractive and food digestible; who do not trouble their heads very much about other people, but go cheerfully and optimistically on their way, closing their eyes as far as possible to things painful and sorrowful, and getting all the pleasure they can out of material enjoyments. Well, to speak very sincerely and humbly, such a life seems to me the worst kind of failure. It is the life that men were living in the days of Noah, and out of such lives comes nothing that is wise or useful or good. Such men leave the world as they found it, except for the fact that they have eaten a little way into it, like a mite into a cheese, and leave a- track of decomposition behind/ them. \ I do not know why so much that is hard and painful and sad is interwoven with our life here ; but I see, or seem to see, that it \ is meant to be so interwoven. All the best and most beautiful flowers of character and thought seem to me to spring up in \ "7 - the track of suffering; and what is the most sorrowful of all r ^ T **** p mysteries, the mystery of death, the ceasing to be, the relinquish-! ing of our hopes and dreams, the breaking of our dearest ties, be- comes more solemn and awe-inspiring the nearer we advance* " to it. I do not mean that we are to go and search for unhappiness; but, on the other hand, the only happiness worth seeking for is a happi- ness which takes all these dark things into account, looks them in the face, reads the secret of their dim eyes and set lips, dwells with them, and learns to be tranquil in their presence. In this mood and it is a mood which no thoughtful man can hope or ought to wish to escape reading becomes less and less a searching for instructive and impressive facts, and more and more a quest after wisdom and truth and emotion. More and more I 40 ENGLISH COMPOSITION \ feel the impenetrability of the mystery that surrounds us; the phenomena of nature, the discoveries of science, instead of raising j the veil, seem only to make the problem more complex, more bizarre, more insoluble; the investigation of the laws of light, ) of electricity, of chemical action, of the causes of disease, the in- fluence of heredity all these things may minister to our con- I venience and our health, but they make the mind of God, the nature of the First Cause, an infinitely morejnysterious andJnconceivable Aproblem. iv-t*^ % iX^ZI^^. / ~r*-^cuZ~^, -YJL***J^C^ -e^cT, But there still remains, inside, so to speak, of these astonishing facts, a whole range of intimate personal phenomena, of emotion, of relationship, of mental or spiritual conceptions, such as beauty, affection, righteousness, which seem to be an even nearer concern, even more vital to our happiness than the vast laws of which it is possible for men to be so unconscious, that centuries have rolled past without their being investigated. And thus in such a mood reading becomes a patient tracing out of human emotion, human feeling, when confronted with the sorrows, the hopes, the motives, the sufferings which beckon us and threaten us on every side. One desires to know what pure I and wise and high-hearted natures have made of the problem; one desires to let the sense of beauty that most spiritual of all pleasures sink deeper into the heart ; one desires to share the thoughts and hopes, the dreams and visions, in the strength of which the human spirit has risen superior to suffering and death. And thus, as I say, the reading that is done in such a mood has little of precise acquisition or definite attainment about it; it is I a desire rather to feed and console the spirit to enter the region in which it seems better to wonder than to know, to aspire rather ^ than to define, to hope rather than to be satisfied. A spirit which walks expectantly along this path grows to learn that the secret of such happiness as we can attain lies in simplicity and courage, in sincerity and loving-kindness; it grows more and more averse to material ambitions and mean aims; it more and more desires silence and recollection and contemplation. In this mood, the words of the wise fall like the tolling of sweet, grave bells upon the soul, the dreams of poets come like music heard at evening from the depth of some enchanted forest, wafted COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 41 over a wide water; we know not what instrument it is whence the music wells, by what fingers swept, by what lips blown ; but we know that there is some presence there that is sorrowful or glad, who has power to translate his dream into the concord of sweet sounds. Such a mood need not withdraw us from life, from toil, from kindly relationships, from deep affections; but it will rather send us back to life with a renewed and joyful zest, with a desire to discern the true quality of beautiful things, of fair thoughts, of courageous hopes, of wise designs. It will make us tolerant and forgiving, patient with stubbornness and preju- dice, simple in conduct, sincere in word, gentle in deed; with pity for weakness, with affection for the lonely and the desolate, with admiration for all that is noble and serene and strong. Those who read in such a spirit will tend to resort more and more to large and wise and beautiful books, to press the sweetness out of old familiar thoughts, to look more for warmth and loftiness of feeling than for elaborate and artful expression. They will value more and more books that speak to the soul, rather than books that appeal to the ear and to the mind. The will realizell that it is through wisdom and force and nobility that books retain ]\ c their hold upon the hearts of men, and not by briskness and colour J !/ and epigram. A mind thus stored may have little grasp of facts, little garniture of paradox and jest ; but it will be full of compas- sion and hope, of gentleness and joy. SECOND NATURE 1 GRANT ALLEN We have all said a hundred times over that habit is a second nature repeating thoughtlessly the acute remark of some name- less and forgotten popular philosopher, some Peckham Socrates or some Bloomsbury Aristotle, who first invented, no doubt, that now historical phrase ; but very few of us, in all probability, have ever reflected how profoundly true and brilliantly luminous is the 1 From Common Sense Science, by Grant Allen. Used by the kind per- mission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, Boston. 42 ENGLISH COMPOSITION idea wrapped up in that simple and familiar commonplace of the present generation. It is often so with current platitudes ; begin- ning as the wise and witty sayings of some pregnant and pithy local character, they are picked up and repeated carelessly by other people who never even dream themselves of realizing their full meaning or true import, and they pass at last into the position of proverbs, bandied about daily in common conversation, with scarcely a relic of their original savor and fresh cleverness re- maining in them. And yet the unknown thinker, whoever he may have been, who first struck out the lucid conception of habit as a second nature, must have possessed philosophical and psy- chological powers of no mean order. For he touched at once, as if with the needle-point of fine criticism, the very core and heart of the matter; he summed up in a single short and easy epigram- matic sentence a whole condensed scientific theory of habit and repetition. Habit is that which by use has become natural to us; nature is habit handed down from our ancestors, and ingrained bodily in the very structure of our brains and muscles and nervous systems. 4VtUi f~- **- "Jf~*~ -^ Let us look first at a few of the more extended manifestations of habit, where it assumes hereditarily the very guise and form of nature. It is well known that the children of jugglers, rope- dancers, tumblers, and acrobats can be much more easily trained and taught their fathers' profession than any casual ordinary members of the general public. They are born, in fact, with quicker fingers, more supple limbs, nimbler toes, easier muscles, than the vast mass of their fellow-citizens. The constant practice of hand or foot has made a real difference at last in the very structure and fibers of their bodies; and this difference is trans- mitted to their children, so that the conjurer, like the poet, is to some extent born, not made. It is just the same with many other arts and handicrafts. Children descended from musical families are musical almost from their very birth those born of parents both of whom have constantly played the harp or the piano exhibit a suppleness and ease of movement in the arms and fingers entirely wanting to the sons and daughters of agricultural laborers or un- skilled mechanics. So, too, mountaineers of many generations' standing have limbs specially adapted to mountain climbing COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 43 for example, the Indians of the Andes differ immensely in the proportions of their bones, and particularly of their thighs, from all other individuals of the human race; and from babyhood upward this originally acquired difference makes itself evidently seen in the children of such Indians. In these and numberless other like cases we recognize at once that habit has at last produced a positive physical difference in the individuals of the particular profession or tribe concerned, and that the difference so begotten is handed down, as a matter of original nature, to the second generation. Our nature, in short, depends upon the structure with which we are at birth endowed; and this structure itself in turn depends, in part at least, upon the acquired habits and func- tional practices of our parents and our remoter ancestors. But habit, itself, within a single person's own lifetime, also tends to acquire the fixity and rigidity of nature becomes in time almost irresistible and, as it were, automatic. Look, for instance, at the smallest matters connected with the way we dress ourselves, cut up our food, or perform our most ordinary every- day actions. Everybody has a fixed order for putting on his socks ; either he puts on the right foot before the left, or vice versa, and any attempt to reverse the accustomed order seems to him not only awkward but almost unnatural. So, again, in buttoning his collar, he either buttons the right half over the left, or the left over the right ; and, whichever he does, he does it regularly, he doesn't fluctuate casually from morning to morning, doing it now one way and now the other. A very curious difference exists in this respect between men's dress and women's; tailors always put the buttons on the right side and the buttonholes on the left; while dressmakers adopt the contrary course, putting the buttons left and the buttonholes right. Now, if a man, by any accident, has the buttons sewn on any garment the unfamiliar way, he finds himself as awkward as a baby in the attempt to fasten them ; while if a woman, on the other hand, puts on a man's coat, she is struck at once by what seems to her the clumsy way the thing has to be fastened wrong side on. In each case the habit of buttoning on one side has become absolutely automatic ; the muscles and nerves of the fingers have adapted themselves to the accustomed move- ments, and are incapable of performing any alternative motion 44 ENGLISH COMPOSITION with equal facility. If any person watches himself for a single day in this manner, he will find there are thousands of similar little actions he performs almost unconsciously, by mere organic routine, each step in the process being followed, without .the necessity for thinking, by the next in order, exactly as the words and rhymes of any familiar piece of poetry help to call up one another in memory, without the slightest conscious effort. As the French proverb quaintly puts it, he who says A must say B also. A very good example of this automatic power of habit is seen in the way we almost all wind up our watches every evening. At a certain fixed stage in the process of going to bed, one hand seeks automatically the waistcoat pocket and pulls the watch out; the other dives without sense of effort into the recesses of the purse in search of the watch-key, which is oftenest recognized not by sight but by mere feeling. Then the watch is opened as if by clockwork, the key is turned round automatically a certain familiar number of times, and duly replaced in the proper pocket; the face is shut down again without ever thinking about it; and finally the watch itself is hung up on its peg or laid down upon the table by the bedside, as the case may be, while all the time perhaps we have been steadily reflecting or talking about something else, and hardly even been aware at all of what it was we were muscularly engaged upon. So purely mechanical is the process, indeed, that people who do not habitually dress for dinner generally find them- selves winding up their watches whenever they take off their waistcoats to assume the civilized swallow-tail and white tie of modern society. The action has become stereotyped in the ner- vous system, and when once the first step of the series is taken by unbuttoning the coat, all the rest follows as a matter of course, without the necessity for deliberation or voluntary effort. Some- times, indeed, even the will itself is not strong enough to beat such chains of habit; Dr. Hughlings Jackson mentions a curious case where an omnibus horse in the streets of London obstinately re- fused for several minutes to move on at the combined commands of his driver and a policeman. Shouts and whippings were all in vain ; the creature declined to budge an inch to please anybody. At last a passenger inside suggested mildly, " Shut the door, con- COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 45 ductor!" The conductor slammed the door with a bang, and, as he did so, rang the bell. That familiar sign was too much for the obdurate horse's nervous system. Within all his experience, when a new passenger got in, and the omnibus was ready to start again, the door was slammed and the bell rung. He could not resist the force of habit. He set off at once at a round pace, as if acted upon magically by some powerful spell, and forgot at once all about his sulky temper. Much the same sort of routine practice is apparent in the lives of every one of us. An immense number of little acts and phrases every day are performed and repeated by pure force of habit. We do ten thousand habitual things, as it were, instinctively. "How do you do?" we ask a friend twenty times running, if we meet him again; not because we want to assure ourselves as to the state of his constitution so very frequently, but because the mere act of meeting him calls up the words mechanically to our lips. " Quite well, thank you," we answer thoughtlessly to casual inquiries about the health of our families, even though we may at that very moment be anxiously running to get the doctor on the sudden outbreak of scarlet fever in the bosom of the house- hold. In the same way, when we have once got into the habit of addressing letters to a particular person at a particular place, the mere act of writing his name upon an envelope is followed almost irresistibly by the familiar number of the house and direction of the street in which he lives. We may have been accustomed for twenty years to send all our notes for Jeremiah Tompkins to 37 East Fourteenth Street, New York City; if increasing means and fashionable desires induce our friend to remove to the more select neighborbood of Fifth Avenue, we still find that, whenever we have got as far with his address as " Jeremiah Tompkins, Esq.," the pen seems of itself to run on into 37 East Fourteenth Street, and it is only with an effort that we substitute in its place the new address in the more dignified up-town district. Everybody has had abundant examples of the same sort within the range of his own experience. We change our banker, let us say ; but as soon as we write on an envelope the words, "The Manager," in a trice the name of the old bank writes itself down against our will in the place of the new one. We go away from home on a holiday; 46 ENGLISH COMPOSITION- but at the head of our letters we still tend to begin by dating from the old familiar domestic address. At the commencement of each new year, how hard we find it to alter from the old date to the new, though the practice has run but for a single twelvemonth; while every married lady must well remember with what difficulty she altered her maiden signature to the one forced upon her by the not wholly distasteful necessities of marriage. After one has written all one's lifetime, up to date, " Very affectionately yours, Ethel Smith," it must be with a sudden pull-up of the pen and hand that one alters it at last by an effort of will into "Ethel Montgomery." What is the rational and underlying cause of this force of habit? Clearly, the nerves and brain elements have become altered by usage, so that the directive action runs more easily along a certain channel than along any other. Very few acts of our lives are isolated; most of them move in trains or sequences so associated that one immediately summons up another, each act being, so to speak, the cue or call-word for the next in order. The nervous energy flows most easily along the most accustomed channels; set up the first step in the sequence, and all the other steps follow regularly, exactly as in repeating any well-known and familiar formula. Habit, in short, becomes a second nature because it modifies to some extent our original minute bodily structure, and makes nerves and muscles act together constantly in certain almost indissoluble chains of coordinated action. The oftener we do a thing, the easier it thus becomes; and when we have done certain things one after another, over and over again for many years, the tendency of the first to call up the others in due suc- cession becomes at last all but irresistible. There is some reason, indeed, to believe that nature itself or personal idiosyncrasy depends ultimately upon mere habit not, of course, the habit of the individual himself who possesses it, but of his earlier ancestors, paternal and maternal. It is now fairly well proved that the character with which every one of us is en- dowed at birth must be regarded as a direct inheritance from our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, in vary- ing degrees of compounded qualities. Hence, while habit is a second nature, it may also be said that nature in turn is a secondary COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 47 habit. What we are by nature we largely or even entirely derive from the various acquired habits of our ancestors ; what we make ourselves, on the other hand, by habit we largely pass on to the natures of our children and our remoter descendants. And this consideration renders the awful responsibility of the formation of habits even more painfully evident than ever. It is a serious enough thought that every wrong act indulged in, every weakness gratified, every temptation yielded to, helps to stereotype the evil practice itself in the very fibers and tissues of our bodies. But it is more serious still to consider that every habit thus thought- lessly or wickedly formed is liable to be transmitted to our children after us. Drunkenness, for example, as we all know, tends to show itself as a hereditary vice. Well, then, every act of culpable yielding to the temptation to drink to excess is not only a step to the formation of an ingrained habit in the person himself, but also a step towards the setting up of a hereditary tendency to drunken- ness in his children and descendants. On the other hand, the more strongly any such besetting sin assails us by nature the more deeply implanted it may be in the very form and structure of our nervous system the greater is the necessity for constant watchfulness against its insidious attacks, and the deeper the im- portance of guarding against it by every means that lies in our power. To form a bad habit is of all things most dangerous when we find ourselves already prone to the habit by very nature. By way of compensation, however, we may reflect with pleasure that every temptation resisted, every weakness thwarted, every active exercise of self-control insured, helps to build "up a habit of re- sistance, and makes victory over the evil more easy in future. Exactly as by frequently writing the new address of the friend who has moved we learn at last to forget the old one, so by fre- quently and constantly taking the better course of action we learn at last, almost without an effort, to avoid the worse. The right habit becomes, as it were, a second nature; as in the case of the most upright of modern philosophers, about whom Sir Henry Taylor has acutely observed that he hardly seemed to be even con- scientious it appeared as though he acted right under all cir- cumstances quite automatically and without the possibility of doing otherwise. There are people, indeed, descended from 4 g ENGLISH COMPOSITION exceptionally fine stocks on either side, of whom it has been well said that they are almost born "organically moral": the impulse to act right seems in their inherited natures to have completely outweighed the impulse to act wrong; and what many of the rest of us do with a voluntary effort these happily constituted and beautiful characters seem to do, so to speak, mechanically and unconsciously. A third method which is often convenient when no other occurs to the mind is that of enumeration. According to this, you state all the various headings of your theme at the beginning and then take them up one by one in order. For example, you might start a theme on the chief advantages of life in a large city as follows : The chief advantages of living in a large city are: that it gives better preliminary education, that it offers more social opportunities, and that it gives one a wider knowledge of men. Then the first paragraph would be about educational advantages, the second about social opportunities, and the third about a wider knowledge of men. In real life this method is used more in oral arguments (such as lawyers' speeches) than in written essays ; but it is often very helpful in either. One thing should be remembered in adopting it, and this is that the different topics in your theme should follow one another in the same order as in the opening sentence. The reader expects this and prepares himself for it; consequently if you change the order you throw him off the track. Below is given an example of this method. The slight abruptness at the beginning and end is due to the fact that it is merely an extract from an article too long to be quoted here entire. 1 THE ATTITUDES OF MEN TOWARD IMMORTALITY G. L. DICKINSON I have to deal with a number of different and mutually in- compatible attitudes, resulting from different experiences and temperaments. These I shall pass in review, distinguish, and 1 Enumeration is also used in the selection on Books, by A. C. Benson, in an earlier part of this chapter. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 49 criticise; and each of my readers, I assume, meantime will be considering within himself what his own position is towards each of them. The attitudes in question may be broadly distinguished as three. There are those who do not think about immortality, those who fear it, and those who desire it. 1. The majority of people I should suppose belong to the first class, except perhaps in certain crises of life. The normal attitude of men towards death seems to be one of inattention or evasion. They do not trouble about it; they do not want to trouble about it; and they resent its being called to their notice. And this, I believe, is as true of those who nominally accept Christianity as of those who reject any form of religion. On this point the late Frederick Myers used to tell a story which I have always thought very illuminating. In conversation after dinner he was pressing on his host the unwelcome question, what he thought would happen after death. After many evasions and much recalcitrancy, the reluctant admission was extorted : " Of course, if you press me, I believe that we shall all enter into eternal bliss ; but I wish you wouldn't talk about such disagreeable subjects." This I believe is typical of the normal mood of most men. They don't want to be worried; and though probably, if the 'question were pressed, they would object to the idea of extinction, they can hardly be said to desire immortality. Even at the point of death, it would seem, this attitude is eften maintained. Thus Professor Osier writes : "I have careful records of about five hundred death-beds, studied particularly with reference to the modes of death and the sensations of the dying. The latter alone concern us here. Ninety suffered bodily pain or distress of one sort or another, eleven showed riiental apprehension, two positive terror, one expressed spiritual exaltation, one bitter remorse. The great majority gave no signs one way or the other; like their birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting." 2. It cannot, then, I think, be said that most men desire im- mortality; rather they are, in their normal mood, and even at the point of death, indifferent to the question. But most men perhaps in some moods, and some men continually, do reflect upon the subject and have conscious and definite desires about it. Of these, 5 ENGLISH COMPOSITION however, not all desire immortality; and some are so far from desiring it that they passionately crave extinction, and would receive the news that they survive death, not with exultation, but with despair. The two positions are to be distinguished. On the one hand, a man may simply have had enough of life without having any quarrel with it, and may prefer to the idea of continued existence that of oblivion and repose. Such, according to Met- schnikoff, would be the normal attitude of men if they were not habitually cut off before the natural term of life, a term which he puts at 'well over a hundred years. And such seems, in fact, to be the attitude of some men even under present conditions. It is beautifully and classically expressed in the well-known epitaph of the poet Landor, on himself : I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved and next to nature, art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks and I am ready to depart. On the other hand, there are those who not merely acquiesce in, but desire extinction ; and that because they believe, on philosophic or other grounds, that any possible life must be bad. These are the people called pessimists; they are more numerous than is often believed; and they are apt to be regarded by the plain man with a certain moral reprobation. That this should be so is an interesting testimony to the instinctive optimism of mankind. But the optimism, it will perhaps be agreed, is commonly less pro- found than the pessimism. Whatever may be the promise of life, it is, as we know it, to those who look at it fairly and straight, very terrible, unjust, and cruel. And if any conceivable subsequent life must be of the same character as this, no freer from limitation, no richer in hope, no fuller in achievement, then the pessimist has at any rate a strong prima facie case. And this brings us to the obvious point, that the desirability of a future life must depend upon its character, just as does the desirability of this one. So that it is relevant to ask those who acquiesce in or desire extinction, whether or no there is some kind of life which, if offered to them securely, they would be willing to accept after death. COHERENCE IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 51 3. Let us turn then to our third class, those who desire immor- tality, and ask them what it is they desire, and whether it is really desirable. For a number of very different conceptions may be covered by the same phrase. And first, there are those who simply do not want to die, and whose desire for immortality is merely the expression of this feeling. Old people, so far as I have ob- served, often cling in this way to life; more often, indeed, than the young. Yet, if they could put it fairly to themselves, they would, I suppose, hardly say that they would wish to go on forever in this life, with all their infirmities increasing upon them. Nothing surely is sadder, nothing meaner, than this desire to prolong life here at all costs. The sick, the infirm, the aged that we care for them as we do may be creditable to our humanity. But that they desire to be cared for, instead of to depart, is that so creditable to theirs ? I will go further and say that to arrest any period of life, even the best, the most glorious youth, the most triumphant man- hood, is what no reasonable man will rightly desire. To the values of life, at any rate as we know it now, the change we call growing older seems to be essential ; and we cannot wisely wish to arrest that process anywhere this side of death. <4tXz> ^r t ^t~~- -t- : ~r~- v So much for arrangement of topics. Now we found under Unity that we must not only have everything belong in our theme but also make our readers realize that it belongs there. Something similar is true of Coherence as well. You must not only pass from point to point in order, but you must also tell your reader when- ever you pass from one point to another. The great danger in all writing is that your reader may think you are still talking about Point i when you are really well advanced in Point 2. To pre- vent this you must always let him see very distinctly just where you cross the dividing line between one point and another. The sentences which are used for this purpose are usually called "transi- tion sentences"; and naturally they come at the beginning of each new paragraph or subdivision of your theme. Some writers put these sentences at the end of the old paragraph ; but it is more common, and on the whole better, to put them at the commence- ment of the new one. For example, if you were writing an essay on the pleasures of country life, the first sentences of your various 5 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION paragraphs that is, your transition sentences might go some- thing like this : 1. One of the charms of country life lies in the pure fresh air. . . . 2. Another attractive feature is the splendid opportunity which it offers for swimming and boating. . . . 3. Then again you can play tennis, golf, or baseball at your very door. . . . 4. If your inclinations lead you in another direction, you can find a great deal of pleasure in studying the odd types of character that you find there. . . . 5. Above all, you are able to get away from the heat and racket of the town. . . . Here each of these sentences shows that you have dropped one topic and are beginning on another; as a result the reader realizes perfectly where you are and can follow you without trouble. On the contrary, if you had left out sentence 4, for instance, and then had gone on talking about these odd characters, your reader would think you were still discussing baseball and golf, and would be racking his head to see the connection between these sports and your last remarks. Eventually, perhaps, he might grasp the situation; but in the meanwhile you would have made sad inroads on his valuable time and still more valuable temper. A glance at the extracts on the preceding pages will show how consistently good writers use these transition sentences. In long themes of three or four thousand words short para- graphs, called "transition paragraphs," are often used to mark the spot where the writer passes from one big subdivision of his essay to another. In short themes of four hundred words, however, these are not needed and should not be used. All that is necessary for a theme of that length is to have your topics arranged in some clear order, and to introduce each topic by a topic sentence. CHAPTER IV EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION IN writing a theme you are handling several different subtopics under one big main head. Seme of these topics you will wish to impress more strongly than others on the reader's mind. If you were writing a letter recommending a man for a position, you might lay some stress on the statement that he was an enjoyable companion, but you would lay much more on the fact that he was fitted for the place. You would wish the firm addressed to remem- ber both points; but you would wish them to be much more im- pressed with the latter one, since that is what would mainly de- termine their decision. Or again, suppose you were writing a theme urging certain reforms in your preparatory school. You would feel that some of these reforms were more important than others; and would wish your readers to feel this, so that they might carry out the most important ones first, even if the others had to be neglected. Now Emphasis, the last of our three principles, is the one by which we make our readers see the relative importance of our ideas. Its practical value is much greater than might at first be supposed, and can be shown by an illustration. Suppose that you and Mr. A are rival agents for two different types of automobile. A timid lady, who wishes a very safe machine and does not care at all about speed, writes letters to both you and A. In your letter you briefly mention the safety of your machine, and then emphasize at great length its remarkable speed. Mr. A barely mentions the speed of his auto, and lays great stress on its safety. As a matter of fact both machines are equally fast and equally safe ; but the lady gets the impression that yours is more remarkable for speed than safety, since you emphasized speed more; and that A's excels in safety rather than speed, since it was on safety that 53 54 ENGLISH COMPOSITION he laid special stress. The consequence is that A gets her order, and you are out of pocket because you did not understand Empha- sis in English Composition. Now there are two common methods by which you can em- phasize your important points in a theme. The first method is simply to say more about those points, to have the paragraphs about them longer than the others. The mere fact that you write twice as much about Point i as about Point 2 makes your reader assume naturally that you are more interested in Point i. This cannot always be done. Sometimes an unimportant topic is so complicated that you cannot explain it in a few words; and again a very important one may be so simple that it is hard to say much about it without being "windy." Even in these cases, however, the emphasis should make a difference. If a minor point is com- plicated, the very fact that it is a minor point means that you do not need to explain all its little details so carefully; and even if a valuable point is very simple, it is often worth while to show not only what it is but also why it is so important. And in all cases where it can be conveniently done the important topics should receive the most space. If you neglect this precaution you must not blame your readers for getting confused as to the relative value of things. You may think the good points of your native place far outweigh the bad ones; but if you write four hundred words about its defects and one hundred about its advantages you must not blame your readers if they speak of it afterward as "a stupid little spot." They are not mind-readers; they simply see that you have emphasized one point more than the other; and they assume mistakenly, alas ! that you knew what you were about. The second method of getting Emphasis is by arrangement. When possible, you should put your most important points in the most emphatic parts of your theme. Now the most emphatic position in the whole composition is at the end ; and the next most important is usually at the start. Readers and listeners are only human; they cannot pay equally strict attention all the time. They begin with the best of resolutions and follow every word for the first few sentences. Then their nervous tension relaxes ; and through the middle of the theme they accompany you with only a languid interest. Toward the end they begin to feel that they EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 55 are losing something, and make a frantic brace to learn the gist of the whole essay from the closing paragraph. Consequently, things which are said at the beginning and end, but especially at the end, sink deeper into the mind than those which are said in the middle. If you doubt this, study your own sensations when reading and listening to lectures. If you still doubt that things assume new importance when put at the very end, consider how it works in a few everyday phrases. The naughty child when he is caught instinctively cries : " I did it; but I'll never do it again." Wise Mother Nature has taught him to emphasize the fact that he will never sin again by putting it last ; and this emphasized fact often so impresses parents that the proposed whipping is averted. On the other hand, if he had said: "I'll never do it again; but I did it," the awful fact that, in spite of all good resolutions for the future, he actually had done it would nerve the parent's hand to the stern task of justice. In some cases it may not be possible to put the most important points in the emphatic places, because Coherence may demand a different order. If Coherence and Emphasis clash, Coherence should always have the right of way. Such cases, however, are rare. As a general thing you should put your most important topic at the end as a climax, and also put one of your next most important points at the beginning to give your composition an energetic start. **W" v^t ^V*-^ " c~o i~^4 - "1., , , " Below are given two illustrations of good emphasis. In the first we have several different topics of unequal value, of which the most important is put at the end and also given the most space. The second develops a single main idea throughout and hammers it home with a final, extra heavy blow at the finish. PRESENT RELATIONS OF THE LEARNED PROFES- SIONS TO POLITICAL GOVERNMENT 1 W. H. TAFT It is the duty of every citizen, no matter what his profession, business, or trade, to give as much attention as he can to the public weal, and to take as much interest as he can in political matters. 1 Used by the kind permission of the author, Hon. William H. Taft. 56 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Americans generally have recognized these duties, and the result is that we find active in political life, prominent in the legislature and executive councils of the government, men representing all professions, all branches of business, and all trades. Perhaps the expression "representing" is not fortunate, because they are not elected by guilds or professions or crafts, and they do not represent their fellows in the sense of being required to look after their peculiar interests. What I mean is that among public men who enact laws and enforce them may be found those who in early life at least have had experience in every business, every craft, and every profession. Nevertheless, as political and governmental necessities change, they have a tendency to increase the number taken from one profession or another for reasons that can be distinctly traced; and I propose this morning to invite your at- tention to the present relation of each of the learned professions to politics and government. It seems to me that such a subject may well have interest for those who have finished an academic career and are looking about to select a profession for themselves. The first profession is that of the ministry. Time was, in New England, and in every other part of the country under the in- fluence of its traditions, when the minister of the Congregational church, in addition to that of his sacred office, exercised a most powerful influence which was of a distinctly political character. His views on the issues of the day were considered of the greatest weight in the community in which he lived, and he ranked every one as its first citizen. This was in the days when New England might almost be called a "theocracy"; when it was deemed wise and politically proper to regulate by law, to the minutest detail, the manner of life of men, and as these laws were understood to be framed in accord with moral and religious requirements, the minister of the community was the highest authority as to what the law should be and how it ought to be enforced. Great changes have come over our methods of life since that day. Then the ministry, because of the rewards in the way of influence, power, and prominence, attracted the ablest of educated minds, and the ability and force of character were where power and influence resided. But the spread of education and independent thinking, the wide diffusion of knowledge and news by the press, the enor- EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 57 mous material development of the country, the vast increase in wealth, the increase in rewards and influence of other vocations, the disappearance of the simple village life, have all contributed to change radically the position and influence of the ministry in the community. To-day it is not true that that profession attracts the ablest young men, and this I think is a distinct loss to our society, for it is of the utmost importance that the profession whose peculiar duty it is to maintain high moral standards and to arouse the best that there is in man, to stir him to higher aspirations, should have the genius and brilliancy with which successfully to carry out this function. Of course the profession of the ministry is supposed to have to do largely with the kingdom of the next world rather than with this, and many people expect to find in the rep- resentatives of the profession only an other-worldliness and no thought of this. This is of course the narrowest view of the pro- fession. Whatever the next world, we are certainly under the highest obligation to make the best of this, and the ministers should be the chief instruments in making this world morally and re- ligiously better. It is utterly impossible to separate politics from the lives of the community, and there cannot be general personal and social business morality and political immorality at the same time. The latter will ultimately debauch the whole community. During the administration of Mr. Roosevelt, and under the in- fluence of certain revelations of business immorality, the con- science of the whole country was shocked and then nerved to the point of demanding that a better order of affairs be introduced. In this movement, the ministers of the various churches have recognized the call upon them to assist, and they have been heard the country over in accents much more effective than ever before, in half a century. They have not all always been discreet. They^ have sometimes attempted to make the moral reforms by law wider than practical experience would justify. Indeed, the tend- ency of some ministers in taking part in politics and seeking governmental reform, is to demand too close a realization of their ideals, and an unwillingness to give up the accomplishment of some for decided progress towards others. This is a limitation upon their usefulness. In two ways the minister is becoming more closely in touch with 5 g ENGLISH COMPOSITION politics and governmental affairs. In the first place the modern tendency of government is paternal. Individualism is not dead, but the laissez-faire school does not have its earnest and con- sistently rigid adherents now as it did years ago. We all recognize, I think, or at least most of us do, that there is certain aid, there is certain protection that the government is in duty bound, acting for all the people, to extend to a smaller number of the people whose circumstances and condition forbid their looking out for themselves. Thus in the enforcement of health regulations, in the passage of tenement laws, child labor laws, establishment of orphan asylums and places of refuge for waifs, and in many other ways, the work of the minister in home missions brings him in contact with necessity for government action, and he is heard, and is entitled to be heard, upon the policies of the government in these regards. So, too, in the matter of foreign missions. The greatest agency to-day in keeping us advised of the conditions among Oriental races, who, however old their traditions and their civilizations, are now tending toward Occidental ideals, is the establishment of foreign missions as the outposts of the advance guard of Christian civilization. These missions have the duty of representing the ideal of western Christian progress and through them such prog- ress is to be commended to the races whom it is hoped we may induce to accept that same civilization. The leaders of these missionary branches of the churches are now becoming some of our most learned statesmen in respect of our proper Oriental policies, and they are to be reckoned with by the men more im- mediately charged with the responsibility of initiating and carry- ing on such policies. The next profession is that of the teacher. Of course, the great number of teachers are engaged in primary and secondary instruction and in industrial or vocational work. Their relation to politics and government is of the utmost importance, though indirect. It is and ought to be their highest duty to instill in the minds of the young girls and boys the patriotism and love of country, because the boy is father to the man and the patriotism of the extreme youth of the country may well determine that of the grown men. The effect of an intense patriotism which thrills EMPHASIS L\ THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 59 through the nerves of the boys of a country is illustrated in the immense strength which Japan derives from it. No one who visits that interesting country or comes into contact with the Japanese can avoid seeing its effect. The term "Bushido" is a kind of apotheosis of patriotism. The joy with which Japanese give up their lives in defense of their country has its foundation in a real religious feeling, and is most inspiring to all who come to know it. It should be full of significance to those of the teaching profession who become responsible for the thoughts and ideals of the young. Another way in which the professional teacher may exercise great indirect political influence is in the encouragement that he ought to give to the young men of college age and life in the study and pursuit of politics. Every curriculum of every academic institution now includes the study of political economy, the study of sociology, the study of government, and often the study of con- stitutional law. These taken together, with the political history of England and the United States, cannot but arouse in the minds of most American students an interest in the government of their country and in present-day politics, to the point of taking part in them when opportunity offers. It is most encouraging to know the great attention that is given to-day in all the universities to the encouragement of political and economical discussion among the students, and the eagerness with which they read and listen to those problems, the solution of which is giving the men in actual political power anxiety and labor. A third profession which exercises some of the functions of the ministry and some of those of the teacher, is that of the writer. His profession may be literature and embrace the poet, the his- torian, the novelist, the critic; or may be journalism, and include the editor, correspondent and the news gatherer or city reporter. In many aspects, writing is a profession; in others when it is reduced merely to the purveying and sale of news, it is a business. When conducted on the highest plane, it exerts as much influence for good as the ministry, and has a wider range, and indeed has probably robbed the profession of part of its usefulness because it has become a substitute for it with many persons and in many families. Its power of public instruction is very great ; but when 60 ENGLISH COMPOSITION it panders to the vulgarest taste for sensationalism and becomes entirely irresponsible in respect to its influence for good, and its statement of the truth, its pernicious tendency is obviated only by the power of the people to protect themselves against it by a safe discrimination and a healthy skepticism, and a clear understand- ing of its recklessness and baser motive. The close relation be- tween journalism and politics and the carrying on of a government, no one who has been in the slightest degree familiar with the course of a popular government, can ignore. The people demand to know what their servants in the legislature, in the executive, and on the bench are doing, and the chief, if not the only, method by which they are made aware of the character of the service rendered to them is through the press. The unjust color sometimes given through jaundiced editors and correspondents has an injurious effect, but fortunately in the number of newspapers and in the variety of motives that affect those who furnish the news, such in- justice is generally remedied. The great body of the people who have discriminating common sense are enabled to reach with considerable accuracy the truthful verdict and judgment in respect to political affairs. The next profession for consideration in its relation to govern- mental matter is that of medicine. Until very recently, its influence has been practically nothing in a professional way. There have been physicians who have given up their practice and gone into politics; but there was some trait of theirs adapted to success in politics that had little or nothing to do with the practice of their profession. They have become more interested in government of late years because the functions of government have widened, and now embrace in a real and substantial way the preservation of the health of all the people. The effect which imperfect drainage, bad water, impure food, ill-ventilated houses, and a failure to isolate contagion have in killing people has become more and more apparent with the study which great sanitary authorities have given to the matter, and has imposed much more distinctly and unequivocally the burden upon municipal, state, and federal govern- ment of looking after the public health. The expansion of our Government into the Tropics, the necessity of maintaining our armies and navies there and of supporting a great force of work- EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 6 1 men in the construction of such an enterprise as that of the Panama canal, have greatly exalted the importance of the discoveries of the medical profession in respect to the prevention and cure of human disease and of diseases of domestic animals. The triumph which has been reached in the name of the medical profession in the discovery as to the real causes of yellow fever and malaria and the suppression of those diseases by killing or pre- venting the propagation or the infection of the mosquito, is one of the wonders of human progress. It has made the construction of the Panama canal possible. It has rendered life in the Tropics for immigrants from the Temperate Zone consistent with health and reasonable length of life, and it has opened possibilities in the improvement of the health and strength of Tropical races themselves under governmental teaching, assistance, and super- vision that were unthought of two decades ago. Sanitary engineer- ing with its proper treatment of water, making it wholesome and harmless, with its removal of the filth and sewage and its con- version of what was noxious into most useful agencies, all confirm the governmental importance of the profession of medicine and the kindred technical profession of chemistry, engineering, and all branches of physical research. So marked has been this in- crease in the importance of the medical profession in governmental agencies that the doctors themselves have organized a movement for the unification of all agencies in the federal government used to promote the public health, in one bureau or department, at the head of which they wish to put a man of their own or kindred branch of science. How near this movement will come in accomplishing the complete purpose of its promoters, only the national legislature can tell. Certainly the economy of the union of all health agencies of the national government in one bureau or department is wise. Whether at the head of that department should be put a doctor of medicine or some other person must depend on the individual and not on his technical professional learning or skill. It is the capacity to organize, coordinate, and execute that is needed at the head of a department, and not so much deep or broad technical and pro- fessional skill. It is the ability to judge whether others have such technical or professional skill that the head of the department who makes the selection of the members of his department should be 6 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION endowed with. However this may be, it is becoming more and more clear that the extending of governmental duties into a territory covered by the profession of medicine is bringing physicians more and more into political and governmental relation, and we may expect that in the next decade they will play a far greater part than they have heretofore; and it is proper that they should. I may stop here to mention other technical professions like those of the chemist, soil expert, botanist, horticulturist, forester, meteorologist, and the student of general agricultural science, all of whom must be consulted and have been consulted in the improvement of our agriculture, and in that movement generally characterized as a conservation of our natural resources. The waste which is going on to-day in our forest, water, and soil supplies has been brought to the attention of the public in startling statistics by the President and the Commission, whose report he has trans- mitted to Congress, and such conservation may well be considered with conservation of human life, in the progress of governmental sanitation, hygiene, and the preventives and cure of disease by quarantine and health regulations. We must look in the future to great development in all these branches and to prominence in political power and authority of those who shall succeed in effecting a reduction in the loss of human life from preventable disease and a saving of the national resources. The Department of Agriculture is expanding in its usefulness and in the scope of its functions, and exercises a power directly beneficial to the production and sale of farm products and the profit of the farmer that no one could have anticipated at the time of its creation and organization. This will bring even more into political prominence than heretofore the scientific farmer generally familiar with the needs of agriculture throughout the country and able to understand the intricacies of the policy of foreign governments in the admission and exclusion of our farm products. We come finally to the profession of the law. With the ex- ception perhaps of the profession of arms, law has always been in all countries most prominent in political and governmental matters. This is so because in a wide sense the profession of the law is the profession of government, or at least it is the profession in the course of which agencies of the government are always used, and EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 63 in which the principles applied are those which affect either the relations between individuals or the relation between the govern- ment and individuals and all of which are denned by what, for want of a better term, is called "municipal law." It is natural that those whose business it is to construe laws, and whose pro- fession it is to know what existing law is, should be called upon in the framing of new laws, to act an important part. It was natural that the framers of the Constitution, which was to be the fundamental law of the land, and to embody the limitations upon the central government, deemed necessary in favor of the separate states, should be those who knew the laws of the separate states and who had the professional capacity of drafting written laws. The creative function of the lawyer, as distinguished from his ana- lytical function, is to put in written and legal form the intention of the person or persons which he wishes to make effective; if it be that of a people, through the legislature, then in the form of a statute; if it be that of an agreement of individuals, then in the form of a written contract ; if it be the desire of the executive, then in the form of an executive order. He must analyze the purposes of those for whom he acts, and then be the careful draftsman of the instrument which shall correctly and truly embody that pur- pose. Thus it has been that in all conventions, in all legislatures, in the great majority of public offices, we find the lawyers to have been selected to carry on governmental work, and this has not been alone due to their knowledge of the law and their training in the drafting and forming of legal expression of the public will; but also in the fact that the necessities of their profession require them constantly to practice the temporary acquisition of technical knowledge of all other professions and all other businesses in order that they may properly present in forensic controversies the issues involved, or in negotiations involving technical matters may be sufficiently advised of the general principles of other professions and business to enable them correctly to interpret and embody the result of the negotiation in language that shall express the meaning of the parties. To put it in a different way, the business of the lawyer is not only to fight lawsuits, but it is to tell the people who desire to accomplish certain results how such results can legally be accomplished, and by writing and instruction to bring 64 ENGLISH COMPOSITION about such results under the forms of law. This is executive. In other words, this executive faculty is a very marked necessity in the successful practice of the modern lawyer. With him the power of initiation and of devising the methods of accomplishment are frequently the secret of his professional success. Of course a great advocate is a great lawyer. In the presentation of the case of the controversy to court, there is called out his power of lucid statement, of analysis, and of forcible presentation of the arguments iii favor of his client; and the great judge is ordinarily the great analyst who with common sense and the judicial quality has the proper sense of proportion, which enables him to weigh and decide in favor of the better reason. But the lawyer, and especially the modern lawyer, whose business is in organizing corporations and partnerships, in the setting going of enterprises, has the counter- part of these functions to perform, and that is the power of initia- tion, of drawing contracts, and of drafting statutes to effect the purpose, either of his client or the people, as his duty may be. Now I am far from being blind to the defects and weaknesses of the profession of the law, of which I once had the honor to be a member. Lawyers are frequently a conservative class. They adhere to the things that are, simply because they are, and re- luctantly admit the necessity for change. When the business community yields to temptation and goes into practices that have an evil tendency, members of the profession are always found who, for professional compensation, can be induced to promote the success of such business methods ; and the combinations to regulate the output and control of prices of various classes of mer- chandise, and to stifle competition by methods which have had statutory denunciation, and which it has been the purpose of the national administration to restrain, repress, and stamp out, could only have been as powerful and successful as they have been, through the manipulation, acuteness, and creative faculty of members of the legal profession. But on the other hand, when statutory re- forms are to be effected, especially in business methods and by introducing limitations upon the use of private property, so as to stamp out the evil involved in combinations of capital, and at the same time not destroy that enormous benefit inuring to the public and insuring commercial progress of such combinations, the work EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 65 of drafting the statutes and enforcing them, so as to secure higher and better business methods without impairing the means of busi- ness progress, must ultimately fall to the members of the legal profession. It is members of that profession of the Supreme Court who are to determine whether such limitations are within the con- stitutional power of Congress. It is the members of the legal pro- fession on the trial Courts and the Supreme Courts that are to construe the statutes and enforce the ultimate penalties for their violation. It must be, not wholly, but chiefly, members of the legal profession that shall draft the amendments to the federal and state statutes which shall give such organization and efficiency to government machinery on the one hand and such clever defi- nition of the limitations of the combinations of capital on the other, that shall uphold legitimate business progress on the one hand and strike down vicious abuses on the other. Hence it is that to-day, no less than at the foundation of our government, the profession of the law is the most important in its relation to politics and political government. . . . National exigency seems to call forth, as if by aid of a special Providence, the men peculiarly fitted to meet the requirements of the situation. Such were Lincoln and Grant during the great I Civil War. Such in the Revolution was Washington, the anni- ' versary of whose birthday this University appropriately makes its - festal day. He was not a lawyer or a doctor or a minister. He was a surveyor and farmer ; as a student of military science only in the hard school of experience, his profession may be said to have been that of arms. Not brilliant, not facile, not eloquent, he had those qualities which placed him far above the brilliant, facile, able, and learned men who were gathered about him in the struggle for American independence. He was a leader of men. His pure, disinterested patriotism, his freedom from small jealousies, his marvelous common sense, his indomitable perseverance and patience, and his serenity and calm under the most trying circum- stances, gave him the victory a victory which could be traced, not to brilliant genius or professional training, but to that which of all things is the most to be pursued and desired to his high character as a man. 66 ENGLISH COMPOSITION GAMES ' A. C. BENSON It requires almost more courage to write about games nowadays than it does to write about the Decalogue, because the higher criticism is tending to make a belief in the Decalogue a matter of taste, while to the ordinary Englishman a belief in games is a matter of faith and morals. I will begin by saying frankly that I do not like games ; but I say it, not because any particular interest attaches to my own dislikes and likes, but to raise a little flag of revolt against a species of social tyranny. I believe that there are a good many people who do not like games, but who do not dare to say so. Perhaps it may be thought that I am speaking from the point of view of a person who has never been able to play them. A vision rises in the mind of a spectacled owlish man, trotting feebly about a football field, and making desperate attempts to avoid the proximity of the ball ; or joining in a game of cricket, and fielding a drive with the air of a man trying to catch an insect on the ground, or sitting in a boat with the oar fixed under his chin, being forced backwards with an air of smiling and virtuous confusion. I hasten to say that this is not a true picture. I arrived at a reasonable degree of proficiency in several games: I was a competent, though not a zealous, oar; I captained a college football team, and I do not hesitate to say that I have derived more pleasure from football than from any other form of exercise. I have climbed some mountains, and am even a member of the Alpine Club; I may add that I am a keen, though not a skilful, sportsman, and am indeed rather a martyr to exercise and open air. I make these confessions simply to show that I do not approach the subject from the point of view of a sedentary person, but indeed rather the reverse. No weather appears to me to be too bad to go out in, and I do not suppose there are a dozen days in the year in which I do not contrive to get exercise. 1 From From a College Window, by A. C. Benson. Used by the kind per- mission of the publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 67 But exercise in the open air is one thing, and games are quite another. It seems to me that when a man has reached an age of discretion he ought no longer to need the stimulus of competition, the desire to hit or kick balls about, the wish to do such things better than other people. It seems to me that the elaborate or- ganization of athletics is a really rather serious thing, because it makes people unable to get on without some species of excitement. I was staying the other day at a quiet house in the country, where there was nothing particular to do ; there was not, strange to say, even a golf course within reach. There came to stay there for a few days an eminent golfer, who fell into a condition of really pitiable dejection. The idea of taking a walk or riding a bicycle was in- supportable to him; and I think he never left the house except for a rueful stroll in the garden. When I was a schoolmaster it used to distress me to find how invariably the parents of boys dis- coursed with earnestness and solemnity about a boy's games; one was told that a boy was a good field, and really had the makings of an excellent bat; eager inquiries were made as to whether it was possible for the boy to get some professional coaching; in the case of more philosophically inclined parents it generally led on to a statement of the social advantages of being a good cricketer, and often to the expression of a belief that virtue was in some way indissolubly connected with keenness in games. For one parent who said anything about a boy's intellectual in- terests, there were ten whose preoccupation in the boy's athletics was deep and vital. It is no wonder that, with all this parental earnestness, boys tended to consider success in games the one paramount object of their lives; it was all knit up with social ambitions, and it was viewed, I do not hesitate to say, as of infinitely more importance than anything else. I do not mean to say that many of the boys did not consider it important to be good, and did not desire to be conscientious about their work. But as a practical matter games were what they thought about and talked about, and what aroused genuine enthusiasm. They were disposed to despise boys who could not play games, however virtuous, kindly, and sensible they might be; an entire lack of conscientiousness, and even grave moral obliquity, were apt to be condoned in the case of a successful 68 EXCLISH COMPOSITION athlete. We masters, I must frankly confess, did not make any serious attempt to fight the tendency. We spent our spare time in walking about the cricket and football fields, in looking on, in discussing the fine nuances in the style of individual players. It was very natural to take an interest in the thing which was to the boys a matter of profound concern ; but what I should be inclined to censure was that it was really a matter of profound concern with ourselves; and we did not take a kindly and paternal interest in the matter, so much as the interest of enthusiasts and partisans. It is very difficult to see how to alter this. Probably, like other deep-seated national tendencies, it will have to cure itself. It would be impossible to insist that the educators of youth should suppress the interest which they instinctively and genuinely feel in games, and profess an interest in intellectual matters which they do not really feel. No good would come out of practising hypocrisy in the matter, from however high a motive. While schoolmasters rush off to golf whenever they get a chance, and fill their holidays to the brim with games of various kinds, it would be simply hypocritical to attempt to conceal the truth ; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that, while parents and boys alike feel as they do about the essential importance of games, head-masters are more or less bound to select men for masterships who are proficient in them; because, whatever else has to be at- tended to at school, games have to be attended to ; and, moreover, a man whom the boys respect as an athlete is likely to be more effective both as a disciplinarian and a teacher. If a man is a first- rate slow bowler, the boys will consider his views on Thucydides and Euclid more worthy of consideration than the views of a man who has only a high university degree. The other day I was told of the case of a head-master of a small proprietary private school, who was treated with open insolence and contempt by one of his assistants, who neglected his work, smoked in his class-room, and even absented himself on occasion without leave. It may be asked why the head-master did not dismiss his recalcitrant assistant. It was because he had secured a man who was a 'Varsity cricket-blue, and whose presence on the staff gave the parents confidence, and provided an excellent ad- vertisement. The assistant, on the other hand, knew that he EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 69 could get a similar post for the asking, and on the whole preferred a school where he might consult his own convenience. This is, of course, an extreme case ; but would to God, as Dr. Johnson said, that it were an impossible one! I do not wish to tilt against athletics, nor do I at all undervalue the benefits of open air and exercise for growing boys. But surely there is a lamentable want of proportion about the whole view ! The truth is that we English are in many respects barbarians still, and as we happen at the present time to be wealthy barbarians, we devote our time and our energies to the things for which we really care. I do not at all want to see games diminished, or played with less keenness. I only desire to see them duly subordinated. I do not think it ought to be considered slightly eccentric for a boy to care very much about his work, or to take an interest in books. I should like it to be recognized at schools that the one quality that was admirable was keenness, and that it was admirable in whatever department it was displayed; but nowadays keenness about games is con- sidered admirable and heroic, while keenness about work or books is considered slightly groveling and priggish. The same spirit has affected what is called sport. People no longer look upon it as an agreeable interlude, but as a business in itself; they will not accept invitations to shoot, unless the sport is likely to be good ; a moderate performer with the gun is treated as if it were a crime for him to want to shoot at all; then the motoring craze has come in upon the top of the golfing craze ; and all the spare time of people of leisure tends to be filled up with bridge. The difficulty in dealing with the situation is that the thing itself is not only not wrong, but really beneficial; it is better to be occupied than to be idle, and it is hard to preach against a thing which is excellent in moderation and only mis- chievous in excess. Personally I am afraid that I only look upon game's as a pis- aller. I would always rather take a walk than play golf, and read a book than play bridge. Bridge, indeed, I should regard as only one degree better than absolutely vacuous conversation, which is certainly the most fatiguing thing in the world. But the odd thing is that while it is regarded as rather vicious to do nothing, it is regarded as positively virtuous to play a game. Personally I 70 ENGLISH COMPOSITION think competition always a more or less disagreeable thing. I dislike it in real life, and I do not see why it should be introduced into one's amusements. If it amuses me to do a thing, I do not very much care whether I do it better than another person. I have no desire to be always comparing my skill with the skill of others. Then, too, I am afraid that I must confess to a lamentably feeble pleasure in mere country sights and sounds. I love to watch the curious and beautiful things that go on in every hedge- row and every field ; it is a ceaseless delight to see the tender un- crumpling leaves of the copse in spring, and no less a pleasure to see the woodland streaked and stained with the flaming glories of autumn. It is a joy in high midsummer to see the clear dwindled stream run under the thick hazels, among the rich water-plants; it is no less a joy to see the same stream running full and turbid in winter, when the banks are bare, and the trees are leafless, and the pasture is wrinkled with frost. Half the joy, for instance, of shooting, in which I frankly confess I take a childish delight, is the quiet tramping over the clean-cut stubble, the distant view of field and wood, the long, quiet wait at the covert-end, where the spindle-wood hangs out her quaint rosy berries, and the rabbits come scampering up the copse, as the far-off tapping of the beaters draws near in the frosty air. The delights of the country-side grow upon me every month and every year. I love to stroll in the lanes in spring, with white clouds floating in the blue above, and to see the glade carpeted with steel-blue hyacinths. I love to walk on country roads or by woodland paths, on a rain-drenched day of summer, when the sky is full of heavy inky clouds, and the earth smells fresh and sweet; I love to go briskly homeward on a winter evening, when the sunset smolders low in the west, when the pheasants leap trumpeting to their roosts, and the lights begin to peep in cottage windows. Such joys as these are within the reach of every one; and to call the country dull because one has not the opportunity of hitting and pursuing a little white ball round and round among the same fields, with elaborately contrived obstacles to test the skill and the temper, seems to me to be grotesque, if it were not also so distressing. I cannot help feeling that games are things that are appropriate EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 71 to the restless days of boyhood, when one will take infinite trouble and toil over anything of the nature of a make-believe, so long as it is understood not to be work ; but as one gets older and perhaps wiser, a simpler and quieter range of interests ought to take their place. I can humbly answer for it that it need imply no loss of zest; my own power of enjoyment is far deeper and stronger than it was in early years ; the pleasures I have described, of sight and sound, mean infinitely more to me than the definite occupations of boyhood ever did. But the danger is that if we are brought up ourselves to depend upon games, and if we bring up all our boys to depend on them, we are not able to do without them as we grow older; and thus we so often have the melancholy spectacle of the elderly man, who is hopelessly bored with existence, and who is the terror of the smoking-room and the dinner-table, because he is only capable of indulging in lengthy reminiscences of his own astonishing athletic performances, and in lamentations over the degeneracy of the human race. Another remarkable fact about the conventionality that attends games is that certain games are dismissed as childish and con- temptible, while others are crowned with glory and worship. One knows of eminent clergymen who play golf; and that they should do so seems to constitute so high a title to the respect and regard with which normal persons view them, that one sometimes wonders whether they do not take up the practice with the wisdom of the serpent that is recommended in the gospels, or because of the Pauline doctrine of adaptability, that by all means they may save some. But as far as mere air and exercise go, the childish game of playing at horses is admirably calculated to increase health and vigor and needs no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon drawn in to repress the curveting of the gaitered steed ? There is nothing in reality more undignified about that than in hitting a little ball about over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice trundled hoops round and round after breakfast in the graveled space behind the Horse Guards, who could allege that they would not be the 7 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION better for the exercise? Yet they would be held for some myste- rious reason to have forfeited respect. To the mind of the philoso- pher all games are either silly or reasonable; and nothing so reveals the stupid conventionality of the ordinary mind as the fact that men consider a series of handbooks on Great Bowlers to be a serious and important addition to literature, while they would hold that a little manual on Blind-man's Buff was a fit subject for derision. St. Paul said that when he became a man he put away childish things. He could hardly afford to say that now, if he hoped to be regarded as a man of sense and weight. I do not wish to be a mere Jeremiah in the region of prophecy, and to deplore, sarcastically and incisively, what I cannot amend. What I rather wish to do is to make a plea for greater simplicity in the matter, and to try and destroy some of the terrible priggish- ness in the matter of athletics which appears to me to prevail. After all, athletics are only one form of leisurely amusement; and I maintain that it is of the essence of priggishness to import solemnity into a matter which does not need it, and which would be better without it. Because the tyranny is a real one; the man of many games is not content with simply enjoying them ; he has a sense of complacent superiority, and a hardly disguised contempt for the people who do not play them. I was staying in a house the other day where a distinguished philosopher had driven over to pay an afternoon call. The call concluded, he wished to make a start, so I went down to the stable with him to see about putting his pony in. The stables were deserted. I was forced to confess that I knew nothing about the harnessing of steeds, however humble. We discovered portions of what appeared to be the equipment of a pony, and I held them for him, while he gingerly tried them on, applying them cautiously to various portions of the innocent animal's person. Eventually we had to give it up as a bad job, and seek for professional as- sistance. I described the scene for the benefit of a lively lady of my acquaintance, who is a devotee of anything connected with horses, and she laughed unmercifully at the description, and ex- pressed the contempt which she sincerely felt in no measured terms. But, after all, it is no part of my business to harness horses; it is a convenience that there should be persons who possess the EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 73 requisite knowledge; for me horses only represent a convenient form of locomotion. I did not mind her being amused indeed, that was the object of my narrative but her contempt was just as much misplaced as if I had despised her for not being able to tell the difference between sapphics and alcaics, which it was my business to know. It is the complacency, the self-satisfaction, that results from the worship of games, which is one of its most serious features. I wish with all my heart that I could suggest a remedy for it; but the only thing that I can do is to pursue my own inclinations, with a fervent conviction that they are at least as innocent as the pursuit of athletic exercises; and I can also, as I have said, wave a little flag of revolt, and rally to my standard the quieter and more simple-minded persons, who love their liberty, and decline to part with it unless they can find a better reason than the merely com- fortable desire to do what every one else is doing. Emphasis, as you can see, is very important, and in theory very simple. Why is it, then, that most young writers violate it? The answer can be found in one sentence : They do not plan out their work beforehand. A boy sits down to write and begins with any part of his subject which happens to occur to him first. He writes a paragraph on this and then a second paragraph on the next topic which happens to come into his head. Naturally he will remember the most important points first, and not think of the lesser ones at all until these have been disposed of. As a result, his most important paragraph, which should have been at the end, will come at or near the beginning; and the end of his theme, which should have been the climax of the whole, will be made up of a series of stringy little afterthoughts, each of them crying piteously from its page, "Our ideas are running out; haven't we reached the four-hundred-word limit yet?" The only cure for this state of affairs is to have the writer draw up a careful outline of his whole essay before he pens a word. He should jot down all his headings, decide which are the most important, arrange these in the important positions as far as possible, and estimate roughly about how many words each one is worth. Then he can begin to write, and ought to produce a good, emphatic theme. 74 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Just a word may be needed here in regard to summaries. Elaborate summaries at the end are very useful in long compo- sitions of three or four thousand words; but in short themes of five hundred words or less they are not needed and should not be used. The whole value of a summary lies in the fact that it refreshes the reader's mind on things which you had told him but which he is beginning to forget. If you have talked to him through four thousand words, he is beginning to forget a good deal and needs a summary to remind him. If, on the contrary, you have given him only four hundred words, he is certainly able to remember that much without help; and in that case there is no more sense in summing up for him what he already remembers than there would be in telling him his own name. On the other hand, although you may not need an elaborate summary, every theme, even a short one, should have a proper ending. You should make your reader feel that you are finishing, and should not drop your subject abruptly in the middle of your last point like a hot iron. A good closing sentence at the end of your last point, referring back to your whole theme in some of its words and stating very briefly your final conclusion, this, or something like this, is usually best for a short composition. You should also be very careful not to suggest at the end any new points which you do not develop. For instance, in a theme on the advantages of a large college, one man makes his last para- graph a discussion of the wide knowledge of men gained there. This, of course, is correct. But in the last sentence of this para- graph he expresses two ideas, both printed here in italics, which had not been mentioned before in the whole theme : Then, besides this knowledge of men, the large colleges offer us better libraries and finer laboratories. Such new ideas should never be tagged on at the end in a few words like this. If they are important they deserve a large para- graph each; if they are not, they should be put in the middle of the theme. As they stand now, they make the reader feel that you have suggested something which you have not explained; consequently he cannot feel that your theme is finished. It EMPHASIS IN THE WHOLE COMPOSITION 75 sounds almost as if it were "to be continued in our next." A good way of ending the whole theme would be to finish this last para- graph about wider knowledge of men with a sentence like the following : In my mind, this wide knowledge of life, combined with the other advantages which I have mentioned, makes the large college preferable to the small one. Here ends our chapter on Emphasis and also our discussion of the composition as a whole. There are many things yet to be said about the details of the paragraph and sentence; but, for the present, if a man has observed Unity by sticking to his sub- ject and showing his reader that he is sticking to it; if he has obeyed the law of Coherence by having a clear order and pointing out his whereabouts at every turn; and if he has made his most important paragraphs emphatic by length or position, or better still by both, then he has done his duty by the theme as a whole, and may conclude as one of my brightest men once con- cluded : "Ye end, praise ye Lord!" CHAPTER V THE PARAGRAPH THERE are two kinds of paragraphs: one is a subdivision of the whole composition ; the other incloses an idea which is whole and complete in itself, and which does not need to be linked to other ideas in order to serve a useful purpose. But there is no real difference of internal structure between the two, and the writer who learns how to develop fitly an independent paragraph needs only to understand the use of transitional sentences in order to make such a paragraph dependent upon others, and part of a composition. In some measure because of this double usefulness, but in greater measure because it consists of a single thought developed as far as need be, the paragraph isthe most important unit of writing. We think very largely by topics, that is, by undeveloped" paragraphs, or at least we should think in that fashion ; and, when we come to write, the paragraph is our unit of composition much as the dollar in this country is our unit in finance. The dollar may be divided into cents or compounded with other dollars into eagles or double eagles; the paragraph may be divided into sen- tences or compounded with other paragraphs into essays or argu- ments, but each keeps its identity as a unit nevertheless. The paragraph is a unit because it consists of a single thought developed as far as need be for complete clearness. To be a paragraph -thought the topic we are preparing to write on must be single, for otherwise it will split into subdivisions, each of which must be developed separately, and so reveal itself as a composition- thought. Again, it must be susceptible of development, for if not we have only a sentence-thought, which is expressed as fully as need be in a sentence. " An ambitious boy should go to college," is a composition-thought. How could this proposition be developed, 76 THE PARAGRAPH 77 except by a series of topics each one of which would require a paragraph? "If you do not hurry you will miss the train," is a sentence-thought. It would be difficult to expend effectively more words upon it. "Abraham Lincoln was a master of clear exposition," is a paragraph-thought. It might conceivably be expanded into several topics. It conveys some meaning as it stands; but it could be made to give over its thought most effi- ciently within the bounds of a fully developed paragraph. The dollar is denned by a certain weight of silver which it always contains. The paragraph is denned by the thought which it expresses, a thought neither too small for expansion, nor too large to be handled without a further subdivision. When it comes to the actual writing of the paragraph, the first problem, naturally, is how best to develop the topic which is, in undeveloped form, your paragraph-thought. The process ranges all the way from very difficult to very easy ; but the explanation of the process must necessarily be a little complicated, for it must cover all varieties of possible development in order to be valuable. There are two successive steps in this discussion of how to expand one's topic : the first simple, the second complex. 1. Your thought must be clear and distinct, and that means, usually, that it must be put into a sentence. For example, if the thought to be developed concerns the honor system in college examinations, it might be phrased as follows: "The best honor system depends upon the honor of the individual." This sentence makes the thought concrete ; crystallizes it so that one can think clearly about it. But though the topic as so phrased can be under- stood, it can by no means be completely comprehended; the thought must be developed. It must be made to bring forth its full meaning; it must be expanded until its significance is entirely revealed. This is the next step, unless, indeed, this topic is but one of a series, which, in completed form, will constitute the skeleton, as it were, of an argument or a lengthy exposition. Then one would proceed with the formation of topic-sentences until a com- plete paragraph outline results, each item of which is the nucleus of a future paragraph. 2. Let us suppose that the topic is to be linked to no other, and so proceed immediately to the task of development. How yg ENGLISH COMPOSITION this is to be done will depend upon a number of variable factors, such as the opinions of the writer, his information, or his purpose in writing the paragraph. No two men would develop a topic by precisely the same materials. But all men would have to choose between a limited number of methods of development. The sim- plest, if we choose the topic-sentence given in the last paragraph, might result somewhat as follows : The best honor system depends upon the honor of the individual. The man who has promised not to cheat will feel that he has been forced into doing right. If he breaks his word, detection must rest with his classmates, who do not desire to perform police service; and if he is not detected, the efficiency of the examination will suffer. On the other hand, if the instructor depends upon the unpledged honor of his classes, he will seldom be disappointed. Furthermore, if there are dishonorable men in the examination, he retains the power to punish them. In this simple form of paragraph the subject is stated in the first sentence, then details are added which enlarge upon it and make plain its meaning. For many purposes this would be sufficient. But suppose the author should be writing for some one who did not understand the phrase "honor system" as we use it in our colleges. In such a case, an explanatory sentence would have to be added after the topic has been stated. And suppose this reader should wish to know how the writer would apply his theories about college ex- aminations. Then, evidently, some sentence which would make use of the sentiments expressed in the paragraph should con- clude it. With these alterations the paragraph might read in this manner : The best honor system depends upon the honor of the individual. I mean by honor system any method which will induce the undergrad- uate to look upon dishonesty in the class room as he looks upon dis- honesty in life. The man who has promised not to cheat will feel that he has been forced into doing right. If he breaks his word, detection must rest with his classmates, who do not desire to perform police service; and if he is not detected, the efficiency of the exami- nation will suffer. On the other hand, if the instructor depends upon the unpledged honor of his classes, he will seldom be disappointed. THE PARAGRAPH 79 Furthermore, if there are dishonorable men in his examination, he re- tains the power to punish them. Personally, I believe that the present system, whereby one promises to be honest, should be given up. It is possible to plot this paragraph somewhat as follows : 1. The subject stated (ist sentence). 2. The subject defined by means of an explanation (2d sentence). 3. The subject established by details (3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th sentences). 4. The subject applied by enforcing it : that is, by bringing home the general statement, an enforced honor system is bad, to a particular instance, the present system (yth sentence). But these are only a few of the many ways in which this topic can be developed under the pressure of various purposes. For example, suppose argument were necessary in order to prove that the honor of the individual was most active when most free. If this should be the case, logical proof would have to be put into the paragraph, and this proof might be either added to the details already given, or substituted for them. One might add after sentence four in the paragraph just above: "No student can give his examination paper the attention it requires and at the same time watch his neighbor. Therefore, if his neighbor happens to be slippery, and wishes to use a crib, he can do so successfully, with this result, that the examination is no longer a fair one for the men who must depend upon legitimate sources of information in order to pass." Or again, the writer of the paragraph may not wish to enforce the general principle it explains. He may not wish to apply it, in this way, to his own college. Delicacy may suggest that it would be well to let his readers draw their own conclusions, in which case he will merely state the result of the establishment of his topic: "No artificial honor system can succeed." It would be difficult to illustrate all the possible ways of developing a paragraph topic by means of this one example, because some of these methods would be valueless here, and others would be superfluous. We must take fresh examples, this time in the form of whole paragraphs where the topic has been developed as in each case its nature and the purpose of the author go ENGLISH COMPOSITION required. But first, in order to understand these various methods of development, consider carefully this scheme, which is an attempt to cover all possible means of expanding a topic-sentence into a paragraph. It is borrowed, with some changes in phrasing, from the Practical Rhetoric of Professor Genung. 1. The subject proposed (stated in a topic-sentence usually). 2. Whatever is needed to explain the subject. (a) Definition (limitation, restriction, or enlargement). (b) Repetition. (c) Presenting the contrary. 3. Whatever is needed to establish the subject. (a) Elaboration by examples or details. (b) Illustration by comparison. (c) Logical proof. 4. Whatever is needed to apply the subject. (a) Result or consequence. (b) Enforcement. (c) Summary or recapitulation. This outline is valuable much as a number of mathematical formulas might be valuable in working out an engineering problem. Like them, it may serve to show all the possible resources, in order that the most efficient may be employed. In practice, an engineer of experience would seldom have to consider more than one or two methods, the others remaining, as it were, dormant in his mind. In practice, too, an experienced writer would instinctively choose the best method for developing his paragraph, but one must know them all in order to make that choice. In the paragraph developed above, the commonest resources of the writer were exemplified. Some explanation is necessary in order to make the others clear. The numbering of the following paragraphs corresponds with that of the scheme of development just given. 1. (The subject proposed.) The various means and places for stating the subject of the paragraph will be discussed later. It is usually embodied in the first sentence. 2. (Whatever is needed to explain the subject.) It is not always necessary to explain the subject, therefore 2 is often omitted. An instance where definition (2 a) was required has been given in THE PARAGRAPH 8 1 the paragraph on the honor system. Repetition (2 b) is sometimes advisable in order that the full force of the topic-sentence shall be certain to reach the reader. "The college world is like the world outside. Life without the campus gates is reflected by life within them." This paragraph opening does not move ahead; the second sentence merely repeats and makes clearer the thought of the first. It would also have been possible to explain this thought by the third method, presenting the contrary (2 c) : "The college world is like the world outside. Life in the college is in no fundamental particular different from life in the town." This last means is not commonly employed. Again there is no moving ahead, but merely a greater emphasizing of the subject by stating what is not true about it. 3. (Whatever is needed to establish the subject.) Your para- graph remains a statement until it is established, and so this division of paragraph development is the most important of all. In nine cases out 8f ten you will wish to elaborate the subject in the form of an exposition. To do this you may give specific instances (3 a), as, for example, in the following: "Sometimes examinations are valueless as a test of ability. Last year Smith failed in mathematics because he had a headache. This winter Jones passed his English by sheer luck," etc. Or you may add the details which may serve to make clear your topic (3 a) : "An Oriental rug owes its beauty, in part, to an irregularity in figure combined with a harmony of pattern. A diamond at one end will balance a star at the other. Two medallions of different design will occupy corresponding positions in the field," etc. Often you may apply a different and a very effective method, for you may help to establish and make clear your topic by an illustration drawn from another field. This will differ from ex- emplification for it will be not a specific instance of the case in hand, as in the part-paragraph about examinations above, but a parallel development borrowed for the occasion: " A steam engine works by means of the pressure of steam upon its piston. It is like a pump reversed." Or, "Municipal government will improve only when the best men enter politics. It takes skilled labor to produce a good machine." The figure of speech called a simile is often to be used for illustration by comparison, with good effect. g 2 EXCLISH COMPOSITION Finally, if the paragraph is argumentative, logical proof (3 c) is frequently to be added to, or substituted for, exposition. Of this an example has been given in the paragraph on the honor system ; but for further explanation of what constitutes proof the reader should consult the chapters upon argument. 4. (Whatever is needed to apply the subject.) Some paragraphs need no conclusion. Others lose their force if they are ended as soon as the proposition has been established. Suppose some application needs to be made in order to get the best development of your thought. Usually it will be no more than some obvious result (4 a) which needs to be phrased in order to round off the paragraph. You have been writing of the inefficiency of examina- tions as above. The result of it all is that: "The teacher who relies too much upon examinations makes a great mistake," and with that sentence you conclude your paragraph. Or, more rarely, you have been discussing some general principle, such as the one which in your judgment should govern the choice of a dog, and wish to enforce (46) your conclusion: "The man who buys a cocker spaniel because the legs are short and the nose is square, regardless of the dog's temperament, may purchase a show dog, but he will seldom get a companion." In this case you had estab- lished the principle, and, in this sentence, you put it to words, apply it to a concrete instance, that is, enforce it. Another in- stance of enforcement is to be found above in the paragraph on the honor system. Finally, a paragraph may be so complicated or so long that it may need at the end a recapitulation of its important points in order that the reader may gather them all into his mind. It is not necessary to give an example of a sum- mary. It should not be necessary to add that in a paragraph it should always be short. All this is much simpler in the explanation and examples given above than in actual practice. For, in the first place, the para- graph is a very flexible instrument ; and, in using it for all the varied purposes of communication by writing, men combine and re- combine its various methods of development in every imaginable fashion. The order of our scheme is often and rightly departed from, definition following establishment, or statement of topic succeeding proof. Again, the relation of a paragraph to other THE PARAGRAPH 83 paragraphs in the exposition of which it is a part may often affect its development, since one portion of that development may be taken from its normal position, and placed elsewhere, in order to show more clearly a connection with what has gone before, or is to follow after. Finally, the paragraph is not only the most important unit of composition; it is usually the last to be com- pletely mastered. Consequently, you will find many paragraphs which are confused in their development, or, still more commonly, are not developed in the best possible manner. The purpose of this chapter is in no sense to impose a rigid and artificial paragraph structure upon the writer ; it is rather to explain to him the nature of the available means for building up a paragraph ; so that by experiment, and by the study of models, he can learn to give to each thought which he wishes to develop the treatment that it deserves. But before we leave the subject of paragraph development consider two specimens of good paragraphs taken from standard writing, and observe the results of an analysis of their structure. The first, which is from Macaulay, is, like most of his paragraphs, very regular in form. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of "the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they were, as a body, unpopular ; they could not defend themselves ; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair g 4 EXGLISH COMPOSITION game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule, which has already misled so many excellent writers. Plotted, the development here is easily seen to be i, 3 a, 4 a : that is, the subject stated in a topic-sentence; the details which serve to elaborate it added ; and some application made by means of a result which follows from the circumstances given in the body of the paragraph. The first sentence states the topic; the 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th establish it by details; and the gth and loth give the result. But this is a very regular paragraph. Macaulay often varies the order of his development. He sometimes begins with a topic- sentence which refers back and has no place in the thought structure of the paragraph which it opens, although this practice is much more common in less monotonously regular writers. An example is the following: "An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless loquacity." Here the first sentence is merely transitional, the second contains the topic. But let us choose an example of paragraph flexibility from a less formal writer. Here is an instance from A. C. Benson: I wish very much that there was a really good literary paper, with an editor of catholic tastes, and half-a-dozen stimulating specialists on the staff, whose duty would be to read the books that came out, each in his own line, write reviews of appreciation and not of contemptuous fault-finding, let feeble books alone, and make it their business to tell ordinary people what to read, not saving them the trouble of reading the books that are worth read- ing, but sparing them the task of glancing at a good many books that are not worth reading. Literary papers, as a rule, either review a book with hopeless rapidity, or tend to lag behind too much. It would be of the essence of such a paper as I have described, that there should be no delay about telling one what to look out for, and at the same time that the reviews should be deliberate and careful. THE PARAGRAPH 85 This paragraph is informal, it is not carefully constructed; and yet it reads well, and gives the conversational effect which the writer desired. In truth, paragraph structure cannot be dealt with as you would deal with mathematical formulas. The topic of this paragraph is, roughly: "There should be a good literary paper." The rest of the material gives details in support of this contention and particulars which elaborate Mr. Benson's conception of what a good literary paper should be. It would be easy to rewrite the paragraph with a short topic-sentence containing the paragraph-thought, and a series of following sentences developing this thought by the methods which we have called elaboration by examples or details. We could thus make the form exhibit more clearly the thought development, i, 3 a, which underlies the original. Would the paragraph be improved ? If one desired a plain state- ment of the crude facts, yes. But Mr. Benson desired a pleasing statement, one which, by means of its informality, would be more effective than a crude blurting out of the truth about literary papers. For his purposes, the free and easy paragraph was better; for Macaulay's, the sharply denned thought development was better. A logical development of thought underlay both paragraphs had to underlie them, for otherwise neither the formal nor the informal specimen would have been effective ; but the manner of using this structure varied with the purpose of the writer. You will have abundant opportunities to test these truths for yourself. Many paragraphs, when you try to analyze them, will seem to be utterly irregular in their structure. Oftentimes this will be because they are slap-dash and ineffective; oftentimes because the writer is sure of his thought development and does not need to make the structure of his paragraph regular in order that his reader should be sure of it also. Yet you should carefully heed one item of advice. You must be sure of the soundness of your thought structure before you can seem to disregard it in the interest of variety and freedom. To be utterly free is to have no freedom at all, as historians have long taught. Learn to write with the obvious clarity of Macaulay before you pull up anchor and seem, only seem, to free yourself from the restraint of careful and logical thought. The soldier must learn the drill code with scrupulous accuracy before he can move without confusion in free formation. 86 ENGLISH COMPOSITION The orator must know exactly the points he wishes to bring out, before he dares speak with apparent informality. In all intellectual work, successful ease and freedom come after, not before, a rigorous mental discipline. Therefore, begin with paragraphs whose logical development is obvious because they follow the most logical development, topic stated, topic defined, topic es- tablished, topic applied, even if they do not employ all of these stages. Wait for a freer arrangement until you are sure that you can control it. A number of paragraphs quoted from works of various natures follow. 1 They illustrate all these various methods of paragraph development, though, naturally, no one specimen exemplifies every method. Each paragraph should be analyzed for its thought structure, for in no other way can the student learn how natural, how effective, and how infinitely flexible is the system which the mind of man has worked out in order to expand in every valuable way his nucleus of thought. To repeat, the strictly logical methods which all good paragraphs follow bind no one, though in learning them a novice is sure to feel awkward and constrained. It is much as with skating: we can all slide over the ice, as we can all get through some rough and inefficient form of paragraph; but to skate we must first submit to what seems an unnatural and wholly artificial movement of the body and limbs. In paragraph writing first learn what can be done ; then see how it is done ; next practice the simpler forms ; then experiment with the more com- plex, taking care not to be discouraged because your results are stiff and awkward. Finally, you may hope to master your in- strument and return to a more natural form of writing with double or triple the power for clear and forcible expression. Until you can develop a paragraph topic effectively, it is useless to consider any other problem of the paragraph except those re- garding its nature as a unit of expression. But this important process well on the way towards mastery, a final consideration in paragraph structure should come up for discussion. The whole paragraph is merely a development of a single thought or topic. In the simplest, in the commonest, form of paragraph this topic is put in a sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. It is placed 1 Pages 90-110. THE PARAGRAPH 87 there as the expression (x+y)* is placed at the head of an algebraic operation of which the completion is the expanded form. The advantages of this method are obvious. You name your paragraph, as it were; you give it a title which indicates the service it is to perform in your article; you state at the beginning what it is which you intend to do. This is Type I, and it is Type I which should be used until the writer feels that topic development is his servant and not his master. Type II, with topic-sentence at both beginning and end, is com- paratively unimportant. It is merely a modification of Type I, to be used in certain particular instances when especial emphasis of the topic is desired. For such a purpose, one need not rest with a clear statement at the beginning of the paragraph. One can reiterate the same statement at the end in words substantially identical, and thus make certain that the sleepiest reader or the most inattentive hearer has caught the gist of one's thought. You begin: "Foreign trade requires a strong navy," and you may end with a summary (4^) : "A strong navy is indispensable for a good foreign trade." Type III, with the topic -sentence at the end, is very important, but it is by no means common. Sometimes your topic would be unintelligible if stated before its explanation. "The ion may displace the molecule in chemical formulas," to one who knew only the old-fashioned chemistry would be unintelligible until the nature of the ion had been explained. Evidently, in a para- graph with this as a topic, a certain amount of exposition would have to precede the topic -sentence. Or again, an argument might be in question in which the conclusion could not be safely stated until convincing proofs had been adduced. Or, in subjects not properly argumentative, it may be desirable to keep the point until the last. In all of these contingencies the end and not the beginning of the paragraph is the place for the topic-sentence, and thus for i, the statement of the topic, and it is this arrangement which makes Type III. Type III should not be used unless there is good reason. It is seldom so clear, at least in simple exposition, as Type I, but in the proper place it is invaluable. Finally we come to Type IV. Sometimes it is impossible to put the subject of the paragraph into a single sentence. If this gg ENGLISH COMPOSITION seems to be the case in an expository paragraph, suspect a haziness of thought or a lack of unity which should be corrected. It is seldom that the average writer will need to express a thought so subtle or so delicate that it cannot be crystallized into a sentence and must be implied by means of a whole paragraph. But in narrative and description the matter is quite otherwise. There, the paragraph structure is a very loose one, which can seldom be plotted according to the scheme given above. The develop- ment, at best, is by a chronological association of incidents, or by an assemblage of details held together by their services in building up a general impression. It is nearly always impossible, in such cases, to put the subject of the paragraph into a single sentence, because this subject is not a topic to be expanded so much as an effect or result of the whole. The narrative and descriptive paragraph must have unity, of course; but this unity is of con- ception, and must be implied by a unity of effect ; it can seldom be expressed in a single sentence. When the thought of a paragraph can be implied better than it can be stated, then and at no other time should one use the paragraph without a topic-sentence which is called Type IV. It should be clear by now that it was impracticable at the begin- ning of this discussion to take up the paragraph according to the usual subdivisions of Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis ; for the chief problem, and the first one to be considered, is to develop properly the topic. Yet, of course, Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis apply here as in all problems of thought, the difference being merely that their application is along lines which differ from those which we have followed in our discussion of the whole composition. If the paragraph can be summed up in a single sentence, of which it is a true development, it has unity. The living cell splits at certain periods of its growth into two. So with a paragraph. If the thought shows signs of division, shows that it is not a single paragraph-thought, split it ; make two paragraphs instead of one, and so be assured of unity. Conversely, two paragraphs may show signs of affinity, may conveniently blend, and, like two drops of mercury, join into one. This means that your ptfragraph- thought was split, that it was only a half -thought. Blend it with another, and so assure a complete unity. THE PARAGRAPH 89 For example, suppose the paragraph on the honor system had been merged with a discussion of the effect upon the faculty of a defective honor system. The cell would have grown too large. It would split, if the writer knew his business, and the new material be added as a new paragraph. Or suppose the remarks upon the police service required of the student body and the results if they failed to perform it had been put into separate paragraphs. The two half topics would show affinity. Unless the writer had a great deal to say about each, they should draw together and be combined. As for Coherence, if the paragraph is properly developed it will be coherent; but, just as with the whole composition, this coher- ence must be shown. There must be guideposts even within the paragraph. In the whole composition, transitional sentences and transitional paragraphs performed this service. Within the paragraph, it is the word and the phrase upon which we must de- pend. The invaluable " however," " but," "also," " nevertheless," "furthermore," "finally," the no less useful "of course," "on the contrary," "but to repeat," "on the other hand," "to return," are the signs which point the way through the thought develop- ment of the paragraph. In order to make clear the coherence of this development, they must be used freely ; in order to avoid monotony they must be incessantly varied. One should have a bagful always ready to be drawn upon, and one should know when to put his hand in the bag and what to draw forth. There is no rule except that the connective used must justify its use by the assistance it gives to the advance of the thought. 1 Emphasis in a paragraph depends naturally somewhat upon proportion. You must develop most extensively that part of your thought which seems to be most important. But it depends even more extensively upon the proper placing of your topic-sentence : at the beginning, if the topic can be most effectively placed there, in which case your concluding sentence should be one which forcibly applies your subject, or strongly exemplifies, illustrates, or proves it; at the end, if the paragraph should be of that type. Type II, with a topic-sentence at both the beginning and the end, is a very emphatic variety, although a rather artificial one, for in it the emphasis by position of the topic is assured. Type IV, 1 See Appendix I for a list of these connectives. go ENGLISH COMPOSITION where the topic is implied, not stated in a sentence, must be given the emphasis of position by placing the more important incidents, details, or circumstances at the beginning and end. And last, a concluding word of caution and advice. Analyze for type, and for thought development, as many paragraphs in literature, current or classical, as time will permit. Write para- graphs of as many varieties, both as to type and as to thought development, as your time will permit; and neither underestimate the extreme difficulty of attaining a complete mastery, nor neglect the great advantage of even a slight increase in proficiency. And above all, as soon as you have attained a reasonable proficiency, vary your study of structure with periods of free writing, when you may apply creatively all you have learned by analysis, and develop an interesting thought by the methods best adapted to make that thought useful to the reader for whom you write. Learn all the resources of the good writer, but do not be content with the learning, which if you stop there, is valueless. Put them in practice; use them; make them do good work. This extraordinary transformation from the fixed habit of thirty years, to which we can find no parallel in history, declares two facts. One is the remarkable character of the man who has shown himself sufficient for these things. Abdul Hamid has often been, and we believe justly, credited with exceptional shrewdness and information as a statesman and a sovereign, and we must now add thereto unsurpassed power of adaptation and resolution as a man. The other thing is the sincere and thorough character of the rev- olution itself. A revolution with the Sultan still behind barred doors at Yildiz might or might not have been maintained. A revolution with the Sultan at its head and with the Sultan himself thus completely revolutionized is assuredly meant to be and will be permanent. 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 conventipnal occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them THE PARAGRAPH 91 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 speak- ing 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 sup- pose 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 of 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 empty, and my gentleman sits bolt up- right upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life. STEVENSON. Practically all of the Southern railways employ both black and white firemen. This has been a practice of years' standing. There may be one or two exceptions to the general rule. Never until the present instance has the custom caused the slightest dissatisfaction or disturbance. It is not possible to say how many negroes are employed as firemen, and how many white men, or what proportion of the total of firemen on Southern railroad lines Q2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION are negroes, and what proportion are whites. There is no central point of inquiry where such information may be obtained. Of course, each of the carriers knows how many negro firemen it employs, and how many white firemen, but, under present con- ditions, they are not inclined to make that information public. We were now standing at a great altitude between two bays: the wilderness of waters before us. Of all the ten thousand barks which annually plow those seas in sight of that old cape, not one was to be descried. It was a blue shiny waste, broken by no object save the black head of a spermaceti whale, which would occasionally show itself on the top, casting up thin jets of brine. The principal bay, that of Finisterra, as far as the entrance, was beautifully variegated by an immense shoal of sardinhas, on whose extreme skirts the monster was probably feasting. From the north- ern side of the cape we looked down upon a smaller bay, the shore of which was overhung by rocks of various and grotesque shapes; this is called the outer bay, or, in the language of the country, Prai do mar defora : a fearful place in seasons of wind and tempests, when the long swell of the Atlantic pouring in, is broken into surf and foam by the sunken rocks with which it abounds. Even in the calmest day there is a rumbling and a hollow roar in that bay which fill the heart with uneasy sensations. BORROW. The world, this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his dis- course. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in THE PARAGRAPH 93 eloquence and wisdom . The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power. EMERSON. The modern system not only demands young men, but rapidly uses them up. An up-to-date factory devours bone and muscle as remorselessly as coal and pig iron ; on railroads men wear out and have to be replaced almost as rapidly as steel rails. In that prosaic account called by all corporations "depreciation of plant," the human element is by far the most conspicuous item. The pace is so rapid that men are not infrequently superannuated at fifty or fifty-five; at sixty, many are physical and mental shells. The minute specialization of the modern system reduces employees to mere automatons. They do not have that wide interest in their work and that close association with the outside world that gave the old-fashioned workman a hold on life and helped to keep him young. Comparison of this period with the "promotion era" of ten years ago, however, will in numerous respects fail to establish a parallel. The existence of a huge fund of ready money in the pub- lic's hands was an important factor in the outcome then ; but the appeal to the public's imagination, through the visible trade phe- nomena of the day, was at least equally important. Things were happening then, in our industrial history, which astonished and excited even conservative observers. We were feeding Europe, for one thing; our wheat crops and our wheat exports had sur- passed all precedent, while Europe's harvests had failed. Gold was pouring into America from abroad in unprecedented quantity. We were invading Europe's markets for manufactured goods, and had piled up an excess of $600,000,000 in merchandise exports over imports, where no previous year had achieved so much of an excess as $300,000,000. Our bankers were lending huge sums of money to the British Government, and buying up control of British steamship lines on a scale which was thought at the time to threaten England's maritime supremacy. This was very obvious material for arousing, not only the speculative instinct, but absolute confidence in any sort of incorporated enterprise put out under the auspices of important capitalists. Behind all this 94 ENGLISH COMPOSITION was the fact of the accumulation of capital, during the rigorous personal and business economies practiced by the people as a whole for nearly half a dozen years. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate we cannot conse- crate _ we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. LINCOLN. Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of the lime kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have scorched and shriveled him up in a moment. HAWTHORNE. While our historians are practicing all the arts of controversy, they miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting THE PARAGRAPH 95 the affections and presenting pictures to the imagination. That a writer may produce these effects without violating truth, is suffi- ciently proved by many excellent biographical works. The im- mense popularity which well-written books of this kind have acquired, deserves the serious consideration of historians. Voltaire's Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel's Memoirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's Account of Nelson, are perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever any tolerable book of the same description makes its appearance, the circulating libraries are mobbed; the book societies are in commotion; the new novel lies uncut; the magazines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In the meantime, histories of great empires, written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious libraries. MACAULAY. There are some very odd things any anatomist can tell, show- ing how our recent contrivances are anticipated in the human body. In the alimentary canal there are certain pointed eminences called villi, and certain ridges called valvula conniventes. The makers of heating apparatus have exactly reproduced the first in the "pot" of their furnaces, and the second in many of the radiators to be seen in our public buildings. The object in the body and in the heating apparatus is the same - to increase the extent of sur- face. We mix hair with plaster (as the Egyptians mixed straw with clay to make bricks), so that it shall hold more firmly. But before man had any artificial dwelling, the same contrivance of mixing fibrous threads with a cohesive substance had been em- ployed in the jointed fabric of his own spinal column. . . . The dome, the round and the Gothic arch, the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all familiar to those who have studied the bony frame of man. All forms of the lever, and all the principal kinds of hinges, are to be met with in our own frames. HOLMES. The writings of Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration of the value of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his quaintness, his humor, and what may seem the slightness, the occasional or accidental character of his work, there lies, as I said at starting, as 9 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION in his life, a genuinely tragic element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest in those hard shadows of Rosamund Grey, is always there, though not always realized either for himself or his readers, and re- strained always in utterance. It gives to those lighter matters on the surface of life and literature among which he for the most part moved, a wonderful force of expression, as if at any moment these slight words and fancies might pierce very far into the deeper soul of things. In his writing, as in his life, that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first drowsy by choice, and needing the prick of some strong passion or worldly ambition, to stimulate him into all the energy of which he is capable ; but rather the reaction of nature, after an escape from fate, dark and insane as in old Greek tragedy, following upon which the sense of mere relief be- comes a kind of passion, as with one who, having narrowly escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing for grateful tears in just sitting quiet at home, under the wall, till the end of days. PATER. But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it, motives eminently such as are called social, come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre- eminent part. Culture is then properly described, not as having its origin in curiosity/Tsut as having its origin in the love of per- fection; it is a^stutty of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good. As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words: "To render an intelligent being yet more intelligent!" so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To make reason and the will of God prevail!" ARNOLD. THE PARAGRAPH 97 Religion apart, they are an unreverential people. I do not mean irreverent, far from it; nor do I mean that they have not a great capacity for hero-worship, as they have many a time shown. I mean that they are little disposed, especially in public ques- tions political, economical, or social to defer to the opinions of those who are wiser or better instructed than themselves. Everything tends to make the individual independent and self- reliant. He goes early into the world ; he is left to make his way alone ; he tries one occupation after another, if the first or second venture does not prosper; he gets to think that each man is his own best helper and adviser. Thus he is led, I will not say to form his own opinions, for even in America few are those who do that, but to fancy that he has formed them, and to feel little need of aid from others towards correcting them. There is, therefore, less disposition than in Europe to expect light and leading on public affairs from speakers or writers. Oratory is not directed towards instruction, but towards stimulation. Special knowledge, which commands deference in applied science or in finance, does not command it in politics, because that is not deemed a special subject, but one within the comprehension of every practical man. Politics is, to be sure, a profession, and so far might seem to need professional aptitudes. But the professional politician is not the man who has studied statesmanship, but the man who has prac- ticed the art of running conventions and winning elections. BRYCE. It will hardly be disputed that the bad negro is always an idle negro. He is charged, and rightly, with being the cause of most of the troubles which give occasion for lynchings and race out- breaks in the Southern States. Next to the absolutely idle negro as a cause of trouble and a source of race prejudice, is the negro with irresponsible and irregular employment that enables him to live for five days on the earnings of two. The negro who is the least source of trouble, who is self-respecting, and who does not figure in clashes between the races, is the man who has steady, responsible employment, who is kept regularly at work, and whose duties require sobriety, faithfulness, intelligence, and the respect and good will of his employers. 9 g ENGLISH COMPOSITION Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. MACAULAY. Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create ; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pre- tension avail nothing. Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year. EMERSON. Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organi- zations but machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had some of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the greatness and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reit- erating this argument of his, so I do not know why I should be THE PARAGRAPH 99 weary of noticing it. "May not every man in England say what he likes?" Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of cul- ture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying, has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behavior of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just 'as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself ; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, grace- ful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that. ARNOLD. Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it well, would have more than compensated for the want of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much, better than those of the Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the difference was great. The parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving men out of place. The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high-spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonor as more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of firearms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favorite horses, and commanding little bands, composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are characteristic of the I00 ENGLISH COMPOSITION regular soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in almost every encounter. MACAULAY. Thus began that memorable war which, kindling among the forests of America, scattered its fires over the kingdoms of Europe, and the sultry empire of the Great Mogul ; the war made glorious by the heroic death of Wolfe, the victories of Frederic, and the marvelous exploits of Clive ; the war which controlled the destinies of America, and was first in the chain of events which led on to her Revolution, with all its vast and undeveloped consequences. On the old battle-ground of Europe, the struggle bore the same familiar features of violence and horror which had marked the strife of former generations fields plowed by the cannon ball, and walls shattered by the exploding mine, sacked towns and blazing suburbs, the lamentations of women, and the license of a maddened soldiery. But in America, war assumed a new and striking aspect. A wilder- ness was its sublime arena. Army met army under the shadows of primeval woods ; their cannon resounded over wastes unknown to civilized man. And before the hostile powers could join in battle, endless forests must be traversed, and morasses passed, and everywhere the ax of the pioneer must hew a path for the bayonet of the soldier. PARKMAN. All the world knows that they are a humorous people. They are as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the nineteenth century as the French were the purveyors of wit to the eighteenth. Nor is this sense of the ludicrous side of things confined to a few brilliant writers. It is diffused among the whole people; it colors their ordinary life, and gives to their talk that distinctively new flavor which a European palate enjoys. Their capacity for enjoying a joke against themselves was oddly illustrated at the outset of the Civil War, a time of stern excitement, by the merri- ment which arose over the hasty retreat of the Federal troops at the battle of Bull Run. When William M. Tweed was ruling and THE PARAGRAPH IOI robbing New York, and had set on the bench men who were openly prostituting justice, the citizens found the situation so amusing that they almost forgot to be angry. Much of President Lincoln's popularity, and much also of the gift he showed for restoring confidence to the North at the darkest moments of the war, was due to the humorous way he used to turn things, convey- ing the impression of not being himself uneasy, even when he was mostso - -BRYCE. Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. And we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad sys- tem, intolerance and extravagant austerity that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Mont- forts, their Dominies and their Escobars. Yet when all circum- stances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pro- nounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body. MACAULAY. The signals from the earth should be kept up for three or four months, and at the end of the year they should be started again, and continued, perhaps, for several years. It is reasonable to expect that if there are Martians in existence of sufficient intelli- gence to take notice of these signals, they will have done so by that time, if they are going to do it at all. It is probable that they would erect some apparatus similar to the signal-flashing mirrors on the earth. Then, if flashes similar to those sent from the earth were flashed from Mars, a system of dots and dashes would have to be studied out. In hoping to get such signals back, we must assume, of course, that the Martians, if there are any, have tele- scopes, eyes, etc., just as human beings have on this earth. The actual apparatus, like all products of genius, is simplicity itself. It possessed all the elements of portability, flexibility, and control requisite to the purpose in view. Its essentials are, at the I02 ENGLISH COMPOSITION transmitting station, a source of electricity, such as an accumulator, a spark coil, control keys, a selective device, and a wave trans- former and transmitter. This equipment, which is under the control of an operator, is placed on shore or on the deck of a bat- tleship, cruiser, destroyer, or submarine, as the case may be. The outfit weighs about 200 Ibs., a mere bagatelle compared with the massive construction of the battleship which it may be instru- mental in sinking. "Why, it is not very easy: two things are needful natural talent, and constant practice; but I'll show you a point or two connected with the game"; and, placing his table between his knees as he sat over the side of the pit, he produced three thimbles, and a small brown pellet, something resembling a pea. He moved the thimble and the pellet about, now placing it to all appearance under one, and now under another. "Under which is it now?" he said at last. "Under that," said I, pointing to the lowermost of the thimbles, which, as they stood, formed a kind of triangle. "No," said he, "it is not, but lift it up"; and, when I lifted up the thimble, the pellet, in truth, was not under it. "It was under none of them," said he; "it was pressed by my little finger against my palms"; and then he showed me how he did the trick, and asked me if the game was not a funny one; and, on my answering in the affirmative, he said, "I am glad you like it; come along and let us win some money." BORROW. The true basis for the estimation of a nation's wealth is to be found in the enjoyment of its members. The wealth of a com- munity does not depend upon the money value of its means for such enjoyment, nor even on their physical amount, but on their utilization. Public wealth is "a flow and not a fund"; it is to be measured as income and not as capital. HADLEY. If a man for a series of years earns $10,000 a year and spends it all, he is always rich in one sense, and never in another. He has much income and no capital unless we stretch the idea of capital wide enough to include the skill which enables him to THE PARAGRAPH 103 earn the large income. In like manner a nation whose mem- bers habitually produce much and consume much, will have large enjoyments and small accumulations. Measured as income, its public wealth will be large ; measured as capital, it will be small. HADLEY. Any good effect of a tariff in promoting the development of higher grades of productive industry is offset by its bad effect in retarding the development of varied consumption. It is a matter of prime importance for the community in general, and the laborers in particular, to have cheap goods placed within their reach. The educational effect of cheapness in increasing consumption and diversifying the enjoyments of a community is very great. A tariff which temporarily enhances prices for the sake of indirect effects on the producers is liable to have an adverse effect on con- sumers which outweighs the possible good that it might other- wise afford. HADLEY. I am struggling to maintain the government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling, especially, to prevent others from overthrow- ing it. I therefore say, that if I shall live, I shall remain president until the 4th of next March ; and that whoever shall be consti- tutionally elected therefor in November, shall be duly installed as president on the 4th of March ; and that, in the interval, I shall do my utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage shall start with the best possible chance to save the ship. LINCOLN. The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is derived through our popular elections. Judging by the recent canvass and its result, the purpose of the people, within the loyal States, to maintain the integrity of the Union, was never more nearly unanimous than now. The extraordinary calmness and good order with which millions of voters met and mingled at the polls give strong assurance of this. Not only all those who sup- ported the Union ticket, so called, but a great majority of the opposing party also, may be fairly claimed to entertain and to be actuated by the same purpose. It is an unanswerable argument I04 ENGLISH COMPOSITION to this effect, that no candidate for any office, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union ' -LINCOLN. What is a trust? It is a combination of capital, designed to simplify and unify business, or a combination of labor, designed to simplify and unify industry. It is easy to see, therefore, that there can be good trusts and bad trusts, just as there can be good men and bad men. A trust is a good trust when it performs the work for which it is organized, and produces better goods at cheaper prices, and delivers them to the consumer more conveniently than a dozen different concerns could do. The consumer is the sover- eign factor. The well-being of the masses is the result of every industrial development that endures. BEVERIDGE. I have lately come to perceive that the one thing which gives value to any piece of art, whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that subtle and evasive thing which is called personality. No amount of labour, of zest, even of accomplishment, can make up for the absence of this quality. It must be an almost instinctive thing, I believe. Of course, the mere presence of personality in a work of art is not sufficient, because the personality revealed may be lacking in charm; and charm, again, is an instinctive thing. No artist can set out to capture charm; he will toil all the night and take nothing; but what every artist can and must aim at is to have a perfectly sincere point of view. He must take his chance as to whether his point of view is an attractive one ; but sincerity is the one indispensable thing. It is useless to take opinions on trust, to retail them, to adopt them; they must be formed, created, felt. The work of a sincere artist is almost certain to have some value; the work of an insincere artist is of its very nature worthless. A. C. BENSON. The spirit that makes a man, when he has once undertaken a thing, put it through to a finish and win out no matter what it costs (and this was once given as a definition of the Yale spirit) is an excellent maxim for business or politics, and one that is THE PARAGRAPH 105 frequently heard in defense of the present teeth-gritting state of affairs between Harvard and Yale. But such a maxim cannot be applied to athletics. It means the death of athletics. Its place is in the prize ring or anywhere you please save in a branch of activity which is essentially a recreation. The true amateur athlete, the true sportsman, is one who takes up a sport for the fun of it and the love of it, and to whom success or defeat is a secondary matter so long as the play is good. Rivalry is a vital element in sport; it is from doing the thing well, doing the thing handsomely, doing the thing intelligently that one derives the pleasure which is the essence of sport. Even more vital than rivalry itself is the checking of its fierceness and bitterness by the graciousness of gentlemanly feeling. It must be remembered that pure rivalry is fighting, and the more its part is magnified in sport, the more sport takes on the nature of a fight, the nature of the sport which has come to exist between Harvard and Yale. We have to admit that there are some of us who prefer fighting-fun to sport, and there is no doubt that the fighting is a healthy dis- cipline ; but the majority of us do not, and there is no reason why our athletics should be moulded to suit the taste of the former, that we should be made to take our fun with all these convulsions and hysterics. Yet just as long as we meet the present-day Yale such will be the state of things. WM. JAMES, JR.- The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, than is sup- posed. Most people find it difficult to believe in the existence of it, unless it is accompanied by certain fragile signs of its existence, such as water-color drawing, or a tendency to strum on a piano. But, as a matter of fact, the possession of an artistic temperament, without the power of expression, is one of the commonest causes of unhappiness in the world. Who does not know those ill- regulated, fastidious people, who have a strong sense of their own significance and importance, a sense which is not justified by any particular performance, who are contemptuous of others, critical, hard to satisfy, who have a general sense of disappointment and dreariness, a craving for recognition, and a feeling that they are not appreciated at their true worth. To such people, sensitive, I0 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION ineffective, proud, every circumstance of life gives food for dis- content. They have vague perceptions which they cannot trans- late into words or symbols. They find their work humdrum and unexciting, their relations with others tiresome; they think that under different circumstances and in other surroundings they might have played a braver part ; they never realize that the root of their unhappiness lies in themselves; and, perhaps, it is merci- ful that they do not, for the fact that they can accumulate blame upon the conditions imposed on them by fate is the only thing that saves them from irreclaimable depression. A. C. BENSON. With us in America, the fight is between interests which do not want fair play on the one hand, and the people who mean that everybody shall play fair on the other hand. Here and now, as everywhere and at all times, the people are winning, and will completely win. But it is a hard fight. Every man is needed. Especially young men like yourselves are needed. If the Nation were at war and it may be at war before many years every one of us would gladly give his blood and life for it on the field of battle. But this is not enough ; every one of us must give his time and strength to the Nation in the field of politics. The man who will not do this does not deserve those rights which his indifference compels others to win for him. The young man who will not take part in the Nation's civil struggles for honesty and righteousness is unworthy of his fathers, who gave not only their time and strength in the same struggle, but gave their blood and lives on war's red fields for the same great purpose. BEVERIDGE. There are two kinds of amateur photographers, those who simply enjoy taking and possessing pictures of the things that interest them, and those who enjoy the making even more than the taking of the pictures. The one may use the camera for the sake of telling pictorially the story of his travels, the ocean trip, the scenes in strange lands are all in all to him. He may use the camera in telling a picture story of the children. He may use it in his business, or with it may cherish his favorite fad, be it golf or THE PARAGRAPH 107 motoring or shooting or fishing, and yet, perhaps, will care nothing for photography except as a means to an end the obtaining of pictures that have the personal interest. To another, photography appeals of itself. To him the iris diaphragm is more wonderful than a carburettor, pyro more interesting than gasoline ; a tripod is a thing of beauty compared with a brassie, an anastigmat lens is more wonderful than a gun barrel of the finest Damascus, and for him a piece of Velox paper has greater lure than has the most brilliant fly in the collection of an Izaak Walton. In either case the answer to the camera question is ''Kodak." To either it appeals by its lightness and its well-made-ness. To either it appeals because no dark room is needed for loading or unloading. The task of humanity, to wit, the task of organizing here on earth a worthy social life, is in one sense a hopelessly complex one. There are our endlessly numerous material foes, our en- vironment, our diseases, our weaknesses. There are amongst us men ourselves, our rivalries, our selfish passions, our anarchical impulses, our blindness, our weak wills, our short and careful lives. These things all stand in the way of progress. For prog- ress, for organization, for life, for spirituality, stand, as the best forces, our healthier social instincts, our courage, our endurance, and our insight. Civilization depends upon these. How hopeless every task of humanity, were not instinct often on the side of order and of spirituality. How quick would come our failure, were not courage and endurance ours. How blindly chance would drive us, did we not love insight for its own sake, and cultivate contemplation even when we know not yet what use we can make of it. And so, these three, if you will, to wit, healthy instinct, enduring courage, and contemplative insight, rule the civilized world. He who wants life to prosper longs to have these things alike honored and cultivated. They are brethren, these forces of human spirituality; they cannot do without one another; they are all needed. ROYCE. The diminution has continued. The influence of Coleridge has waned, and Wordsworth's poetry can no longer draw succor I0 g ENGLISH COMPOSITION from this ally. The poetry has not, however, wanted eulogists; and it may be said to have brought its eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised Wordsworth's poetry has praised it well. But the public has remained cold, or, at least, undetermined. Even the abundance of Mr. Palgrave's fine and skillfully chosen specimens of Wordsworth, in the Golden Treasury, surprised many readers, and gave offense to not a few. To tenth-rate critics and compilers, for whom any violent shock to the public taste would be a temerity not to be risked, it is still quite permissible to speak of Wordsworth's poetry, not only with ignorance, but with im- pertinence. On the Continent he is almost unknown. ARNOLD. Our Constitution does not so manacle our hands and narrow our vision. It is no such charter of death. Our fathers did not so anchor us within a narrow harbor when the high seas call us. No! Our Constitution is a chart by which we sail all seas and make all ports. We must provide for our possessions according to the wisdom of events according to the common sense of situations. The people of each are unlike the people of any other ; none of them is like the American pioneers who settled our con- tinental wilderness. We must adopt measures fitting the con- dition and the necessities of each, and change those measures as conditions and necessities change. BEVERIDGE. The Constitution must steadily grow, because the requirements of the people steadily grow. As Mr. Justice Story says of the Constitution, "It was not intended to provide merely for the emergencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable pur- poses of Providence." The safety and vigor of the British Con- stitution is not only in the inviolability of the customs which con- stitute it, but even more in its powers of change and growth. So the vitality of the American Constitution and all constitutions must reside in their power to grow as the people grow, and furnish scope for the people's power and the Nation's necessities in exact pro- portion as the people's power and the Nation's necessities enlarge. BEVERJDGE. THE PARAGRAPH 109 If, disregarding conduct that is entirely private, we consider only that species of conduct which involves direct relations with other persons ; and if under the name government we include all control of such conduct, however arising ; then we must say that the earliest kind of government, the most general kind of govern- ment, and the government which is ever spontaneously recom- mencing, is the government of ceremonial observance. More may be said. This kind of government, besides preceding other kinds, and besides having in all places and times approached nearer to universality of influence, has ever had, and continues to have, the largest share in regulating men's lives. SPENCER. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumu- lators of the power which animals distribute and disperse. HUXLEY. The Constitution has been expanded by construction in two ways. Powers have been exercised, sometimes by the President, more often by the legislature, in passing statutes, and the question has arisen whether the powers so exercised were rightfully ex- ercised, i.e. were really contained in the Constitution. When the question was resolved in the affirmative by the court, the power has been henceforth recognized as a part of the Constitution, although, of course, liable to be subsequently denied by a reversal of the decision which established it. This is one way. The other is where some piece of State legislation alleged to contravene the Constitution has been judicially decided to contravene it, and to be therefore invalid. The decision, in narrowing the limits of State authority, tends to widen the prohibitive authority of the Constitution, and confirms it in a range and scope of action which was previously doubtful. BRYCE. IIO ENGLISH COMPOSITION The English people did not ordain a written constitution be- cause their customs, their steadily developing modes of procedure, constituted their constitution. These customs, methods, institu- tions had been growing for centuries. They changed only as the tree changes from sprig to sapling, from sapling to oak. The roots of their constitution were in remote history, and growth was the law of its being. The violation of established modes of pro- cedure or of universal privileges was certain to cause impeach- ment or revolution if attempted by Parliament or Crown. Thus the British Constitution, springing from the memories of the past, is vitalized by the affections of the present. It has its security not in cold type, but in the hearts of the people. BEVERIDGE. The distinction here made between the amateur and the pro- fessional is one that, for ordinary purposes, is obvious enough. The amateur, we are accustomed to say, works for love, and not for money. He cultivates an art or a sport, a study or an employ- ment, because of his taste for it ; he is attached to it, not because it gives him a living, but because it ministers to his life. Mr. Joseph Jefferson, for instance, is classed as a professional actor and an amateur artist. Charles Dickens was an amateur actor and a professional novelist. Your intermittent political reformer is an amateur. His opponent, the "ward man," is a professional ; politics being both his life and his living, his art and his constant industry. PERRY. CHAPTER VI THE SENTENCE IN the first chapter of this book you learned how to construct the whole composition, and saw that much depends upon the arrangement of its constituent parts. In the discussion of the paragraph, you studied these parts by themselves, and found out that they, as well as the whole composition, are built up according to the three principles of Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis. The elements of which paragraphs are formed, and which are called sentences, are now to be studied in their turn, and their structure analyzed. The sentence is the smallest unit that can express a complete thought; for, though use is made, in expressing thought, of certain symbols called words, these cannot carry thought of them- selves. They merely represent ideas, and it is only when they are combined in certain relations that they carry thought. The prop- erties of single words will be discussed in a later chapter ; here we are concerned with sentences as units and with the way that they are made coherent and emphatic. As a unit of thought, a sentence is worthy of the closest care ; for more genuine skill is required to perfect a sentence than to write a good theme. As in a miniature there is necessary a greater fineness of touch, and a more careful handling of detail than in a large canvas, so in a sentence there is need of the greatest delicacy of treatment. Here your sense of fitness, of proportion, and of adaptability come most into play, and your power of accurate thinking must be most ably concentrated. There are more things to the making of a sentence than are dreamed of by the inexpe- rienced writer. What some of these are will now be pointed out. I. UNITY A sentence is usually defined as a group of words expressing a complete thought. To fulfill the requirements of the principle II2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION of Unity, then, it is necessary only that a sentence contain one thought, and that this thought be complete. This looks easy; but your experience has probably already shown you that it is not as easy as it looks. What is the trouble ? In the first place, it is not clear just what is meant by the word thought. It is important that the meaning of this word should be under- stood. The mind, when occupied with any subject, has in stock a number of impressions called concepts, notions, or ideas. These may at first be vague and unrelated ; but after the thinking faculty is applied to them they assume shape, and certain definite relations between them become evident. This process, by which the re- lation is discovered, is called thought; and, somewhat carelessly, the relation itself, when clearly defined in the brain, is also called a thought. The words "Birds are flying," for instance, express a thought ; they show a certain relation between the idea " birds " and the idea ' ' flying. " Or take as an example a longer sentence : Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. Here there are several ideas, but there is only one thought, because all the ideas are brought into a certain relation with each other. The relation here is somewhat complicated ; for the words, as far as the comma, express a relation between "charms" and "sight," the words after the comma express a relation between "merit" and "soul." Moreover, the sentence as a whole itself makes known a relation existing between these two sets of relations. Thus there are two minor thoughts, each made up of ideas, and combined to form one thought. Further examples will per- haps only add to the fog instead of clearing it away. At any rate, enough has been said to show that a thought consists of an understanding of the relations existing bet-ween certain ideas. One thing more must be made clear. When one of these re- lations is perceived by the mind and put into words, it appears in the form of. a statement. In the first example, where the relation is simple, there is a single statement, "Birds are flying." In the second, there are two statements: (1) Charms strike the sight. (2) Merit wins the soul. THE SENTENCE 113 In the following sentence there are five statements : Though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. The statements are : (1) I would not willingly part with such scraps of science. (2) I do not set the same store by them. (3) I set more store by certain odds and ends. (4) I came by them in the open street. (5) I was playing truant at the time. More will be said presently about the methods of combining these statements into a sentence and the changes that are thereby neces- sitated in the expression. At present, attention is called only to the fact that the sentences are made up of separate statements, and that these statements each show a relation between certain ideas. Now we are ready to go back to the question of Unity. A sentence possesses unity if it contains only one thought, and if this thought is complete. We must consider for a while the means by which a sentence may be so made that it shall contain one thought, and only one. We shall begin with sentences which express a single relation and hence contain but one statement. Such are called Simple Sentences. A man struck the door. This is a simple sentence containing a single statement which ex- presses a relation between the ideas "man" and "door." Pre- cisely what is this relation is indicated by the verb "struck." Now, if I say A short, stout man angrily struck the heavy door with his cane, I still have one statement expressing a single relation between ideas. But I have modified these ideas by means of words and phrases. Your idea of a "short, stout man" is different, doubtless, from your idea "man"; but it is still a single idea. "Heavy i II4 ENGLISH COMPOSITION door" is a different idea from "door"; "struck angrily with his cane" is decidedly different from "struck." In this sentence, then, the ideas are different from those in the first, the relation between them is different ; but the statement by which the relation is made known in words is still single; the sentence is still a simple sentence, and it possesses unity. Simple sentences may always be expanded in this way by the use of words and phrases as modifiers. There is only one principle to be observed in order to insure unity. It is this: the words and phrases used to qualify the ideas in the sentence must really be necessary or helpful in presenting the ideas exactly as they are to be understood in the connection in which they occur. In the example used, the adjectives " short " and " stout " are to be re- garded as necessary to identify the particular man in question. The adverbial expressions "heavily" and "with his cane" make clear just how he struck the door. Unity is violated when such qualify- ing expressions are irrelevant to the thought of the sentence. In the following sentence, the words in italics violate unity because they are wholly unnecessary to a clear understanding of the ideas to which they are connected. A short, stout man, fifty years old and a lineal descendant of John Alden, angrily struck the heavy door, made, by the way, by one James Cooper, a carpenter of Hatnden, with his cane. Errors of this sort are so obvious that they are rare, even with inexperienced writers. Simple sentences, as a rule, give little trouble in the matter of unity. The principle, once understood, is easy of application. Pass now to sentences which are to contain more than one state- ment. The question for you to consider is: How may the state- ments be combined so as to express but one thought ? There are two chief ways, according as the statements are of equal or of un- equal rank or importance. If they are of equal value, they are said to be co-ordinate. If one of the statements outweighs the others in importance, it is called the main or independent statement, and to it the others are all subordinate. If the statements are of equal rank, the resultant sentence is said to be Compound; if of unequal rank, Complex. THE SENTENCE 115 Compound sentences in their construction require especial skill. How is it possible for two or more statements of equal importance to be combined in such a way as to express one, and only one, complete thought? There are eight well-defined relations which such statements may bear to one another. The statements may be: (1) In the same line of thought, the second adding to the first, the third to the second, and so on. The conjunction which in- dicates this relation is and. The night was dark, and there was a chill of snow in the air. Here there are two statements, one about the darkness of the night, the other about its chilliness. These are regarded as co- ordinate, and unite to make up one complete thought about the night. Of course, this sentence might have been written, ''The night was dark and chilly." The thought in such a case would have been the same, but the sentence would have been simple, as it would have contained but one statement. Compound sentences can usually not always be condensed in this manner into simple sentences; and this is a sure test of their unity. (2) The statements may be in contrast to each other; the con- junctions in this case are but, yet, nevertheless. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. (3) They may be in alternation, a relation which is expressed by or and nor. Either the principle is wrong, or there is something amiss with its application. (4) One of two statements may be a consequence of, or inference from, the other; the conjunctions here are hence, therefore, etc. Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. (5) Occasionally, the second of two co-ordinate statements gives a reason, not for the truth of the preceding statement, but for the speaker's knowledge of its truth. It will rain, for the barometer is falling. Il6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION This usage is not to be confounded with subordinate causal clauses, the use of which will be mentioned later. In all these cases the conjunctions are often omitted. The fact that the statements are written together in one sentence shows (in such cases) that they are to be regarded as component parts of one single thought ; and the particular relation the statements bear to each other is made clear by their sense. You can readily determine, for example, what relation the co-ordinate statements bear to each other in each of the following sentences : You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out or perish. . The sun was slowly setting; darkness gradually shut down upon us. Water expands in freezing ; often in the winter season pitchers filled with it burst. (6) Two or more statements are sometimes co-ordinated with or without the aid of a conjunction, when they repeat the same thought. A young man feels himself one too many in the world ; his is a pain- ful situation; he has no calling; no obvious utility; no ties but to his parents. (7) Similarly, a statement and an example are sometimes co- ordinated. Places small and uninteresting in themselves often have greatness thrust upon them; Waterloo is known in history only because a great battle was fought near it. (8) There is one other type of compound sentences. Some- times a number of details are massed together so as to give an impression of unity. In one corner of the room stood an old-fashioned bedstead ; in another, a rickety washstand; the walls were bare and unpapered; there was no carpet on the floor. Now there are three common faults against unity in compound sentences. THE SENTENCE 117 (1) In the first place, statements are often made co-ordinate, when in reality they are not of equal importance ; as, It began to rain, and we started home. This is one of the commonest of errors. For many writers there is only one conjunction, the useful and. This word is brutally overworked ; it is tortured from its true meaning and made to do duty for all other words of the same part of speech. This is owing either to a limited vocabulary at the writer's command, or perhaps even more to slovenly carelessness. Statements are strung to- gether with ands, on the same principle as that by which a railroad crew make up a train. The cars are loaded with different cargoes ; some bear grain, some coal, some furniture, some live stock. Some of the loads are worth a few hundred dollars, others are worth several thousands. The material or the value has nothing to do with their connection; they are coupled together solely because they are all going in the same direction. Such is the method of the careless writer. Disregarding the relative value of his state- ments and their contents, he joins them all by ands, as the quickest way of getting to his destination. The result is that he writes like this: It began to rain and we started home and it soon grew dark and so we lost our way. The trouble is that these statements are not all of equal rank, so that when united by ands they do not form one thought, but several, and hence violate unity. (2) It often happens that, though the statements are really co-ordinate, the writer fails to bring out by the use of proper con- junctions just what relation the statements have to one another. Here again it is the and that makes the chief trouble. "John went to school and Peter stayed at home" isacommonbut incorrect way of saying "John went to school but Peter stayed at home." You should notice carefully whether your statements are in the same line of thought, in contrast, or in alternation ; whether one state- ment is a consequence of another, or gives a reason for it, or repeats ug ENGLISH COMPOSITION its thought, or furnishes an example. You should then connect the statements in such a manner as to make their relation clear. Important as it is that you should mind your p's and <7's, it is even more important that you watch your buts and ands. (3) Lastly, unity is violated in a compound sentence when the statements, although of equal importance, do not unite to make up one thought. They have not enough in common to make them fuse together; they should in such cases be written as separate sentences. This error is more obvious, and for that reason, per- haps, less common than the others. Sometimes, however, we see sentences like this : Julius Caesar was the greatest emperor of Rome, but Athens is the chief city of Greece. To avoid these faults, and to maintain uriity in compound sen- tences, three directions must be observed : Be sure your statements are of equal importance. Be sure you use the proper co-ordinating word between the statements. Be sure they really do unite to form one and only one complete thought. And in addition a timely warning might be given. Since compound sentences are so open to abuse, since the and is so unruly, it is well, if you find you have been making most of your sentences compound, hereafter to use compound sentences more sparingly. The other way in which two or more statements may.be com- bined into one sentence is by means of subordination. This type of sentence is called Complex. One statement is regarded as more important than the others and is therefore called the main or independent clause. The other statements are joined to this by conjunctions in such a way as to show they are dependent on it. They receive their identity only from their thought-relation to the main clause. Their existence in the sentence is justified only by the fact that they serve the independent clause in some menial capacity: they are the valets, the footmen, the men of all work. They have each their own particular task to do, and, acknowl- edging the authority of one head, they together make up a well- ordered household. This matter of subordination is so important that, if you once master it thoroughly, it is hardly too much to say THE SENTENCE 119 that you will be in a position to battle successfully with most of the dangers that beset sentence-writing. Perhaps, if you have never looked into the subject, it has never occurred to you that complex sentences are really made up of separate statements. In compound sentences, the statements retain their individuality. They are easily detached, and by a simple change of punctuation may usually be written themselves as sentences, as in this example : An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself. Changing the semicolon to a period, omitting "and," and writing "it" with a capital letter, we have two sentences: An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding. It is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself. In complex sentences, however, all the statements except the inde- pendent clause, owing to the fact of their subordination, lose their individuality and cannot be detached and written as distinct sentences without some change in wording. It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. There are three statements in this sentence, as follows : (1) Our polite literature revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical polity. (2) It would naturally in this case have been immoral. (3) The result is therefore not strange. For a full appreciation of this point it is necessary that you exercise your ingenuity in disentangling the several statements in the sentences given in the Appendix, pages 367-372. Now having 'seen that complex sentences are made up of distinct statements, you are next to consider the different subordinate functions which the statements may perform. You learned long ago in grammar school so long ago that you have probably I20 ENGLISH COMPOSITION forgotten that subordinate clauses perform the functions of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Noun clauses are either (i) quotations, or (2) questions. In either case they may be direct or indirect. An example of each is given here : (1) Quotation direct: "Don't give up the ship," said Captain Lawrence. Quotation indirect: Izaak Walton says that anglers, like poets, are born, not made. (2) Question direct: The problem What shall we do next? now confronts us. Question indirect: Much depends on when and where you read a book. Noun clauses can be used in all constructions the same as simple nouns. What these are, your knowledge of English grammar must tell you. In the first sentence of the examples above, the noun clause is used as subject of the verb ; in the second, as predicate substantive; in the third, as an appositive with another noun; in the fourth, as object of a preposition. Adjective clauses, like other adjectives, qualify, or depend on, nouns or pronouns. They are always relative clauses introduced by who, which, that, or what, or words which are equivalents of these relative pronouns -f- prepositions ; as, where = in which, when = at which, etc. The man who just struck out is the best batter on the team. The book is not in the place where I left it. Adverb clauses depend on verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. As they express a large number of subordinate relations, they require special attention. Following is an enumeration of these relations, with an example of each. (1) Time. I shall go, when I get ready. (2) Place. Go where glory waits thee. (3) Degree, or Comparison. New Haven is farther north than New York is. THE SENTENCE 121 (4) Manner. He went at his problems much as an angry bull goes at a red rag. (5) Cause, or Reason. Cream rises to the surface because it is lighter than milk. (6) Condition. If a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. (7) Purpose, or Result. Workingmen combine into unions in order that they may the better protect their rights. (8) Concession. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. You should study these various relations until you are perfectly familiar with them. Think of as many conjunctions as possible to indicate the same relation. See the exercise on page 367 of the Appendix. Having in mind a pretty clear conception of the subordinate functions that statements may bear in a sentence, you are now ready to consider how they may be joined so as to maintain unity. First of all you must determine what is the chief component of the thought you are to express; what, in other words, you want* your sentence chiefly to convey to your reader. Make this, then, your main or independent clause. If there are subordinate state- ments which seem to belong to this, decide carefully upon the precise kind and exact shade of subordination. Then make this relation unmistakable by the use of proper conjunctions and con- nective words. Suppose, for example, you had to express a thought, whose component idea-relations, put in the form of statements, are as follows : My brother was struck down by an automobile. A stranger was standing near. The stranger picked my brother up. You decide that the fact that the stranger picked my brother up is the most important. Next, you see that the first statement, I22 ENGLISH COMPOSITION "My brother was struck down by an automobile," bears some relation to the action indicated by the verb "picked up." You determine this relation to be one of time; and you know that time clauses are introduced by such conjunctions as when, while, until, etc. Lastly, you see that the statement "A stranger was standing near," is there solely to mark out this same stranger more plainly. It modifies, then, the noun, " stranger," and should be made into a relative clause. You finally "connect up" your sen- tence into a unit as follows : When my brother was struck down by an automobile, a stranger, who was standing near, picked him up. (For other examples, page 372 .) Of course, as a matter of fact, you do not go through such a lengthy process for every sentence you write; but you do un- doubtedly perform all these operations unconsciously in your mind in an abbreviated form as you write. If now you go one step farther and perform them consciously in all cases of long and com- plicated sentences, and do it with little conscious effort, you will learn to avoid many of the offenses against unity. For, in forcing yourself to discover the exact relation each statement bears to the thought of the sentence, you will be able to cast out those state- ments which bear no necessary relation at all. To do this is to preserve unity. See examples for practice, page 372 of the Appendix. A few observations will show in what the chief violations of unity in complex sentences consist. Noun clauses give little trouble in this respect and need not be considered here. Relative clauses, however, are likely to cause trouble and must be carefully watched. Be sure first that the statement in a relative clause is really apart of the idea suggested by the word it modifies ; be sure, second, that it is a necessary part of the idea in the particular connection in which it occurs. This is precisely similar to the caution given in regard to the unity of the simple sentence. In this case the modifiers are clauses instead of words and phrases ; but the same rule holds good. The Japanese, in a recent war, overwhelmingly defeated the Russians who are connoisseurs cf tea and tobacco. THE SENTENCE I2 3 The statement in the relative clause in this sentence may, or may not, be considered as really a part of our idea of the Russians ; but as it is not a necessary part of the idea in connection with their defeat by the Japanese, it violates unity. The same fault occurs in the following sentences : The burglar was killed with an ancient shot-gun, which had formerly been my uncle's, who is now on a voyage in the Pacific. The Amazon is a large river in Brazil, where the nuts come from. A similar mistake is often committed. Frequently a statement is subordinated in a relative clause, whereas in reality it is co- ordinate with a preceding statement. He supported the frightened girl to the door, followed by a servant, with whose assistance he helped her down the steps. The clause beginning with "whose" is not needed to complete our conception of the servant, but is really an additional statement in the same line of thought as the preceding. It might better be expressed thus, "... and with the servant's assistance," etc. Or, still better, the sentence might read, "He supported the frightened girl to the door, and, with the assistance of a servant who had followed, helped her down the steps." Sometimes, again, a statement is subjoined in a relative clause, when it does not belong to the thought of the sentence in any relation at all; as, I parted from her at the door, at which I again presented myself at seven. In the following sentences, however, the relative clauses are necessary, or at least helpful, in identifying the persons indicated by the words they modify. The man whom you mention is my uncle. The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. All this world, and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a young man, to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. I24 ENGLISH COMPOSITION A similar principle applies in the construction of adverb clauses Be sure not only that they belong to the ideas to which they are attached, but also that they aid materially in making clear a full understanding of these ideas in the connection in which they occur. Examples need not be given, as by this time the principle should be well in mind. However, a further caution is necessary. Make clear the kind of relation your adverb clause sustains to the thought of the sentence. Be sure that the conjunctions bring out the exact shade of meaning that you have in mind. If this is not done, violations of unity often result. It is a fault similar to that pointed out in the construction of compound sentences, when and is made to do the duty of but. In complex sentences there is more danger of this sort of error. The subordinate relations are so many, and the shades of meaning so fine, that you must exercise your full powers of discrimination. Don't subjoin a statement in a con- cessive relation, when it really denotes condition. Don't confuse time and cause. And don't subjoin a statement in an adverb clause, when it should be co-ordinated. The conjunction while is a chief offender in this respect. While is properly used to introduce a clause expressing time. It is at least questionable whether it ever means though; and it certainly never means but. While mother is far from well, she would be able to endure a trip to New York. The first statement in this sentence does not, as the conjunction while leads us to expect, bear a time-relation to the second. Our ideas of mother's sickness and her ability to go to New York do not unite by a time-relation to form one thought. They do, how- ever, so unite in a concessive relation. She is able to go to New York in spite of her sickness. The sentence should read, then, Though mother is far from well, she would be able to endure a trip to New York. It is best to avoid this use of while in the sense of though. 1 In the following sentence, the relation between the statements is not one of time, but of contrast. 1 Many good writers, it is true, use while in the sense of though. But such usage lacks precision. Since there are two good conjunctions, which THE SENTENCE 125 Mr. Hammond was there in all his glory, while Mrs. Hammond was unable to be present. While in this case should give way to but. When, in like manner, is often used in the place of whereupon; as, He stood for a moment smiling; when Sharkey up with a fist and obliterated the smile. She joyfully took and read the letter; when her eyes immediately suffused with tears. Some practical aid in the building of unified sentences may be had from a thorough understanding of two important types of sentence the periodic, and the loose. The periodic sentence is so constructed that the meaning is incomplete until the end. In the loose type, however, there is more than one place at which the sentence might end and still make sense. The difference be- tween these two types is shown by the following table : LOOSE PERIODIC We came to our journey's end, At last, with no small diffi- at last, with no small difficulty, culty, and after much fatigue, we after much fatigue, through deep came, through deep roads and bad roads, and bad weather. weather, to our journey's end. Talkative women listen, when When there's anything worth there's anything worth hearing. hearing, talkative women listen. He likes music, and art as He likes both music and art. well. The principle is wrong, or Either the principle is wrong, else there is something amiss or there is something amiss with with its application. its application. I can't go, unless I get some Unless I get some money, I money. can't go. By its very nature the periodic sentence is apt to possess unity. As the sense is to be incomplete until the end, it must follow that the writer knows, before he begins to write, just what he is going to say. This makes it necessary for him to test his ideas rigidly indicate the concessive relation, namely though and although, what is the need of using while, a temporal conjunctive, in this slipshod manner? I2 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION to see if they belong together. In the case of a loose sentence, on the other hand, the writer usually does not know just how he is going to end. He first writes one statement, then adds other statements or ideas, as they seem to 1 be required. Herein lies the danger. By the laws of suggestion, one thing leads to another, until, if a close watch is not kept, the thought goes astray. Phrase after phrase, clause after clause, the words move on, until the original idea is forgotten. This is the fault in the following sen- tences : I doubt very much if any one has a harder day than this one, especially as it comes on Monday, and Sunday is not a good day for studying, even if you have no religious scruples concerning it. The many inventions in small arms, field guns, and everything pertaining to war, are very noticeable features of the last ten years and so by enumerating in this manner, one could bring to mind a great num- ber of inventions, without describing any one in particular, but if one should attempt to give even a brief description of a few already enumer- ated, it would be a long and tedious task. Loose sentences, of course, are not bad necessarily. In most good writers they probably outnumber the periodic. When properly unified, they promote ease, and do away with formality and pompousness. The following paragraph from James Bryce consists of two loose sentences properly constructed : There are also points of construction on which every court, following a well-established practice, will refuse to decide, because they are deemed to be of " a purely political nature," a vague description, but one which could be made more specific only by an enumeration of the cases which have settled the practice. These points are accordingly left to the dis- cretion of the executive and legislative powers, each of which forms its view as to the matters falling within its sphere, and in acting on that view is entitled to the obedience of the citizens and of the States also. But inasmuch as your habit heretofore has probably been to write loose sentences almost exclusively, arid inasmuch as such sentences are so liable to abuse, you should cultivate the habit, for a while, of making as many as possible of your sentences periodic. Thereby you will undoubtedly decrease the number of your offenses against unity. THE SENTENCE 127 It was stated some pages back that, for a sentence to possess unity, it must express only one thought, and that this thought must be complete. You have seen what is meant by a thought, and how a sentence must be constructed to express one thought, and only one. You should now see that this thought must be complete not a fraction. Statements are sometimes written as complete sentences, when, in reality, they are but co-ordinate clauses of one compound sentence. The fault is worse when clauses so written are subordinate. This practice violates unity because it leaves the thought incomplete. If the foregoing remarks on sentence- structure have been taken to heart, this fault should not now trouble you. The fault is illustrated herewith : He tried to appear unconcerned. But he couldn't. He told me that the course covered three years. And he assured me that it probably would not be hard work. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, inventions were few and far between. That is, inventions of great importance. The coming of steam revolutionized travel, as it made possible the crossing of the ocean in the least possible time. Reducing the time from months to days. On Thursdays I have an eight o'clock recitation. While on Fridays I have nothing till ten. The trouble here seems to be chiefly one of punctuation. At any rate, each of the examples above may be corrected by pointing the sentences , properly. Even so, however, a proper sense of unity should have prevented the writer from marking off as com- plete sentences such phrases and clauses as are but fragments of thought. On rare occasions, fragmentary sentences are used by good writers. Such groups of words are generally emphatic, as the license of their .form calls special attention to their matter. Carlyle is over-fond of this device, and is in no wise to be imitated. Stevenson employs it sometimes. For example, he ends a certain paragraph with the assertion that a certain characteristic "stamps the man who is well armoured for this world." The next para- graph begins thus: "And not only well armoured for himself, but a good friend and a good citizen to boot." Nevertheless, I2 g ENGLISH COMPOSITION beyond an occasional expression like "But enough of this," or "To take up the next point," writers without an established literary reputation should avoid this kind of writing. 1 Your sentence, then, must contain one complete thought. You have seen, after much tribulation, how you may so construct a sen- tence that it will conform with this requirement. This is the first thing necessary in order that you may fulfill the purpose of good writing, to put your own mind into communication with the minds of others. But it is not the only thing needful. Not only must you lighten the reader's work by placing before him but one thought at a time ; you also must express this thought clearly. The reader must be able to understand what you say. It is not enough that he may, after repeated study, understand; it is essential that, even with but a glance, he cannot possibly misunderstand. The principle by which you achieve this requisite of composition is called the principle of Coherence. II. COHERENCE Coherence means "sticking together." Applied to the con- struction of a sentence, it means that the parts of a sentence must stick together. Words, phrases, and clauses must be where they belong. Each must know its place and keep its place. It is your business to see that this rule is observed. You may most readily understand how to perform this duty of supervision, if you com- prehend well the chief respects in which the rule is likely to be disobeyed. These will now be discussed. Almost all the offenses against Coherence come under one or another of the three following categories: (i) faulty reference; (2) faulty placing of modifiers; (3) change in grammatical con- struction. Reference is faulty when the writer fails to make clear precisely to what words certain other words refer. The offenders are pronouns and participles. Pronouns should be used with pre- cision. Personal pronouns, demonstratives, and relatives are equally treacherous. The general rule for their use is twofold. First, they should refer to definite persons, things, or ideas; that *For miscellaneous examples of violations of Unity, see Appendix, p. 374. THE SENTENCE 129 is, their reference should not be vague. Second, they should refer to particular persons, things, or ideas ; that is, their refer- ence should not be ambiguous. The following group of sentences 'illustrates violations of this rule in its first aspect. The pronouns in each sentence refer not to any definitely expressed antecedent, but to a notion conveyed by the sentence as a whole, or implied by some word in the sen- tence : I went duck-shooting yesterday and bagged six of them. Electricity is naturally regarded as the best form of power by the students of that department. The horse was overloaded and then beaten because he could not draw it. If I did not have a " two o'clock," I could take plenty of time, which would be more pleasant. With the forefinger of his right hand he successively touched those of his left. In the first sentence above, them refers to a noun, "ducks," implied in the word "duck-shooting." In the third sentence, it refers to the notion conveyed by the statement, "the horse was overloaded." Explain the faults in the other sentences. In the following sentences the rule is violated in its second aspect. The pronouns here are ambiguous : A bird can see a worm while it is flying. If the person who lost a pocketbook on Chapel Street will call at 132 Wall Street, he can obtain it. As the train was waiting, after I bought my ticket I entered it. The man's father was killed and he afterwards fell in love with Maud. A number of fellows in my division were making merry over a bag of peanuts, and the result was that they were scattered all around as they were thrown at one another. I must go and help Alice with the heifer; she is not very quiet yet and I see her going out with her pail. In each of these sentences it is not clear to which of two possible antecedents the pronouns refer. Expressions quoted indirectly are full of pitfalls of this kind. I 3 ENGLISH COMPOSITION John told my brother that he might come to see him if he would let him know when he would find it most convenient. Harry Percy said to King Henry IV that he behaved himself not to him as he should; for, he said, ne had he been, he had never been king of England. On his way he visited an old friend who had asked him to call upon him on his journey northward. He was overjoyed to see him, and he sent for one of his most intelligent workmen and told him to consider himself at his service, as he himself could not take him as he wished about the city. An appropriate question, upon reading such sentences, would be, Who's who? Participles are equally dangerous. Sometimes, as is the case with pronouns, their reference is vague. Hastening up the steps, the door opened. On entering the room, the eye is struck by a huge chandelier. After eating a hearty dinner, our carriages were brought to the door. Lost in meditation, the minutes fleeted past. The sentences above illustrate what is called the "hanging parti- ciple." There is no one word to which the participles definitely refer. In each sentence except the third, they refer presumably to words in a preceding sentence. In the third, the participle refers to the antecedent of our. Errors of this sort are especially com- mon. Participles must be watched ; they cannot be trusted with- out strict surveillance. Make your participles refer to some definite person, thing, or idea. Moreover, see that they refer to some particular person, thing, or idea. Make it clear that they modify one word, and only one ; see that they are not ambiguous. I observed that crystals were formed. Being in a test tube, I could watch them grow. Returning to the room, she told us to be seated. The book in question, which had been my grandfather's, being in levant, brought a good price. I saw my old friend Johnson again by mere chance when I was in New York recently, walking down Broadway and looking in at the store- windows. He wrote to the Secretary demanding an apology. THE SENTENCE 131 Each of the participles in these sentences might possibly be understood as referring to two persons or things. Who or what was in the test tube? Who returned to the room? Who or what was in levant? Who was walking down Broadway? Who demanded an apology? The second main category of offenses against Coherence is the faulty placing of modifiers. Modifiers may be words, phrases, or clauses. As regards their position, one rule covers the correct usage. They should be placed as closely as possible to the words they modify. Of single words it is perhaps only that is oftenest misplaced. It should, when possible, be placed immediately before the word with which it is connected. Otherwise the sentence fails to tell exactly what the writer meant, or even sometimes declares some- thing which he decidedly did not mean. On Mondays I only have one recitation. I tried to borrow some money from him and he only lent me a dollar. My two cousins only got to the end; I stopped halfway. I have only read over one page of the lesson. Not is likely to cause the same two kinds of incoherence. The first sentence below, for example, appears to mean that all con- victed persons are innocent. All convicted persons are not guilty. All men are not created equal. The instructor did not say that the work was wrong, but only care- lessly done. The so-called "correspondents" cause obscurity, when they are not so placed as to show what words they connect. They are not only . . . but also; either ...or; neither . . . nor; both . . . and; on the one hand . . . on the other hand. For example: He neither succeeded in scholarship nor athletics. Interest in this matter should not only be manifested by the students, but also by the instructors. Not only does the student save the expenses of the extra year, which, we must acknowledge, amounts to a great deal for some people, but also the energy devoted to studying and preparing lessons. I 3 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Other adverbs are sometimes misplaced : She left the room without almost knowing what she did. We shall merely try to point out the leading errors. Harold was twice defeated and slain. Please observe what I say very carefully. Phrases used as modifiers often surreptitiously intrude where they have no business. Watch them. Be sure that they are attached to the words they actually qualify. We saw the place where Fort Hale stood for the first time yesterday. Pay highest amount punched to cashier. Our maid is always boasting of her approaching marriage to the housekeeper and the other servants. There is a great disinclination to work on the part of the Seniors. We have discussed the principles which will guide you in writing good paragraphs in a preceding chapter. As Tom could not dance, he was forced to spend the time when the others were dancing in the smoking room. My friend Dr. Josiah Curtis was stricken down with chronic dysentery. By the use of my Liquid Food, five drops at a time, he was restored to health and walked a mile in ten days. Clauses, in the same manner, should be put where they belong. Relative clauses, to speak in the terms of electricity, are excellent conductors. When they are placed too near a word to which they do not belong, the flow of thought leaps to them, and is short- circuited. This is an error similar to that pointed out under faulty reference. Elizabeth imprisoned her sister Mary, who was queen of England. While I was returning, some one entered the house, who, from the appearance of things, was a burglar. Students willingly follow a professor's instructions that they like,, She had a diamond pin in her hair, which was bought in Paris. The President retained in his cabinet all the men that had served under his predecessor that he had perfect faith in. A gentleman sent his partner in a foreign country that was sick some of my Liquid Food. We have got a new automobile since we had the smash-up in the old one, which nearly cost me my life. THE SENTENCE 133 So with adverb clauses. With what verb does each of these clauses belong? We met at a place called Osborne, as near as I remember, thirty miles from Boston. Though some of the European rulers may be females, when [ they are] spoken of altogether, they may be correctly classified under the de- nomination "kings." The adoption of the triple turn in the hammer-throw brought to light the imperfections of the old single-turn method which up to that time had been in use, since the triple turn required great dexterity. The "split infinitive" is to be avoided. Although a great many careful writers employ this construction, it is nearly always awkward and for that reason its use is not to be encouraged. There is something displeasing about such expressions as follow : He was unable to successfully perform the experiment. Seek to assiduously do all your duties. Sometimes not only single adverbs, but even whole phrases are interpolated between "to" and the infinitive: All actors find it tedious to, night after night, throughout a whole season, act and react the same r61es. Occasionally even a clause is so placed : You will find it difficult to, while you count fifty, hold your breath. The third kind of incoherency to be considered is that arising from a change of grammatical construction. Stated positively the rule is : Ideas parallel in thought should be parallel in expres- sion. In other words, keep the same subject throughout your sentence (or co-ordinate clause of a compound sentence) ; or else keep your syntax uniform. Negatively and specifically, the cau- tions are : Do not link an infinitive with a participle ; a participle or infinitive with a verb ; an active with a passive voice ; a word or phrase with a clause. Do not, for example, make sentences like the following : He was last seen approaching the wharf, and to have a large satchel in his hand. 134 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Two better men than Biglow and Jones could not be found; the former to smooth out the work, and the latter puts snap into the men. We had a general course in Chemistry, but spending most of the time on quantitative analysis. The morning is spent in recitations, but in the afternoon / have time for recreation. The captain began to get the men in shape for the Princeton game, and a shift was made by him in the line-up. He made us promise to be careful, and that we would not go beyond the limits of the city. This is a true saying, and which is worthy of all acceptation. This "and which construction," as it is called, should be noticed carefully. The error has been variously explained. Some rhetoricians regard it as an attempt to make a clause at once co- ordinate and subordinate. Usually, however, it will be found that it is simply a case of a clause joined by a conjunction to a word or phrase ; as, My roommate is a studious fellow in his habits, and who rarely spends his evenings out. Here evidently the qualifying adjective "studious " and the qualify- ing clause " who rarely spends," etc., are similar ideas in the writer's mind ; he has merely failed to make them similar in grammatical construction. 1 Knowing now the kinds of incoherence you are most likely to be troubled with, and having in mind the means whereby to avoid them, you are in a position to make your sentences clear. When you are able to do this, you will have accomplished much; but much more is necessary. Your sentences must not only be uni- fied and coherent; they must also be emphatic. III. EMPHASIS The Emphasis of a sentence is generally the thing least con- sidered. Young writers, especially, have little care for strength, force, and energy. As a result, their thoughts do not always properly impress the reader. The brain is so busy when we are 1 For miscellaneous examples of violation of Coherence, see Appendix, P- 376. THE SENTENCE 135 reading, that we need all the help the writer can give us in seizing instantly the important points. Some of the ways by which the writer can give this help are now to be considered. Some of these are the same as for securing emphasis in the whole composition ; others apply to the sentence alone. Listening to conversation, the hearer is informed of the proper emphasis by means of the ear. When he perceives that certain words and phrases are uttered with especial stress of voice, he knows at once that the speaker regards these as important. The reader, however, is without this sure means of guidance. For him the functions of the ear must be performed, as well as may be, by the eye. Emphasis, since it cannot be heard by him, must be seen. The writer, therefore, is confronted with no small difficulty. How is it possible to make the important expressions emphatic to the eye? There is a fairly satisfactory solution to the problem. Words which in speaking are made emphatic by vocal stress, may in writ- ing be made emphatic by position. The following discussion explains how this may be done. The eye in reading a sentence is most forcibly struck by the beginning and the end. In these positions, therefore, you should place the words you wish to be emphasized. Somewhere in the interior you may tuck away the subsidiary ideas. Unless you follow this principle you will cause the reader unnecessary an- noyance. You will make him rummage around for the salient words, to dig, as Stevenson says, like a pig for truffles. The result is that the reader becomes wearied; he loses confidence in you. Remember that when you write you put yourself in the attitude of a suppliant; you are asking a favor. The mere fact that you write is an appeal for a reader. It is to your advantage, therefore, to make the reader's task as light as possible. In no other respect does he need your aid more than in the matter of emphasis. You should indicate clearly, then, what are your prominent ideas. You do this, it must be repeated, by placing them in the emphatic positions, the beginning and the end. The following sentence has proper emphasis : Judging from past history, no very important part in civilization will ever be played by the Javanese. I3 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Here, the position of the word "Javanese" calls special attention to the people. It is the Javanese you are talking about not the Chinese, or the Patagonians. The reason for your statement is also noteworthy. It is upon past history that you base your judgment. You emphasize this point by placing it first. By this device your reader is correctly informed of the relative value of these two facts. So in these sentences : Power of style, properly so called, as manifested in the masters of style like Dante or Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bossuet, or Bolingbroke in prose, is something quite different, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic effect, this : to add dignity and distinction. The Queen will readily excuse our over-zealous actions, for the cause in which we fight is hers. On men and manners at least, on the men and manners of a par- ticular place and a particular age Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating eye. In the following sentences, on the other hand, the most signifi- cant ideas are obscured to the eye by being surrounded with un- important details : The papers deny the report that Congress has agreed to amend the tariff, much to the general dissatisfaction. During the holidays there was so much gayety that I seldom saw my family because each night there was either a dance or a theater party. The fellow who starts right and does his best is the fellow who always succeeds in the end. We went home, after all our misfortunes, glad to get one night's undisturbed rest, anyhow. As to which is the more emphatic position, the beginning or the end, no absolute rule can be given. Usually, however, the end is more forcible. We may use here again an illustration employed in a previous chapter. The wailing cry of a guilty child, " I did it, mother, but I'll never do it again ! " is much more emphatic than, "I'll never do it again, but I did do it "' The former sen- tence calls special attention to the point that the child undoubtedly wished to emphasize. He wanted to impress upon his mother, not the confession, but the promised reformation. THE SENTENCE 137 There may be, moreover, a sort of secondary emphasis within the limits of the sentence. Words before a mark of punctuation comma, semicolon, colon are emphatic in an ascending scale. To illustrate : Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. He could fast; but when he did not fast he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspira- tion running down his cheeks. If a student applies himself diligently to his books; if he takes some part in athletics; if he cultivates that side of his nature called the social; then his development will be threefold: he will grow strong in mind, in body, and in knowledge of men. Now to do successfully what we have been describing is no easy task. This is because, in English, position largely determines meaning. Hence, in putting expressions in emphatic positions, you run a danger of taking them too far from the words upon which they depend, and so of doing violence to Coherence. You must learn, therefore, not only to make the words occupy emphatic positions, but to make them seem to do so naturally. This requires a great deal of ingenuity. Fortunately the English language is resourceful enough to allow you to do this unhampered. To borrow an illustration, 1 the sentence "Nero killed Agrippina" can be arranged in various ways in order to bring out the particular idea you wish to emphasize. If you wish to call special attention to the fact that Nero was the murderer, you say, "It was Nero who killed Agrippina"; if you want to fix attention upon the person murdered, you say, "It was Agrippina that Nero killed." Or you may wish to bring out forcibly the fact of the murder; you say, accordingly, "For Nero's crime against Agrippina the only word is murder." By manipulating words; by changing the order without obscuring the grammatical sense; by using the passive voice instead of the active, and vice versa; by a dozen little ingenious devices, you can shake up the words of a sentence until the important ones are in the emphatic places. 1 A. S. Hill, Principles of Rhetoric, p. 185. I3 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION The above discussion brings us logically to another general principle. Words out of their natural order are always emphatic. The natural order is the usual grammatical series : subject, verb, complements. When one of these elements is out of its order, special attention is called to it. Could you take oath that every man in English recitation yesterday had on a necktie ? Yet every one in the room knew that yours was skewed around under your left ear. Similarly, you notice a word when it is put where you do not expect it. For example : Last of all came Satan. Pop goes the weasel ! If I say stop, stop he shall! How good you are ! Back darted Spurius Lartius. Sweet are the uses of adversity. This method of achieving emphasis tends, however, to lead you into extravagance. Be sure that the inversion does not appear forced instead of forcible. In the following sentences the order is offensively unnatural : Her, by the way, in after life, I had many opportunities to meet. Me though just right and the fixed laws of Heaven Did first create your leader. Carlyle offends notoriously in this respect: Yes truly; it is the ultimate persuasive, that. Him Heaven had kneaded of much more potent stuff. On Pitt, amid confused clouds, there is a bright dawn rising. Another device whereby the position of words, phrases, and clauses indicates emphasis is called Antithesis. By means of this construction ideas or thoughts are placed in contrast; they there- fore lend each other stress. We live in deeds, not years. Read not to contradict and confute, but to weigh and consider. Character is what we are; reputation, what people think we are. THE SENTENCE 139 It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do ; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. With Milton line runs into line, and all is straightly bound together; with Homer line runs off from line, and all hurries away onward. As a means of securing forcible expression, antithesis is always effective. It is open, however, to two objections: used in excess it becomes tiresome ; indulged too frequently it grows into a habit. The habit once acquired leads the writer into twisting the facts in order to bring about the desired antithetical arrangement. Pope and Macaulay illustrate these two faults. Macaulay's writings, especially, owing to his ungoverned fondness for this construction, are often both wearisome and untrustworthy. Chesterton, one of the most interesting and forceful of modern prose writers, has fed his love for this kind of writing until it has become a passion. Young writers, however, should cultivate this style; for they can thereby often make their themes energetic, and there is little danger that they will get the habit. Force is gained also by the use of Climax. By this arrangement, words, phrases, and clauses are placed in an ascending series. The sentence gains momentum as it moves, and ends with tremendous power. Washington was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. This sentence as a whole is energetic; and the phrase "first in the hearts of his countrymen," bounding up leap by leap above the other phrases, is given wonderful prominence. The follow- ing sentences also illustrate this source of strength : A man's power, his greatness, his glory depend on essential qualities. In the rank of Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his very person, there was a strange union of opposite extremes. He is invited to Edinburgh; hastens thither with anticipating heart; is welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal blandishment and acclamation. You probably will not have many opportunities to employ climaxes ; but you should make use of every chance you have. At any rate, I4 o ENGLISH COMPOSITION avoid the common fault of ending your sentence with an expres- sion weaker than one just preceding it. Do not write sentences like these : The electrical locomotives are better in every way: safer, cheaper, faster, and cleaner. Sickness not only kept him from school all spring, but prevented him from writing all his themes. Freshmen like Prom, week even if they can't go to the dance and the pretty girls don't notice them. Of the two types of sentence periodic and loose the former is always more emphatic. This should be evident merely from the definition. The meaning in a periodic sentence is not complete until the end. The leading idea, then, is usually emphasized by being placed last. In the loose sentence, however, there is more than one place where the sentence might end and still make com- plete sense. It is too much to suppose that the sense would be equally emphatic at each of these points. In fact, just as the loose sentence offers temptations for offenses against Unity by allowing phrases or clauses to trail one after another, so it allures to viola- tions of Emphasis. Never is a sentence weaker in effect than when it ends with an unimportant phrase or subordinate clause. Yet theme-writers repeatedly blunder in this respect. No error is more common. The method, apparently, is to blurt out in the first clause the most important point, and then to hook on phrase after phrase, clause after clause, as long as the sentence will stand the strain. The result is as follows : I rewrote all my themes correctly at last without much difficulty on the last few days of the term. It is no easy task to prevent people from finding fault with things beyond their comprehension. I always prophesied his greatness, from the first moment I saw him, then a young man and unknown outside of the circle of his own par- ticular friends. When clauses are allowed to trail in this manner, the effect is much worse : THE SENTENCE 141 The climate of New Haven might be termed variable, since it often changes in one day from warmth to extreme cold ; although even there the weather is very steady for a while. Football has changed much in the last few years because of the adoption of better rules, although there is still room for improvement. If we were to study engineering only without any English to accom- pany the course, we should be illiterate, although the English is not necessary to the engineering studies. Such sentences are piteously feeble. Not the least fault is that in the last clause the writer takes back, in effect, what he has said before, thus leaving the opposite impression to that intended. If you have to make exceptions, allowances, or provisos, stow them away inconspicuously in the hold, and hang your cardinal fact like a banner to the monkey-gaff. The comparative forcibleness of loose and periodic sentences may be seen by noting the following. Some of Macaulay's sen- tences are given, first in the periodic form in which he wrote them, then in a transposed form which makes them loose. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Diety through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness. They aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness of the Deity, instead of catching occasional glimpses of Him through an obscuring veil. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt. They looked down with contempt on the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an over-ruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being. They habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, not content to acknowledge, in general terms, an over-ruling Providence. For other examples, see Appendix, p. 380. Of course you are now not being counseled to make all your sentences periodic. If you should do so, your style would be in- tolerably stiff and formal. But there is little fear that you will ever use too many sentences of this type. Therefore, make as. many as possible of your sentences periodic. 142 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Another form of sentence that is emphatic is the Balanced Sentence. In this type the words and phrases of one part corre- spond in form and position with those of another part. The ideas expressed by these sets of words and phrases are often not always in contrast. The balanced sentence is thus similar in its effect to Antithesis. It is too artificial to be used freely, but is often pleasing in its strength; as, My roommate is for talking continuously; I am for studying part of the time. He favors Egyptian Deities and Craven Mixture; I prefer Naturals and Bull Durham. He is very fond of the Hyperion Theatre; I like Poli's. His taste runs to Pilsner; I don't drink any- thing but water. We do not, therefore, often agree. Thus far we have been discussing the emphasis of words, phrases, and clauses as determined by their position. There is another way by which the relative importance of the ideas in a sentence may be manifested. This is by a proper subordination of the grammatical elements. Next to the matter of loose and periodic sentences, there is nothing which demands so much and receives so little attention. The principle of subordination requires that one statement be made independent and that the others in the sentence be made subject to it. Reason dictates that the most important statement be put in this independent relation. Yet the constant practice both in speaking and writing is to disregard this obvious device. Often our best ideas are overlooked because we hide them away in the obscurity of some subordinate clause. Conversely, minor points sometimes usurp undue attention, because they are placed in the independent relation. This is due to the tendency to make our first statement, whatever it happens to be, the main clause. The following examples illustrate this fault : I was walking along the street when I met an old woman carrying a heavy basket of clothes. The important statement here is certainly not that I was walking along the street but that I met an old woman. To bring out the proper subordination, we might say: THE SENTENCE 143 As I was walking along the street, I met, etc. I think that Mr. Steevens did wrong in accepting a nomination from a party whose principles he could not conscientiously approve. Here, "I think," the least important statement in the sentence, is made the main clause and is put in one of the important positions. In like manner, "Mr. Steevens did wrong," which is the main statement, is put in a subordinate relation and hidden away in the interior of the sentence, the least emphatic place. To insure the proper emphasis, rearrange as follows: In accepting a nomination from a party whose principles he could not conscientiously approve, Mr. Steevens, I think, did wrong. Similarly : He said that he had always thought that bribery was one of the worst of crimes. He had had many misfortunes, but he was happy now, for fortune seemed to favor him. The front tire of an automobile blew out while it was going very fast, although no one was hurt. A very common error of this sort is the misuse of so as a con- junction. To use again an illustration employed previously in this chapter : It began to rain, and so we started home. It was pointed out that this sentence violates unity because two statements not of equal rank are made co-ordinate. Frequently careless writers go one step farther and omit the and, so that the sentence becomes : It began to rain, so we started home. This sentence is faulty because the writer has not made it clear whether he regards the second statement as co-ordinate with the first, or subordinate to it. Does he regard the two statements of equal value? If he does so regard them he has violated em- I44 ENGLISH^ COMPOSITION phasis for the same reason that he has violated unity. He has equalized two statements that are not of equal rank ; one of these he has given undue prominence by lifting it up from its subordinate relation. Or, does he intend the first to be the main clause, and the second a subordinate clause denoting result? If this is the case, he has not made the relation clear. He should have said, It began to rain, so that we started home. Then the reader would have known at once that the persons repre- sented by the pronoun "we" started home as a result of the rain. Troubles of this sort may be avoided by relieving so of some of its numerous duties. It is cruelly overworked. Get out of the habit of using so, in the sense of and so. Learn to use consequently, accordingly, therefore, etc. These words are longer, but they are more specific in their meanings, and are not likely to be mis- understood. Learn also to say so that when you are introducing a result clause, as in the example above. Furthermore, in cases of this kind, you can avoid all confusion by a change in sub- ordination. Instead of appending the clause in a result-relation, make it the main clause, and reduce the other to a clause ex- pressing cause. Say, for example, As 1 Since > it began to rain, we started home. Because J This sentence is much more emphatic than either It began to rain, so we started home, or It began to rain, so that we started home. For it is reasonable to suppose that the fact that we started home is the more important of the two. The following examples of the same abuse may be profitably studied : Plenty of light was needed, so the lantern was brought closer. He was through with his work when he put the things away, so he went home. THE SENTENCE 145 He was unsuccessful in his first exam., so he stayed away from all the rest. I was tired and my feet ached, so I refused to stir another step. Our auto broke down while climbing a steep hill, so we had to walk home. The morning was bright and sunny, so I started out to take a ramble. Pretty soon I met an old man with a pole and line, going fishing, so, at his invitation, I went along. Now you are not to understand, of course, that the most em- phatic statement should be put in the main clause invariably. This arrangement would be fatiguing to both writer and reader. In continuous writing, ease demands a certain relaxation. Often the thought in a sentence is such that no one statement requires especial emphasis. Furthermore, it sometimes happens that, for example, the time or cause of an action or of a fact is, for the writer's purpose, more important and hence more emphatic than the action or the fact itself. This is illustrated in the follow- ing sentences : He remained at home, not because he was indifferent, but because he was sick. My roommate usually studies during the early hours of the evening, but he always puts his light out when the clock strikes ten. But, in general, you should form the habit of putting your chief ideas in the main clauses and your subsidiary ideas in the sub- ordinate clauses. Then the reader is able to estimate at once the relative value of your statements. For making his work emphatic, the writer has one other re- source. Occasionally, in a long series of declarative sentences, special point may be given to a particular thought by putting it in the form of- a rhetorical question or exclamation. This is so familiar a device that it is mentioned only to make the discussion complete. You naturally make use of such expressions, for ex- ample, as the following : What could I do now? O that I were safe at home again ! L 14 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION You will probably find it necessary to curb your readiness to write in this style rather than to cultivate it. As a sort of summary of the means of securing emphasis in the sentence, the following example will serve. A short passage from Macaulay is give'n first in a transposed form. Changes are made in the position of phrases and clauses, and in the plan of subor- dination of the statements. It is then given as Macaulay wrote it. Compare the two carefully, and note how the second gains in emphasis. Mr. Burke most justly observed that Johnson appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been in matter quite equal to his writings and in manner far superior to them. He clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural ex- pressions, when he talked. But he took his pen in hand to write for the public, and then his style became systematically vicious. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in hand to write for the public, his style became systematically vicious. 1 In studying this chapter on the sentence, you cannot have failed to notice that much stress was laid on grammatical subordination. In the section on Unity it was shown what various subordinate relations statements may bear to each other and how they may be combined into a sentence in such a manner as to express one complete thought. In the discussion of Coherence it was pointed out how to arrange dependent clauses in order to insure clearness. Emphasis, in like manner, was found to be determined largely by the proper subjection of unimportant elements. Thus, it is indispensable to indicate accurately the relative values of the con- stituent ideas of a thought, if you would make your sentence thoroughly effective. Obviously, then, everything goes back to the starting point, which is the mind of the writer. In order to write unifiedly, 1 For miscellaneous examples of violations of Emphasis, see Appendix, p. 378- THE SENTENCE 147 coherently, and emphatically, to make your thought appear on paper single, clear, and forcible, you must form the habit of ac- curate thinking. At the very beginning of the book, this necessity was mentioned. It is essential to the Whole Composition, to the Paragraph, to the Sentence. In the sentence, which is the smallest unit of thought, it is to be observed with especial care. You must cultivate a sense of proportion, learn to estimate values, to recognize shades of meaning. Train your mind to perform these functions, and when you begin to write, the necessary work of construction has already been done. You have only to put down in black and white what has already been completely planned by the faculties of your brain. CHAPTER VII THE RIGHT WORD WHEN you entered upon this study of composition you were acquainted with several thousand English words, though you may not have used all of them rightly. You did not stumble or hesitate at finding any one of them on the tip of your tongue. You were no doubt aware of fully an equal number, which you felt you understood, but nevertheless hesitated to use, since they were unfamiliar. Beyond these bounds stretches the vast vocabulary of the language, which the new dictionaries will soon bring up to three hundred thousand words. Tens of thousands of these are of course techni- cal and scientific words, which you will never meet, save when your wandering eye runs down the dictionary column, and pauses amazed at some monstrous formation of science. But thousands more you will meet, and will need to understand. Obviously, in view of these facts, two things are needful at once : readjustment of the working vocabulary you possess, and com- pleter mastery of the vaguer field of words that surrounds you on every hand. As in the building up of strength, you must improve the quality of what muscle you possess and turn your useless weight into more muscle, before you are fit for a contest, so in conquering the supreme difficulty of choosing the right word, you must exercise your intellectual powers toward the acquisition of a wide and well- chosen vocabulary. Already, though perhaps not always consciously, your choice of the right word, so far as you have sought it, has been governed by two standards, Good Use and Effectiveness. You have felt, though perhaps vaguely, that certain words and expressions that passed well enough in talk among your classmates, were to be avoided in the home circle, among older men, or in correspondence. 148 THE RIGHT WORD 149 or other writing. Good Use was then your standard. You have not always been sure, after you have spoken, that you have said just what you meant to say, or that your presentation of the facts produced the effect you had intended. You have felt at times that your story was a bit lame, your description a little indistinct, your explanation vague; you have often said, "I know what I want to say, but I cannot express it." Effectiveness was then your standard. Your success in the quest for the right word will depend entirely upon a more rigid application of the tests of Good Use and Effec- tiveness. Good Use is the use, or general practice at present, of good writers and speakers, the best, if we could but find them. From this definition it follows, that you should put yourself in the way of hearing and reading good speakers and writers, in order to become familiar with their general practice. A dictionary, provided it contains the usage of accepted authorities, is your next best guide. It is the general practice of good writers to avoid slang, colloquial, provincial, and dialectal expressions, foreign words where there is a satisfactory English equivalent, pompous language, and archaisms. Slang is often picturesque, forcible, and witty, but it is avoided by a good writer for the same reason that shady acquaintances are avoided; they bring him sooner or later into disrepute. Moreover, it is the common lot of the slang term to be extended to include a great variety of meanings. As the hundred terms of the Chinook jargon of the Pacific slope are sufficient for the needs of trade, so a hundred or two slang terms will convey fairly well the ideas of a modern schoolboy. When one remonstrates with him, his reply is apt to be, "Why not? The fellows all understand what I mean." He does not realize that the inevitable result will be poverty as regards the real resources of language ; and the day will come when he will be ashamed of having to put his thoughts into slang, for lack of knowledge of the right word. We might even say that the franchise to use slang should be granted only when the speaker can, if he chooses, put the same thought in words of good usage. In the year in which this book is written the word "dope" seems in its various significations to provide at least one-third of the !- ENGLISH COMPOSITION meaningj needed to complete the vocabulary of the average college student. The intellectual poverty that results is unworthy of college men. In another year some other word will be similarly over-used. Colloquial words, unlike slang words, are proper enough at any time in familiar talk, which would indeed sound stilted and un- friendly without them; but they may be out of place in formal speech and in writing. Colloquial speech may be denned as the familiar talk of good speakers, which varies, though not to the same degree as in other languages, from literary expression. A Syrian, brought to this country when a boy and educated at an American University, upon his return to his native country at- tempted to address his countrymen in the colloquial Arabic of his boyhood. He was hissed from the platform. His speech was an insult, as they thought, to their literary language, which has now become utterly different from every-day talk. Examples of colloquial speech are the following: /'// be there, all right, anyhow. Well, why not ? Quite so. I say, wait a bit. I did it, though. Provincial and dialectal words will be avoided because they arc not intelligible among all English speakers, and because their use in writing might argue the writer's ignorance of their equivalent in universal practice. No such effort to avoid provincialisms should be made in colloquial speech, which gains through their use a variety and raciness wholly desirable, and which more than any other thing gives character and individuality to the different districts of this country and of England. 1 But in writing, which 1 It is a mistaken idea to consider as the best accent in colloquial speech such a compromise as will effectively conceal the part of the country from which you come. That speaker will be most admired, who, while ridding his tongue of those elements in his own dialect which are harsh and un- pleasant, still stands proudly and sturdily by that dialect in which he was brought up. We none of us think any the less of the Yorkshire gardener whose ten years in this country have not affected his burr in the slightest. The reason why we may feel pride in dialect is that both in speech and word it is a survival from a time when such usage wus just as good as the next county's, or else that it helps to tell the history of the community in Us relations with its neighbors and its borrowings of their words. There is history back of your dialect, and it is not to be despised. THE RIGHT WORD 151 appeals to readers who may be ignorant of the terms of provincial speech, it is well to adopt only universal usage. Examples of provincial usage are : / guess, I reckon, you want to mind your pa, I like to died of thirst ( = almost}, I took Spanish, was you there? there was quite some people. Foreign words, which are still felt to be foreign, should be generally avoided, as savoring of affectation or as confusing to the ordinary reader. Exceptions to this rule occur, as when, to use a homely example, a bit of foreign cookery must be named a pate or an entree. English has always been hospitable to words from foreign sources, for which no equivalent was to be found in the English of the time. Mosquito, piano, prestige, lexicon, simile, zinc, pajamas are examples, each from a different language. Oc- casionally a wrong word gets in, as when chauffeur, the French word for engine-driver, gets into English with the meaning which properly belongs to the French mecanicien. A good rule is, not to be among the first to introduce a foreign word. You may depend on the genius of the language to supply what words you need, all in good time. It is needless to point out why pompous language and the highly figurative language of poetry are to be avoided in ordinary prose. Every one feels how out of place they are. A certain oratorical robustness of phrase, a certain spread-eagleism, is however still to be guarded against, especially by those who have been fond of public speaking, or who have read orations more often than other forms of composition. Good use sanctions such speech only upon important occasions, and from the lips of authority. Archaisms, or old terms no longer current in good writing, must be left to the poet, and even he will do well to use them sparingly. They have no place in prose. Thus, the third person in -eth, of the present indicative of the active verb, is out of place in prose of the twentieth century, though common and in good use as late as Washington's time. The language of the pulpit is, of course, justified in a certain use of the archaisms found in the King James Bible, or other early versions. Having satisfied yourself on this primary requirement of Good Use, you will go one step farther, and examine your words with 152 ENGLISH COMPOSITION regard to the requirements of Effectiveness. This is only saying that you look upon a word as a means of conveying your thought, and that it is the right word, when it conveys just as much meaning as you intend it shall. The occasion will of course determine the degree of effectiveness to be obtained; but to repeat the com- parison as in the gymnasium the director is interested only in developing your muscles to their best strength, so here you are guided only towards your greatest power of expression. You must learn for yourself, as circumstances shape themselves, how much effectiveness the right word shall possess. Avoiding, then, the technical terms of rhetoricians, we may say that a word is effective, in proportion as it conveys truth, force, and suggestive power. Without attempting strict definitions of these three functions, let us look at them by the more simple pro- cess of application. You have often used the expressions, "Strictly speaking, that is hardly true," or "Generally speaking, that may be true," and have thereby realized that there are degrees in which a thing is true. You often say, "That is true enough, perhaps," indicating that a certain degree of truth, not necessarily the highest, is at times satisfactory. In writing home of an evening's entertainment, you may decide that "When I arrived, the family were already at dinner" is true enough and less likely to cause misgiving at home than the stricter truth, "When I arrived, the family had just finished the ice cream, and my hostess was obviously put out at my tardy appearance." You notice in the example just given that the strict truth was had by eliminating the general term dinner, and by substituting for it specific terms for a part of the dinner. Strict truth always de- pends upon the use of specific words, of words which admit of but one interpretation. For the scientific man, of course, strict truth must be his one ideal. In so far as you aim, then, to be strictly true, in other words to be most effective in regard to the demands of truth you must use words with specific or limited meaning. You must also, since many general terms have certain specific senses, familiarize your- self with the various meanings of words, and the many minor THE RIGHT WORD 153 differences of synonyms. Here the dictionary, and a knowledge of the history of the word, will aid you ; but wide reading, and more than all knowledge of men and things, will help you most. Now the value of forming the habit of being strictly true in speech and writing lies first in its effect upon your own mind, and secondly in its effect upon others. You will become, as you write, more observant, painstaking, and accurate; others will get from you a completer picture, a clearer conception. Especially is it to be desired of scientific students, that they be able to tell the exact truth. No matter how accurately you work out a problem, you work in vain unless you can present it with the strictest accuracy. Of all the tools a scientific student employs, his tongue requires the greatest filing, the most frequent repair. Clearness, which is the prime requisite in all writing, depends entirely upon your telling the exact truth. This does not mean that in your zeal for exact truth you should seek for what is commonly called scientific terminology, as your only means of expression. The great one need of scientific men to-day is to learn to tell the truth in terms which convey it. A reaction has set in against the long words of chemists and biologists. In the laboratory, such words are useful, but scarcely so outside. Thus the editor of a mining journal objects to the use of such terms by mining experts : "When you don't know what a thing is, call it a phenomenon. . . . A mining engineer, of the kind known to the press as an expert, described a famous lode as traversing 'on the one hand a feldspathic tufaceous formation' and 'on the other hand a metamorphic matrix of a somewhat argillo-arenaceous composi- tion.' This is scientific nonsense, the mere travesty of speech. To those who care to dissect the terms used it is plain that the writer of them could make nothing out of the rocks he had ex- amined except the fact that they were decomposed, and the rock which he described last might have been almost anything, for all he said of it; since his description, when translated, means literally a changed matter of a somewhat clayey-sandy composition which, in Anglo-Saxon, is m-u-d ! The somewhat is the one use- ful word in the sentence." Even the strictest truth can gain effectiveness by being forcibly or convincingly presented. In speaking, the tones of the voice, 154 ENGLISH COMPOSITION facial expression, or gesture, will make an ordinary statement strong and appealing. The dramatist alone among writers may look to these things for aid in the interpretation of his written word ; other writers must depend far more upon the words themselves for their effect of force or convincing power. Here again you will probably recognize that some facts need less forcible expression than others. Yet it is the tendency of young writers not to realize the number of degrees which may enter into emphasis. They know only the top and bottom of the scale, and all intermediate effects are lost. The result is a lack of effect, for people very soon learn to discount one's superlatives. Nor is force to be gained by abundant use of full-sounding, florid phrasing. The decorated and elegant style may safely be left to the public orator; simplicity and strength must be your reliance. It is a mistake to imagine that a liberal sprinkling of such words as sort of, kind of, very, quite, exceedingly, tremendously, somewhat, rather, adds anything to the truth or force of your state- ments. Your reader does not know the standard by which you measure your ideas, consequently your degrees are nothing to him. Moreover, the adjectives to which these adverbs are usually at- tached cannot properly be qualified. "This picture is a very perfect likeness." " What you say is very obvious." " This tree is quite vertical." " On the whole, he is about the nicest fellow I know." One indignant reader of scientific articles finds so many of these modest but unmeaning modifiers, that he calls the practice "an orgy of moderation." This excessive modesty in stating facts is most annoying to the average reader. He wishes to determine for himself the measure of degree, by his knowledge of you. When you tell him a certain mountain is about a mile high, he is no better informed than when you tell him it is a mile high, since the round number always implies some leeway. You can trust your reader to be aware of the fact that you have probably not measured the mountain, and found it to be exactly 5280 feet in height. Noth- ing is gained either by saying that a man is sort of fat. The sum THE RIGHT WORD . 155 of it all is, rely on the simple unmodified word to express your meaning. We can avoid many of these dubious adverbs of degree by search for the word that conveys the precise force desired. Thus "he knocked very softly" is no better than "he tapped"; "he knocked quite hard" than "he pounded." The English language is rich in precise terms. He is a poor builder who depends upon stones of a size approximate to that required, and then fills up with little stones and a liberal supply of mortar. He is all the more to be condemned, if there is lying by him all the time a stone of the exact size and form needed, which he might have for the asking. Not only would this stone be stronger, but it would not give the appearance of a botched job. Many an engineer, who prides himself on the smooth face of the wall he has built, takes no such pride in the terms he uses to describe it in his report. Nowhere, the editors of technical journals tell us, will you find vaguer and weaker use of words than among men with a technical training. Against some of these abuses it is easy to warn you. The worst of them is the use of unnecessary words. It is scarcely too much to say that thirty per cent of the words in first-term themes can be struck through without loss. They add nothing to the meaning ; they clog it, instead, like barnacles on a ship's hull, these long, trailing relative clauses, which boil down to a single adjective; these adverbial modifiers which can be replaced by a single adverb ; these long noun clauses for which one noun is enough ; these tedious predicates, when one verb will tell the story. The man that is not wanted in college is the man that does not care very much about hardly anything. (Boiled down: College opinion condemns indifference.) He spoke to me when we met each other this morning in a very cordial manner. (Boiled down : He greeted me cordially this morning.) We went back to the clubhouse as fast as we could, so as not to get caught in the rain which was at that time coming down quite hard. (Boiled down: We raced to the clubhouse, to escape the pelting rain.) Of course this practice in boiling down will remind you of the telegram, with its ten words so packed with meaning that it is !-6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION frequently unintelligible. But the telegraphic style is not a fault of young writers; diffuseness is their bane. A second great abuse of words lies in the failure to grasp their relation as parts of a single series, which can be compactly handled in a parallel structure. I could not consent to do anything which people do not call honest. Besides, this thing you propose might make trouble for somebody, and I could not do that. And then I don't believe that my father would like me to do it, anyhow, and I don't want to disobey him. (Boiled down : I will neither cheat, make trouble for my friends, nor disobey my father; and as your proposal involves all these, I will not act upon it.) Along with this goes the overuse of the verb to be and the re- sultant wearisome repetition of pronouns and other words. He was very young. He was so young that no one believed that he could pass the exams. But although he was so young, he passed them. This was because he was so well prepared. (Boiled down : Though younger than other candidates, he had had a thorough prep- aration, and passed without difficulty.) Several other faults may be dismissed with a word of caution. The overuse of the word one, more common in England than here, is responsible for much vague phrasing. The first person pronoun is perhaps less modest, but it is certainly more forcible, and modesty must yield to force. The continual use of passive construction, where active construction is demanded, is to blame for much more lack of force. Again, while intentional repetition produces em- phasis, unconscious repetition brings monotony at once. By observing variety in your choice of words, you stimulate the reader's interest. If you have used the same phrase twice on a page, or a single word more than three times, you had better pause, and take variety into consideration, as a factor in adding force to your writing. Unless you have already formed the habit of rereading what you have written, you will be surprised to see how often the same phrase will crop up in your theme. Once in your mind, it is hard to keep it out. Yet you must remember, that every uncon- scious repetition weakens the force of the first presentation of the idea. THE RIGHT WORD 157 The sentence below illustrates all these three faults. If one is interested to see the sights of the city, one will be repaid by the sights to be seen at the corner of Worth and State streets, since more people are seen there at one time, and an interesting sight is thus obtained. A short time ago, the head of one of the great tunneling com- panies in this country tried to tell a society of mining engineers about rock-drilling in tunnels. His theme was speed and efficiency, yet so far did his knowledge of composition fall short of his techni- cal achievement, that he took an hour and a half to say what he had been invited to say in fifteen minutes, and he repeated him- self till his audience was laughing at him. The man who followed him had only fifteen minutes in which to say what he had been invited to say in thirty ; yet so admirably did he compress his com- plicated exposition, that the worn-out audience was re-awakened, and listened eagerly, and understood. The difference between the two lay in the fact that the latter knew what words counted, while the former did not. Just as a rock drill of narrow bore drives deeper into the rock than a larger drill with the same force behind it, so a word of limited, specific meaning drives deeper into the mind than a word of wide application. The more definite a word is, the harder it hits. "He lies" is more forcible than "he misstates the facts," since the inaccuracy is defined as intentional. In parts of the country where the taking of human life is not greatly regarded, the word " murder " is seldom heard. " Killing" is vaguer, and im- plies no motive. A banker may "appropriate "the funds of a bank ; the burglar "robs." The banker's family prefer the less defi- nite term; but the rest of the world, and the law in particular, prefer to call things by their right names. A boy might write in a letter, "I saw a big automobile win the hill-climbing contest last Saturday. It went very fast." But the reporter for the "Auto Era" would say, "Mr. Charles Evans in his great new 8-cylinder, shaft-driven, imported Deauville, with its i3o-horse-power motor crackling louder than a dozen Catlings, flared like a comet up the slope in 53! seconds, breaking the record for a climb of this grade." The specific words in the latter's !^8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION account would carry more force and vividness than the general words in the boy's letter. The chief difficulty with colloquial phrases, when used in writing, is that they are not specific enough. It is" all very well to say of a friend, "He is very good fun." The expression vaguely in- dicates a certain companionableness in your friend, and in talk vagueness will pass. But a reader needs to know more than this. He must know wherein the friend is companionable, how he differs from others. The one object of specification is to separate one thing from all others of its kind. When you have described one man in a crowd, so that no other in the crowd could be mistaken for him, then you are specific. And it is the specific that is inter- esting; it is the man whose words mean something that carries conviction. Some writers are compelled by their profession to use words that mean little or nothing. The financial column of any news- paper will give you all the examples of this that you need. The reporter is, you see, ignorant of the underlying forces controlling the movements of the market, but he must at all costs preserve his air of omniscience. The result is not infrequently like the following : "Yesterday was the first day since May 15 three weeks ago to-morrow on which the stock has failed to reach a higher price than the best of the day before. The fact may or may not have a bearing on the programme of the eminently successful gamble to which an admiring world has been treated in the interim. Predictions about immediate results, in such a market as has been stirred up, are of no great value ; it is only predictions of the more distant outcome which may be made with certainty. However, all people familiar with Wall Street manipulation know what it is apt to mean when volume of trading on the Stock Exchange is expanded with such rapidity as in the past few days. " Human nature is such that the fact of this advance will instill in many minds the conviction that an equally large further ad- vance must be on the cards a method of inference which some- times turns out right, sometimes wrong, which is always a curiosity of logic, which serves very usefully the purposes of one element in the personnel of a speculative market, and is the invariable Ditfall of another." THE RIGHT WORD 159 If the reporter had dared to be forcible he would have avoided pallid words like, "may or may not," "may be made," "what it is apt to mean," and the other expressions that give the passage the sound of a Delphic oracle. He dared not say, "The market will fall to-morrow," because you see it might not, though in that case his salary would. His writing was cramped by circumstances, and to read such stuff is a mere waste of time. Fortunately most of us can write in unequivocal words, what- ever we have to say. "Be sure you are right, then go ahead." Don't go around, you see, go ahead. We come now to the most difficult of the three tests of the ef- fective word, Suggestive Power. Truth depends upon exactness and fidelity; Force" upon the amount of meaning in the word; Suggestive Power depends upon what the word calls up in the mind of the hearer, or, as the rhetorics put it, upon what it connotes. " Please present yourself before the Dean at three o'clock to-day." The phrase "the Dean" accurately describes a person whom the student knows; it means to him a man intrusted with certain powers. Truth and Force stop there ; Suggestiveness carries him on. The student may have been before the Dean on a previous occasion ; if so, his memory will recall the scene with painful vivid- ness, and awake all sorts of foreboding for the future interview. He may know of such interviews only by hearsay ; if so, his im- agination, aided by these scraps of knowledge, will paint for him an even more painful picture. The suggestive power of the word " Dean " depends then upon its association with ideas already existing in the mind of the students, and upon their personal rela- tions with him, upon the immediateness of the appeal. The reason why the world at large forgives the moderate use of slang in conversation, is that all slang possesses some suggestive quality. "I waited anxiously for his reply. The smile that preceded it was like a letter from home." In themselves the last four words are not slang, but the sug- gestive quality they possess has caused them to be taken up as a comparison expressive of something welcome, and this overuse has become slang. On the other hand, you must remember that the picturesqueness !6o ENGLISH COMPOSITION of suggestion contained in slang vanishes with its freshness, and that in general the suggestive quality in a word fades away with overuse. Trite comparisons are worse than none at all; they suggest nothing. Such phrases as, "He ran like a deer," are obviously unsuggestive. The two examples we have given illustrate the two types of words which carry suggestive quality; words which bring up images through intimate association, and words which bring up ideas and images through the medium of a comparison. To the former class belong such words as country, home, honor. Each of these is full of suggestiveness, since it brings up at once a host of ideas, and perhaps a definite series of pictures, within the mind. To the latter class belong all figures of speech, and particularly the simile, the metaphor, and the epithet. Now in conveying suggestive power the figure is tremendously more effective than the plain word. Its strength lies in the fact that it sets the reader's mind at work, recalling the pictures of past experiences. The idea created by the reader's mind has more effect than the one the writer gives him. But in proportion as it is powerful, it is dangerous if misused, and no part of composition is more difficult to manage. The great danger lies in the fact that the writer frequently does not realize the force of his comparison. In certain novels which we have all read, the little girl bounds to her mother's side, or away from it, as the case may be. But she always bounds. Now all the writer intends is probably a light, quick little run like the fawn's, but the word bound suggests more than that to the reader. It suggests a series of startled leaps, like a kangaroo's or a spring- bok's. The result of the comparison is ridiculous. All mixed figures are to be avoided for the same reason, that realization of them involves absurdity. We all know how the illustrator of cheap jokes would sketch the sentence, The fair girl threw a scornful eye upon him, and his face fell. Both figures are suggestive enough, when alone, but together they make nonsense. The student who wrote the next example sug- gested a little more than he meant to say, through the same fault. THE RIGHT WORD l6l The outcome of the French Revolution was too much for Words- worth to stomach. The writer, then, must realize the figure first of all for himself, and he must know enough of his reader to make sure how that person will take it, if he would forestall the laughter that is certain to attend a too realistic attempt. A less frequent fault in choosing figures is the use of unfamiliar comparisons. The whole point of a figure is to make a certain idea vivid by the suggestion of one more vivid and more easily apprehended. In describing a Class Day at a girls' college, a student wrote, "The campus was bright with as many colors as a swale in spring." His reader wondered what kind of a bush a swale was, and how many colors a swale had, until he looked up the word, and found it meant a low damp spot in a meadow. Only to him who instantly recognizes your comparison can it possibly be effective. A figure must be real, it must come from familiar life, but it does not need to be in all respects like the object to which it is applied. One point of similarity is sufficient, and, indeed, the more it differs in other respects, the more striking is the figure. But the differences should not be emphasized; they must be left to the reader's imagination. The essential thing is the immediate perception of the single point of likeness. One simile will illustrate what is meant. As the exhausted prize-fighter sat on his second's knee, his head dangled about like a poppy in a shower. Now there could be nothing more unlike in other respects than a prize-fighter and a poppy ; but there was in this case an immediate and real resemblance, and the reporter was keen enough to see it. Success in the use of figures depends chiefly upon the keen ob- servation of interesting experiences, and upon the ability to recall these observations at the proper time, for the purposes of a com- parison. Only one who had seen a poppy in a shower, and noted the odd effect of its dangling head, could have recalled it for use in a figure at the proper time. To a minor degree, success depends upon not forcing the comparison. This latter fault comes usually from too frequent employment of the figure. The common and !62 ENGLISH COMPOSITION violent figures of the writers of the cheap sensationalism of to-day form the worst possible models for the one who is learning to write. He had better avoid any figure, than follow their example. An extravagant metaphor may be funny once, but its point dulls quickly. It is neither spontaneous nor natural, and it cannot help us in our search for the right word. Finally, you will remember that all composition, whether written or oral, is addressed to the ear. Even in forms of composition intended only for the reader this fact must be taken into account. Every reader, as he reads, thinks more or less about the sound of the words he is reading. It is naturally impossible in such a book as this to go into any discussion as to what constitutes euphony. Two things we may say: that harsh combinations affect the ear unpleasantly, and that the same sound repeated at too close intervals is similarly offensive. When old Bishop Douglas talked of "thick drumly scuggis," and "ragged rolkis of hard harsk whin-stane," and the like, he was justified in devising such hideous combinations by the fact that he was trying to tell of a fierce winter storm. The sound fitted the sense. Otherwise, harsh sounds could never be good form in writing. When Sir Francis Bacon writes, in his translation of Psalm 104, There hast them set the great Leviathan That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan, the reader at once notices the disagreeable sound of too many j's and e's in the second line. The lines are bad poetry, and worse prose. Other lines of his in the same translation are equally bad, from the same fault. A typical one is the following : Plaining or chirping through their warblwg throats. Your ear alone can tell you why a combination like " a deep sleep " is not offensive, and why "the heart-breaking leave-taking" is distinctly so. But do not be a poet, unless you know it. Not only is a succession of like sounds to be avoided, except under special conditions, such as alliteration; but a succession of sentences of like structure should be avoided, except under special conditions, such as the intentional use of Parallel Structure for emphasis. THE RIGHT WORD 163 The right word, in short, must be felt in sound and sense alike to belong to the sentence, to be indispensable to a proper under- standing of its meaning. If it has satisfied the demands of Good Use, that it shall be neither slangy, colloquial, dialectal, foreign, pompous, nor archaic ; if it has been tested for effectiveness by the standard of Truth, the scales of Force, and the touchstone of Suggestiveness, and has not been rejected, it is thenceforward entitled to all the rights and privileges that appertain to an active and honorable member, in full standing, of the Sentence. But the rights carry with them a real responsibility. Only when in its complicated framework the word does easily and without ap- pearance of strain the work that it is given to do, can it be called the Right Word in the Right Place. PART II ARGUMENTATION CHAPTER VIII THE BRIEF ARGUMENTATION is closely related to Exposition, and all ar- gument contains more or less material that is simply expository. However, all writing (and speaking also) 1 which is called argu- ment differs from pure Exposition in one very important respect. Exposition explains something which the audience are willing to admit as true, but which they do not yet understand; argument tries to make them admit as true something which they do not yet believe to be so, and it usually deals with a subject which the audience already understand fairly well, else they would not have opinions about it. That is, the difference between Exposition and Argument is not so much in the material they use as in the purpose or aim for which they use it. For example, if you should explain to a friend the machinery of your bicycle simply to make clear to him how it works, your talk would be Exposition. If, however, you should explain the machinery of this wheel in order to persuade him to buy one of the same type, for which you are agent, then your talk would be Argument. The material used in both cases would be largely the same ; but the purpose for which you used this material would be different. In the first case you are trying to explain something; in the second you are trying to persuade the man to do something. In practical writing it is best, unless you have had years of ex- perience, to draw up an outline for a theme before actually writing the theme. In Argumentation we make for this purpose a special 1 The material in the following chapter will, it is believed, hold equally true of either oral or written argument. 164 THE BRIEF 165 form of outline, called a brief. A brief is a kind of outline, but every outline is not a brief by any means; consequently the reader should notice carefully what we are about to say concerning briefing, and should never make the mistake of thinking that any ordinary outline will answer the purpose of a carefully drawn brief. In drawing up a good brief there are three distinct steps, (a) In the first place, you must form a clear idea in your own mind of just what you are to prove, and must express this in the form of a single sentence. This step is called "phrasing the proposition," and the resulting sentence is called the Proposition or Resolution. This sentence, or resolution which you are upholding, should always be written at the top of your brief, (b) In the second place, you will need, at the beginning of your completed essay, one or two paragraphs of pure Exposition explaining what the facts of the question are, before you begin to argue about it. You will not write these paragraphs in full yet, but will simply draw up a skeleton outline of them. This outline should be written directly below the resolution, and is called the Introduction to the brief. (c) Thirdly, you must form a clear idea in your own mind of just how you are to prove the above resolution. Your scheme of proof should be put on paper in outline according to a special system which will be explained later. This part is called the Body of the Brief, or the Brief Proper. We will take up each of these three steps in detail. I. PHRASING THE PROPOSITION To phrase the proposition is to express in a single sentence the exact point which you are trying to prove. This proposition should always be a complete sentence, never a mere word or phrase. For instance, if you wrote down as your resolution "The evils of divorce," nobody would know what you meant to prove about the evils of divorce. No one could say whether you meant to prove that they are important or unimportant, whether they demand action or not. But if you write a complete sentence, "The evils of divorce call for immediate legislation," then you have stated one definite point which can be proved or disproved. !66 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Not only must your resolution be a sentence, but it must also be a sentence which expresses exactly what you propose to prove, no more and no less. In writing this sentence, a man should analyze his ideas carefully, for he will often find his own mind sur- prisingly hazy as to just what he is trying to prove. For instance, many a man would write at the top of his brief, "Football is good," and think that this sentence was perfectly satisfactory. It is not so at all. In the first place, what does he mean by "football "? Football as played by college men might be good, when football played by half-grown boys would be bad. In the second place, what does he mean by "good"? Good for whom? A sport may be good for the players, good for the on-lookers to watch, or good as a means of developing college spirit; and a game might be good in one of these ways without being good in the remaining two. However, if the sentence had been written, "Intercollegiate football is good for the players," it would have stated just what the author meant to prove, no more and no less, and thus would have been correct. II. THE INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF The aim of the introduction is to clear up the ground before the real argument begins. You must remember that your readers (or audience, as the case may be) know much less about the ques- tion than you do. Consequently, in order that they may follow your subsequent reasoning intelligently, you must give them cer- tain facts in the case, before you begin to argue about the conclu- sions to be drawn from those facts. Just how much should be told in the introduction will depend partly on the question and partly on your audience. The more complicated the subject and the more ignorant the audience, the more full your introduction will have to be. There are, however, certain things which your hearers should always know thoroughly when you have finished your introduction, whether they learned it from that or knew it beforehand. For one thing, they should understand, in its main features at least, the past history of the subject involved and the present state of affairs. You would not think, for example, of beginning to argue for a change in the tariff THE BRIEF 167 until your audience understood thoroughly what the tariff at present is. Secondly, your audience must know just what the question or resolution means. If you are arguing for a change in the tariff, you must explain just what changes you advocate and on what articles the changes are to be made. If you are arguing for the honor system in your school, you must explain precisely what the honor system is which you are upholding. In the third place, you should state clearly and precisely what the points are on which you disagree with the men of the other side. In most live questions you will find certain points on which all people agree, and others on which different minds clash. For example', all thinking men would agree that intercollegiate football has certain faults; but they might disagree as to whether the good points outweigh the bad ones or vice versa. Consequently, if you were arguing that inter- collegiate football is good for the players, you would say in your introduction that the question was not whether or not football had faults, but that the point at issue was, Does football have good qualities enough to outweigh its faults? When you have said this you have finished your introduction ; and as soon as you begin to prove that the good points really do more than counterbalance the bad, you are starting in on your brief proper. Always remember, however, that the great aim of your intro- duction is to prepare your audience for what follows, and that you are to include or exclude material accordingly. No argument should be brought into it. Its purpose, as just stated, shows that it should be pure exposition. It states what the facts are and what stand you propose to take as to these facts in your subsequent reasoning. As we are not yet writing out our full essay, we will simply make a skeleton outline of our introductory points here. This is the introduction of our brief. For the question on intercollegiate football it might be written as follows : INTRODUCTION I. The subject is an important one at present. A. It involves the interests of thousands of young men. B. It is having a marked influence on our educational problems. j68 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II. The past history of football gives us a fair basis of facts from which to argue about it. A. It has been in the country for years. B. It has been taken up by practically every college in the country. III. In arguing for football we do not deny that it has faults. A. We admit that it has numerous minor evils. B. We maintain simply that its good points far outweigh its defects. III. THE BODY OF THE BRIEF Now that you have phrased your proposition and cleared the ground by your preliminary explanation, you are ready for your third step in briefing. This consists of gathering and arranging in order the arguments by which you are to prove your proposition. These arguments are arranged in an outline according to a simple but important principle. The main idea of this part of your brief is that it should be a map of the relations of your ideas to each other. Perhaps the simplest way of explaining this outline of your argument would be to compare it to a scaffolding or old-fashion railroad trestle. A cross section of a railroad trestle 1 looks something like the diagram on the opposite page (Fig. i). Now, the main aim of this whole trestle is simply to support the central track, so that trains can run over it. In the same way, the whole aim of your argument is to uphold one central point, that is, the main proposition that you are trying to prove. Further, this track rests upon two or three posts immediately under it. Similarly, your main proposition rests upon two or three main points. For example, if your main proposition is that foot- ball is good for the players, this rests upon the three main argu- ments that it is good for them physically, good for them mentally, and good for them morally. Now, those two or three top posts in your railroad trestle did not reach down to the ground ; con- sequently, they had to have other posts under them supporting them. Likewise, your three points about football must them- selves rest on other points which prove that they are true. If 1 Of course, some details of an actual railroad trestle are omitted. The comparison is used merely to explain the brief. THE BRIEF 169 football is good physically, mentally, and morally, then it is a good thing; but each of these points must have some aubpoints under it to prove it. So we can make a trestle for our argument like our railroad trestle, one that will support our main proposition at the II .. II II II top and reach down at the bottom to the bedrock of facts or strong evidence. It would stand something like Fig. 2 "(P a g e 170). It will be seen here that each point in the first or top row proves the main proposition ; that each point in the second row proves the point in the first row under which it stands; and that each point in the third row proves the point in the second row above it. The fact that a player spends all his afternoons at the athletic field proves that he is kept out in the open air; the fact that he is kept out in the open air helps to prove that football is good for him physically; and the fact that it is good for him physically helps to prove that it is a good thing for him as a whole. It will also be seen that all the points in the bottom row are so obviously true that nobody would dispute them. Consequently, these form a solid foundation on which the entire trestle of our argument can rest 170 ENGLISH COMPOSITION firmly. This is the whole idea of a brief : to base our main prop- osition on certain points, then rest these on other points, and so on, until we reach points at the bottom, on which the whole argu- &xff It is a dangerous game. They need skill in each man. Lnexpected plays are alw.ays happening. The variety of slays developes hey spend their ntire afternoons at the field. ment rests, and which seem so true that they themselves need no further support. THE BRIEF 171 A framework like the above should underlie every good argu- ment. In practice, however, it is almost never written in the above form. Instead, it is written in a scheme like the following, with each subpoint under the main point which it proves. I. Football is good for the players physically, for A. It keeps the men out in the open air, for (i) They spend every afternoon at the athletic field. B. It requires a healthy diet, for (1) The athlete cannot eat pastry, and (2) He cannot eat between meals. Now we can draw up our whole brief on football, as follows : 1 PROPOSITION Resolved, that intercollegiate football is good for the players. INTRODUCTION I. The subject is an important one at present. A. It involves the interests of thousands of young men. B. It is having a marked influence on our educational problems. II. The past history of football gives us a fair basis of facts from which to argue about it. A. It has been in the country for years. B. It has been taken up by practically every college in the country. HI. In arguing for football we do not deny that it has faults. A. We admit that it has numerous minor evils. B. We argue simply that its good points far outweigh its defects. 1 If a real trestle stands on uneven ground, some of the supports will have to go farther down than others to reach ground, and will need an extra tier of posts. In the same way one main point in a brief may have more tiers of argument than another. One might go I. (i) and stop at (i), while another in the same brief might stand I. A. (i) (a) !72 ENGLISH COMPOSITION BRIEF PROPER I. Football is good for the players physically, for A. It keeps the men out in the open air, for (i) They spend every afternoon at the athletic field. B. It requires a healthy diet, for (1) The athlete cannot eat pastry, and (2) He cannot eat between meals. C. It develops the muscles, for (i) The variety of plays develops the whole body. II. It is good for the players mentally, for A. It makes men think quickly, for (i) Unexpected plays are always happening. B. It makes the men resourceful, for (1) They need variety of plays, and (2) They need skill in each separate man. III. It is good for the players morally, for A. It develops courage, for (i) It is a dangerous game. B. It teaches self-control, for (1) A man must not be offside, and (2) A man must obey the umpire. CONCLUSION Since football helps the players physically, mentally, and morally, it is a good thing and should be encouraged. Remarks on the Brief. Theoretically the brief consists of three parts : the introduction, the brief proper, and the conclusion. The conclusion, which, theoretically, is the third main division of the brief, is practically a mere matter of form, stating clearly just what you have proved. In drawing up a brief, there are certain cautions which you must always bear in mind. In the first place, you must be very careful to see that every subpoint proves the main point under which it stands. As a check on this, every point which is followed by a subpoint proving it should end with for or because. If for or because here does not make sense, there is something wrong with your brief. For the same reason the word therefore should never THE BRIEF 173 be used. The very word therefore implies that you are bringing in a main point or conclusion after the minor point or evidence which proves it; and this in briefing is wrong. It is like putting the track in a railroad trestle under its supports instead of above them. If you could use the word therefore at any point in your brief and make sense, then your brief is not properly drawn. In the second place, every point in the brief should be a complete sentence, never a mere word or phrase. The reasons for this are the same as the reasons which require that the proposition at the head of your brief should be a sentence. If you phrase a point "open air," nobody knows what you mean about open air; but if you say, "Football keeps a man out in the open air," then you have made a point, and everybody knows just what it is. In the third place, your most important point should be put last for Emphasis, just as in the outline of an expository theme. Testing the Brief as Argument. We have now finished all the details of properly drawing up a brief, as far as the form goes. But before we actually write it out, we ought also to test it as argu- ment. At bottom, we are working, not simply to conform to certain rules of rhetoric, but to convince intelligent men ; and in order that we may convince them, we must be sure that our argu- ment is not only properly briefed but also calculated to convince. The first caution needed under this head is that a brief should not have too many main points. A greater number than four or five is usually undesirable, as the reader is unable to keep them clearly in his mind, and consequently does not get the full force of what you are saying. As a general thing some points are much stronger than others. If you find that your brief has eight or ten main heads, you will do well to cut out some of the weaker ones altogether. The great gain in clearness will far outweigh the slight loss in argument. It is not the number of points which you make but the number of points which your readers clearly remem- ber that determine how far you have convinced them; and you must remember that the sole aim of argument is to convince your readers that you are right. Frequently also you will be able to combine two points into one by making them subheads under one new main head. For instance, the two points that football de- velops courage and that it develops self-control can both be com- I74 ENGLISH COMPOSITION bined under the one head that it develops a man morally. This should always be done when possible, as it makes the outline of your argument much easier to remember. The second caution is that you should have actual evidence or proof to support every point that you make. Evidence is the lower part in the trestle of your argument; and if it is weak or insufficient, your whole fabric will tumble at a touch. Young men are apt to assert a series of statements without proof, and think they are arguing. They will say that the honor system should be tried because the men will be too honest to cheat under it; and then will not bring forward one scrap of evidence, aside from their own opinion, to show that the men will be so honest. This is not arguing. No intelligent man will be persuaded by you until you show him a solid foundation for your assertions. There are many different kinds of evidence; but definite evidence of some kind you must have. You must reason and prove, not merely assert. Not only must you have evidence, but you must also analyze this evidence carefully and see that it will stand investigation. Any argument is almost certain to rouse more or less antagonism ; and your opponents will examine your points with microscopes and pick out every flaw. If you have arguments that sound well at first but are weak at bottom, these enemies will show this to every- body and make you ridiculous. We have already compared an argument to a trestle ; we might also compare it to a battleship. The best battleship is not that one which makes the finest show when it is launched, but that one which can stand the most bang- ing. In the same way, the best argument is not always that which sounds the most impressive at first ; but that argument is best which is so fortified with proof that your enemies can hammer and hammer at it, and still not be able to shatter it. Consequently, you should make sure that your own evidence is sound before you expose it to hostile fire. Before we can accumulate evidence or test its value properly, we must consider some of the more usual forms which it takes. One very common form of it is what is known as "testimonial evidence." This consists in grounding your arguments on the fact that somebody said such and such things were so. If a lawyer THE BRIEF 175 tries to prove the innocence of his client by the testimony of some witness who saw another man commit the murder, he is using one form of testimonial evidence, the form in which the witness asserts a fact. If a debater is arguing that a certain law is unjust, and quotes a statement to that effect from some prominent states- man, then he is using the second form of testimonial evidence, in which the man quoted states not a fact, but an opinion. Either form, if it will stand analysis, is strong. If a man actually saw Jones commit the murder, no jury would hang Smith. If one of the wisest statesmen in the country thinks a law unjust, most men would hesitate long before disagreeing with him. But will this evidence stand analysis? Did the witness actually see Jones do the shooting, or is he lying about it? Was the man who pro- nounced the law unjust really a great statesman whose opinion you would respect; or was he only a conceited demagogue whose views on the subject are worthless ? Obviously the whole value of this class of evidence depends on the character of the witness himself. If he is reliable, you can include his statements, and your opponents will have to respect them ; if he is not reliable, you must omit the whole thing from your brief and argument. There are three tests which you should always apply to testi- monial evidence: Was the speaker mentally competent? Was he morally trustworthy? Were his statements or opinions un- biased by any personal prejudice? If all three of these can be answered in the affirmative, the evidence is sound ; if they cannot, it is weak. The statement of a witness that Jones did the killing would have little value if the witness was mentally incompetent at the time through drunkenness, if he was morally untrust- worthy because he was a notorious liar, or if his judgment was biased by his friendship for the accused. The declaration by a statesman that a law was unjust would be worthless if the man was not well informed on the subject, if he was an unprincipled politician, or if he was personally interested in some business which suffered from this particular law. Another form of evidence, very useful but also very dangerous, is generalization. This consists in arguing that a certain thing is true generally because you have seen that it is true in particular cases. For example, you might argue that the negro race could X y6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION produce great men by citing several cases where it had done so, in the lives of Frederick Douglas, Booker Washington, etc. The danger with this reasoning is that a man .may base his general conclusion on too few particular cases. There are exceptions to all rules. If you have a great many cases to prove your point, these must represent the rule ; but if you have only a few, they might represent the exceptions, and your conclusions might be all wrong. Some time ago a certain class in English Composition discovered that three men had passed the course the preceding year without doing any work. By the process of generalization the class somewhat too hastily concluded from these few cases that any man could pass English Composition without working. When they failed at the end of the year, they realized that there was something wrong in their reasoning. The three men who had passed were exceptions to the rule, not representative of it. On the other hand, when you argue that yellow fever is due to the bite of a mosquito because this, has been known to be true in hundreds of cases, then your conclusion is sound ; for these cases are so numerous that they must represent the rule and not the exceptions. Generalization at the present time works largely through statistics. If you can show by figures that the majority of German immigrants amass wealth and that very few of them are brought into our criminal courts, you can safely draw the general conclusion that German immigrants are desirable. It should be mentioned in passing, however, that statistics, which from one point of view are a form of generalization, from another standpoint are testi- monial evidence and should be submitted to the same tests. If a learned doctor in a magazine article gives a table of statistics, compiled by himself, to show that alcoholic neuritis is increasing, you have nothing but his word to prove that those figures are true. Hence, considering statistics as testimonial evidence, you must ask whether or not the man who compiled them was competent, honest, and unprejudiced. At the same time, considering them as a form of generalization, you must decide whether or not they cover cases enough to warrant a general conclusion. A third type of evidence is based on the relation of cause and effect. We feel universally that there must be a cause for every THE BRIEF 177 effect and an effect for every cause. Things do not happen with- out a reason why, and you cannot do this or that without feeling the consequences. Hence when a certain effect is known and its cause is unknown, you can argue from the known effect to the probable cause. A certain town is ravaged by typhoid fever; this is the known effect. The cause of this fever is at first un- known; but since the drainage of the town is bad and since bad drainage is a common cause of typhoid, you can put two and two together and conclude that the drainage must be the cause of the* fever. In the same way, you can argue from a known cause to a probable effect. "If you drive your auto so fast, some day you will have an accident." Here the cause, the fast driving, is a known fact ; and the speaker is arguing that an accident will be the probable result as an accident is usually the effect produced by this cause. In other words, the relation between cause and effect may be compared to that between the receiver and transmitter of a telephone. If you see a friend talking into a transmitter, you feel certain that a receiver miles away is repeating his words, although you have no evidence of that distant effect except that you see the cause of it before your eyes. So you can infer any effect if you see its cause in action. Or again, if you hear a voice in your receiver, you are convinced that some one is talking into a transmitter in another city, although you have no proof of the existence of this cause except that you hear the effect which that cause regularly produces. Now where there is only one cause and one effect, this argument is simple and reliable. It is like a private telephone line with only one transmitter and one receiver. Hence you can be certain that there is but one cause for your effect, just as you could feel assured that there could be but one transmitter from which the voice heard in your receiver could come. But frequently in real life several causes unite to produce one effect, and several effects may spring from a single cause. In such cases, if you are not careful, your reasoning will prove unsound, because you may give the blame (or credit) for a certain effect to one of its many causes when really the other causes had more to do with producing that effect. You can no more infer here that any one cause produced a certain effect than you could argue that a man speaking to you over a N I 7 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION public telephone must be standing by a particular transmitter, when a voice at any one of a dozen different transmitters might have.produced the same sound. A good example of this fallacious reasoning is found in the often-quoted statement: "The re- publican form of government is better than the monarchical, be- cause the United States has grown so fast under a republican govern- ment." Here the prosperity of our country is the known effect, and the speaker argues that our form of government is the unknown fcause. But as a matter of fact there are several causes for our prosperity : the newness of our country, our national isolation, our great natural resources, the ability of our race, etc. If the good government were the only possible cause, we should know that we have a good government, for we could not have the effect with- out some cause, and that would be the only possible cause. But as things are, there are four other causes fully able to produce the effect (prosperity), even if cause five did not east. Consequently we have no proof that our prosperity is due, to any extent, to our government; and hence the above statement is no proof that our government is good. Here you have a fallacy in reasoning from effect to cause. Similar fallacies occur in reasoning from cause to effect. You can never be certain that this kind of reasoning is sound unless you have considered all possible causes and all possible effects. As a fourth form of evidence we have the argument from re- semblance. This consists in pointing out that things which have happened a certain way under certain conditions will happen in the same way again under similar conditions. "The honor system would work well in our school, for it worked well at Hamil- ton, which is a school very much like ours." This argument derives its whole strength from the resemblance between the two schools. Of course if conditions at the two schools are identical, it is almost certain that what succeeded in one place will succeed in the other; and in practical life the argument from resemblance is usually treated with a good deal of respect. At the same time it contains one great danger. This is that the resemblance be- tween the two schools (or whatever else you are comparing) may not be as close as it seems to be in those very details that are most important. Two schools might resemble each other in every- THE BRIEF 179 thing else, and yet differ in the one thing on which the success of the honor system depends, the attitude of the undergraduates toward the curriculum. The question is not, Do the schools re- semble each other in details which are not to the point, but, Do they resemble each other in that one detail on which everything depends ? If you can show a resemblance of this last kind, your argument is strong; if you cannot, you may not be proving nearly as much as you suppose. 1 Another form of reasoning, very different from the above, is what is called "deductive argument." All that deductive argu- ment amounts to is this : You have a certain object X about which you wish to prove a certain fact Y. You say, " It is a general law, admitted by everybody, that' the fact Y is true of all the objects in a certain class. Now don't you see that X is one of the objects belonging to that class ? Consequently, the fact Y is true of the object X." The best illustration of this is found in geometry, which is an unbroken series of deductive arguments. You have laid two points in two straight angles together, and you wish to prove that the angles coincide. You say: "There is a general law, true of all straight lines, that if they coincide at two points, they coincide throughout. But these two straight angles are straight lines, and they coincide in two points. Therefore what is true of all straight lines is true of them, and they coincide through- out." In other words, this is the simplest form of putting two and two together. Everybody admits that your law is true of that class of objects ; everybody admits that the object about which you are arguing belongs to that class ; well, then, just put the two things together. An everyday example of deductive argument would be the following : in such and Johnny h n othing but a so how can you expect him to live] ,. , P Consequently, he can't live there. 1 Arguments from generalization, cause and effect, and resemblance are closely related and sometimes run into each other. They are all forms of inductive argument, that is, argument which reasons from facts to general l8o ENGLISH COMPOSITION In real life deductive arguments are usually implied without being fully expressed. You would generally hear the above one worded more like this: "How can you expect any boy to live in a den like that?" It would still be a deductive argument, how- ever, since at bottom its logic is the same. To have a sound deductive argument, you must be sure of two things: that the law which you assume as true really is so; and that the object about which you are proving your point really is a member of the class to which the law applies. " Every man has his price, and Thompson is a man like the rest of us ; so I can bribe him." This sounds logical; but Thompson refuses to be bribed; consequently the reasoning must be wrong. The trouble here is that the law from which the speaker starts is not true, for every man does not have his price. "Tyrants deserve to be killed, and Caesar was a tyrant; therefore Caesar deserved to be killed." Here the law in regard to the class "tyrants" is true; but Caesar did not belong to that class, for he was not a tyrant, at least not in the sense in which the word is used here; consequently this argument is worthless. Most arguments can be brought under one of the above heads : testimonial evidence, cause and effect, generalization, resemblance, and deductive reasoning. If you have analyzed all the points in your brief under these heads and found them reliable, you may feel reasonably certain that the framework of your whole argument is sound. Now, when your proposition is phrased, when your introduc- tion is drawn up, and when the arguments of your brief proper are arranged and tested, your brief is complete. All that is left is the final task of writing this out in full. laws, as opposed to deductive argument, which reverses this order and ap- plies general laws to particular cases. CHAPTER IX DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT FROM THE BRIEF THERE are two great classes of arguments: (i) arguments which are intended to convince people without rousing them to action, and (2) arguments which aim to persuade men not only that some- thing is true, but also that they should rouse up and do something about it. An example of the first would be an argument to prove that the North American Indians are related to the Tartars. This question concerns only the intellect ; it has nothing to do with the feelings ; and whether your audience are convinced or not, nothing will be done about it. An example of the second type would be an argument that all voters should vote for Mr. X for President. This would appeal not only to the intellect but also to the emotions of the audience ; and their whole future course of conduct would depend on the way in which the argument affected them. The first type includes what are usually called arguments of theory and fact; the second type includes what are called arguments of policy; and the appeal to the feelings which is almost always associated with these arguments of policy is called Persuasion. Now, in writing out your full composition from your previously prepared brief, you would develop an argument of the first type somewhat differently from one of the second. Hence, we will take these up separately. Type I : Arguments of Theory or Fact. In writing these out, you simply use your brief as a guide, and follow the rules of ordinary exposition. If your argument is very short, each main division may be made a paragraph. If it is long, you should have separate paragraphs for the larger subdivisions. Be careful to make all transitions clear and to have each paragraph emphasize its main point. A good example of an argument of this type is the follow- ing: 181 !8 2 . ENGLISH COMPOSITION THE ORIGIN OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 1 JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY [From The Yosemite Guide Book, 1874.] All will recognize in the Yosemite a peculiar and unique type of scenery. Cliffs absolutely vertical, like the upper portions of the Half Dome and El Capitan, and of such immense height as these, are, so far as we know, to be seen nowhere else. The dome form of mountains is exhibited on a grand scale in other parts of the Sierra Nevada; but there is no Half Dome, even among the stupendous precipices at the head of the King's River. No one can avoid asking, What is the origin of this peculiar type of scen- ery ? How has this unique valley been formed, and what are the geological causes which have produced its wonderful cliffs, and all the other features which combine to make this locality so remark- able?' These questions we will endeavor to answer, as well as our ability to pry into what went on in the deep-seated regions of the earth, in former geological ages, will permit. Most of the great canons and valleys of the Sierra Nevada have resulted from aqueous denudation, and in no part of the world has this kind of work been done on a larger scale. The long- continued action of tremendous torrents of water, rushing with impetuous velocity down the slopes of the mountains, has exca- vated those immense gorges by which the chain of the Sierra Nevada is furrowed, on its western slope, to the depth of thou- sands of feet. This erosion, great as it is, has been done within a comparatively recent period, geologically speaking, as is conclu- sively demonstrated in numerous localities. At the Abbey's Ferry crossing of the Stanislaus, for instance, a portion of the mass of Table Mountain is seen on each side of the river, in such a posi- tion as to demonstrate that the current of the lava which forms the summit of this mountain once flowed continuously across what is now a canon over 2000 feet deep, showing that the erosion 1 Used by the kind permission of the owner of the copyright, Miss Maria Whitney. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 183 of that immense gorge has all been effected since the lava flowed down from the higher portion of the Sierra. This event took place, as we know from the fossil bones and plants embedded under the volcanic mass, at a very recent geological period, or in the latter part of the Tertiary epoch, and after the appearance of man on the earth. The eroded canons of the Sierra, however, whose formation is due to the action of water, never have vertical walls, nor do their sides present the peculiar angular forms which are seen in the Yosemite, as, for instance, in El Capitan, where two perpendic- ular surfaces of smooth granite, more than 3000 feet high, meet each other at a right angle. It is sufficient to look for a moment at the vertical faces of El Capitan and the Bridal Veil Rock, turned down the Valley, or away from the direction in which the eroding forces must have acted, to be able to say that aqueous erosion could not have been the agent employed to do any such work. The squarely cut reentering angles, like those below El Capitan, and between Cathedral Rock and the Sentinel, or in the Illilouette canon, were never produced by ordinary erosion. Much less could any such cause be called in to account for the peculiar formation of the Half Dome, the vertical portion of which is all above the ordinary level of the walls of the Valley, rising 2000 feet, in sublime isolation, above any point which could have been reached by denuding agencies, even supposing the current of water to have filled the whole Valley. Much less can it be supposed that the peculiar form of the Yosemite is due to the erosive action of ice. A more absurd theory was never advanced than that by which it was sought to ascribe to glaciers the sawing out of these vertical walls, and the rounding of the domes. Nothing more unlike the real work of ice, as ex- hibited in the Alps, could be found. Besides, there is no reason to suppose, or at least no proof, that glaciers have ever occupied the Valley or any portion of it, as will be explained in the next chapter ; so that this theory, based on entire ignorance of the whole subject, may be dropped without wasting any more time upon it. The theory of erosion not being admissible to account for the formation of the Yosemite Valley, we have to fall back on some one of those movements of the earth's crust to which the primal !84 ENGLISH COMPOSITION forms of mountain valleys are due. The forces which have acted to produce valleys are complex in their nature, and it is not easy to classify the forms which have resulted from them in a satis- factory manner. The two principal types of valleys, however, are those produced by rents or fissures in the crust, and those resulting from flexures or foldings of the strata. The former are usually transverse to the mountain chain in which they occur ; the latter are more frequently parallel to them, and parallel to the general strike of the strata of which the mountains are made up. Valleys which have originated in cross fractures are usually very narrow defiles, inclosed within steep walls of rocks, the steepness of the' walls increasing with the hardness of the rock. It would be diffi- cult to point to a good example of this kind of valley in California ; the famous defile of the Via Mala in Switzerland is one of the best which could be cited. Valleys formed by foldings of the strata are very common in many mountain chains, especially in those typical ones, the Jura and the Appalachian. Many of the valleys of the Coast Ranges are of this order. A valley formed in either one of the ways suggested above may be modified afterwards by forces pertaining to either of the others ; thus a valley originating in a transverse fissure may afterwards become much modified by an erosive agency, or a longitudinal flexure valley may have one of its sides raised up or let down by a "fault" or line of fissure running through or across it. If we examine the Yosemite to see if traces of an origin in either of the above ways can be detected there, we obtain a negative answer. The Valley is too wide to have been formed by a fissure ; it is about as wide as it is deep, and if it had been originally a simple crack, the walls must have been moved bodily away from each other, carrying the whole chain of the Sierra with them, to one side or the other, or both, for the distance of half a mile. Be- sides, when a cliff has been thus formed, there will be no difficulty in recognizing the fact, from the correspondence of the outlines of the two sides ; just as, when we break a stone in two, the pieces must necessarily admit of being fitted together again. No corre- spondence of the two sides of the Yosemite can be detected, nor will the most ingenious contriving, or lateral moving, suffice to bring them into anything like adaptation to each other. A square DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 185 recess on one side is met on the other, not by a corresponding pro- jection, but by a plain wall or even another cavity. These facts are sufficient to make the adoption of the theory of a rent or fissure impossible. There is much the same difficulty in conceiving of the formation of the Valley by any flexure or folding process. The forms and outlines of the masses of rock limiting it are too angular, and have too little development in any one direction ; they are cut off squarely at the upper end, where the ascent to the general level of the country.is by gigantic steps, and not by a gradual rise. The direction of the Valley, too, is transverse to the general line of elevation of the mountains, and not parallel with it, as it should be, roughly at least, were it the result of folding or upheaval. In short, we are led irresistibly to the adoption of a theory of the origin of the Yosemite Valley in a way which has hardly yet been recognized as one of those in which valleys may be formed, probably for the reason that there are so few cases in which such an event can be absolutely proved to have occurred. We conceive that, during the process of upheaval of the Sierra, or, possibly, at some time after that had taken place, there was at the Yosemite a subsidence of a limited area, marked by lines of "fault" or fissures crossing each other somewhat nearly at right angles. In other and more simple language, the bottom of the Valley sank down to an unknown depth, owing to its support being withdrawn from underneath during some of those convulsive movements which must have attended the upheaval of so extensive and elevated a chain, no matter how slow we may imagine the process to have been. Subsidence, over extensive areas, of por- tions of the earth's crust is not at all a new idea in geology, and there is nothing in this peculiar application of it which need excite surprise. It is the great amount of vertical displacement for the small area implicated which makes this a peculiar case; but it would not be easy to give any good reason why such an exceptional result should not be brought about, amid the complicated play of forces which the elevation of a great mountain chain must set in motion. By the adoption of the subsidence theory for the formation of the Yosemite, we are able to get over one difficulty which appears insurmountable with any other. This is, the very small !g6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION amount of debris at the base of the cliffs, and even, at a few points, its entire absence, as previously noticed in our description of the Valley. We see that fragments of rocks are loosened by rain, frost, gravity, and other natural causes, along the walls, and probably not a winter elapses that some great mass of detritus does not come thundering down from above, adding, as it is easy to see from actual inspection of those slides which have occurred within the past few years, no inconsiderable amount to the talus. Several of these great rock avalanches have taken place since the Valley was inhabited. One which fell near Cathedral Rock is said to have shaken the Valley like an earthquake. This abrasion of the edges of the Valley has unquestionably been going on during a vast period of time ; what has become of the detrital material ? Some masses of granites now lying in the Valley one in partic- ular near the base of the Yosemite Fall are as large as houses. Such masses as these could never have been removed from the Valley by currents of water; in fact, there is no evidence of any considerable amount of aqueous erosion, for the canon of the Merced below the Yosemite is nearly free from detritus, all the way down to the plain. The falling masses have not been carried out by a glacier, for there are below the Valley no remains of the moraines which such an operation could not fail to have formed. It appears to us that there is no way of disposing of the vast mass of detritus, which must have fallen from the walls of the Yosemite since the formation of the Valley, except by assuming that it has gone down to fill the abyss which was opened by the subsidence which our theory supposes to have taken place. What the depth of the chasm may have been we have no data for com- puting; but that it must have been very great is proved by the fact that it has been able to receive the accumulation of so long a period of time. The cavity was, undoubtedly, occupied by water, forming a lake of unsurpassed beauty and grandeur, until quite a recent epoch. The gradual desiccation of the whole country, the disappearance of the glaciers, and the filling up of the abyss to nearly a level with the present outlet, where the Valley passes into a canon of the usual form, have converted the lake into a valley with a river meandering through it. The process of DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 187 filling up still continues, and the talus will accumulate perceptibly fast, although a long time must elapse before the general appearance of the Valley will be much altered by this cause, so stupendous is the vertical height of its walls, and so slow their crumbling away, at least as compared with the historic duration of time. Lake Tahoe and the valley which it partly occupies we con- ceive also to be, like the Yosemite, the result of local subsidence. It has evidently not been produced by erosion; its depth below the mountains on each side, amounting to as much as 3000 feet, forbids this idea, as do also its limited area and its parallelism with the axis of the chain. The Lake is still very deep, over 1000 feet; but how deep it was originally, and how much detritus has been carried into it, we have no data for even crudely estimating. Type II : Arguments of Policy. In writing out this type of argu- ment in full, we also follow all the previous rules for exposition; but we likewise have certain new considerations to face. The first new need here is a certain amount of policy or diplomacy in our opening remarks. We are trying to win over people who disagree with us; hence we 'must be careful to ingratiate ourselves with them at the start. Our introduction must be not only clear but tactful as well. Secondly, we need a certain exciting stimulus in this form of argument which was not required in the other type or in exposition. If you wish men to act, it is not enough to convince them that certain facts are so. It is easy to convince most college men that they ought to study harder; but it is not so easy to get them to study, even after they are convinced. So it is in all things. You must adopt some definite means of spurring on your readers to action; or the laziness inherent in all humanity will keep them from acting, even after they have agreed that you are right. The means used for thus spurring on your readers to action are various; but all consist in exciting their emotions. One of the best ways is that of giving specific instances which will appeal to the reader's conscience or pride or sympathy. Such definite examples are always much more vivid and exciting than philosophical generalizations. For instance, a man who was arguing for the suppression of Child Labor could stir up his audi- !88 ENGLISH COMPOSITION ence tremendously by picturing the sufferings of one little child, when elaborate statistics about children in general would convince their reason without rousing their interest. Another powerful instrument of Persuasion is an appeal to the selfish instincts in man. If a person can be made to feel that the wrongs of another man may eventually become his wrongs, he is much more inclined to enter the field in that man's defence. As a general thing, it is better to bring your most solid arguments in the middle of your speech and the appeal to the feelings of your audience later. In- telligent men are more willing to enlist their sympathies on your side when you have already won their respect by an appeal to their reason. The following extracts are examples of arguments of this type. Their difference in character is due largely to the difference in the audiences before which they were delivered. THE LIVERPOOL SPEECH HENRY WARD BEECHER This speech was delivered in Liverpool, England, during our Civil War. Notice how Mr. Beecher gradually wins over an audience at first opposed to him and his views. For more than twenty-five years I have been made perfectly familiar with popular assemblies in all parts of my country except the extreme South. There has not for the whole of that time been a single day of my life when it would have been safe for me to go South of Mason's and Dixon's line in my own country, and all for one reason : my solemn, earnest, persistent testimony against that which I consider to be the most atrocious thing under the sun the system of American slavery in a great free republic. [Cheers.] I have passed through that early period when right of free speech was denied to me. Again and again I have attempted to address audiences that, for no other crime than that of free speech, visited me with all manner of contumelious epithets; and now since I have been in England, although I have met with greater kindness and courtesy on the part of most than I deserved, yet, on the other DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 189 hand, I perceive that the Southern influence prevails to some ex- tent in England. [Applause and uproar.] It is my old acquaint- ance ; I understand it perfectly [laughter] and I have always held it to be an unfailing truth that where a man had a cause that would bear examination he was perfectly willing to have it spoken about. [Applause.] And when in Manchester I saw those huge placards: "Who is Henry Ward Beecher?" [laughter, cries of "Quite right," and applause] and when in Liverpool I was told that there were those blood-red placards, purporting to say what Henry Ward Beecher had said, and calling upon Englishmen to suppress free speech I tell you what I thought. I thought simply this: "I am glad of it." [Laughter.] Why? Because if they had felt perfectly secure, that you are the minions of the South and the slaves of slavery, they would have been perfectly still. [Applause and uproar.] And, therefore, when I saw so much nervous apprehension that, if I were permitted to speak [hisses and applause] when I found they were afraid to have me speak [hisses, laughter, and "No, no!"] when I found that they considered my speaking damaging to their cause [applause] when I found that they appealed from facts and reasonings to mob law [applause and uproar] I said, no man need tell me what the heart and secret counsel of these men are. They tremble and are afraid. [Applause, laughter, hisses, "No, no!" and a voice: "New York mob."] Now, personally, it is a matter of very little consequence to me whether I speak here to- night or not. [Laughter and cheers.] But, one thing is very cer- tain, if you do permit me to speak here to-night, you will hear very plain talking. [Applause and hisses.] You will not find a man [interruption] you will not find me to be a man that dared to speak about Great Britain three thousand miles off, and then is afraid to speak to Great Britain when he stands on' her shores. [Immense applause and hisses.] And if I do not mistake the tone and temper of Englishmen, they had rather have a man who op- poses them in a manly way [applause from all parts of the hall] than a sneak that agrees with them in an unmanly way. [Ap- plause and "Bravo!"] Now, if I can carry you with me by sound convictions, I shall be immensely glad [applause] ; but if I cannot carry you with me by facts and sound arguments, I do 190 ENGLISH COMPOSITION not wish you to go with me at all; and all that I ask is simply FAIR PLAY. [Applause, and a voice: "You shall have it too.'"] Those of you who are kind enough to wish to favor my speaking and you will observe that my voice is slightly husky, from having spoken almost every night in succession for some time past, those who wish to hear me will do me the kindness simply to sit still, and to keep still; and I and my friends the Secessionists will make all the noise. [Laughter.] There are two dominant races in modern history the Ger- manic and the Romanic races. The Germanic races tend to personal liberty, to a sturdy individualism, to civil and to political liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolutism in government; it is clannish; it loves chieftains; it develops a people that crave strong and showy governments to support and plan for them. The Anglo-Saxon race belongs to the great German family, and is a fair exponent of its peculiarities. The Anglo-Saxon carries self- government and self -development with him wherever he goes. He has popular GOVERNMENT and popular INDUSTRY; for the effects of a generous civil liberty are not seen a whit more plain in the good order, in the intelligence, and in the virtue of a self-governing people, than in their amazing enterprise and the scope and power of their creative industry. The power to create riches is just as much a part of the Anglo-Saxon virtues as the power to create good order and social safety. The things re- quired for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty. [Hear, hear!] Though these are not merely the same liberty, as I shall show you. First, there must be liberty to follow those laws of business which experience has developed, without imposts or restrictions or governmental intrusions. Busi- ness simply wants to be let alone. [Hear, hear !] Then, secondly, there must be liberty to distribute and exchange products of in- dustry in any market without burdensome tariffs, without im- posts, and without vexatious regulations. There must be these two liberties liberty to create wealth, as the makers of it think best, according to the light and experience which business has given them ; and then liberty to distribute what they have created with- out unnecessary vexatious burdens. The comprehensive law DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT IQI of the ideal industrial condition of the world is free manufacture and free trade. [Hear, hear! A voice: "The Morrill tariff." Another voice : " Monroe."] I have said there were three elements of liberty. The third is the necessity of an intelligent and free race of customers. There must be freedom among producers; there must be freedom among the distributors ; there must be free- dom among the customers. It may not have occurred to you that it makes any difference what one's customers are, but it does in all regular and prolonged business. The condition of the customer determines how much he will buy, determines of what sort he will buy. Poor and ignorant people buy little and that of the poorest kind. The richest and the intelligent, having the more means to buy, buy the most, and always buy the best. Here, then, are the three liberties: liberty of the producer, liberty of the distributor, and liberty of the consumer. The first two need no discussion; they have been long thoroughly and brilliantly illustrated by the political economists of Great Britain and by her eminent states- men; but it seems to me that enough attention has not been directed to the third; and, with your patience, I will dwell upon that for a moment, before proceeding to other topics. It is a necessity of every manufacturing and commercial people that their customers should be very wealthy and intelligent. Let us put the subject before you in the familiar light of your own local experience. To whom do the tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most goods at the highest profit? To the ignorant and poor, or to the educated and prosperous ? [A voice: "To the South- erners." Laughter.] The poor man buys simply for his body; he buys food, he buys clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. His rule is to buy the least and the cheapest that he can. He goes to the store as seldom as he can ; he brings away as little as he can ; and he buys for the least he can. [Much laughter.] Poverty is not a misfortune to the poor only who suffer it, but it is more or less a misfortune to all with whom he deals. On the other hand, a man well off how is it with him ? He buys in far greater quantity. He can afford to do it ; he has the money to pay for it. He buys in far greater variety, because he seeks to gratify not merely physical wants, but also mental wants. He buys for the satisfaction of sentiment and taste, as well as of sense. He buys I9 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION silk, wool, flax, cotton; he buys all metals iron, silver, gold, platinum; in short he buys for all necessities, and all substances. But that is not all. He buys a better quality of goods. He buys richer silks, finer cottons, higher grained wools. Now a rich silk means so much skill and care of somebody's that has been ex- pended upon it to make it finer and richer ; and so of cotton and so of wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs back to the very beginning, and remunerates the workman as well as the merchant. Now, the whole laboring community is as much inter- ested and profited as the mere merchant, in this buying and selling of the higher grades in the greater varieties and quantities. The law of price is the skill ; and the amount of skill expended in the work is as much for the market as are the goods. A man conies to market and says: "I have a pair of hands," and he obtains the lowest wages. Another man comes and says: "I have something more than a pair of hands; I have truth and fidelity." He gets a higher price. Another man comes and says : "I have something more; I have hands, and strength, and fidelity, and skill." He gets more than either of the others. The next man comes and says: "I have got hands, and strength, and skill, and fidelity; but my hands work more than that. They know how to create things for the fancy, for the affections, for the moral sentiments"; and he gets more than either of the others. The last man comes and says: "I have all these qualities, and have them so highly that it is a peculiar genius"; and genius carries the whole market and gets the highest price. [Loud applause.] So that both the workman and the merchant are profited by having purchasers that demand quality, variety, and quantity. Now, if this be so in the town or the city, it can only be so because it is a law. This is the specific development of a general or universal law, and there- fore we should expect to find it as true of a nation as of a city like Liverpool. I know that it is so, and you know that it is true of all the world; and it is just as important to have customers educated, intelligent, moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool. [Applause.] They are able to buy; they want variety, they want the very best ; and those are the customers you want. That nation is the best customer that is freest, because freedom works prosperity, industry, and wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral con- DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 193 siderations, has a direct commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization, and wealth of every nation on the globe. [Loud applause.] You also have an interest in this, because you are a moral and religious people. [" Oh, oh ! " Laughter and applause. ] You desire it from the highest motives ; and godliness is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no here- after, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial specula- tion. To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley all have an interest that that nation should be free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise Hungary, Italy, Poland it is a duty for humanity's sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with them; but besides all these there is a material and an interested reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design. Now, Great Britain's chief want is what ? They have said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your chief want is consumers. [Applause and hisses.] You have got skill, you have got capital, and you have got machinery enough to manufacture goods for the whole population of the globe. You could turn out fourfold as much as you do, if you only had the market to sell in. It is not so much the want, therefore, of fabric, though there may be a temporary obstruction of it ; but the prin- cipal and increasing want increasing from year to year is, where shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so fast? [Interruption, and a voice, "The Morrill tariff," and applause.] Before the American war broke out, your warehouses were loaded with goods that you could not sell. [Applause and hisses.] You had over-manufactured ; what is the meaning of over-manufac- turing but this : that you had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had customers to take goods off your hands? And you know that rich as Great Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, I94 ENGLISH COMPOSITION if she could have fourfold the present demand, she could make fourfold riches to-morrow ; and every political economist will tell you that your want is not cotton primarily, but customers. There- fore, the doctrine, how to make customers, is a great deal more important to Great Britain than the doctrine how to raise cotton. It is to that doctrine I ask from you, business men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Englishmen to that point I ask a mo- ment's attention. [Shouts of "Oh, oh!" hisses, and applause.] There are no more continents to be discovered. [Hear, hear!] The market of the future must be found how ? There is very little hope of any more demand being created by new fields. If you are to have a better market, there must be some kind of process invented to make the old fields better. [A voice, "Tell us some- thing new," shouts of "Order," and interruption.] Let us look at it, then. You must civilize the world in order to make a better class of purchasers. [Interruption.] If you were to press Italy down again under the feet of despotism, Italy, discouraged, could draw but very few supplies from you. But give her liberty, kindle schools throughout her valleys, spur her industry, make treaties with her by which she can exchange her wine, and her oil, and her silk for your manufactured goods ; and for every effort that you make in that direction there will come back profit to you by increased traffic with her. [Loud applause.] If Hungary asks to be an unshackled nation if by freedom she will rise in virtue and intelligence, then by freedom she will acquire a more multi- farious industry, which she will be willing to exchange for your manufactures. Her liberty is to be found where ? You will find it in the Word of God, you will find it in the code of history; but you will also find it in the Price Current [Hear, hear !] ; and every free nation, every civilized people every people that rises from barbarism to industry and intelligence becomes a better customer. A savage is a man of one story, and that one story a cellar. When a man begins to be civilized, he raises another story. When you Christianize and civilize the man, you put story upon story, for you develop faculty after faculty; and you have to supply every story with your productions. The savage is a man one story deep ; the civilized man is thirty stories deep. [Applause.] Now, if you DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 195 go to a lodging-house, where there are three or four men, your sales to them may, no doubt, be worth something; but if you go to a lodging-house like some of those which I saw in Edinburgh, which seemed to contain about twenty stories ["Oh, oh!" and interruption], every story of which is full, and all who occupy buy of you which is the better customer, the man who is drawn out, or the man who is pinched up? [Laughter.] Now, there is in this a great and sound principle of economy. ["Yah, yah!" from the passage outside the hall, and loud laughter.] If the South should be rendered independent [At this juncture min- gled cheering and hissing became immense ; half the audience rose to their feet, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there was the greatest commotion and uproar.] You have had your turn now; now let me have mine again. [Loud ap- plause and laughter.] It is a little inconvenient to talk against the wind; but after all, if you will just keep good-natured I am not going to lose my temper; will you watch yours? [Applause.] Besides all that, it rests me, and gives me a chance, you know, to get my breath. [Applause and hisses.] And I think that the bark of those men is worse than their bite. They do not mean any harm they don't know any better. [Loud laughter, applause, hisses, and continued uproar.] I was saying, when these re- sponses broke in, that it was worth our while to consider both alternatives. What will be the result if this present struggle shall eventuate in the separation of America, and making the South [loud applause, hisses, hooting, and cries of "Bravo!"] a slave territory exclusively [cries of "No, no!" and laughter] and the North a free territory, what will be the final result ? You will lay the foundation for carrying the slave population clear through to the Pacific Ocean. This is the first step. There is not a man that has been a leader of the South any time within these twenty years that has not had this for a plan. It was for this that Texas was invaded, first by colonists, next by marauders, until it was wrested from Mexico. It was for this that they engaged in the Mexican War itself, by which the vast territory reaching to the Pacific was added to the Union. Never for a moment have they given up the plan of spreading the American institutions, as they call them, straight through toward the West, until the slave, 196 ENGLISH COMPOSITION who has washed his feet in the Atlantic, shall be carried to wash them in the Pacific. [Cries of "Question," and uproar.] There ' I have got that statement out, and you cannot put it back. [Laugh- ter and applause.] Now, let us consider the prospect. If the South becomes a slave empire, what relation will it have to you as a customer? [A voice: "Or any other man." Laughter.] It would be an empire of twelve millions of people. Now, of these, eight millions are white, and four millions black. [A voice : "How many have you got?" Applause and laughter. Another voice: "Free your own slaves!"] Consider that one-third of the whole are the miserably poor, unbuying blacks. [Cries of "No, no!" "Yes, yes!" and interruption.] You do not manufacture much for them. [Hisses, "Oh!" "No."] You have not got ma- chinery coarse enough. [Laughter, and "No."] Your labor is too skilled by far to manufacture bagging and linsey-woolsey. [A Southerner: "We are going to free them, every one."] Then you and I agree exactly. [Laughter.] One other third consists of a poor, unskilled, degraded white population; and the remaining one-third, which is a large allowance, we will say, intelligent and rich. Now here are twelve million of people, and only one-third of them are customers that can afford to buy the kind of goods that you bring to market. [Interruption and uproar.] My friends, I saw a man once, who was a little late at a railway station, chase an express train. He did not catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going to stop this meeting, you have got to stop it before I speak ; for after I have got the things out, you may chase as long as you please you would not catch them. [Laughter and inter- ruption.] But there is luck in leisure; I'm going to take it easy. [Laughter.] Two-thirds of the population of the Southern States to-day are non-purchasers of English goods. [A voice: "No, they are not;" "No, no I" and uproar.] Now you must recollect another fact namely, that this is going on clear through to the Pacific Ocean ; and if by sympathy or help you establish a slave empire, you sagacious Britons ["Oh, oh!" and hooting] if you like it better, then, I will leave the adjective out [laughter, Hear ! and applause] are busy in favoring the establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest customers DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 197 and the largest non-buying population. [Applause, "No, no!" A voice: "I thought it was the happy people that populated fastest."] Now, what can England make for the poor white population of such a future empire, and for her slave population? What carpets, what linens, what cottons can you sell them? What machines, what looking-glasses, what combs, what leather, what books, what pictures, what engravings? [A voice: "We'll sell them ships."] You may sell ships to a few, but what ships can you sell to two-thirds of the population of poor whites and blacks ? [Applause.] A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a few whips and manacles, are all that you can sell for the slave. [Great applause and uproar.] This very day, in the slave States of America there are eight millions out of twelve millions that are not, and cannot be, your customers from the very laws of trade. [A voice: "Then how are they clothed?" and interruption.] . . . But I know that you say, you cannot help sympathizing with a gallant people. [Hear, hear!] They are the weaker people, the minority; and you cannot help going with the minority who are struggling for their rights against the majority. Nothing could be more generous, when a weak party stands for its own legitimate rights against imperious pride and power, than to sympathize with the weak. But who ever sympathized with a weak thief, because three constables had got hold of him ? [Hear, hear !] And yet the one thief in three policemen's hands is the weaker party. I suppose you would sympathize with him. [Hear, hear ! laughter, and applause.] Why, when that infamous king of Naples, Bomba, was driven into Gaeta by Garibaldi with his immortal band of patriots, and Cavour sent against him the army of Northern Italy, who was the weaker party then? The tyrant and his minions; and the majority was with the noble Italian patriots, struggling for liberty. I never heard that Old England sent deputations to King Bomba, and yet his troops resisted bravely there. [Laughter and interruption.] To-day the majority of the people of Rome is with Italy. Nothing but French bayonets keeps her from going back to the kingdom of Italy, to which she belongs. Do you sympathize with the minority in Rome or the majority in Italy? [A voice: "With Italy."] To-day the South I9 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION is the minority in America, and they are fighting for independence ! For what? [Uproar. A voice: "Three cheers for independ- ence!" and hisses.] I could wish so much bravery had a better cause, and that so much self-denial had been less deluded ; that the poisonous and venomous doctrine of State rights might have been kept aloof; that so many gallant spirits, such as Jackson, might still have lived. [Great applause and loud cheers, again and again renewed.] The force of these facts, historical and incontrovertible, cannot be broken, except by diverting attention by an attack upon the North. It is said that the North is fighting for Union, and not for emancipation. The North is fighting for Union, for that insures emancipation. [Loud cheers, "Oh, oh!" "No, no!" and cheers.] A great many men say to ministers of the Gospel: "You pretend to be preaching and working for the love of the people. Why, you are all the time preaching for the sake of the Church." What does the minister say? "It is by means of the Church that we help the people," and when men say that we are fighting for the Union, I too say we are fighting for the Union. [Hear, hear! and a voice: "That's right."] But the motive determines the value ; and why are we fighting for the Union? Because we never shall forget the testimony of our ene- mies. They have gone off declaring that the Union in the hands of the North was fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There is testimony in court for you. [A voice: "See that," and laughter.] . . . In the first place I am ashamed to confess that such was the thoughtlessness [interruption] such was the stupor of the North [renewed interruption] you will get a word at a time ; to-morrow will let folks see what it is you don't want to hear that for a period of twenty-five years she went to sleep, and per- mitted herself to be drugged and poisoned with the Southern prej- udice against black men. [Applause and uproar.] The evil was made worse, because, when any object whatever has caused anger between political parties, a political animosity arises against that object, no matter how innocent in itself; no matter what were the original influences which excited the quarrel. Thus the colored man has been the football between the two parties in the North, and has suffered accordingly. I confess it to my shame. But DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 199 I am speaking now on my own ground, for I began twenty-five years ago, with a small party, to combat the unjust dislike of the colored man. [Loud applause, dissension, and uproar. The inter- ruption at this point became so violent that the friends of Mr. Beecher throughout the hall rose to their feet, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and renewing their shouts and applause. The interruption lasted some minutes.] Well, I have lived to see a total revolution in the Northern feeling I stand here to bear solemn witness of that. It is not my opinion ; it is my knowledge. [Great uproar.] Those men who undertook to stand up for the rights of all men black as well as white have increased in number; and now what party in the North represents those men that resist the evil prejudices of past years? The Republicans are that party. [Loud applause.] And who are those men in the North that have oppressed the negro? They are the Peace Democrats; and the prejudice for "which in England you are at- tempting to punish me, is a prejudice raised by the men who have opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats abuse the negro. I defended him, and they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice! [Loud laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is as if a man should commit an assault, maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called in should begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a policeman should come and collar the surgeon and haul him off to prison on account of the wounds which he was healing. Now, I told you I would not flinch from anything. I am going to read you some questions that were sent after me from Glasgow, purporting to be from a workingman. [Great interruption.] If those pro-slavery interrupters think they will tire me out, they will do more than eight millions in America could. [Applause and renewed interruption. ] I was reading a question on your side too. "Is it not a fact that in most of the Northern States laws exist precluding negroes from equal civil and political rights with the whites? That in the State of New York the negro has to be the possessor of at least $250 worth of property to entitle him to the privileges of a white citizen ? That in some of the Northern States the colored man, whether bond or free, is by law excluded alto- gether, and not suffered to enter the State limits, under severe 200 ENGLISH COMPOSITION penalties? and is not Mr. Lincoln's own State one of them? and in view of the fact that the twenty million dollars' compensation which was promised to Missouri in aid of emancipation was de- feated in the last Congress (the strongest Republican Congress that ever assembled), what has the North done toward emancipation?" Now, then, there's a dose for you. [A voice: "Answer it."] And I will address myself to the answering of it. And first, the bill for emancipation in Missouri, to which this money was denied, was a bill which was drawn by what we call "log-rollers," who inserted in it an enormously disproportioned price for the slaves. The Republicans offered to give them ten million dollars for the slaves in Missouri, and they outvoted it because they could not get twelve million dollars. Already half the slave population had been "run" down South, and yet they came up to Congress to get twelve million dollars for what was not worth ten millions, nor even eight millions. Now as to those States that had passed "black" laws, as we call them; they are filled with Southern emigrants. The southern parts of Ohio, the southern part of Indiana, where I myself lived for years, and which I knew like a book, the southern part of Illinois, where Mr. Lincoln lives [great uproar] these parts are largely settled by emigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, and it was their vote, or the Northern votes pandering for political reasons to theirs, that passed in those States the infamous "black " laws; and the Republicans in these States have a record, clean and white, as having opposed these laws in every instance as "in- famous." Now as to the State of New York ; it is asked whether a negro is not obliged to have a certain freehold property, or a certain amount of property, before he can vote. It is so still in North Carolina and Rhode Island for white folks it is so in New York State. [Mr. Beecher's voice slightly failed him here, and he was interrupted by a person who tried to imitate him. Cries of "Shame!" and "Turn him out!"] I am not under- taking to say that these faults of the North, which were brought upon them by the bad example and influence of the South, are all cured; but I do say that they are in process of cure which promises, if unimpeded by foreign influence, to make all such odious distinctions vanish. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 2OI There is another fact that I wish to allude to not for the sake of reproach or blame, but by way of claiming your more lenient consideration and that is, that slavery was entailed upon us by your action. [Hear, hear !] Against the earnest protests of the colonists the then government of Great Britain I will concede not knowing what were the mischiefs ignorantly, but in point of fact, forced slave traffic on the unwilling colonists. [Great uproar, in the midst of which one individual was lifted up and carried out of the room amid cheers and hisses.] THE CHAIRMAN : If you would only sit down, no disturbance would take place. The disturbance having subsided, MR. BEECHER said : I was going to ask you, suppose a child is born with hereditary disease; suppose this disease was entailed upon him by parents who had contracted it by their own mis- conduct, would it be fair that those parents that had brought into the world the diseased child, should rail at the child because it was diseased? ["No, no!"] Would not the child have a right to turn round and say: "Father, it was your fault that I had it, and you ought to be pleased to be patient with my deficiencies " ? [Applause and hisses, and cries of "Order!" Great interruption and great disturbance here took place on the right of the platform ; and the chairman said that if the persons around the unfortunate individual who had caused the disturbance would allow him to speak alone, but not assist him in making the disturbance, it might soon be put an end to. The interruption continued until another person was carried out of the hall.] Mr. Beecher continued: I do not ask that you should justify slavery in us, because it was wrong in you two hundred years ago ; but having ignorantly been the means of fixing it upon us, now that we are struggling with mortal struggles to free ourselves from it, we have a right to your tolerance, your patience, and charitable constructions. No man can unveil the future ; no man can tell what revolutions are about to break upon the world ; no man can tell what destiny belongs to France, nor to any of the European powers; but one thing is certain, that in the exigencies of the future there will be combinations and recombinations, and that those nations that are of the same faith, the same blood, and the same substantial interests, 20 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION ought not to be alienated from each other, but ought to stand to- gether. [Immense cheering and hisses.] I do not say that you ought not to be in the most friendly alliance with France or with Germany; but I do say that your own children, the offspring of England, ought to be nearer to you than any people of strange tongue. [A voice: "Degenerate sons," applause and hisses; another voice: "What about the Trent?'' 1 ] If there had been any feelings of bitterness in America, let me tell you that they had been excited, rightly or wrongly, under the impression that Great Britain was going to intervene between us and our own lawful struggle. [A voice: "No!" and applause.] With the evidence that there is no such intention all bitter feelings will pass away. [Applause.] We do not agree with the recent doctrine of neutrality as a question of law. But it is past, and we are not disposed to raise that question. We accept it now as a fact, and we say that the utterance of Lord Russell at Blairgowrie [Applause, hisses, and a voice: "What about Lord Brougham?"] together with the declaration of the government in stopping war steamers here [great uproar, and applause] has gone far toward quieting every fear and removing every apprehension from our minds. [Uproar and shouts of applause.] And now in the future it is the work of every good man and patriot not to create divisions, but to do the things that will make for peace. ["Oh, oh !" and laugh- ter.] On our part it shall be done. [Applause and hisses, and "No, no ! "] On your part it ought to be done ; and when in any of the convulsions that come upon the world, Great Britain finds herself struggling single-handed against the gigantic powers that spread oppression and darkness [applause, hisses, and uproar] there ought to be such cordiality that she can turn and say to her first-born and most illustrious child, "Come !" [Hear, hear ! ap- plause, tremendous cheers, and uproar.] I will not say that Eng- land cannot again, as hitherto, single-handed manage any power [applause and uproar] but I will say that England and America together for religion and liberty [A voice : " Soap, soap," uproar, and great applause] are a match for the world. [Applause; a voice: "They don't want any more soft soap."] Now, gentle- men and ladies [A voice: "Sam Slick"; and another voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you please"] when I came, I was DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 203 asked whether I would answer questions, and I very readily con- sented to do so, as I had in other places ; but I will tell you it was because I expected to have the opportunity of speaking with some sort of ease and quiet. [A voice: "So you have."] I have for an hour and a half spoken against a storm [Hear, hear !] and you yourselves are witnesses that, by the interruption, I have been obliged to strive with my voice, so that I no longer have the power to control this assembly. [Applause.] And although I am in spirit perfectly willing to answer any question, and more than glad of the chance, yet I am by this very unnecessary opposition to- night incapacitated physically from doing it. Ladies and gentle- men, I bid you good-evening. THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT WOODROW WILSON MR. TOASTMASTER, MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN: I must confess to you that I came here with very serious thoughts this evening, because I have been laboring under the conviction for a long time that the object of a university is to educate, and I have not seen the universities of this country achieving any re- markable or disturbing success in that direction. I have found everywhere the note which I must say I have heard sounded once or twice to-night a note of apology for the intellectual side of the university. You hear it at all universities. Learning is on the defensive, is actually on the defensive, among college men, and they are being asked by way of concession to bring that also into the circle of their interests. Is it not time we stopped asking in- dulgence for learning and proclaimed its sovereignty? Is it not time we reminded the college men of this country that they have no right to any distinctive place in any community, unless they can show it by intellectual achievement? that if a university is a place for distinction at all, it must be distinguished by the conquests of 1 An address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University. Reprinted from the Yale Alumni Weekly by the kind permission of the Editors. 204 ENGLISH COMPOSITION the mind? I for niy part tell you plainly that that is my motto, that I have entered the field to fight for that thesis, and that for that thesis only do I care to fight. The toastmaster of the evening said, and said truly, that this is the season when, for me, it was most difficult to break away from regular engagements in which I am involved at home. But when I was invited to a Phi Beta Kappa banquet, it had an unusual sound, and I felt that that was the particular kind of invitation which it was my duty and privilege to accept. One of the prob- lems of the American university now is how, among a great many other competing interests, to give places of distinction to men who win distinction in the class room. Why don't we give you men the Y here and the P at Princeton, because, after all, you have done the particular thing which distinguishes Yale or Princeton ? Not that these other things are not worth doing, but they may be done anywhere. They may be done in athletic clubs where there is no study, but this thing can be done only here. This is the distinctive mark of the place. A good many years ago, just two weeks before the midyear ex- aminations, the faculty of Princeton was foolish enough to permit a very unwise evangelist to come to the place and to upset the town. And while an assisting undergraduate was going from room to room, one undergraduate secured his door and put this notice out, "I am a Christian and am studying for examinations." Now I want to say that that is exactly what a Christian undergraduate would be doing at that time of the year. He would not be attend- ing religious meetings, no matter how beneficial it would be to him. He would be studying for examinations, not merely for the purpose of passing them, but from his sense of duty. We get a good many men at Princeton from certain secondary schools which say a great deal about their earnest desire to cultivate character among their students, and I hear a great deal about character being the object of education. I take leave to believe that a man who cultivates his character consciously will cultivate nothing except what will make him intolerable to his fellow-men. If your object in life is to make a fine fellow of yourself, you will not succeed, and you will not be acceptable to really fine fellows. Character, gentlemen, is a by-product. It comes, whether you DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 20$ will or not, as a consequence of a life devoted to the nearest duty, and the place in which character would be cultivated, if it be a place of study, is a place where study is the object and character the result. Not long ago a gentleman approached me in great excitement just after the entrance examinations. He said we had made a great mistake in not taking so and so from a certain school which he named. "But," I said, "he did not pass the entrance examina- tions." He went over the boy's moral excellences again. "Par- don me," I said, "you do not understand. He did not pass the entrance examinations. Now," I said, "I want you to under- stand that if the Angel Gabriel applied for admission tc Princeton University and could not pass the entrance examinations, he would not be admitted. He would be wasting his time." It seemed a new idea to him. This boy had come from a school which culti- vated character, and he was a nice, lovable fellow with a present- able character. Therefore, he ought to be admitted to any uni- versity. 1 fail to see it from this point of view, for a university is an institution of purpose. We have in some previous years had pity for young gentlemen who were not sufficiently acquainted with the elements of a preparatory course. They have been dropped at the examinations, and I have always felt that we have been guilty of an offense, and have made their parents spend money to no avail and the youngsters spend their time to no avail. And so I think that all university men ought to rouse themselves now and understand what is the object of a university. The object of a university is intellect; as a university its only object is intellect. As a body of young men there ought to be other things, there ought to be diversions to release them from the con- stant strain of effort, there ought to be things that gladden the heart and moments of leisure, but as a university the only object is intellect. The reason why I chose the subject that I am permitted to speak upon to-night the function of scholarship was that I wanted to point out the function of scholarship not merely in the university but in the nation. In a country constituted as ours is the relation in which education stands is a very important one. Our whole theory has been based upon an enlightened citizenship 20 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION and therefore the function of scholarship must be for the nation as well as for the university itself. I mean the function of such scholarship as undergraduates get. That is not a violent amount in any case. You cannot make a scholar of a man, except by some largess of Providence in his make-up, by the time he is twenty- one or twenty-two years of age. There have been gentlemen who have made a reputation by twenty-one or twenty-two, but it is generally in some little province of knowledge, so small that a small effort can conquer it. You do not make scholars by that time, you do not often make scholars by seventy that are worth boasting of. The process of scholarship, so far as the real scholar is concerned, is an unending process, and knowledge is pushed forward only a very little by his best efforts. It is evident, of course, that the most you can contribute to a man in his under- graduate years is not equipment in the exact knowledge which is characteristic of the scholar, but the inspiration of the spirit of scholarship. The most that you can give a youngster is the spirit of the scholar. Now the spirit of the scholar in a country like ours must be a spirit related to the national life. It cannot, therefore, be a spirit of pedantry. I suppose that it is a sufficient working conception of pedantry to say that it is knowledge divorced from life. It is knowledge so closeted, so desecrated, so stripped of the significances of life itself, that it is a thing apart and not connected with the vital processes in the world about us. There is a great place in every nation for the spirit of scholarship, and it seems to me that there never was a time when the spirit of scholarship was more needed in affairs than it is in this country at this time. We are thinking just now with our emotions and not with our minds, we are moved by impulse and not by judgment. We are drawing away from things with blind antipathy. The spirit of knowledge is that you must base your conclusions on adequate grounds. Make sure that you are going to the real sources of knowledge, discovering what the real facts are before you move forward to the next process, which is the process of clear thinking. By clear thinking I do not mean logical thinking. I do not mean that life is based upon any logical system whatever. Life is DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 207 essentially illogical. The world is governed now by a tumultuous house of commons made up of the passions, and we should pray God that the good passions should outvote the bad passions. But the movement of impulse, of motive, is the stuff of passion, and therefore clear thinking about life is not logical, symmetrical thinking, but it is interpretative thinking, thinking that sees the secret motive of things, thinking that penetrates deep places where are the pulses of life. Now scholarship ought to lay these impulses bare just as the physician can lay bare the seat of life in our bodies. That is not scholarship which goes to work upon the mere formal pedantry of logical reasoning, but that is scholarship which searches for the heart of a man. The spirit of scholarship gives us catholicity of thinking, the readiness to understand that there will constantly swing into our ken new items not dreamed of in our philosophy ; not simply to draw our conclusions from the data that we have had, but that all this is under constant mutation, and that there- fore new phases of life will come upon us and a new adjustment of our conclusions will be necessary. Our thinking must be detached and disinterested thinking. The particular objection that I have to the undergraduate form- ing his course of study on his future profession is this that from start to finish, from the time he enters the university until he finishes his career, his thought will be centered upon particular interests. He will be immersed in the things that touch his profit and loss, and a man is not free to think inside that territory. If his bread and butter is going to be affected, if he is always thinking in the terms of his own profession; he is not thinking for the nation. He is thinking of himself, and whether he be conscious of it or not, he can never throw these trammels off. He will only think as a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker. He will not be free in the world of knowledge and in the circle of interests which make up the great citizenship of the country. It is necessary that the spirit of scholarship should be a detached, disinterested spirit, not immersed in a particular interest. That is the function of scholar- ship in a country like ours, to supply, not heat, but light, to suffuse things with the calm radiance of reason, to see to it that men do not act hastily, but that they act considerately, that they obey the 208 ENGLISH COMPOSITION truth. The fault of our age is the fault of hasty action, of pre- mature judgments, of a preference for ill-considered action over no action at all. Men who insist upon standing still and doing a little thinking before they do any acting are called reactionaries. They want actually to react to a state in which they can be allowed to think. They want for a little while to withdraw from the tur- moil of party controversy and see where they stand before they commit themselves and their country to action from which it may not be possible to withdraw. The whole fault of the modern age is that it applies to every- thing a false standard of efficiency. Efficiency with us is accom- plishment, whether the accomplishment be by just and well-con- sidered means or not; and this standard of achievement it is that is debasing the morals of our age, the intellectual morals of our age. We do not stop to do things thoroughly ; we do not stop to know why we do things. We see an error and we hastily correct it by a greater error; and then go on to cry that the age is corrupt. And so it is, gentlemen, that I try to join the function of the university with the great function of the national life. The life of this country is going to be revolutionized and purified only when the universities of this country wake up to the fact that their only reason for existing is intellectual, that the objects that I have set forth, so far as undergraduate life is concerned, are the only legiti- mate objects. And every man should crave for his university primacy in these things, primacy in other things also if they may be brought in without enmity to it, but the sacrifice of everything that stands in the way of these. For my part, I do not believe that it is athleticism which stands in the way. Athletics have been associated with the achievements of the mind in many a successful civilization. There is no difficulty in uniting vigor of body with achievement of mind, but there is a good deal of difficulty in uniting the achievement of the mind with a thousand distracting social influences, which take up all our ambitions, which absorb all our thoughts, which lead to all our arrangements of life, and then leave the university authorities the residuum of our attention, after we are through with the things that we are interested in. We absolutely changed the whole course of study at Princeton and revolutionized the methods of instruction DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 209 without rousing a ripple on the surface of the alumni. They said those things were intellectual, they were our business. But just as soon as we thought to touch the social part of the university, there was not only a ripple, but the whole body was torn to its depths. We had touched the real things. These lay in triumphal competition with the province of the mind, and men's attention was so absolutely absorbed in these things that it was impossible for us to get their interest enlisted on the real undertakings of the uni- versity itself. Now that is true of every university that I know anything about in this country, and if the Faculties in this country want to re- capture the ground that they have lost, they must begin pretty soon, and they must go into the battle with their bridges burned behind them so that it will be of no avail to retreat. If I had a voice to which the university men of this country might listen, that is the endeavor to which my ambition would lead me to call. Refutation. We have already shown how you are to build up an argument on your side of a question. But when this argument is brought before the public, men on the other side will almost certainly attack your arguments and raise all manner of objections against them. In order to stand your ground and prove your point, you must have answers ready for these objections. This answer to the objections of the opposite party, this process of knocking down the arguments of the other side and defending your own by still further proof, is called Refutation or Rebuttal. For example, you claim that football benefits a man physically, and show certain evidence to prove that it does. Your opponents try to knock down your point by producing evidence that it strains and cripples men physically, instead of developing them. Then you must refute this by bringing in proof that very few men are crippled, while a very large number are developed. This last material is Refutation. \Vhen you know beforehand what the chief objections will be, you can answer them in your first or main argument, thereby taking the wind out of your opponent's sails. In this case your refutation should be included in your brief. For instance, under the heading that football benefits a man physically you could have 2io ENGLISH COMPOSITION these subheads: (a) It keeps him out in the open air; (b) It re- quires a healthy diet; (c) It develops the muscles; (d) It does not cause lasting physical injuries. Here the last point is at the same time a part of your brief and a refutation of an objection almost certain to be raised by the other side. Whether you bring in your refutation as part of your first argu- ment or write it in a later article after the other side has made its attack, there are two rules that you should always bear in mind. The first is to have plenty of good reason to support all your points. Frequently the question will reduce itself to a fight between you and the other man about some one point; and the side which produces the most evidence will win, just as the football team which gets the most men into the play will push back the other team. The second rule is that you should make this fight center around your big main points and not about little minor ones. Remember that your purpose is, not to contradict something merely because the other man has said it, but to prove your main proposition. Do not get so excited about some little side-issue that you forget your main points and the relation of these side- issues to them. Follow your main proposition as an athlete follows the ball, and if you are advancing that main proposition, never mind about a few little insignificant questions out on one side. Frequently, when an opponent has completely crushed you on one of these minor points, you can completely crush him in turn by showing that, while he has beaten you on a minor point, you have beaten him on a main one. For example, suppose that you are arguing for the honor system in your school; that your op- ponent has proved in spite of you that it worked badly at X ; and that you have proved that it worked well in every other school in the state. You would be exceedingly foolish if you spent all the rest of your time in arguing about X . All that you have to do to win is to point out to the audience that you have proved your point for dozens of schools while your opponent has been proving his for one. Below is given an example of constructive argument and refuta- tion combined. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 211 THE VALUE OF THE PACIFIC CRUISE OF THE UNITED STATES FLEET, 1908 x CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN The projected movement of an American fleet of sixteen battle- ships, with attendant smaller vessels, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of the United States, is an event not only important, both from the professional and national point of view, but striking to the imagination. It carries in itself certain elements of grandeur. It is therefore not surprising that it should have attracted partic- ular notice from the press ; but the effect upon the imagination of several journals has been such as to approach the border line of insanity. A measure designed upon its face to reach a practical solution of one of the most urgent naval problems that can con- front a nation having two seaboards, extremely remote the one from the other, has been persistently represented as a menace to a friendly power Japan ; and so effectively has this campaign of misrepresentation been carried on, so successfully has an obvious and perfectly sufficient reason for this cruise been ignored in favor of one less probable, and, so far as knowledge went, non-existent, that certain of the press of Japan, we are told, have echoed the cry. Not only so, but European journals, notably some in Great Britain, among them certain which are incessant in their warnings against Germany, and conscious that the whole distribution of the British fleet has of late been modified, with the object of in- creasing the battleship force quickly available for the North Sea, where their only enemy is Germany, nevertheless affect to dep- recate the dispatch of a United States fleet from its Atlantic to its Pacific coast, where it will be four thousand miles from Japan, against the two or three hundred which separate England and Germany. A new British naval base has been established on the North Sea. The naval manoeuvers of this autumn (1907), in which have taken part twenty-six battleships and fifteen to twenty armored cruisers, that is, over forty armored vessels, with other cruisers and torpedo boats in numbers, have been in the 1 Reprinted from the Scientific American by the kind permission of the publish- ers, Munn and Co., New York. 212 ENGLISH COMPOSITION North Sea; one coast only of which is British as our Pacific coast is ours. The Naval Annual for this year, a publication conserva- tive in tone as well as high in authority, discusses the strategy of the North Sea with unhesitating reference to Germany. I take from it the statement that by May, 1908, 86 per cent of the British battleship strength will be concentrated in or near home waters. Yet, in the face of all this, the rulers of Great Britain and Germany, at this very moment of my writing, find no difficulty in exchanging peaceful assurances, the sincerity of which we have no good reason to doubt. Have we also forgotten that, upon the Emperor Wil- liam's famous telegram to Kruger, a British special squadron was ordered into commission, ready for instant movement ? Whether a retort or a menace, even so overt a measure, in home waters, gave rise to no further known diplomatic action. We Americans are attributing to other people a thinness of skin, suggestive of an over-sensitiveness in ourselves which it was hoped we had out- grown. Let it be said at once, definitely and definitively, that there is in international law, or in international comity, absolutely no ground of offence to any state, should another state, neighbor or remote, see fit to move its navy about its own coasts in such manner as it pleases. Whatever Germany may think of the new distribution of the British navy, she says nothing, but will silently govern her own measures accordingly. The statesmen of Japan, who under- stand perfectly the proprieties of international relations, know this well, and doubtless retain their composure ; but the result of the action of certain of the American press has been to stir up popular feeling in both countries, by the imputation to the United States government of motives and purposes which cannot be known, and which prima facie are less probable than the object officially avowed. Whether this endeavor to rouse ill blood has been in- tentional or not, is of course known only to the editors ; but grave ground for suspecting even so unworthy a motive as to injure the national administration is fairly to be inferred from such a para- graph as I shall here quote, from a New York journal of October 6. My chief object in quoting, however, is not to impugn motives, however reasonable such construction, but to emphasize the essential characteristic of the coming movement of our fleet : DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 2I 3 "Suppose that soon after the New Orleans riots, when rela- tions between the United States and Italy were 'strained,' the American fleet had been sent on a practice cruise to the Medi- terranean. "Suppose that soon after the Venezuela message, Mr. Cleveland had ordered the whole American fighting naval strength to take a practice cruise off Nova Scotia or Jamaica." Such action, in either supposed case, would have been wantonly insolent and aggressive, calculated to provoke hostilities, and such as no statesman would take, unless he had already determined to force war, or saw it looming large on the horizon; as when the British fleet was sent to Besika Bay in 1878. The insolence, aggression, and provocation, however, would have been the dem- onstration off the coast of the nation with whom diplomatic difficulty existed. Occurring when these innuendoes did, in the midst of the virulent campaign of imputation of warlike purposes against the Administration, the inference is irresistible that there was deliberate intention to parallel the sending of our fleet from our one coast to our other to a measure as offensive as those named. The distinguishing characteristic of the movement now projected, from the international point of view, is that it is not in the nature of a demonstration, peaceful or hostile, off the coast of any other state, much less off that of one with whom our relations are asserted by the press to be delicate. Not every man in the street, however, could detect the fallacy. It is a maxim of law that intention can only be inferred from action. So wild an insinuation, in the columns of a journal distinguished for intelligence, can, so far as the action shows, be attributed only to a willingness to mislead, or to a loss of head. In pursuing the next aspect of this cruise to which I purpose to devote attention, I am led again to quote the same journal: "We are asked to believe that this expedition to the Pacific is a mere 'practice cruise.' He must be a miracle of innocent credulity who believes it. What observant men perceive in this dangerous situation is a cataclysm trained and bridled for Theo- dore Roosevelt to bestride and run amuck." The last sentence is not necessary to my purpose; but I pre- serve it, partly for that gem of metaphor, "a cataclysm trained 214 ENGLISH COMPOSITION and bridled," and partly for the directness of the charge against the President of preparing conditions that must issue in war. For the rest, if to believe in the obvious and adequate motive of practice for the fleet is to be a " miracle of innocent credulity," such I must admit myself to be; and I do so heartily. I am not in the councils of either the government or the Navy Department. I have neither talked with nor heard from any person who from official position could communicate to me any knowledge of the facts. My own information has been confined throughout to the newspapers. Shortly after the purpose to send the fleet became known, and counter agitation to be made, I had occasion to write to a British naval friend ; and I said to him then that, while I had no clew to the motives of the Administration, it seemed to me that a perfectly sufficient reason was the experience to be gained by the fleet in making a long voyage, which otherwise might have to be made for the first time under the pressure of war, and the dis- advantage of not having experienced at least once the huge ad- ministrative difficulties connected with so distant an expedition by a large body of vessels dependent upon their own resources. By "own resources" must be understood, not that which each vessel carries in herself, but self-dependence as distinguished from dependence on near navy yards the great snare of peace times. The renewal of stores and coal on the voyage is a big problem, whether the supply vessels accompany the fleet or are directed to join from point to point. It is a problem of combination, and of subsistence ; a distinctly military problem. To grapple with such a question is as really practical as is fleet tactics or target practice. To this opinion I now adhere, after having viewed the matter in the light of such historical and professional thought and train- ing as I can bring to it. Other reasons may have concurred ; of this I know nothing. The one reason, practice, is sufficient. It is not only adequate, but imperative. The experiment for such it is until it has become experience should have been made sooner rather than be now postponed. That it was not sooner attempted has been, probably, because the growth of the navy has only now reached the numbers, sufficiently homogeneous, to make the movement exhaustively instructive. The word practice covers legitimately many features of naval DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 215 activity, which differ markedly and even radically from one an- other, though all conducive to the common end proficiency. I may perhaps illustrate advantageously by a remark I have had occasion to make elsewhere, upon two theories concerning the summer practice cruises of the Naval Academy. There were probably still are those who advocated spending most of the allotted time in quiet, contracted waters, following a prearranged routine of practical drills of various descriptions, which would thus be as little as possible disturbed by weather or similar impedi- ment. Others favored the practice vessels putting out at once to sea for a voyage of length, amounting often to five or six thousand miles, in which must necessarily be experienced many kinds of weather and other incidents, reproducing the real life of the sea, and enforcing such practical action as the variable ocean con- tinually exacts. It is evident that these conceptions, though opposite, are not contrary to each other, but complementary; and a moment's thought shows that under another phase they reappear in every fleet, if its active life is thoughtfully ordered with a view to full efficiency. It is imperative that a fleet, for a large proportion of the year, seek retired waters and relatively equable weather, for the purposes of drill with the guns; from the slow graduated instruction of the gunners, the deliberate firing at a stationary target, and from a ship either at rest or slowly mov- ing, up through successive accretions of speed of ship, and of dis- charges, until the extreme test is reached of fast steaming, and firing with the utmost quickness with which the guns can be handled. In like manner the maneuvering of a body of several ships in rapid movement, changing from one formation to another, for the ulti- mate purposes of battle, must progress gradually, in order that com- manding officers and their understudies may gain, not only ability, but confidence, based upon habit ; upon knowledge of what their own ships can do, and what they may expect from the other vessels about them. Ships in battle order must keep at distances which, relatively to the speed maintained, are short; dangerously short, except where compensated by the sureness of handling based on long practice. It is clear also that alterations in the personnel of a fleet, which are of frequent occurrence, make constant tactical drills additionally necessary. 2i6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION But when all this and more not here specified has been accomplished, whether at the Naval Academy or for the fleet, what has been done but lay the necessary foundation upon which to rear the superstructure of the real life of the profession? There remains still to fulfill the object very different from mere practice, though dependent upon it which alone justifies the existence of a navy. The pupil of the Naval Academy passes naturally and imperceptibly into the routine of life of the service by the simple incident of being ordered to a sea-going ship ; the single ship, the cruiser, gains her sufficient experience by the mere fact of staying at sea ; but a fleet tied to its home ports, or to the drill ground, does not undergo, and therefore does not possess, the fullness of fleet life. Not only are the interruptions numerous and injurious; not only does the easily reached navy yard sap the habit of self- reliance; but out in the deep, dependent upon itself alone and for a long period, there await a fleet on a distant voyage problems so different in degree from those of a vessel alone as practically to be different in kind. Multiply any kind of difficulty by sixteen, and you have passed from one order of administration to another. The movement of the United States battle fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast is in the highest sense practical, because it is precisely the kind of movement which the fleet of any nation may, and usually will, be required to make in war. It is further practical, because the United States has a Pacific as well as an Atlantic coast, and has not a navy large enough to be divided safely between them. The question is at least debatable, whether for the near future the Pacific is not the greater center of world interest ; as it certainly, with regard to our own military necessities, is one of greater exposure than the Atlantic. Like France, with her Mediterranean and Atlantic shores, the United States is in the painful military dilemma of being liable to attack on one side while the fleet is on the other ; but our distance to be covered is so much greater than that of France, that the position is vastly more em- barrassing. A fleet of battleships leaving Toulon, full coaled and victualed, may reach Brest or Cherbourg without renewing the fuel and stores in its holds ; but a fleet leaving New York or Norfolk for San Francisco has upon its hands a most serious administrative problem, and one which no accuracy of gun-fire, no skill in tactics, DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 217 can meet. It is in fact the problem of Rozhestvensky, to use an illustration particularly apt, because recent. Can our navy in such case expect from the weak states of South America the facility for recoaling, etc., which was liberally extended to the Russian admiral, to the somewhat amazement of the naval profession, and to the just indignation of Japan? It is an old saying that an army, like a snake, moves on its belly. This is little less true of a navy. In the foremost naval man of modern times, in Nelson, we, according to our several preposses- sions, see the great strategist, or the great tactician, or the great fighting man; but the careful student of his letters realizes that, underlying all, is the great administrator, who never lost sight or forethought for the belly on which his fleet moved. The unre- mitting solicitude for the food essential to the health of his crews; the perpetual alertness to seize opportunity, indicated by such casual note, at sea: "Finished discharging storeship No. ;" the slipping into Tetuan to fill with water, because little progress toward Gibraltar could be made against the current and temporary head wind ; the strong self-control, holding down his constitutional impetuosity to move, till sure that all has been done to make move- ment far reaching, as well as accurate in direction ; the whole culminating at the end of his life in a wide sweeping movement across the Atlantic, back to Gibraltar, and -thence to Brest, a period of three months about equivalent to that required for our pro- jected transfer during which he was never embarrassed about stores because always forehanded; that is the way speed, not haste in which wars are won. It was, and was recognized at the time to be, a magnificent instance of the mobility which is the great characteristic of navies as fighting bodies ; not the mobility which consists in getting an extra half-knot on a speed trial with picked coal and firemen, but that which loses no time because it never misses opportunity. At the end, when he came off Brest, out of the dozen ships with him, all but two were turned over to the admiral there commanding, ready for any call ; to blockade or to fight. Of the two, one, worn out structurally, he had retained from the first chiefly because of her value as a fighting unit, due to an exceptional captain; the other, his own flagship, had been over two years from a home port, yet within a month of arrival 2I g ENGLISH COMPOSITION sailed again for his last battle. Compared to these its antecedents, Trafalgar is relatively a small matter. The example is for all time. Incidental conditions have changed since then, but the essential problem remains. Steamers may not find in a calm, or in an unprofitable head wind, the propitious moment for clearing a storeship, or running into a near port to fill with water; but the commander-in-chief may find imposed upon him the consideration: Where should we fill with coal, and to what extent beyond the bunker capacity, in order to make the successive coalings, and the necessary stretches from point to point, most easy and most rapid ? What distribution of these operations will make the total voyage shortest and surest ? What anchorages may be available outside neutral limits, should neutral states consider coal renewal and other refreshment an operation of war not to be permitted within their jurisdiction? \Vhat choice is there among these anchorages, for facility due to weather? If driven to coal at sea, where will conditions be most propitious ? For concrete instances: How much of the wide and shoal estuary of the La Plata is within neutral jurisdiction? Is the well-known quietness of the Pacific between Valparaiso and the equator such that colliers can lie alongside while the ships hold their course ? If so, at what speed can they move? Then the mere operation of transferring the coal, or other stores,- under any of these circumstances is done more rapidly the second time than the first; and the third than the second. At what points of the voyage should additional colliers join, having reference, not only to the considerations above men- tioned but also to the ports whence they sail, that the utmost of their cargo may go into the fleet and the least be expended for their own steaming? It is always well to consider the worst difficulties that may be met. From the north tropic on the one side to the same latitude on the other, the whole voyage of an American fleet will be in foreign waters, except when on the ocean common. Upon what hospitality can it count in war? I hold it to be impossible that a fleet under a competent com- mander-in-chief and competent captains not to mention the admirable junior official staff of our navy, of highly trained officers in the prime of life can make the proposed voyage once, even with the advantages of peace, without being better fitted to repeat DEVELOPMENT OF THE FULL ARGUMENT 2I 9 the operation in war. No amount of careful pre- arrangement in an office takes the place of doing the thing itself. It is surely a safe generalization, that no complicated scheme of action, no in- vention, was ever yet started without giving rise to difficulties which anxious care had failed to foresee. If challenged to point out the most useful lesson the fleet may gain, it may be not unsafe to say : its surprises, the unexpected. If we can trust press reports, surprise has already begun in the home water. The fleet apparently has not been able to get ready as soon as contemplated. If so, it will be no small gain to the government to know the several hitches; each small, but cumulative. In my estimation, therefore, the matter stands thus: In the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke than whom I know no sounder authority, because while non-professional he has been for a genera- tion a most accurate observer and appreciative student of military and naval matters the United States navy now stands second in power only to that of Great Britain ; but it is not strong enough to be divided between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Both are part of a common country; both therefore equally entitled to defence. It follows inevitably that the fleet should be always ready, not only in formulated plan, but by acquired experience, to proceed with the utmost rapidity according to the definition of mobility before suggested from one coast to the other, as needed. That facility obtained, both coasts are defended in a military sense. By this I do not mean that an enemy may not do some flying injury serious injury but that no large opera- tion against the coasts of the United States can prosper unless the enemy command the sea ; and that he cannot do, to any effect, if within three months a superior United States force can appear. Rozhestvensky took longer ; but could he have smashed Togo, as Togo did him, what would have been the situation of Japan, for all the successes of the preceding fourteen months? Evidently, however, the shorter the transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic, the greater will be the power of the fleet for good ; just as it would have been better if Rozhestvensky assuming his success had come before Port Arthur fell, or better still before its fleet was destroyed. Such mobility can be acquired only by a familiarity with the ground, and with the methods to be followed, such as 220 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Nelson by personal experience had of the Mediterranean and of the West Indies; of the facilities they offered, and the obstacles they presented. Such knowledge is experimental, gained only by practice. It is demonstrable, therefore, that the proposed voyage is in the highest degree practical; not only advisable, but imperative. Nor should it be a single spasm of action, but a re- current procedure ; for admirals and captains, go and come, and their individual experience with them. Why not annual? The Pacific is as good a drill ground as the Atlantic. PART III DESCRIPTION CHAPTER X DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION, as the word is generally used, means any repre- sentation of objects, no matter whether by line, color, or words. In composition, description is easily divided into two main types, V according to the purpose for which the description is written. Most descriptions can without difficulty be assigned to one of these two divisions. Thus, for example, a guidebook might describe the view from Westminster Bridge in London, in the following way: From the bridge an admirable view is obtained of the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Lambeth Palace, the extensive Hospital of Saint Thomas, and other landmarks, together with a considerable part of the city and the river. Below the bridge, which is crossed by electric trams, is the beginning of the Victoria Embankment, down which the trams run to Blackfriars Bridge. Above, on the right bank, is the Albert Embankment, leading past Lambeth Palace. The poet Wordsworth described the view from the bridge in 1802, in a sonnet which was a masterpiece of a different sort of description. Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touchmg in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep 222 ENGLISH COMPOSITION In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! The river glideth at his own sweet will : Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still ! An even greater contrast is afforded by a comparison of a de- scription of Rome copied from a cyclopedia, with some descriptive stanzas on the same city by Byron. Rome, the capital and center of the greatest state of the ancient world, the center of the Roman Catholic Church, and the capital of the present kingdom of Italy. This, the most famous of all cities, is situated on both banks of the Tiber, fifteen miles from the Mediterranean, in lat. 41' 54" N., long. 12' 29" E. The city proper is on the left bank, on the original seven hills (Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Vimi- nal, Esquiline, and Quirinal) and the connecting valleys and plains near the river. Etc. O Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires ! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye ! Whose agonies are as evils of a day A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations ! there she stands Childless and crown less in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scatter' d long ago; The Scipio's tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers: dost\hou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. The first pair of examples described a definite picture, a view, though with widely different aims. The descriptions of Rome, DESCRIPTION M$ however, in neither case give a definite picture, although you feel that the poet is standing somewhere, and gazing at the city. Yet you recognize at once that the first and third selections belong to one class of description, the second and fourth to another. You see that guidebook and cyclopedia are explanatory or instructive in aim, while the poems are imaginative, suggestive, pictorial. The first of these is so closely allied to the form of discourse already studied as Exposition that we may well call it expository descrip- tion and apply to it most of what was said under that title. The second of these we may call imaginative description, and in this chapter must devote to it the greater part of our attention. Often these two kinds of description are combined, when the aim of the writer is both to give information and to stimulate the imagination. Thus the advertiser waxes enthusiastic over his honey : There are times in the life of every adult who has once experi- enced, even in childhood's earliest memory, the delightful taste of pure honey, when the longing of the palate for this delicious nectar of the flowers becomes almost irresistible. . . . There is no flavor of nature so delicate, so subtle, so universally loved. From that wonder-garden of the New World, California, comes a honey which the bees procure from hills and valleys covered with rich and luxuriant beds of sage. Well may the poet sing that into its every drop is poured the semitropical bounty of the sweet Pacific Sun and the silver-white hue of the Western Stars. This is unquestionably the finest honey in the world and the only one which satisfies the demands of our Premier Label. It comes to us in all its limpid purity, just as it is taken from the hive of the bee, and after it is filtered we distribute it to the fortunate few in cylinder shaped bottles under our " Premier " label. For the table or for medicinal use this product provides a perfect solu- tion to the problem which confronts all who seek quality and purity combined. Here we drop with a thud from what is imaginative to what is expository, and the awkwardness of the combination is apparent. As a matter of fact, however, few descriptions are purely imagina- 224 ENGLISH COMPOSITION tive or purely expository, since you cannot understand objects without seeing, nor really see without comprehending. To an English-speaking citizen of Timbuctoo, Wordsworth's description of London could be of little interest; only those who have seen London, or some other civilized city, can supply the basis for the vivid appeal of the poem. Still more to one unacquainted with the history of Rome, Byron's lines are without meaning. For such a one, a Baedeker is first necessary. You must not be afraid, there- fore, of putting into your imaginative description any details which help us to understand the picture, so long as these are really needed. On the other hand, a touch of the imaginative makes many an exposition readable. It is the prevailing purpose, not any single use of details, which divides description into our two classes. With this in mind, we may glance for a moment more at expository description. The following examples are full of imaginative touches: The evening proceedings and manceuvers of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. . . . Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded and motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are still called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb glidan, r to glide. The kestrel, or windhover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in the air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated. Henharriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting- DESCRIPTION 225 dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish ; and, when they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak, and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the center of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner ; crows and daws swagger in their walk ; woodpeckers fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. . . . Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no dispatch; herons seem incumbered with too much sail for their light bodies, but these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens, such as large fishes and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort called smiters, have a way of clashing their wings the one against the other over their backs with a loud snap; another variety, called tumblers, turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ringdoves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the windhover; and the greenfinch, in par- ticular, exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat-suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor ; starlings as it were swim along, while missel-thrushes use a wild and desultory flight; swallows sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish them- selves by rapid turns and quick evolutions; swifts dash round in circles; and the bank-martin moves with frequent vacillations like a butterfly. Most of the small birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as they advance. Most small birds hop ; but wagtails and larks walk, moving their legs alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they sing; woodlarks hang poised in the air; and tit-larks rise and fall in large curves, singing in their descent. . . . GILBERT WHITE: Natural History of Selborne, Letters lix, xliii. Q 22 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Few pieces of expository description, however, possess such picturesque elements as the flight of birds. The most that we can strive for, in the majority of cases, is an accurate and orderly setting down of sufficient details to present the object clearly before the reader. In specific description of this kind, technical words cannot be avoided ; but the writer will confine them to the least possible number consistent with clearness. Baedeker, Great Britain, thus describes the Choir of Salisbury Cathedral: The Choir (adm. 6d.) is separated from the nave by a modern metal screen by Skidmore. The vaulting has been coloured in accordance with the index afforded by a few traces of the original decorations. The stalls are a combination of work of various dates, including perhaps some of the original work ; the pulpit and reredos are modern. On the N. side of the choir is the fine Per- pendicular Chantry of Bishop Audley (1520), and on the S. the Hungerford Chantry (removed from the N. side of the nave), a good example of i5th century iron-work (1430). The E. ex- tremity of the cathedral is occupied by the Lady-Chapel, with five lancets filled with modern stained glass. Adjacent, at the E. end of the N. choir-aisle, is the monument of Sir Thomas Gorges (d. 1610) and his wife (d. 1635), the builders of Longfort Castle. Opposite, at the E. end of the S. choir-aisle, is a monu- ment to the Earl of Hertford (d. 1621) and his wife. Between this and the Lady-Chapel is a slab commemorating St. Osmund (d. 1099), whose shrine stood in the Lady-Chapel. The N.E. Tran- sept contains the interesting and curious brass of Bishop Wyville (d. 1375). From the S.E. Transept, containing the Chantry of Bishop Bridport (d. 1262), a door leads to the Vestry and Muni- ment Room. As may be gathered from this extract, the chief difficulty in the writing of expository description is the mastering of the technical vocabulary which accompanies every art and science. Practice in this form of composition had best be limited therefore to objects which have been long familiar to the writer. And even in such a simple object as a door, he will find that the details will involve words beyond his experience, unless he has at some time practiced DESCRIPTION 227 carpentry. With these few notes on expository description, we leave the subject; anything else would belong to the chapter on Exposition, to which you are referred. In imaginative description, on the other hand, you are first to keep in mind its close relation to the art of painting. Your diffi- culties will be those which confront the painter. A description, as one critic defines it, is a painting which renders material things visible, so that a painter might copy the scene from the words. The comparison between painting and description is indeed inevitable. If expository description is an architect's drawing, imaginative description is a portrait or a landscape. It is the touch of the imagination which turns a fashion-plate into a portrait, whether in words or in oils. It is obvious, to begin with, that in such matters as color, contour, and grace the painter has a great advantage over his brother- artist in words. There are not words enough to describe the infinite variety of these things. On the other hand, when the painter comes to depict a landscape, what can he tell us of the sweet smell of the meadow, the softness of the breeze, the waving of the wheat, the flight of birds, the movements of folks, the song of the brook, the piping of the cricket, and a hundred other appeals that make up the true picture of a summer day ? All these images the writer can call back to the mind of any one who has once ex- perienced them ; he may even, by comparison and metaphor, teach them to one who has never known them. Words, then, can paint effectively, though their range is different from that of the artist's material. Note the variety of sensation, and the graphic quality, in the following bit from Kipling : Harvey soon discovered that the We're Here, with her riding- sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the We're Here headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. There was a bite and kick to the wheel even in ' boy's ' weather ; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy. . . . The low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when 22 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her stedfast way, through grey-blue or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam ; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. . . . Harvey began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turn- ing over with a sound of incessant tearing ; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud- shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors ; the salty glare and blaze of noon ; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles ; the chilly blackening of everything at the day's end ; and the million wrinkles of the sea under moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook. KIPLING : Captains Courageous. Here are color, motion, form, taste, touch, sound, all at work in a dozen ways painting a picture with a variety of appeal that no painter of marines could equal. A second way in which description may be compared to painting is in the character of the artist himself. The essential equipment for the artist is, of course, the same in both arts: frank and ap- preciative interest in nature, and keen and truthful observation. These qualities may be summed up in one phrase, a willing- ness to see what is there. But the comparison does not stop here. A third point of contact is the field in which work can be done. Your choice, like the painter's, will be limited, first by the extent of your own experience for you cannot describe what you have not seen, and the imagination is only an active memory and secondly by what will interest your reader. Ordinarily, descrip- tion is divided into the landscape and the portrait, but its range is far wider than this. Character, mode of life, sound, a mood, and an infinite combination of these and other appeals to the imag- ination are equally suitable for descriptive writing. As a college student, you might describe not merely the view from your window at a given moment, or the most interesting of your classmates, but your own moods during one day, the most popular tune of the DESCRIPTION 229 moment, the speech you remember best, the kind of voice you like to hear, the differences in accent among your classmates, the prevailing types at college, how different men shake hands, these are all good themes for descriptive composition. But though your range of subject be wider than the painter's, your aim is the same, to present something that is real, vivid, and significant, something that will appeal to the man you wish to interest. A fourth comparison of description to painting is still more im- portant; the writer of description, like the painter, must have a point of view. He must see things in relation to each other, in perspective. Early painters, before perspective was observed, were accustomed to paint objects exactly as they were, and not as they were seen from a certain place. Their paintings to-day seem crude to us, because of this. The effect is the same when a writer describes objects in a landscape which he could not possibly see from any point of view in which the rest of the details can be grasped. The whole picture becomes grotesque, unproportioned, unreal. Unity in description depends chiefly upon your observ- ance of this fact, and upon your frequent reference, either direct or implied, to the point from which the reader is to look upon your landscape. Nous entrames dans cette maison, dont la grande chambre en bas, toute sombre, parce qu'on avait blinde" les fenetres avec des sacs de terre, etait deja pleine de soldats. On apercevait dans le fond un escalier en bois, tres roide, ou le sang coulait ; des coups de fusils partaient d'en haut. Et leurs eclairs montraient, de, seconde en seconde, cinq ou six des notres affaisse's centre la rampe, les bras pendants, et les autres que leur passaient sur le corps, la baionnette en avant, pour forcer Pentree de la soupente. C'etait quelque chose d'horrible que tous ces hommes avec leurs moustaches, leurs joues brunes, la fureur peinte dans les rides, qui voulaient monter a toute force. En voyant cela, je ne sais quelle rage me prit, et je me pris a crier: ' En avant ! pas de quartier ! ' ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN : Waterloo. 2 3 EXGL1SH COMPOSITION " Courage ! " he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams ! some like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner lands ; far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flushed; and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset lingered low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seemed the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotus-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. TEXXYSOX : The Lotus-Eaters. DESCRIPTION 231 The fifth point of comparison is the right of selection of details. The writer, like the painter, is limited to a certain angle of vision. He cannot include everything he sees, nor does he wish to. He avails himself of the privilege of rejection of such details as are in- significant, or impede the main point of the description. So the photographer, who wishes to imitate the finer effects of painting, deliberately throws a part of his landscape out of focus, and renders it indistinguishable in order to bring out his main subject in stronger relief. The trouble with the ordinary photograph as a work of art is usually that this power of rejection cannot be used. This consideration of the necessity of selection in our building up a picture from details naturally brings up a second law of Unity. In ordinary description, you have seen, Unity depends upon the point of view; but in descriptions of character, sound, and many other things you have no point of view to guide you in the observance of Unity in the picture. In such cases, Unity of Effect should be your aim. Your selection of details will depend entirely upon it. All descriptions are written with the purpose of making a vivid impression upon the imagination, and this impres- sion can only be vivid if it is single, clear, and sharp. An example of the most obvious sort of selection with a view to single effect is here given. Whan ended was the lyf of seint Cecyle, Er we had riden fully fyve myle, At Boghton under Blee us gan atake A man, that clothed was in clothes blake, And undernethe he hadde a whyt surplys. His hakeney, that was al pomely grys, So swatte, that it wonder was to see; It semed he had priked myles three. The hors eek that his yeman rood upon So swatte, that unnethe mighte it gon. . Aboute the peytrel stood the foom ful hye, He was of fome al flekked as a pye. A male tweyfold on his croper lay, It semed that he caried lyte array. Al light for somer rood this worthy man, And in myn herte wondren I bigan 2 3 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION What that he was, til that I understood How that his cloke was sowed to his hood; For which, when I had long avysed me, I demed him som chanon for to be. His hat heng at his bak doun by a laas, For he had ridden more than trot or paas; He had ay priked lyk as he were wood. A clote-leef he hadde under his hood For swoot, and for to kepe his heed from hete, But it was joye for to seen him swete. His foreheed dropped as a stillatorie Were ful of plantain and of paritorie. CHAUCER : The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Finally, as a sixth and last point of comparison for we must not push the resemblance too far what you select as the chief note in your description must be original with you, if it is to be sincere writing; just as the painter must depend in the long run upon his own personality, for his best work. ' Moreover, the scene as it impresses you is always most vivid. You will often hear it said, "I am always glad to get letters from X, his letters are so fresh and original." This usually means, that the writer of the letters has been successful in conveying his own impressions of what he sees. In correspondence more than in any other writing, the writer is free to develop this personal tone in description, which adds so much to the vividness of the picture. The success of Byron's most famous poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, selections from which follow, was due primarily to the masterly way in which Byron described Europe as he saw it, and thereby gave his descrip- tion a unity which other books of travel lacked. Moreover, if you remember that your description depends on your personal choice, you will be stimulated all the more to keep your eyes and ears open, to examine what your own tastes are, what sort of sensations appeal most to you ; and your writing will gain in interest accordingly. One may insist too much on 'he unity which personal interest gives to a description, but the tendency of most of us is usually so far in the other direction, so much inclined to the use of "one sees," "one notices," and other im- personal usages, such as the passive voice, "a train was seen to be DESCRIPTION 233 approaching," and the like, that emphasis on the point of per- sonal impression can hardly be misplaced. (a) Once more upon the waters ! yet once more ! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows its rider. Welcome to their roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead ! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. (b) Clear placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn Ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine Whose breast of waters broadly swells Between the banks which bear the vine, And hills all rich with blossom'd trees, And fields which promise corn and wine, And scatter'd cities crowning these, Whose far white walls along them shine, Have strew'd a scene, which I should see With double joy, wert thou with me. BYRON : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Jane Austen thus describes the impressions of a romantic girl, on visiting an Abbey : She knew not that she had any right to be surprised, but there was something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not expected. To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, 234 ENGLISH COMPOSITION to find herself with such ease in the very precincts of the Abbey, and driven so rapidly along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm, or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent. She was not long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe anything farther, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw-bonnet: and she was actually under the Abbey walls, was springing, with Henry's assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the General were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had wafted nothing worse than a thick drizzling rain, and having given a good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shewn into the common drawing- room, and capable of considering where she was. An abbey! Yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey. But she doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her observation would have given her the consciousness. The furniture was in all the profusion of modern taste. The fire- place, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain, though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having heard the General talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure the pointed arch was preserved, the form of them was Gothic, they might even be casements, but every pane was so large, so clear, so light. To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions and the heaviest stonework, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing. N orthanger Abbey. Where there is such unity as this in the observer's mental point of view, the varying scenes which may be described are easily DESCRIPTION 235 linked by the bond of personality. Where there is no such mental standpoint, every change in scene must be marked with the greatest care. So far, then, as the general laws of Unity are concerned, unity of point of view, of effect, or of personality, description is not unlike painting. We can hardly carry the comparison further, useful though it be. Coherence in descriptions asks only that there be some simple plan in setting down details. It will vary according to the nature of the subject. The most natural plan is the best; if not, then climax provides an easy solution. Tennyson's Brook shows a typically natural plan. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. From source to mouth, from top to bottom, right to left, head to foot any plan, so long as it be orderly, will pass muster. An easy method is to recall the actual process by which the eyes take in a landscape : the general outlines first, then the details. Often a second look, a second listening, is needed, before the object is really seen or heard. But you will soon see, when you begin to write descriptions, that the main stress in description is not upon Coherence. De- scriptions are usually short, and the details have naturally a close relation to each other. The explanatory terminology of exposition should be avoided here as far as possible, as well as phrases and 2 3 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION words that aid transition; and the details should be left unen- cumbered to tell their own story. A description which opens by saying that a certain scene is very beautiful, without specifying its peculiar appeal, or an account of travel which dwells on the incidental details that occur in every journey, is very tedious. Such narrative as is part of the description may be retained ; the rest should be suppressed, as tending toward obscurity. The two paragraphs quoted above from Miss Austen show narrative detail skillfully combined with description. Where the description is long enough to make it necessary, an effective method of preserving coherence among the numerous details of description is to treat the details as in series, either several in a sentence with parallel clauses, or each in a separate sentence of parallel structure, or both methods combined. The same grammatical treatment gives like value to each detail, and the whole scene is brought in as a unit. In the meantime, the seasons gradually rolled on. The little frogs which had piped in the meadows in early spring, croaked as bull-frogs during the summer heats, and then sank into silence. The peach-tree budded, blossomed, and bore its fruit. The swallows and martins came, twitted about the roof, built their nests, reared their young, held their congress among the eaves, and then winged their flight in search of another spring. The cater- pillar spun its winding-sheet, dangled in it from the great button- wood tree before the house; turned into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of summer, and disappeared ; and finally the leaves of the buttonwood tree turned yellow, then brown, then rustled one by one to the ground, and whirling about in little eddies of wind and dust, whispered that winter was at hand. WASHINGTON IRVING: Wolfert Webber. The lofty houses ; the stately, though narrow and gloomy, streets; the splendid display of the richest goods and most gorgeous armor in the warehouses and shops around ; the walks crowded by busy citizens of every description, passing and repassing with faces of careful importance or eager bustle ; the huge wains, which trans- ported to and fro the subject of export and import, the former con- DESCRIPTION 237 sisting of broadcloths and serge, arms of all kinds, nails and iron- work, while the latter comprehended every article of use or luxury intended either for the consumption of an opulent city or received in barter and destined to be transported elsewhere all these objects combined to form an engrossing picture of wealth, bustle, and splendor, to which Quentin had hitherto been a stranger. WALTER SCOTT : Quentin Durward. If we give a paragraph to Emphasis in description, it is only to insist upon what has already been suggested. To give space and precedence to the details that directly contribute to your desired effect, to subdue what is incidental, is to observe proportion in descriptive writing. The general outline of the scene is usually given first, and supplemented afterwards by the details which con- tribute to the main effect. With equally good results, the details may often be grouped in a climactic order. Care should be taken, of course, that no details are given a prominence which would not be justified in reality. In Blackmore's romantic novel of Lorna Doone, the account of the water-slide is a fine piece of description, and perfectly justified in a romance; but visitors to the actual Doone Valley are always disappointed to find a little gully of no size at all as the only basis in fact for the water-slide which plays so large a part in the story. Where the descriptions are of actual objects, your emphasis on details must be proportionate, not only to the effect you wish to convey, but to the facts as they are. In this general survey of the laws of description, we have seen that expository description, while it may contain imaginative touches, is really pure exposition, and to be studied as part of that form of composition. Imaginative description is like painting in the three points of equipment (the instruments of expression, the character of the artist, and the field of labor) ; it is further like painting in that the law of Unity applies in both to the point of view, the effect produced, and the personality of the artist. Turning now from the general methods of descriptive writing to the particular devices of the art, we find one term which covers the whole subject, suggestion. Imaginative description might, indeed, be better termed suggestive description, were it not that the latter phrase does not indicate the object of our appeal. We 238 ENGLISH COMPOSITION are aiming at the imagination through the force of suggestion, and our purpose better defines our work than does our weapon. It is time, however, to examine this weapon closely, and to learn as far as may be its various uses. We have already considered some phases of the subject in the chapter on the Right Word (p. 159). Suggestion in description is primarily the action of bringing up in the reader's mind a mental picture of what you see. The most vivid mental picture will be brought up by the use of con- crete terms, and by the closeness with which the words fit the ideas. It is a mistake for the young writer to feel that he must cudgel his brain for violent metaphors and overwrought similes. We shall give full value to the devices that aid suggestion, but when all is said, it remains true that the fundamental requirements of descriptive suggestion are aptness and concreteness. All this is only repeating that keen observation on your part, your search for what is particular, what is individual, what is characteristic, will in the end reward you more than will all fine- spun epithets and brilliant figures of rhetoric. And since the concrete facts about any object are never very many, this very limitation of circumstances will teach you another great point in description, to be brief. Your reader's capacity to take in the details of your picture is limited as well ; he loses the first before the last is told, and in a few moments the whole picture has blurred. Just as diminishing the diaphragm in front of the lens sharpens and clears the image in the camera, so compressing the description and concentrating on a few significant details sharpens the out- lines and makes the impression permanent. This is particularly true, it may be noted parenthetically, in the case of descriptions of persons. You cannot crowd many details into a description of this sort without confusion. A single incident, a single habitual gesture, will tell enough of a man's character for all practical purposes. The one significant trait may be reinforced, if you like, by illustrative material but in character- drawing compactness is the chief essential. So far as the outer man is concerned, there are few significant details, stature, com- plexion, walk, and strongly marked features. You have only a half-dozen strokes at most ; make the most of them. Benjamin Franklin thus describes his father: DESCRIPTION 239 I think you may like to know something of his person and char- acter. He had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature but well set, and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius, too, and on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools; but his great excellence lay in a sound under- standing and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in public and private affairs. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. In the character of the country doctor, given below, the dis- tinguishing marks of the outward man are made to indicate the inner nature of the man and the details are expanded by the use- ful method of illustrative anecdote. The details themselves, how- ever, are few. No one sent for MacLure save in great straits, and the sight of him put courage in sinking hearts. But this was not by the grace .of his appearance, or the advantage of a good bedside manner. A tall, gaunt, loosely made man, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, his face burnt a dark brick colour by constant exposure to the weather, red hair and beard turning grey, honest blue eyes that looked you ever in the face, huge hands with wrist- bones like the shank of a ham, and a voice that hurled his salu- tations across two fields, he suggested the moor rather than the drawing-room. But what a clever hand it was in an operation, as delicate as a woman's, and" what a kindly voice it was in the humble room where the shepherd's wife was weeping by her man's bedside. He was "ill pitten thegither" to begin with, but many of his physical defects were the penalties of his work, and endeared him to the Glen. That ugly scar that cut into his right eyebrow and gave him such a sinister expression, was got one night Jess slipped on the ice and laid him insensible eight miles from home. His limp marked the big snowstorm in the fifties, when his horse missed the road in Glen Urtach, and they rolled together in a drift MacLure escaped with a broken leg and the fracture of three ribs, 240 ENGLISH COMPOSITION but he never walked like other men again. He could not swing into the saddle without making two attempts and holding Jess's mane. Neither can you " warstle " through the peat bogs and snow- drifts for forty winters without a touch of rheumatism. But they were honourable scars, and for such risks of life men get the Vic- toria Cross in other fields. MacLure got nothing but the secret affection of the Glen, which knew that none had ever done one- tenth as much for it as this ungainly, twisted, battered figure, and I have seen a Drumtochty face soften at the sight of MacLure limping to his horse. IAN MACLAREN (WATSON) : A Doctor of the Old School. Yet though a few vivid touches are best in character description, it is possible to carry this rule too far, both here and elsewhere. In proportion as the descriptive element is compressed, it must make up for brevity by significance. Few of us have the power of hitting off a scene or a character in a phrase, and for students in composition there is distinct danger in urging too strongly swiftness and compactness of presentation before the whole de- scriptive range has been covered. Behind the phrases with which Lincoln was able to summarize a great situation in a dozen words, lay a great experience of life. It took a George Borrow to call a certain house "a pandemonium in red brick." Until some such experience, as that great writer had, is gained, the student had best not try to strike off a portrait in a phrase, but rather fill in as com- plete and accurate a picture as his reader can carry away. He must depend for his power of suggestion upon telling the truth, and the whole truth. But concreteness and brevity of themselves would make but a bare description. Two other valuable methods for obtaining descriptive power are equally important comparison and contrast. By relating the object you wish to present to some other object more familiar to your reader, you gain an instant entrance into his imagination. 1 It must, however, be emphasized that the comparison should be a familiar one. An American discussing the constellations with an English friend is surprised to find that 1 See on this point the chapter on The Right Word, pp. 159-162, which has more to say about the use of rhetorical figures. DESCRIPTION 241 the name Dipper, for a certain part of the Great Bear, does not appeal to the Englishman so much as does his own name, Charles's Wain. The dipper is practically unknown in England ; the great farmer's wagon universal. A comparison, to be obvious, must be familiar. Thus the usefulness of comparing Italy to a boot is recognized throughout the world, and to say that the recent earthquakes affected the toe of the boot places them instantly. Lake Erie and the Niagara River are undeniably like a whale spouting, but the comparison is neither so obvious nor so familiar, and is there- fore less valuable. In the use of comparisons, one must employ such figures as would naturally occur to the person who is represented as looking at the picture. The ease with which a figure becomes unnatural through the slightest infringement of this rule is surprising. James Lane Allen, in his Kentucky Cardinal, represents his ornithologist hero as comparing people to birds. Among the neighbors who furnish me much of the plain prose of life, the nearest hitherto has been a bachelor named Jacob Mariner. I called him my rain-crow, because the sound of his voice awoke apprehensions of falling weather. A visit from him was an endless drizzle. Of a gossipy old lady : I call Mrs. Walters my mocking bird, because she reproduces by what is truly a divine arrangement of the throat the voices of the town. When she flutters across to the yellow settee under the grapevine and balances herself lightly with expectation, I have but to request that she favor me with a little singing, and soon the air is vocal with every note of the village songsters. On the other hand, when in his Summer in Arcady he has been describing a country girl in the spring house on a Kentucky farm, he digresses to introduce some classical comparisons, and the effect is bad. 242 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Seeing her standing thus, slender and still on the low, green stones as though poised on the leaves of the lotus, with only the voices of the tiny spring rippling on the silence as it struggled out of its caverns, the fancy forgot who she was and fell to dreaming of those faint, far shapes that in the youth of the world's imagina- tion haunted the borderland of mystery and reality. What was she but a nymph of the fountain, brought by some late disaster to ponder the secrets of life and nature? Antithesis may be equally effective in suggestion. Often telling what an object is not helps to picture it all the more vividly. The contrast must, however, be very much to the point, if it is to be effective at all. An easier way of using contrast is between details in the same picture. Here the climactic order is of importance, for the object contrasted last has the more significant position. The picture presented to his eye was not calculated to enliven his mind. The old mansion stood out against the western sky, black and silent. One long, lurid pencil stroke along a sky of slate was all that was left of daylight. No sign of life was ap- parent ; no light at any window, unless it might have been on the side of the house hidden from view. No owls were on the chim- neys, no dogs were in the yard. GEORGE W. CABLE : Old Creole Days. Sighing at these words, as if they were her own utterance, the listener lifted her eyes to the king, and, seeing his clear, penetrating gaze fixed upon her, blushed, and turned her face to the window. Her body was frail and slender as a flower's stem, and his rugged and robust, like a stout blade beaten into shape under the blows of a forging hammer; the eyes of each were great and gray, but hers soft as -a falcon in mew, and his keen as a hawk trussing; her skin, softer than the tissue of her silken garments, was scarcely less white, and his, bronzed by many winds and suns, was darker than the brown moustache, which, thick and strong like the brows and hair, overshadowed the firm lines of the mouth. Where the subtle likeness between the two hid were hard to say, though it struck the shallowest observer at a glance. A. S. HARDY: Passe Rose. DESCRIPTION 243 Another and most useful method of heightening suggestive power is to describe the effect which the pictured scene makes on the beholder. It has been a favorite pastime of practical jokers to stand upon the street gazing steadily at a building till a crowd gathers round them, no man knowing what he looks at, but each stimulated by the sight of interest in others. Scarcely any method of widening the range of suggestion has greater possibilities than this. It is the effect of an experience, graven in the deep lines of The Ancient Mariner's face, that compels the Wedding Guest to linger and listen. Keats describes Chapman's transla- tion of Homer by a comparison of its effect upon him to similar effects upon other men. He holds him with his glittering eye The Wedding Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding Guest sat on a stone; He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. ***** "I fear thee, Ancient Mariner!" " Be calm, thou Wedding Guest ! " COLERIDGE: Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Much have I travel'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific and all his men 244 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Look'd at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien. KEATS : On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. It has been pointed out in another connection that variety of sense-appeal is one of the advantages of description by means of words ; 1 but we must now go farther than this, and assert that any description which lacks this variety of appeal is lacking in an essential part of its nature. In particular, sound, motion, and feeling must be added to a landscape, lest it remain lifeless and un- naturally still. The proper words to convey these ideas of action are of course those words which indicate action, namely, verbs. Few things are more important in description than the verb. Look back to the extract from Kipling's Captains Courageous, and note the number of verb-forms in proportion to other descrip- tive words; or try the same with Gilbert White's paragraph on the flight of birds and note the number of verbs he employs to denote flying. On the other hand, a scene cannot be so still that the verb with descriptive power is not wanted to describe it. Note the participles as well as the other forms of the verb in the following passage : Upon the midsummer woods most of all lay brooding stillness and subtle, relaxing heat. In the depths of one the moo of a rest- less heifer broke at intervals upon the ear like a faint, far bell of distress. The squirrel was asleep. The cuckoo barely lilted in silky flight among the trees. The mourning moth lay on the thistle with flattened wings as still as death. The blue snake doctor had dropped on the brink of the green pool like a lost jewel. Amid such silence in a forest, the imagination takes on the belief that all things in Nature understand and are waiting for some one to come for something to happen that they will all feel. Daphne glided like a swift, noiseless shadow into the woods. JAMES LANE ALLEN: Summer in Arcady. In the search for unity of effect, to which reference has been made under the law of Unity, you will not neglect one valuable 1 See p. 227. DESCRIPTION 245 aid in suggestive power, the great number of synonyms with which our language is endowed. By a judicious use of words synonymous with the effect you desire to convey, you can hammer in your meaning by successive blows. An extreme case is Coleridge's line Around me and above Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass. In the passage given below, this method is less obvious. The southern cross flashed down from the myriad stars in its startling splendor. The moon shone bright over the vast, silent plain, limitless, broken only by the undulating mounds and the infinitely stretching clumps of karroo bushes. The campfire, just replenished with damp twigs and shrubs, burned sulkily and the smoke ascended in spirals into the clear air. The hooded wagon depended helplessly on its shafts. The Kaffirs, wrapped in blankets, slept beneath. The oxen, outspanned some distance off, chewed the cud in sharp, rhythmic munches. The universe was still awfully still. All gave the sense of the littleness of man and the immensity of space. W. J. LOCKE: Derelicts. Here every sentence conveys an effect of stillness, though but two synonyms, silent and still, are used. The use of the word awfully, in the last part of the last selection, introduces another point to be observed in striving for suggestive power. Mr. Locke meant by the word just what it ought to mean, to the point oj inspiring awe. More of the context, if we could give the space, would bring this out even more clearly. He was justified, for, while heightening the suggestion, he added a new thought. He did not mean the word as a mere vague, intensive modifier of still, in which sense we use it every day as convenient colloquial slang, as "awfully nice," "awfully quick," etc. Had he done so, the effect would have been a complete anti-climax. In general, then, learn to use sparingly in description all adverbs of degree, such as most, very, exceedingly, and depend upon the 246 ENGLISH COMPOSITION number and vividness of your details for the degree of effect you wish to secure. Another way of avoiding triteness in description is to "rub out the penciling," to conceal the too obvious plan upon which you are working. Spare your reader too many of the following, "if one should go to the edge of the hill, one would see," "one is apt to notice," "it was an interesting sight," "it made a pretty picture," "he had on," "he was," "he wore," "of striking appearance," "it seemed as if," etc., etc. Phrase your thoughts so as to avoid these expressions, for they are too well worn to pass current now. They obstruct the definiteness of your picture, for their own outlines are rubbed smooth by overuse. While the subject is properly treated elsewhere, 1 yet a word at least is needed to suggest to students the power in the sound of words. You can hardly expect to go far in this direction, and will do well perhaps to heed Lewis Carroll's burlesque dictum, "Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves." But even so, you will sometimes have a choice to make between synony- mous words of relatively equal suggestive value so far as meaning is concerned. Let your ear in such cases be umpire as to which sound helps most to convey the sense; but remember in all cir- cumstances that "high sounding" does not necessarily mean " sounding in tune." It has been said that it is the little poets that use big words. The devices which we have examined under the head of sug- gestion are concreteness, brevity, the use of such rhetorical figures as comparison and antithesis, utilizing the effect of the scene upon an observer, repetition by synonyms, care in the choice of verbs, and euphony. The list could no doubt be greatly extended. The reader may find others in the various types of description given at the end of the chapter. For our purposes, however, the list is long enough to show the numerous means at hand to aid the writer of description. The single fact that many of our selections in this chapter are from stories is proof enough that Description and Narration are closely joined in writing. Speaking in the terms of the theater, 1 See in the chapter on The Right Word, p. 162. DESCRIPTION 247 we may say that all the illusion that is accomplished on the stage by scenery, costuming, music, dance, and picturesque action is accomplished in the narrative by the descriptive art. Yet though Description is indispensable to Narrative, it is subordinate. We cannot keep our attention long on Description, but Narrative holds our interest unflagging. Narrative, therefore, has the larger field, although in many cases it must owe much of its charm to the lesser art. The writer who keeps in mind the pictorial side of action will gain much in vividness of narration. The description in a story, to be most effective, must be thor- oughly knit up with the action. Many of the descriptive touches in a good yarn will be found in those sentences which tell the action of the story. The description must be an intimate and proper part of the story, and must not be lugged in for effect. The amount of space it will occupy will depend entirely upon the nature of the story. Mr. Allen's Summer in Arcady, as its title implies, needs a great deal of description, while a narrative from the Old Testa- ment will have but little. Of all who have written narrative, Homer is the master in his handling of descriptive material. The two extracts given below (p. 248) show his method sufficiently well, but to exhibit it com- pletely one would have to insert both the Iliad and Odyssey, so completely are narrative and descriptive mingled. In Homer, every incident is visualized, so that one sees the action as if in a series of changing views, and feels and hears as well. This is accomplished, more than in any other way, by fidelity to the work- ing out of detail. And it is upon this, in the last analysis, that all good description depends. To sum up, then, these diverse hints upon descriptive writing, we find that Description, which shares with Exposition the setting down of numerous details, differs from that form in its purpose of picturing objects rather than of making them understood. Ex- pository description is really exposition, and the rules which apply to that form of writing apply to it. Imaginative description, which alone is true description, is closely related to the art of painting, in the equipment of keenness of observation which the artist must possess, in the fact that words, like line and color, can portray objects, and in the common requirements of one point of 248 ENGLISH COMPOSITION view, one central effect, and one personal note of the creator of the picture. Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis apply to Description, though the two latter laws are less difficult to follow than in Ex- position. The suggestive power of a description may be height- ened by many devices, chiefly by concentration upon a few strong outlines, by comparison, contrast, and other figures, by noting the effect of the scene upon the observer, by repetition through the use of synonyms, by careful attention to the suggestive power of verbs as well as of adjectives and nouns, and by some care in the selec- tion of words according to the effect produced by their sound. Keeping these points in mind, you may learn Description best, perhaps, by the diligent study of models, such as are appended to this chapter. Only so far as the theoretical side of the art is concerned, however, will you do this; nothing can ever take the place of accurate and sympathetic observation of life. SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ODYSSEY i. Odysseus gets to land. Whilst yet he pondered these things in his heart, a great wave bore him to the rugged shore. There would he have been stript of his skin and all his bones been broken, but that the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, put a thought into his heart. He rushed in and with both his hands clutched the rock, whereto he clung till the great wave went by. So he escaped that peril, but again with backward wash it leapt on him and smote him and cast him forth into the deep. And as when the cuttle-fish is dragged forth from his chamber, the many pebbles clinging to his suckers, even so was the skin stript from his strong hand, and the great wave closed over him. There of a truth would luckless Odysseus have perished beyond that which was ordained, had not grey-eyed Athene given him sure counsel. He rose from the line of the breakers that belch upon the shore, and swam outside, ever look- ing landwards, to find, if he might, spits that take the waves aslant, and havens of the sea. But when he came in his swimming DESCRIPTION 249 over against the mouth of a fair-flowing river, whereby the place seemed best in his eyes, smooth of rocks, and withal there was a covert from the wind, Odysseus felt the river running, and prayed to him in his heart: "Hear me, O king, whosoever thou art: unto thee am I come, as to one to whom prayer is made, whilst I flee the rebukes of Poseidon from the deep. Yea, reverend even to the. deathless gods is that man who comes as a wanderer, even as I now have come to thy stream and to thy knees after much travail. Nay pity me, O king;' for I avow myself thy suppliant." So spake he, and the god straightway stayed his stream and withheld his waves, and made the water smooth before him, and brought him safely to the mouths of the river. And his knees bowed and his stout hands fell, for his heart was broken by the brine. And his flesh was all swollen and a great stream of sea water gushed up through his mouth and nostrils. So he lay without breath or speech, swooning, such terrible weariness came upon him. 2. The home of EumseuS. But Odysseus fared forth from the haven by the rough track, up the wooded country and through the heights, where Athene had showed him that he should find the goodly swineherd, who cared most for his substance of all the thralls that goodly Odysseus had gotten. Now he found him sitting at the front entry of the house, where his courtyard was builded high, in a place with wide prospect; a great court it was and a fair, with free range round it. This the swineherd had builded by himself for the swine of his lord who was afar, and his mistress and the old man Laertes knew not of it. With stones dragged thither had he builded it, and coped it with a fence of white thorn, and he had split an oak to the dark core, and without he had driven stakes the whole length thereof on either side, set thick and close ; and within the courtyard he made twelve styes hard by one another to be beds for the swine, and in each stye fifty grovelling swine were penned, brood swine; but the boars were without. Now these were far fewer in number, the godlike wooers minishing them at their feasts, for the swine- 250 ENGLISH COMPOSITION herd ever sent in the best of all the fatted hogs. And their tale was three hundred and threescore. And by them always slept four dogs, as fierce as wild beasts, which the swineherd had bred, a master of men. Now he was fitting sandals to his feet, cutting a good brown oxhide, while the rest of his fellows, three in all, were abroad this way and that, with the droves; while the fourth he had sent to the city to take a boar to the proud wooers, as needs he must, that they might sacrifice and satisfy their soul with flesh. And of a sudden the baying dogs saw Odysseus, and they ran at him yelping, but Odysseus in his weariness sat him down, and let his staff fall from his hand. There by his own homestead would he have suffered foul hurt, but the swineherd with quick feet hasted after them, and sped through the outer door, and let the skin fall from his hand. And the hounds he chid and drave them this way and that, with a shower of stones, and he spake unto his lord, saying : "Old man, truly the dogs went nigh to be the death of thee all of a sudden, so shouldest thou have brought shame upon me. . . ." THE CALTON HILL 1 The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great elevation, which the town embraces. The old London road runs on one side of it; while the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes the circuit. You mount by stairs in a cut- ting of the rock to find yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart has the honours of situation and architecture; Burns is memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord Nelson, as befits a sailor, gives his name to the topgallant of the Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently and yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and a butter-churn; comparisons apart, it ranks among the vilest of men's handiworks. But the chief feature is an unfinished range of columns, "the Modern Ruin" 1 Reprinted, by the kind permission of the publishers, from the complete edition of R. L. Stevenson: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. DESCRIPTION 251 as it has been called, an imposing object from far and near, and giving Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air of a Modern Athens which has earned for her so many slighting speeches. It was meant to be a National Monument; and its present state is a very suitable monument to certain national characteristics. The old Observatory a quaint brown building on the edge of the steep and the new Observatory a classical edifice with a dome occupy the central portion of the summit. All these are scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep. Of all places for a view, this Gallon Hill is perhaps the best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. It is the place to stroll on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the sea, with a little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar to the quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organisations and greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a faint, floating haze, a cunning decolouriser, although not thick enough to obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes the aspect of a bank of thin sea fog. Immediately underneath upon the south, you command the yards of the High School, and the towers and courts of the new Jail a large place, castellated to the extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the one, you may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string of nuns ; in the other, school- boys running at play and their shadows keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a shapelier edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little farther, and there is Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red sentry pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical figure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their escape and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed 252 EXGLISH COMPOSITION in white wine to entertain her loveliness. Behind and overhead, lie the Queen's Park, from Muschat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long w T all of Salisbury Crags: and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the right, the roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one upon another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bas- tions on the western sky. Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon ; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's flag-staff close at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke followed by a report bursts from the half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun by which people set their watches, as far as the sea-coast or in hill farms upon the Pentlands. To complete the view, the eye enfilades Princes Street, black with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley between the Old Town and the New : here, full of railway trains and stepped over by the high North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens. On the North, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself nor has it so exceptional an outlook ; and yet even here it commands a striking prospect. A gully separates it from the New Town. This is Greenside, where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days. Down that almost precipitous bank, Both- well launched his horse, and so first, as they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tesselated with sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith camps on the seaside with her forest of masts ; Leith roads are full of ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith Island; the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May ; the towns of Fif eshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the opposite coast; and the hills inclose the view, except to the farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies the road to Norway ; a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots Lords ; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland. DESCRIPTION 253 "O lang, lang, may the ladies sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the land!" The sight of the sea, even from a city, will bring thoughts of storm and sea disaster. The sailors' wives of Leith and the fisher- women of Cockenzie, not sitting languorously with fans, but crowd- ing to the tail of the harbour with a shawl about their ears, may still look vainly for brave Scotsmen who will return no more, or boats that have gone on their last fishing. Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a multitude have gone down in the North Sea! Yonder is Auldhame, where the London smack went ashore and wreckers cut the rings from ladies' fingers; and a few miles round Fife Ness is the fatal Inchcape, now a star of guidance; and the lee shore to the east of the Inchcape, is that Forfarshire coast where Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son. These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person on the spot, and turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow absorbed with single points. You mark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows, you watch a figure moving ; on one of the multitude of roofs, you watch clam- bering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a bird goes dipping evenly over the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the meantime, 254 ENGLISH COMPOSITION on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked upon by monumental buildings. Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless night, with a ring of frost in the air, and only a star or two set sparsely in the vault of heaven ; and you will find a sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the Alps. The solitude seems perfect; the patient astronomer, flat on his back under the Observatory dome and spying heaven's secrets, is your only neighbour; and yet from all around you there come up the dull hum of the city, the tramp of countless people marching out of time, the rattle of carriages and the continuous keen jingle of the tramway bells. An hour or so before, the gas was turned on; lamplighters scoured the city; in every house, from kitchen to attic, the windows kindled and gleamed forth into the dusk. And so now, although the town lies blue and darkling on her hills, innumerable spots of the bright element shine far and near along the pavements and upon the high facades. Moving lights of the railway pass and re-pass below the stationary lights upon the bridge. Lights burn in the Jail. Lights burn high up in the tall lands and on the Castle turrets, they burn low down in Greenside or along the Park. They run out one beyond another into the dark country. They walk in a procession down to Leith, and shine singly far along Leith Pier. Thus, the plan of the city and her suburbs is mapped out upon the ground of blackness, as when a child pricks a drawing full of pin-holes and exposes it before a candle; not the darkest night of winter can conceal her high station and fanciful design; every evening in the year she proceeds to illuminate herself in honour of her own beauty ; and as if to complete the scheme or rather as if some prodigal Pharaoh were beginning to extend to the adjacent sea and country halfway over to Fife, there is an outpost of light upon Inchkeith, and far to sea-ward, yet another on the May. And while you are looking, across upon the Castle Hill, the drums and bugles begin to recall the scattered garrison; the air thrills with the sound; the bugles sing aloud; and the last rising flourish mounts and melts into the darkness like a star ; a martial swan-song, fitly rounding in the labours of the day. STEVENSON : Picturesque Xotes on Edinburgh. DESCRIPTION 255 ROME FROM THE TARPEIAN On the left of the Piazza of the Campidoglio, as you face city- ward, and at the head of the long and stately flight of steps de- scending from the Capitoline Hill to the level of lower Rome, there is a narrow lane or passage. Into this the party of our friends now turned. The path ascended a little, and ran along under the walls of a palace, but soon passed through a gateway, and terminated in a small paved courtyard. It was bordered by a low parapet. The spot, for some reason or other, impressed them as exceed- ingly lonely. On one side was the great height of the palace, with the moonshine falling over it, and showing all the windows barred and shuttered. Not a human eye could look down into the little courtyard, even if the seemingly deserted palace had a tenant. On all other sides of its narrow compass there was nothing but the parapet, which as it now appeared was built right on the edge of a steep precipice. Gazing from its imminent brow, the party beheld a crowded confusion of roofs spreading over the whole space between them and the line of hills that lay beyond the Tiber. A long, misty wreath, just dense enough to catch a little of the moonshine, floated above the houses, midway towards the hilly line, and showed the course of the unseen river. Far away on the right, the moon gleamed on the dome of St. Peter's as well as on many lesser and nearer domes. " What a beautiful view of the city ! " exclaimed Hilda ; " and I never saw Rome from this point before." "It ought to afford a good prospect," said the sculptor; "for it was from this point at least we are at liberty to think so, if we choose that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of the precipice." They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell perpendicularly downward to about the depth, or rather more, at which the tall palace rose in height above their heads. Not that it was still the natural, shaggy front of the original precipice; for it appeared to be cased in ancient stone-work, through which the primeval rock 256 ENGLISH COMPOSITION showed its face here and there grimly and doubtfully. Mosses grew on the slight projections, and little shrubs sprouted out of the crevices, but could not much soften the stern aspect of the cliff. Brightly as the Italian moonlight fell a-down the height, it scarcely showed what portion of it was man's work, and what was nature's, but left it all in very much the same kind of ambiguity and half-knowledge in which antiquarians generally leave the identity of Roman remains. The roofs of some poor-looking houses, which had been built against the base and sides of the cliff, rose nearly midway to the top; but from an angle of the parapet there was a precipitous plunge straight downward into a stone-paved court. HAWTHORNE : The Marble Faun. A DESOLATE SCENE IN SPAIN From Estremoz to Elvas the distance is six leagues. I started at nine next morning. The first part of the way lay through an enclosed country, but we soon emerged upon wild, bleak downs, over which the wind, which still pursued us, howled most mourn- fully. We met no one on the route, and the scene was desolate in the extreme. The heaven was of a dark gray, through which no glimpse of the sun was to be perceived. Before us, at a great distance, on an elevated ground, rose a tower, the only object which broke the monotony of the waste. In about two hours from the time when we first discovered it, we reached the fountain at the foot of the hill on which it stood ; the water, which gushed into a long stone trough, was beautifully clear and transparent, and we stopped here to water the animals. Having dismounted, I left the guide, and proceeded to ascend the hill on which the tower stood. Though the ascent was very gentle, I did not accomplish it without difficulty. The ground was covered with sharp stones, which in two or three instances cut through my boots and wounded my feet; and the distance was much greater than I had expected. When I at last arrived at the ruin, for such it was, I found it had been one of those watch- towers or small fortresses called in Portuguese atalaias. It was square, and surrounded by a wall, broken down in many places. DESCRIPTION 257 The tower itself had no door, the lower part being of solid stone- work; but on one side were crevices at intervals between the stones, for the purpose of placing the feet, and up this rude stair- case I climbed to a small apartment, about five feet square, from which the top had fallen. It commanded an extensive view from all sides, and had evidently been built for the accommodation of those whose business it was to keep watch on the frontier, and at the appearance of an enemy to alarm the country by signals probably by a fire. Resolute men might have defended themselves in this little fastness against many assailants, who must have been completely exposed to their arrows or musketry in the ascent. Being about to leave the place, I heard a strange cry behind a part of the wall which I had not visited; and hastening thither, I found a miserable object in rags seated upon a stone. It was a maniac a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb. There he sat, gibbering and mowing, and distorting his wild features into various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping. But the maniac on his stone, in the rear of the wind-beaten ruin over-looking the blasted heath, above which scowled the leaden heaven, presented such a picture of gloom and misery as I believe neither painter nor poet ever conceived in the saddest of their musings. This is not the first instance in which it has been my lot to verify the wisdom of the saying that truth is sometimes wilder than fiction. GEORGE BORROW : The Bible in Spain. LONDON BRIDGE A strange kind of bridge it was; huge and massive, and seem- ingly of great antiquity. It had an arched back, like that of a hog, a high balustrade, and at either side, at intervals, were stone bowers bulking over the river, but open on the other side, and furnished with a semicircular bench. Though the bridge was wide very wide it was all too narrow for the concourse upon it. Thousands of human beings were pouring over the bridge. But what chiefly struck my attention was a double row of carts 258 ENGLISH COMPOSITION and wagons, the generality drawn by horses as large as elephants, each row striving hard in a different direction, and not unfre- quently brought to a standstill. Oh, the cracking of whips, the shouts and oaths of the carters, and the grating of wheels upon the enormous stones that formed the pavement ! In fact, there was a wild hurly-burly upon the bridge, which nearly deafened me. But if upon the bridge there was a confusion, below it there was a confusion ten times confounded. The tide, which was fast ebbing, obstructed by the immense piers of the old bridge, poured beneath the arches with a fall of several feet, forming in the river below as many whirlpools as there were arches. Truly tremen- dous was the roar of the descending waters, and the bellow of the tremendous gulfs, which swallowed them for a time, and then cast them forth, foaming and frothing from their horrid wombs. Slowly advancing along the bridge, I came to the highest point, and there I stood still, close beside one of the stone bowers, in which, beside a fruitstall, sat an old woman, with a pan of char- coal at her feet, and a book in her hand, in which she appeared to be reading intently. There I stood, just above the principal arch, looking through the balustrade at the scene that presented itself and such a scene ! Towards the left bank of the river, a forest of masts, thick and close, as far as the eye could reach ; spacious wharfs, surmounted with gigantic edifices; and, far away, Caesar's Castle, with its White Tower. To the right another forest of masts, and a maze of building, from which, here and there, shot up to the sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra's Needle, vomiting forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy occasionally a gorgeous one of the more than Babel City. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, fascina- ated me. Who knows but I should have leapt into its depths I have heard of such things but for a rather startling occurrence which broke the spell. As I stood upon the bridge, gazing into the jaws of the pool, a small boat shot suddenly through the arch beneath my feet. There were three persons in it; an oarsman in the middle whilst a man and a woman sat at the stern. DESCRIPTION 259 I shall never forget the thrill of horror which went through me at this sudden apparition. What ! a boat a small boat passing beneath that arch into yonder roaring gulf? Yes, yes, down through that awful waterway, with more than the swiftness of an arrow, shot the boat, or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous breaker curls over the prow there is no hope ; the boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling vortex. No ! the boat, which appeared to have the buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening horror, and the next moment was out of danger, the boatman a true boatman of Cockaigne that elevating one of his sculls in sign of triumph, the man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman that of a certain class waving her shawl. Whether any one observed them save myself, or whether the feat was a common one I know not ; but nobody appeared to take any notice of them. As for myself, I was so excited, that I strove to clamber up the balustrade of the bridge, in order to obtain a better view of the daring adventurers. Before I could accomplish my design, however, I felt myself seized by the body, and, turning my head, perceived the old fruitwoman, who was clinging to me. " Nay, dear ! don't don't ! " said she. " Don't fling yourself over perhaps you may have better luck next time!" GEORGE BORROW: Lavengro. THE APPROACH OF AUTUMN Now came fulfillment of the year's desire: The fall wheat, colored by the August fire, Grew heavy-headed, dreading its decay, And blacker grew the elm trees day by day. About the edges of the yellow corn And o'er the gardens grown somewhat outworn, The bees went hurrying to fill up their store. The apple boughs bent over more and more; With peach and apricot the garden wall Was odorous, and the pears began to fall From off the high tree with each freshening breeze. WM. MORRIS: The Earthly Paradise. 2 6o ENGLISH COMPOSITION NETLEY ABBEY How shall I describe Netley to you ? I can only tell you that it is the spot in the world which I and Mr. Chute wish. The ruins are vast and retain fragments of beautiful fretted roofs, pen- dant in the air, with all variety of Gothic patterns of windows topped round and round with ivy. Many trees have sprouted up among the walls, and only want to be increased by cypresses. A hill rises above the Abbey, enriched with wood. The fort, in which we would build a tower for habitation, remains with two small platforms. This little castle is buried from the Abbey, in the very center of a wood, on a wood hill. On each side breaks in the view of Southampton Sea, deep, blue, glistening with silver and vessels. In short, they are not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise. Oh, the purpled abbots ! What a spot they had chosen to slumber in ! The scene is so beautifully tranquil, yet so lively that they seem only to have retired into the world. HORACE WALPOLE : Letters. A HOT NIGHT It was a pitchy-black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretense. It was a shade cooler in the press room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads, and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back, what- ever it was, would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order, before DESCRIPTION 261 I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud. RUDYARD KIPLING : The Man Who Would, Be King. THE ISLAND OF GUERNSEY Granit au sud, sable au nord ; ici des escarpements, lades dunes ; un plan incline de prairie avec des ondulations de collines et des reliefs de roches ; pour frange a ce tapis vert fronce de plis 1'ecume de 1'ocean ; le long de la cote, des batteries rasantes, des tours a meurtrieres, de distance en distance ; sur toute la plage basse, un parapet massif, coupe de creneaux et d'escaliers, que la sable envahit, et qu'attaque le flot, unique assiegeant a craindre; des moulins demates par les tempetes; quelques-uns, au Valle, a la Ville-au Roi, a Saint- Pierre- Port, a Torteval, tournant encore; dans la falaise, des ancrages; dans les dunes, des troupeaux; le chien du berger et le chien du toucheur de bceufs en quete et en travail; les petites charrettes des marchands de la ville galopant dans les chemins creux; souvent des maisons noires, goudron- nees a Pouest a cause des pluies; coqs, poules, fumiers; partout des murs cyclopeens; ceux de 1'ancien havre, malheureusement detruits, etaient admirable avec leurs blocs informes, leurs poteaux puissants et leurs lourdes chaines; des fermes a encadrements de futaies; les champs mures a hauteur d'appui avec des cordons de pierre seche dessinant sur les plaines un bizarre e"chiquier; ca et la, un rempart autour d'un chardon, des chaumieres en granit, des huttes casemates, des cabanes a defier le boulet; parfois, dans le lieu le plus sauvage, un petit batiment neuf, surmonte d'une cloche, qui est une ecole ; deux ou trois ruisseaux dans des fonds de pres ; ormes et cheries ; un lys fait expres, qui n'est que la, Guern- sey lily; dans la saison des "grand labours," des charrues a huit chevaux; devant les maisons, des larges meules de foin portees sur un cercle de bornes de pierre ; des tas d'ajoncs dpineux; parfois des jardins de 1'ancien style francais, a ifs tailles, a buixs fagonnes, a vases rocailles, melds aux vergers et aux potagers; des fleurs d'amateurs dans des enclos de paysans; des rhodo- dendrons parmi les pommes de terre; partout sur 1'herbe des etalages de vareche, couleur oreille-d'ours ; dans les cimitieres, pas de croix, des larmes de pierre imitant au clair de lune des 262 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Dames blanches debout; dix clochers gothiques sur 1'horizon; vieilles eglises, dogmes neufs; le rite protestant loge dans 1'archi- tecture catholique; dans les sables et sur les caps, la sombre enigme celtique eparse sous ses formes diverses, menhirs, peulvens, longues pierres, pierres des fees, pierres branlantes, pierres son- nantes, galeries, cromlechs, dolmens, pouquelaies ; toutes sortes de traces; apres les druides, les abbes; apres les abbes, les recteurs; des souvenirs de chutes du ciel ; a une pointe Lucifer, au chateau de Michel- Archange ; a 1'autre pointe Icare, au cap Dicart; presque autant 1'hiver que 1'ete; voila Guernsey. VICTOR HUGO : Les Travailleurs de la Mer. DESCRIPTION OF AN INTERIOR The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House of the Seven Gables, which many such sunrises as it had witnessed looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the stairs. It was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, paneled with dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but so worn and faded, in these latter years, that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centi- pede; the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person, that they were irksome even to the sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been DESCRIPTION 263 adapted. One exception there was, however, in a very antique elbow chair, with a high back, carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by its spacious com- prehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair. HAWTHORNE: House of Seven Gables. DESCRIPTION OF PERSON FROM DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW In front of them, over beyond the hedge, the dusty road stretched away across the plain ; behind them the meadow lands and bright green fields of tender young corn lay broadly in the sun, and over- head spread the shade of the cool, rustling leaves of the beechen tree. Pleasantly to their nostrils came the tender fragrance of the purple violets and wild thyme that grew within the dewy moisture of the edge of the little fountain, and pleasantly came the soft gurgle of the water; all else was sunny silence, broken only now and then by the crow of a distant cock, borne up to them on the wings of the soft and gentle breeze, or the drowsy drone of the humble-bee burrowing in the clover blossoms that grew in the sun, or the voice of the busy housewife in the nearest farmhouse. All was so pleasant and so full of the gentle joy of the bright May- time, that for a long time neither of the three cared to speak, but each lay on his back, gazing up through the trembling leaves of the trees to the bright sky overhead. At last, Robin, whose thoughts were not quite so busy wool-gathering as those of the others, and who had been gazing around him now and then, broke the silence. "Heyday!" quoth he, "yon is a gayly-feathered bird, I take my vow." The others looked and saw a young man walking slowly down the highway. Gay was he, indeed, as Robin had said, and a fine figure he cut, for his doublet was of scarlet silk and his stockings also ; a handsome sword hung by his side, the embossed leathern scabbard being picked out with fine threads of gold ; his cap was of scarlet velvet, and a broad feather hung down behind and back of one ear. His hair was long and yellow and curled upon his shoulders, and in his hand he bore an early rose, which he smelt at daintily now and then. 264 ENGLISH COMPOSITION "By my life!" quoth Robin Hood, laughing, "saw ye e'er such a pretty mincing fellow?" "Truly, his clothes have overmuch prettiness for my taste," quoth Arthur a Bland; "but, ne'ertheless, his shoulders are broad and his loins are narrow; and seest thou, good master, how that his arms hang from his body ? They dangle not down like spindles, but hang stiff, and bend at the elbow. I take my vow, there be no bread and milk limbs in those fine clothes, but stiff joints and tough thews." "Methinks thou art right, friend Arthur," said Little John. " I do verily think that yon is no such rose-leaf and whipped-cream gallant as he would have one take him to be." " Pah ! " quoth Robin Hood, " the sight of such a fellow doth put a nasty taste into my mouth ! Look how he doth hold that fair flower betwixt his thumb and finger, as he would say, ' Good rose, I like thee not so ill but I can bear thy odor for a little while.' I take it ye are both wrong, and verily believe that were a furious mouse to run across his path, he would cry, 'La!' or 'Alack-a- day ! ' and fall straightway into a swoon. I wonder who he may be. " HOWARD PYLE: Robin Hood. SKETCHES OF CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one hand hangs carelessly by his side ; in the other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of music. His only garment a lion's skin, with the claws upon his shoulder falls halfway down his back, leaving the limbs and the entire front of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, is marvellously graceful, but has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle, than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their types of mas- culine beauty. The character of the face corresponds with the figure; it is most agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, especially about the throat and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly curves in- ward, thereby acquiring an indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, that it calls forth a responsive smile. The DESCRIPTION 265 whole statue unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that severe material of marble conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to gaze long at this stone image without conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its substance were warm to the touch, and imbued with actual life. It comes very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies. HAWTHORNE : The Marble Faun. Short descriptive passages from Sir Walter Scott's Guy Man- nering : On one of these occasions he (Dominie Abel Sampson) presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, with a colored hand- kerchief, not over-clean, about his sinewy, scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in gray breeches, dark-blue stockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles. Her (Meg Merrilies') appearance made Mannering start. She was full six feet high, wore a man's greatcoat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly sloethorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks shot out like the snakes of the Gorgon between an old-fashioned bonnet called a bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had a wild roll that indicated something like real or affected insanity. The first object which caught his eye in the kitchen was a tall, stout, country-looking man, in a large jockey greatcoat, the owner of the horse which stood in the shed, who was busy dis- cussing huge slices of cold boiled beef, and casting from time to time an eye through the window, to see how his steed sped with his provender. A large tankard of ale flanked his plate of victuals, to which he applied himself by intervals. Mr. Pleydell was a lively, sharp-looking gentleman, with a professional shrewdness in his eye, and, generally speaking, a pro- 266 ENGLISH COMPOSITION fessional formality in his manners. But this, like his three-tailed wig and black coat, he could slip off on a Saturday evening, when surrounded by a party of jolly companions, and disposed for what he called his altitudes. . . . On the present occasion, the revel had lasted since four o'clock, and at length, under the direction of a venerable compotator, who had shared the sports and festivities of three generations, the frolicsome company had begun to practice the ancient and now forgotten pastime of High Jinks. ... At this sport the jovial company were closely engaged, when Man- nering entered the room. Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, such as we have described him, was enthroned, as a monarch, in an elbow chair, placed on the dining table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle- slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse as these : Where is Gerunto now, and what's become of him ? Gerunto's drowned because he could not swim, etc. etc. She was the tallest woman I ever saw, and her hair was as black as midnight, unless where it was gray, and she had a scar abune the brow, that ye might hae laid the lith of your finger in. MADAME VAUQUER Bientot la veuve se montre, attifee de son bonnet de tulle sous lequel pend un tour de faux cheveux mal mis; elle marche en trainassant ses pantoufles grimacees. Sa face vieillotte, gras- souillette, du milieu de laquelle sort un nez a bee de perroquet; ses petites mains potelees, sa personne dodue comme un rat d'eglise, son corsage trop plein et qui flotte, sont en harmonic avec cette salle ou suinte le malheur, ou s'est blottie la speculation, et dont madame Vauquer respire 1'air chaudement fetide sans en etre ecoeuree. Sa figure fraiche comme une premiere gelee d'au- tomne, ses yeux rides dont Pexpression passe du sourire present aux danseuses a 1'amer renfrognement de Pescompteur, enfin toute sa personne explique la pension, comme la pension implique sa personne. Le bagne ne va pas sans 1'argousin, vous n'ima- gineriez pas 1'un sans 1'autre. L'embonpoint blafard de cette DESCRIPTION 267 femme est le produit de cette vie, comme le typhus est la con- sequence des exhalaisons d'un hopital. Son jupon de lain tri- cotee, qui depasse sa premiere jupe faite avec une vieille robe, et dont la ouate s'echappe par les fentes de Petoffe lezardee, resume le salon, le salle a manger, le jardinet, annonce la cuisine et fait pressentir les pensionnaires. Quand elle est la, le spectacle est complet. Agee d'environ cinquante ans, madame Vauquer res- semble a toutes les femmes qui ont eu des malheurs. Elle a 1'ceuil vitreux, Pair innocent d'une entremetteuse qui va se gendarmer pour se faire payer plus cher, mais d'ailleurs prete a tout pour adoucir son sort, a livrer Georges ou Pichegru, si Georges ou Pichegru etaient encore a livrer. Neanmoins, elle est bonne femme au fond, disent les pensionnaires, qui la croient sans fortune en 1'entendant geindre et tousser comme eux. . . . H. DE BALZAC: Le Plre Goriot. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was waning. There was a difference in the look of the tree shadows out in the yard. Somewhere in the distance cows were lowing and a little bell was tinkling ; now and then a farm-wagon tilted by, and the dust flew ; some blue-shirted laborers with shovels over their shoulders plodded past; little swarms of flies were dancing up and down before the people's faces in the soft air. There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything for the mere sake of subsidence a very premonition of rest and hush and night. This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also. She had been peacefully sewing at her sitting-room window all the afternoon. Now she quilted her needle carefully into her work, which she folded precisely, and laid in a basket with her thimble and thread and scissors. Louisa Ellis could not remember that ever in her life she had mislaid one of these little feminine appur- tenances, which had become, from long use and constant associa- tion, a very part of her personality. Louisa tied a green apron around her waist, and got out a flat straw hat with a green ribbon. Then she went into the garden with a little blue crockery bowl, to pick some currants for her tea. After the currants were picked she sat on the back door-step and stemmed them, collecting the stems carefully in her apron, and 2 68 ENGLISH COMPOSITION afterwards throwing them into the hencoop. She looked sharply at the grass beside the step to see if any had fallen there. Louisa was slow and still in her movements ; it took her a long time to prepare her tea; but when ready, it was set forth with as much grace as if she had been a veritable guest to her own self. The little square table stood exactly in the center of the kitchen, and was covered with a starched linen cloth whose border pattern of flowers glistened. Louisa had a damask napkin on her tea- tray, where were arranged a cut-glass tumbler full of teaspoons, a silver cream-pitcher, a china sugar-bowl, and one pink china cup and saucer. Louisa used china every day something which none of her neighbors did. They whispered about it among themselves. Their daily tables were laid with common crockery, their sets of best china stayed in the parlor closet, and Louisa Ellis was no richer nor better bred than they. Still she would use the china. She had for her supper a glass dish full of sugared currants, a plate of little cakes, and one of light white biscuits. Also a leaf or two of lettuce, which she cut up daintily. Louisa was very fond of lettuce, which she raised to perfection in her little garden. She ate quite heartily, though in a delicate, pecking way ; it seemed almost surprising that any considerable bulk of the food should vanish. MRS. WILKINS-FREEMAN : A New England Nun. This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold. Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting place, but lent themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the dark leather mouths ! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work were always partly DESCRIPTION 269 paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them ; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work of his loom, as if they had been un- born children thought of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand. GEORGE ELIOT: Silas Marner. Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as easy to him as a bad habit : they were the common issue of his weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that sad fact, he took his favorite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits. If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. GEORGE ELIOT: Adam Bede. Hetty in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston 2 7 ENGLISH COMPOSITION road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine, and think with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is shining, and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to be out of the highroad, that she may walk slowly, and not care how her face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts ; and through this gate she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave, tender man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway branches off: there are two roads before her one along by the hedgerow, w r hich will by-and-by lead her into the road again; the other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses this, and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradu- ally downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round her knees and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if try- ing to guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs. No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she had, they might find her they might find out why she had drowned herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where they can't find her. GEORGE ELIOT : Adam Bede. DESCRIPTION 271 It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already passed, that Mr. Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if no such suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull eyes, and sallow face, would still have been strong witnesses against him. His attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest arrangement, but was in a state of disorder which strongly induced the idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted of a brown body-coat with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind, a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with an outside pocket from which there peeped forth the cleanest end of a very large and very ill-favored handkerchief ; his dirty wristbands were pulled down as far as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs ; he displayed no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a ring on its little finger and a black ball in its grasp. With all these personal ad- vantages (to which may be added a strong savor of tobacco smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appearance) Mr. Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the company with a few bars of an intensely dismal air, and then, in the middle of a note, relapsed into his former silence. DICKENS: Old Curiosity Shop. PART IV NARRATIVE CHAPTER XI SIMPLE NARRATIVE LIFE is made up, in some measure at least, of events. In order to explain the nature or the cause of these events, or to account for circumstances which arise from them, exposition is necessary. But to tell them requires narrative. Exposition explains; Nar- rative tells what happens. Pizarro, balked in his attempt to discover a rich kingdom in the South, gained the support which hitherto he had lacked, by one bold and desperate act, an act which convinced the doubters of his courage and determination. Drawing his sword, he traced a line with it on the sand from east to west. Then turning towards the south, 'Friends and comrades!' he said, 'on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death ; on this side, ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.' So saying, he stepped across the line. The sentence beginning with the word "Pizarro" is exposition, for it explains. The next six sentences are narrative, for they tell in sequence the actual events. If the difference between the two modes is not made clear by this instance, compare the editorial page of a morning paper with the news column on the day after a game, a strike, or an election. Upon the former one finds comment which deals with the how, the why, the wherefore, and all else which should or can be explained. In the latter is the narrative of what happened. Narrative is an account of events, and good narrative is, first of all, an account made up of the right events. Life is a driving SIMPLE NARRATIVE . 273 whirl of happenings, important, unimportant; significant, trivial. To tell about all of the happenings of a day or an hour is virtually impossible. Which are to be chosen, which discarded, in making narrative? The problem troubled us as children when we ram- bled helplessly in our attempt to tell what happened in our first day at school. We have overcome such elementary difficulties and now tell a plain tale with some clearness because we instinctively omit those events which do not bear upon the action which we would recount. Yet, even in maturity, some unfortunate in- dividuals cannot narrate. Juliet's nurse could not get her story straight because she would include the bump on Juliet's forehead. Dogberry could not tell the tale of Don John's intrigue because of his inability to pick out the significant in what he saw. Read Act V, scene i, of Much Ado about Nothing and see how Borachio, by proper inclusions and exclusions, makes his narrative of the same intrigue both clear and brief. Dogberry and the Nurse are exceptional, naturally; yet the man who in journalism, on the witness stand, or in a theme, tries to reproduce, in words and under pressure, a reasonably complicated action may learn to sympathize with their difficulties. His lifelong practice in everyday narration will save him, perhaps, from absurdity, yet, consciously or uncon- sciously, he must choose the right items of incident for inclusion in his narrative or he will never be able to give a thoroughly satis- factory account. Suppose this hypothetical person to be a "cub reporter" trying to "write up" a brief account of a street fight. He saw it all. How much and what shall he put in? Here are his first two attempts : There was a fight upon Main Street at twelve o'clock to-day which promised, for a while, to be serious. A brick thrown in the scuffle went through the window of the new grocery store and broke a dozen bottles of olives. The offenders were not caught. They are said to have been strangers. A party of strangers whose names could not be learned commenced to fight among themselves on Main Street at about twelve o'clock this morning. Fists were used freely, and bricks, one of which broke a window in the new grocery. It is said that one man was so seriously injured as to be able to walk only with the assistance of a friend. I 274 EXGL1SH COMPOSITION A crowd was attracted by the sound of cursing and blows, but the offenders patched up their differences, and escaped towards the station before they could be arrested. The first of these is rather bad, the second rather good. What makes the difference? Merely this: that in the second version the reporter chose more skillfully among the many things which he witnessed, and the many more that were recounted by other by- standers. He dropped the smashed olive bottles as unessential, and added the injury, the reconciliation, and the direction of flight as more relevant. Select the incidents u'hicJi advance and make clear the action is the first rule for the narrator. Observance of this rule will result in a prime virtue of good narrative, a steady movement. A narrative must always move; good narrative nearly always moves rapidly. The selection of the incident which really advances the action is like putting your muscle into that part of the stroke where the oar takes hold of the water most effectively. The latter sends the boat ahead, the former the narrative. The selection which follows is a striking example of celerity gained by a scrupulous exclusion of all but the in- dispensable moments of the episode. It is from Fenelon, and re- counts the death of Baccharis, king of Egypt : " Je le vis perir; le dard d'un Phenicien perc,a sa poitrine; les renes lui echapperent des mains; il tomba de son char sous les pieds des chevaux. Un soldat lui coupa la tete, et, la prenant par les cheveux, il la montra comme en triomphe a toute 1'armee." No digressions, not too many episodes, no tedious passages, but vigor, restraint, rapidity, these are the qualities of good narrative. This is the advice which Albalat, the French rhetorician, gives to the French writer, and it is equally valuable for the writer in English. But the narrator must usually do more than tell clearly and truthfully what happened. His purpose is broader. He desires to be not only accurate but convincing. If he is a journalist, he must make his report read true ; if he is a novelist, he must make his story read as if it had really happened. If he is only a letter writer engaged in ordinary correspondence, he will wish to give an air of reality to the experiences which he recounts. Journalists and writers of fiction in particular, but also every one SIMPLE NARRATIVE 275 with something to tell, must therefore do more than decide what incidents most advance and make clear the narrative. They must also decide what selection of incidents will make it most real to the reader for whom it is written. Now these two requirements go hand in hand, for the drop-kick which won the game does no more to advance the action of the narrative in which it is included than it serves to make the narrative real to the reader. But there were other incidents at that football game which were not part of the main action, which did not bear upon the game, which were by no means significant for the final result. And yet they were so inseparably connected with the chief happenings of the day, they found a place in so many memories, that not to tell of them would be to strike out some of the most familiar features of the moving picture you are constructing for your readers. There was the dog who wandered upon the field and was distracted by ten thou- sand whistles; there was the balloon that sailed over the grand stands; there were the innumerable yellow flames of matches against the dark backgrounds of the stands in the growing dusk. You must get all these in if you wish to make your story read as if it were true. In life, such accidental circumstances always accompany the main action, and some of them must always ac- company it in narrative. If our hypothetical "cub reporter" of the previous paragraph had written a third version of his report of the street fight, he might have reinstated the destruction of the olive bottles, not because the incident was important, but because it gave a little homely realism to his story. Here, for example, is a skeleton outline of The Morning Bugle's account of a fire : 1. The Smith block 'burned. 2. First discovery of fire. 3. Arrival of engines. 4. Rapid spread of fire. 5. Bursting of show windows by heat.* 6. The work of the various fire companies. 7. Crowd assembles.* 8. The bursting of a hose.* 9. Firemen have conflict with students.* 10. Roof falls in. 276 ENGLISH COMPOSITION 11. Walls sway. 12. Crowd pushed back.* 13. Fire under control. 14. Pickpocket at work in the crowd.* Of these, the items followed by an asterisk are not part of the main action of the fire, but they would play a very important part in making the narrative realistic and vivid. Indeed, at a very large fire an important newspaper would assign two reporters to the task of "writing up" the catastrophe, one to tell an unvarnished tale recounting the facts of the case in the simplest and most literal manner, the other to provide a narrative for those who were more interested in the exciting picture which the news column presented to their imaginations than in the precise amount of the damages, or the number of minutes required to check the fire. And so in all forms of narrative which are intended to convey an impression of truthfulness the circumstances accompanying actual life must be included. In certain kinds of journalism, indeed, these circumstances become more important than the action which they accompany. Such journalism is exaggerated, of course, yet by this very exaggeration it illustrates admirably the various devices which can accomplish the writer's purpose. You will be able to choose your own example upon the day following any event suffi- ciently important to be fully reported in the metropolitan news- papers. A characteristic example follows this section. A more classic and less easily accessible specimen is also reprinted in the following pages. The Apparition of Mrs. Veal is by Daniel Defoe. Defoe was author of Robinson Crusoe, a book which owes its enduring popularity to the intense reality of the strange adventures which it contains. The Apparition of Mrs. Veal has the same merits. It was undoubtedly fabricated from beginning to end; yet the supporting circumstances, the painstaking in- clusion of probable details, the informality of the narrative, every- thing down to the striking of the clock helps to make the impossible seem probable and real. So far the writing of narrative has been discussed only in relation to certain special problems which arise when events are to be told of, not explained. But it is not to be forgotten that the laws which govern good expression the laws of Unity, Coherence, and Em- SIMPLE NARRATIVE 277 phasis apply here as in exposition. The narrator must keep in view the aim of his narrative, otherwise he will not select the proper events, and to keep this aim in view is to strive for unity. He must make his development either strictly chronological, or, if he departs from the chronological, he must make the relation between his events thoroughly comprehensible, and so assure coherence. He must arrange and proportion his account so that what is most im- portant shall be given the space and the emphatic position which is its due. But the necessity for good Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis will appear even more clearly in the next section, which will treat of the specialized variety of narrative called " the story." AND THE CROWD CHEERED HEARTILY FOR NEW YORK; IRONICALLY FOR CHICAGO A Rip-snorting Tearing Time, Breaking Fences and Frantically Trying to Get Places Where They Had No Right to Be About Some Who Were There. The biggest day that baseball ever saw, even if the Giants did lose the game and the pennant that's the fact about what happened yesterday afternoon at the Polo Grounds. Everybody asks everybody else as everybody files out at the big gates after it was all over if anybody ever knew the like before two teams tied for the pennant at the end of a 154 game series. And every- body promptly answers that he'll be darned if he ever did and he'll be darned again if ever anybody else did. Nobody else ever did either, so nobody need be darned. It's half past two o'clock and less than 30,000 wildly excited human beings inside are waiting for the game to begin. There would be twice that number if the Polo Grounds were twice as large. There would be even 40,000 people inside the grounds as it is if the management hadn't shut the gates, in accordance with the rules, against the throng at half past one a full hour and a half before the game begins. But all the folks that see the game aren't inside the gates. By no means. Take a look around and see where they are climbing, perching, scrambling, balancing, hanging on with their toes and their eyelids. 278 ENGLISH COMPOSITION OH, SEE THE PEOPLE There are thousands of them on Coogan's Bluff. The viaduct is black with them. They are roosting on the grand stand roof. The third rail cannot keep them off the elevated railroad structure. One man has climbed to the top of a huge derrick that overlooks the left field fence. They swarm around the edges of the field anywhere from three to ten deep. There are 10,000 present three hours before the time set for the game and for at least an hour and a half fully 30,000 sit in their seats waiting with what patience they can summon. Outside the gates things are in a mess. There's a mob of some- where near 15,000 persons hammering at the gates and they won't be let in. They know that, too, but that doesn't stop them from hammering. A good many of them have tickets, but that makes no difference. Nice time to show up half past two o'clock on such a day, when the game begins at three. Ought to have come at noon like the rest of us ! So the mob that is shut out filters gradually around the inclosure until the Polo Grounds are ringed about with the disappointed. Somebody finds a loose board on the fence that divides the Polo Grounds from Manhattan Field. In an instant fifty hands are tearing at it. In another moment six boards are wrenched off. The rush that follows is almost a stampede. Squads of cops rush up, but before they can stop the breach several hundred have scampered through it and are in the promised land, leaping through the barbed wire with a sublime disregard for the consequences to their clothes. Lots of folks have friends on the outside trying to get in, but you can't go out to help them. If you do, you know you can't get back. A fat man comes into the right field bleachers carrying a baby who may yet grow up to be a great pitcher like Matty. He is cheered frantically and he grabs the kid with one hand and waves at the crowd with the other. Pretty girls are cheered, homely girls are cheered, fat men, thin men, tall men, short men, the girl with a hat as big as three of Fred Tenney's mitts anything and everything for a cheer. Up on the elevated tracks a hundred or so men have scrambled to the roof of an empty train. They're splendid seats from which SIMPLE NARRATIVE 279 to view the game, and their possessors are widely envied. Suddenly the train begins to move; it moves more and more rapidly, and amid a vast roar of laughter the folks on the car roofs are borne away and out of sight. TAKING OFF THE SHEETS Now a couple of the players reserved from the minor leagues appear from the clubhouse and begin to throw the ball around the diamond that has only recently been uncovered. Uncovered from what? Why, from the huge canvas sheets that have been spread on it all night. They put the diamond to bed early the night before so that it would get a good night's rest for the game of all games. Smiling Larry Doyle, who was the Giants' regular second baseman until he hurt his leg a month ago, is the first of the regulars to show up. He gets many cheers. Nobody thinks it necessary to explain that Larry's only chance to get into the game is as a hitter in a tight pinch. Everybody knows it. It's ele- mentary information. And then out from the clubhouse emerges a melancholy figure. Shall we say that it is the figure of the man who lost the pennant ? Well, anyhow, it's the figure of Fred Merkle, and everybody knows that if he'd run to second when Bridwell made that safe hit at the end of the now famous disputed game with the Cubs a couple of weeks ago the pennant would now be waving from that flagstaff out there in center field. Instead of which here we are about to fight as best we may for that same game again. Amid a silence that cuts Merkle crosses the field and begins to toss a ball about. It's clear that he feels worse than anybody else about it. Nobody has the heart to jeer him. But all the same NO CHEERS FOR MERKLE Wiltse, the southpaw, the port wheeler (this means that he pitches with his left arm), is the next to appear, along with Ames, his fel- low twirler. They got cheered too. Cheers for everybody and everything save the melancholy Merkle up to date, that is ; but it's different a moment later when Artie Hofman, the Cubs' 2 8o ENGLISH COMPOSITION center fielder, appears. He comes from Chicago. Therefore his name is anathema, mud, Dennis. Consequently jeers, boos, and hisses for Mr. Hofman. Also cries of " Oh, you robber!" Pleasant greetings to Mr. Hofman are interrupted by a new diversion. Several thousand persons are suddenly released from durance and allowed to scamper to standing room behind the ropes all about the field. It looks like the serpentine dance after a victory for the Blue on Yale Field. A moment ago the field was green; now it's black. There aren't enough real cops to boss a real lively Sunday school class, and how the deuce things are ever going to be straight- ened doesn't appear, unless you've been there before and know that when the umpire is ready for play, the field will clear itself like magic. Everybody begins to get happily restless, and one fan says to another, "Boy, you'll be able to tell your grandchildren about this day when the Cubs or " Fearful of the out- come, he rubs his chin doubtfully and doesn't finish his observation. Reports come in that the mob outside is storming the gates with intent to break them down. Muffled thumps are heard on the back of the grand stand, and it wouldn't surprise anybody if the place were carried by assault. But the mounted cops in the street hold the mob in check and nothing serious happens. Nothing serious, is it? Why, aren't there 15,000 human beings right out there unable to see the game, and you say "nothing serious"? How'd you like to be out there yourself? GREETINGS TO CHANCE "Robber!" "Bandit!" "Quitter!" howls the crowd all at once. The row begins out in the right field bleachers and runs all over the field as Frank Chance appears from the clubhouse, loafing carelessly along on his bowed legs and looking as if he hadn't a care in the world. Roars, hoots, hisses, jeers are showered upon him as he advances, but he smiles pleasantly as if the freedom of the city had been conferred upon him. Just behind him comes three-fingered Brown, the star pitcher who is going to play hob with us before the day is over. He is also called a number of things which he isn't. He doesn't seem to mind either. > SIMPLE NARRATIVE 2 gl ATTENTIONS TO THE VISITORS The New Yorks take their batting practice methodically, one hit to each man. Then the Cubs go in for theirs. More roars, more hisses, more catcalls, howls of contempt, shrieks of "Oh, you robbers ! You brigands ! " And you think if you were a Cub, you'd hunt the nearest cyclone cellar. But the Cubs wallop the horsehide as cheerfully as if the stands were empty. Mean- while the jeers keep on. Somebody in the stand catches a foul tip from a Cub's bat. A hundred voices shout : " Keep it ! Keep it ! Don't give it back ! Murphy (that's the Chicago baseball magnate) will cry his eyes out if you keep it." The Cubs retire and the Giants begin to practice. They are lightning fast. The infielders don't throw the ball. They just 'seem to reflect it, they are so fast. It fairly spurts from their hands. Time and again Devlin, Bridwell, Herzog, and Tenney set the stands in a roar by their speed and accuracy. How can they beat 'em ? is what everybody asks. And nobody can see how they can. Later they find out. The Cubs, on the other hand, warm up badly. Great is the joy thereat. Chance is jeered at joyously by 10,000 throats as he goes to his place at first. An instant later he fumbles a grounder. Delirious glee ! Tinker fumbles too. Stupendous joy! Meantime the twirlers are warming up Pfeister, the left hander, for the Cubs, and the only Matty for the Giants. This doesn't take long and at a quarter of three o'clock the real trouble begins. It is time. WHEN CHANCE WAS STUNG There certainly was an outpouring of mirth when Chance, after hitting safely, is caught off first by a lightning throw by Mathew- son. You'd have thought that was the precise play that 30,000 persons had come to see. It wouldn't have been nearly so much fun if it had been anybody else in the world. But Chance! well, it is almost more joy than the crowd can stand. Chance 282 ENGLISH COMPOSITION is not well pleased. He calls on heaven to witness that he is safe. He pleads with Umpire Klem. He throws his cap into the dust and stamps upon it. Various Cubs assist in the oratory. Artie Hofman is the chief speaker. He gets so eloquent that he draws tears to the eyes of his captain. But Umpire Klem is a callous soul. He cares so little about Artie's eloquence that he tells him to get oft" the field. Artie retires, but first he throws his glove into the field. Then he goes to get it again and on the way he stops and tells Herzog and Seymour certain things. There's a rumor that his remarks have to do with the professional ca- pacity of Umpire Klem. Then comes the third inning. Birds hush their joyous hymns to their maker, sun is obscured, nature veils her smile. Sounds of glee are wanting, and the only noise heard is that made by the resounding whacks of Chicago wagon tongues as they land on Matty's curves. Sounds to most of us like clods falling on a coffin. When it's over, the Cubs have four runs. As for that vast crowd, it's as quiet as the little throng that hangs around the door of the country church of a Sunday morning waiting for the parson to pass in. But there are diversions after that. You can always keep on roasting the visitors, and Kling, being nearest the grand stand, is the chief target. Once when he goes after a foul tip, somebody throws a bottle at him. Another man throws a hat, but these outbreaks are roundly hissed. "Be a sport, be a sport," remonstrate those nearest the male- factors. "Forget it," replies one of the evildoers. "What chanst would d'Noo Yorks git if it was in Chicago?" " You're a bum, Johnny Kling ! " howls another enthusiast, but somebody shuts him up with: "Wisht we had a couple of them bums on our team." "Come on now, boys, with the rebel yell!" shouts a front-row fan when the Giants come in for their seventh inning, and there really is something doing and we score once. Smiling Larry Doyle gets his chance as a pinch hitter here too, but it's too tight a pinch for him and out he goes on a pop fly. So the one run is all there is to it. SIMPLE NARRATIVE 283 Gloom descends once more. People begin to get quarrelsome. They would just love a disputed decision to fight about. There being none, some of them fight anyhow. There's a beautiful row over in the right field bleachers, but a fat cop climbs the rail and nips it in the bud. Meanwhile nobody can hit three-fingered Brown. With three feeble attempts to do so the last hope expires. The Cubs, now champions, gallop joyfully from the field. That one sad third inning did it all. The Sun, New York. A TRUE RELATION OF THE APPARITION OF ONE MRS. VEAL THE NEXT DAY AFTER HER DEATH TO ONE MRS. BARGRAVE AT CANTERBURY, THE STH OF SEPTEMBER 1705 285 THE PREFACE THIS relation is matter of fact, and attended with such cir- cumstances as may induce any reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a justice of peace at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London, as it is here worded; which discourse is attested by a very sober and understanding gentlewoman and kinswoman of the said gentleman's, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit as not to be put upon by any fallacy, and who positively assured him that the whole matter as it is here related and laid down is what is really true, and what she herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth, who, she knows, had no reason to invent and publish such a story, nor any design to forge and tell a lie, being a woman of much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of piety. The use which we ought to make of it is to consider that there is a life to come after this, and a just God who will retribute to every one according to the deeds done in the body, and therefore to reflect upon our past course of life we have led in the world; that our time is short and uncertain ; and that if we would escape the punishment of the ungodly and receive the reward of the righteous, which is the laying hold of eternal life, we ought, for the time to come, to return to God by a speedy repentance, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well, to seek after God early, if haply He may be found of us, and lead such lives for the future as may be well pleasing in His sight. 287 A RELATION OF THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL DANIEL DEFOE THIS thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and on so good authority, that my reading and conversation has not given me any- thing like it. It is fit to gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer. Mrs. Bargrave is the person to whom Mrs. Veal ap- peared after her death ; she is my intimate friend, and I can avouch for her reputation for these last fifteen or sixteen years, on my own knowledge; and I can confirm the good character she had from her youth to the time of my acquaintance; though since this re- lation she is calumniated by some people that are friends to the brother of Mrs. Veal who appeared, who think the relation of this appearance to be a reflection, and endeavour what they can to blast Mrs. Bargrave's reputation, and to laugh the story out of countenance. But by the circumstances thereof, and the cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstanding the unheard-of ill-usage of a very wicked husband, there is not the least sign of dejection in her face; nor did I ever hear her let fall a desponding or murmuring expression ; nay, not when actually under her hus- band's barbarity, which I have been witness to, and several other persons of undoubted reputation. Now you must know Mrs. Veal was a maiden gentlewoman of about thirty years of age, and for some years last past had been troubled with fits, which were perceived coming on her by her going off from her discourse very abruptly to some impertinence* She was maintained by an only brother, and kept his house in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and her brother a very sober man, to all appearance; but now he does all he can to null or quash the story. Mrs. Veal was intimately acquainted with Mrs. Bargrave from her childhood. Mrs. Veal's circumstances were then mean ; her father did not take care of his children as he ought, so that they were exposed to hardships; and Mrs. Bargrave in u 289 290 ENGLISH COMPOSITION those days had as unkind a father, though she wanted neither for food nor clothing, while Mrs. Veal wanted for both ; so that it was in the power of Mrs. Bargrave to be very much her friend in several instances, which mightily endeared Mrs. Veal; insomuch that she would often say, " Mrs. Bargrave, you are not only the best, but the only friend I have in the world; and no circumstance in life shall ever dissolve my friendship." They would often con- dole each other's adverse fortune, and read together Drelincourt upon Death, and other good books; and so, like two Christian friends, they comforted each other under their sorrow. Some time after, Mr. Veal's friends got him a place in the Custom House at Dover, which occasioned Mrs. Veal, by little and little, to fall off from her intimacy with Mrs. Bargrave, though there was never any such thing as a quarrel; but an indifferency came on by degrees, till at last Mrs. Bargrave had not seen her in two years and a half; though above a twelvemonth of the time Mrs. Bargrave had been absent from Dover, and this last half- year had been in Canterbury about two months of the time, dwell- ing in a house of her own. In this house, on the 8th of September last, viz. 1705, she was sit- ting alone, in the forenoon, thinking over her unfortunate life, and arguing herself into a due resignation to Providence, though her condition seemed hard. "And," she said, "I have been provided for hitherto, and doubt not but I shall be still ; and am well satis- fied that my afflictions shall end when it is most fit for me;" and then took up her sewing-work which she had -no sooner done but she hears a knocking at the door. She went to see who it was there, and this proved to be Mrs. Veal, her old friend, who was in a riding-habit: at that moment of time the clock struck twelve at noon. j "Madam," says Mrs. Bargrave, "I am surprised to see you, you have been so long a stranger;" but told her she was glad to see her, and offered to salute her, which Mrs. Veal complied with, till their lips almost touched; and then Mrs. Veal drew her hand across her own eyes and said, " I am not very well," and so waived it. She told Mrs. Bargrave she was going a journey, and had a great mind to see her first. "But," says Mrs. Bargrave, "how came you to take a journey alone ? I am amazed at it, because I SIMPLE NARRATIVE 2 9 l know you have so fond a brother." " Oh," says Mrs. Veal, " I gave my brother the slip, and came away, because I had so great a desire to see you before I took my journey." So Mrs. Bargrave went in with her into another room within the first, and Mrs. Veal set her down in an elbow-chair, in which Mrs. Bargrave was sitting when she heard Mrs. Veal knock. Then says Mrs. Veal, "My dear friend, I am come to renew our old friendship again, and beg your pardon for my breach of it ; and if you can forgive me, you are one of the best of women." " Oh," says Mrs. Bargrave, "don't mention such a thing; I have not had an uneasy thought about it; I can easily forgive it." " What did you think of me?" said Mrs. Veal. Says Mrs. Bargrave, " I thought you were like the rest of the world, and that prosperity had made you forget yourself and me." Then Mrs. Veal reminded Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly offices she did in her former days, and much of the conversation they had with each other in the time of their adversity; what books they read, and what comfort in particular they received from Drelincourt's Book of Death, which was the best, she said, on that subject ever wrote. She also mentioned Dr. Sherlock, and two Dutch books which were translated, wrote upon death, and several others ; but Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and of the future state of any who had handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs. Bargrave whether she had Drelincourt. She said, "Yes." Says Mrs. Veal, "Fetch it." And so Mrs. Bargrave goes upstairs and brings it down. Says Mrs. Veal, "Dear Mrs. Bargrave, if the eyes of our faith were as open as the eyes of our body, we should see numbers of angels about us for our guard. The notions we have of heaven now are nothing like what it is, as Drelincourt says. Therefore be com- forted under your afflictions, and believe that the Almighty has a particular regard to you, and that your afflictions are marks of God's favour; and when they have done the business they are sent for, they shall be removed from you. And believe me, my dear friend, believe what I say to you, one minute of future happiness will infinitely reward you for all your sufferings ; for I can never believe" (and claps her hand upon her knee with great earnestness, which indeed ran through most of her discourse) " that ever God will suffer you to spend all your days in this afflicted state ; but be 292 ENGLISH COMPOSITION assured that your afflictions shall leave you, or you them, in a short time." She spake in that pathetical and heavenly manner, that Mrs. Bargrave wept several times, she was so deeply affected with it. Then Mrs. Veal mentioned Dr. Horneck's Ascetick, at the end of which he gives an account of the lives of the primitive Christians. Their pattern she recommended to our imitation, and said their conversation was not like this of our age; "for now," says she, " there is nothing but frothy, vain discourse, which is far different from theirs. Theirs was to edification, and to build one another up in faith ; so that they were not as we are, nor are we as they were; but," said she, "we might do as they did. There was a hearty friendship among them ; but where is it now to be found ? " Says Mrs. Bargrave, " 'Tis hard indeed to find a true friend in these days." Says Mrs. Veal, "Mr. Norris has a fine copy of verses, called Friendship in Perfection, which I wonderfully admire. Have you seen the book?" says Mrs. Veal. "No," says Mrs. Bargrave, " but I have the verses of my own writing out." " Have you?" says Mrs. Veal; "then fetch them." Which she did from above-stairs, and offered them to Mrs. Veal to read, who refused, and waived the thing, saying, holding down her head would make it ache; and then desired Mrs. Bargrave to read them to her, which she did. As they were admiring Friendship Mrs. Veal said, "Dear Mrs. Bargrave, I shall love you forever." In the verses there is twice used the word Elysian. " Ah ! " says Mrs. Veal, " these poets have such names for heaven ! " She would often draw her hand across her own eyes and say, " Mrs. Bargrave, don't you think I am mightily impaired by my fits?" "No," says Mrs. Bargrave, " I think you look as well as ever I knew you." After all this discourse, which the apparition put in words much finer than Mrs. Bargrave said she could pretend to, and was much more than she can remember (for it cannot be thought that an hour and three-quarters' conversation could all be retained, though the main of it she thinks she does), she said to Mrs. Bar- grave she would have her write a letter to her brother, and tell him she would have him give rings to such and such, and that there was a purse of gold in her cabinet, and that she would have two broad pieces given to her cousin Watson. SIMPLE NARRATIVE 293 Talking at this rate Mrs. Bargrave thought that a fit was coming upon her, and so placed herself in a chair just before her knees, to keep her from falling to the ground, if her fits should occasion it (for the elbow-chair, she thought, would keep her from falling on either side) ; and to divert Mrs. Veal, as she thought, she took hold of her gown-sleeve several times and commended it. Mrs. Veal told her it was a scoured silk, and newly made up. But for all this, Mrs. Veal persisted in her request, and told Mrs. Bargrave she must not deny her; and she would have her tell her brother all their conversation when she had an opportunity. " Dear Mrs. Veal," said Mrs. Bargrave, " this seems so impertinent that I cannot tell how to comply with it; and what a mortifying story will our conversation be to a young gentleman!" "Well," says Mrs. Veal, " I must not be denied." " Why," says Mrs. Bargrave, " 'tis much better, methinks, to do it yourself." "No," says Mrs. Veal, " though it seems impertinent to you now, you will see more reason for it hereafter." Mrs. Bargrave then, to satisfy her im- portunity, was going to fetch a pen and ink; but Mrs. Veal said, " Let it alone now, and do it when I am gone ; but you must be sure to do it ; " which was one of the last things she enjoined her at part- ing; and so she promised her. Then Mrs. Veal asked for Mrs. Bargrave's daughter. She said she was not at home, "but if you have a mind to see her," says Mrs. Bargrave, " I'll send for her." " Do," says Mrs. Veal. On which she left her, and went to a neighbour's to send for her; and by the time Mrs. F.argrave was returning, Mrs. Veal was got with- out the door in the street, in the face of the beast-market on a Saturday (which is market-day), and stood ready to part as soon as Mrs. Bargrave came to her. She asked her why she was in such haste. She said she must be going, though perhaps she might not go her journey until Monday; and told Mrs. Bargrave she hoped she should see her again at her cousin Watson's before she went whither she was a-going. Then she said she would take her leave of her, and walked from Mrs. Bargrave in her view, till a turning interrupted the sight of her, which was three-quarters aftei one in the afternoon. Mrs. Veal died the yth of September, at twelve o'clock at noon, of her fits, and had not above four hours' senses before death, 2 9 4 EXGLISH COMPOSITION in which time she received the sacrament. The next day after Mrs. Veal's appearance, being Sunday, Mrs. Bargrave was mightily indisposed with a cold and a sore throat, that she could not go out that day; but on Monday morning she sends a person to Captain Watson's to know if Mrs. Veal were there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry, and sent her word that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer, Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's, though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in town ; they were sure, if she had, she would have been there. Says Mrs. Bargrave, " I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours." They said it was impossible ; for they must have seen her, if she had. In comes Captain Watson while they are in dispute, and said that Mrs. Veal was certainly dead, and her escutcheons were making. This strangely sur- prised Mrs. Bargrave, who went to the person immediately who had the care of them, and found it true. Then she related the whole story to Captain Watson's family, and what gown she had on, and how striped, and that Mrs. Veal told her it was scoured. Then Mrs. Watson cried out, " You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was scoured." And Mrs. Watson owned that she described the gown exactly; "for," said she, "I helped her to make it up." This Mrs. Watson blazed all about the town, and avouched the demonstra- tion of the truth of Mrs. Bargrave's seeing Mrs. Veal's apparition; and Captain Watson carried two gentlemen immediately to Mrs. Bargrave's house to hear the relation from her own mouth. And then it spread so fast that gentlemen and persons of quality, the judicious and sceptical part of the world, flocked in upon her, which at last became such a task that she was forced to go out of the way ; for they were in general extremely satisfied of the truth of the thing, and plainly saw that Mrs. Bargrave was no hypochondriac, for she always appears with such a cheerful air and pleasing mien, that she has gained the favour and esteem of all the gentry, and 'tis thought a great favour if they can but get the relation from her own mouth. I should have told you before that Mrs. Veal SIMPLE NARRATIVE 295 told Mrs. Bargrave that her sister and brother-in-law were just come down from London to see her. Says Mrs. Bargrave, " How came you to order matters so strangely ? " " It could not be helped," says Mrs. Veal. And her sister and brother did come to see her, and entered the town of Dover just as Mrs. Veal was expiring. Mrs. Bargrave asked her whether she would drink some tea. Says Mrs. Veal, " I do not care if I do ; but I'll warrant this mad fellow " (meaning Mrs. Bargrave's husband) "has broke all your trinkets." "But," says Mrs. Bargrave, "I'll get something to drink in for all that." But Mrs. Veal waived it, and said, "It is no matter; let it alone; "-and so it passed. All the time I sat with Mrs. Bargrave, which was some hours, she recollected fresh sayings of Mrs. Veal. And one material thing more she told Mrs. Bargrave that old Mr. Breton allowed Mrs. Veal ten pounds a year, which was a secret, and unknown to Mrs. Bargrave till Mrs. Veal told it her. Mrs. Bargrave never varies in her story, which puzzles those who doubt of the truth, or are unwilling to believe it. A servant in a neighbour's yard ad- joining to Mrs. Bargrave's house heard her talking to somebody an hour of the time Mrs. Veal was with her. Mrs. Bargrave went out to her next neighbour's the very moment she parted with Mrs. Veal, and told what ravishing conversation she had with an old friend, and told the whole of it. Drelincourt's Book of Death is, since this happened, bought up strangely. And it is to be observed that, notwithstanding all this trouble and fatigue Mrs. Bargrave has undergone upon this account, she never took the value of a farth- ing, nor suffered her daughter to take anything of anybody, and therefore can have no interest in telling the story. But Mr. Veal does what he can to stifle the matter, and said he would see Mrs. Bargrave; but yet it is certain matter of fact that he has been at Captain Watson's since the death of his sister, and yet never went near Mrs. Bargrave ; and some of his friends report her to be a great liar, and that she knew of Mr. Breton's ten pounds a year. But the person who pretends to say so has the reputation of a notorious liar among persons whom I know to be of undoubted repute. Now, Mr. Veal is more a gentleman than to say she lies, but says a bad husband has crazed her; but she needs only to present herself, and it will effectually confute that pretence. Mr. 296 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Veal says he asked his sister on her deathbed whether she had a mind to dispose of anything, and she said No. Now, the things which Mrs. Veal's apparition would have disposed of were so trifling, and nothing of justice aimed at in their disposal, that the design of it appears to me to be only in order to make Mrs. Bar- grave so to demonstrate the truth of her appearance, as to satisfy the world of the reality thereof as to what she had seen and heard, and to secure her reputation among the reasonable and under- standing part of mankind. And then again, Mr. Veal owns that there was a purse of gold ; but it was not found in her cabinet, but in a comb-box. This looks improbable; for that Mrs. Watson owned that Mrs. Veal was so very careful of the key of her cabinet, that she would trust nobody with it ; and if so, no doubt she would not trust her gold out of it. And Mrs. Veal's often drawing her hand over her eyes, and asking Mrs. Bargrave whether her fits had not impaired her, looks to me as if she did it on purpose to remind Mrs. Bargrave of her fits, to prepare her not to think it strange that she should put her upon writing to her brother to dispose of rings and gold, which looked so much like a dying per- son's request; and it took accordingly with Mrs. Bargrave, as the effect of her fits coming upon her; and was one of the many in- stances of her wonderful love to her, and care of her, that she should not be affrighted; which indeed appears in her whole management, particularly in her coming to her in the daytime, waiving the salu- tation, and when she was alone ; and then the manner of her part- ing, to prevent a second attempt to salute her. Now, why Mr. Veal should think this relation a reflection (as 'tis plain he does by his endeavouring to stifle it) I can't imagine, because the generality believe her to be a good spirit, her discourse was so heavenly. Her two great errands were to comfort Mrs. Bargrave in her affliction, and to ask her forgiveness for her breach of friendship, and with a pious discourse to encourage her. So that, after all, to suppose that Mrs. Bargrave could hatch such an invention as this from Friday noon till Saturday noon (s-pposing that she knew of Mrs. Veal's death the very first moment), without jumbling circumstances, and without any interest too, she must be more witty, fortunate, and wicked too, than any indifferent per- son, I dare say, will allow. I asked Mrs. Bargrave several times SIMPLE NARRATIVE 297 if she was sure she felt the gown. She answered modestly, " If my senses be to be relied on, I am sure of it." I asked her if she heard a sound when she clapped her hand upon her knee. She said she did not remember she did ; and she said, " She appeared to be as much a substance as I did, who talked with her; and I may," said she, " be as soon persuaded that your apparition is talking to me now as that I did not really see her ; for I was under no man- ner of fear; I received her as a friend, and parted with her as such. I would not," says she, "give one farthing to make any one believe it ; I have no interest in it. Nothing but trouble is entailed upon me for a long time, for aught I know; and had it not come to light by accident, it would never have been made public." But now she says she will make her own private use of it, and keep herself out of the way as much as she can ; and so she has done since. She says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to her to hear the relation, and that she had told it to a room full of people at a time. Several particular gentlemen have had the story from Mrs. Bar- grave's own mouth. This thing has very much affected me, and I am as well satisfied as I am of the best grounded matter of fact. And why we should dispute matter of fact because we cannot solve things of which we have no certain or demonstrative notions, seems strange to me. Mrs. Bargrave's authority and sincerity alone would have been undoubted in any other case. CHAPTER XII THE STORY A STORY is a narrative in which the causal relation between events is made very apparent. In life, this causal relation between events often, but not always, exists. In a story it must not only exist, it must be obvious. For example, a reporter "writes up" an inter- view with a foreigner in which is recounted, in a general fashion, the latter's experiences upon an ocean voyage. The resulting news article will have no plot ; that is, no obvious set of causal re- lations between events, and so will be simple narrative. But a magazine writer chances to read the interview, and sees mention there made of an interesting American girl with whom the afore- said foreigner has been upon friendly relations during the voyage. Thereupon he alters names, supposes that the visiting foreigner had taken passage in order to win the lady for his wife, creates a fitting climax, and thus artificially throws the given events into a causal relationship each to each. This process is, simply, the invention of a plot. The plot of a story is merely the thread of relationship which connects the events, and a narrative with a plot is a story. Naturally, a basis of actual happening, as in the hypothetical case just given, is not required. It is sometimes ad- vantageous. Indeed, the requisite heightening of causal relation- ships is occasionally found in life, so that we have only to write it down in order to get what is called "a true story." But much more frequently the happenings and their relationship are alike a product of the imagination, the whole process is artificial, not natural, and we have fiction. In truth, the story-teller draws from real or imagined life as he pleases but he must get a plot. Making a plot, however, is the least part of story-telling. The best plots were, most of them, made long ago, and it- is often far better to adapt an old plot to modern conditions than to strain probability in the attempt to create something new. The energy 298 THE STORY 299 of the story-teller, and particularly the energy of the novice at the trade, will be expended much more profitably upon a harder prob- lem: Given a plot, how to make from it an interesting and con- vincing story. The operation is never easy. It requires imagina- tion, knowledge of life, and a vocabulary. It also requires the application in a high degree of the three chief principles of rhetoric, and, since it is in learning to control these principles that the story- teller will find mere advice of the greatest value, tvith Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis we will begin. First for Unity. " Sticking to the subject " is comparatively easy in a story, but the unity which should result is much more likely to appear if you make sure before you begin that your plot does not contain "another story." It is a fallacy, too widespread among beginners in story-writing, that the more plot the easier it is for the writer. Nothing could be more erroneous. It is hard enough to tell one story in a given space; it is usually impracticable to tell two. One unsuccessful tale could be made from such a plot as the follow- ing: An American quarrels with a Frenchman in a Parisian cafe, is challenged, fights a duel, and kills his opponent. Stricken with remorse, he, nevertheless, endeavors to escape from the police, is sheltered in the chateau of, a friend, and hides from his pursuers in a secret chamber which he discovers by accident. When he thinks danger of pursuit is over, he tries to get out, finds that he is locked in behind a sound-proof panel and escapes only by a fortunate accident. But if this plot should be divided, the two plots resulting would have a much greater likelihood of success, for each would be given elbow room, and you would avoid an error which is quite as confusing as the mistaken combination of two paragraph-thoughts in one paragraph. Unity of plot, however, has a still more especial significance in story-writing. It depends upon "sticking to the subject," but it is also dependent upon a proper manipulation of that subject. A story, potentially, is of very nearly indefinite length. If you wish, you can extend its remote beginnings and its ultimate results further back than the birth, further on than the grave of the hero. Conversely, it can be, not indefinitely, but, as a rule, very materially shortened. We are inspired to write of the revenge which an Italian noble took upon his friend. Where begin? 300 EXGLISH COMPOSITION Where end? The early history of Venice, the remote beginnings of the feud may be brought into the story, the discovery of the bones of the murdered man by his great grandchildren may be included to end it. The principal countries of Europe may be drawn upon for scenes in the flight of the suspected murderer. But Poe, as one sees in the Cask of A montillado, begins his story in the hour of the revenge, and ends it with the consummation. He confines it not merely to one city, but to one place. This is an extreme example, perhaps; certainly such perfect unity of place and time is not always possible, nor always advisable. And yet, in every instance, the chances for success will be very much increased if the story- teller, before he begins to write, will restrict, as far as probability will let him, both the scene and the time of the actions he is to recount. Sometimes this may be accomplished by briefly ex- plaining all the scenes of the story which belong in a time earlier or later than the main action. Often enough the narrator, who is absolute monarch of his story, can make one scene and time do for actions which, in his original conception, happened far apart. So long as the tale remains probable, every simplification of this kind will increase the unity, and so the success, of his story. " Ah ! passons au deluge," Racine said in the course of a certain story, a remark which may be freely translated into, " Don't begin before the Flood!" THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO l EDGAR ALLAN POE The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could ; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled but the very definiteness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when 1 Reprinted, by the kind permission of the publishers, from the edition of Poe published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. THE STORY 3 OI the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. It must be understood that neither by wordjnor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. He had a weak point this Fortunato although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting party-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. I said to him: "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day ! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." " How ? " said he, " Amontillado ? A pipe ? Impossible ! And in the middle of the carnival!" " I have my doubts," I replied ; " and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain." " Amontillado ! " "I have my doubts." "Amontillado !" "And I must satisfy them." "Amontillado!" "As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me 3 02 ENGLISH COMPOSITION "Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." "And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own." " Come, let us go." "Whither?" "To your vaults." "My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi " "I have no engagement come." " My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insuffer- ably damp. They are encrusted with nitre." " Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amon- tillado ! You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado." Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaure closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and wind- ing staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors. The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode. "The pipe," said he. "It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls." He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. "Nitre?" he asked at length. THE STORY 33 "Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?" " Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! " My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. "It is nothing," he said at last. "Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi "Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." " True true," I replied ; " and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps." Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould. "Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled. "I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." "And I to your long life." He again took my arm, and we proceeded. "These vaults," he said, "are extensive." "The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family." " I forget your arms." "A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel." "And the motto?" " Nemo me impune lacessit." "Good !" he said. The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunate by an arm above the elbow. "The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss 3 04 ENGLISH COMPOSITION upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough "It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc." I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed, and threw the bottle upward with a gesticulation I did not under- stand. I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement a grotesque one. "You do not comprehend?" he said. "Not I," I replied. "Then you are not of the brotherhood." "How?" " You are not of the masons." "Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes." "You? Impossible! A mason?" "A mason," I replied. "A sign," he said. "It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaure. "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado." "Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We con- tinued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and, descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the dis- placing of the bones we perceived a still interior recess, in depth THE STORY 35 about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circum- scribing walls of solid granite. It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see. "Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Lu- chesi "He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the* niche, and find- ing his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key, I stepped back from the recess. "Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power." "The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment. "True," I replied; "the Amontillado." As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon un- covered a quantity of building-stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. 506 ENGLISH COMPOSITION There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth ; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satis- faction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the masonwork, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess ; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of- the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I reechoed I aided I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this and the clamourer grew still. It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh ; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said: "Ha ! ha ! ha ! he ! he ! he ! a very good joke indeed an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo he ! he ! he ! over our wine he ! he ! he ! " "The Amontillado!" I said. "He! he! he ! he ! he! he! yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late ? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone." "Yes," I said, "let us be gone." " For the love of God, Montresor!" "Yes," I said, "for the love of God!" THE STORY 37 But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud : "Fortunate!" No answer. I called again: " Fortunate ! " No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position ; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat. COHERENCE IN NARRATIVE For story-telling, Coherence is as vital as Unity; indeed, the necessity for a clear and logical development is more obvious in a story than anywhere else. The steps to this coherency are not so easy as they appear. In simple narrative one can follow a regular, chronological order, and be sure of an orderly develop- ment. But a story must always be interesting, and hence it will sometimes be advisable to plunge in medias res, to begin with the exciting middle in order that we shall be interested in the less stirring scenes which came before. A story is made up of causal relations, and these relations must be explained without interrupt- ing the flow of the tale. A story deals with characters whose past history must, in some measure, be known; with incidents whose origin must, in some degree, be accounted for. Clearly, "begin at the beginning and tell to the end" is not a sufficient direction. The problem will be simpler after we have divided a typical story into its constituent parts. In such a tale, there must be (a) the antecedent action, which includes whatever information the reader may need in order to understand the place of action, the identity of the characters, and the circumstances which lead to the plot. There is (b) the development of the plot; (c) the climax; (d) the conclusion. Now to begin one's stories in medias res, as Tennyson begins each one of his Idylls of the King, requires no special art. It is 308 EX GUSH COMPOSITION only necessary to make sure that the reader grasps the chrono- logical relations of each episode. This requires some skill, and until that skill is acquired stories should not be told in such a fashion. Again, it is not difficult, theoretically, to explain the causal relation between episode and episode without interrupting the flow of the narrative. Here, also, skill is required, but the question is merely one of interesting and effective transitions between event and event. The various episodes in a story are like the bases in a ball game. You must get from one to another as expeditiously as possible. But the most troublesome problem in narrative coherence arises when one begins to consider the antecedent action. If all the explanatory circumstances are not given at the beginning, they must be brought in later where they will clog the story. Steven- son, in A Gossip on Romance, quotes a passage from .Scott which illustrates this point in small compass : " ' I remember the tune well, though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.' He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke the corre- sponding associations of a damsel, who, dose behind a fine spring about halfway down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen. She immediately took up the song 'Are these the links of Forth,' she said; ' Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head That I so fain would see?' "'By Heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'" The maiden should have been accounted for earlier so that the romantic narrative of the incident might have run free. The marring clauses which I have italicized should not have been re- quired. The remedy here, and in the larger field of the story, is to get all the explanation out of the way; to let the antecedent action be really antecedent to the narrative. There is just one way to learn how to handle this portion of the story, observation combined with experiment. Run through THE STORY 39 the beginnings of a dozen good stories and observe the method in each. You will see that, in each instance, the author has tucked away his explanations in the first lines, first paragraphs, or first pages. You will also discover that every story has its own way of disposing of this explanation, but that all methods are alike in one respect : they endeavor to make the necessary explanation natural and interesting. One author will resort to an interesting piece of description in which the required facts, incidentally, are included. Another will begin his tale with a preliminary narrative, a "curtain raiser" as it were; still another will so contrive his story proper that a few lines are sufficient to tell the reader all he needs to know of the characters and antecedent events. It is clear that although you must supply the necessary explanations, you need not make your first course so tasteless as to take away the appetite. No one doubts that all the necessary antecedent action is included in the first chapter of Guy Mannering, but few enjoy wading through it. Skill and ingenuity must be exercised upon this problem of how to open a story, and only a careful consideration of the plot to be developed will determine just what facts must be tucked into this prefatory portion. But one final suggestion may be of value, because it deals with material not so obvious as the place, time, actors, and circumstances which will naturally have, to be ex- plained. In life, when a not unexpected event happens, we usually say, "I told you so." And we back up our assertion of foreknowledge by recalling various incidents which pointed to- wards this result. These incidents belong in the antecedent action. The start at the sight of a naked sword will be remembered when the villain is defeated at the climax because he is a coward. The child Modred listening at the keyhole will be remembered when the man is traitor to his king. Such "prophetic incidents" are facts which look forwards for their explanation, and so, when introduced at the beginning with the other facts of which a knowledge will be required later, they are bound to help the narrative to cohere. Every good story is a good example of antecedent action reason- ably well handled, for it could not be very good otherwise. But perhaps the best illustration is to be found in a tale where the diffi- culty is really considerable. A notable instance is Honore de Balzac's La Grande Brethhe. Here is a story of jealousy, in which 3 io ENGLISH COMPOSITION the lover is punished in the sight of his mistress. The narrative of this punishment occupies about six pages. It could not, however, have been left in this simplicity as was the very similar episode in The Cask oj A montillado, for we are sure to ask, Who was the lover? How did he come to fall in love with Mme. de Merret? What became of him after he was left in his frightful predicament ? Balzac's method of supplying all this information is a marvel of technique. First come three pages of suggestive description by which a deserted chateau is made to assume an air of mystery. Next, an inquisitive lawyer is ushered in who tells the story of events at the chateau subsequent to the tragedy, a story which is interesting because it deepens the mystery hanging over La Grande Breteche. Next conies the hostess of the inn. It is she who sheltered the lover, and her account supplies the love story which preceded the tragedy, the identity of the lover, the situation between husband and wife ; in a word, the antecedent action which we re- quire. And now the stage is clear for the story proper. We can follow it uninterruptedly because we know all that we need to know of the circumstances. We may stop with the terrible climax because what happened afterwards has been told. The propor- tions of this story are very unusual. Ordinarily the relation of the tale proper to all explanatory matter will be as ten is to one. But La Grande Breteche presented especial difficulties, and their working out illustrates, all the more clearly because of the exaggera- tion in this particular instance, the method to be followed in the pursuit of coherence in a story. LA GRANDE BRETECHE 1 HONORE DE BALZAC About one hundred yards from Venddme, on the banks of the Loire, there stands an old dark-coloured house, surmounted by a very high roof, and so completely isolated that there is not in the neighbourhood a single evil-smelling tannery or wretched inn, such as we see in the outskirts of almost every small town. In 1 From the version by G. B. Ives. in the Balzac volume of Little French Masterpieces: New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Used by the kind permission of the publishers. THE STORY 311 front of the house is a small garden bordering the river, in which the boxwood borders of the paths, once neatly trimmed, now grow at their pleasure. A few willows, born in the Loire, have grown as rapidly as the hedge which encloses the garden, and half conceal the house. The plants which we call weeds adorn the slope of the bank with their luxuriant vegetation. The fruit trees, neglected for ten years, bear no fruit; their offshoots form a dense undergrowth. The espaliers resemble hornbeam hedges. The paths, formerly gravelled, are overrun with purslane; but, to tell the truth, there are no well-marked paths. From the top of the mountain upon which hang the ruins of the old chateau of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot from which the eye can look into this enclosure, you would say to yourself that, at a period which it is difficult to determine, that little nook was the delight of some gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, to horticulture in short, but especially fond of fine fruit. You espy an arbour, or rather the ruins of an arbour, beneath which a table still stands, not yet entirely consumed by time. At sight of that garden, which is no longer a garden, one may divine the negative delights of the peace- ful life which provincials lead, as one divines the existence of a worthy tradesman by reading the epitaph on his tombstone. To round out the melancholy yet soothing thoughts which fill the mind, there is on one of the walls a sun-dial, embellished with this com- monplace Christian inscription: ULTIMAM COGITA. The roof of the house is terribly dilapidated, the blinds are always drawn, the- balconies are covered with swallows' ' nests, the doors are never opened. Tall weeds mark with green lines the cracks in the steps ; the ironwork is covered with rust. Moon, sun, winter, summer, snow, have rotted the wood, warped the boards, and corroded the paint. The deathly silence which reigns there is disturbed only by the birds, the cats, the martens, the rats and the mice, which are at liberty to run about, to fight, and to eat one another at their will. An invisible hand has written everywhere the word MYSTERY. If, impelled by curiosity, you should go to inspect the house on the street side, you would see a high gate, arched at the top, in which the children of the neighbourhood have made numberless holes. I learned later that that gate had been condemned ten years before. 3 I2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Through these irregular breaches you would be able to observe the perfect harmony between the garden front and the courtyard front. The same disorder reigns supreme in both. Tufts of weeds surround the pavements. Enormous cracks furrow the walls, whose blackened tops are enlaced by the countless tendrils of climb- ing plants. The steps are wrenched apart, the bell-rope is rotten, the gutters are broken. " What fire from heaven has passed this way? What tribunal has ordered salt to be strewn upon this dwelling? Has God been insulted here? Has France been betrayed?" 'Such are the questions which one asks one's self. The reptiles crawl hither and thither without answering. That empty and deserted house is an immense riddle, the solution of which is known to no one. It was formerly a small feudal estate and bore the name of La Grande Breteche. During my stay at Vendome, where Desplein had left me to attend a rich patient, the aspect of that strange building became one of my keenest pleasures. Was it not more than a mere ruin? Some souvenirs of undeniable authenticity are always connected with a ruin; but that abode, still standing, although in process of gradual demolition by an avenging hand, concealed a secret, an unknown thought; at the very least, it betrayed a caprice. More than once, in the evening, I wandered in the direction of the hedge, now wild and uncared for, which surrounded that enclosure. I defied scratches, and made my way into that ownerless garden, that estate which was neither public nor private; and I remained whole hours there contemplating its disarray. Not even to learn the story which would doubtless ac- count for that extraordinary spectacle, would I have asked a single question of any Vendomese gossip. Straying about there, I com- posed delightful romances, I abandoned myself to little orgies of melancholy which enchanted me. If I had learned the cause of that perhaps most commonplace neglect, I should have lost the unspoken poesy with which I in- toxicated myself. To me that spot represented the most diverse images of human life darkened by its misfortunes ; now it was the air of the cloister, minus the monks ; again, the perfect peace of the cemetery, minus the dead speaking their epitaphic language; to-day, the house of the leper; to-morrow, that of the Fates; but THE STORY 3*3 it was, above all, the image of the province, with its meditation, with its hour-glass life. I have often wept there, but never laughed. More than once I have felt an involuntary terror, as I heard above my head the low rustling made by the wings of some hurrying dove. The ground is damp; you must beware of lizards, snakes, and toads, which wander about there with the fearless liberty of nature ; above all, you must not fear the cold, for, after a few seconds; you feel an icy cloak resting upon your shoulders, like the hand of the Commendator on the neck of Don Juan. One evening I had shuddered there ; the wind had twisted an old rusty weather-vane, whose shrieks resembled a groan uttered by the house at the mo- ment that I was finishing a rather dismal melodrama, by which I sought to explain to myself that species of monumental grief. I returned to my inn, beset by sombre 'thoughts. When I had supped, my hostess entered my room with a mysterious air, and said to me : "Here is Monsieur Regnault, monsieur." " Who is Monsieur Regnault ? " "What! monsieur doesn't know Monsieur Regnault? That's funny ! " she said, as she left the room. Suddenly I saw a tall slender man, dressed in black, with his hat in his hand, who entered the room like a ram ready to rush at his rival, disclosing a retreating forehead, a small pointed head, and a pale face, not unlike a glass of dirty water. You would have said that he was the doorkeeper of some iflinister. He wore an old coat, threadbare at the seams; but he had a diamond in his shirt-frill and gold rings in his ears. "To whom have I the honour of speaking, monsieur?" I asked him. He took a chair, seated himself in front of my fire, placed his hat on my table, and replied, rubbing his hands: " Ah ! it's very cold ! I am Monsieur Regnault, monsieur." I bowed, saying to myself: " II Bondacani! Look for him ! " " I am the notary at Vendome," he continued. "I am delighted to hear it, monsieur," I exclaimed, "but I am not ready to make my will, for reasons best known to myself." "Just a minute," he rejoined, raising his hand as if to impose 314 ENGLISH COMPOSITION silence upon me. " I beg pardon, monsieur, I beg pardon ! I have heard that you go to walk sometimes in the garden of La Grande Breteche." "Yes, monsieur!" "Just a minute," he said, repeating his gesture; "that practice constitutes a downright trespass. I have come, monsieur, in the name and as executor of the late Madame Countess de Merret, to beg you to discontinue your visits. Just a minute ! I'm not a Turk, and I don't propose to charge you with a crime. Besides, it may well be that you are not aware of the circumstances which compel me to allow the finest mansion in Vendome to fall to ruin. However, monsieur, you seem to be a man of education, and you must know that the law forbids entrance upon an enclosed estate under severe penalties. A hedge is as good as a wall. But the present condition of the house may serve as an excuse for your curiosity. I would ask nothing better than to allow you to go and come as you please in that house ; but, as it is my duty to carry out the \fill of the testatrix, I have the honour, monsieur, to request you not to go into that garden again. Even I myself, monsieur, since the opening of the will, have never set foot inside that house, which, as I have had the honour to tell you, is a part of the estate of Madame de Merret. We simply reported the number of doors and windows, in order to fix the amount of the impost which I pay annually from the fund set aside for that purpose by the late countess. Ah! her will made a. great deal of talk in Vendome, monsieur." At that, he stopped to blow his nose, the excellent man. I re- spected his loquacity, understanding perfectly that the administra- tion of Madame de Merret's property was the important event of his life his reputation, his glory, his Restoration. I must needs bid adieu to my pleasant reveries, to my romances ; so that I was not inclined to scorn the pleasure of learning the truth from an official source. "Would it be indiscreet, monsieur," I asked him, "to ask you the reason of this extraordinary state of affairs?" At that question an expression which betrayed all the pleasure that a man feels who is accustomed to ride a hobby passed over the notary's face. He pulled up his shirt collar with a self-satisfied air, produced his snuff-box, opened it, offered it to me, and at my THE STORY 3*5 refusal, took a famous pinch himself. He was happy; the man who has no hobby has no idea of the satisfaction that can be de- rived from life. A hobby is the precise mean between passion and monomania. At that moment I understood the witty expression of Sterne in all its extent, and I had a perfect conception of the joy with which Uncle Toby, with Trim's assistance, bestrode his battle- horse. "Monsieur," said Monsieur Regnault, "I was chief clerk to Master Roguin of Paris. An excellent office, of which you may have heard ? No ? Why, it was made famous by a disastrous failure. Not having sufficient money to practise in Paris, at the price to which offices had risen in 1816, I came here and bought the office of my predecessor. I had relatives in Vendome, among others a very rich aunt, who gave me her daughter in marriage. Monsieur," he continued after a brief pause, "three months after being licensed by the Keeper of the Seals I was sent for one even- ing, just as I was going to bed (I was not then married), by Madame Countess de Merret, to come to her Chateau de Merret. Her maid, an excellent girl who works in this inn to-day, was at my door with madame countess's carriage. But, just a minute ! I must tell you, monsieur, that Monsieur Count de Merret had gone to Paris to die, two months before I came here. He died miserably there, abandoning himself to excesses of all sorts. You under- stand ? On the day of his departure madame countess had left La Grande Breteche and had dismantled it. Indeed, some people declare that she burned the furniture and hangings, and all chattels whatsoever now contained in the estate leased by the said What on earth am I saying ? I beg pardon, I thought I was dictating a lease That she burned them," he continued, "in the fields at Merret. Have you been to Merret, monsieur? No?" he said, answering his own question. "Ah! that is a lovely spot! For about three months," he continued, after a slight shake of the head, "monsieur count and madame countess led a strange life. "They received no guests; madame lived on the ground floor, and monsieur on the first floor. When madame countess was left alone, she never appeared except at church. Later, in her own house, at her chateau, she refused to see the friends who came to see her. She was already much changed when she left La Grande 316 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Breteche to go to Merret. The dear woman I say 'dear,' because this diamond came from her ; but I actually only saw her once, the excellent lady, then, was very ill ; she had doubtless despaired of her health, for she died without calling a doctor; so that many of our ladies thought that she was not in full possession of her wits. My curiosity was therefore strangely aroused, mon- sieur, when I learned that Madame de Merret needed my services. I was not the only one who took an interest in that story. That same evening, although it was late, the whole town knew that I had gone to Merret. The maid answered rather vaguely the questions that I asked her on the road ; she told me, however, that her mistress had received the sacrament from the cure of Merret during the day, and that she did not seem likely to live through the night. "I reached the chateau about eleven o'clock; I mounted the main staircase. After passing through divers large rooms, high and dark, and as cold and damp as the devil, I reached the state bedchamber where the countess was. According to the reports that were current concerning that lady I should never end, monsieur, if I should repeat all the stories that are told about her I had thought of her as a coquette. But, if you please, I had much difficulty in finding her in the huge bed in which she lay. To be sure, to light that enormous wainscoted chamber of the old regime, where everything was so covered with dust that it made one sneeze simply to look at it, she had only one of those old-fashioned Argand lamps. Ah ! but you have never been to Merret. Well, monsieur, the bed is one of those beds of the olden time, with a high canopy of flowered material. A small night-table stood beside the bed, and I saw upon it a copy of the Imitation of Jesus Christ, which, by the by, I bought for my wife, as well as the lamp. There was also a large couch for the attendant, and two chairs. Not a spark of fire. That was all the furniture. It wouldn't have filled ten lines in an inventory. "Oh ! my dear monsieur, if you had seen, as I then saw it, that huge room hung with dark tapestry, you would have imagined yourself transported into a genuine scene from a novel. It was icy cold; and, more than that, absolutely funereal," he added, raising his arm with a theatrical gesture and pausing for a moment. "By looking hard and walking close to the bed, I succeeded in THE STORY 317 discovering Madame de Merret, thanks to the lamp, the light of which shone upon the pillow. Her face was as yellow as wax, and resembled two clasped hands. She wore a lace cap, which re- vealed her lovely hair, as white as snow. She was sitting up, and seemed to retain that position with much difficulty. Her great black eyes, dulled by fever no doubt, and already almost lifeless, hardly moved beneath the bones which the eyebrows cover these," he said, pointing to the arch over his eyes. "Her brow was moist. Her fleshless hands resembled bones covered with tightly-drawn skin ; her veins and muscles could be seen perfectly. She must have been very beautiful ; but at that moment I was seized with an indefinable feeling at her aspect. Never before, according to those who laid her out, had a living creature attained such thin- ness without dying. In short, she was horrible to look at ; disease had so wasted that woman that she was nothing more than a phantom. Her pale violet lips seemed not to move when she spoke to me. Although my profession had familiarised me with such spectacles, by taking me sometimes to the pillows of dying persons to take down their last wishes, I confess that the families in tears and despair whom I had seen were as nothing beside that solitary, silent woman in that enormous chateau. " I did not hear the slightest sound, I could not detect the movement which the breathing of the sick woman should have imparted to the sheets that covered her; and I stood quite still, gazing at her in a sort of stupor. It seems to me that I am there now. At last her great eyes moved, she tried to raise her right hand, which fell back upon the bed, and these words came from her mouth like a breath, for her voice had already ceased to be a voice : ' I have been awaiting you with much impatience.' Her cheeks suddenly flushed. It was a great effort for her to speak, monsieur. ' Ma- dame,' I said. She motioned to me to be silent. At that moment the old nurse rose and whispered in my ear: 'Don't speak; ma- dame countess cannot bear to hear the slightest sound, and what you said might excite her.' I sat down. A few moments later, Madame de Merret collected all her remaining strength, to move her right arm and thrust it, not without infinite difficulty, beneath her bolster; she paused for just a moment; then she made a last effort to withdraw her hand, and when she finally produced a scaled 318 ENGLISH COMPOSITION paper, drops of sweat fell from her brow. ' I place my will in your hands,' she said. 'Oh, man Dieu! oh!' That was all. She grasped a crucifix that lay on her bed, hastily put it to her lips, and died. The expression of her staring eyes makes me shudder even now, when I think of it. She must have suffered terribly! There was a gleam of joy in her last glance, a sentiment which remained in her dead eyes. "I carried the will away; and when it was opened, I found that Madame de Merret had appointed me her executor. She left all her property to the hospital at Vendome with her exception of a few individual legacies. But these were her provisions with respect to La Grande Breteche : She directed me to leave her house, for fifty years from the day of her death, in the same condition as at that moment that she died ; forbidding any person whatsoever to enter the rooms, forbidding the slightest repairs to be made, and even setting aside a sum in order to hire keepers, if it should be found necessary, to assure the literal execution of her purpose. At the expiration of that period, if the desire of the testatrix has been carried out, the house is to belong to my heirs, for monsieur knows that notaries cannot accept legacies. If not, La Grande Breteche is to revert to whoever is entitled to it, but with the obligation to comply with the conditions set forth in a codicil attached to the will, which is not to be opened until the expiration of the said fifty years. The will was not attacked; and so : At that, without finishing his sentence, the elongated notary glanced at me with a triumphant air, and I made him altogether happy by addressing a few compliments to him. "Monsieur," I said, "you have made a profound impression upon me, so that I think I see that dying woman, paler than her sheets; her gleaming eyes terrify me; and I shall dream of her to r night. But you must have formed some conjecture concerning the provisions of that extraordinary will." "Monsieur," he said with a comical reserve, "I never allow myself to judge the conduct of those persons who honour me by giving me a diamond." I soon loosened the tongue of the scrupulous Vendomese notary, who communicated to me, not without long digressions, observa- tions due to the profound politicians of both sexes whose decrees THE STORY 319 are law in Vendome. But those observations were so contradictory and so diffuse that I almost fell asleep, despite the interest I took in that authentic narrative. The dull and monotonous tone of the notary, who was accustomed, no doubt, to listen to himself, and to force his clients and his fellow-citizens to listen to him, triumphed over my curiosity. "Aha! many people, monsieur," he said to me on the landing, "would like to live forty-five years more; but just a minute!" and with a sly expression, he placed his right forefinger on his nose, as if he would have said, "Just mark what I say." "But to do that, to do that," he added, "a man must be less than sixty." I closed my door, having been, roused from my apathy by this last shaft, which the notary considered very clever; then I seated myself in my easy-chair, placing my feet on the andirons. I was soon absorbed in an imaginary romance a la Radcliffe, based upon the judicial observations of Monsieur Regnault, when my door, under the skilful manipulation of a woman's hand, turned upon its hinges. My hostess appeared, a stout red-faced woman, of ex- cellent disposition, who had missed her vocation : she was a Flem- ing, who should have been born in a picture by Teniers. "Well, monsieur," she said, ; 'no doubt Monsieur Regnault has given you his story of La Grande Breteche?" " Yes, Mother Lepas." "What did he tell you?" I repeated in a few words the chilling and gloomy story of Madame de Merret. At each sentence my hostess thrust out her neck, gazing at me with the true innkeeper's perspicacity a sort of happy medium between the instinct of the detective, the cunning of the spy, and the craft of the trader. "My dear Madame Lepas," I added, as I concluded, "you evidently know more, eh ? If not, why should you have come up here?" " Oh ! on an honest woman's word, as true as my name's Lepas "Don't swear; your eyes are big with a secret. You knew Monsieur de Merret. What sort of a man was he?" " Bless my soul ! Monsieur de Merret was a fine man, whom you never could see the whole of, he was so long; an excellent 3 20 ENGLISH COMPOSITION gentleman, who came here from Picardy, and who had his brains very near his cap, as we say here. He paid cash for everything, in order not to have trouble with anybody. You see, he was lively. We women all found him very agreeable." "Because he was lively?" I asked. " That may be," she said. " You know, monsieur, that a man must have had something in front of him, as they say, to marry Madame de Merret, who, without saying anything against the others, was the loveliest and richest woman in the whole province. She had about twenty thousand francs a year. The whole town went to her wedding. The bride was dainty and attractive, a real jewel of a woman. Ah ! they made a handsome couple at that time ! " "Did they live happily together?" " Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! yes and no, so far as any one could tell ; for, as you can imagine, we folks didn't live on intimate terms with them. Madame de Merret was a kind-hearted woman, very pleasant, who had to suffer sometimes perhaps from her husband's quick temper; but although he was a bit proud, we liked him. You see, it was his business to be like that ; when a man is noble, you know " "However, some catastrophe must have happened, to make Monsieur and Madame de Merret separate so violently?" "I didn't say there was any catastrophe, monsieur. I don't know anything about it." " Good ! I am sure now that you know all about it." " Well, monsieur, I'll tell you all I know. When I saw Monsieur Regnault come up to your room, I had an idea that he would talk to you about Madame de Merret in connection with La Grande Breteche. That gave me the idea of consulting with monsieur, who seems to me a man of good judgment and incapable of playing false with a poor woman like me, who never did any- body any harm, and yet who's troubled by her conscience. Up to this time I've never dared to speak out to the people of this neighbourhood, for they're all sharp-tongued gossips. And then, monsieur, I've never had a guest stay in my inn so long as you have, and to whom I could tell the story of the fifteen thousand francs." THE STORY 3 2I "My dear Madame Lepas," I said, arresting the flood of her words, " if your confidence is likely to compromise me, I wouldn't be burdened with it for a moment, for anything in the world." "Don't be afraid," she said, interrupting me; "you shall see." This eagerness on her part made me think that I was not the only one to whom my worthy hostess had communicated the secret of which I dreaded to be the only confidant, and I listened. "Monsieur," she began, "when the Emperor sent Spanish or other prisoners of war here, I had to board, at the expense of the government, a young Spaniard who was sent to Vendome on parole. In spite of the parole, he went every day to show himself to the subprefect. He was a Spanish grandee ! Nothing less ! He had a name in os and dia, something like Bagos de Feredia. I have his name written on my register; you can read it if you wish. He was a fine young man for a Spaniard, who they say are all ugly. He was only five feet two or three inches tall, but he was well-built ; he had little hands, which he took care of oh ! you should have seen; he had as many brushes for his hands as a woman has for all purposes ! He had long black hair, a flashing eye, and rather a copper-coloured skin, which I liked all the same. He wore such fine linen as I never saw before on any one, although I have enter- tained princesses, and among others General Bertrand, the Duke and Duchess d'Abrantes, Monsieur Decazes, and the King of Spain. He didn't eat much ; but he had polite and pleasant man- ners, so that I couldn't be angry with him for it. Oh ! I was very fond of him, although he didn't say four words a day, and it was impossible to have the slightest conversation with him ; if any one spoke to him, he wouldn't answer; it was a fad, a mania that they all have, so they tell me. He read his breviary like a priest, he went to mass and to all the services regularly. Where did he sit ? We noticed that later : about two steps from Madame de Merret's private chapel. As he took his seat there the first time that he came to the church, nobody imagined that there was any design in it. Besides, he never took his face off his prayer-book, the poor young man! In the evening, monsieur, he used to walk on the mountain, among the ruins of the chateau. That was the poor man's only amusement ; he was reminded of his own country there. They say that there's nothing but mountains in Spain. 322 ENGLISH COMPOSITION " Very soon after he came here he began to stay out late. I was anxious when he didn't come home till midnight; but we all got used to his whim; he would take the key of the door, and we wouldn't wait for him. He lived in a house that we have on Rue de Casernes. Then one of our stablemen told us that one night, when he took the horses to drink, he thought he saw the Spanish grandee swimming far out in the river, like a real fish. When he came back, I told him to be careful of the eel-grass; he seemed vexed that he had been seen in the water. At last, monsieur, one day, or rather one morning, we didn't find him in his room; he hadn't come home. By hunting carefully everywhere, I found a writing in his table drawer,, where there were fifty of the Spanish gold-pieces which they call portugaises, and which were worth about five thousand francs; and then there were ten thousand francs' worth of diamonds in a little sealed box. His writing said that in case he didn't return, he left us this money and his diamonds, on condition that we would found masses to thank God for his escape and his salvation. In those days I still had my man, who went out to look for him. And here's the funny part of the story: he brought back the Spaniard's clothes, which he found under a big stone in a sort of shed by the river, on the chateau side, almost opposite La Grande Breteche. "My husband went there so early that no one saw him; he burned the clothes after reading the letter, and we declared, ac- cording to Count Feredia's wish, that he had escaped. The sub- prefect set all the gendarmerie on his track, but, bless my soul! they never caught him. Lepas believed that the Spaniard had drowned himself. For my part, monsieur, I don't think it; I think rather that he was mixed up in Madame de Merret's business, seeing that Rosalie told me that the crucifix that her mistress thought so much of that she had it buried with her, was made of ebony and silver ; now, in the early part of his stay here, Monsieur Feredia had one of silver and ebony, which I didn't see afterwards. Tell me now, monsieur, isn't it true that I needn't have any re- morse about the Spaniard's fifteen thousand francs, and that they are fairly mine?" "Certainly. But did you never try to question Rosalie?" I asked her. THE STORY 323 " Oh ! yes, indeed, monsieur. But would you believe it? That girl is like a wall. She knows something, but it's impossible to make her talk." After conversing a moment more with me, my hostess left me beset by undefined and dismal thoughts, by a romantic sort of curiosity, a religious terror not unlike the intense emotion that seizes us when we enter a dark church at night and see a dim light in the distance under the lofty arches ; a vague figure gliding along, or the rustling of a dress or a surplice; it makes us shudder. La Grand Breteche and its tall weeds, its condemned windows, its rusty ironwork, its closed doors, its deserted rooms, suddenly appeared before me in fantastic guise. I tried to penetrate that mysterious abode, seeking there the kernel of that sombre story, of that drama which had caused the death of three persons. In my eyes Rosalie was the most interesting person in Vend6me. As I scrutinised her, I detected traces of some inmost thought, despite the robust health that shone upon her plump cheeks. There was in her some seed of remorse or of hope; her manner announced a secret, as does that of the devotee who prays with excessive fervour, or that of the infanticide, who constantly hears her child's last cry. However, her attitude was artless and natural, her stupid smile had no trace of criminality, and you would have voted her innocent simply by glancing at the large handkerchief with red and blue squares which covered her vigorous bust, con- fined by a gown with white and violet stripes. "No," I thought, "I won't leave Vendome without learning the whole story of La Grande Breteche. To obtain my end, I will become Rosalie's friend, if it is absolutely necessary." "Rosalie?" I said one evening. "What is it, monsieur?" "You are not married?" She started slightly. " Oh ! I sha'n't lack men when I take a fancy to be unhappy !" she said with a laugh. She speedily overcame her inward emotion; for all women, from the great lady down to the servant at an inn, have a self- possession which is peculiar to them. " You are fresh and appetising enough not to lack suitors. But 3 2 4 ENGLISH COMPOSITION tell me, Rosalie, why did you go to work in an inn when you left Madame de Merret's? Didn't she leave you some money?" "Oh, yes! but my place is the best in Vendome, monsieur." This reply was one of those which judges and lawyers call dilatory. Rosalie seemed to me to occupy in that romantic story the position of the square in the middle of the chessboard ; she was at the very centre of interest and of truth ; she seemed to me to be tied up in the clew ; it was no longer an ordinary case of attempting seduction ; there was in that girl the last chapter of a romance ; and so, from that moment, Rosalie became the object of my attentions. By dint of studying the girl, I observed in her, as in all women to whom we devote all our thoughts, a multitude of good qualities: she was neat and clean, and she was fine-looking that goes without saying; she had also the attractions which our desire im- parts to women, in whatever station of life they may be. A fort- night after the notary's visit, I said to Rosalie one evening, or rather one morning, for -it was very early: "Tell me all that you know about Madame de Merret." " Oh, don't ask me that, Monsieur Horace ! " she replied in alarm. Her pretty face darkened, her bright colour vanished, and her eyes lost their humid, innocent light. But I insisted. "Well," she rejoined, "as you insist upon it, I will tell you; but keep my secret ! " " Of course, of course, my dear girl ; I will keep all your secrets with the probity of a thief, and that is the most loyal probity that exists." " If it's all the same to you," she said, " I prefer that it should be with your own." Thereupon she arranged her neckerchief, and assumed the attitude of a story-teller ; for there certainly is an attitude of trust and security essential to the telling of a story. The best stories are told at a certain hour, and at the table, as we all are now. No one ever told a story well while standing, or fasting. But if it were necessary to reproduce faithfully Rosalie's diffuse eloquence, a whole volume would hardly suffice. Now, as the event of which she gave me a confused account, occupied, between the loquacity of the notary and that of Madame Lepas, the exact position of the THE STORY 325 mean terms of an arithmetical proportion between the two extremes, it is only necessary for me to repeat it to you in a few words. Therefore I abridge. The room which Madame de Merret occupied at La Grande Breteche was on the ground floor. A small closet, about four feet deep, in the wall, served as her wardrobe. Three months before the evening, the incidents of which I am about to narrate, Madame de Merret had been so seriously indisposed that her husband left her alone in her room and slept in a room on the first floor. By one of those chances which it is impossible to foresee, he returned home, on the evening in question, two hours later than usual, from the club to which he was accustomed to go to read the newspapers and to talk politics with the people of the neighbourhood. His wife supposed that he had come home, and had gone to bed and to sleep. But the invasion of France had given rise to a lively discussion ; the game of billiards had been very close, and he had lost forty francs, an enormous sum at Vendome, where everybody hoards money, and where manners are confined within the limits of a modesty worthy of all praise, which perhaps is the source of a true happiness of which no Parisian has a suspicion. For some time past Monsieur de Merret had contented him- self with asking Rosalie if his wife were in bed ; at the girl's reply, always in the affirmative, he went immediately to his own room with the readiness born of habit and confidence. But on return- ing home that evening, he took it into his head to go to Madame de Merret's room, to tell of his misadventure and perhaps also to console himself for it. During dinner he had remarked that Ma- dame de Merret was very coquettishly dressed ; he said to himself as he walked home from the club, that his wife was no longer ill, that her convalescence had improved her; but he perceived it, as husbands notice everything, a little late. Instead of calling Rosalie, who at that moment was busy in the kitchen, watching the cook and the coachman play a difficult hand of brisque, Monsieur de Merret went to his wife's room, lighted by his lantern, which he had placed on the top step of the stairs. His footstep, easily rec- ognised, resounded under the arches of the corridor. At the instant that he turned the knob of his wife's door, he fancied that he heard the door of the closet that I have mentioned close; but 326 ENGLISH COMPOSITION when he entered, Madame de Merret was alone, standing in front of the hearth. The husband naively concluded that Rosalie was in the closet; however, a suspicion, that rang in his ears like the striking of a. clock, made him distrustful; he looked at his wife and detected in her eyes something indefinable of confusion and dismay. " You come home very late," she said. That voice, usually so pure and so gracious, seemed to him slightly changed. He made no reply, but at that moment Rosalie entered the room. That was a thunderclap to him. He walked about the room, from one window to another, with a uniform step and with folded arms. "Have you learned anything distressing, or are you ill?" his wife timidly asked him, while Rosalie undressed her. He made no reply. "You may go," said Madame de Merret to her maid; "I will put on my curl-papers myself." She divined some catastrophe simply from the expression of her husband's face, and she preferred to be alone with him. When Rosalie was gone, or was supposed to be gone, for she stayed for some moments in the corridor, Monsieur de Merret took his stand in front of his wife, and said to her coldly: "Madame, there is some one in your closet?" She looked at her husband calmly, and replied simply: "No, monsieur." That "no" tore Monsieur de Merret's heart, for he did not be- lieve it ; and yet his wife had never seemed to him purer and more holy than she seemed at that moment. ' He rose to open the closet door; Madame de Merret took his hand, stopped him, looked at him with a melancholy expression, and said in a voice strangely moved : "If you find no one, reflect that all is at an end between us!" The indescribable dignity of his wife's attitude reawoke the gentleman's profound esteem for her, and inspired in him one of those resolutions which require only a vaster theatre in order to become immortal. " No," he said, " I will not do it, Josephine. In either case, we should be separated forever. Listen; I know all the purity of THE STORY 327 your soul, and I know that you lead the life of a saint, and that you would not commit a mortal sin to save your life." At these words, Madame de Merret looked at her husband with a haggard eye. " See, here is your crucifix ; swear to me before God that there is no one there, and I will believe you, I will never open that door." Madame de Merret took the crucifix and said: " I swear it." "Louder," said the husband, "and repeat after me: 'I swear before God that there is no one in that closet.'" She repeated the words without confusion. " It is well," said Monsieur de Merret coldly. After a moment's silence, " This is a very beautiful thing that I did not know you possessed," he said, as he examined the crucifix of ebony encrusted with silver and beautifully carved. "I found it at Duvivier's; when that party of prisoners passed through Vendome last year, he bought it of a Spanish monk." " Ah ! " said Monsieur de Merret, replacing the crucifix on the nail. And he rang. Rosalie did not keep him waiting. Mon- sieur de Merret walked hastily to meet her, led her into the em- brasure of the window looking over the garden, and said to her in a low voice: " I know that Gorenflot wants to marry you, that poverty alone prevents you from coming together, and that you have told him that you would not be his wife until he found some way to become a master mason. Well, go to him, and tell him to come here with his trowel and his tools. Manage so as not to wake anybody in his house but him ; his fortune will exceed your desires. Above all, go out of this house without chattering, or He frowned. Rosalie started, and he called her back. "Here, take my pass-key," he said. " Jean !" shouted Monsieur de Merret in the corridor, in a voice of thunder. Jean, who was both his coachman and his confidential man, left his game of brisque and answered the summons. " Go to bed, all of you," said his master, motioning to him to come near. And he added, but in an undertone: "When they 328 ENGLISH COMPOSITION are all asleep, asleep, do you understand, you will come down and let me know." Monsieur de Merret, who had not lost sight of his wife while giving his orders, calmly returned to her side in front of the fire, and began to tell her about the game of billiards and the discussion at the club. When Rosalie returned she found monsieur and madame talking most amicably. The gentleman had recently had plastered all the rooms which composed his reception apart- ment on the ground floor. Plaster is very scarce in Vendome, and the cost of transportation increases the price materially; so he had purchased quite a large quantity, knowing that he would readily find customers for any that he might have left. That circum- stance suggested the design which he proceeded to carry out. " Gorenflot is here, monsieur," said Rosalie in an undertone. "Let him come in," replied the Picard gentleman aloud. Madame de Merret turned pale when she saw the mason. "Gorenflot," said her husband, "go out to the carriage-house and get some bricks, and bring in enough to wall up the door of this closet ; you can use the plaster that I had left over, to plaster the wall." Then, beckoning Rosalie and the workman to him, he said in a low tone : " Look you, Gorenflot, you will sleep here to-night. But to-morrow morning you shall have a passport to go abroad, to a city which I will name to you. I will give you six thousand francs for your journey. You will remain ten years in that city ; if you are not satisfied there, you can settle in another city, provided that it is in the same country. You will go by way of Paris, where you will wait for me. There I will give you a guarantee to pay you six thousand francs more on your return, in case you have abided by the conditions of our bargain. At that price you should be willing to keep silent concerning what you have done here to-night. As for you, Rosalie, I will give you ten thousand francs, which will be paid to you on the day of your wedding, provided you marry Gorenflot; but, in order to be married, you will have to be silent; if not, no dower." " Rosalie," said Madame de Merret, " come here and arrange my hair." The husband walked tranquilly back and forth, watching the door, the mason, and his wife, but without any outward sign of THE STORY 3 2 9 injurious suspicion. Gorenflot was obliged to make a noise; Madame de Merret seized an opportunity, when the workman was dropping some bricks, and when her husband was at the other end of the room, to say to Rosalie : " A thousand francs a year to you, my dear child, if you can tell Gorenflot to leave a crack at the bottom. Go and help him," she said coolly, aloud. Monsieur and Madame de Merret said not a word while Goren- flot was walling up the door. That silence was the result of design on the husband's part, for he did not choose to allow his wife a pretext for uttering words of double meaning; and on Madame de Merret's part, it was either prudence or pride. When the wall was half built, the crafty mason seized a moment when the gentleman's back was turned, to strike his pickaxe through one of the panes of the glass door. That act gave Madame de Merret to understand that Rosalie had spoken to Gorenflot. At that mo- ment all three saw a man's face, dark and sombre, with black hair and fiery eyes. Before her husband had turned, the poor woman had time to make a motion of her head to the stranger, to whom that signal meant, "Hope!" At four o'clock, about daybreak, for it was September, the work was finished. The mason remained in the house under the eye of Jean, and Monsieur de Merret slept in his wife's chamber. In the morning, on rising, he said carelessly : " Ah ! by the way, I must go to the mayor's office for the passport." He put his hat on his head, walked towards the door, turned back and took the crucifix. His wife fairly trembled with joy. " He will go to Duvivier's," she thought. As soon as the gentleman had left the room, Madame de Merret rang for Rosalie; then, in a terrible voice, she cried: " The pickaxe ! the pickaxe ! and to work ! I saw how Gorenflot understood last night; we shall have time to make a hole, and stop it up." In a twinkling Rosalie brought her mistress a sort of small axe, and she, with an ardour which no words can describe, began to demolish the wall. She had already loosened several bricks, when, as she stepped back to deal a blow even harder than the preceding ones, she saw Monsieur de Merret behind her; she fainted. 330 ENGLISH COMPOSITION "Put madame on her bed," said the gentleman, coldly. Anticipating what was likely to happen during his absence, he had laid a trap for his wife; he had simply written to the mayor, and had sent a messenger to Duvivier. The jeweller arrived just as the disorder in the room had been repaired. "Duvivier," asked Monsieur de Merret, "didn't you buy some crucifixes from the Spaniards who passed through here?" "No, monsieur." "Very well; I thank you," he said, exchanging with his wife a tigerlike glance. " Jean," he added, turning towards his confidential valet, "you will have my meals served in Madame de Merret's room; she is ill, and I shall not leave her until she is well again." The cruel man remained with his wife twenty days. During the first days, w-hen there was a noise in the walled-up closet and Josephine attempted to implore him in behalf of the dying unknown, he replied, not allowing her to utter a word: "You have sworn on the cross that there was no one there." EMPHASIS IX THE STORY The directions for story-writing so far given regard the plot mainly, and they apply particularly to the work which must be done in the mind before the actual writing begins. The proper emphasis of the story also depends upon the handling of the plot, and here not only the preliminary planning, but also the actual execution of the tale must be controlled by a determination to get all the effectiveness possible out of a given number of words. Emphasis in the story, as in exposition, depends upon proportion and upon the arrangement of the materials. It is like the dis- position of colors in a picture. The painter achieves his desired result by giving the most space to the tone which is to be pre- vailing, and by giving to that same tone the most prominent positions. In a story, the writer who desires effective proportioning must have a care first of all for the antecedent action. This section of his narrative is not an integral portion of his tale ; it is a necessary evil which must be tucked away at the beginning. But if the tale THE STORY 33 ! is to be properly emphatic, it must not only be disposed of at the be- ginning, as coherence demands, it must be condensed until its total length is but a small percentage of the whole narrative. Other- wise it will absorb an undue share of the reader's attention, with this unfortunate result, that his interest may begin to flag just when the story proper gets under way. Or, to put the case from another point of view, the writer may expend his labor and his time upon this introduction, and then out of misapprehension or, if it is theme work, out of weariness, condense unduly the development and the climactic portion of his story. For coherence, then, tuck away your antecedent action at the beginning ; and for emphasis make it as brief as possible. La Grande Breteche is not a good model for the emphasis of proportion. It is in no sense unemphatic, but, for special purposes, the introduction to the story proper takes up an unusual amount of space. The other stories included in this chapter in narrative will show more clearly what space should be given under normal circumstances to the various parts of a story. But we are not through with emphasis. In a story, the causal relation between the incidents should all lead to a result which is both logical and striking. This result is the climax of the story. The climax should be the most emphatic moment in the tale. In order to be so, it must not only be the most significant moment in the story, it must also be placed where the most emphasis will fall upon it. This would naturally be the end. But the climax can seldom go to the very end of the tale. It consists of some unex- pected, though logical, happening, some sudden revelation of an interesting situation, some definitive event in the lives of the characters ; and after this happening, this revelation, or this event there is usually a final disposition of the characters which must be accomplished before the reader is willing to relinquish the tale. So the climax can seldom come to the end. Balzac's ingenious insertion of the subsequent action before his story proper began made it possible to secure the very conclusion for his climax. But in this respect also La Grande Breteche is exceptional, and the other stories of this chapter will supply much more typical instances. Locate, for example, the climax of The Man Who Was, and notice what comes after. Yet the climax must be as near the end as possible. If it is not, 332 ENGLISH COMPOSITION the reader will be bored by the excess of narrative which follows the highest point of the story, for when he knows what to expect, he is very nearly ready to stop. Or, if there are several climaxes and the strongest is not last, he will be disgusted by an anti-climax, that is, a moment of the story whose significance is out of proportion to the importance of the position which it holds. Put your main climax as near as may be to the very end. Finally, in the handling of a climax, as in the handling of every part of a story, innumerable refinements are possible. The modern short story particularly is a carefully organized variety of narrative in which, the practice of some of these refinements has raised technique to a high level of efficiency. A study of Markheim, where climax and conclusion are made to blend in the last words : " ' You had better go for the police,' said he ; 'I have killed your master,' " will show much more than the choice of a fitting position for the high point of the story. The student will see that all the emphasis in the tale is carefully reserved for this climax. Every sentence from the first on creates an expectancy of some striking conclusion, and does not discharge its full force until this end is reached. Just this is true, also, of The Cask of Amontillado, where the first words of the story, " The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge," look forward to the climax which they imply. This shift of all emphasis to the climax is merely one way of making the story more emphatic. The method is useful because the modern short story usually depends for success, not upon a chain of incidents, each a little more effective than its predecessors, as in Rip Van Winkle, but upon a single impression which is to be the total effect of the story. For practice, the old-fashioned tale, of which Rip Van Winkle is a typical example, is the most profit- able variety for a beginner to experiment with. But as soon as he masters the elements of Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis in nar- rative, he should attempt an impressionistic story, for in it he will have to exercise these three principles strenuously and to a high and perfect degree. THE STORY ,.,., THE MAN WHO WAS RUDYARD KIPLING Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. ' The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next. Dirkovitch was a Russian a Russian of the Russians who appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan, Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was tp be seen; so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to another till he fore- gathered with her Majesty's White Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones, who, individually and collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed drinks of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to be a superior man. The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition 334 ENGLISH COMPOSITION of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely even more than among the Black Tyrones. But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars were " My dear true friends," u Fellow-soldiers glorious," and "Brothers inseparable." He would unburden him- self by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized, after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday-school, or learn to vote save with swords for tickets. Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little, in- formation about his own Sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help- yourself fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be admired. \Vhen Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public senti- ment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married, she was not going to content herself with one of them. WTierefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment being by nature contradictious and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the last subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title. THE STORY 335 The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of per- sons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines, beautiful Martini- Henry carbines, that would cob a bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long riile. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and, since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver seven and one-half pounds of rupees, or sixteen pounds and a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from arm-racks; and in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them first for their own family vendettas, and then for contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon government must make it good but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the 'regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps, the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the ground. Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar 336 ENGLISH COMPOSITION team came, and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of the Punjab frontier force and all irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be learned; but, unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till death. The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table the same table that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten fight long and long ago the dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the daily risk of his life on ledge, snow-slide, and glassy grass-slope. The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters, who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch 's dull green uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own long, lathy down-country- men could account for in a fair charge. But one does not speak of these things openly. The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said: "Mr. Vice, the Queen," and Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered: "The Queen, God bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to pay their THE STORY 337 mess-bills. That sacrament of the mess never grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener where- ever he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his " brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point. Immediately after the little silence that follows on the ceremony, there entered the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not of course eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue-and-silver turban atop and the big black top-boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his saber, in token of fealty, for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of "Rung ho! Hira Singh!" (which being trans- lated means " Go in and win ! ") . " Did I whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?" "Shabash, Res- saidar Sahib !" Then the voice of the colonel: "The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!" After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular : " Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you ; but we were beaten." (" No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! H'sh!") "Then we will play you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his swora-hilt, and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. "But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we shall play it out side by side, though they" again his eye sought Dirkovitch " though they, I say, have fifty 338 ENGLISH COMPOSITION ponies to our one horse." And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that rang like a musket-butt on flag-stones, he sat down amid shoutings. Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy the terrible brandy aforementioned did not understand, nor did the expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira Singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamor might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch " reached back," after the American fashion a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team wondering how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain. "Carbine-stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his chair. " This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed him." The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as though something was being dragged. "Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant." The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed. "Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal. "Leastways 'e was crawlin' toward the barricks, sir, past the main-road sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turban- less, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough hand- ling. Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of brandy. " What does the sentry say?" said the colonel. "Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal. " So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant ! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost, you've no business " Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot. THE STORY 339 "Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the rag^bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four, and big in pro- portion. The corporal, seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep. Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath. "Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep, ' Ail AiT Nor is he of Hindoostan, for they weep, l Oh! Ho!' He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say, l Ow! Ou