ii; ii'ii', lililr I 'r '. 1 l! 111! ii: GIFT OF Walter Morr-ls Hart ENGLISH PROSE COMPOSITION WITH ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES By EDWARD FULTON, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English in the University of Illinois NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911 <^5 GIFT COPTRIQHT, 1911, BY HENEY HOLT AND COMPANY THE OUINN A BODEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N, J. PREFACE In the main, the present work is a revision of the author ^s Rhetoric and Composition, published some five or six years ago. A radical change of plan and the addition of a number of specimens of the different types of composition have seemed, however, to justify the use of a new title. The author wishes to repeat here his earlier acknowl- edgment of obligations to other writers in the same field. He wishes also to express his appreciation of the courtesy of the various publishers who have kindly permitted him to take illustrative material from works copjn'ighted or authoritatively published by them. MT76255 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.arGhive.org/details/englishprosecompOOfultrich CONTENTS PART I GENERAL PRINCIPLES PA6B 1. Writing An Art 1 Imitating good models— The study and application of principles. 2. Writing Implies Thinking 3 Composition a building up process — Sources of the writer's material — Individuality in writing — Import- ance of the habit of observing things. 3. Planning the Composition 6 How to secure unity— How to secure coherence— The management of the beginning and the ending. 4. Paragraphing 13 The function of the paragraph — The normal para- graph scheme — Developing the topic — Unity and coherence in the paragraph — The beginning and the ending— Length of the paragraph— Providing for transitions. 5. The Structure of the Sentence .... 28 Unity in the sentence— Length of the sentence— Co- herence in the sentence — Typical causes of incoher- ence — Interdependence of sentences in the para- graph — The need of variety — Emphasis in the sen- tence — The use of the periodic sentence. 6. The Choice op Words 43 For clearness— For accuracy— For force. V vi CONTENTS PART II WRITING WHICH AIMS TO ENLIGHTEN OR TO CONVINCE I PAGE General characteristics 51 II— EXPOSITION 1. Nature and Purpose of Expository Writing . 53 2. The Outline as an Aid in Exposition ... 54 Specimen outlines. 3. Exposition Which Aims to Define or to Classify . 58 The logical definition— Classification. 4. Descriptive and Illustrative Exposition . . 70 The description of a type-form— The explanation of a process — The illustration of a general law. 5. Literary Criticism 74 The criticism of a classic— The book review. III-SPECIMENS op EXPOSITION The Great Author .... Cardinal Newman 76 The Idea of a Gentleman . . . Cardinal Newman 77 Japanese Ancestor Worship . . . Lafcadio Hearn 80 The Kinds of Literature . . . W. H. Crawshaw 81 The Influence-of the Press in America . James Bryce 84 Ihe Gossamer Spider .... Charles Darwin 87 How to Make New Varieties of Plants The Garden Magazine 90 Protective Coloring Among Animals . . A. R. Wallace 94 Soil Wastage Through Tillage . . . N. S. Shaler 96 The Formation of Vapor Drops . . Frank H. Bigelow 98 A Sailor's Work R. H. Dana, Jr. 99 Why Mies Gather on the Screen Door . E. T. Brewster 101 The Law of Economy in Style . . . G. H. Lewes 102 Goldsmith William Hazlitt 106 Potash & Perlmutter (Review of) . James Oppenheim 108 CONTENTS vii IV— ARGUMENTATION PAGE 1. Nature and Purpose op Argumentative Writing 111 2. Conviction and Persuasion 113 3. The Proposition 117 4. Defining the Issues 119 5. Proof AND Evidence 125 The nature of proof — The kinds of evidence. 6. Refutation 132 Fallacies— Reductio ad absurdum. 7. The Brief as an Aid in Argumentation . . .136 Specimen briefs. 8. Deduction and Induction 144 The syllogism — The stages in inductive reasoning. v-specimens of argumentation SJwuld the Panama Canal be Fortijiedf . The Outlook 157 Fortifying the Canal The Nation 162 The Income Tax Amendment . . . Norris Brown 165 The Cause of Cleavage in Slates . . John Tyndall 176 PARI III WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE I General characteristics of writing that appeals to the Feelings — Expressiveness in the choice of words —Adaptation of words to each other . . . 185 II— DESCRIPTION 1. Nature and Purpose of Descriptive Writing . 191 2. Methods of Attaining Effectiveness in Description 196 A comprehensive grasp of the object essential— Suggestiveness in the selection and arrangement of details — Vividness in the choice of words. vUi CONTENTS III-SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION PAGE Charles Lamb T. N. Talfourd 213 Jfm Tox Charles Dickens 314 An English Stage Coach Driver . Washington Irving 215 The Interior of St. Mark's, Venice . . John Ruskin 216 A Sunday in London . . . Washington Irving 218 An Iceberg R. H. Dana, Jr. 220 The Sea Fogs R. L. Stevenson 221 The Grand Caflon of the Colorado . . John Burroughs 227 IV— NARRATION 1. Natube of Narrative Writing 233 3. Setting 234 3. Characterization 236 4. Action 243 5. Order op Events and Movement .... 248 V— SPECIMENS OF NARRATION Franklin's Account of His Early Studies Benjamin Franklin 256 The Chase Francis Parkman 263 Bip Van Winkle .... Washington Irving 269 The Ambitious Quest . . . Nathaniel Hawthorne 287 EXERCISES ■ ... 299 INDEX 315 ENGLISH PROSE COMPOSITION PAET I GENEEAL PRINCIPLES 1. WRITING AN ART To write effectively is an art that requires skill and practice. No man learns to write quite as he learns to talk, — that is, by instinctively imitating his elders. He must study the art and consciously direct his prac- tice toward the attainment of the end he has in view. To a certain extent, to be sure, every one who learns the art of writing does go through a sort of uncon- scious imitative process. '^ In any language that has been used for centuries as a literary instrument, the beginner,'' as Professor Minto says, '' cannot begin as if he were the first in the field. Whatever he pro- poses to write, be it essay or sermon or leading article, history or fiction, there are hundreds of things of the same kind in existence, some of which he must have read and cannot help taking more or less as patterns or models. ' ' ^ But this unconscious imita- tion does not, as a rule, carry a writer very far to- ward the mastery of his art. Study and consciously directed practice are as indispensable in acquiring mastery in this, as in every other art. * Principles of Prose Composition, p. 9. 2 , , . . . < ; , , GENERAL PRINCIPLES 'the general end of all writing is the communica- tion of thought and emotion. To communicate thought or emotion, now, one must use a language that is intelligible to those addressed. Hence the ability to write well presupposes a knowledge of the facts of the language one uses, — that is to say, its vocabulary and its grammar. If the mere communi- cation of thought or emotion were all that the writer ever concerned himself about, little more would be required of him than a knowledge of such facts as a dictionary and a grammar might teach him. Simply to let others know what we think or feel is not, how- ever, our only object in writing. We wish, usually, to produce some definite effect upon the reader, to stimulate his imagination, to stir his feelings, or to Influence his actions or beliefs ; but to do this by means of the written word is an art, and an art that must be cultivated. One way to cultivate this art is by selecting ex- amples of effective writing and deliberately imitating them. Stevenson, for instance, attained his mastery of the pen, as he tells us, only by dint of constant and severe practice and the imitating of good models : "All through boyhood and youth I was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw by the roadside. I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the feature of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I WRITING IMPLIES THINKING 3 thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written con- sciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author ... as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. . . . Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality." ^ Another way to learn to write is by studying the principles underlying effective discourse and follow- ing them out in practice. Hence the use of the text- book in composition. This, perhaps, is the safest way for beginners; but more advanced students ought to try both ways. The study and conscious imitation of good models gives one a standard by which one may measure his achievements, and without a stand- ard of some kind to serve as a guide or point of reference, it is difficult to know whether one is making progress or not. The young student is therefore ad- vised to begin with the study of a few general prin- ciples, which are best mastered from a text-book, and from simple exercises illustrating these principles, gradually to attempt the more difficult task of pro- ducing effects like those he appreciates and admires in the works of good writers. 2. WRITING IMPLIES THINKING It may be proper to remind the -young writer here that before he begins to learn to write, he ought to * See A College Magazine, 4 GENERAL PRINCIPLES begin to cultivate his powers of perceiving and think- ing. Invention must always precede composition. It is impossible to write a composition without ideas to start with. Unless one thinks, indeed, it is scarcely worth while trying to learn to write. The mere repetition of what has already been expressed is not composition. Composition is a building up process, and requires as its material either new thought find- ing expression for the first time, or old thought finding new and fresh expression. There are two sources whence a writer may derive his ideas; he may derive them from life or nature through his own observation and experience, or he may derive them from the writings of others. The one source is just as legitimate as the other, for re- flection upon the thought of others may be just as truly invention as direct observation. The mind in- vents either by direct contact with phenomena, or by reaction upon the results of the contact of other minds with phenomena. In both cases there is some- thing added to the world's stock of ideas, which is the really important thing in writing. The beginner should remember, of course, that if he borrows his thought from others he should expect to pay interest; and to do that, he must put his borrowed capital to productive use. That is to say, he must really add something to it; he must assimi- late it and give it out again in new combinations, or modified by his own thought. Then, and then only, will his borrowing be legitimate. The writer must always try to put as much of him- self into his work as he can. It is the individuality WRITING IMPLIES THINKING 5 of the writer that, in most cases, gives value to a piece of writing. In any case, the chances are that the closer the writer adheres to his own experience the better will his work be. With the beginner, of course, the value of his work lies rather in the dis- cipline it gives him than in the work itself ; but even here individuality is to be encouraged. Nothing de- velops self-confidence like the effort to stand alone, and nothing more quickly gives the beginner that sense of mastery over his material which it is the aim of every writer to possess than the practice of putting his own thought into presentable form. The difficulty most beginners experience when they try to depend upon themselves for their material is in finding something to say. They have nothing to say, they protest, when urged to make use of their own thought rather than that of others. They are, of course, mistaken. They have something to say if they only knew how to get at it ; no mind is an abso- lute blank. If they can do nothing else, they can at least open their eyes and describe what they see. A little effort will reveal the fact that there are plenty of things worth describing lying right before their eyes. John Burroughs, whose delightful sketches from nature every one knows, speaking of his de- scriptions, says: "I wish to give an account of a bird or a flower or of any open-air scene or incident. My whole effort is to see the thing just as it was. I ask myself, * Exactly how did this thing strike my mind? What was prominent? What was subordinated?' ... I set the thing down exactly as 6 GENERAL PRINCIPLES it fell out. People say, ' I do not see what you do when I take a walk/ But for the most part they do, but the fact as it lies there in nature is crude and raw; it needs to be brought out, to be passed through the heart and mind and presented in appropriate words." ^ If the young writer begins early the cultivation of habits of observation, of noting carefully the things he meets with in the world around him, he will soon have a fund of material to draw upon of the very best possible kind. He may not be able to describe what he sees as felicitously as does Mr. Burroughs, but he need never be at a loss for something to write about. As to his reading, he should cultivate in that also habits of observation. He should read critically, or as Emerson says, ** creatively. ' ' If he is writing on a subject that he must read up on, let him fill his mind with everything relating to it that he can lay his hands on, or, at any rate, that seems worth while ; then let him turn it over in his mind, assimilate it, and reflect upon it. After this, if there is a spark of originality in him it will make itself evident. 3. PLANNING THE COMPOSITION Having determined more or less exactly what it is he wishes to say, the writer must next address him- self to the task of giving his composition definite form and structure. In other words, the ideas he expresses must be unified and made coherent. A composition * Indoor Studies, p. 250. PLANNING THE COMPOSITION 7 is not a mere mass of material more or less closely bearing upon the subject in hand and strung together in a haphazard way. It must have organic character. All its parts must be bound together and must con- tribute toward the production of some given eiffect. That is to say, it must have a central idea running through it and furnishing, so to speak, the thread by which the various parts are bound together, — a vital principle of unity working in and through every part and becoming evident in the whole. This means that matter not strictly relevant to the subject in hand must be rigorously excluded. Irrel- evant matter is not only useless, it is worse than useless, for it is almost sure to cause the reader con- fusion, and it may, at times, even prevent him from getting the true point of the discourse. Practically, the best way to secure unity in the composition is to narrow the subject down as much as possible. Most beginners make the mistake of writing upon subjects of too great breadth. The broader the subject, the more numerous the points of view from which it may be regarded, and hence the greater the temptation for the novice to scatter his ideas, to say a little on this, that, and the other aspect of his subject, rather than to concentrate his attention upon some one definite line of thought. Unity requires concentration of effort on the part of the writer. It forbids him to dissipate his thought, to wander aimlessly from point to point and, as a result, arrive nowhere. It demands, rather, that he fix upon some definite point as the goal of his effort, and that he try to attain that goal. 8 GENERAL PRINCIPLES Suppose, for example, that the writer wishes to discuss the subject of football. There are a thousand and one different things that may be said about so broad a subject as this. No one, even if he were writing an encyclopedic article upon the subject, would want to say everything about it. What he should say on any given occasion will depend upon his point of view and the purpose he has in mind in writing upon the subject. Is he a football player who wishes to explain the game to a friend? Or is he an enthusiastic admirer of the game who wishes to defend it from hostile criticism in the public press ? The answers to these questions will determine the scope of the composition, the material that may be used, and the shape into which that material may be molded. In the one case, however, the subject will inevitably r arrow itself down to some such form as. How Football is Played ; in the other, to some such form as, The Popular Hostility to Football. The basis of all writing is personal experience, and as each man's experience is apt to be somewhat differ- ent from that of every other man, so each writer's manner of presenting a given subject is likely to be, in some respects, different from that which would be adopted by any other writer. No writer is a law unto himself, however. The material of every discourse must be fitted together in an orderly fashion of some kind or other. It must be made coherent. There must be no gaps or breaks in the composition. Each part must be in its proper place, — the place, that is, in which it will be most effective, — and the relation of the various parts to each other and to the PLANNING THE COMPOSITION 9 whole must be made obvious. If this is not so, if there is any want of connection or break in the train of thought, the mind of the reader will be unable to devote itself wholly to the consideration of the matter in hand, and the effectiveness of the composition will be to that extent impaired. The planning of a composition is thus a matter requiring some forethought. Good coherence in the composition cannot be secured without a plan. It is not necessary that this plan be always committed to paper. If the writer has it clearly in mind, that, in most cases, will suffice, though the sketching or outlining of the plan before actual composition has been begun is always advisable. The precise plan to be followed in any given com- position will depend, of course, upon the nature of the subject and the conditions under which it is treated. In general, however, the plan must be in keeping with the natural laws of the association of ideas. In narrative writing, for example, the natural order to follow in grouping the events of the story is the chronological order, the order in which the events happened in time. In descriptive composition, on the other hand, the writer may group his details accord- ing either to the principle of contiguity, or according to the principles of resemblance and of contrast; in fact, he may use all these principles in one and the same plan. As an illustration of a plan which follows the principle of contrast, take Burroughs 's essay on Dr. Johnson and Carlyle. Somewhat condensed, the es- say proceeds as follows: 10 GENERAL PRINCIPLES Glancing at a remark in the London Times, the author^ of Obiter Dicta, in his late essay on Dr. Johnson, asks : " Is it as plain as the 'old hill of Howth/ that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary the truth? " There are very many people, I imagine, who would be slow to admit that the " precise contrary " were the truth; yet it is a question not to be decided offhand. Both were great men, unquestionably, apart from their mere literary and scholastic accomplishments. Each made a profound impression by virtue of his force of character, his weight and authority as a person. ... As regards the genius, Carlyle ranks far above Johnson. Indeed the intellectual equipment of the two men, and the value of their contributions to literature, admit of hardly any comparison. But the question still is of the man, not of the writer. This^ is excellently said, and is true enough. ... If a man is born constitutionally unhappy, as both these men seem to have been, his suffering will be in proportion to the strength and vividness of the imagination ; and Carlyle's imagination, compared with Johnson's, was like an Arctic night with its streaming and flashing auroras, compared with the midnight skies of Fleet Street. Carlyle fought a Giant Despair all his life, and never for a moment gave an inch of ground. . . . Johnson fought many lesser devils, such as moroseness, laziness, irritability of temper, gloominess, and tendency to superstition. . . . What takes one in Johnson is his serious self -reproof and the perfect good faith in which he accuses himself. . . . Carlyle does not touch us in just this way, because his ills are more imaginary and his language more exaggerated. "What takes one in Carlyle is the courage and helpfulness that underlie his despair, the humility that underlies his * Mr. Augustine Birrell. 2 Referring to a quotation from Birrell. PLANNING THE COMPOSITION 11 arrogance, the love and sympathy that lie back of his violent objurgations and in a way prompt them. . . . Again, Johnson owed much more to his times than Carlyle did to his. . . . Johnson has survived his works. . . . Our interest in the man seems likely to be perennial. . . . Is it possible to feel as deep an interest in and admira- tion for Carlyle, apart from his works, as we do in Johnson? Different temperaments will answer differently. Some people have a natural antipathy to Carlyle, based, largely, no doubt, on misconception. But misconception is much easier in his case than in Johnson's. He was more of an exceptional being. He was pitched in too high a key for the ordinary uses of life. He had fewer infirmities than John- son, moral and physical. Johnson was a typical English- man, and appeals to us by all the virtues and faults of his race. . . . Both men had the same proud independence, the same fearless gift of speech, the same deference to authority or love of obedience. . . . Yet the fact remains that Johnson lived and moved and thought on a lower plane than Carlyle, and that he cherished less lofty ideals of life and of duty. It is probably true also that his presence and his conversa- tion made less impression on his contemporaries than did Carlyle's; but, through the wonderful Boswell, a livelier, more lovable, and more real image of him is likely to go down to succeeding ages than of the great Scotchman through his biographer. Important things for the writer to consider are the beginning and the ending of his composition. Ex- cept in books and treatises of considerable length, formal and extended introductions are quite out of place. Ordinarily, the writer should begin at once with the subject in hand. In very short compositions, 12 GENERAL PRINCIPLES he should always do so. The space at his disposal is usually all needed for the development of his theme, and should therefore be used for that purpose and for no other. Notice the directness with which Lowell, for example, begins his essay on Emerson the Lec- turer. ** It is a singular fact that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America. * * It is not always necessary to begin in this direct fashion, but, in general, it is a good way to begin. Begin at the real beginning and waste as little time on introductory matter as possible, — this is the safest of all rules for the young writer to follow. With regard to the ending, a somewhat similar rule may be given. End when everything that it is really necessary to say has been said. Never pro- long a composition beyond its natural and proper close. A good ending should leave the reader satisfied, neither surprised at its suddenness nor impatient that it is long drawn out. As a rule, the ending should have something of the nature of a climax; that is, the interest in the composition should heighten steadily toward the end and be greatest at, or near, the con- clusion. 4. PARAGRAPHING All compositions, except the very shortest, have subdivisions, called paragraphs, in which are discussed the various topics coming under the general subject. When the composition is reduced to its lowest terms, — that is, when it consists of but a single paragraph, — the paragraph becomes, of course, identical with the whole composition; but ordinarily it is a subdivision of the PARAGRAPHING 13 whole composition, and its function is the facilitating of the discussion of the subject by providing a means of taking up, one by one, the several topics into which the subject may be divided. Practically, therefore, the paragraph is the working unit of discourse; for, although the sentence is the ultimate unit of expressed thought, compositions are built up paragraph by para- graph, rather than sentence by sentence. Good paragraphing, it should be needless to say, is an essential part of good writing. There is no truer test of clear thinking on the part of the writer than good paragraphing in his composition. Para- graphs do not take shape of their own accord. They are not the result of spontaneous effort, as sentences often are. They are, on the contrary, the result of con- scious prevision or planning. In writing a paragraph, one must have clearly in mind, not only his topic but everything he wishes to say in developing that topic. If he would hope to produce a given effect, he must foresee the end from the beginning, and he must not leave anything to chance. All paragraphs are not, of course, planned alike. The great majority of normal paragraphs, however, conform more or less closely to one and the same scheme, which may be outlined as follows: (1) the statement of the topic; (2) the development or dis- cussion of the topic; and (3) the conclusion. Observe how closely the following paragraphs, for example, conform to this scheme: The great error in Rip^s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would 14 GENERAL PRINCIPLES sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor, even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word. Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.^ To go light is to play the game fairly. The man in the woods matches himself against the forces of nature. In the towns he is warmed and fed and clothed so spontaneously and easily that after a time he perforce begins to doubt himself, to wonder whether his powers are not atrophied from disuse. And so, with his naked soul, he fronts the wilderness. It is a test, a measuring of strength, a proving of his essential pluck and resourcefulness and manhood, an assurance of man's highest potency, the ability to endure and to take care of himself. In just so far as he substitutes the ready-made of civilization for the wit-made of the for- est, the pneumatic bed for the balsam boughs, in just so far is he relying on other men and other men's labor to take care of him. To exactly that extent is the test invalidated. He has not proved a courteous antagonist, for he has not stripped to the contest. ^ The average paragraph has not, perhaps, quite so regular a construction as those just cited, both of which 1 From living's Rip Van Winkle. 2 From Stewart Edward White's TM Forest. PARAGRAPHING 15 have an explicit statement of the topic in the first sentence and a clearly defined conclusion. Still, it tends in the direction of the type form outlined above, and departs from that form only because of the neces- sity of avoiding monotony. Owing to the need of variety, we find the set conclusion frequently omitted and the topic stated in some other sentence than the opening one, or even left without explicit statement at all. In this last case the paragraph must be so constructed that the reader will have no difficulty in formulating the topic for himself. In the following paragraph, for example, there is no statement of the topic, but the reader easily perceives what the para- graph is about : As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Ship ton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the re- peated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon ex- changing his own riding-horse, " Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of " Five Spot " with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.^ *From Bret Harte's Outcasts of Poker Flat, 16 GENERAL PRINCIPLES The method of developing the paragraph topic will depend, obviously, upon the nature of the topic and the purpose of the paragraph. In narrative and de- scriptive writing, the method of development consists ordinarily in grouping together details according to the principle of their time or space relations, or according to the principles of resemblance and of con- trast. In the first of the following narrative para- graphs, for example, we have a fairly clear statement of the topic at the beginning and then a grouping together of the events illustrating it according as they happened in time; in the second, no topic is expressed, but one is implied in the opening sentences and fully developed later through the enumeration of the various incidents arising out of the situation depicted : The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired *'on which side he voted? " Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, " Whether he was Federal or Democrat ? " Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, gjade his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "What brought him to PARAGRAPHING 17 the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village ? " " Alas ! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him! " ^ Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the dis- posal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion. " We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together." The cheerful gaiety of the young man and Mr. Oakhurst's calm infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid of pine-boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roof- less cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the rearrange- ment of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheek through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to " chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had pru- dently cached. " And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky," said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it was " square fun." ^ The typical method of development in the descrip- tive paragraph, — that is, by means of the systematic grouping of the striking or characteristic details of the object, — may be illustrated by the following: * From living's Rip Van Winkle. 2 From Bret Harte's Outcasts of Poker Flat, 18 GENERAL PRINCIPLES I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick-set, like a little bull, — a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large, blunt head ; his muzzle black as night, a tooth or two — being all he had — gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leigh- ton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, — if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long, — the mobility, the instantaneousness, of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its ex- pressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it were of the oddest and swiftest.^ Development in the descriptive paragraph by means of contrast or comparison may be observed in the fol- lowing : Rosamund and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet table near the window while Rosamund took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied little touches of her finger-tips to her hair — hair of infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs — 1 From John Brown's Rob and His Friends* PARAGRAPHING 19 the one in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children at Middlemarch looked blonde by the side of Rosamund, and the slim figure displayed by her riding habit had delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some called her an augel. Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner! she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn ; her stature was low ; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues.^ Expository and argumentative paragraphs are, as a rule, somewhat different in structure from descrip- tive and narrative paragraphs. The topic is more commonly expressed here than in the descriptive or narrative paragraph, and the development may take other forms. Besides the forms of development al- ready mentioned, — ^those of enumerating details or particulars and of comparing or contrasting, — ^we may have the development in expository and argumenta- tive paragraphs take, for example, one or more of the following forms: (1) the defining or fixing the limits of the topic; (2) the amplifying or enlarging upon the content of the topic; (3) the citing of in- stances or examples for the purpose of illustrating, or making application of, a truth or principle laid down in the topic sentence; (4) the specifying of * From George Eliot's Middlemarch, 20 GENERAL PRINCIPLES reasons for, or the causes or results of, something expressed in the topic sentence. Other methods of development might be mentioned, but these are, per- haps, the most common. A few examples will suffice. (1) Development by the method of definition : The kinetic theory of gases is now generally accepted by men of science, and all modern investigations of the mathe- matical relations of molecular forces and centers are based upon this theory. It asserts that a gas consists of a collec- tion of molecules, simple or compound, which are in ex- tremely rapid motion and which intermingle freely, coming into collision with each other, probably, and certainly with the confining surfaces of the chamber in which they may be contained, with a violence which depends upon their velocities; which velocities, in turn, are determined by the temperature of the mass. In fact, the supposed motion of these particles is that mode of motion known as heat. The intermolecular spaces, and hence the free paths of the mole- cules, are comparatively large, and each molecule moves over distances of considerable length, as compared to its own diameter, on the average, without collision with its neighbor molecules; but the continual motion of all pro- duces great variations in the momentary distances of particle from particle, and while the mean density of the mass at any point is preserved, the number of molecules within any prescribed space is never the same at any two consecutive instants.^ (2) Development by the method of amplification: Yet one more cause of failure in our lives here may be briefly spoken of — the want of method or order. Men do * From R. H. Thurston's Beat as a Form of Energy, PARAGRAPHING 21 not consider sufficiently, not merely what is suited to the generality, but what is suited to themselves individually. They have different gifts and therefore their studies should take a different course. One man is capable of continuous thought and reading, while another has not the full use of his faculties for more than an hour or two at a time. It is clear that persons so differently constituted should pro- ceed on a different plan. Again, one man is gifted with powers of memory and acquisition, another with thought and reflection; it is equally clear that there ought to be a corresponding difference in the branches of study to which they devote themselves. Things are done in half the time and with half the toil when they are done upon a well-considered system; when there is no waste and noth- ing has to be unlearned. As mechanical forces pressed into the service of man increase a hundredfold more and more his bodily strength, so does the use of method, — of all methods which science has already invented (for as actions are con- stantly passing into habits so is science always being con- verted into method) — of all the methods which an indi- vidual can devise for himself, enlarge and extend the mind. And yet how rarely does any one ever make a plan of study for himself — or a plan of his own life.* (3) Development by citing instances of the truth of a principle: Historians and philosophers have not infrequently re- marked that the stress of war results in the advancement of science and learning. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt carried in its train the unlocking of the mysteries of the hiero- glyphs and the production of the great work " Description de I'Egypte." More recently the foundation of the Uni- 1 From Benjamin Jowett's College Sermons. 22 GENERAL PRINCIPLES versity of Strassburg signalized the close of the Franco- Prussian War, while the establishment of the Johns Hop- kins University was a direct resultant of the war between the States, and was intended, at least in the mind of the founder, to assist in healing the breaches this had created.^ (4) Development by giving reasons for accepting a proposition: Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place— and a prominent place — in any scheme of education worthy of the name. Leave out the physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject-matter would best develop his powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the deepest importance for his own and others* welfare; blind to the richest sources of beauty in God's creation; and unprovided with that belief in a living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through endless change and variety, which might serve to cheek and moderate that phase of despair which, if he take an earnest interest in social problems, he will assuredly sooner or later pass.^ As the paragraph is, in a v^ay, a miniature com- position in itself, the laws of unity and coherence must be observed in its structure just as carefully as in that of the larger whole. A paragraph, therefore, should have but one topic, and everything in it should relate to that topic and to nothing else. The para- graph exists, in fact, as we have seen, solely for the purpose of dealing in an orderly fashion with the ^ From Scribner's Magazine, January, 1904. * From Huxley's Essays. PARAGRAPHING 23 various topics which spring out of the general sub- ject ; and that it may be effective, it should deal with only one of them at a time. Observe, in the following paragraph, for example, how carefully the writer keeps to his topic : The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judi- cious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he gives to the truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the opera- tion of laws, of reUgion, and of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases or a few extracts from statistical documents, but by appropriate images presented in every line.^ No irrelevant matter is brought in here, no digres- sions are made, but everything made to bear upon the particular point under discussion. Hence the effect- iveness of the paragraph. *From Macaulay*s Essay on Eistory, 24 GENERAL PRINCIPLES Not only must the paragraph be properly unified; it must also be made coherent. There must be some principle of sequence observed in passing from point to point in the development. This means that the same point of view must be maintained throughout the paragraph, and that all minor details be kept strictly subordinated to the main details. Special attention should be given to the beginning and the ending, for upon the management of these depends, in no small measure, the effectiveness of the paragraph as a whole. What particular detail should be placed at the beginning and what at the end, will depend upon the circumstances of the case. Other things being equal, however, the end will give more emphasis to a point than the beginning. Effec- tive devices for making the conclusion emphatic are the employment of a short, summarizing sentence at the end ; restatement of the topic, either in the same or in other words; and inversion, or arranging the sen- tences of the paragraph in such a way as to bring the topic sentence last. Examples of these devices are given below : (1) Ending a short summarizing sentence: So talks the sender with noise and deliberation. It is the Morse code working — ordinary dots and dashes which can be made into letters and words, as everybody knows. With each movement of the key bluish sparks jump an inch be- tween the two brass knobs of the induction coil, the same kind of coil and the same kind of sparks that are familiar in experiments with the Roentgen rays. For one dot, a single spark jumps; for one dash there comes a stream of sparks. One knob of the induction coil is connected with the earth, PARAGRAPHING 25 the other with the wire hanging from the masthead. Each spark indicates a certain oscillating impulse from the elec- trical battery that actuates the coil; each one of these im- pulses shoots through the aerial space by oscillations of the ether, traveling at the speed of light, or seven times around the earth in a second. That is all there is in the sending of these Marconi messages.^ (2) Ending a restatement of the topic: Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning, if we determine to begin with proof. We shall ever be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into textu- aries. We shall never get at our first principles. Resolve to believe nothing, and you must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, sinking further and further, and finding "in the lowest depth a lower deep," till you come to the broad bosom of scepticism. I would rather be bound to defend the reasonableness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demonstrate a moral governance from the physical world. Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith.^ (3) Ending a placing of the topic sentence last: The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind ^ was in- fallible. We may rely upon it that we shall not improve 1 From an article by Cleveland Moffatt in McClure's Magazine. 2 From Newman's Discussions and Arguments. 5 Matthew Arnold, from whose essay on Wordsworth this ex- ample is taken, had remarked in the preceding paragraph that Wordsworth's classification of his poems is ingenious but far- fetched. 26 GENERAL PRINCIPLES upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two cate- gories a poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a predom- inant note, which determines the poem as belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the best proof of the value of the classification, and of the advan- tage of adhering to it. Wordsworth's poems will never produce their due effect until they are freed from their present artificial arrangement, and grouped more naturally. As to the length to which a paragraph may be permitted to run, no strict rule can be laid down. In general it is wise to avoid very long paragraphs. Whenever a paragraph extends over several pages, it will usually be found either lacking somewhat in unity, or developed beyond the limits marked b^ the importance of its topic with regard to the subject of the composition. In any case, if it is too long to be at once mentally reviewed and grasped as a whole, it is too long to be effective. The modem theory of paragraphing really hinges upon the fact that a paragraph should be an organic part of the discourse small enough for the mind to take it in as a whole at one moment of time. On the other hand, frequent very short paragraphs should likewise be avoided, since they tend to give a ** scrappy '' effect to a discourse. Here, as in all things, the golden mean is the rule to follow. WTien all has been said about the structure of the PARAGRAPHING 27 paragraph, considered as a unit by itself, the fact must not be overlooked that the paragraph is in reality but a part of a larger whole, and that therefore it must be so shaped that it will fit properly into its appointed place. Each paragraph of the composi- tion must be properly linked with the adjoining para- graphs, so that the reader may be able to pass easily from one topic to another. In other words, the tran- sitions between paragraphs must be made smooth and natural. One way of securing good transitions — and perhaps the best way — is to shape every paragraph so that the end of it will seem to suggest that which is to follow. When this is impossible or undesirable, tran- sition from one paragraph to another may be made by means of some word or phrase of backward refer- ence placed at or near the beginning of the second paragraph. Good illustrations of smooth and natural transitions may be seen, for example, in the following : Sometimes, in addressing men who sincerely desire the betterment of our public affairs, but who have not taken active part in directing them, I feel tempted to tell them that there are two gospels which should be preached to every reformer. The first is the gospel of morality; the second is the gospel of efficiency. To decent, upright citizens it is hardly necessary to preach the doctrine of moraUty as applied to the affairs of public life. . . . The first requisite in the citizen who wishes to share the work of our public life ... is that he shall act disinterestedly and with a sincere purpose to serve the whol6 commonwealth. 28 GENERAL PRINCIPLES But disinterestedness and honesty and unselfish desire to do what is right are not enough in themselves. A man must not only be disinterested, but he must be efficient. . . . He must stand firmly for what he believes, and yet he must realize that political action, to be effective, must be the joint action of many men, and that he must sacrifice some- what of his own opinions to those of his associates if he ever hopes to see his desires take practical shape. The prime thing that every man who takes an interest in politics should remember is that he must act, and not merely criticise the actions of others. . . . We need fearless criticism of our public men and public parties; . . . but it behooves every man to remember . . . that, in the end, prog- ress is accomplished by the man who does the things, and not by the man who talks about how they ought or ought not to be done. Therefore the man who wishes to do good in his com- munity must go into active political life. . . . He may find that he can do best by acting within a party organiza- tion; he may find that he can do best by acting ... in an independent body of some kind; but with some association he must act if he wishes to exert any real influence.^ 5. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE The sentence, like the paragraph, is but a part of a larger whole, and the writer in fashioning it must always keep this fact in mind. Every sentence has a certain function to perform in the paragraph, and its structure must be such as will enable it to perform that function properly. 1 From Theodore Roosevelt's The Manly Virtues and Practi- cal Politics. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 29 Considered as a unit by itself, the sentence, like any other unit of expressed thought, must have, of course, definiteness of form and coherence. It must have, that is to say, at least one independent verb, and it must have its component parts so arranged that the relation of each to other is apparent at a glance, and it must, further, be contained within rather nar- row limits as regards space. The sentence that has no verb that can stand alone is not, properly speak- ing, a sentence at all. On the other hand, an in- definitely prolonged series of more or less loosely articulated clauses, is just as objectionable ; a sentence that goes everywhere and takes in everything usually fails to accomplish anything. The first rule of the sentence — that it must be the expression of one complete thought, and only one — is easily enough observed, of course, in the simple sentence, which has only one subject and one predicate; and even in the complex sentence, where there is only one main assertion, formal unity at least may always be secured, though logical unity will be lacking if to the main assertion are joined subordinate assertions not really related to it. In the compound sentence, however, the question of unity often arises. Are the assertions which one wishes to join together in a single sentence intimately enough related to form parts of a larger whole, or do they lack that intimate relationship? This is a question which nearly every writer has to ask himself occasionally, and for the beginner it is sometimes a troublesome one. Very often it is a mere matter of punctuation. Should one use a comma or semicolon, or a period between 30 GENERAL PRINCIPLES such and such clauses? It is impossible to lay down any rule that will cover all cases; but in general it may be said that the law of unity for the compound sentence demands not only that there be a close con- nection between the parts, but that the meaning ex- pressed by the whole be different from that which would have been expressed by the parts, if each were taken separately. Such a sentence as the following, for example, violates every principle of unity : Some parts of the lake are very deep, as is the case with most of the Wisconsin lakes, and deep down in these holes amongst the reeds the muskallonge makes his home, and I know no better sport than to get out early in the morning with a deep troll baited with salt pork and wait for the big fellows to strike. It is impossible to unify such utterly disconnected assertions as ** some parts of a certain lake in Wis- consin are very deep,'^ and ** trolling for muskallonge in the early morning is excellent sport. *' But whether a given series of assertions which are intimately con- nected should be grouped together in one sentence or kept apart in separate sentences, will depend upon the precise shade of meaning which the writer wishes to convey, or upon the structure of the paragraph of which they are to form a part. The point may be illustrated by the following pas- sages from Macaulay : (a) Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. But the danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the Third of Spain had early conceived THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 31 a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples. An English Captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that, within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bom- bardment would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion to the English name. He was at length in a situation to gratify that passion. He had re- cently become King of Spain and the Indies. (b) Five years after the death of Prince Frederic, the public mind was for a time violently excited. But this ex- citement had nothing to do with the old disputes between Whigs and Tories. England was at war with France. The war had been feebly conducted. Minorca had been torn from us. Our fleet had retired before the white flag of the House of Bourbon. A bitter sense of humiliation, new to the proudest and bravest of nations, superseded every other feeling. The cry of all the counties and great towns of the realm was for a government which would retrieve the honor of the English arms. In the first passage, the coordinate clauses of the sentence italicized might very well, so far as they themselves are concerned, have been made separate sentences. The various assertions have not, as is the case with those of the preceding sentence, that intimate relation with each other which makes it impossible to disjoin them: they are not separate assertions with regard to one act, but assertions deal- ing with separate and distinct acts. Consequently, 32 GENERAL PRINCIPLES each might have been made an independent sentence. From the point of view of their relation to the topic of the paragraph, however, they ought obviously to be taken together ; hence the writer has made a single sentence of them. In the second passage, however, a similar series of assertions — the series italicized — has been treated differently. The assertions in this series might properly enough have been grouped in one sentence. The first sentence states a general truth, the two following give illustrative particulars, and the fourth presents the consequence. All are closely re- lated. But the writer's purpose in the paragraph is to bring out as strongly as he can the fact that the public mind of England was for a time violently ex- cited in consequence of the conduct of the war; and to do this, he emphasizes as much as possible the causes of the excitement by mentioning each in a separate sentence. The result is analogous to the cumulative effect of a series of blows delivered in rapid succession. As to the number of related assertions that may be grouped together in a single sentence, nothing definite can be said. Neither can anything definite be said as to what should be the length of the average sen- tence. It depends a little on the writer's individu- ality, though more, perhaps, on the nature of the sub- ject. A rough calculation based on passages of about one thousand words each, selected at random from Macaulay 's Essay on Milton, Newman 's Idea of a Uni- versity, and Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, shows an average sentence length of about twenty-six, thirty, and thirty-nine words, respectively. The sub- THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 33 jects treated here are similar in their nature, and the difference in sentence length is due mainly to the dif- ference in the individuality of the writers, Macaulay being evidently much fonder of the short sentence than Matthew Arnold. Again, making a similar calcula- tion from passages of the same length from two of Stevenson's works, — Virginibus Puerisque, on the one hand, and Treasure Island, on the other, — the results show an average sentence length of thirty-four and thirty words, respectively. Here the difference is due solely to the nature of the subject. As we should suppose, the long sentence is much more often used in discourses of a serious nature than in those of lighter character. The natural tend- ency of the long sentence is to give weight and strength to the style; that of the short sentence — provided it does not go to an extreme — is to give lightness, ease, and flexibility. Notice, for example, the difference in style between the two following pas- sages, — the one from Darwin 's Origin of Species, with its average of fifty-nine words to the sentence, the other from Stevenson 's Treasure Island, with its aver- age of only twenty-two words to the sentence : On the ordinary view of each species having been inde- pendently created, why should specific characters, or those by which the species of the same genus differ from each other, be more variable than generic characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the color of a flower be more likely to vary in any one species of a genus, if the other species possess differently colored flowers, than if all possessed the same colored flowers? If species are only well-marked varieties, of which the characters have 34 GENERAL PRINCIPLES become in a high degree permanent, we can understand this fact J for they have abeady varied since they branched off from a common progenitor in certain characters, by which they have come to be specifically different from each other; therefore these same characters would be more likely again to vary than the generic characters which have been inher- ited without change for an immense period. It is inexpli- cable on the theory of creation why a part developed in a very unusual manner in one species alone of a genus, and therefore, as we may naturally infer, of great impor- tance to that species, should be eminently liable to variation ; but, on our view, this part has undergone, since the several species branched off from a common progenitor, an unusual amount of variability and modification, and therefore we might expect the part generally to be still variable. But a part may be developed in the most unusual manner, like the wing of a bat, and yet not be more variable than any other structure, if the part be common to many subordinate forms, that is, if it has been inherited for a very long period; for in this case it will have been rendered constant by long-continued natural selection.^ At last I came right down upon the borders of the clear- ing. The western end was already steeped in moonshine; the rest, and the blockhouse itself, still lay in a black shadow, checkered with long, silvery streaks of light. On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers, and shed a steady, red reverberation, con- trasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul stirring, nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze. I stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great * From Darwin's Origin of Species. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 35 fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood; and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while I was absent. I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade. To make assurance surer, I got upon my hands and knees, and crawled, without a sound, toward the corner of the house. As I drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. It was not a pleasant noise in itself, and I have often complained of it at other times; but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful " All's well," never fell more reassuringly on my ear/ As a rule, the beginner will do well to avoid the very long sentence. Apart from the fact that it is apt to be somewhat lacking in unity, it is more difficult to handle than the short sentence or sentence of medium length. In the average short sentence or sentence of medium length, the problem of securing good coherence is not usually one that troubles the writer very much. If the rules of grammar are duly observed, that fact settles, in the majority of cases perhaps, what part shall be joined to what other part, and where each part shall be placed. In the longer and more involved sentence, however, some care is usually necessary, if good coherence is to be secured. The beginner must not suppose, of course, that he can dispense with all forethought in any case. Even in the simplest sentence, not only must the parts be 1 From Stevenson's Treasure Island. 36 GENERAL PRINCIPLES so arranged as to bring the meaning out clearly, but so, also, as to enable the sentence to fit properly into its particular niche in the paragraph. The general rule for coherence in the sentence is that those parts which are most closely related in thought should be most closely related in position. This presupposes that the various sentence elements all have their proper shape, and that the question is simply one of obtaining the right order or arrange- ment of the parts. In the following examples, there is incoherence resulting from placing some part of the sentence in a wrong position, but it can easily be remedied by a rearrangement : He was only good when he was happy. (Should read, good only.) I lived under the dread of being discharged for five months. (Should read, I lived five months under, etc.) Haman is accused of threatening the Jews by Esther in the presence of the king, and is ordered to be hanged. (Should read, Haman is accused hy Esther in the presence, etc.) Almost every year the question as to whether the colleges should dispense with professional football coaches comes up. (Should read, Almost every year the question com,es up as to, etc.) The widely prevalent idea that a farmer can hardly be- come wealthy who devotes his time entirely to the pursuit of agriculture, is an erroneous one. (Should read, The . . . idea that a farmer who devotes his time . . . to . . . agri- culture can hardly become wealthy, is an erroneous one.) He was probably a boy about sixteen years of age. (Should read, He was a hoy probably about sixteen years of age.) THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 37 Incoherence often results, however, from some fault in the construction of the sentence, and in this case it can be remedied only by remodeling the sentence. Typical causes of such incoherence are : (1) The employment of a loose or dangling modi- fier: While making excavations there not long ago, between fifteen and twenty marble images were uncovered. (Should read, While they were making, etc., or, While making ex- cavations . . . they uncovered, etc.) Accustomed to regular living, our Bohemian mode of living disturbed him greatly. (Should read, As he was ac- customed, etc., or Accustomed . . ., he was greatly dis- turbed by our Bohemian, etc.) Being a freshman, it was expected that I should join the other members of the class in retaliating on the sopho- mores. (Should read. Being a freshman, I was expected to join, etc.) After reading the book through, one^s first impression is confirmed. (Should read. After one has read, etc.) He has to work ten hours a day, thus having no time for recreation. (Should read. He has to work . . ., and thus has, etc.) (2) Faulty coordination or subordination of clauses : The first to answer our advertisement was a strong- looking Swedish girl who could not speak a word of Eng- lish, and we knew we could not get along with her. ( Should read, The first . . . was o . . . Swedish girl, hut as she could not speak a word of English, we knew, etc.) He has sent me a civil enough letter, but implying that he is prepared to go the length of taking legal action iq 38 GENERAL PRINCIPLES the matter. (Should read, He has sent me a civil enough letter, hut hints, etc., or, The letter he has sent me is civil enough, hut it implies, etc.) At his friend's house, he met a number of people gathered together, apparently, for the purpose of having a good time, and who welcomed him with open arms. (Should read, At his friend's house, he met a number of people who had come together, etc.) (3) The failure to make sentence elements that are similar in meaning or function, similar also in form: She shows us the gentle nature which he possessed, but that he could be driven into terrible passions. (Should read, She shows us that he possessed a gentle nature, but that, etc.) I intended to devote my energies, first to straightening out the tangle in my finances, and then to the building up of a good business. (Should read, I intended to devote my energies, first to the straightening out of, etc., or, I in- tended to devote my energies, first to straightening out . . ., and then to building up, etc.) By this foundation is meant not only the knowledge gained, but it also includes the training in methods of study which one acquires through taking regular work. (The words " it " and " includes " should be omitted, since they change the construction of "training," which should have the same construction as "knowledge.") (4) Faulty comparisons: He was the man of all others in the world I had most longed to see. (Should read, He of all men was the man, etc., or. Of all men in the world, he was the man, etc.) THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 39 His work is as good, if not better than, the average. (Should read, His work is as good as the average, if not better.) No course of action could be better suited to our purposes, or so well calculated to strengthen our position, than that. (Should read. No course of action could be better suited to our purposes, or better calculated, etc.) (5) Improper abbreviations or omissions: We had such fun as only the light-hearted can. (Supply " have " after " can.") When he hears that you are going, he will too. (Supply "go" after "will.") They had neither respect nor confidence in his opinion. (Supply "for" after "respect.") Incoherence in the sentence not infrequently re- sults, also, from the failure to punctuate the sentence properly. As a general rule, the parts of a sentence should be so constructed and so placed that the proper understanding of their relation to each other will not be dependent vrhoUy on the presence or absence of punctuation marks, but it is not always possible to manage this easily. Besides, punctuation marks are always a legitimate, and sometimes a necessary, means of indicating the relationship between sentence ele- ments. It behooves a writer, therefore, to look care- fully to his punctuation. In the following sentence, for instance, the absence of a punctuation mark after ** do " may mislead the reader, at least for the mo- ment, as to the relation subsisting between the clause introduced by * * for ' ' and that which precedes it ; 40 GENERAL PRINCIPLES That is not an easy thing to do for those who conform to the law soon find themselves confronted by rapidly dimin- ishing profits. The beginner has already been reminded that the sentence, like the paragraph, is but a part of a larger whole, and that therefore its form will, to a certain extent, be determined by its position or function in that whole. Hence the writer must aim to construct sentences not only good in themselves, but capable of fitting into their proper places in the paragraph. A given sentence is almost always bound up with a number of other sentences which add, in a way, something to its meaning, and which often, indeed, prescribe its very form. To illustrate, take the following short passage : One by one the hunters came dropping in ; yet such is the activity of the Rocky Mountain sheep that although sixty or seventy men were out in pursuit, not more than half a dozen animals were killed. Of these only one was a full- grown male. He had a pair of horns, the dimensions of which were almost beyond belief.^ The second sentence here obviously cannot be fully understood without the first; nor can the meaning of the third be grasped in its completeness without a reference to those which go before. In fact, in struc- ture as well as in meaning, the second sentence looks both ways. The opening words '' Of these " refer directly to the last clause of the preceding sentence, and the last words * * a full-grown male ' ' form a point of departure, so to speak, for the succeeding sentence. * From Parkman's Oregon Trail. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE 41 This interdependence of the sentences of a compo- sition complicates the matter of sentence building a great deal, for the writer is constantly confronted with a changing set of conditions as the factors which go to determine the structure of his sentence. He must not only seek to express a given thought prop- erly; he must seek, also, to express that thought har- moniously with other thoughts. This means that he must attend carefully to such matters as the proper articulation or joining together of his sentences, the placing of the emphasis on just the right thing, and the avoidance of anything like monotonous same- ness. Variety in the structure of the sentence is an espe- cially important thing, but in most cases this will be satisfactorily attained if the writer attends care- fully to the articulation of his sentences, and to the proper placing of the emphasis. As the thing to be emphasized will vary, the emphasis will have to be placed now on this, and now on that sentence element, and this will make it necessary to vary the plan of the sentence from time to time. In the normally constructed sentence, the order of the constituent parts is, subject, verb, object, and verb- modifier; and when this order is followed, no special emphasis is given to any one part. The verb- modifier, to be sure, from the fact that it occupies the most prominent position in the sentence, — that is to say, the end, — has slightly more emphasis than any other part; but it has no special emphasis. Special emphasis can be given to any particular part only by placing that part in a position it would not nor- 42 GENERAL PRINCIPLES mally occupy. Thus a verb-modifier placed at the end of the sentence is only slightly emphasized ; placed at the beginning, it is made strongly emphatic. Sim- ilarly, a subject placed at the beginning receives little or no emphasis ; placed at the end, it becomes strongly emphasized. Hence the general rule to secure em- phasis in the sentence is, Change the natural order of the parts and bring the part to be emphasized to one or other of the naturally prominent positions in the sentence, namely, the beginning or the end. In the following sentences, for example, note how the plan of the sentence varies according as the em- phasis is placed on this or that sentence element : We found inefficiency and corruption everywhere. (Nor- mal arrangement; verb-modifier slightly emphasized.) Everywhere we found inefficiency and corruption. (In- verted order; object slightly, verb-modifier strongly empha- sized.) Inefficiency and corruption we found everywhere. (In- verted order; verb-modifier slightly, object strongly empha- sized.) Great is Diana of the Ephesians. (Inverted order; predi- cate adjective emphasized.) Flashed all their sabers bare. (Inverted order; verb strongly emphasized.) On whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is his wonderful invention. (Inverted order; subject emphasized.) A too frequent use of the inverted order must, of course, be avoided, since that would give an air of unuaturalness to one's style. The great majority of THE CHOICE OF WORDS 43 one's sentences ought obviously to be normal in their structure. This is why the very frequent use of the periodic sentence is objectionable. In the periodic sen- tence, an essential part is withheld until the end, — that is, the sentence does not become grammatically complete until the last word is given ; but as this last or ** key " word, as it is sometimes called, is usually a word that does not ordinarily come at the end, the effect of the sentence arrangement is generally one of inversion, and if this effect is repeated too often, the style will seem to the reader stiff and unnatural. When sparingly and judiciously used, however, the periodic sentence tends to give to one 's style an air of firmness, vigor, and finish. 6. THE CHOICE OF WORDS ** The first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the talk of a brilliant conversational- ist," says Stevenson, *' is the apt choice and contrast of the words employed. ' ' ^ There is no doubt of the truth of this. Not only the first merit, but the great- est merit which a good piece of writing possesses is a pleasing style. In the last analysis, it is style rather than structure which gives discourse its effectiveness. Precisely wherein lies the secret of style, it is not easy to say ; style is of so subtle and elusive a nature that it defies exact analysis. To a certain extent, obviously, it is dependent upon the structure of the sentences and paragraphs of the discourse, but to a * See his Style in Literature. 44 GENERAL PRINCIPLES much greater extent it is a matter, as Stevenson puts it, of the " apt choice and contrast of the words employed. '^ We judge a writer's style, not so much by the way he models his sentences and paragraphs, as by his choice of words and his phrasing, — that is to say, by his ability to find the right word to express his ideas and by his ability at the same time to put those words into effective combinations. The ability to find the right word for the occasion, presupposes, of course, the possession of a good vocab- ulary. The writer must have at his command a stock of words adequate to the needs of the thought he wishes to express, else he will often be at a loss to find just the right word to express his idea. If his command over words is not what it should be, he should set about improving it at once. The best way for him to do this, perhaps, is to read as widely as possible, and especially with an eye to the exact meaning of the words he reads. In his search for the right word to express his idea, the writer ought to take three things into considera- tion: (1) the need of being understood, (2) the need of being true to his own thought, and (3) the need of being effective. In short, the things one should strive for, in choosing one's words, are clearness, accuracy, and force. Clearness, naturally, is the first thing to be con- sidered. The function of language being to com- municate thought, it follows that that quality in a writer's discourse which enables his thought to be understood is the most desirable. The aim of every writer, therefore, should be to express himself in such THE CHOICE OF WORDS 45 a way as to enable his readers to grasp his thought without difficulty. No one who writes otherwise can be said to possess a good style. A good style is always lucid; and, other things being equal, the more lucid the style the better it is. Every obstacle that hinders the thought of the writer from becoming at once apparent to the reader is a defect of style, and should, if possible, be removed. The reader 's attention should be left perfectly free to be concentrated upon the thought, and should not be diverted from the thought to the medium through which that thought is con- veyed. Choosing words for clearness, now, means choosing words which have a well-understood and generally accepted meaning; and this, in turn, means choosing words which have the sanction of good usage. For practical purposes, we may regard these words as those used by the best writers of the present day. The young writer who would avoid mistakes in the matter of his choice of words would do well, therefore, to make as wide an acquaintance with the standard authors of the present day as possible. If he follows their example, he is not likely to use words which will be misunderstood or objected to by his readers. There is one thing, perhaps, which the young writer needs to be specially cautioned against, and that is the indiscriminate use of slang. Slang terms are often among the most familiar terms in the language; but they are never recognized as being really a part of the language. There is always a suggestion of vul- garity or bad taste about them. As a rule, they are rather vague in meaning and very short-lived. Hence, 46 GENERAL PRINCIPLES apart from the question of taste, they are ill-adapted for use in serious writings, and should be avoided. To be sure, a distinction has to be made between kinds of slang. Some are wholly bad; others are almost toler- able. For the " vulgar terms used by vulgar men to describe vulgar things ' ' nothing can be said ; but for many apt or picturesque expressions which are de- rived from reputable sports or occupations, but which are still labeled * ' slang ' ' the case is a little different. A spoken language is a living thing. It is continu- ally growing and enriching itself with words from various sources, and one of these sources, unques- tionably, is slang. Many expressions in the English language which are now recognized by good usage as legitimate were once mere slang terms. " Bias,'' * * hazard, " ' * hit the mark, " " within an ace of, ' ' for instance, are examples of such expressions. The lan- guage has adopted these terms in spite of the fact that they were once slang, but it has adopted them because they were needed. It will adopt others just as readily, provided they also are needed. This, how- ever, is an important proviso; and the young writer who is proposing to use a favorite bit of slang would do well to pause and consider whether or not, in that particular case, the proviso has been met. As to the use of newly coined words, the caution already given with respect to the use of slang may be repeated : it is permissible only when the lan- guage has need of the new words. "With a thinking, progressive people, new things and new ideas are constantly coming into vogue, and so long as this is true, so long will there be a need for new words. THE CHOICE OF WORDS 47 To object to these new words would be to deny- to the language the means offmaking a natural growth. At the same time, before a writer introduces, or uses, a new word, he should be quite sure that the need for it really exists. Language is, on the whole, rather impatient of useless terms. It prefers to adapt, wherever possible, old words to new uses, rather than to invent new terms for everything; and whenever it finds itself encumbered with more words to express a given idea than are necessary, it usually shows a tendency to get rid of some of them. As every writer owes something to his language, it is his duty, there- fore, to avoid trying to foist useless baggage upon it. Before venturing upon the coinage of new words, he should exhaust the possibilities of those already at his command. With regard to accuracy, it would seem to be the duty of the writer, if he really wishes to say some- thing, to try to find the word which will, so far as he can see, precisely express the thought he has in his mind. This word, provided it is one which will be understood by his readers, is the word he should use. If there is any conflict between the demands of accu- racy and intelligibility, he should always prefer, of course, intelligibility to accuracy. A word which is understood, even though it be not just the right word, may come near conveying the idea the writer in- tended ; but a word which is not understood, no matter how exactly used or how accurately it may fit the thought in the writer's mind, is not likely to convey any idea at all. How to find the right word is often a difficult 48 GENERAL PRINCIPLES matter; no unfailing rule for finding it can be given. It may be safely said that wide reading and at least some experience in writing will alone give one that thorough knowledge of words necessary to the making of the right choice on a given occasion. He who would learn to write, then, should, as has already been suggested, first do a good deal of careful reading in standard authors — the more the better. Reading, however, can be supplemented by the judi- cious use of a dictionary or a book of synonyms ; and it is a good plan for the young writer to keep one or the other at his elbow while writing, and to get into the habit of consulting it frequently. Suppose, for example, the writer is at a loss for some good, specific word to express the idea of ** searching for," *^ finding out " — ^the adroit and persistent questioning, let us say, of a reluctant wit- ness to get at the truth. General terms to express the idea are ** find out," '' search for," '* discover," ** get at." One of these will probably be the first to occur to the writer ; but suppose no one of them is sat- isfactory. Thereupon the dictionary or book of syn- onyms is brought into requisition. On turning up in the index of Roget's Treasury of English Words, for instance, any one of the terms mentioned, the in- quirer will be referred to the section on " Results of Reasoning, ' ' where he will find all sorts of expressions for the general idea. Running over these, he will come at length to ** ferret out," which, let us suppose, strikes him as the term he wants to use. To reassure himself, he may look it up in the dictionary. There he will find that it means, literally, * * to drive out of a THE CHOICE OF WORDS 49 lurking-place, as a ferret does a rabbit/'^ and that figuratively it means *' to search out by perseverance and cunning. * * He has now a term which exactly fits the thought in his mind, and he will consequently be able to make what he says much more effective than if he had been content with the first general word that occurred to him. With regard to the necessity for being forceful, the writer must remember that he cannot always assume an eagerness on the part of his readers to learn what he has to say. If he could assume so much, accuracy and clearness in the choice of his words would be all that he need concern himself about. But few are so much on the alert for what may be of interest to them that they will seek it out wherever it may be found. Most men need to have their attention at- tracted or compelled. To make the communication of his thought effective, therefore, the writer must endeavor to give to his style some degree of forceful- ness. His words, that is, must not only be intelli- gible and accurately used; they must be forceful as well; they must be words which, when used under given conditions, attract or compel our attention, make us feel that they are the fit words to use under those conditions. The forceful word is the apt word, the word that not only fits the place in which it is put, but makes us recognize that fact. * See the Century Dictionary. PART II WEITING WHICH AIMS TO ENLIGHTEN OR TO CONVINCE In the preceding pages we have devoted our at- tention exclusively to the consideration of some of the more general and fundamental principles of compo- sition, but have not taken into account the fact that compositions differ in kind. The beginner, however, will already have observed that not all compositions should be treated alike, that certain subjects demand one general method of treatment, and certain others, a quite different one. In general, we may say that the object of all writing is to appeal either to the understanding or to the feelings. In a great many cases, it is true, both the understanding and the feelings are affected; but for the most part we recognize one or the other as the predominant object of appeal. A Huxley, in ex- pounding the principles of biology, may, by the pre- cision and lucidity of his style, give his readers pleas- ure as well as information; but his chief aim will obviously be to enlighten rather than to please. A Dickens, a^ain, in picturing for us a bit of an imagi- 51 52 WRITING WHICH AIMS TO ENLIGHTEN nary world, may at times give us facts that he would have us remember; still, on the whole, he will feel that his main end is accomplished if he has been able to make us take pleasure in his picture. Setting aside poetry as beyond the scope of our present interest, we may therefore divide all prose compositions into two great classes: those which appeal mainly to the understanding, and those which appeal mainly to the feelings. As the great bulk of writings — and those, too, of the simplest and most ordinary kind — are comprised in the first class, we shall do well, perhaps, to begin our consideration of the particular kinds of com- positions with them. Before going further, we have to note that writings which appeal to the understanding may make this appeal in two ways. They may seek either to en- lighten the understanding, — ^that is, convey informa- tion about certain facts, truths, or principles, — or they may try to influence people 's beliefs with regard to these facts, truths, or principles. In the first case, we call the writing Exposition; in the second, Argu- mentation. These two varieties of the literature of thought are not always, of course, sharply defined, since it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is meant simply as explanation, and what is meant as an effort to influence belief or opinion. The two varieties shade into one another, as, in fact, all kinds of writing do; but in the majority of cases we shall have little or no trouble in distinguishing be- tween them. II EXPOSITION 1. NATURE AND PURPOSE OF EXPOSITORY WRITING Exposition, as we have seen, is that kind of writing wherein we aim to explain something. Whenever we attempt to make clear what a thing is, rather than what it appears to be, to give its general or essential characteristics, rather than its superficial appearance, or whenever we try to set forth the meaning or signifi- cance of a fact, a truth, or a principle, we are making use of exposition. Expounding, in fact, is nothing more nor less than explaining. Pure exposition is dispassionate. Its aim is not to stir the reader's feelings or influence his beliefs, but solely to make him understand something. It pursues the truth, and nothing but the truth. The purpose of exposition being elucidation, its first virtue must necessarily be clearness; its second, accuracy. That composition which pretends to ex- plain something, but which does not succeed in making its explanation intelligible to the reader, is, obviously, little better than no explanation at all. As far as the reader is concerned, it might just as well not have been written. For a similar reason, an explanation that is felt to be inaccurate loses much, if not all, of its value. Minute, scientific precision is not, of course, S3 54 EXPOSITION either possible or desirable in all cases ; circumstances will have to determine whether a given exposition shall be full and exhaustive, or brief and suggestive merely. But nothing will excuse inaccuracy. An exposition should be exact as far as it goes; and other things being equal, the more precise it is the better. The importance of clearness as a general principle in writing, and its relation to the question of diction have already been pointed out. It will suffice here, therefore, if we call the beginner's attention to the bearing good arrangement has upon the securing of clearness in exposition. Nowhere, perhaps, is the orderly arrangement of the material so important as in exposition. It is scarcely too much to say, in fact, that half the difficulties in expository composi- tion spring out of the question of getting the topics arranged in their proper order. Once the writer has clearly in mind the topics he wishes to discuss, and has settled upon the order in which he wishes to develop them, he has usually accomplished more than half his task. 2. THE OUTLINE AS AN AID IN EXPOSITION The importance of a clear and logical arrangement of the material in exposition being conceded, it re- mains to consider the best way to secure this. Nothing better than the preparation of an outline in advance can be recommended. The use of some sort of an outline is advisable, to be sure, in the case of almost any kind of writing; but it is especially helpful in exposition. The outline may be as full or as brief as the writer THE OUTLINE AS AN AID IN EXPOSITION 55 chooses. A good plan is to make, first, a very brief or skeleton outline, giving only the main topics or headings, and later to enlarge this by filling in with sub-topics wherever necessary. This gives the writer a chance to correct any mistakes of arrangement which he may have made in the first or skeleton outline. Thus, if one were writing on The Carp and its Culture, for example, one might make some such preliminary outline as the following: THE CARP AND ITS CULTURE I. General characteristics. II. Its history and varieties. III. Its habits. IV. Its adaptability to artificial culture. V. Localities suitable for its culture. VI. The method of culture. VII. The extent of carp culture. This, if it be regarded as adequate in its provision of main topics, might be enlarged somewhat as follows : THE CARP AND ITS CULTURE I. General characteristics of the carp. II. Its history and varieties. A. The scale carp. B. The mirror carp. C. The leather carp. IIL Its habits. A. Its partiality for stagnant waters. B. Its readiness to take either vegetable or animal food. C. Its mode of reproduction. 56 EXPOSITION IV. Its adaptability to artificial culture. A. The ease with which it may be grown. B. Its value as a food. V. Localities suitable for its culture. A. The kind of soil which should underlie the ponds. B. The character of the water supply. VI. The method of culture. A. The size and construction of the ponds. 1. In "mixed/' or single-pond culture. 2. In " class," or triple-pond culture. a. The hatching pond. b. The breeding pond. c. The culture, or regular pond. B. Stocking the ponds and the care of the fish. 1. In " class " culture. 2. In " mixed " culture. C. Marketing the grown fish. VII. The extent and importance of the carp industry. A. In Europe. B. In the United States. In this outline it will be observed that the various headings and sub-headings are phrases only. This is what is known as the topical outline. It is sometimes desirable, however, — especially where the outline is to be read by others besides the writer, — to have the main headings complete sentences, and the sub-headings either complete sentences or phrases complementary to the headings under which they are placed. This gives greater definiteness to an outline, and indicates more precisely the writer's point of view. THE OUTLINE AS AN AID IN EXPOSITION 57 The following, slightly adapted from a student's theme, will illustrate the method ; THE DISSEMINATION OF THE SEEDS OF WILD PLANTS I. Introduction: A natural means of disseminating the seeds of wild plants is necessary to prevent many species becoming extinct. II. The chief natural agencies which disseminate the seeds of wild plants are : A. The wind, which distributes 1. Light seeds having plumes or wing-like at- tachments, such as those of a. The Canada thistle. b. The maple. 2. Seeds of plants which, after they mature and die, may be rolled along over level plains, such as a. Tickle-grass. b. Tumble-weed. B. The waters of rivers, lakes, etc., which carry the seeds of such plants as 1. The water-lily. 2. The willow. C. Animals, which transport seeds 1. By devouring the fruits of such plants as a. The blackberry. b. The cherry. 2. By carrying in their fur or hair the barbed seed pods of such plants as a. The burdock. b. The cockle-bur. 58 EXPOSITION D. The explosive action of certain seed pods, which by violently ejecting the seeds scatters them widely; for example, 1. The violet. 2. The witch-hazel. 3. EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE OR TO CLASSIFY The typical moods of exposition are definition and classification. That is to say, in exposition we are, for the most part, either trying to make clear what some- thing is, or, on the other hand, trying to group things in classes in accordance with their natural relation- ships. In trying to make clear what a thing is, we are, of course, trying to indicate what its essential characteristics, attributes, or qualities are. Exposi- tion by definition may therefore be defined as the setting forth of the essential characteristics of some- thing ; it is the determining of the meaning or content of a general idea. The nucleus of an expository composition of the defining kind is what is known as the logical definition. This differs from the ordinary or loose definition simply in being more formal and exact. Its aim is to mark out the limits or boundaries of the term to be defined, to differentiate it from all other terms of similar meaning, so that the things for which it stands may be distinguished from all other things which can be put in the same general class. Thus if we wish to give a logical definition of the term " parallelo- gram, ' ' we must so frame our definition that the differ- ence between a parallelogram and all other plane ^g- EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 59 ures is exactly indicated. This involves the regarding of the term to be defined as representing a species, the bringing of that species within a higher class or genus, and the enumerating of the essential qualities or attributes which distinguish the species from the genus. These distinguishing qualities or attributes are usually called the differentia. The following ex- amples will illustrate the form in which the logical definition usually occurs: Term to be Defined (Species) Science is Man is Genus Differentia knowledge systematized. an animal capable of reasoning. A paragraph is * ^ "^^* ^^ i ^^^veloping a single ( discourse ( idea. A genus Rhetoric IS discourse a class is the art ( divisible into smaller ( classes or species. which deals with the effective communica- tion of thought and emotion by means of words. In testing the validity of a definition, we have to take into account both the content and the form. "With regard to the content, the main question is whether the differentia be satisfactory or not. In a valid definition, the differentia must always be (1) an essential characteristic of the species or thing for which the term to be defined stands, and (2) a char^ acteristic not possessed by any other member of the 80 EXPOSITION genus. Thus if we were to define animal capable of flying," the definition would be faulty, since, in the first place, not all birds are capable of flying, and, in the second place, other animals than birds — bats, for instance — possess this characteristic. That is to say, the differentia would not be an essential attribute of birds; nor would it be an attribute possessed by no other animals than birds. The definition would thus be, at one point, too narrow and at another, too broad ; it would not cover all the territory indicated by the term to be defined, yet it would stretch beyond that territory. In other words, it would admit of exceptions, and a logical definition must be true universally, else it is worthless. It should be noted that accuracy of definition does not necessarily imply that the differentia must exhaust all the characteristics which distinguish the species from the genus. In exact scientific definitions, accu- racy of this kind may be desirable, but it is not neces- sary in those of a more literary kind. For example, in the definition of man as * * a reasoning animal, ' ' the differentia, '* reasoning,'* does not cover all the qual- ities distinguishing man from other animals; but the definition is a perfectly valid one for all that. It is accurate as far as it goes. It is thus often possible, especially in popular exposition, where absolute exact- ness is seldom an essential point, for a writer to have a good deal of freedom with regard to the choice of differentia for his definition. *' Man is a reasoning animal " might be a perfectly good definition for one purpose ; but for another, * ' man is a worshipping animal " might be better. Neither of these defini- EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 61 tions, however, would be of much service to the zoolo- gist, who would want to have all the essential charac- teristics distinguishing man from the other animals of his class and order carefully indicated. With regard to the form, care must be taken to see that the differentia does not repeat the term to be defined, nor use any term derived from the same root. Trying to define a term by means of virtually the same term would be like traveling in a circle; no advance would be made. Thus, to define freedom as ** the ability to act freely '' would be inadmissible. It is advisable, also, that a definition should be couched in as simple and concise a form as possible. Other things being equal, the simpler and more concise a definition is the better. Dr. Johnson's famous defini- tion of network as ** anything reticulated or decus- sated, at equal distances, with intersections between the interstices, " is a good illustration of the definition which violates the principle of simplicity. Simplicity, however, is a relative term, and there are times when the learned word is unavoidable. The following defi- nition of evolution by Herbert Spencer, though not couched in terms very familiar to the average man, would probably not be greatly improved either in lucidity or in precision if it were much simplified: ** Evolution is a continuous change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent hetero- geneity through successive differentiations and inte- grations.'' A logical definition is not of itself, of course, suflS- cient to present the full content of an idea. It may serve as a sort of nucleus out of which the complete 62 EXPOSITION explanation may grow, or as a means of putting the gist of the explanation succinctly before the reader; but it cannot take the place of the complete discourse. To be able to grasp the full meaning of a thought or conception, the reader must have a thorough analysis of what it contains. This means a presentation of its main points from as many different sides as possible. Hence a definition, if it be made the start- ing point of an exposition, must be enlarged upon. An expository composition of the defining kind may, indeed, be regarded simply as an expanded definition. In the following examples the student will observe that the writers begin with a simple definition or description, which may easily be put into the form of a logical definition, and follow this up by showing what the definition implies as well as expresses in explicit terms : Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organ- ized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. The real advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman developed and perfected. So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 63 mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practised by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discov- ers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.^ If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or " School of Universal Learning." This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot: — from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for eveiy department of knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accord- ingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to com- plete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country. But I have said more than enough in illustration; I end as I began; — a University is a place of concourse, whither students come from every quarter for every kind of knowl- edge. You cannot have the best of every kind everywhere; * From Huxley's Essays. 64 EXPOSITION you must go to some great city or emporium for it. There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all together, which you find each in its own separate place else- where. All the riches of the land, and of the earth, are carried up thither, there are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the center of trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival talents, and the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing won- derful voices and performers of transcendent skill. It is the place for great preachers, great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of things, greatness and unity go together; excellence implies a center. And such, for the third or fourth time, is a University; I hope I do not weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rash- ness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, displaying his science in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers. It is the place where the catechist makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready memory, and wedg- ing and tightening it into the expanding reason. It is a place which wins the admiration of the young by its celeb- rity, kindles the affections of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 65 and a great deal more, and demands a somewhat better head and hand than mine to describe it well.^ The correlative of definition is classification. Clas- sification may be defined simply as the explaining of the relationship, or lack of relationship, subsist- ing among a series of things in such a way that these things fall naturally into distinct groups. As Huxley expresses it, the classification of any series of objects means ** the actual, or ideal, arrangement together of those which are like and the separation of those which are unlike ; the purpose of this arrange- ment being to facilitate the operations of the mind in clearly conceiving and retaining in the memory the characters of the objects in question." * Exposition of this kind is based upon the logical division. In its strictly logical sense, the term '* division '* means simply the breaking up of a genus into its constituent species. In its freer and more literary use, however, the term means much more than this. The object of expository division, or classi- fication as it is more commonly called, is not so much to give an exact enumeration of the species into which a genus may be divided as to enable the writer to take a comprehensive and systematic survey of the whole and of the parts. Hence it takes into account the purpose the writer had in mind in making the classification, and allows him to adapt it to that pur- * From Newman's " What is a University " ; see his His- torical Sketches, Vol. Ill, chapter ii. 2 See Huxley*s Introduction to the Classification of Animals. 66 EXPOSITION pose. A classification such as that contained in the following passage, for example, has little of the exact- ness which a strictly logical division would demand; yet for the purpose the writer had in view, it is exceedingly useful: The human element in production, whether in the work of guidance or in obedience, varies as widely as human nature and capacity. Tot homines, tot capacitates. For services to production, laborers may be roughly classified by strata, as in the accompanying diagram: The unskilled men in A, the slightly skilled in B, the highly skilled artisans in C (such as the locomotive engi- neers), the highly educated pro- fessional men in D (such as civil engineers, electrical experts, and the like), and finally the excep- tionally capable managers in E. In any one industry some of each kind are required, but not with the same intensity of de- mand; nor are they wanted in the same relative numbers in different industries. The unskilled man in A has no choice of occupations that he can enter; he can do only the work demanded of his class. And yet, as compared with the demand for them, the number in this strata is enormously large. Moreover, in the A class there is the least capacity to set the future gain above the present indulgence. Thus we find increasing numbers in the very group whose activity is restricted to a given kind of work. Among those least competent to add EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 67 to production, there is the greatest supply relatively to the demand for them. Their share is small, not only be- cause their industrial efficiency is small, but because the supply of them is excessive. As we go up in the scale of industrial efficiency, we find the numbers in the strata of the more highly skilled dimin- ishing, while the intensity of the demand for them increases. Hence wages increase the higher we go. In the top strata, containing the most efficient managers, we find the highest wages paid throughout the whole industrial field. When a blundering or incompetent manager costs a company millions in losses, a fifty-thousand-dollar man, who adds millions in gains, is a cheap laborer. In this struggle up the scale from A to E v^e find the real social conflict. It is a contest between different kinds of laborers, — a con- test of varying grades of industrial capacity with each other. It is a free-to-all race, in which the most competent win. The great industrial manager, being the most highly skilled laborer, obtains enormous wages for exceptional services to production. This exposition gives us, in brief, the economic reason why, in a country of phenomenal re- sources like the United States, men of exceptional industrial ability can acquire exceptionally large fortunes legiti- mately.^ Expository classification is thus, as we see, some- thing more than mere logical division. Nevertheless, a good classification always conforms to the rules which govern logical division. These rules are: (1) There must be only one principle of division; (2) There must be no overlapping in the classes or species ; (3) The sum of the species must equal the genus or class divided. * J. Lawrence Laughlin, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1905. 68 EXPOSITION The first of these rules is especially important, in- asmuch as a change in the principle of division abso- lutely vitiates a classification. Thus if we were to classify the people of Asia as Mongolians, Malayans, Hindus, and Mohammedans, we should be proceeding first on the principle of racial character, and then on that of religion. There would therefore be no unity or meaning in our classification. It would be like filing letters at haphazard, now according to the writers' names, and again according to some other principle. The rule against overlapping or cross divi- sion, as it is sometimes called, is also important, since, if the classes are not distinct, the classification loses much, if not all, its value. To classify the writings which make up literature, for example, as poetry, fiction, history, biography, and the essay, would be objectionable, because the classes ' * poetry ' ' and * * fic- tion '* would not be mutually exclusive; a romance such as Scott's Lady of the Lake, for example, might be put in either. As to the question of exhaustive- ness, the rule is imperative only where exactness and precision are of first importance. In ordinary literary exposition it is seldom insisted on. A clas- sification may have great practical value even if it be not exhaustive. In fact, no classification can be held to be absolutely exhaustive, logically speaking, unless it is made according to the method known as dichotomy, where there are only two divisions, one of which is expressly stated to contain all the indi- viduals of the genus not included in the other. For example, the citizens of the United States may be classed as those who have the right to vote, and those EXPOSITION WHICH AIMS TO DEFINE 69 who have not. The classification is absolutely ex- haustive, since every citizen must belong to either the one or the other of these two classes. It should be noted that classification always implies definition. The two, indeed, very commonly go to- gether. Whenever we make a classification, we do so on the supposition that the various classes can be defined. Exposition by classification is generally, in fact, first a division and then a definition of each member of the division. Notice how, in the following, Huxley first divides the science of zoology into its various subordinate sciences, and then defines each one of these in turn : I shall use the term zoology as denoting the whole doc- trine of animal life, in contradistinction to botany, which signifies the whole doctrine of vegetable life. Employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is divisible into three great but subordinate sciences, — morphology, physiology, and distribution, — each of which may, to a very great extent, be studied irdependently of the other. Zoological morphology is the doctrine of animal form or structure. Anatomy is one of its branches; development is another; while classification is the expression of the rela- tions which different animals bear to one another, in re- spect to their anatomy and their development. Zoological distribution is the study of animals in relation to the terrestrial conditions which obtain now, or have obtained at any previous epoch of the earth's history. Zoological physiology, lastly, is the doctrine of the func- tions or actions of animals. It regards animal bodies as machines impelled by certain forces, and performing an amount of work which can be expressed in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. The final object of physiology 70 EXPOSITION is to deduct the facts of morphology on the one hand, and those of distribution on the other, from the laws of the molecular forces of matter.^ 4. DESCRIPTIVE AND ILLUSTRATIVE EXPOSITION As has been said, the typical moods of exposition are definition and classification. Exposition, however, is often used for various explanatory or illustrative processes not formal or exact enough to be brought under the category of definition or of classification. Among such uses may be mentioned, (1) the descrip- tion of a type-form or the setting forth of the general characteristics of a class of things ; (2) the explanation of a method or process; (3) the illustration of a gen- eral law or the application of it to particular cases. In the first of these uses we have a kind of writing which suggests description, on the one hand, and definition, on the other. In some cases it verges so closely upon description that it can scarcely be dis- tinguished from that form; it always deals with the type or with a class of things, however, whereas de- scription properly deals with the individual rather than with the type. In trying to set forth the general characteristics of a type-form or of a class of things, descriptive exposition, to be sure, is trying to do very much the same thing as is done in definition ; but its method is usually more suggestive of description than of definition. An illustration or two will make the point clear, * See Huxley's Lay Sermons. DESCRIPTIVE EXPOSITION 71 and serve to show the general method of this kind of exposition: The woodehiick always burrows on a side-hill. This en- ables him to guard against being drowned out, by making the termination of the hole higher than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three feet, then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the surface of the ground for a distance of eight or ten feet farther, according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing up in October or No- vember and coming out again in April. This is a long sleep, and is rendered possible only by the amount of fat with which the system has become stored during the sum- mer. The fire of life still burns, but very faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all closed and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is continued, but at longer intervals, and all the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig one out during hibernation . . . and you find it a mere inani- mate ball, that suffers itself to be moved and rolled about without showing signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it presently unrolls and opens its eyes, and crawls feebly about, and if left to itself will seek some dark hole or comer, roll itself up again, and resume its former condition.^ But Nature's most common device for the protection and preservation of her desert brood is to supply them with wonderful facilities for finding and sapping what moisture there is, and conserving it in tanks and reservoirs. The roots of the greasewood and the mesquite are almost as powerful as the arms of an octopus, and they are frequently three times the length of the bush or tree they support. * From Pepacton, by John Burroughs. 72 EXPOSITION They will bore their way through rotten granite to find a damp ledge almost as easily as a diamond drill; and they will pry rocks from their foundations as readily as the wistaria wrenches the ornamental woodwork from the roof of a porch. They are always thirsty and they are always running here and there in the search for moisture. A vertical section of their underground structure revealed by the cutting away of a river bank or wash is usually a great surprise. One marvels at the great network of roots required to support such a very little growth above ground.^ In writing which aims to explain a method or process of any kind, we have another variety of exposition which deals with the type. The process or method explained is, of course, always that which is regarded as the normal or usual one followed in bringing about such and such results. The most familiar example of this kind of exposition, perhaps, is the ordinary recipe of the cook-books. In this case, the exposition takes the form of directions to be carried out in action. It is not necessary, however, that in the explanation of a process there should be any idea that the directions given are to be actually translated into action ; the explanation of the working of a plan, for instance, may be given without any thought that the plan is ever to be put into operation. The ordinary form of this kind of exposition may be illustrated by the following: The country before us was now thronged with buffalo, and a sketch of the manner of hunting them will not be out of place. There are two methods commonly practised 1 From The Desert, by J. C. Van Dyke. DESCRIPTIVE EXPOSITION 73 — " running " and " approaching." The chase on horseback, which goes by the name of " running," is the more violent and dashing mode of the two. Indeed, of all American wild sports this is the wildest. Once among the buffalo, the hunter, unless long use has made him familiar with the situation, dashes forward in utter recklessness and self- abandonment. He thinks of nothing, cares for nothing, but the game; his mind is stimulated to the highest pitch, yet intensely concentrated on one object. In the midst of the flying herd, where the uproar and the dust are thickest, it never wavers for a moment; he drops the rein and abandons his horse to his furious career; he levels his gun, the report sounds faint amid the thunder of the buffalo; and when his wounded enemy leaps in vain fury upon him, his heart thrills with a feeling like the fierce delight of the battle- field. A practised and skilful hunter, well mounted, will sometimes kill five or six cows in a single chase, loading his gun again and again as his horse rushes through the tumult. An exploit like this is quite beyond the capacities of a novice. In attacking a small band of buffalo, or in sep- arating a single animal from the herd and assailing it apart from the rest, there is less excitement and less danger. With a bold and well-trained horse the hunter may ride so close to the buffalo that, as they gallop side by side, he may reach over and touch him with his hand; nor is there much danger in this as long as the buffalo's strength and breath continue unabated; but when he becomes tired and can no longer run with ease, when his tongue lolls out and the foam flies from his jaws, then the hunter had better keep a more respectful distance; the distressed brute may turn upon him at any instant; and especially at the moment when he fires his gun. The wounded buffalo springs at his enemy; the horse leaps violently aside; and then the hunter has need of a tenacious seat in the saddle, for if he is thrown to the ground there is no hope for him. When he 74 EXPOSITION sees his attack defeated the buffalo resumes his flight, but if the shot be well directed he soon stops; for a few mo- ments he stands still, then totters and falls heavily upon the prairie. The method of "approaching," being practised on foot, has many advantages over that of "running"; in the former, one neither breaks down his horse nor endangers his own life; instead of yielding to excitement, he must be cool, collected, and watchful; he must understand the buf- falo, observe the features of the country and the course of the wind, and be well skilled, moreover, in using the rifle. The buffalo are strange animals; sometimes they are so stupid and infatuated that a man may walk up to them in full sight on the open prairie, and even shoot several of their number before the rest will think it necessary to retreat. Again, at another moment, they will be so shy and wary that in order to approach them the utmost skill, ex- perience, and judgment are necessary.^ With regard to the method of that type of exposi- tion which aims to show the operation of a general law or its application to particular cases, nothing special needs to be said. Examples of the type are given among the specimens reprinted below. 5. LITERARY CRITICISM Literary criticism is a kind of writing almost dis- tinctive enough to deserve recognition as a species by itself. As its main purpose is expository, however, *From Parkman's Oregon Trail, LITERARY CRITICISM 75 it may properly enough be regarded as a particular variety of exposition. Certain of its forms, as for instance, what is often called appreciation or inter- pretation, might, indeed, more fittingly be regarded as making their appeal to the feelings rather than to the understanding; but even in such cases, if the main purpose be not expository, there is always a very definite appeal to the understanding. Criticism is of course one of the most common, as it certainly is one of the most useful, kinds of writing. No one can read all the books published nowadays; and if one wishes to be informed as to what is best worth reading, one must look largely to criticism for guidance. We should make a distinction between the criticism of books which are accepted as classics, or are at least well-known, and the criticism which deals with the books of the day, — ^that is to say, the ordinary book review. The criticism of a classic implies, on the part of the reader, some knowledge of the work criti- cised ; the critic justifies his notice of the work either by giving us some fresh information about it or by giving us an appreciation of it from a new point of view. The ordinary book review is on a much lower plane, usually, than criticism of this kind. Its first aim, naturally, is to tell the reader something about the contents of the book it discusses; but it should also aim to give him an idea of the writer's style and of the skill or power with which he treats his subject. In the specimens given below, the reader will find an example of the appreciation of a classic, and an example, also, of the ordinary book review. Ill SPECIMENS OP EXPOSITION The Great Author ^ A great author, gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life, though these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense, the faculty of Expression. He is master of the two- fold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but insep- arable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious and single-minded in ful- filling. That aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, what- ever be the splendor of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, "nil molitur inepte." ^ If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not * From Newman's Idea of a University. =^"He attempts nothing injudiciously." 76 SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 77 only "distincte" and "splendide," but also " apte." His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life — Quo fit, ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis." * He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly ; he sees too clearly to be vague ; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich ; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament ; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embar- rasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become house- hold words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tes- selated with rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modem palaces. The Idea op a Gentleman * Hence it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occu- pied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free 1 " Wherefore it is that the whole life of the old (poet) lies as open as if written on a votive tablet." 2 From Newman's Idea of a University, 78 EXPOSITION and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he con- curs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature : like an easy-chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids what- ever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speak- ing; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversa- tion, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is con- ferring. He never speaks of himself except when com- pelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves toward our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable; to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 79 destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect presei-ves him from the blundering dis- courtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the ques- tion more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, considera- tion, indulgence! he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of re- ligion and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization. Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful, with- out which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the attributes of perfec- tion. And this deduction of his reason, or creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a teach- 80 EXPOSITION ing, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which exists in his mind no otherwise than as a number of deductions. Japanese Ancestor Worship ^ Probably the filial piety that centered about the domestic altars of the ancient West differed in little from that which yet rules the most eastern East. But we miss in Japan the Aryan hearth, the family altar with its perpetual fire. The Japanese home-religion represents, apparently, a much earlier stage of the cult than that which existed within historic time among the Greeks and Romans. The home- stead in Old Japan was not a stable institution like the Greek or the Roman home ; the custom of burying the family dead upon the family estate never became general; the dwelling itself never assumed a substantial and lastmg character. It could not be literally said of the Japanese warrior, as of the Roman, that he fought pro aris et focis. There was neither altar nor sacred fire: the place of these was taken by the spirit-shelf or shrine, with its tiny lamp, kindled afresh each evening; and, in early times, there were no Japanese images of divinities. For Lares and Penates there were only the mortuary tablets of the an- cestors, and certain little tablets bearing names of other gods — ^tutelary gods. The presence of these frail wooden objects still makes the home; and they may be, of course, transported anywhere. To apprehend the full meaning of ancestor-worship as a family religion, a living faith, is now difficult for the Western mind. We are able to imagine only in the vaguest *From Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Interpretation. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 81 way how our Aryan forefathers felt and thought about their dead. But in the living beliefs of Japan we find much to suggest the nature of the old Greek piety. Each member of the family supposes himself, or herself, under a perpetual ghostly surveillance. Spirit-eyes are watching every act; spirit-ears are listening to every word. Thoughts, too, not less than deeds, are visible to the gaze of the dead: the heart must be pure, the mind must be under control, within the presence of the spirits. Probably the influence of such beliefs, uninterruptedly exerted upon conduct during thou- sands of years, did much to form the charming side of Japanese character. Yet there is nothing stem or solemn in this home-religion to-day, — nothing of that rigid and unvarying discipline supposed by Fustel de Coulanges to have especially characterized the Roman cult. It is a re- ligion rather of gratitude and tenderness; the dead being served by the household as if they were actually present in the body. I fancy that if we were able to enter for a moment into the vanished life of some old Greek city, we should find the domestic religion there not less cheerful than the Japanese home-cult remains to-day. I imagine that Greek children, three thousand years ago, must have watched, like the Japanese children of to-day, for a chance to steal some of the good things offered to the ghosts of the ancestors; and I fancy that Greek parents must have chidden quite as gently as Japanese parents chide in this era of Meiji, — mingling reproof with instruction, and hint- ing of weird possibilities. The Kinds op Literature ^ All literature is the result of four great art impulses. These are: the impulse to narrate events, either real or iFrom W. H. Crawshaw's Tlie Interpretation of Literature, by permission of the Macmillan Company. 82 EXPOSITION imagined; the impulse to express the subjective thought and emotion of the writer; the impulse to portray human life and character; and the impulse to describe objects, either real or imagined, either material or spiritual. If it be objected that this list is incomplete, the only answer lies in an appeal to literature itself. If other impulses ap- pear, they ought of course to be included; but investiga- tion seems to show that all actual literary works can be classified as resulting from one or more of the impulses here noted. These impulses have been at work in literature from the beginning; and, in all probability, they will con- tinue, without increase or decrease to the end. The par- ticular forms in which they have manifested themselves have been almost infinitely diversified, the purposes that have worked in harmony with them have been no less vari- ous; but still, in one or another of these directions, literary activity has always moved. Here, as elsewhere, we see that which is simple in principle working out to that which is multitudinous in detail. When a new literary form is created, it is by the use of these same elements in new ways. When prose takes its place as a medium of literary expression, it is moved by the same instincts that have been creating poetry for thousands of years. These four fundamental impulses furnish a basis for four dif- ferent types of literary work. These four types may be called the Narrative, the Subjective, the Dramatic, and the Descriptive. Turning first, then, to the narrative type, we shall find that the typical representative of its verse form is the Epic, and the typical representative of its prose form is the Romance. The term epic has a restricted meaning in which it is applicable only to such works as the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is used here, however, to denote all poetry in which narrative is the distinctive feature. This broader SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 83 meaning is justified by modern usage, and also by the fact that narrative is the essential element in the ancient epic. The romance includes all prose works in which narrative clearly predominates over portrayal of life and character. In subjective literature, the typical verse form is the Lyric, and the typical prose form is the Essay. As to substance and spirit, the lyric is the embodiment of sub- jective emotion; as to form, the original conception of it as something to be sung has made it the most varied and musical of all kinds of poetry. The essay is the expression of the personal thought and feeling of its author; and both in subject and form, it has great variety. As compared with the lyric, it tends more toward thought and less to- ward emotion. The tj^pical poetic form of dramatic literature is the Drama; and the typical prose form is the Novel. The typical drama is a combination of plot and characters, both being presented through the medium of dialogue and action, and the treatment of life being predominant. The drama is found both in prose and poetry; but in its original and typical form, it belongs to the latter. The novel differs from the romance as the drama differs from the epic — namely, in combining plot and character, with character as the leading feature. It differs from the drama in its use of direct narration. It is distinctly a prose type, although such a thing as a novel in verse is not altogether unknown. We have seen that descriptive literature is rightly to be regarded as one of the great literary types; but that, in all probability, its only results are to be found in descrip- tion diffused throughout the other literary types and sub- ordinate to them. Inasmuch, then, as the descriptive type has produced no strictly representative works, it is of course impossible to note any typical classes. Description appears in both forms of expression, and we may therefore speak of descriptive poetry and descriptive prose; but we cannot 84 EXPOSITION be more definite. We are, indeed, familiar in poetry with the term idyl; but it is not desirable to use this, since it denotes simply a poem in which the descriptive element is large, but not necessarily predominant. The classification here suggested may be represented as follows : NARRATIVE SUBJKCTIVK DRAMATIC DBSCRIPTIVK Poetry Prose Epic Romance Lyric Essay Drama Novel Descriptive Poetry Descriptive Prose This analysis may be said to represent fairly the classi- fication of literature on natural principles and by a logical method. A more minute classification would not be in place here; for a consideration of the various kinds of epic, lyric, drama, etc., belongs rather to the study of those classes of literature. It is sufficient for us to have noted here the great varieties of literature, which represent its essential forms and fundamental instincts. Beyond this, we shall find that literary art emphasizes its liberty and blossoms out into that infinite variety of detail which is characteristic of all life. The Influence of the Press in America ^ Newspapers are influential in three ways — as narrators, as advocates, and as weathercocks. They report events, they advance arguments, they indicate by their attitude what those who conduct them and are interested in their circulation take to be the prevailing opinion of their read- ers. In the first of these regards the American press is the most active in the world. Nothing escapes it which * From The American Commonwealth, by James Bryce, copy- right 1893 and 1910, by The Macmillan Company. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 85 can attract any class of readers. It does not even confine itself to events that have happened, but is apt to describe others which may possibly have happened, however slight the evidence for them: pariter facta atque infeeta canehat. This habit affects its worth as an historic record and its influence with sober-minded people. But it is a natural result of the high pressure under which the newspaper business is carried on. The appetite for news, and for highly spiced or " sensational " news, is enormous, and journalists working under keen competition and in un- ceasing haste take their chance of the correctness of the information they receive. Much harm there is, but possibly as much good. It is related of an old barrister that he observed : " When I was young I lost a good many causes which I ought to have won, and now, that I have grown old and experienced, I win a good many causes which I ought to lose. So on the whole justice has been done." If in its heedlessness the press sometimes causes pain to the innocent, it does a great and necessary service in exposing evil-doers, many of whom would escape were it never to speak except upon sufficient evidence. It is a watch-dog whose noisy bark must be tolerated, even when the person who approaches has no bad intent. No doubt charges are so promiscuously and often so lightly made as to tell less than they would in a country where the law of libel was more frequently appealed to. But many abuses are unveiled, many more prevented by the fear of publicity. Although the leading American newspapers contain far more non-political matter than those of Europe, they also contain, especially, of course, before any important elec- tion, more domestic political intelligence than any, except perhaps two or three, of the chief English journals. The public has the benefit of hearing everything it can wish, and more than it ought to wish, to know about every oc- 86 EXPOSITION eurrence and every personality. The intelligence is not quite of the same kind as in England or France. There are fewer reports of speeches, because fewer speeches of an argumentative nature are made, but more of the schemes and doings of conventions and political cliques, as well as of the sayings of individuals. As the advocates of political doctrines, newspapers are of course powerful, because they are universally read and often ably written. They are accused of unfairness and vituperation, but I doubt if there is any marked difference in this respect between their behavior and that of European papers at a time of excitement. Nor could I discover that their arguments were any more frequently than in Europe addressed to prejudice rather than to reason. In America, however, a leading article carries less weight of itself, being discounted by the shrewd reader as the sort of thing which the paper must of course be expected to say, and is effective only when it takes hold of some fact (real or supposed), and hammers it into the public mind. This is what the unclean politician has to fear. Mere abuse he does not care for, but the constant references to and comments on misdeeds of which he cannot clear himself tell in the long run against him. It is chiefly in its third capacity as an index and mirror of public opinion that the press is looked to. This is the function it chiefly aims at discharging; and public men feel that in showing deference to it they are propitiating, and inviting the commands af, public opinion itself. In wor- shiping the deity you learn to conciliate the priest. But as every possible view and tendency finds expression through some organ in the press, the problem is to discover which views have got popular strength behind them. Professed party journals are of little use, though one may sometimes discover from the way they advance an argument whether SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 87 they think it will really tell on the opposite party, or use it only because it falls within their own program. More may therefore be gleaned from the independent or semi- independent journals, whereof there are three classes: pa- pers which, like two or three in the great cities, generally support one party, but are apt to fly off from it when they disapprove its conduct, or think the people will do so; pa- pers which devote themselves mainly to news, though they may give editorial aid to one or other party according to the particular issue involved, and papers not professedly or primarily political. Of this last class the most impor- tant members are the religious weeklies, to whose number and influence few parallels can be discovered in Europe. They are mostly either neutral or somewhat loosely attached to their party, usually the Republican party, because it began as the Free Soil party, and includes, in the North, the greater number of serious-minded people. It is only on great occasions, such as a presidential election, or when some moral issue arises, that they discuss current politics at length. When they do so, great is their power, because they are deemed to be less "thirled" to a party or a leader, because they speak from a moral standpoint, and because they are read on Sunday, a time of leisure, when their seed is more likely to strike root. The monthly magazines deal less with politics than do the leading Eng- lish monthlies, but their influence seems to grow with the increasing amount of excellent writing they contain. The Gossamer Spider ^ On several occasions, when the Beagle had been within the mouth of the Plata, the rigging has been coated with the web of the Gossamer Spider. One day (November 1st, 1832) I paid particular attention to this subject. The *From Darwin's Voyage of the " Beagle J* 88 EXPOSITION weather had been fine and clear, and in the morning the air was full of patches of the flocculent web, as on an autumnal day in England. The ship was sixty miles dis- tant from the land, in the direction of a steady though light breeze. Vast numbers of a small spider, about one-tenth of an inch in length, and of a dusky red color, were at- tached to the webs. There must have been, I should sup- pose, some thousands on the ship. The little spider, when first coming in contact with the rigging, was always seated on a single thread, and not on the flocculent mass. This latter seems merely to be produced by the entanglement of the single threads. The spiders were all of one species, but of both sexes, together with young ones. These latter were distinguished by their smaller size and more dusky color. I will not give the description of this spider, but merely state that it does not appear to me to be included in any of Latreille's genera. The little aeronaut as soon as it arrived on board was very active, running about, sometimes letting itself fall, and then reascending the same thread; sometimes employing itself in making a small and very irregular mesh in the corners between the ropes. It could run with facility on the surface of water. When disturbed it lifted up its front legs, in the attitude of atten- tion. On its first arrival it appeared very thirsty, and with exserted maxillae drank eagerly of drops of water; this same circumstance has been observed by Strack : may it not be in consequence of the little insect having passed through a dry and rarefied atmosphere? Its stock of web seemed inexhaustible. While watching some that were sus- pended by a single thread, I several times observed that the slightest breath of air bore them away out of sight, in a horizontal line. On another occasion (25th) under similar circumstances, I repeatedly observed the same kind of small spider, either when placed or having crawled on some little eminence, elevate its abdomen, send forth a thread, and then SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 89 sail away horizontally, but with a rapidity which was quite unaccountable. I thought I could perceive that the spider, before performing the above preparatory steps, connected its legs together with the most delicate threads, but I am not sure whether this observation was correct. One day, at St. Fe, I had a better opportunity of ob- serving some similar facts. A spider which was about three-tenths of an inch in length, and which in its general appearance resembled a Citigrade (therefore quite differ- ent from the gossamer), while standing on the summit of a post, darted forth four or five threads from its spin- ners. These, glittering in the sunshine, might be com- pared to diverging rays of light; they were not, however, straight, but in undulations like films of silk blown by the wind. They were more than a yard in length, and diverged in an ascending direction from the orifices. The spider then suddenly let go its hold of the post, and was quickly borne out of sight. The day was hot and apparently quite calm; yet under such circumstances, the atmosphere can never be so tranquil as not to affect a vane so delicate as the thread of a spider's web. If during a warm day we look either at the shadow of any object cast on a bank, or over a level plain at a distant landmark, the effect of an ascending current of heated air is almost always evident: such upward currents, it has been remarked, are also shown by the ascent of soap- bubbles, which will not rise in an in-doors room. Hence I thuak there is not much difficulty in understanding the ascent of the fine lines projected from a spider's spinners, and afterwards of the spider itself; the divergence of the lines has been attempted to be explained, I believe by Mr. Murray, by their similar electrical condition. The circumstance of spiders of the same species, but of different sexes and ages, being found on several occasions at the distance of many leagues from the land, attached in vast 90 EXPOSITION numbers to the lines, renders it probable that the habit of sailing through the air is as characteristic of this tribe, as that of diving is of the Argyroneta. We may then reject Latreille's supposition, that the gossamer owes its origin indifferently to the young of several genera of spiders: although, as we have seen, the young of other spiders do possess the power of performing aerial voyages. How TO Make New Varieties of Plants ^ There are two distinct phases of plant breeding. The first is " hybridization " or " cross-breeding." This is the process by which we cross different species or varieties so as to produce new plants having some of the characters of both parents. The second phase is " selection," the choosing from new plants those that approach nearest to the ideal we are seeking. Most of the improved forms of plants have been produced by selection alone. In order to cross two plants you have to put the pollen of one flower on the pistil of another. The stamen has three parts — the thread-like stalk, or filament, the anthers at the end of the stalk, and the pollen which is borne in the anthers. The pollen is the vital element and, when ripe, is fine, dust-like and often highly colored. Without this pollen no seed can be formed. The stamens are usually located just inside of the petals, but in double flowers they are intermingled with the inner rows of the petals if present at all. The pistil or group of pistils occupies the very center of the flower. Like the stamen, it is composed of three parts. The essential part where the seed is borne is at the base, and is called the ovary. Above the ovary is a stalk called * From the Garden Magazine. Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Company. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 91 the style, and at the end of this style is the stigma or place where the pollen grain must fall to form seeds. The stigma is usually knob-shaped. Pollination is the placing of the pollen from one plant upon the stigma of another plant. Fertilization takes place when the contents of the pollen grain unite with the ovule or contents of the ovary. Until this takes place no seed is developed, no matter how much pollen may be present. Furthermore, only one pollen grain can act. In order to be sure that its own pollen does not act you must remove the stamens from the flower you wish to bear seed. Of course this must be done before any pollen has been shed. The necessary tools are few — a pair of forceps or com- mon tweezers, or, lacking these, a common steel hairpin, a pair of small scissors, a pocket knife, some twine and some white paper for tags, or the little price tags your dry-goods merchant uses. A little hand magnifier is nec- essary. The choice of the plants you are to use is a matter of personal taste. Flowers, fruits, garden vegetables all are possibilities. After the plants are chosen decide what you wish to breed for. In flowers, quantity of bloom, length of bloom- period, color, hardiness and such characters are generally considered. The important thing is to have some definite ideal of what you wish to obtain and then work toward that ideal. Indiscriminate breeding may give you some interesting results, but the chances are that nothing of value will be obtained. Don't try to cross plants too far apart botanically. . . Choose your plants from the same botanical family and, if possible, the same genus. Take some common flower like the geranium to start with. Enough interesting things can be developed in that one flower to occupy you for years. 02 EXPOSITION If the flowers of the plant chosen have both stamens and pistil developed, the stamens must be removed from the one that is to bear seed. To do this take flowers in which no pollen has been shed. The half-open ones will usually be in the right condition, but in some flowers, like the sweet pea, the pollen is shed before the flower begins to open, and in such cases very young flowers must be chosen. Shed pollen gives the anther a fuzzy, dusty appearance. Hold the flower carefully with one hand and, with the forceps, carefully pick off the petals that are in the way. Then pick off the anthers. As there are usually very many anthers be sure that you get them all. Avoid any unnecessary injury or mutilation. If the flowers are in clusters you should pick off all but the ones you wish to pollinate. This will give you stronger flowers. Since the pollen from other flowers can easily be trans- ferred to yours, protect your flower from foreign pollen immediately after emasculation by covering it with an ordi- nary paper sack or envelope. Tie this on carefully but firmly. If it is much exposed to water you can oil it with grease or vaseline. After removing the stamens wait several days before you pollinate, in order to allow the stigma to become ripe or receptive. The exact length of time depends upon the age of the flower when operated upon — the younger the flower the longer the time you must wait. Here again a little observation will aid you, for, when receptive, the stigma excretes a gummy substance that gives it a moist appearance. This excretion causes the pollen to adhere and aids in the process of fertilization. Both pollen and stigma will remain active and receptive for several days if pollina- tion does not take place at first maturity. Usually two to four days is plenty of time to wait, but if doubtful pol- linate twice at an interval of two or three days. The transference of the pollen may be made in several SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 93 ways. A common way is to pick the pollen-bearing flower and rub or shake it over the stigma. A more exact way is to pick off a pollen-shedding stamen with the forceps and rub it on the stigma. In some cases, where considerable work is to be done, the pollen is collected on dry paper or glass and transferred to the stigmas by means of a small brush. This is the method in the case of strawberries. For accurate work in such cases a new brush should be used for each kind of pollen. The essential thing is that you get a single pollen grain upon a receptive stigma, and that no foreign pollen has a chance to pollinate it. After pol- lination cover until the seeds begin to form. When you pull out the stamens tag the flower, and on the tag make the following record: Male parent, female parent, when stamens were removed and date of pollina- tion. This tag should remain till the seed or fruit is gathered. As this may be several months, when the record is complete rub the tag with vaseline or grease. Make your record with lead pencil. When the seed is thoroughly ripe carefully gather it and keep for future planting. Seed formation is the last step in the first great phase of plant breeding. For the next phase, selection, no exact rules or directions can be given. Too much depends upon the individual worker and the end he has in view. A few general principles can be given : First. — See that the seed is thoroughly ripe, and in sow- ing observe the general rules as given in any flower cata- logue or garden book. Second. — Give the young seedlings every condition possi- ble for the best growth and carefully note their behavior. In this way you can often tell much as to their thrif tiness, habit of growth, etc. Third. — Compare carefully the characters of the seedlings with those of the parents, as this will tell you which ones to select for further work. Sometimes one seedling will 92 EXPOSITION If the flowers of the plant chosen have both stamens and pistil developed, the stamens must be removed from the one that is to bear seed. To do this take flowers in which no pollen has been shed. The half-open ones will usually be in the right condition, but in some flowers, like the sweet pea, the pollen is shed before the flower begins to open, and in such cases very young flowers must be chosen. Shed pollen gives the anther a fuzzy, dusty appearance. Hold the flower carefully with one hand and, with the forceps, carefully pick off the petals that are in the way. Then pick off the anthers. As there are usually very many anthers be sure that you get them all. Avoid any unnecessary injury or mutilation. If the flowers are in clusters you should pick off all but the ones you wish to pollinate. This will give you stronger flowers. Since the pollen from other flowers can easily be trans- ferred to yours, protect your flower from foreign pollen immediately after emasculation by covering it with an ordi- nary paper sack or envelope. Tie this on carefully but firmly. If it is much exposed to water you can oil it with grease or vaseline. After removing the stamens wait several days before you pollinate, in order to allow the stigma to become ripe or receptive. The exact length of time depends upon the age of the flower when operated upon — the younger the flower the longer the time you must wait. Here again a little observation will aid you, for, when receptive, the stigma excretes a gummy substance that gives it a moist appearance. This excretion causes the pollen to adhere and aids in the process of fertilization. Both pollen and stigma will remain active and receptive for several days if pollina- tion does not take place at first maturity. Usually two to four days is plenty of time to wait, but if doubtful pol- linate twice at an interval of two or three days. The transference of the pollen may be made in several SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 93 ways. A common way is to pick the pollen-bearing flower and rub or shake it over the stigma. A more exact way is to pick off a pollen-shedding stamen with the forceps and rub it on the stigma. In some cases, where considerable work is to be done, the pollen is collected on dry paper or glass and transferred to the stigmas by means of a small brush. This is the method in the case of strawberries. For accurate work in such cases a new brush should be used for each kind of pollen. The essential thing is that you get a single pollen grain upon a receptive stigma, and that no foreign pollen has a chance to pollinate it. After pol- lination cover until the seeds begin to form. When you pull out the stamens tag the flower, and on the tag make the following record: Male parent, female parent, when stamens were removed and date of pollina- tion. This tag should remain till the seed or fruit is gathered. As this may be several months, when the record is complete rub the tag with vaseline or grease. Make your record with lead pencil. When the seed is thoroughly ripe carefully gather it and keep for future planting. Seed formation is the last step in the first great phase of plant breeding. For the next phase, selection, no exact rules or directions can be given. Too much depends upon the individual worker and the end he has in view. A few general principles can be given: First. — See that the seed is thoroughly ripe, and in sow- ing observe the general rules as given in any flower cata- logue or garden book. Second. — Give the young seedlings every condition possi- ble for the best growth and carefully note their behavior. In this way you can often tell much as to their thriftiness, habit of growth, etc. Third. — Compare carefully the characters of the seedlings with those of the parents, as this will tell you which ones to select for further work. Sometimes one seedling will 96 EXPOSITION said to be able to subsist on fruits and berries in winter, and to be so active upon the trees as to catch small birds among the branches. So also the woodchuck of Canada has a dark-brown fur; but then it lives in burrows and frequents river banks, catching fish and small animals that live in or near the water. Among birds, the ptarmigan is a fine example of pro- tective coloring. Its summer plumage so exactly harmonizes with the lichen-colored stones among which it delights to sit, that a person may walk through a flock of them without seeing a single bird; while in winter its white plumage is an almost equal protection. The snow-bunting, the jer- falcon, and the snowy owl are also v/hite-colored birds in- habiting the arctic regions, and there can be little doubt that their coloring is to some extent protective. Nocturnal animals supply us with equally good illustra- tions. Mice, rats, bats, and moles possess the least con- spicuous of hues, and must be quite invisible at times when any light color would be instantly seen. Owls and goat- suckers are of those dark mottled tints that will assimilate with bark and lichen, and thus protect them during the day, and at the same time be inconspicuous in the dusk. It is only in the tropics, among forests which never lose their foliage, that we find whole groups of birds whose chief color is green. The parrots are the most striking example, but we have also a group of green pigeons in the East; and the barbets, leaf -thrushes, bee-eaters, white- eyes, turacos, and several smaller groups, have so much green in their plumage as to tend greatly to conceal them among the foliage. Soil Wastage through Tillage^ As soon as agriculture begins, the ancient order of the soils is subverted. In order to give his domesticated plants 1 From N. S. Shaler's Man and the Earth. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 97 a chance to grow, the soil-tiller has to break up the ancient protective mantle of plants, which through ages of natural selection became adjusted to their task, and to expose the ground to the destructive action of the rain. How great this is may be judged by inspecting any newly plowed field after a heavy rain. If the surface has been smoothed by the roller, we may note that where a potsherd or a flat pebble has protected the soil it rests on top of a little column of earth, the surrounding material having been washed away to the streams, where it flows onward to the sea. A single heavy rainstorm may lower the surface of a tilled field to the amount of an inch, a greater waste than would, on the average, be brought about in natural conditions in four or five centuries. The result is that in any valley in which the soils are subjected to an ordinary destructive tillage the deportation of the material goes on far more rapidly than their restoration by the decay of the underlying rocks. Except for the alluvial plains where- upon the flood waters lay down the waste of fields of the upper country, nearly all parts of the arable lands which have been long subjected to the plow are thinned so that they retain only a part of their original food- yielding capacity. Moreover, the process of cropping takes away the soluble minerals more rapidly than they are prepared, so that there is a double waste in body and in the chemical materials needed by the food-givmg plants. There is no question that the wasting of soils under the usual tillage conditions constitutes a very menacing evil. Whoever will go, with his eyes open to the matter, about the lands bordering on the Mediterranean, will see almost everywhere the result of this process. Besides the general pauperizing of the soils, he will find great areas where the fields have prevailingly steep slopes from which the rains have stripped away the coatmg down to the bedrock. In 98 EXPOSITION Italy, Greece, and Spain, this damage has gone so far that the food-producing capacity of those countries has been greatly reduced since they were first subjected to general tillage. There is no basis for an accurate reckoning, but it seems likely from several local estimates that the average loss of tillage value of the region about the Mediterranean exceeds one-third of what it was originally. In sundry parts of the United States, especially in the hilly country of Virginia and Kentucky, the depth and fertility of the soil has in about one hundred and fifty years been shorn away in like great measure. Except in a few regions, as in England and Belgium, where the declivities are pre- vailingly gentle, it may be said that the tilled land of the world exhibits a steadfast reduction in those features which give it value to man. Even when the substance of the soil remains in unimpaired thickness, as in the so-called prairie lands of the Mississippi valley, the progressive decrease on the average returns to cropping shows that the impoverishment is steadfastly going on. The Formation of Vapor Drops ^ The formation of the vapor drops that make the cloud was long a puzzle to science, but modem research has at last succeeded in solving this mystery. It has been found by experiments that if pure dry air, and pure vapor of water, be mixed in a clean vessel, and then cooled down below the temperature of saturation, the drops of mist are not generally able to form. Purity means that all the particles of dust which float in the air have been perfectly filtered out, and that all traces of electricity have been removed from the air before mixing them. It was further discovered that if fine dust powder is injected into the ^From an article by Frank H. Bigelow on "The Formation and Motion of Clouds," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1902. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 99 pure mixture, without changing the temperature or the pressure, the drops of water developed at once; also that if minute charges of electricity, carried on particles of matter which may be as small as one-thousandth part of the mass of an atom of hydrogen, are introduced, the drops are able to condense. It is inferred that nuclei of some kind, dust particles or electric particles, called ions or electrons, are required for the formation of water drops suspended in dry air, one nucleus for each drop. Hence, it is possible, by counting the number of minute drops that form in a cubic inch, to estimate the number of motes of dust in the air, and even the number of ions charged with electricity in a given volume. The number of the ions contained in the air may be enormous, ranging from 20 per cubic centimeter to many millions. We perceive further that these minute drops coalesce to form rain, which falls from the clouds to the ground, and that they carry down the dust previously blown up by the winds and so purify the atmosphere from all sorts of small floating particles. They also bring electric charges to the earth, and this has something to do with producing the atmospheric electrical potential which always exists. These ions are a natural portion of the atmosphere itself, being continuously pro- duced in it, even when no special cause seems to be present, and they have much to do with explaining some of the strange characteristics of atmospheric electricity which have so long baffled all efforts to comprehend. Investiga- tors are now paying the closest attention to these ions from every point of view. A Sailor's Work^ Nothing is more common than to hear people say — " Are not sailors very idle at sea? — ^what can they find to do?" ^ Prom Two Years Before the Mast, by R. H. Dana, Jr. 100 EXPOSITION This is a very natural mistake, and being very frequently made, it is one which every sailor feels interested in having corrected. In the first place, then, the discipline of the ship requires every man to be at work upon something when he is on deck, except at night and on Sundays. Ex- cept at these times, you will never see a man, on board a well-ordered vessel, standing idle on deck, sitting down, or leaning over the side. It is the officers' duty to keep every one at work, even if there is nothing to be done but to scrape the rust from the chain cables. In no state prison are the convicts more regularly set to work, and more closely watched. No conversation is allowed among the crew at their duty, and though they frequently do talk when aloft, or when near one another, yet they always stop when an officer is nigh. With regard to the work upon which the men are put, it is a matter which probably would not be understood by one who has not been at sea. When I first left port, and found that we were kept regularly employed for a week or two, I supposed that we were getting the vessel into sea trim and that it would soon be over, and we should have nothing to do but to sail the ship; but I found that it continued so for two years, and at the end of the two years there was as much to be done as ever. As has often been said, a ship is like a lady's watch, always out of repair. When first leaving port, studding-sail gear is to be rove, all the running rigging to be examined, that which is unfit for use to be got down, and new rigging rove in its place : then the standing rigging is to be overhauled, replaced, and repaired, in a thousand different ways; and wherever any of the numberless ropes or the yards are chafing or wearing upon it, there " chafing gear," as it is called, must be put on. This chafing gear consists of worming, parceling, roundings, battens, and service of all kinds — both rope- yarns, spun-yarn, marline, and seizing-stuffs. Taking SPECIMENS OF EXPOSlTlC^iT lOl off, putting on, and mending the chafing gear alone, upon a vessel, would find constant employment for two or three men, during working hours, for a whole voyage. Why Flies Gather on the Screen Door ^ It is a long step toward keeping flies out of the house when one understands why they want to come in. Common opinion has it that the fly meditates profoundly on the conduct of life, knows what he wants and why he wants it, and deliberately joins the assembly around the top of the kitchen screen door to wait for the chance to dodge in when the cook comes out. As a matter of fact, the fly is no such rational thinker. He has one supreme motive in life, and that is — to move toward the strongest smell. He enters the house because there are more smells inside than out, and, once in, he frequents the kitchen because there are more smells there than in the parlor. The fly does not find its food by sight, but by odor only. In fact, the fly^s sight is extremely poor; for nature has never solved the optical problem of making a small eye see as clearly as a large one. The customary swarm of flies around the kitchen door means only that the kitchen windows are opened at the bottom, and since the top of the door is the highest opening in the room, that, rather than one of the windows, is carrying the out-draft and the smell of yesterday's soup. The moral is, adjust the ventilation so that the out-draft shall be through a screened window. No fly will ever see a door open and deliberately fly in. iFrom an article by E. T. Brewster on *' The Fly— the Diseaso of the House," McClure'8 Magazine, September, 1909. 102 EXPOSITION The Law of Economy in Style ^ Our inquiry is scientific, not empirical; it therefore seeks the psychological basis for every law, endeavoring to ascertain what condition of a reader's receptivity deter- mines the law. Fortunately for us, in the case of the first and most important law the psychological basis is extremely simple, and may be easily appreciated by a reference to its analogue in Mechanics. What is the first object of a machine? Effective work — vis viva. Every means by which friction can be reduced, and the force thus economized be rendered available, neces- sarily solicits the constructor's care. He seeks as far as possible to liberate the motion which is absorbed in the working of the machine, and to use it as vis viva. He knows that every superfluous detail, every retarding influ- ence, is at the cost of so much power, and is a mechanical defect, though it may perhaps be an assthetic beauty or a practical convenience. He may retain it because of the beauty, because of the convenience, but he knows the price of effective power at which it is obtained. And thus it stands with Style. The first object of a writer is effective expression, the power of communicating distinct thoughts and emotional suggestions. He has to overcome the friction of ignorance and preoccupation. He has to arrest a wandering attention, and to clear away the misconceptions which cling around verbal symbols. Words are not like iron and wood, coal and water, invari- able in their properties, calculable in their effects. They are mutable in their powers, deriving force and subtle variations of force from very trifling changes of position; coloring and colored by the words which precede and succeed; significant or insignificant from the powers of rhythm and cadence. It is the writer's art so to arrange * From G. H. Lewes's Principles of Success in Literature. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 103 words that they shall suffer the least possible retardation from the inevitable friction of the reader's mind. The analogy of a machine is perfect. In both cases the object is to secure the maximum of disposable force, by diminish- ing the amount absorbed in the working. Obviously, if a reader is engaged in extricating the meaning from a sentence which ought to have reflected its meaning as in a mirror, the mental energy thus employed is abstracted from the amount of force which he has to bestow on the subject; he has mentally to form anew the sentence which has been clumsily formed by the writer; he wastes, on interpretation of the symbols, force which might have been concentrated on meditation of the propositions. This waste is inappreciable in writing of ordinary excellence, and on subjects not severely tasking to the attention; but if inappreciable, it is always waste; and in bad writing, especially on topics of philosophy and science, the waste is important. And it is this which greatly narrows the circle for serious works. Interest in the subjects treated of may not be wanting; but the abundant energy is want- ing which to the fatigue of consecutive thinking will add the labor of deciphering the language. Many of us are but too familiar with the fatigue of reconstructing unwieldy sentences in which the clauses are not logically dependent, nor the terms free from equivoque; we know what it is to have to hunt for the meaning hidden in a maze of words; and we can understand the yawning indifference which must soon settle upon every reader of such writing, unless he has some strong external impulse or abundant energy. Economy dictates that the meaning should be presented in a form which claims the least possible attention to itself as form, unless when that form is part of the writer^s ob- ject, and when the simple thought is less important than the manner of presenting it. And even when the manner is playful or impassioned, the law of Economy still presides, 104 EXPOSITION * and insists on the rejection of whatever is superfluous. Only a delicate susceptibility can discriminate a superfluity in passages of humor or rhetoric; but elsewhere a very ordi- nary understanding can recognize the clauses and the epi- thets which are out of place, and in excess, retarding or confusing the direct appreciation of the thought. If we have written a clumsy or confused sentence, we shall often find that the removal of an awkward inversion liberates the idea, or that the modification of a cadence increases the effect. This is sometimes strikingly seen at the rehearsal of a play: a passage which has fallen flat upon the ear is suddenly brightened into effectiveness by the removal of a superfluous phrase, which, by its retarding influence, had thwarted the declamatory crescendo. Young writers may learn something of the secrets of Economy by careful revision of their own compositions, and by careful dissection of passages selected both from good and bad writers. They have simply to strike out every word, every clause, and every sentence, the removal of which will not carry away any of the constituent ele- ments of the thought. Having done this, let them compare the revised with the unrevised passages, and see where the excision has improved, and where it has injured, the effect. For Economy, although a primal law, is not the only law of Style. It is subject to various limitations from the pressure of other laws; and thus the removal of a trifling superfluity will not be justified by a wise economy if that loss entails a dissonance, or prevents a climax, or robs the expression of its ease and variety. Economy is rejection of whatever is superfluous; it is not Miserliness. A liberal expenditure is often the best economy, and is always so when dictated by a generous impulse, not by a prodigal carelessness or ostentatious vanity. That man would greatly err who tried to make his style effective by strip- ping it of all redundancy and ornament, presenting it SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 105 naked before the indifferent public. Perhaps the very redundancy which he lops away might have aided the reader to see the thought more clearly, because it would have kept the thought a little longer before his mind, and thus prevented him from hurrying on to the next while this one was still imperfectly conceived. As a general rule, redundancy is injurious; and the reason of the rule will enable us to discriminate when redundancy is injurious and when beneficial. It is injuri- ous when it hampers the rapid movement of the reader^s mind, diverting his attention to some collateral detail. But it is beneficial when its retarding influence is such as only to detain the mind longer on the thought, and thus to secure the fuller effect of the thought. For rapid reading is often imperfect reading. The mind is satisfied with a glimpse of that which it ought to have steadily contem- plated; and any artifice by which the thought can be kept long enough before the mind, may indeed be a redundancy as regards the meaning, but is an economy of power. Thus we see that the phrase or the clause which we might be tempted to lop away because it threw no light upon the proposition, would be retained by a skilful writer because it added power. You may know the character of a redun- dancy by this one test: does it divert the attention, or simply retard it? The former is always a loss of power; the latter is sometimes a gain of power. The art of the writer consists in rejecting all redundancies that do not conduce to clearness. The shortest sentences are not nec- essarily the clearest. Concision gives energy, but it also adds restraint. The labor of expanding a terse sentence to its full meaning is often greater than the labor of picking out the meaning from a diffuse and loitering passage. Taci- tus is more tiresome than Cicero. There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. 106 EXPOSITION An example may be seen in the passage which has been a favorite illustration from the days of Longinus to our own. " God said : Let there be light ! and there was light." This is a conception of power so calm and simple that it needs only to be presented in the fewest and the plainest words, and would be confused or weakened by any suggestion of accessories. Let us amplify the expression in the redundant style of miscalled eloquent writers : " God, in the magnificent fullness of creative energy, exclaimed: Let there be light! and lo! the agitating fiat immediately went forth, and thus in one indivisible moment the whole universe was illumined." We have here a sentence which I am certain many a writer would, in secret, prefer to the masterly plainness of Genesis. It is not a sentence which would have captivated critics. Although this sentence from Genesis is sublime in its simplicity, we are not to conclude that simple sentences are uniformly the best, or that a style composed of propositions briefly expressed would obey a wise Economy. The reader's pleasure must not be forgotten; and he cannot be pleased by a style which always leaps and never flows. A harsh, abrupt, and dislocated manner irritates and perplexes him by its sudden jerks. It is easier to write short sentences than to read them. An easy, fluent, and harmonious phrase steals unobtrusively upon the mind, and allows the thought to expand quietly like an opening flower. But the very suasiveness of harmonious writing needs to be varied lest it become a drowsy monotony; and the sharp, short sen- tences which are intolerable when abundant, when used sparingly act like a trumpet-call to the drooping attention. Goldsmith ^ The principal name of the period we are now come to is that of Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or I From Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Foots, SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 107 fairer in the annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to describe him as he ought to be described — amiable, various, and bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of excellence — ^with manners un- studied, but a gentle heart — performing miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the most flowing and elegant of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of artless nature which Pope had not, and with a peculiar felicity in his turns upon words, which he constantly re- peated with delightful effect: such as — " His lot, though small, He sees that little lot, the lot of all." " And turned and lookM, and turned to look again." As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. What reader is there in the civilized world, who is not the better for the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so deliberately with the poker — for the knowledge of the guinea which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets — the adventure of the picture of the Vicar^s family, which could not be got into the house — and that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges in their hands — or for the story of the case of shagreen spectacles and the cosmogony? As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston's face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor Goldsmith! how happy he has made others! how unhappy he was in himself ! He never had the pleasure of reading his own works ! He had only the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the necessities of others, and the consolation of being harassed to death with his own. He is the most amusing and interesting person, in one of the 108 EXPOSITION most amusing and interesting books in the world, BoswelPs Life of Johnson. His peach-colored coat shall always bloom in Boswell's writings, and his fame survive in his own ! His genius was a mixture of originality and imitation : he could do nothing without some model before him, and he could copy nothing that he did not adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the latter part of the Vicar of Wake- field, and a great deal of the former, is taken from Joseph Andrews; but the circumstances I have mentioned above are not. The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character of a country schoolmaster, and that prophetic de- scription of Burke in the Retaliation. His moral essays in the Citizen of the World are as agreeably chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic discourses. Potash & Perlmutter ^ A many-nationed country like America needs writers who can interpret one race to another, needs especially writers of fiction who can pierce through the crust of alien manners and speech and show the inherent humaneness. Only thus shall come a richer understanding, a quicker socialization. Hence, in his light-hearted Potash & Perlmutter stories, Montague Glass is doing a serious work. For he has seized upon a section of life as yet not articulated through art, a section on the surface sordid and crass, and has so set it forth that it swarms upon us with interest and reality. His method is photographic and phonographic; that is, we get the life just as it stirs daily in the cloak and suit section of New York, and we get it through its own lan- guage. However, Mr. Glass is an artist; he is not content ^By Montague Glass. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Com- pany. — Reviewed by James Oppenheim in the Bookman, Au- gust, 1910. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION 109 with mere literalness; his realism is not mere realism; but there is all through his work an undercurrent of genial warmth, of kindly humor, which rises here and there in the creation of real characters. Potash, Perlmutter, Henry D. Feldman, Sammet Brothers, and a host of others live as really as Pickwick, Becky Sharp or Falstaff. We talk of them as if they were living people. They come to us dripping with faults; they shock us by their manners and their meannesses, by their money-lust and sharp practice; but they grow on us until we accept them as relatives — that is, we see their faults merged into a universal humaneness, a humaneness that we share our- selves. In fact, Mr. Glass has interpreted a certain type of the Jew, and done it successfully. Needless to say, these stories have large limitations. The area of life covered is small. Mr. Glass has only touched a slight fringe of the race that has produced the Prophets, the founder of Christianity, and such men as Spinoza, Marx, Mendelssohn, and Heinrich Heine. His is not the book of the Jew; but a book about certain Jews. Nor is this narrowness made up by depth. When Shakespeare created a group of Scotchmen, as in Macbeth, he did more than make them human : he connected them up with Nature ; he showed the divine spaciousness of the human soul; he gave through them a sense of the vastness, the tremendous- ness of life. He gave depth, as Dickens has given breadth. This may seem a curious criticism of stories that were probably primarily intended to be entertaining and farcical ; but a writer who can create living characters should not be contented with so limited an area; and it is to be hoped that this book is Mr. Glass's Pickwick Papers and that he is going on to write a David Copperfield — that is, a book rich with the diversities of life, crowded with a varied peo- ple, and set on a broad stage. In the meantime we may thoroughly enjoy Potash <& Perl- 110 EXPOSITION mutter. Its humor is unique — not the humor of a wit, like Mr. Dooley — but the humor of characters who are deadly serious and do not know how funny they are. While the reader is laughing, Abe Potash and Morris Perlmutter are groaning and turning pale. Especially precious to any one acquainted with German and Yiddish idioms are the quaint foreign phrases that sprinkle the racy speech throughout. In a few words, then, this book by Mr. Glass is a real transcription of life, it is alive with real people, it is charged with human warmth, it is full of laughable fun and farce, and it is significant in that it interprets one type of American, and in that it promises larger work. The man who wrote this book has it in him to depict life on a larger scale. AEGUMENTATION 1. NATURE AND PURPOSE OP ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING Argumentation may be defined, in general, as that kind of discourse wherein the aim is to influence be- lief or opinion. In argumentation the writer or speaker assumes that there is difference of opinion between himself and the person addressed with re- gard to the matter discussed, and his object is to remove the difference by bringing that person over to his way of thinking. Argumentation always pre- supposes that there are two sides to the question. Where no difference of opinion exists, there is no ground for argument. It is this presupposition that there may be difference of opinion on the subject discussed that distinguishes, in the main, argumentation from exposition. In ex- position, the presumption is that the reader is at one with the writer in desiring simply a clear understand- ing of the subject. When he understands fully and clearly what the writer is trying to make him under- stand, all has been done that needs to be done. Whether he believes it to be true or false is immaterial ; it is sufficient if he simply understands it. In argu- mentation, however, it is different. Here it is the 111 112 ARGUMENTATION reader's beliefs or opinions with regard to a subject, not his understanding of it merely, that the writer is concerned with chiefly. Explanation may, of course, play an important part in an argumentative discourse ; but it is always a part subservient to the main pur- pose of the discourse, which is the influencing of the belief or opinions of the reader. It is not always easy, to be sure, to distinguish between what is meant as explanation simply and what is intended to influence belief. The line between exposition and argumentation, as has been said, is not, and can not be, very sharply drawn. Many books and articles which are obviously expository in their main intention have yet an underlying argumentative purpose. The main purpose of Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, may be regarded as expository, but note the argumentative tone of the following pas- The complex and little known laws governing the pro- duction of varieties are the same, as far as we can judge, with the laws which have governed the production of dis- tinct species. In both cases physical conditions seem to have produced some direct and definite effect, but how much we cannot say. Thus, when varieties enter any new station, they occasionally assume some of the characters proper to the species of that station. With both varieties and species, use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable effect; for it is impossible to resist this conclusion when we look, for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which has wings incapable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the domestic duck; or when we look at the burrowing tucu- tucu, which is occasionally blind, and then at certain moles. CONVICTION AND PERSUASION 113 which are habitually blind and have their eyes covered with skin J or when we look at the blind animals inhabiting the dark caves of America and Europe. With varieties and species, correlated variation seems to have played an im- portant part, so that when one part has been modified other parts have been necessarily modified. With both varieties and species, reversion to long-lost characters occa- sionally occur. How inexplicable on the theory of creation is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulders and legs of the several species of the horse-genus and of their hybrids. How simply is this fact explained if we believe that these species are all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several domestic breeds of the pigeons are descended from the blue and barred rock pigeon ! The purpose of the writer here is manifestly not merely to explain his theory, but to show how much more satisfactory it is as an explanation of the facts in the case than the commonly accepted theory of special creation. He not only wishes his reader to understand it, but to accept it as true. 2. CONVICTION AND PERSUASION One of the first things the student should note with regard to argumentation is that it has two phases, — one which concerns the reason or understanding mainly; and the other, the will. When the effort to win assent takes the form of an appeal to the under- standing, it is called reasoning, or conviction if the appeal has been successful ; when, however, it consists mainly of an appeal to the will — ^which is usually reached through the passions or feelings — it is com- 114 ARGUMENTATION monly called persuasion. There is a difference be- tween being convinced and being persuaded. Convic- tion is content with simple intellectual assent; per- suasion, on the contrary, seeks, wherever possible, to transform belief into action. A man convinced against his will is, according to the adage, of the same opinion still. To induce him to act in conformity with his opinion is the task of persuasion. At bottom, as has been intimated already, argumen- tation is a matter for the understanding rather than the feelings. But the feelings play a very important part in it for all that. Man is not wholly a creature of reason, though in his arguing he sometimes makes the mistake of supposing that he is. Temperament, training, inherited tendencies, special interest, and so on, all go to give the mind a bent; and this bent is sometimes so decided that it is difficult for one to see things quite as others see them. Still, it is at the same time true that, though we may be much less under the sway of pure reason than we sometimes suppose, we always expect to have our understanding convinced before we change our opinions. Our reason must be satisfied before we yield assent. It is only where our interests or feelings are unconcerned, how- ever, that we are likely to be induced to yield that assent by the methods used in pure reasoning. Hence it is in the field of pure science only, where personal interests, passions, or prejudices have no place, that we may expect to find pure reasoning. The demonstra- tion of a proposition in geometry is an example of reasoning pure and simple without any admixture of persuasion. All that is required of us here is in- CONVICTION AND PERSUASION U5 tellectual assent, and that we must yield if the reason- ing is sound and we are in the possession of our senses. Argumentation of this kind, however, is sel- dom or never to be met with outside the realms of pure science. Whenever we deal with questions which bear upon the interests or activities of life, we put more or less of feeling into our discourse. There is, virtually, no such thing as pure reasoning in litera- ture; persuasion enters, to some degree at least, into practically all argumentative discourses of the ordi- nary kind, — the kind, that is, with which we are here concerned. On the other hand, pure persuasion is as rare as pure reasoning. Persuasion must have a sub- stratum of reasoning before it can be widely effective. We may move for the moment by an appeal to the passions or prejudices of our hearers or readers, but the effect will not be very lasting if there is no solid logical basis to our argument. Practically, then, all argumentative discourses which deal with questions of personal, political, or social interest are a mixture of reasoning and per- suasion. They accomplish their end partly by con- viction and partly by persuasion, aiming always at a happy combination of the two methods. The two methods, indeed, are each, as Professor Baker puts it, '* the complement of the other, and ideal argumen- tation would combine perfection of reasoning, com- plete convincingness, with perfection of persuasive power — excitement of just the right emotions to just the right extent to obtain the ends desired by the (speaker or writer. ' ' ^ * Principles of Argumentation, p. 7, 116 ARGUMENTATION For the most part, the arts of persuasion are be- yond the power of the rhetorician to teach. There is, as yet, neither a science nor an art of persuasion. Such persuasive arts and devices as are recognized and practised depend for their efficacy mostly upon the personal gifts of those who use them. These gifts will, in the case of one speaker, render effective what would, in the case of another, be a totally ineffective argument. In written argumentation, to be sure, the personal magnetism which a speaker may exert does not count; nevertheless, there may still be an in- dividuality in a writer's style whereby what he says may win its way to the hearts of his readers, when the same arguments, differently expressed, would fall flat. In general, the great thing in persuasion is the winning of the sympathy of the reader. The reader must be made to feel with the writer, to be willing not only to hear what he has to say, but to follow him in a spirit of open-mindedness, or readiness to be persuaded. This means that the writer himself must be fair-minded, earnest, and sincere. Nothing will more quickly breed distrust in the reader, and hence render the task of winning assent from him difficult, if not impossible, than an appearance of unfairness or insincerity on the part of the writer. The reader cannot be made to believe what the writer himself does not believe. Nor can he be made to feel much enthusiasm about a subject if the writer displays no such feeling on his own part. The reader, in short, takes his cue from the writer. The argumentative writer who would succeed, therefore, should first try THE PROPOSITION 117 to get his readers into as favorable an attitude toward him as possible, and then throw himself into his sub- ject with as much vigor as he can. The rest will depend upon the cogency of his reasoning. In studying the methods of convincing the under- standing, we are on much firmer ground than when dealing with persuasion. Logic, which is the science that treats of the nature and laws of thought, has investigated the process of thinking and has laid down the general conditions under which reasoning must proceed in order to be correct. We can here call logic to our aid, whereas in persuasion we have no such guide to fall back upon. 3. THE PROPOSITION Every argumentation implies a proposition. In arguing, we affirm or deny that something is true and then proceed to give reasons why it should or should not be regarded as true. In other words, we lay down a ** proposition '^ and then ** prove " it by adducing arguments in support of it. We cannot * * argue a term ' ' ; we must have an assertion with re- gard to it before we can bring it within the scope of argumentation. The point is well illustrated by the comment which Newman makes upon the composition of a certain student whose father had submitted it to him for criticism : The subject is "Fortes fortuna adjuvat"; now this is a proposition; it states a certain general principle, and this is just what an ordinary boy would be sure to miss, 118 ARGUMENTATION and Robert does miss it. He goes off at once on the word " f ortuna." " Fortuna " was not his subject ; the thesis was intended to guide him for his own good; he refuses to be put into leading strings; he breaks loose, and runs off in his own fashion on the broad field and in wild chase of " foiiuna," instead of closing with a subject, which, as being definite, would have supported him. It would have been very cruel to have told a boy to write on " fortuna " ; it would have been like asking him his opinion of things in general. Fortune is good, bad, ca- pricious, unexpected, ten thousand things all at once . . . and one of them as much as the other. Ten thousand things may be said of it; give me one of them, and I will write upon it; I cannot write on more than one.^ ** Fortuna '' is a term ; ^' fortune favors the brave,'* is a proposition. The first may be made the subject of an exposition; the second, only, can be argued. It should be noted that a term is not necessarily a single word. ** A logical term may consist of any number of nouns, substantive or objective, with the articles, prepositions, and conjunctions required to join them together; still it is only a term if it points out, or makes us think of a single object or collection, or class of objects.*' ^ A term may thus be often of considerable length, as for example the following: " The Bearing of the Monroe Doctrine upon the Venezuela Incident and its Influence upon the Re- lations between England and the United States.'* As arguing implies difference of opinion, the propo- sition should not, of course, be the statement of an * From The Idea of a Umversity. ' Jevons, Primer of Logic, p. 12. DEFINING THE ISSUES 119 obvious or universally admitted truth. In framing the proposition, therefore, care should be taken to see that it is one upon which there may be real diver- gence of opinion. The student should note that a question-begging epithet introduced into the proposi- tion, as sometimes happens in debates, will, if accepted, often remove all ground for argument. For instance, on the proposition, ** The brutal game of football should be suppressed, ' ' there can scarcely be two opinions. If the game is brutal, it should of course be suppressed. The brutality of the game, however, may be questioned. In that case, the debatable propo- sition would be simply, ** Football is a brutal game." 4. DEFINING THE ISSUES Every argumentative composition must, as we have seen, have a proposition, and that proposition must be one as to the truth of which there may legitimately be some doubt. Except in debate, which is a special kind of argumentation, it is not necessary that the proposition be formulated in precise terms. But if it is not so formulated, it should at least be clearly implied. The person addressed must be able to gather what it is that he is expected to give his assent to, otherwise there will be small chance of pro- ducing anything like conviction in his mind. It is usual in argumentative compositions to devote some space at the beginning to such preliminary ex- planations as may be felt to be necessary or desirable. In this introduction the precise meaning of the propo- sition may be made clear, or, if there is not likely to 120 ARGUMENTATION be doubt as to that, the special points which must be proved before the proposition can be established may be indicated. Ordinarily, misapprehension as to the meaning of a proposition will be the result of some ambiguity lurking in the meaning of the terms used. This of course should be guarded against; and the best possible way of guarding against it is to define carefully all terms about which there is the least likelihood of there being any misunderstanding. The importance of this preliminary explanation is obvious. In argumentation there must always be a certain common ground upon which both parties may meet in agreement, and from which they may pro- ceed to the point in dispute. The larger the area of this common ground, the less, naturally, will be the distance to travel over debatable ground. Hence a little explanation will often save a great deal of argument, and in many cases it may render argument almost, if not wholly, superfluous. The necessity of coming to an agreement as to the meaning of terms used in controversy is well illus- trated in the following passage from Matthew Arnold's essay on Literature and Science, in which he defends himself against Huxley's attack upon his theory of culture: Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the object of a good deal of comment; an observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, we have, as the means to this end, to know the best which has been thought and said in this world. A man of science, who is also an ex- cellent writer and the very prince of debaters, Professor DEFINING THE ISSUES 121 Huxley, in a discourse at the opening of Sir Josiah Ma- son's College at Birmingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, which are these : " The civilized world is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result; and whose members have for their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one an- other. Special local and temporary advantages being put out of account, that modem nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most progress which most thoroughly carries out this program." Now on my phrase, thus enlarged. Professor Huxley re- marks that when I speak of the above-mentioned knowl- edge as enabling us to know ourselves and the world, I assert literature to contain the materials which suffice for thus making us know ourselves and the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, that after having learned all which ancient and modern literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life, that knowledge of ourselves and the world, which constitutes culture. On the contrary. Pro- fessor Huxley declares that he finds himself "wholly un- able to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical science. An army without weapons of precision, and with no particular base of operations might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life." This shows how needful it is for those who are to dis- cuss any matter together, to have a common understanding as to the sense of the terms they employ, — how needful, and how difficult. What Professor Huxley says, implies just the reproach which is so often brought against the 122 ARGUMENTATION study of helles lettres, as they are called: that the study is an elegant one, but slight and ineffectual; a smattering of Grreek and Latin and other ornamental things, of little use for any one whose object is to get at truth, and to be a practical man. So, too, M. Renan talks of the " super- ficial humanism" of a school course which treats us as if we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers, orators, and he opposes this humanism to positive science, or the critical search after truth. And there is always a tendency in those who are remonstrating against the predominance of letters in education, to understand by letters helles lettres, and by helles lettres a superficial humanism, the opposite of science or true knowledge. But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people have called the humanities, I for my part mean a knowledge which is something more than a superficial humanism, mainly deco- rative. "I call all teaching scientific," says Wolf, the critic of Homer, "which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources. For example : a knowl- edge of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the original languages." There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; that all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific. When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages; I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal ; and when we talk of endeavoring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a DEFINING THE ISSUES 123 help to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean en- deavoring so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, how- ever much we may still fall short of it. The same also as to knowing our own and other modern nations, with the like aim of getting to understand ourselves and the world. To know the best that has been thought and said by the modern nations, is to know, says Professor Huxley, " only what modern literatures have to tell us ; it is the criticism of life contained in modern liteiature." And yet " the distinctive character of our times," he urges, *Mies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore, can a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, enter hopefully upon a criticism of modern life? Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which has been thought and uttered in the world; Professor Huxley says this means knowing Literature. Literature is a large word; it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. Euclid^s Elements and Newton^s Principia are thus literature. All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. But by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres. He means to make me say, that know- ing the best which has been thought and said by the modem nations is knowing their belles lettres and no more. And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for a criticism of modem life. But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin belles lettres, and taking no account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology, — 124 ARGUMENTATION I understand knowing her as all this, and not merely know- ing certain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches, — so as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their belles lettres, but knowing also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. " Our ancestors learned," says Professor Huxley, " that the earth is the center of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more especially was it inculcated that the course of nature has no fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was, altered." But for us now, continues Professor Huxley, "the notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the chief body in the material universe, and that the world is not subordinated to man^s use. It is even more certain that nature is the expression of a definite order, with which nothing interferes." " And yet," he cries, "the purely classical education advocated by the representatives of the humanists in our day gives no inkling of all this!" In due place and time I will just touch upon that vexed question of classical education; but at present the question is as to what is meant by knowing the best which modern nations have thought and said. It is not knowing their helles lettres merely which is meant. To know Italian belles lettres is not to know Italy, and to know English belles lettres is not to know England. Into knowing Italy and England there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly enough to some other disciplines; but to the particular discipline recommended when I proposed knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world, it does not apply. In that best I certainly include what in modern times has PROOF AND EVIDENCE 125 been thought and said by the great observers and knowers of nature. 5. PROOF AND EVIDENCE Having determined upon the proposition and made clear the precise point or points at issue, the argu- mentative writer must next turn his attention to the question of proof. To prove a proposition, something must be brought forward to substantiate it, to show that there is ground for believing it true. Anything BO brought forward, that is, anj^thing used to induce belief in the truth of a proposition, is called evidence, or, in some cases, an argument. The whole body of evidence used to establish the truth of the proposition is called the proof. The beginner should note here that mere assertion on his part does not constitute proof. No statement that he may make in support of his proposition can be regarded as evidence of its truth unless that state- ment is in itself a fact or truth generally accepted, or unless it is, in its turn, supported by other facts or truths about which there is no dispute. Every state- ment made in support of the proposition, therefore, must be backed up by unimpeachable evidence. The only way to prove a proposition, in short, is to bring forward arguments in its favor which every one ad- mits to be sound. As so much depends in argumentation upon the soundness of the arguments used, some knowledge of the nature and kinds of evidence will be found helpful by every disputant. Evidence, as we have already defined it, is anything used to induce belief in the 126 ARGUMENTATION truth of a proposition. Its value is not a constant quantity. It may be strong or weak, according to circumstances. From weak evidence it is impossible, of course, to build up a satisfactory proof. To know whether a given bit of evidence is weak or strong, is, therefore, the business of every one who would hope to argue successfully. A thoroughly satisfactory classification of the kinds of evidence is not easy to find. The most natural classification, perhaps, as it certainly is the most familiar, is that which divides all evidence into two kinds, testimonial evidence, and circumstantial evi- dence. By testimonial evidence is meant evidence given by a human being, — that is, evidence which consists of statements of fact or of opinion based upon some person's observation or experience and bearing directly upon the point at issue; by circum- stantial evidence is meant any kind of evidence that is not testimonial, — in other words, any kind of evi- dence that owes its force wholly to something inherent in itself, and not to the fact that it is asserted by any particular person. Circumstantial evidence is unlike testimonial evidence in that it does not bear directly upon the point in dispute, but must be made to apply to it by inference. It is a popular supposition that testimonial evidence is, from its very nature, much more convincing than circumstantial evidence. As Huxley points out, how- ever, this is an unwarranted assumption: " Suppose that a man tells you that he saw a person strike another and kill him; that is testimonial evidence PROOF AND EVIDENCE 127 of the fact of murder. But it is possible to have circum- stantial evidence of the fact of murder; that is to say, you may find a man dying with a wound upon his head having exactly the form and character of the wound which is made by an ax, and, with due care in taking surrounding cir- cumstances into account, you may conclude with the utmost certainty that the man has been murdered; that his death is the consequence of a blow inflicted by another man with that implement. We are very much in the habit of consid- ering circumstantial evidence as of less value than testi- monial evidence, and it may be that, where the circumstances are not perfectly clear and intelligible, it is a dangerous and unsafe kind of evidence; but it must not be forgotten that, in many cases, circumstantial is quite as conclusive as testimonial evidence, and that, not unfrequently, it is a great deal weightier than testimonial evidence. For example, take the case to which I referred just now. The circumstantial evidence may be better and more convincing than the testimonial evidence; for it may be impossible, under the conditions that I have defined, to suppose that the man met his death from any cause but the violent blow of an ax wielded by another man. The circumstantial evidence in favor of a murder having been committed, in that case, is as complete and as convinc- ing as evidence can be. It is evidence which is open to no doubt and to no falsification. But the testimony of a witness is open to multitudinous doubts. He may have been mis- taken. He may have been actuated by malice. It has con- stantly happened that even an accurate man has declared that a thing has happened in this, that, or the other way, when a careful analysis of the circumstantial evidence has shown that it did not happen in that way, but in some other way." ^ *See Huxley's Three Lectures on Evolution. 128 ARGUMENTATION A distinction must be made between ordinary testi- mony and the testimony of an expert or authority. The latter, if it can be employed, is much more weighty, of course, than the former. Care must be taken, however, to see that it really is authoritative. Hence before using the argument from authority — under which term is included not only the testimony of so-called experts, but the statements or assertions made in such compilations as dictionaries, encyclo- pedias, and the like — one should ask, To what extent is the person who gives the testimony, or the work which is cited, as the case may be, accepted as an authority? The force of the argument will depend solely, of course, upon the willingness of those to whom it is addressed to accept anything coming from such a source as authoritative. With regard to ordi- nary testimony, the tests to apply are such as will determine whether or not the person giving it possesses average intelligence and has a reputation for truth- fulness. Circumstantial evidence is of various kinds. These kinds may conveniently be grouped under three heads : (1) evidence which, from a known cause, points to a probable effect; (2) evidence which, from a known effect, points to a probable cause or necessary con- dition of that effect; (3) evidence which is founded on the belief that things which are alike in one or more essential particulars are apt to be alike in others. Arguments based on these three kinds of evi- dence are commonly known, respectively, as the argu- ments from antecedent probability, from sign, and from resemblance. PROOF AND EVIDENCE 120 The argument from antecedent probability tries to account for the fact or matter in dispute by bring- ing forward some known fact or circumstances pre- ceding it, and saying that the former might be ex- pected as a result of the latter. It infers what is likely to happen from what has happened, what is likely to be true from what is admittedly true. In general, it is a strong argument ; but its value depends largely upon the clearness with which the cause and effect relation is brought out. If that relation is made unmistakable, the force of the argument is very great, since it establishes a strong presumption in favor of the proposition to be proved. For the argument to become conclusive, however, it is necessary to show not only that the known cause is adequate to produce the alleged effect, but that nothing has interfered with its producing that effect. That a thing is likely to happen is not, of course, proof conclusive that it has actually happened. The argument from antecedent probability, therefore, though a strong argument, must usually be supported by arguments of another kind. The argument from sign is the exact opposite of the argument from antecedent probability. It tries to account for the fact or matter in dispute by bring- ing forward other facts or circumstances which are in- disputable, but which themselves can be satisfactorily accounted for only on the supposition that the fact in dispute is true. From an effect, it infers a cause or necessary condition of that effect. Thus, the ex- istence of ice in a pool of water on a spring morning is an indication of a freezing temperature the night before; the fact that the clothes of a man accused 130 ARGUMENTATION of murder are found to be bloody, is an indication that he is guilty of the crime charged against him. The force of this argument varies with circumstances. A single argument from sign may be so weak as to be almost valueless as proof; again, it may be abso- lutely conclusive. For example, the fact that a man died on the twentieth of the month proves conclusively that he was alive on the nineteenth. In general, the force of the argument comes from the cumulative effect of a number of signs all pointing in the same direction. The argument from resemblance differs from both the argument from antecedent probability and the argument from sign in that it does not infer directly an effect from a cause, or a cause from an effect, but infers rather that like causes will be followed by the same or similar effects, or that like effects must result from the same or similar causes. Its force depends wholly upon the kind and degree of resemblance ex- isting between the things compared. If the resem- blance is superficial or fanciful, the argument has no weight whatever. For the argument to have proba- tive value, the resemblance must be real, — that is, it *' must hold in all particulars essentially connected with the point under discussion. ' ' ^ What has sometimes been called the " argument from analogy '' is simply a particular form of the argument from resemblance. Here the resemblance is not so much in the things themselves as in the relations in which they stand to other things. This I Baker and Huntington, Principles of Argumentation, p. 107. PROOF AND EVIDENCE 131 form of argument is never very weighty. At best, it can but establish a strong probability ; it can never be conclusive. We might, for example, be able to show that the conditions on the planet Mars were almost identical with those obtaining on the earth ; but that would not be proving that Mars was inhabited by living beings, much less by human beings like ourselves. Reasoning from analogy is, however, by no means to be discredited. It can never, indeed, demonstrate to a certainty, and at times it may even be mislead- ing ; yet on the whole it has been found to be a method of reasoning having great practical value. It is peculiarly adapted to furnish hints or starting-points for new lines of investigation. In the field of scien- tific research, analogy has often pointed the way to new discoveries or new applications of familiar laws and principles. It was reasoning from analogy that enabled Darwin, for example, to hit upon his famous theory of natural selection. In studying the methods of breeders of plants and animals, selection, he ob- served, was the clue to their success. To improve a variety, they uniformly selected the best, — ^that is, the fittest for the particular purpose in view, — and al- lowed those only to survive and propagate their kind. Why might not, he reasoned, the same principle hold true in nature ? Why might there not be an improve- ment of races or varieties by natural, as well as by artificial selection? The hint thus obtained led ulti- mately to the theory, now accepted as a truth by virtually all scientists, that species owe their origin to a process of natural selection. 132 ARGUMENTATION 6. REPUTATION Argumentation may be destructive as well as con- structive; that is, it may equally as well aim to prove a proposition false as aim to prove it true. Most argumentative compositions, indeed, are a mixture of constructive and destructive reasoning ; for it is often necessary, in order to establish the truth of a given proposition, to destroy belief in its opposite. In any case, the successful argumentation is the one which not only advances positive proof in support of its proposition, but meets all weighty objections that either are, or may possibly be, urged against it. De- structive argumentation, or argumentation which con- sists in showing that an opponent's conclusions are wrong or wrongly arrived at, is usually called refuta- tion. To be able to manage refutation well, the disputant must not only know what constitutes proof, but must be able to detect errors in reasoning. Such errors are usually known as fallacies. Fallacies may arise either from lack of definition of the terms used, from misinterpretation of evidence, or from improper methods of making inferences. To point out a fallacy in an opponent's argument, is, of course, to invalidate any conclusion that may rest on that argument. Fallacies may take a great variety of forms. It is scarcely worth while to enumerate them all here, how- ever; it will suffice if a few of the more common are distinguished. The ambiguous term. This fallacy consists in using, in an argument, a word or term in two or more REFUTATION 133 senses, though ostensibly in one only. Sometimes the fallacy is quite transparent; again, it is so subtle as almost to escape detection. No one, probably, is de- ceived when the stump speaker triumphantly declares that X ought to vote the Republican ticket because he is a Republican and believes in a republican form of government. But a fallacy like that in the follow- ing argument is very apt to pass unchallenged : * * He is the Representative in Congress of our district; therefore he should really represent us, do as we should do, were we ourselves there to act in our own behalf. * * The best way to expose fallacies of this kind is to insist rigorously on a careful definition of all the im- portant terms used in the argument. Begging the question. The fallacy here consists in taking for granted something that has to be proved. The most common form in which it occurs is in the use of what are called question-begging epithets. Thus if, in attacking the acts or policies of a political opponent, we begin by calling them ** nefarious ^' or ** unstatesmanlike, * ' and then proceed to condemn them as nefarious or unstatesmanlike, we obviously assume what it should be our business to prove. Arguing beside the point. It sometimes happens that a disputant finding it hard to prove the proposi- tion he began with, proves some other proposition very much like it, and assumes that it is virtually the same as that he wished to prove. In such a case, he is said to argue beside the point, or to ignore the point at issue. Dr. Johnson's refutation of Berkeley's ideal- ism by kicking a stone is an example of a variety of this fallacy. The appeal to the special interests, 134 ARGUMENTATION passions, or prejudices of a particular individual {argumentum ad hominem, as it is called) is also a variety of this fallacy. Assuming that to he true of the whole which is true only of the part, and the converse. Fallacies in which assumptions of this kind are made are technically called the fallacies of composition and of division, respectively. Thus if we argue that because partici- pation in collegiate athletic contests benefits the par- ticular individuals who take part in them, therefore such contests have a beneficial effect on the student body as a whole, we commit the fallacy of composition. Contrariwise, if we argue that because the Republican party deserves well of the country, therefore X, the Eepublican candidate for district Y, ought to be re- elected, we commit the fallacy of division. The false cause. The most common form of this fallacy, perhaps, is that usually known as post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), in which the assumption is made that because one thing follows another, there is therefore a necessary connection between the two things. X, for instance, takes a certain quack remedy for the rheumatism, and finds, after a few days, that his rheumatism is all gone; he leaps to the conclusion, accordingly, that the remedy has cured his malady, whereas it may have had no effect one way or the other. Hasty generalization. The fallacy here consists in assuming that to be true generally which happens to be true in one or two particular cases, — that is to say, in inferring the existence of a law or general truth from a too narrow basis of observation. Because we REFUTATION 135 happen to have been unlucl^ in certain ventures which we began on a Friday, it does not follow that Friday- is an unlucky day on which to begin anything. Yet a great many people argue in precisely this fashion. The disputant must remember that even if a given argument used by an opponent is shown to rest on a fallacy, it does not necessarily follow that his con- clusions are false. They may be true for other reasons that he urges, or for reasons that he fails to urge. It is only when the fallacious argument is an essential part of his proof, that the exposing of the fallacy means the overthrow of his conclusions. Effective refutation lays bare the cardinal points of a chain of reasoning and shows that they are incapable of sup- porting the conclusions that rest on them. A particularly effective method of refutation, wherever it can be employed, is that known as reductio ad absurdum, — that is, showing that an opponent's arguments lead to manifest absurdities when carried to their logical conclusion. A passage from Webster's Reply to Hayne well illustrates the method. Senator Hayne, with others of his party, contended that " in case of a plain, palpable violation of the Constitution by the general government, a State may interpose ; and that this interposition is constitutional."^ In the course of his reply, Webster cited the tariff of 1828 and observed as follows: The tariff is a usurpation; it is a dangerous usurpation; it is a palpable usurpation; it is a deliberate usurpa- tion. It is such a usurpation, therefore, as calls upon the * See Webster's Great Speeches, p. 256, 136 ARGUMENTATION States to exercise their right of interference. Here is a case, then, within the gentleman's principles. It is a case for action. The Constitution is plainly, dangerously, pal- pably, and deliberately violated; and the States must inter- pose their own authority to arrest the law. Let us suppose the State of South Carolina to express this same opinion, by the voice of her legislature. That would be very im- posing; but what then? Is the voice of one State con- clusive? It so happens that, at the very moment when South Carolina resolves that the tariff laws are unconstitu- tional, Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve exactly the re- verse. They hold those laws to be both highly proper and strictly constitutional. And now, sir, how does the honora- ble member propose to deal with this case? How does he relieve us from this difficulty, upon any principle of his? His construction gets us into it; how does he propose to get us out? In Carolina, the tariff is a palpable, deliberate usurpa- tion; Carolina, therefore, may nullify it, and refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania, it is both clearly constitu- tional and highly expedient; and there the duties are to be paid. And yet we live under a government of uniform laws, and under a Constitution, too, which contains an express provision, as it happens, that all duties shall be equal in all the States. Does not this approach absurdity? 7. THE BRIEF AS AN AID IN ARGUMENTATION After the argumentative writer has arrived at a clear conception of what it is he wishes to prove, and has examined the evidence in support of his proposi- tion which he has at his disposal, he will do well to make a brief or outline of the course which he plans to have his argument take. In exposition, as we have THE BRIEF AS AN AID IN ARGUMENTATION 137 seen, the outline is a valuable aid in enabling the writer to set forth clearly the facts or principles he wishes to explain ; in argumentation, the brief, which is simply a special form of outline, is well-nigh indis- pensable. It enables the writer to see at a glance the precise bearing of his arguments upon his proposition, and very greatly facilitates the task of securing their proper arrangement. As to the form of the brief, it should consist of three parts : an Introduction, the Brief Proper, and a Conclusion. A good Introduction will usually (1) de- fine such terms used as are likely to be misunderstood, (2) explain how and why the subject comes up for discussion, (3) indicate what is admitted by both sides to the dispute, (4) give the conflicting arguments in the case, and (5) state clearly the precise points it is necessary to prove in order to establish the proposi- tion. The Brief Proper should then take up the proposition, or the points at issue indicated in the Introduction, and outline the development of the argument. This can best be done by putting the vari- ous arguments used in support of the proposition in the form of main headings, making every one read as a reason for accepting the proposition, or point to be proved, and by putting every subordinate argument in the form of a sub-heading under the argument it is intended to support. Each heading should, of course, be in the form of a complete sentence. The Conclusion should consist simply of a concise sum- ming up of the main arguments and a re-affirmation of the proposition. The student will probably find it best to make, in 138 ARGUMENTATION the first place, a short brief, giving only the main arguments. When he has definitely settled upon the order of these arguments, he can then enlarge this to whatever extent may be deemed desirable. Of the examples given below, A shows a preliminary, B a completed, brief. Brief A SHOULD MANUAL TRAINING FORM A PART OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL WORK OF THE STATE? Introduction I. The question of manual training in the public schools is becoming one of increasing importance. II. The discussion of the question arises from the fact that, while a large number of the public schools of the State have successfully undertaken manual training during the last twenty-five years, a great many still fail to provide such training. III. By manual training is meant a series of exercises in a properly equipped work room where children are taught the use of tools and the properties of such materials as wood, metal, leather, etc. Brief Proper Manual training should form a part of the public school work of the State, for I. The courses of instruction in the public schools as now arranged are inadequate for fully developing the child. II. The introduction of manual training would tend to strengthen the courses where they are now weak. THE BRIEF AS AN AID IN ARGUMENTATION 139 III. The addition of manual training will not interfere with the ordinary academic work now done in the schools. IV. The argument that the cost of introducing manual training generally into the public schools would be prohibitive is not warranted by the facts. Conclusion I. Since manual training would strengthen the present courses of study, n. Since it would benefit rather than injure the intel- lectual work now done in the schools, III. And since the cost of its general introduction into the schools would not be excessive, Therefore it should be made a part of the public school work of the State. Brief B SHOULD MANUAL TRAINING FORM A PART OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL WORK OF THE STATE? Introduction I. The question of manual training in the public schools is becoming one of increasing importance. II. The discussion of the question arises from the fact that, while a large number of the public schools of the State have successfully undertaken manual training during the last twenty-five years, a great many still fail to provide such training. III. By manual training is meant a series of exercises in a properly equipped work room where children are taught the use of tools and the properties of such materials as wood, metal, leather, etc. 140 ARGUMENTATION IV. Those who favor making manual training a part of the public school work usually contend that, A. The ordinary public schools do not provide adequately for the training of the child's physical powers. B. The average child will find skill in the use of tools highly advantageous as a prepara- tion for its vocation in life. C. This skill cannot now be obtained in the home. V. Those who oppose making manual training a part of the public school work contend, ordinarily, that, A. The courses as now arranged in the public schools not having manual training develop the child as completely as they would were manual training introduced. B. Manual training will add little or nothing to the usefulness of the training the child now gets. C. The cost of introducing manual training into all the public schools of the State, even if it were desirable, would be prohibitive. VI. The following, therefore, seem to be the special ques- tions to be decided: A. Do the public schools of the State at present provide adequately for the full develop- ment of the child? B. If not, would the introduction of manual training add a beneficial element? C. Would the addition of manual training affect either the quantity or the quality of the purely intellectual work now done in the schools ? D. Would the cost of the general introduction of manual training be excessive ? THE BRIEF AS AN AID IN ARGUMENTATION 141 Brief Proper I. The courses of instruction in the public schools as now arranged are inadequate for fully developing the child, for A. They tend almost exclusively toward the de- velopment of the mental powers, because 1. The subjects taught are such as re- quire memorizing chiefly. 2. The child is now a hearer, merely, not a doer. B. They tend to foster a purely idealistic atti- tude in the child, for 1. They do not force the child to relate ideas of things to the things them- selves. C. Much of the training which they give, the child is unable to find applicable to every- day life. D. They do not provide adequately for the de- velopment of the child's physical powers, for 1. Gymnastic exercises are not regularly conducted. II. The introduction of manual training would tend to strengthen the courses where they are now weak, for A. Manual training exercises develop properly the physical powers. B. They cultivate dexterity of hand. C. They train the child to see correctly, reason soundly, and execute accurately. D. They cultivate habits of exactness, order, and neatness, for 142 ARGUMENTATION 1. The tools must be kept in their places and the work bench kept in order. 2. Careless or slovenly work at once ac- cuses its author. E. They develop independence and self-reliance, for 1. Each child takes part in planning its own work. 2. The results obtained depend entirely on the child's own care and skill. F. They stimulate mental development in a nat- ural way, for 1. They encourage the planning and car- rying out of original ideas with means at the disposal of the child. G. They keep the child in touch with the prac- tical side of life, for 1. They lead to the production of useful commodities. H. They help to fit the child to make a wise choice of a vocation in life, for 1. They give it a chance to learn some- thing about the various trades. 2. They enable it to test its own capa- bilities in a variety of ways. III. The addition of manual training will not interfere with the ordinary academic work now done in the schools, for A. The manual training exercises will be alter- nated properly with purely intellectual work and will thus preserve a just pro- portion between mental and bodily ex- ertion. B. This will enable the child to do more and better intellectual work in the time devoted THE BRIEF AS AN AID IN ARGUMENTATION 143 to that work than would otherwise be pos- sible, because 1. It is a well-known fact that the child cannot profit by instruction if its mind is overtaxed or its physical needs are not satisfied. C. Manual training stimulates intellectual de- velopment directly as well as indirectly, for 1. Judgment and intelligence are re- quired to solve the tasks it sets. IV. The argument that the cost of introducing manual training generally into the public schools would be prohibitive is not sound, for A. The equipment need not be elaborate, because 1. Valuable training can be given by means of simple, moderate-priced tools. B. The cost of equipment can be spread over a number of years. C. The operating cost can be kept within rea- sonable bounds, because 1. The materials used need not be ex- pensive. 2. Many of the pupils would be glad to pay for the articles made if allowed to take them home. Conclusion I. Since manual training would strengthen the present courses of study, U. Since it would benefit rather than injure the intel- lectual work now done in the schools, III. And since the cost of its general introduction into the schools would not be excessive, 144 ARGUMENTATION Therefore it should be made a part of the public school work of the State. 8. DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION Reasoning consists, for the most part, either in in- ferring the particular from the general or in inferring the general from the particular. Thus, if I argue that X will try to pay his just debts because he is an honest man, I am assuming as a general truth that all honest men try to pay their just debts, and from that am inferring the particular truth I wish to establish. My reasoning in this case is said to be deductive. On the other hand, if from my observa- tion of honest men I find that they invariably try to pay their just debts, and come to the conclusion that all honest men try to pay their just debts, I am inferring a general truth from a number of particular truths. In this case my reasoning is said to be in- ductive. We have thus two general methods of reasoning, the deductive and the inductive, each the exact oppo- site of the other. Though opposite to, they are by no means independent of each other, however. Rather, each is the complement of the other. A deduction implies a general truth to start with, and a general truth is the result of an inductive process. More- over, induction must, at a certain stage of its progress, adopt the deductive method before it can finally es- tablish its conclusion. The basis of a deductive argumentation is the syl- logism. This consists of a set of three propositions, two of which, called the major and minor premises, DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 145 are joined together in such a way as to admit of the third, called the conclusion, being derived from them. For example : (1) All our fellow-men are entitled to our sympathy Major premise Criminals are our fellow-men . . Minor premise Therefore criminals are entitled to our sympathy Conclusion (2) Seaweeds are not flowering plants . Major premise This is a seaweed Major premise Therefore this is not a flowering plant Conclusion (3) All whales are mammals .... Major premise All whales are water animals . . Minor premise Therefore some water animals are mam- mals Conclusion It will be observed that in each of these syllogisms the two premises together contain but three terms, one term being common to the two, and that of these three terms, two appear again in the conclusion. Thus the conclusion has nothing in it that is not derived from the premises; and if the premises be admitted as true, there is no escape from accepting the con- clusion as true also. It must not be supposed, of course, that in actual discourse we ordinarily find syllogisms fully expressed, as in the examples given above. As a matter of fact, we seldom find them so expressed. The writer who would stop to make all the minute steps of his reason- 146 ARGUMENTATION ing so definite and explicit as that would be considered formal and pedantic. Reasoning by means of the regular syllogism is the exception rather than the rule. It is the enthymeme, or incomplete syllogism, that is ordinarily employed ; for one or other of the premises is usually a truth so obvious as not to need explicit statement, as, for example, in the following cases : We shall die, for all men are mortal. Brought up among savages, he could not be expected to know the usages of polite society. He is an Oriental, and therefore cannot appreciate the western point of view. Plagues and convulsions of nature cannot be interpreted as manifestation of God^s anger against the wicked, for they involve the innocent as well as the guilty. In each of these examples one of the premises is suppressed, it being so obvious that the reader is sup- posed to supply it for himself. Occasionally, even the conclusion may be omitted, as, for example, in the following : Every man who voted for that measure is a traitor to his country; and we have the honorable gentleman's own word for it that he cast his vote in its favor. The beginner needs to be cautioned here against the danger of omitting too much, of taking too much for granted. That which appears perfectly obvious to him may not appear obvious at all to his readers. Before making any assumptions he should examine his premises carefully. Whatever can safely be taken DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 147 for granted should, of course, be assumed. Whatever is doubtful or apt to be misunderstood, however, should be explained and, if necessary, supported by- arguments. It is in this elucidation and establishment of his premises, in fact, that the main work of the argumentative writer lies. Where the premises are universally accepted and the inference is plain, there is little or no need for argument. Argument becomes necessary only where one or other of the premises needs elucidation and support. A passage from Webster's argument in the Dart- mouth College case, for example, will illustrate the point. One of the main propositions which Webster sought to establish in this celebrated case was that certain acts of the New Hampshire legislature in amending the charter of Dartmouth College without the consent of the trustees were repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. Briefly outlined, his argument takes the form of the following syllo- gism : The Constitution of the United States says that no State shall pass a law impairing the obligation of a contract. But a charter to a private corporation, such as a college, is essentially a contract. Therefore the acts of the New Hampshire legislature in question amending the charter of Dartmouth College with- out the consent of the trustees are repugnant to the Con- stitution of the United States. Here the major premise is a clause of the Constitu- tion of the United States, which, of course, is accepted without question. But the minor premise, — that is, 148 ARGUMENTATION that a charter is essentially a contract, — is not so clear. This premise, therefore, Webster has to estab- lish. In fact, the greater part of his speech is taken up with the establishing of this premise. Slightly condensed, his argument runs as follows: The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, that the acts in question are repugnant to the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States. The ma- terial words of that section are : " No state shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts." It has already been decided in this court, that a grant is a contract, within the meaning of this provision; and that a grant by a State is also a contract, as much as the grant of an individual. In the case of Fletcher v. Peck this court says: "A contract is a compact between two or more par- ties, and is either executory or executed. An executory- contract is one in which a party binds himself to do, or not to do, a particular thmg; such was the law under which the conveyance was made by the government. A contract executed is one in which the object of contract is performed; and this, says Blackstone, differs in nothing from a grant. The contract between Georgia and the purchasers was ex- ecuted by the grant. A contract executed, as well as one which is executory, contains obUgations binding on the parties. A grant, in its own nature, amounts to an ex- tinguishment of the right of the grantor, and implies a contract not to reassert that right. If, under a fair con- struction of the Constitution, grants are comprehended under the term contracts, is a grant from the State ex- cluded from the operation of the provision? Is the clause to be considered as inhibiting the State from impairing the obligation of contracts between two individuals, but DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 149 as excluding from that inhibition contracts made with itself? The words themselves contain no such distinction. They are general and are applicable to contracts of every description. It has also been decided, that a grant by a State before the Revolution is as much to be protected as a grant since. But the case of Terret v. Taylor, before cited, is of all others most pertinent to the present argument. Indeed, the judgment of the court in that case seems to leave little to be argued or decided in this. " A private corporation," says the court, " created by the legislature, may lose its franchises by a misuser or nonuser of them; and they may be resumed by the government under a judicial judgment upon a quo warranto to ascertain and enforce the forfeiture. This is the common law of the land, and is the tacit condition an- nexed to the creation of every such corporation. . . . But that the legislature can repeal statutes creating private corporations or confirming to them property already ac- quired under the faith of previous laws, and by such repeal can vest the property of such corporations ex- clusively in the State, or dispose of the same to such pur- poses as they please, without the consent or default of the corporators, we are not prepared to admit; and we think ourselves standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental laws of every free government, upon the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States, and upon the decisions of most respectable judicial tribunals, in resisting such a doctrine." This court, then, does not admit the doctrine, that a legis- lature can repeal statutes creating private corporations. If it cannot repeal them altogether, of course it cannot repeal any part of them, or impair them, or essentially alter them, without the consent of the corporators. If, therefore, it has been shown that this college is to be regarded as a private charity, this case is embraced within the very terms of that 150 ARGUMENTATION decision. A grant of corporate powers and privileges is as much a contract as a grant of land. What proves all charters of this sort to be contracts is, that they must be accepted to give them force and effect. If they are not accepted, they are void. And in the case of an existing corporation, if a new charter is given, it may even accept part and reject the rest. There are, in this case, all the essential constituent parts of a contract. There is something to be contracted about, there are parties, and there are plain terms in which the agreement of the parties on the subject of the contract is expressed. There are mutual considerations and induce- ments. The charter recites, that the founder, on his part, has agreed to establish his seminary in New Hampshire, and to enlarge it beyond its original design, among other things, for the benefit of that Province; and thereupon a charter is given to him and his associates, designated by himself, promising and assuring to them, under the plighted faith of the State, the right of governing the college and admin- istering its concerns in the manner provided in the charter. There is a complete and perfect grant to them of all the power of superintendence, visitation, and government. Is not this a contract? If lands or money had been granted to him and his associates, for the same purpose, such grant could not be rescinded. And is there any difference, in legal contemplation, between a grant of corporate franchises and a grant of tangible property? No such difference is recog- nized in any decided case, nor does it exist in the common apprehension of mankind. It is therefore contended, that this ease falls within the true meaning of this provision of the Constitution, as ex- pounded in the decisions of this court; that the charter of 1769 is a contract, a stipulation or agreement, mutual in its considerations, express and formal in its terms, and of DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 151 a most binding and solemn nature. That the acts in ques- tion impair this contract, has been sufficiently shown. They repeal and abrogate its most essential parts. The deductive method is a very important and use- ful method of reasoning, but it has its limitations. Its great defect is that, of itself, it is powerless to aid us in the discovery of new truth. Every conclu- sion we arrive at by this method is but the rendering clear, or the making application of, some particular truth involved in a more general one, and therefore by implication already known. When we wish to find out new truth, to make new generalizations or estab- lish new laws, we must proceed by the inductive method. In inductive reasoning, we start with par- ticular facts or truths known to us from our observa- tion and seek to find some general truth or principle underlying them and giving them meaning or unity. A conclusion arrived at by the inductive method, once it is established, may be used, of course, as a starting point for a deductive argumentation. Thus a writer, in endeavoring to establish a given truth, may use both the inductive and deductive methods in one and the same discourse. He may proceed now by means of the one and again by means of the other, using them in succession and each as an aid and sup- port to the other. As a matter of fact, reasoning in this way is much more common than reasoning by the purely inductive, or the purely deductive method. It is the method the mind naturally employs in un- studied and informal reasoning. ** Our thought,'' says Professor Creighton, ** uses every means which 152 ARGUMENTATION will help it to its desired end. It is often able, after pushing its inquiries a little way, to discover some general principle, or to guess what the law of con- nection must be. When this is possible, it is found profitable to proceed deductively, and to show what results necessarily follow from the truth of such a general law. Of course, it is always essential to verify results obtained in this deductive way, by com- paring them with the actual facts. But in general, the best results are obtained when induction and de- duction go hand in hand. * ' ^ Inductive reasoning is essentially the endeavor to establish causes for the phenomena which have en- gaged our attention. "When we note facts and seek an explanation of those facts, we reason inductively. In this search for the explanation we desire, our ordi- nary procedure is first to make a guess as to what that explanation is and then to try to find out whether our guess is correct or not. Thus, in the whole process of inductive reasoning, three distinct steps are distin- guishable : (1) Observation, or the gathering of the particular facts to be used as the basis of the induction. (2) The making of an hypothesis, or the provi- sional explanation of the facts. (3) Verification, or the comparison of deductions from the hypothesis with known facts or principles. The gathering of the facts is, of course, preliminary work. Ordinarily, the writer begins his argumenta- tion with some reference to his hypothesis, which may * J. E. Creighton, Introductory Logic, pp. 174, 176. DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 153 be stated explicitly at the beginning or left as a matter of inference for the reader. The one decisive test of a good hypothesis is its complete accordance with facts. If it is not in agreement with known facts, or is inadequate to the explanation of all the facts it is required to explain, it must be discarded and some more probable hypothesis adopted. That this test may be applied, however, the hypothesis must be of such a nature as to admit of deductions being made from it. ** An hypothesis from which nothing can be deduced, . . . is of no value whatever. It always remains at the stage of mere possibility, and without any real connection with fact. It is a mere guess which has no significance whatever, for it is entirely incapable either of proof or of disproof."^ Such a useless hypothesis is that, for example, stated first in the following passage: The adaptation of the external coloring of animals to their condition of life has long been recognized, and has been imputed either to an originally created specific pe- culiarity, or to the direct action of climate, soil, or food. Where the former explanation has been accepted, it has completely checked inquiry, since we coulJ never get any further than the fact of the adaptation. There was nothing more to be known about the matter. The second explanation was soon found to be quite inadequate to deal with all the varied phenomena, and to be contradicted by many well-known facts. For example, wild rabbits are always of gray or brown tints well suited for concealment among grass and fern. But when these rabbits are do- mesticated, without any change of climate or food, they > Ibid., p. 242. 154 ARGUMENTATION vary into white or black, and these varieties may be multiplied to any extent, forming white or black races. Exactly the same thing has occurred with pigeons; and in the case of rats and mice, the white variety has not been shown to be at all dependent on alteration of climate, food, or other external conditions. In many cases, the wings of an insect not only assume the exact tint of the bark or leaf it is accustomed to rest on, but the form and veining of the leaf or the exact rugosity of the bark is imitated; and these detailed modifications cannot be reasonably im- puted to climate or food, since in many cases the species does not feed on the substance it resembles, and when it does, no reasonable connection can be shown to exist be- tween the supposed cause and the effect produced.^ The verification or proof of an hypothesis is essen- tially a deductive process. In verifying an hypothe- sis, we reason in some such fashion as this: If this hypothesis is true, then such and such consequences should follow; these consequences do follow — ^that is, they are in accord with all the known facts bearing on the matter; therefore the hypothesis is true. The familiar story of how Torricelli proved that the air has weight, and incidentally invented the barom- eter, illustrates the method perfectly. It had been noticed by his master, Galileo, that water would not rise in a suction pump beyond thirty-two or thirty- three feet. Torricelli, in trying to explain why it should rise at all, hit upon the idea that it was because of the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the air balancing the column of water. If this were so, * From Alfred Russel Wallace's Natural Selection. DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION 155 he reasoned, then a liquid heavier than water would rise to a less height. Mercury, for instance, which is a little more than thirteen times heavier than water, would rise less than one thirteenth as far. On invert- ing, in a basin of mercury, a glass tube about four feet long, and hermetically sealed at one end, he found that the result was as he had conjectured. The mercury in the tube sank to about thirty inches above the level of that in the basin. His hypothesis was thus veri- fied, and the world was benefited by the invention of a very useful instrument. The verification of the hypothesis should, of course, be conducted with the utmost care possible. Accurate observations and rigid scrutiny of the facts used are indispensable as a preliminary, since no induction based on doubtful facts can have much validity. But even if the writer is sure of his facts, he needs to be cautioned against generalizing on too narrow a basis. He needs to be cautioned also against the assumption that a single test satisfactorily passed necessarily estab- lishes an hypothesis. In some cases, such as the one just cited, a single test may be sufficient ; but in most cases it is not. It often happens that a phenomenon re- sults from a complexity of causes, in which case a num- ber of tests made under varying conditions will be nec- essary to reveal all the causes. For example, at a given altitude the application of a certain degree of heat to water in an open vessel will cause it to boil; but we cannot therefore infer that water will always boil when brought to this same temperature. At a lower altitude, it will not boil until a higher temperature is reached. In other words, pressure as well as heat 156 ARGUMENTATION must be taken into account in determining the boiling point of a fluid. To guard against error, therefore, the tests em- ployed in verifying an hypothesis should be as many and as varied as possible. Moreover, wherever it is convenient, experiment should be used as an aid to observation. When we can control the conditions under which a phenomenon occurs, we can the more readily determine the cause of that phenomenon. SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION Of the specimens of argumentation given below, the first three illustrate the deductive, the last the inductive, method of reasoning. Should the Panama Canal be Fortified?^ It is announced — and we are authorized to say that the announcement correctly represents the President's views — that the President is in favor of fortifying the Panama Canal; that he has always been in favor of its fortification ever since his early connection with it as Secretary of War; that he believes that there is nothing in the Hay- Pauncef ote Treaty inconsistent with such fortification ; that, on the contrary, that treaty both implicitly and explicitly recognizes the right of the United States to fortify it; that Colonel Goethals, who is in charge of the construction of the Canal, is in thorough sympathy with the President's views on this subject, and that in the construction of the Canal he has in mind facilities for its future fortification. The Outlook agrees with the President's policy in this respect, which was the policy of his predecessor. The grounds for this policy will best appear from a brief his- torical statement. For neutralization and non-fortification are not the same. And non-fortification of the present Canal has at no time been entertained as a poHcy by our Government. It is one of the disadvantages of the com- » From the Outlook, October 1, 1910. 157 158 ARGUMENTATION plete separation between the executive and legislative branches of the Government that it gives encouragement to absolute Congressional non-continuity of thought and policy. The Executive, with the consent of the Senate, will negotiate a treaty, and that treaty will be carried out, and a few years later, not only newspapers and individual citi- zens, but even members of Congress, especially of the lower branch of CongTess, will seem to forget everything con- nected with what has been assumed by the nation itself to be a well-settled and well-thought-out policy, and will start in to reverse it. The first Hay-Pauncefote treaty provided that the Pan- ama Canal should not be fortified, and that its neutrality should be guaranteed by various European powers. The Senate, by an overwhelming vote, and with the cordial approbation of practically the entire country, amended the treaty by striking out both these provisions. It was then argued, and, as we believe, convincingly, that to invite the European powers to gaurantee the neutrality of the Canal was to invite the official violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and definitely to establish on American shores European military powers with the right guaranteed to interfere in American affairs. Moreover, the complete failure of a similar effort to control Egypt and the Suez Canal in the interest of civilization, a scheme which broke down so absolutely as to render it necessary for England to herself assume the burden of managing Egypt and policing the Canal, was a sufficient warning against our repeating the experiment that had failed. Still further, the senators and public men who opposed the treaty in its unamended form pointed out that we had no right as a nation to leave in the hands of others the control in war time of the Canal, when such control might be vital to our own interests. It was argued that if we undertook the enormous expense of digging the Canal and managing it, it was not merely an SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 159 absurdity, but a criminal absurdity, to refrain from seeing that it was not managed against our own interests, and that of course we should fortify it; that while guaranteeing its absolute neutral use by all nations in times of peace, and while guaranteeing that it should not be used by one nation as against another in time of war, we should keep it under our own control, so that it should not only not be used against us, but also should enable us to have one fleet instead of two fleets for use in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at any and all times. This was — indeed is — one of the prime reasons for its existence. The argument was that the right to fortify the Canal and to use it in our own de- fense was an elemental right, like that of self-defense; that, of course, there was not the slightest need of putting this in any treaty; but there was imperative need of eliminating its denial from any treaty. The Senate amendments were carried. After the lapse of some time Secretary Hay and Ambassador Pauncefote produced another draft of the treaty which practically em- bodied the Senate amendments, and struck out the provisos to which objection had been made. Before submitting this treaty to the Senate, the then President, Mr. Roosevelt, categorically inquired, both of Mr. Hay and the ambas- sador, if the striking out of the objectionable provisos was clearly understood to carry by implication the right of the United States to fortify the Canal and to control it for its own defense in time of war, or when war impended; and the President submitted the treaty only on the assur- ance that of course the abolition of the objecting para- graphs meant, and could only mean, the acceptance of the view upon which the President insisted. This bit of inside history happens to be within the personal ken of the editors of the Outlook, but it is mentioned merely as casting a side- light on the event, and not as having any importance, because the facts speak for themselves. The treaty was, 160 ARGUMENTATION in effect, rejected until the objectionable clauses were struck out, and was ratified on the ground, openly and re- peatedly taken, that, with the clauses struck out, the United States obtained the right to fortify the Canal, the duty to police it, and the further right to control it for its own benefit if menaced by war. This right was further ex- plicitly recognized by the clause that the United States shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the Canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder. To suppose that England, while holding Egypt, would permit the Suez Canal to be used by a hostile fleet against the interest of Egypt is an absurdity; but it is not quite so great an absurdity as to suppose that, after building with American money and by American enterprise the Panama Canal, and after having assumed the full mone- tary and other responsibility of repairing it, of policing it, of securing the health of the Canal Zone, and in every way taking care of it, the United States is then to turn over the real control of the Canal to foreign powers, to assume a secondary position, and to trust to what has in the past so often turned out to be the veriest broken reed, a general international agreement of amity, to protect its vital inter- est in time of war. It ought always to be regarded as a matter of primary national obligation that the nation keep its promises; it is always wrong for the nation to make a promise which cannot be kept and ought not to be kept when the need for breaking it arises. As political candidates ought not to be asked to promise the impossible because to make such promises puts a premium upon intellectual dishonesty in the candidates, as the nation ought not to pass sweeping resolutions for unqualified and universal arbitration look- ing towards a hoped-for millennium of international peace, with the absolute certainty that the nation would instantly disregard its resolutions in case a concrete matter affecting SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 161 its own vital interests and its elemental duties should arise, so it should refuse to enter into any treaty obligation which it is morally certain would be disregarded under the stress and strain of war. In time of war any administration would be derelict to its duty which failed instantly to prevent the Canal from being used by an enemy, and which failed to use it in the interest and for the protection of the United States. Since such a course would have to be pursued immediately upon the outbreak of war, it would be an iniquity for the nation in time of peace explicitly or implicitly to promise the reverse. We said that we would leave Cuba, and do what we could to make Cuba an independent nation. We kept our word. Forced again to interfere in Cuba, we still treated the word as a continuing obligation, and kept it. Wisely, we refused to make any such promise in the Philippines, and in the Philippines it could not have been kept. Eng- land, unfortunately for itself, adopted the opposite policy in Egypt. She promised definitely to get out of Egypt. It was a thoroughly unwise promise to make. It would be infinitely to the harm of Egypt, of England, and of civiliza- tion if it were kept. But no small part of England's dif- ficulty in Egypt arises from the fact that this foolish prom- ise was made; and that, while it would be a great wrong to keep it, the fact of having made it puts England in the wrong when assailed for having failed to fulfil the promise. The Canal Zone is United States territory. The Canal itself is, to all intents, a part of the coast line of the United States. We may well agree that all nations may use it for peaceful transit on equal terms; but we have no right to agree that a nation at war with us may use it in attacking us; and, if such an agreement were made, no administration could or would keep the agreement. It is inconceivable that, had the Panama Canal been in ex- 162 ARGUMENTATION istence during the Spanish War, the United States would have allowed a Spanish fleet to pass through it for the purpose of attacking our Pacific coast. Nor has the nation any right, by a policy of fatuous optimism, to prohibit itself from preventing the use of the Canal by a foreign power, if the attempt should ever be made so to use it with hostile intent. In view of the fact that it is only between England and the United States that any serious controversy can arise over the American policy of fortification, the attitude of the London Spectator is significant. The Spectator, which reflects the most intelligent opinion in Great Britain on public questions, thinks that " armed control of the Canal by the United States is the simplest solution of the dif- ficulty, not only for the United States, but for the whole world." Fortifying the Canal ^ Six sound and unanswerable reasons for not fortifying the Panama Canal have been advanced by such men and women as John Graham Brooks, Richard Olney, President Jordan of Leland Stanford University, Ida Tarbell, Jane Addams, and many others, including one of the ablest of our United States judges, George C. Holt. The first alone ought to convince the country that to expend millions for guns and forts at Panama would be a criminal waste. It is a simple reminder that under the laws of war, as fixed by the Hague Conference in 1907, unfortified coast places cannot be bom- barded. Warships could not lie off Panama and Colon and shell these towns, because to do so would be to place their crews in the category of those who poison wells and delib- erately kill women and children — acts expressly forbidden to the troops of all civilized nations. Lack of fortification :would thus of itself become a protection to the canal zone. *From the Nation, January 19, 191L SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 163 The signers of the protest then point out that it was the original intention to prohibit the fortification of the canal, and this pacific intent was not affected by the failure to mention it in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. Nor was the Panama Canal proposed primarily as a military under- taking, although the voyage of the Oregon in the Spanish War did focus public opinion upon the desirability of building the inter-ocean waterway. The Suez Canal was neutralized by England, the nation which built it; the Strait of Magellan is neutralized, and the very important Inter-Parliamentary Union declared itself only last year in favor of the neutralization of all inter-ocean waterways. Moreover, as the protestants point out, we have pledged to England by the most solemn treaty obligations that the Panama Canal shall always be open to British warships in times of peace or of war. Again, the whole spirit of fortification is against the modem tendency of settling mat- ters by international arbitration and makes a mockery of President Taf t's " impressive declaration that he sees no reason why any question whatever should not be arbi- trated." As for the cost, as Congressman Foster has pointed out, it will in all probability be not less than fifty millions of dollars with an annual cost of maintenance of at least five millions. Naturally, the signers of this remarkable statement do not overlook the question of the denunciation or violation of treaties made both for arbitration and other purposes. This is a stock argument of those who believe in fortification. " Why," they ask, " do you put your faith in treaties when almost every war has been preceded by a violation of treaties? If you fortify the canal, you do not need treaties, and you are safe for all time." To this the reply is that if an international agi'eement for neutralization should carry with it the penalty of non-intercourse with the offend- ing nation by all the other signatory Powers, there would 164 ARGUMENTATION be an effective check upon any attempted violation of the treaty. Again, that treaties have been broken is no more a reason for refusing to make new ones than the fact that some men and women violate the marriage law is an argument against the contract of marriage. If some treaties have been violated, many others have stood the test of time, notably that far-sighted agreement with England which prevented the erection of fortifications and the housing of large garrisons along our Canadian boundary. What vast sums would have been wasted along that line if the mili- tarists had had their wish! In his splendid address at the peace meeting in this city on Friday, Congressman Foster, who occupies the highly important position of chairman of the Foreign Affairs Com- mittee of the House, laid stress upon what we owe to future generations in this Panama matter. We are placing upon them, as it is, the duty of paying for the canal, and now some propose to put upon them, too, the cost of fortification and the standing army that is to be banished to the Isthmus. Again, as Mr. Foster put it, to fortify the canal, after having given assurances to Great Britain and the Republic of Panama before ever a spade of earth was turned up there, that the canal would be neutralized, " would be equiv- alent to saying to a foreign government. You have bound yourselves to observe our rules of neutrality, but we do not trust you, and, therefore, beware of our guns." As for neutralizing and fortifying, too, when has a neutralized territory been violated? Not Switzerland, certainly, amid all the upheavals in Europe; and plainly the excellent militia which Switzerland has was no deterrent in 1870-71. Why is it that such repeated proposals are made for the neutralization of Holland, except that the neutralization of Belgium has so successfully protected that little country from all fear of annexation by either Germany or France? It is unthinkable that any nation would dare in these SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 165 times to violate neutrality — least of all in the case of such a great work of man as the canal at Panama, which is primarily for the benefit of the commerce of the entire world. But, whether there is or is not such a danger, the policy of fortification is the policy of reaction and retrogression, and therefore particularly to be shunned by a forward- looking nation like the United States. It gives the lie to our avowals of a desire to be let alone and to live in peace. It means that when the time comes, as come it must, for an appeal to the nations to neutralize the Philippine Islands, we shall be met with suspicion and distrust and contemptu- ous references to our policy in Panama. In the direction of neutralization and non-fortification, we can only repeat once more, lies the path to fame and glory, as well as hu- manity, both for Mr. Taft and for his country. The Income Tax Amendment ^ The American Constitution, with its fifteen amendments, completes the labors of the American people in an effort to build for their Government its foundation. Gladstone said of it : "As the British Constitution is the most settled organ- ism which has proceeded from progressive society, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Gladstone was right. It is the greatest document con- taining the simplest plan for a self-governing people ever framed. It leaves in the hands of the people to whom the government belongs all the machinery of government. Under it public policies are determinable alone by the peo- *By Senator Norris Brown; see the Outlook, January 22, 1910. 166 ARGUMENTATION pie. They have the power, if they choose to exercise it, to repeal every law on the statute books or to enact any new law, limited only by a Constitution which they have the power to amend. There is, in truth, no limit to the power of the people in free America under our form of govern- ment. The sun never rose on another people so blessed with power or so freighted with responsibility. For forty-one years the Constitution as it now reads has stood with no sustained effort on the part of Congress or the people to further amend it. But at the last session of Congress a joint resolution was introduced and passed, receiving every vote in the United States Senate and all but fourteen votes in the House of Representatives, pro- posing the Sixteenth Amendment. It reads: " Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived, without appor- tionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration." The question presented is. Should this amendment be ratified by the States? I hold the affirmative of the propo- sition. My conviction is unalterable that the safety of the Nation may depend on the power conferred by this amendment. Its ratification is therefore imperative. In the first place, the issue does not raise a question of party politics. On the record, the two great political par- ties of the country stand in favor of the amendment. One indorsed it in its last National platform, and both indorsed it by voting for the joint resolution in the last Congress. This amendment should receive the support of every man who believes as an economic policy that the incomes of the country should at all times bear a share of the burdens of government. It should also have the support of those who do not believe in that economic policy in times of peace because other forms of taxation fail in times of war. SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 167 No patriotic citizen can deny his country in distress this source of revenue even if he would do so in times of peace and quiet. As the Constitution reads to-day under the last interpretation of the Supreme Court, our Government is without power to tax incomes directly, no matter what the need or how great the necessity. Section 8 of Article I provides that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. This provision of Section 8 is modified by another provision of Section 9 of the same article, which reads: " No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore di- rected to be taken." From these provisions it is clear that the framers of the Constitution intended that the revenues with which to run the Government should be raised by custom duties, excises, and imposts, and not by direct taxation. For it is obvious to the casual student that to levy direct taxes on either lands or incomes in proportion to the population of the States would work such inequality and gross injustice as to render the tax intolerable and, as Supreme Justice Brown said, " impossible." During all the years of the country's history no continued effort has been made to lay and collect taxes on any kind of property, real or personal, apportioned according to population. However, at different times in our history Con- gress has undertaken to tax incomes. Congress acted on the theory that a tax on incomes was not a direct tax, and therefore need not be laid with regard to apportion- ment among the States according to population as provided in Section 9. From the beginning every law seeking to lay an income tax has been assailed in the courts. Beginning with the Hylton case in 1789, reported in 3 Dallas, 171, and ending with the Springer case in 1880, reported in 102 U. S., 586, 168 ARGUMENTATION the Supreme Court continuously and consistently held such a law Constitutional. The opinion of the Court in these cases rested on the proposition that a tax on incomes was not a direct tax, and was therefore not inhibited by the Constitution. It will be recalled that the Springer case involved the validity of an act of Congress passed during the Rebellion. The Union was broken in credit and the Government at WasJiington was selling its bonds at a heavy discount. The National currency had depreciated and the Union was in urgent need of money with which to provide the Union forces with maintenance and equipment. The life of the Union was at stake. Congress had exhausted every resource except a tax on incomes. It was in obedience to the cry of the country's distress that Lincoln asked Congress to furnish the neces- sary funds by laying a tax on incomes. The law was passed; millions of dollars were collected under it at a time when the Government vitally needed the money. Springer assailed the constitutionality of the law. After full argu- ment and mature consideration, the Court sustained the law, and Springer's homestead was sold by the marshal for the collection of the tax. In so deciding the Court fol- lowed the decision in the Hylton case, which involved the same principle. So we find that the uniform and uninterrupted interpre- tation of the Constitution by the Court had sustained the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes for nearly a century. But in 1895 the Supreme Court was called upon to pass for the third time on the same ques- tion. The income tax law of 1864 had been repealed and a new statute restoring the tax had been enacted in 1894. A suit was brought to determine the validity of the 1894 statute on the subject. It is known as the Pollock case, and is reported in 157 U. S., 429. This suit involved the identical principle decided in the SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 169 Hylton and Springer cases. It was argued with marked ability by distinguished lawyers on its first submission to the Court, and again at great length on the rehearing. The Attorney-General of the United States, Richard Olney, of Massachusetts, appeared with other great lawyers in behalf of the Constitutional power of Congress to tax incomes. The decision of the Court, however, in effect reversed the holding in the Hylton and Springer cases and held the law unconstitutional. The Court put the reversal on the ground that a tax on incomes was a direct tax, and unless apportioned according to population could not be collected. It is idle to discuss whether the last decision of the Supreme Court on this question was right or wrong. Such a decision would avail nothing, because, right or wrong, the decision of the Supreme Court, under our form of govern- ment, stands as the law of the land. It binds every citizen. It cannot be ignored either by the people or Congress. In this case the judgment of the Court was that Congress had no power to tax incomes. Surely Congress would not be justified in passing another law of the same character and import in the face of that judgment, at least not with- out at the same time making an effort to amend the Con- stitution so as to confer on Congress such power. And if it did so, the people would have a right to question its good faith. Who contends that Congress should ever do what the Supreme Court of the United States holds it cannot do? The strength of our form of government lies in the plan of its distribution of powers, legislative, executive, and judicial — the three co-ordinate branches of government — each supreme in its field. Under this plan the power of the judiciary is supreme in determining the constitu- tionality of a law. Under this plan the legislative branch is supreme in determining what laws shall be enacted in the first instance; but when enacted, it is wholly and 170 ARGUMENTATION exclusively within the power of the judiciary to interpret and construe them; to sustain or set them aside, if in the judgment of the Court they contravene any of the provisions of the Constitution. The Court having been clothed by the people with author- ity under the Constitution to say what Congress can or cannot do, and having spoken on the subject, the people are driven to amend the Constitution, the only remedy they have. The people demand the ratification of the amendment, in the first place, because they insist that their Government shall have all the rights, powers, and prerogatives as a Government that are enjoyed by every other sovereign nation. The power of taxation — a power exercised by every full-grown government — is a sovereign attribute. If the right to tax incomes is denied, the right of taxation is impaired. No nation could exist for any length of time if the power of taxation is taken entirely away. If it is partly taken away, its life is jeopardized that far. The purpose of this amendment is to restore beyond dispute that power. This Republic should be a Nation shorn of no attribute nor prerogative incident to National sov- ereignty. There is another reason why the amendment should be ratified. No man can tell how soon this country may be in need of the revenue which could be obtained only by a tax on incomes. We have learned from experience that at one time at least in this country the Nation depended on an income tax for its life. While to-day there may be no such emergency, we have no assurance that it may not again arise. Should it ever come, who cares to be re- sponsible for withholding a power from the Government which may be necessary for its existence? Should we have a foreign war, our revenue, now raised chiefly from revenue duties, would inevitably cease, or at SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 171 least be greatly reduced. With customs duties impaired, to what source of revenue could Congress look for the money to carry on war or to maintain the Government in the meantime? It is not a foolish apprehension to suggest this possible situation. Neither is this the first time that it has been suggested. Mr. Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court, in his dissenting opinion in the Pollock case, said on this phase of the subject : " In my judgment, to say nothing of the disregard of the former adjudications of this Court and of the settled prac- tice of the Government, this decision may well excite the gravest apprehension. It strikes at the very foundation of National authority in that it denies to the General Gov- ernment a power which is or may become vital to the very existence and preservation of the Union in a National emergency, such as that of war with a great commercial nation, during which the collection of imposts will cease or be materially diminished." These words ought to strike deep into the heart of every American. They come from the lips of a man who demon- strated his patriotism and fidelity to the old flag long before he honored the Nation by consenting to become one of its Supreme Justices. He loved the Union as only he can love it who helped to save it. Harlan the judge in that sentence became Harlan the soldier, the citizen, the patriot, the statesman, calling to the American people to amend the Constitution for the sake of the Union. His words were not lightly spoken. They came from his great mind and heart, full of apprehension and love for his native land, its civilization, and, above all else, its preservation. But this venerable and learned American jurist does not stop with the words quoted. He says further : 172 ARGUMENTATION " But the serious aspect of the present decision is that by a new interpretation of the Constitution it so ties the hands of the legislative branch of the Government that, without an amendment to that instrument, or unless the Court should at some future time return to the old theory of the Constitution, Congress cannot subject to taxation, however great the need or pressing the necessity of the Govern- ment, either the invested personal property of the country, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds, or the income arising from the renting of real estate, or from the yield of personal property, except by the grossly unequal and unjust rule of apportionment among the States." Will any one who believes in fair and equitable taxation answer this argument? Who among our citizens desires to exempt the earnings of the bonds and stocks and all per- sonal investments from Federal taxation should the neces- sities of the Government require? What is there about the interest collected on bonds, or the dividend declared on stocks, or the income collected by the landlords of the country from the tenants of the country, that they should be left beyond the reach of the Federal Government in its search for the revenues necessary for maintenance? If it is desired that these securities should escape all contributions to the Federal treasury, the amendment should be defeated; but such a desire is in full discord with the great multitude of fair-thinking and fair-dealing men who believe that all kinds of property should enjoy equal rights and should bear equal burdens under the law. But, inde- pendently of the economic honesty of taxing incomes, the amendment deserves support for other reasons. The ques- tion presented is not whether an income tax should be levied now; the question is. Shall the Government have the power to levy such a tax if such a tax ever becomes necessary? SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 173 Patriotic citizenship insists that the Government shall have adequate powers. Mr. Justice Brown, in his opinion in the Pollock case, observes: " It is certainly a strange commentary upon the Constitu- tion of the United States and upon a democratic Govern- ment that Congress has no power to lay this tax which is one of the main sources of revenue of nearly every civi- lized state. It is a confession of feebleness in which I find myself wholly unable to join." If this learned Justice was right in declaring it to be a strange commentary on the Constitution of the United States to hold that it gave Congress no power to tax incomes, it will be a sad commentary on the citizenship of the people of the United States if they allow the Con- stitution to remain in that form. If it be contended that the amendment should not be adopted until the Supreme Court has had another oppor- tunity to review and reverse its last interpretation of the Constitution, the reply is, The country has had enough of judicial interpretation of the Constitution in that re- spect. Already judges of equal ability and integrity have passed at different times different opinions on that ques- tion. Already the courts have decided it both ways. This demonstrates that there is so much doubt and uncertainty as to the meaning of the Constitution in this respect that no opinion of the Court, on whichever side of the question it may be written, is certain to be followed by future Justices. The people of the United States have a right to a Con- stitutional provision on the subject which shall not be debatable — a provision which will speak for itself; one that will need no judicial interpretation. Americans have the right to know whether the Constitution gives their 174 ARGUMENTATION Government the power to tax incomes or whether it with- holds that power. The adoption of the Sixteenth Amend- ment would settle the question. We have many provisions in the Constitution which are not open to different interpretations. For example, the Constitution provides that the people shall have a Presi- dent of the United States in whom is placed chief executive authority. That provision has never been questioned, be- cause it is not susceptible of two constructions. It is cer- tain and definite. So, likewise, the provision that the Ex- ecutive is Coromander-in-Chief of the army and navy is certain and definite. These provisions are above and beyond the reach of nullification by judicial interpretation, because they are simple and plain in their words and terms. Why should there be any doubt as to the power of the Government to tax incomes'? Is there any reason founded in our civilization or in our institutions why the Govern- ment, which belongs to us, and is our creation, and must respond to our will and pleasure in the matter of taxa- tion, should be without the power conferred by the pro- posed amendment? If it be argued that, for any reason, a tax on incomes should not be levied, this is not an argument against the adoption of the amendment, because the proposed amend- ment does not suggest that an income tax law should be enacted now. It contains no indication that it is in the purpose of the Government or of Congress to pass such a law. Therefore those who are opposed to taxing incomes as a general economic policy need feel no alarm. The only function the amendment possesses and the only thing it proposes to do is to confer the power on Congress. It contains no pledge that the power will ever be exercised. Its exercise will still be left to the further discretion of the people. If it be argued that an income tax is just and should SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 175 be imposed by Congress, the Supreme Court has said that no such tax can ever be constitutionally laid by Congress under the present Constitution. Those of our people who believe in the equity and justice of placing a share of the burdens of government on the incomes of the country cannot expect ever to see such a tax imposed, either in time of peace or of war, under the latest decision of the Supreme Court, unless the Constitution is amended. So that, in the final analysis, those who favor an income tax law, to be consistent, must favor this amendment; while those who oppose such a law in times of peace, to be patriotic, must not oppose it, for no reason has yet been suggested why our Government should be without power to lay the tax in times of National emergency. The only point so far made against the amendment is that it might, in some mysterious way, weaken the States. Just how it could impair the strength of any State is not made clear by those who raise this objection. If it is thought that the Federal Government might tax the State out of its existence, the answer is. It did not have that effect or even tendency when incomes were taxed. The last effective income tax law in this country was in force during the sixties. It had the opposite effect then, for it not only kept all of the States in existence, but it helped to bring a few of them back into the Union. The Federal Government could not tax the States out of existence without ending its own; for without the States to support it, there is no Union to be supported. To destroy the State is to destroy the Republic. The point is not well taken. The fear is wholly groundless. The rights of the States as they exist to-day will not be impaired, nor will a single State in the Union suffer, by reason of the amend- ment. But with the amendment ratified, they will continue to grow richer and stronger, enjoying that security and independence incident to their membership in a Union 176 ARGUMENTATION clothed with Constitutional powers to maintain a foremost position among the world's greatest nations. The Cause of Cleavage in Slates ^ This sandstone rock was once a powder, more or less coarse, held in mechanical suspension by water. The powder was composed of two distinct parts, fine grains of sand and small plates of mica. Imagine a wide strand covered by a tide, or an estuary with water which holds such powder in suspension: how will it sink? The rounded grains of sand will reach the bottom first, because they encounter the least resistance, the mica afterwards, and when the tide recedes we have the little plates shining like spangles upon the surface of the sand. Each successive tide brings its charge of mixed powder, deposits its duplex layer day after day, and finally masses of immense thickness are piled up, which by preserving the alternations of sand and mica tell the tale of their formation. Take the sand and mica, mix them together in water, and allow them to subside; they will arrange themselves in the manner indi- cated, and by repeating the process you can actually build up a mass which shall be the exact counterpart of that presented by nature. Now this structure cleaves with readi- ness along the planes in which the particles of mica are strewn. Specimens of such rock sent to me from Halifax, and other masses from the quarries of Over Darwen in Lan- cashire, are here before you. With a hammer and chisel I can cleave them into flags; indeed these flags are em- ployed for roofing purposes in the districts from which the specimens have come, and receive the name of " slatestone.*' But you will discern without a word from me, that this cleavage is not a crystalline cleavage any more than that of a hayrick is. It is molar, not molecular. * From a lecture on *' Slates," by John Tyndall, published in Fragments of Science, London, 1871. SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 177 This, so far as I am aware of, has never been imagined, and it has been agreed among geologists not to call such splitting as this cleavage at all, but to restrict the term to a phenomenon of a totally different character. Those who have visited the slate quarries of Cumberland and North Wales will have witnessed the phenomenon to which I refer. We have long drawn our supply of roofing- slates from such quarries; schoolboys ciphered on these slates, they were used for tombstones in churchyards, and for billiard balls in the metropolis; but not until a compara- tively late period did men begin to inquire how their won- derful structure was produced. What is the agency which enables us to split Honister Crag, or the cliffs of Snowdon, into laminffi from crown to base? This question is at the present moment one of the great difficulties of geologists and occupies their attention perhaps more than any other. You may wonder at this. Looking into the quarry of Penrhyn, you may be disposed to offer the explanation I heard given two years ago. " These planes of cleavage," said a friend who stood beside me on the quarry's edge, " are the planes of stratification which have been lifted by some convulsion into an almost vertical position." But this was a mistake, and indeed here lies the grand difficulty of the problem. The planes of cleavage stand in most cases at a high angle to the bedding. Thanks to Sir Rod- erick Murchison, I am able to place the proof of this be- fore you. Here is a specimen of slate in which both the planes of cleavage and of bedding are distinctly marked, one of them making a large angle with the other. This is common. The cleavage of slates then is not a question of stratification; what then is its cause? In an able and elaborate essay published in 1835, Prof. Sedgwick proposed the theory that cleavage is due to the action of crystalline or polar forces subsequent to the consolidation of the rock. " We may affirm," he says, " that 178 ARGUMENTATION no retreat of tlie parts, no contraction of dimensions in passing to a solid state, can explain such phenomena. They appear to me only resolvable on the supposition that crys- talline or polar forces acted upon the whole mass simultane- ously in one direction and with adequate force." And again in another place : " Crystalline forces have rearranged whole mountain masses, producing a beautiful crystalline cleavage, passing alike through all the strata." The utterance of such a man struck deep, as it ought to do, into the minds of geologists, and at the present day there are few who do not entertain this view either in whole or in part. The boldness of the theory, indeed, has, in some cases, caused speculation to run riot, and we have books published on the action of polar forces and geologic magnetism, which rather astonish those who know something about the sub- ject. According to this theory whole districts of North Wales and Cumberland, mountains included, are neither more nor less than the parts of a gigantic crystal. These masses of slate were originally fine mud, composed of the broken and abraded particles of older rocks. They contain silica, alumina, potash, soda, and mica mixed mechanically together. In the course of ages the mixture became con- solidated, and the theory before us assumes that a process of crystallization afterwards rearranged the particles and developed in it a single plane of cleavage. Though a bold, and I think inadmissible, stretch of analogies, this hypothe- sis has done good service. Right or wrong, a thoughtfully uttered theory has a dynamic power which operates against intellectual stagnation; and even by provoking opposition is eventually of service to the cause of truth. It would, however, have been remarkable if, among the ranks of geolo- gists themselves, men were not found to seek an explana- tion of slate-cleavage involving a less hardy assumption. The first step in an inquiry of this kind is to seek the facts. This has been done, and the labors of Daniel SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 179 Sharpe . . ., Mr. Henry Clifton Sorby, and others have furnished us with a body of facts associated with slaty cleavage, and having a most important bea,ring upon the question. Fossil shells are found in these slate-rocks. I have here several specimens of such shells in the actual rock, and occupying various positions in regard to the cleavage planes. They are squeezed, distorted, and crushed; in all cases the distortion leads to the inference that the rock which con- tains these shells has been subjected to enormous pressure in a direction at right angles to the planes of cleavage. The shells are all flattened and spread out in these planes. Compare this fossil trilobite of normal proportions with these others which have suffered distortion. Some have lain across, some along, and some oblique to the cleavage of the slate in which they are found; but in all cases the distortion is such as required for its production a compress- ing force acting at right angles to the planes of cleavage. As the trilobites lay in the mud, the jaws of a gigantic vice appear to have closed upon them and squeezed them into the shapes you see. We sometimes find a thin layer of coarse gritty material, between two layers of finer rock, through which and across the gritty layer pass the planes of lamination. The coarse layer is found bent by the pressure into sinuosities like a contorted ribbon. Mr. Sorby has described a striking case of this kind. This crumpling can be experimentally imi- tated; the amount of compression might, moreover, be roughly estimated by supposing the contorted bed to be stretched out, its length measured and compared with the shorter distance into which it has been squeezed. We find in this way that the yielding of the mass has been con- siderable. Let me now direct your attention to another proof of pressure; you see the varying colors which indicate the bed- 180 ARGUMENTATION ding on this mass of slate. The dark portion is gritty, being composed of comparatively coarse particles, which, owing to their size, shape, and gravity, sink first and constitute the bottom of each layer. Gradually, from bottom to top the coarseness diminishes, and near the upper surface we have a layer of exceedingly fine mud. . . . The mud thus deposited is, as might be expected, often rolled up into nodular masses, carried forward, and deposited among coarser material by the rivers from which the slate-mud has subsided. Here are such nodules inclosed in sandstone. Everybody, moreover, who has ciphered upon a school-slate must remember the whitish-green spots which sometimes dotted the surface of the slate, and over which the pencil usually slid as if the spots were greasy. Now these spots are composed of the finer mud, and they could not, on account of their fineness, hite the pencil like the surround- ing gritty portions of the slate. Here is a beautiful ex- ample of these spots: you observe them on the cleavage surface in broad round patches. But turn the slate edge- ways and the section of each nodule is seen to be a sharp oval with its longer axis parallel to the cleavage. . . . Let me now remind you that the facts brought beford you are typical — each is the representative of a class. We have seen shells crushed; the unhappy trilobites squeezed, beds contorted, nodules of greenish marl flattened; and all these sources of independent testimony point to one and the same conclusion, namely, that slate-rocks have been sub- jected to enormous pressure in a direction at right angles to the planes of cleavage. Thus we have established the concurrence of the phe- nomena of cleavage and pressure — that they accompany each other; but the question still remains. Is the pressure sufficient to account for the cleavage? A single geologist, as far as I am aware, answers boldly in the affirmative. SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 181 This geologist is Sorby, who has attacked the question in the true spirit of a physical investigator. Call to mind the cleavage of the flags of Halifax and Over Darwen, which is caused by the interposition of layers of mica be- tween the gritty strata. Mr. Sorby finds plates of mica to be also a constituent of slate-rock. He asks himself, what will be the effect of pressure upon a mass containing such plates confusedly mixed up in it? It will be, he argues, and he argues rightly, to place the plates with their flat surfaces more or less perpendicular to the direc- tion in which the pressure is exerted. He takes the scales of the oxide of iron, mixes them with a fine powder, and on squeezing the mass finds that the tendency of the scales is to set themselves at right angles to the line of pressure. Along the planes of weakness produced by the scales the mass cleaves. By tests of a different character from those applied by Mr. Sorby, it might be shown how true his conclusion is, that the effect of pressure on elongated particles, or plates, will be such as he describes it. But while the scales must be regarded as a true cause, I should not ascribe to them a large share in the production of the cleavage. I believe that even if the plates of mica were wholly absent the cleavage of slate-rocks would be much the same as it is at present. Here is a mass of pure white wax: it contains no mica particles, no scales of iron, or anything analogous to them. Here is the selfsame substance submitted to pres- sure. I would invite the attention of eminent geologists now before me to the structure of this wax. No slate ever exhibited so clean a cleavage; it splits into laminsB of sur- passing tenuity, and proves at a single stroke that pressure is sufficient to produce cleavage, and that this cleavage is independent of intermixed plates or scales. I have pur- posely mixed this wax with elongated particles, and am 182 ARGUMENTATION unable to say at the present moment that the cleavage is sensibly affected by their presence — if anything, I should say they rather impair its fineness and clearness than pro- mote it. The finer the slate is the more perfect will be the re- semblance of its cleavage to that of the wax. Compare the surface of the wax with the surface of this slate from Borrodale in Cumberland. You have precisely the same features in both: you see flakes clinging to the surfaces of each, which have been partially torn away in cleaving. Let any observer compare these two effects, he will, I am persuaded, be led to the conclusion that they are the product of a common cause. But you will ask me how, according to my view, does pressure produce this remarkable result. This may be stated in a very few words. There is no such thing in nature as a body of perfectly homogeneous structure. I break this clay which seems so uniform, and find that the fracture presents to my eyes innumerable surfaces along which it has given way, and it has yielded along those surfaces because in them the cohesion of the mass is less than elsewhere. I break this marble, and even this wax, and observe the same result; look at the mud at the bottom of a dried pond; look to some of the ungraveled walks in Kensington Gardens on drying after a rain, — they are cracked and split, and other circumstances being equal, they crack and split where the cohesion is least. Take then a muss of partially consoli- dated mud. Such a mass is divided and subdivided by interior surfaces along which the cohesion is comparatively small. Penetrate the mass in idea, and you will see it composed of numberless irregular polyhedra bounded by surfaces of weak cohesion. Imagine such a mass subjected to pressure, — it yields and spreads out in the direction of least resistance; the little polyhedra become converted into SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION 183 laminae, separated from each other by surfaces of weak cohesion, and the infallible result will be a tendency to cleave at right angles to the line o:^ pressure. Further, a mass of dried mud is full of cavities and fissures. If you break dried pipe-clay you see them in great numbers, and there are multitudes of them so small that you cannot see them. A flattening of these cavities must take place in squeezed mud, and this must to some extent facili- tate the cleavage of the mass in the direction indicated. Although the time at my disposal has not permitted me duly to develop these thoughts, yet for the last twelve months the subject has presented itself to me almost daily under one aspect or another. I have never eaten a biscuit during this period without remarking the cleavage devel- oped by the rolling-pin. You have only to break a biscuit across, and to look at the fracture, to see the laminated structure. We have here the means of pushing the analogy further. I invite you to compare the structure of this slate, which was subjected to a high temperature during the con- flagration of Mr. Scott Russell's premises, with that of a biscuit. Air or vapor within the slate has caused it to swell, and the mechanical structure it reveals is precisely that of a biscuit. During these inquiries I have received much instruction in the manufacture of puff-paste. Here is some such paste baked under my own superintendence. The cleavage of our hills is accidental cleavage, but this is cleavage with intention. The volition of the pastry-cook has entered into its formation. It has been his aim to pre- serve a series of surfaces of structural weakness, along which the dough divides into layers. Puff-paste in preparation must not be handled too much; it ought, moreover, to be rolled on a cold slab to prevent the butter from melting, and diffusing itself, thus rendering the paste more homo- geneous and less liable to split. Puff-paste is, then, simply an exaggerated case of slaty cleavage. 184 ARGUMENTATION The principle which I have enunciated is so simple as to be almost trivial; nevertheless, it embraces not only the cases mentioned, but, if time permitted, it might be shown you that the principle has a much wider range of applica- tion. When iron is taken from the puddling furnace it is more or less spongy, an aggregate in fact of small nodules: it is at a welding heat, and at this temperature is submitted to the process of rolling. Bright smooth bars are the result. But notwithstanding the high heat the nodules do not per- fectly blend together. The process of rolling draws them into fibers. Here is a mass acted upon by dilute sulphuric acid, which exhibits in a striking manner this fibrous struc- ture. The experiment was made by my friend Dr. Percy, without any reference to the question of cleavage. Break a piece of ordinary iron and you have a granular fracture; beat the iron, you elongate these granules, and finally render the mass fibrous. Here are pieces of rails along which the wheels of locomotives have slidden; the granules have yielded and become plates. They exfoliate or come off in leaves; all these effects belong, I believe, to the grea*^ class of phenomena of which slaty cleavage forms the most prominent example. PART III WEITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE I Writing which aims to touch the feelings of the reader almost always takes the form of description or narration. This does not mean that all descrip- tive and narrative compositions are charged with feeling; it simply means that description and narra- tion, owing to their pictorial character, may more readily be used to stir the imagination and the feel- ings than any other form of writing. The two forms are closely related to each other. In fact, they may be said to be companion forms; one is rarely used without the other. Both are markedly different in mood from exposition and argumentation. In the latter, the writer's concern is with truth, which he follows either for its own sake or for the sake of its effect on belief or action. In description and narration, on the contrary, — and espe- cially in description and narration of the more artistic kind, — ^the writer is concerned more with appearance than with truth. Not what a thing is, but what it seems to be; not what are the motives or hidden springs of action, but how the actions or events shape themselves, — these are the questions we ask ourselves in writing description and narration. 185 186 WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE The cardinal virtues in writing whicli appeals mainly to the understanding are, of course, clearness and accuracy. In writing whose chief aim is to give pleasure, however, these virtues, though by no means to be neglected, are relatively much less important. If we go to an idle tale simply for amusement, we may care very little whether the author be true to fact or not; if the tale pleases, that, we may say, is enough. So, too, it is with regard to force. A certain degree of forcefulness is necessary in all writing, in order that the attention of the reader may be held ; and such a degree of forcefulness may be said to be pleas- ing; but carried very much beyond that point, force may at times become positively disagreeable. In short, in writing that pleases, while we must have the funda- mental qualities of style — clearness, accuracy, force — present in some degree, we must have a certain some- thing in addition, — a something which has been vari- ously called ease, elegance, grace, or charm. Perhaps a better word for it would be simply expressiveness, since it sometimes happens that writings which are distinctly without what may properly be called ele- gance or grace have the power to attract and delight us. Expressiveness is thus a certain quality which some writings have which enables them to attract us, enkindle our feelings, and hold us willing captives to their spell. This quality of expressiveness, charm, grace, or whatever we are pleased to call it, is mainly, now, a matter of the apt choice of words and of phrasing. When we write with a view to pleasing our readers, we choose, so far as is possible, words which are likely WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE 187 to have interesting or agreeable suggestions for them, as well as exact meanings; and we try, moreover, to arrange these words attractively. Many words have what we may call a flavor or set of associations which distinguishes them from all other words of similar meaning, and it is this set of associations which enables them to mean so very much more than their denotation or exact significance would warrant. The writer who is an artist is aware of this fact, and always takes into account the connotation or sugges- tiveness of the words he uses. The words which call up just the right associated ideas to reinforce and render agreeable the main ideas which the writer wishes to convey are the expressive words, the words to use in writing having an artistic aim. For the most part, these will be found to be the familiar, rather than the learned; the specific, rather than the general ; the figurative, rather than the literal. As to phrasing, the young writer never gets very far before learning that the influence of word upon word is a fact that must be reckoned with. A writer cannot throw his words together without regard to euphony or eongruity and expect them to furnish very agreeable reading. If he expects them to please, he must adapt them to one another. He must see that, in the matter of their connotation, they sort well to- gether, — that is, that they do not call up associated ideas of an utterly incongruous or contradictory char- acter ; and he must also see that they do not make dis- cordant or harsh-sounding combinations. Discourse, whether written or oral, is in reality always addressed to the ear. It behooves a writer, therefore, to consider 188 WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE what combinations of words are likely to prove dis- agreeable, and to avoid them. Sentences like the following, for example, could not have been written by any one who had a proper sense of the value of euphony and congruity in phrasing : Her pride is here thrown aside and the humorous side of her character revealed. His name has been carved in golden characters upon the corridors of time, and its never-fading letters will herald the message of his greatness to the ears of the generations to come. In the first sentence, the quick repetition of the '^i" sound in '' pride, ^' *^ aside,'' and ''side'' offends the ear ; and in the second, the idea of letters, which can appeal only to the sense of sight, conveying anything to the ears strikes the reader at once as absurd. The avoidance of what is disagreeable is, to be sure, only a negative virtue; but it is a virtue which the beginner ought by no means to despise. From know- ing how to avoid the disagreeable, he may, in time, come to know how to secure the positively pleasing. No writer, however, can hope to attain a pleasing style unless he has a tolerably good ear for the music of language. In general, it may be said that a harmonious style is the result, largely, of a free use of the more euphoni- ous consonantal sounds — such as those of the liquids 1 and m, and the labials b, p, f, and v — ^and of a skilful variation of the stressed vowel sounds. AUiter- WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE 189 ation, or the repetition of the same consonantal sounds, provided it is not carried so far as to obtrude itself on the reader 's attention, also aids in giving a pleasing effect to prose style. To quote Stevenson's apt re- marks on this point: The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence, depends implicitly upon alliteration and upon assonance. The vowel demands to be repeated; the consonant demands to be repeated ; and both cry aloud to be perpetually varied. You may follow the adventures of a letter through any passage that has particularly pleased you; find it, perhaps, denied awhile, to tantalize the ear; find it fired again at you in a whole broadside; or find it pass into congenerous sounds, one liquid or labial melting away into another.^ Notice, for example, the frequent recurrence of the sounds, p, b, and f in the following passage from Ruskin : 1/ I were to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my own gate, and endeavor to exact a shilling from every passenger, the pub he would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on my part that "it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as that they themselves should." But if, instead of out/acing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any such useless thing, out of my ground, I may ro& them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as a public bene- /actor, and promoter of commercial prosperity.' Notice, also, in the following passage from DeQuin- cey, the lavish use of liquids and labials, the variety ^ See Stevenson's Style in Literature. 2 See the Introduction to The Crown of Wild Olive, 190 WRITING WHICH AIMS TO PLEASE in the vowel sounds, the skilfully concealed allitera- tion, and the exquisite cadence of the sentences: Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the thun- dering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the eldest, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all last sum- mer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the tempta- tions of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year, and whilst her own Spring was budding, He recalled her to Him- self. But her blind father mourns for ever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness.^ ^ From Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow. n DESCRIPTION 1. NATURE AND PURPOSE OF DESCRIPTIVE WRITING Description may be defined simply as the portrayal of things by means of language. It is that kind of writing which aims to give the reader an idea of the appearance of things. It deals, therefore, with things as they appeal to the senses or to the imagination. Ordinarily when we speak of description we have in mind the portrayal of physical things, whether real or imaginary, — that is, persons, buildings, landscapes, and the like; but the term is also applied to the de- lineation of characters, mental states, and things of a like immaterial nature. Thus the second of the two following passages is no less a description than the first: On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes down- ward from the city, here to the sea, there to the fat farms of Haddington, there to the mineral fields of Linlithgow. On the south alone, it keeps rising until it not only out- tops the Castle but looks down on Arthur's Seat. The character of the neighborhood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity of hedges; by many stone walls of varying height; by a fair amount of timber, some of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little river, Esk or Leith or 191 192 DESCRIPTION Almond, busily journeying to the bottom of its glen; and from almost every point by a peep of the sea or the hills. There is no lack of variety, and yet most of the elements are common to all parts; and the southern district is alone distinguished by considerable summits and a wide view.^ Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back helplessly in her chair. She might have compared her experience at that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was taking on a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs. Everything was changed in its aspect: her hus- band's conduct, her own duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between them — and yet more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw. Her world was in a state of convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself was, that she must wait and think anew. One change terri- fied her as if it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting everything she said and did. Then again she was conscious of another change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden yearning of heart towards Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could, under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light — that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility, — and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions, and questions not to be solved.^ Description is an extremely common form of writ- ing, though it is seldom used alone. In books of * From Stevenson's Edinburgh. » From George Eliot's Middlemarch. NATURE AND PURPOSE 193 travel — books which aim, as a rule, to give an im- pression of things seen — we may sometimes find ex- amples of almost pure description; but even in such books there is, usually, a thread of story mingled with the description. Description and narration are, in fact, so closely related in aim and so helpful to each other that they are almost always used together. Description furnishes the setting for narration, with- out which it would be but a bare record of events; narration, in its turn, gives life and activity to de- scription, without which it would soon become weari- some. It is worth while, perhaps, to remind the beginner here that description of the kind we have been talking about must not be confused with scientific or exposi- tory description. In the latter, the aim is to give in- formation not to portray. Description proper, how- ever, is pictorial. To a certain extent, the writer here seeks to produce by means of words what the painter produces by means of lines and colors — an illusion. That is, he seeks to conjure up in the mind of the reader an image of the thing described. Hence his appeal is to the imagination rather than to the understanding. In the following passage, for example, the purpose of the writer is obviously pictorial; that is, he aims to stimulate the imagination of the reader in such a way as to enable him to form a mental picture of the scene described: Immediately underneath upon the south, you command the yards of the High School, and the towers and courts of 194 DESCRIPTION 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, schoolboys 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 shapelier edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little further, 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 in white wine to entertain her liveliness. Behind and overhead, lie the Queen's Park, from Muschat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall 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 above another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky. — Perhaps it is now one in the after- noon; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's flagstaff 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 seacoast 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 NATURE AND PURPOSE 195 North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens.^ Description is thus a kind of portrayal. To a cer- tain extent, as has been said, it aims to do what the painting does — ^produce in the mind an image of the thing represented, but to a certain extent only. Description does not seek to rival painting, to meet it on its own ground, so to speak. It would be im- possible for the writer to produce precisely the same effect as the painter, even were he to try. The latter appeals to the imagination through the bodily eye, and presents a picture which can be grasped in its totality in a single moment of time. In this picture, there can be no progression in time, for it represents the artist's impression of the object at a given mo- ment. The writer, on the other hand, appeals to the mind's eye only, and that through the medium of words, which, from their very nature, require an appreciable space of time to be taken in and fitted together. Hence a portrayal in words can never represent any precise impression of an object, for it cannot be rendered in a single moment of time. The most that it can do is to suggest an impression, and leave to the imagination of the reader the definite form which that impression shall take. The writer, therefore, seldom tries to reproduce any one fixed impression, but dwells now on this, now on that aspect of the thing described, and so strings together a series of impressions, in which, besides suggestions of form and color, there may be other suggestions entirely * From Stevenson's Edinburgh, 196 DESCRIPTION foreign to the art of the painter, such as those of sounds and odors. 2. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS IN DESCRIP- TION Though the writer is thus precluded from repre- senting impressions with the definiteness and distinct- ness of painting or drawing, he should endeavor to give his descriptions as much distinctness as possible. The reader's imagination must be stimulated so that some kind of a mental picture be formed, some kind of unification of the details mentioned may be made. The best way for the writer to do this is to get, in the first place, a comprehensive grasp of the thing to be described ; then to select and arrange, according to some natural or obvious plan, the details most suggestive of the effect he wishes to produce; and, lastly, to choose his words with an eye to their picturesqueness or vividness. Comprehensiveness of grasp, suggestiveness in the selection and arrange- ment of details, and vividness in the choice of words, — these are the clues to effectiveness in description. The comprehensive grasp which the good descriptive writer has of the object he is describing will manifest itself in the general outline of the description. This will vary, of course, according to the nature of the object described. In descriptions of landscapes, for example, the general outline of the object is often indicated in a rapid preliminary sketch, the details of which are to be filled in later. Sometimes this sketch takes the form of a comparison of the general METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 197 outline of the object with that of some well-known figure, as in Thoreau's description of Cape Cod: Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts ! the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro j and the sandy fist at Provincetown, — ^behind which the State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay, — boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann.^ A similar comparison is that used in Stevenson's description of the Bay of Monterey: The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend; and Monterey itself is cozily ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient capital of California faces across the bay, while the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and northwest, and then westward to inclose the bay." Another way of stimulating the reader's imagina- tion to form a picture of the whole is to give, first, » From Thoreau's Cape Cod, ^ From Across the Plains, 198 DESCRIPTION the general impression or effect of the whole, and then to follow this up with the mention of appropriate details, especially those which contribute mainly to- ward producing that effect. A striking example of this method is seen in the description of the Grand Canon of the Colorado given below. When this method is carried to the extreme of suppressing the details altogether, or of almost suppressing them, we have what may aptly be called indirect description, as in the following, for example : At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new impressions! every face was radiant. Now all look serious; — none speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dom- inating all, I think, is the consciousness of the awful an- tiquity of what one is looking upon; — such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in that tremendous question of the Book of Job ! — " Wast thou brought forth before the hills? " And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the morns, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence, — telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath, — until something Uke the fullness of a great grief begins to weigh at the heart. For all this astonish- ment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely endure, — marvellous as now, — after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.^ *View from the summit of Mont Pel6e; Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 199 With regard to the selection and arrangement of the details in a description, care must be taken, in the first place, that only those which are most prom- inent or striking be chosen. These are what we may term the suggestive details, the details that best stim- ulate the reader's mind to form the desired image. Moreover, only so many details as are necessary should be used, and no more. Superfluous details have a confusing effect ; they tend to blur the reader 's mental picture, and distinctness of impression is al- most the first consideration in description. As to the arrangement of these details, the method is that of simple enumeration according to some suitable plan. Mere enumeration without plan will not, of course, serve the writer's purpose. The details must be arranged with as much regard as possible to the aid they give one another in their image or picture sug- gesting capacity. Bad arrangement will spoil the effect of the most admirably chosen details. As to what details are most striking and what arrangement is likely to be most effective, the writer can best judge if he keeps always in mind the point of view from which he observes the thing to be de- scribed. That point of view must, of course, be defi- nite, else the writer's own impression will be vague and his chances of producing a vivid impression on the mind of the reader correspondingly slim. No one can make another see clearly what he does not see clearly himself. If, for instance, the writer wishes to describe a bit of scenery, he must first get a clear image of it in his own mind, which can be done only by viewing it, in reality or in imagination, from some 200 DESCRIPTION point in the foreground. Viewed from this point, certain features of the scene will stand out more prominently than others and will relate themselves in a particular way. These features are the sugges- tive ones, and this particular relation the one that the writer should seek to reproduce. Note the distinctness of this sketch from Stevenson *s Edinburgh, a distinctness attained by fixing the point of view and by attending carefully to the perspective : Kirk Yetton forms the northeastern angle of the range; thence, the Pentlands trend off to south and west. From the summit you look over a great expanse of champaign sloping to the sea and behold a large variety of distant hills. There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or Apple- cross. To turn to the other, is like a piece of travel. Far out in the lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises darkly in the midst; and close by, Arthur's Seat makes a bold figure in the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking vil- lages, and white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines; little ships are tacking in the Firth; the shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and standing corn, and sends pulses of varying color across the landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and look down from afar upon men's life. The city is as silent as a city of METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 201 the dead: from all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill. The sea surf, the cries of ploughmen, the streams and the mill-wheels, the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert through the plain; from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for the whispering rumor of a train, the world has fallen into a dead silence and the business of town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight highways, tell visibly of man^s active and comfortable ways ; and you may be never so laggard and never so unim- pressionable, but there is something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein for cheerful labor. The same careful attention to point of view and grouping of details is observable in the following sketch 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 wit- nessed — 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 hav- ing a large chimney-piece, set around with pictured tiles, 202 DESCRIPTION but now closed by an iron fireboard, 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 per- plexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede ; the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it was almost incred- ible 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 dis- comfort of the human person that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been 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. ^ Ordinarily, the point of view in description is fixed. It is permissible, however, to introduce movement into description, and thus have the viev^oint a chang- ing one ; but in this case the reader must be kept duly informed as to each change in the point of view. If this is not done, the result will almost surely be confusion. The picture v^dll have a blurred effect like that produced in a photograph when the camera is shifted during the exposure of the plate. As an illustration of how the point of view may change, yet without loss of distinctness in the result- ing picture, take the following : ^From Hawthorne's House of the Seven Cfahles. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 203 A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight, — though the sun may be blinding on the white road without. All about you is a green gloaming, up through which you see immense tininks rising. Follow the first path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, if you wish to obtain the best general view of the place in the shortest possible time. As you proceed, the garden on your right deepens more and more into a sort of ravine; — on your left rises a sort of foliage-shrouded cliff; and all this in a beautiful crepus- cular dimness, made by the foliage of great trees meeting overhead. Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold their heads a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the light. Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes, dotted with artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica : these are covered with tropical plants, many of which are total strangers even here : they are natives of India, Senegambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arborescent ferns of unfamiliar elegance curve up from path-verge or lake-brink ; and the great arhre-du-voyageur outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas droop down over the way in loops and fes- toons; tapering green cords, which are creepers descending to take root, hang everywhere; and parasites with stems as thick as cables coil about the trees like boas. Trunks shooting up out of sight, into the green wilderness above, display no bark; you cannot guess what sort of trees they are; they are so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of leaves. Between you and the sky, where every- thing is fighting for the sun, there is an almost unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which nothing particular is distinguishable. You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your left, — openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed basin of brown stone to another, — or gaps occupied by flights of stone steps, green with mosses, 204 DESCRIPTION and chocolate-colored by age. These steps lead to loftier paths; and all the stone- work — the grottos, bridges, basins, terraces, steps, — are darkened by time and velveted with mossy things. It is of another century, this garden : special ordinances were passed concerning it during the French Revolution. It is very quaint; it suggests an art spirit as old as Versailles, or older; but it is indescribably beautiful even now. At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water; — there is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river below you; and at a sudden turn you come in sight of the cascade. Before you is the Morne itself; and against the burst of descending light you discern a precipice-verge. Over it, down one green furrow in its brow, tumbles the rolling foam of a cataract, like falling smoke, to be caught below in a succession of moss-covered basins. The first clear leap of the water is nearly seventy feet. . . . Returning by another path, you may have a view of other cascades — though none so imposing. But they are beauti- ful; and you will not soon forget the effect of one — flanked at its summit by white-stemmed palms which lift their leaves so high into the light that the loftiness of them gives the sensation of vertigo. Dizzy also the magnificence of the great colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two hun- dred feet high, through which you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade, — the famed AlUe des duels,^ In the following series of memory pictures, too, though the point of view changes frequently, there is not the slightest trace of blur or confusion : ^ From Lafcadio Hearn's Ttoo Years in the French West Indies. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 205 The scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that re- vealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half -obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bald brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thor- oughfares, the tall, gray houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the townspeople assembled and leveling their stern regards at Hester Prynne, yes, at her- 206 DESCRIPTION self, who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroid- ered with gold-thread, upon her bosom. ^ Description of this kind differs, obviously, in very few respects from narration. The passage just quoted might almost, in fact, be regarded as narration. Hawthorne 's purpose is to review rapidly, yet with as much vividness as possible, the course of events in the early life of his heroine. To do this, he adopts the descriptive, rather than the narrative method ; but he puts as much movement into his description as pos- sible. How easily description may pass into narration and still retain the descriptive purpose may be seen in the following: We ate our lunch at Bethlehem in a curiosity-shop. The table was spread at the back of the room by the open win- dow. All around us were hanging innumerable chaplets and rosaries of mother-of-pearl, of carnelian, of carved olive-stones, of glass beads; trinkets and souvenirs of all imaginable kinds, tiny sheep-bells and inlaid boxes and carved fans filled the cases and cabinets. Through the window came the noise of people busy at Bethlehem's chief industry, the cutting and polishing of mother-of-pearl for mementoes. The jingling bells of our pack-train, passing the open door, reminded us that our camp was to be pitched miles away on the road to Hebron. We called for the horses and rode on through the town. Very beautiful and peaceful was the view from the southern hill, looking down upon the pastures of Bethlehem where " shepherds watched their flocks by night," and the field of Boaz where Ruth followed the reapers among the corn. * From Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 207 Down dale and up hill we journeyed; bright green of almond-trees, dark green of carob-trees, snowy blossoms of apricot-trees, argent verdure of olive-trees, adorning the valleys. Then out over the wilder, rockier heights; and past the great empty Pools of Solomon, lying at the head of the Wadi Aras, watched by a square ruined castle; and up the winding road and along the lofty flower-sprinkled ridges; and at last we came to our tents, pitched in the wide, green Wadi-el-'Arrub, beside the bridge. Springs gushed out of the hillside here and ran down in a little laughing brook through lawns full of tiny pink and white daisies, and broad fields of tangled weeds and flowers, red anemones, blue iris, purple mallows, scarlet adonis, with here and there a strip of cultivated ground shimmering with silky leeks or dotted with young cucum- bers. There was a broken aqueduct cut in the rock at the side of the valley, and the brook slipped by a large ruined reservoir. " George," said I to the Bethlehemite, as he sat meditating on the edge of the dry pool, " what do you think of this valley?" " I think," said George, " that if I had a few thousand dollars to buy this land, with all this runaway water I could make it blossom like a peach-tree." ^ In what has been said so far as to the appeal which description makes to the senses, it has been the sense of sight which we have had chiefly in mind. Visual images, however, are not the only kind of images which descriptive writing may evoke. Sounds and odors affect us, as well as form and color, and de- scription may seek to reproduce the impression which they make upon us. Examples of the attempt to * From Henry Van Dyke's Out of Doors in the Holy Land. 208 DESCRIPTION reproduce impressions other than those derived from form and color may be seen in the following: A rough smack of resin was in the air, and a crystal mountain purity. It came pouring over these green slopes by the oceanful. The woods sang aloud, and gave largely of their healthful breath. Gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference behind us in the valley. " I to the hills will lift mine eyes ! " There are days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands, seems Uke scaling heaven.^ We ride past the gardens and through the shady lanes to our camp, on the outskirts of the modern village. The air is heavy and languid, full of relaxing influence, an air of sloth and luxury, seeming to belong to some strange region below the level of human duty and effort as far as it is below the level of the sea. The fragrance of the orange-blossoms, like a subtle incense of indulgence, floats on the evening breeze. Veiled figures pass us in the lanes, showing lustrous eyes. A sound of Oriental music and laughter and clapping hands comes from one of the houses in an inclosure hedged with acacia-trees. We sit in the door of our tent at sundown and dream of the vanished palm-groves, the gardens of Cleopatra, the palaces of Herod, the soft, ignoble history of that region of fertility and indolence, rich in harvest, poor in manhood.' In descriptions of character, mental states, and the like, there can, of course, be no appeal to any of the senses, since the things described have no materiality. As applied to such descriptions, the term '* point of iFrom Stevenson's Silverado Squatters. » From Henry Van Dyke's Out of Doors in the Holy Land. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 209 view " must therefore be taken in a metaphorical sense; and to say that a writer here must keep his point of view in mind, means simply that he must select and group the details he mentions in such a way that they will appeal to the reader's imagination as a whole, and not as separate and unrelated frag- ments. This he can do most readily by making some one trait of the character or mental state described the dominating trait or principle of the whole, and subordinating all others to it. Note, for example, the effectiveness of the follow- ing description of the character of Clifford Pyncheon, after his return from prison, where his likeness to a child is made the dominating trait: But it would be no fair picture of Clifford's state of mind, were we to represent him as continually or prevail- ingly wretched. On the contrary, there was no other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless mo- ments as himself. He had no burden of care upon him; there were none of those questions and contingencies with the future to be settled, which wear away all other lives, and render them not worth having by the very process of providing for their support. In this respect, he was a child, — a child for the whole term of his existence, be it long or short. Indeed, his life seemed to be standing still at a period little in advance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences about that epoch ; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow, the sufferer's reviving consciousness goes back to a moment considerably behind the accident that stupefied him. He sometimes told Phoebe and Hepzibah his dreams, in which he invariably played the part of a child, or 210 DESCRIPTION a very young man. So vivid were they, in relation of them, that he once held a dispute with his sister as to the particular figure or print of a chintz morning-dress, which he had seen their mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night. Hepzibah, piquing herself on a woman's accuracy in such matters, held it to be slightly different from what Clifford described; but producing the very gown from an old trunk, it proved to be identical with his remembrance of it. Had Clifford, every time that he emerged out of dreams so lifelike, undergone the torture of transforma- tion from a boy into an old and broken man, the daily re- currence of the shock would have been too much to bear. It would have caused an acute agony to thrill, from the morning twilight, all the day through, until bedtime; and even then would have mingled a dull, inscrutable pain, and pallid hue of misfortune, with th visionary bloom and adolescence of his slumber. But the nightly moonshine in- terwove itself with the morning mist, and enveloped him as in a robe, which he hugged about his person, and seldom let realities pierce through; he was not often quite awake, but slept open-eyed, and perhaps fancied himself most dreaming then. Thus lingering always so near his childhood, he had sym- pathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring, not far from the fountain-head. Though prevented, by a subtile sense of propriety, from desiring to associate with them, he loved few things better than to look out of the arched window, and see a little girl driving her hoop along the sidewalk, or schoolboys at a game of ball. Their voices, also, were very pleasant to him, heard at a distance, all swarming and intermingling together, as flies do in a sunny room.^ * From Hawthorne's House of the Seven Odhles. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS 211 In all descriptive writing, vividness is an essential quality. Vividness depends partly upon the selection and arrangement of details, but chiefly, perhaps, upon the apt choice of words. Whatever device the descrip- tive writer may use to help give vividness to his description, this one thing he must be particular about. The word that most nearly corresponds to the thing, that best brings out what is characteristic in it, is the word to be used, and the writer must make it his business to find that word, if possible. Vague, inex- act, or inappropriate diction is fatal to effectiveness in description. The expressive verb, the apt figure, the picturesque epithet, — these are the things that count. Note the suggestiveness of the italicized words and phrases in the following: The design upon that fan represented only the white rushing burst of one great wave on a beach, and sea-birds shooting in exultation through the blue overhead. But to behold it was worth all the trouble of the journey. It was a glory of light, a thunder of motion, a triumph of sea-wind, all in one.^ The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty per- haps; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half -vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspira- tion; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kincj * From Lafcadio Hearn's Out of the East. 212 DESCRIPTION of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked, he could never fix which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preach- ing, — you would have said, preaching earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things.^ * Carlyle's picture of Coleridge: see his Life of Sterling. Ill SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION Charles Lamb ^ Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared then, and as he continued with scarcely any perceptible altera- tion to me, during the twenty years of intimacy which followed, and were closed by his death. A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the preva- lent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance and even dig- nity to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering sweetness, and fix it forever in words? There are none, alas, to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humor; the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterized by what he him- »TalfQurd'a sketch of Lamb; quoted by Ainger in his Life of Lamb. m 214 DESCRIPTION self says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham, "a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." Miss Tox ^ "Mrs. Chick," said a very bland female voice outside, " how are you now, my dear friend ? " " My dear Paul," said Louisa, in a low voice, as she rose from her seat, "it^s Miss Tox. The kindest creature! I never could have got here without her! Miss Tox, my brother Mr. Dombey. Paul, my dear, my very particular friend Miss Tox." The lady thus specially presented, was a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-drapers call " fast colors " originally, and to have, by little and little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as the very pink of general propitiation and politeness. From a long habit of listening admirably to everything that was said in her presence, and looking at the speakers as if she were men- tally engaged in taking off impressions of their images upon her soul, never to part with the same but with life, her head had quite settled on one side. Her hands had contracted a spasmodic habi of raising themselves of their own accord as in involuntary admiration. Her eyes were liable to a similar affection. She had the softest voice that ever was heard; and her nose, stupendously aquiline, had a little knob in the very center or key-stone of the bridge, whence it tended downward toward her face, as in an in- vincible determination never to turn up at anything. Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel and good, had a certain character of angularity and scantiness. She was accustomed to wear odd weedy little flowers in her bonnets and caps. Strange grasses were sometimes per- * From Dickens's Domhey and Son, SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 215 ceived in her hair; and it was observed by the curious, of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wrist-bands, and other gossamer articles — indeed of everything she wore which had two ends to it intended to unite — that the two ends were never on good terms, and wouldn't quite meet without a struggle. She had furry articles for winter wear, as tip- pets, boas, and muffs, which stood up on end in a rampant manner, and were not at all sleek. She was much given to the carrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off like little pistols when they were shut up; and when full-dressed, she wore round her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing a fishy old eye, with no approach to speculation in it. These and other appearances of a sim- ilar nature, had served to propagate the opinion, that Miss Tox was a lady of what is called limited independence. Possibly her mincing gait encouraged the belief, and sug- gested that her clipping a step of ordinary compass into two or three, originated in her habit of making the most of everything. An English Stage Coach Driver ^ He has commonly a broad full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin ; he is swelled into jolly dimen- sions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole, the pres- ent, most probably, of some enamored country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, striped, and * From Irving's Sketch Book. 216 DESCRIPTION his smallclothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about halfway up his legs. All this costume is maintained with much precision; he has a pride in having his clothes of excellent materials ; and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person, which is almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys great consequence and consideration along the road; has frequent conferences with the village housewives, who look upon him as a man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the hostler, his duty being merely to drive them from one stage to another. When oif the box, his hands are thrust into the pockets of his great-coat, and he rolls about the inn yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded by an admiring throng of hostlers, stable boys, shoeblacks, and those nameless hangers-on, that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kind of odd jobs, for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the taproom. These all look up to him as to an oracle ; treasure up his cant phrases ; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavor to imitate his air and car- riage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back, thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo Coachey. The Interior of St. Mark^s, Venice ^ Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his rest, let us enter the church itself. It is * From Ruskin's Stones of Venice. SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 217 lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be ac- customed for some moments before the form of the build- ing can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burn- ing ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and raven- ing beasts of prey, and graceful bii'ds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life sym- bolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the ser- pent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman 218 DESCRIPTION standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscrip- tion above her, " Mother of God," she is not here the pre- siding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always burning in the center of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshipers scat- tered through the darker places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, pro- foundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen mur- muring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures, but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sun- set, in which we may not see some half -veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, east itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted. A Sunday in London ^ In a preceding paper I have spoken of an English Sun- day in the country, and its tranquilizing effect upon the landscape, but where is its sacred influence more strikingly apparent than in the very heart of that great Babel, Lon- don? On this sacred day, the gigantic monster is charmed into repose. The intolerable din and struggle of the week are at an end. The shops are shut. The fires of forges and * From Irving's Sketch Book, SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 219 manufactories are extinguished; and the sun, no longer obscured by murky clouds of smoke, pours down a sober, yellow radiance into the quiet streets. The few pedestrians we meet, instead of hurrying forward with anxious coun- tenances, move leisurely along; their brows are smoothed from the wrinkles of business and care; they have put on their Sunday looks, and Sunday manners, with their Sunday clothes, and are cleansed in mind as well as in person. And now the melodious clangor of bells from church towers summons their several flocks to the fold. Forth issues from his mansion the family of the decent tradesman, the small children in the advance; then the citizen and his comely spouse, followed by the grown-up-daughters, with small morocco-bound prayer-books laid in the folds of their pocket-handkerchiefs. The housemaid looks after them from the window, admiring the finery of the family, and receiving, perhaps, a nod and smile from her young mistresses, at whose toilet she has assisted. Now rumbles along the carriage of some magnate of the city, peradventure an alderman or a sheriff; and now the patter of many feet announces a procession of charity scholars in uniforms of antique cut, and each with a prayer- book under his arm. The ringing of bells is at an end ; the rumbling of the car- riage has ceased; the pattering of feet is heard no more; the flocks are folded in ancient churches, cramped up in by-lanes and corners of the crowded city, where the vigilant beadle keeps watch, like the shepherd's dog, round the threshold of the sanctuary. For a time every thing is hushed; but soon is heard the deep, pervading sound of the organ, rolling and vibrating through the empty lanes and courts; and the sweet chanting of the choir making them resound with melody and praise. Never have I been more sensible of the sanctifying effect of church music, than when I have heard it thus poured forth, like a river of 220 DESCRIPTION joy, through the inmost recesses of this great metropolis, elevating it, as it were, from all the sordid pollutions of the week; and bearing the poor world-worn soul on a tide of triumphant harmony to heaven. The morning service is at an end. The streets are again alive with the congregations returning to their homes, but soon again relapse into silence. Now comes on the Sunday dinner, which, to the city tradesman, is a meal of some importance. There is more leisure for social enjoyment at the board. Members of the family can now gather together, who are separated by the laborious occupations of the week. A school-boy may be permitted on that day to come to the paternal home; an old friend of the family takes his accustomed Sunday seat at the board, tells over his well-known stories, and rejoices young and old with bis well-known jokes. An Iceberg^ At twelve o'clock we went below, and had just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen. "Where away, cook?" asked the first man who was up. " On the larboard bow." And there lay, floating on the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its center of a deep indigo color. This was an iceberg, and of the largest size, as one of our men said who had been in the Northern ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light, and in the midst lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun. All hands were soon ^ From Two Years Before the Mast, by R. H. Dana, Jr. SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 221 on deck, looking at it, and admiring in various ways its beauty and grandeur. But no description can give any idea of the strangeness, splendor, and, really, the sublimity, of the sight. Its great size, — for it must have been from two to three miles in circumference and several hundred feet in height, — its slow motion, as its base rose and sank in the water, and its high points nodded against the clouds ; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, breaking high with foam, lined its base with a white crust; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces; together with its nearness and approach, which added a slight element of fear, — all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity. The main body of the mass was, as I have said, of an indigo color, its base crusted with frozen foam; and as it grew thin and transparent toward the edges and top, its color shaded off from a deep blue to the whiteness of snow. It seemed to be drifting slowly toward the north, so that we kept away and avoided it. It was in sight all the afternoon; and when we got to leeward of it, the wind died away, so that we lay-to quite near it for a greater part of the night. Unfortunately, there was no moon, but it was a clear night, and we could plainly mark the long, regular heaving of the stupendous mass, as its edges moved slowly against the stars. Several times on our watch loud cracks were heard, which sounded as though they must have run through the whole length of the iceberg, and several pieces fell down with a thundering crash, plunging heavily into the sea. Toward morning, a strong breeze sprang up, and we filled away, and left it astern, and at daylight it was out of sight. The Sea Fogs ^ A change in the color of the light usually called me in the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks * From Stevenson's Silverado Squatters. , 222 DESCRIPTION in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and sep- arated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly colored, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the canon already glowed with sunlight in a wonderful compound of gold and rose and green ; and this too would kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. If I were sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue that struck me awake; if more lightly, then I would come to myself in that earlier and fairer light. One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness called me. I rose and turned to the east, not for my devo- tions, but for air. The night had been very still. The little private gale that blew every morning in our canon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed not a sigh of wind had shaken the treetops; and our barrack, for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning than of wont. But I had no sooner reached the window than I forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the crazy plank to the platform. The sun was still concealed below the opposite hilltops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet above my head, on our own mountain slope. But the scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. Napa Valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes and woody foot- hills of the range; and in their place, not a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. It was as though I had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened in a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations from below; at Calis- toga I had risen and gone abroad in the early morning, SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 223 coughing and sneezing, under fathoms and fathoms of gray sea vapor, like a cloudy sky — a dull sight for the artist, and a painful experience for the invalid. But to sit aloft one^s self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The color of that fog ocean was a thing never to be for- gotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crys- tal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with a sound. As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to observe that this sea was not so level as at first sight it appeared to be. Away in the extreme south, a little hill of fog arose against the sky above the general surface, and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There were huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea; and yet, as I looked again, I was not sure but they were moving after all, with a slow and august advance. And while I was yet doubting, a promontory of the hills some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant overtaken and swallowed up. It reappeared in a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be swallowed up once more and then for good. This set me looking nearer, and I saw that in every cove along the line of mountains the fog was 224 DESCRIPTION being piled in higher and higher, as though by some wind that was inaudible to me. I could trace its progress, one pine tree first growing hazy and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there was none of this forerunning haze, but the whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee these poisonous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high among the mountains. And now, be- hold, here came the fog to besiege me in my chosen alti- tudes, and yet came so beautifully that my first thought was of welcome. The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle, or some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over the nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sidewise, as if to look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, for the eyries of her comrades. Then, with a long cry, she disappeared again toward Lake County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to me as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reap- pearance into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went into the house to light the fire. I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted the platform to look abroad. The fog ocean had swelled up enormously since last I saw it; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where the Toll House stands and the road runs through into Lake County, it had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 225 with it; and though I was still in the calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where I stood. Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder of the mountain still warded it out of our canon. Napa Valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted out. The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pouring over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing treetops appearing and disappearing in the spray. The air struck me with a little chill, and set me coughing. It smelled strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt. Had it not been for two things — the sheltering spur which answered as a dyke, and the great valley on the other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted — our own little platform in the canon must have been already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. As it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our minds. We were set just out of the wind, and but just above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the one as to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down into the other, as into some flowing stream from over the parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing from moment to moment like figures in a dream. The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt more strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in kind. I played with the idea, as the child flees in delighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part in play. 226 DESCRIPTION As I ascended the mountain-side, I came once more to overlook the upper surface of the fog; but it wore a dif- ferent appearance from what I had beheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor'land moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. And next the new level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only five or six points of all the broken country below me still stood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma on the west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the fog was pour- ing over, like an ocean, into the blue clear sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the water-shed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon the eastern sky. Through the Toll House gap, and over the near ridges on the other side, the deluge was immense. A spray of thin vapor was thrown high above it, rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of its course was like a mountain torrent. Here and there a few treetops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for one sec- ond, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the spray like the arm of a drowning man. But still the imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for something more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating thunder would it have rolled upon its course, disemboweling mountains and de- racinating pines! And yet water it was, and seawater at that — true Pacific billows, only somewhat rarified, rolling in mid-air among the hilltops. I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel and dwarf underwood of Mount St. Helena, until I could look right down upon Silverado, and admire the favored nook in SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 227 •which I lay. The sunny plain of fog was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting spur a gigantic accumu- lation of cottony vapor threatened, with every second, to blow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past the Toll House was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last effort. The wind veered while we ^ere at dinner, and began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and by half-past one all that world of sea-fogs was utterly routed and flying here and there into the sou^h in little rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea-beach, we found ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountain- side with the clear green country far below us, and the light smoke of Calistoga blowing in the air. The Grand Canon of the Colorado ^ A friend of mine who took a lively interest in my Western trip wrote me that he wished he could have been present with his kodak when we first looked upon the Grand Canon. Did he think he could have gotten a picture of our souls? His camera would have shown him only our silent, motion- less forms as we stood transfixed by that first view of the stupendous spectacle. Words do not come readily to one's lips, or gestures to one's body, in the presence of such a scene. One of my companions said that the first thing that came into her mind was the old text, "Be still, and know that I am God." To be still on such an occasion is the easi- est thing in the world, and to feel the surge of solemn 1 From an article by John Burroughs on *'The Grand Cafion of the Colorado," the Century, January, 1911. 228 DESCRIPTION and reverential emotions is equally easy — is, indeed, almost inevitable. The immensity of the scene, its tranquillity, its order, its strange, new beauty, and the monumental char- acter of its many forms — all these tend to beget in the beholder an attitude of silent wonder and solemn admira- tion. It is beautiful, oh, how beautiful! but it is a beauty that awakens a feeling of solemnity and awe. We called it the " divine abyss." It seems as much of heaven as of earth. Of the many descriptions of it, none seems adequate. To rave over it, or to pour into it a torrent of superlatives, is of little avail. My companion came nearer the mark when she quietly repeated from Revelation, "And he car- ried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem." It does indeed suggest a far-off, half -sacred antiquity, some greater Jerusalem, Egypt, Babylon, or India. We speak of it as a scene: it is more like a vision, so foreign is it to all other terrestrial spectacles, and so surpassingly beautiful. To ordinary folk, the spectacle is so extraordinary, so unlike everything one's experience has yielded, and so unlike the results of the usual haphazard working of the blind forces of nature, that I did not wonder when people whom I met on the rim asked me what I supposed did all this. I could even sympathize with the remark of an old woman visitor who is reported to have said that she thought they had built the canon too near the hotel. The enormous cleavage which the canon shows, the abrupt drop from the brink of thousands of feet, the sheer faces of perpendicular walls of dizzy height, give at first the im- pression that it is all the work of some titanic quarryman, who must have removed cubic miles of strata as we remove cubic yards of earth. Indeed, go out to O'NeiFs, or Hopi Point, and, as you SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 229 emerge from the woods, you get glimpses of a blue or rose- purple gulf opening before you. The solid ground ceases suddenly, and an aerial perspective, vast and alluring, takes its place; another heaven, counter-sunk in the earth, trans- fixes you on the brink. " Great God ! " I can fancy the first beholder of it saying, " what is this ? Do I behold the transfiguration of the earth? Has the solid ground melted into thin air? Is there a firmament below as well as above? Has the earth's veil at last been torn aside, and the red heart of the globe been laid bare ? " If this first witness was not at once overcome by the beauty of the earthly revelation before him, or terrified by its strangeness and power, he must have stood long, awed, spellbound, speech- less with astonishment, and thrilled with delight. He may have seen vast and glorious prospects from mountain-tops, he may have looked down upon the earth and seen it unroll like a map before him; but he had never before looked into the earth as through a mighty window or open door, and beheld depths and gulfs of space, with their atmospheric veils and illusions and vast perspectives, such as he had seen from mountain-summits, but with a wealth of color and a suggestion of architectural and monumental remains, and a strange almost unearthly beauty, such as no mountain- view could ever have afforded him. Three features of the canon strike one at once: its un- paralleled magnitude, its architectural forms and sugges- tions, and its opulence of color effects — a chasm nearly a mile deep and from ten to twenty miles wide, in which Niagara would be only as a picture upon your walls, in which the pyramids, seen from the rim, would appear only like large tents, and in which the largest building upon the earth would dwindle to insignificant proportions. There are amphitheaters and mighty aisles eight miles long, three or four miles wide, and three or four thousand feet deep; there are room-like spaces eight hundred feet high; there 230 DESCRIPTION are well-defined alcoves with openings a mile wide; there are niches six hundred feet high overhung by arched lintels; there are pinnacles and rude statues from one hundred to two hundred feet high. Here I am running at once into references to the architectural features and suggestions of the canon, which must play a prominent part in all faith- ful attempts to describe it. There are huge, truncated tow- ers, vast, horizontal moldings; there are the semblance of balustrades on the summit of a noble fagade. In one of the immense halls we saw, on an elevated platform, the out- lines of three enormous chairs, fifty feet or more high, and behind and above them the suggestion of three more chairs in partial ruin. Indeed, there is an opulence of archi- tectural and monumental forms in this divine abyss such as one has never before dreamed of seeing wrought out by the blind forces of nature. These forces have here fore- shadowed all the noblest architecture of the world. Many of the vast carved and ornamental masses which diversify the canon have been fitly named temples, as Shiva^s temple, a mile high, carved out of the red carboniferous limestone, and remarkably symmetrical in its outlines. Near it is the temple of Isis, the temple of Osiris, the Buddha temple, the Horus temple, and the Pyramid of Cheops. Farther to the east is the Diva temple, the Brahma temple, the temple of Zoroaster, and the tomb of Odin. Indeed, everywhere there are suggestions of temples and tombs, pagodas and pyramids, on a scale that no work of human hands can rival. " The grandest objects," says Captain Dutton, " are merged in a congregation of others equally grand." With the wealth of form goes a wealth of color. Never, I venture to say, were reds and browns and grays and vermilions more appealing to the eye than they are as they softly glow in this great canon. The color scheme runs from the dark, somber hue of the gneiss at the bottom, up through the yellowish-brown of the Cambrian layers, and on up SPECIMENS OF DESCRIPTION 231 through seven or eight broad bands of varying tints of red and vermilion, to the broad yellowish-gray at the top. One of the smaller of these many geologic temples is called the temple of Isis. How it seems to be resisting the siege of time, throwing out its salients here and there, and meeting the onset of the foe like a military engineer! It is made up of four stories, and its height is about 2,500 feet. The finish at the top is a line of heavy wall probably one hundred feet high. The lines of many of these natural temples or fortresses are still more lengthened and attenu- ated, appearing like mere skeletons of their former selves. The forms that weather out of the formation above this, the Permian, appear to be more rotund, and tend more to domes and rounded hills. One^s sense of the depths of the canon is so great that it almost makes one dizzy to see the little birds fly out over it, or plunge down into it. One seemed to fear that they, too, would get dizzy and fall to the bottom. We watched a line of tourists on mules creeping along the trail across the inner plateau, and the unaided eye had trouble to hold them; they looked like little red ants. The eye has more difficulty in estimating objects and distances beneath it than when they are above or on a level with it, because it is so much less familiar with depth than with height or lateral dimensions. IV NARRATION 1. NATURE OF NARRATIVE WRITING Broadly speaking, narration may be defined as that kind of composition in which the main purpose is to set forth action manifesting itself in a succession of events. It is, perhaps, the commonest kind of writ- ing. In fact, it may be regarded as the typical liter- ary form. It is the oldest of all literary forms, and it seems to have a much greater hold upon man's in- terest than any other form. For some reason or other, we are more interested in what men do than in what they say. The works which have held men's attention longest, and have probably had the most influence, have been works which have dealt mainly with action, with what has happened to man, either in the world of actuality or in that scarcely less real world, the world of imagination ; and it is hardly too much to say that no work wherein action plays but a small part can have much chance of being per- manently interesting. The forms which narration may assume are numer- ous. Most representative of the type nowadays, per- haps, is the novel, under which term we may include all those narratives which deal with imaginary events NATURE OF NARRATIVE WRITING 233 and characters, or which do not profess to be bound to any strict observance of literal truth. When the events set forth are such as have actually happened and the characters are real, we have, of course, either history or biography. In its essential nature, however, narration is the same whether it deals with fact or with fiction. The method of treating events depends in a very slight degree upon whether those events are real or imagi- nary. A novel, for instance, may take the form of a biography and be indistinguishable from it except on the score of conformity to fact. History and biog- raphy can be differentiated from fiction only by their aim or purpose. Their purpose being, in the main, to convey information, they must give an exact ac- count of what has happened, and can adapt facts only in so far as such adaptation is consistent with a truthful presentation of the events recorded. In fiction there is no such limitation. Here the writer *s facts are, or may be, purely imaginary, and can be adapted at will, provided they are kept in harmony with each other. The novelist appeals not so much to the understanding as to the imagination and the emotions. His aim is to please, and he is bound only by the laws of consistency and of beauty, the observ- ance of which is for him a necessity if he would please. In short, while the historian and the biogra- pher are bound to the observance of specific truth, the writer of fiction is bound to the observance of general truth only. The simplest kind of narration is that of the chronicle or diary kind. Here the interest is expected 234 NARRATION to be centered in the events themselves, and not in any particular sequence or arrangement of them. Nar- ration of this kind, however, can usually pretend to little or no artistic quality. When we speak of narra- tion as a form of art, we have in mind those writings wherein the events recorded are connected in a series so as to form a unified whole, in which, rather than in the separate events, the interest of the reader cen- ters itself. For narration of this higher or more artistic kind, three things are necessary, — characters, action leading to some definite end, and setting. 2. SETTING Strictly speaking, setting should, perhaps, be classed as description in narration, rather than as an element of narration proper, whose concern is primarily with character and action. Setting in a narrative is simply the background or scene in which the characters are placed. A character must have a local habitation and a name, even if it be only a general one; and events must happen in time and space. Whatever the narrative writer tells us about the environment of his characters, or about the time, place, or circum- stances of the action, constitutes the setting of his narrative. The usefulness of setting in a narrative is appar- ent. Without it, there would be an air of unreality about everything in the story. Setting serves to give definiteness to the narrative, and to throw the char- acters into relief. A certain amount of it is neces- sary in every narrative; but it should always be SETTING 235 strictly subordinated to the action and characteriza- tion, since these are the things of fundamental im- portance in narration. Long descriptions of scenery are apt to prove tedious to the reader, and should therefore be avoided. The most natural place for the setting of a narra- tive is at the beginning, though it may be placed any- where, according as the occasion demands. A passage from the opening of Poe 's Oold Bug will illustrate the use of setting at the beginning of the narrative : Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortifications conse- quent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is sep- arated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle so much prized by the horticulturists of Eng- land. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen 236 NARRATION or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance. In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. . . . His chief amuse- ments were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomo- logical specimens — his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdam. In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by prom- ises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young " Massa Will." . . . The winters in the latitude of SuUivan^s Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18 — , there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks — ^my residence being at that time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the facilities of passage and repassage were very far behind those of the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs, and waited patiently the arrival of my hosts. 3. CHARACTERIZATION In the center of every event or incident that be- comes material for the narrator is an actor or char- CHARACTERIZATION 237 acter. A story without a character of some kind is just as much of an impossibility as a story without action. It is sometimes a question which of these two things — the character or the incident — interests us most. For many, undoubtedly, it is the incident. Stevenson, though with perhaps just a touch of ex- aggeration, remarks that " It is not character but in- cident that wooes us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realized in the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the characters ; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience ; and then, and then only, do we say we have been reading a romance. ' ' ^ It is only in the type of narrative we call romance, however, that the action is apt to be of more conse- quence than the characterization. In the ordinary novel and in most short stories of the modern variety, characterization, if it is not the predominant feature, is likely to be at least as important as action. After all, it does not matter very much whether we say that the one or the other should predominate: the two things are, in a certain sense, but different aspects of the same thing; they are complementary to each other, and either may properly be given preeminence. The point to note here especially is that the novice in the art of fiction is not very likely to over-emphasize the element of characterization. On the contrary, he * See A Gossip on Romance. 238 NARRATION is rather apt to err in the opposite direction, and pay- too little attention to his characters. To invest his characters with the semblance of life, the novelist has to have, of course, some spark of crea- tive genius ; and if he is lacking in this respect, there is little hope for him. Still, no amateur need be de- terred from trying his hand at story-writing because he has not the genius of a Thackeray or a Dickens; intelligence and painstaking care will accomplish a good deal. The first thing to be done in beginning a narrative is to determine whose story it is to be. In every nar- rative, there must be one character, or at least one small group of characters, in whom the action centers. It will become the business of the narrator, then, to bring this character, or group of characters, forward and keep all the others, relatively speaking, in the background. The next thing to be done, if the char- acters are to be made life-like, is for the narrator to try to realize his characters, — that is to say, see them in his mind's eye as if they were actually in his presence. Unless he can do this, he is not likely to make his readers feel that they are real. Of course the degree of individuality a character should have will depend somewhat upon the nature of the story. In some narratives, — as for example in Hawthorne's Ambitious Guest, given in the selections below, — the aim of the writer is to present types rather than in- dividuals. For the most part, however, the characters in a story should be real, flesh-and-blood persons, — persons such as we might actually meet in real life. The ways in which a narrator may delineate char- CHARACTERIZATION 239 acter are various. Following more or less closely the descriptive method, he may portray his characters directly by telling us what they are like, or indirectly by telling us what they have said and done ; or again, adopting the dramatic method, he may make them re- veal, through their own words and actions, their in- dividuality themselves, as persons do in real life. The last way is undoubtedly the best, since it is the most natural; but it is seldom used alone. Ordinarily, a writer will give us a hint as to what his characters are like, then place them before us acting and talking, and thus allow us to judge of them for ourselves. Observe how Stevenson, in the following passage, for example, first gives us a general notion of Dr. Desprez, and then follows it up with a conversation between the Doctor and the waif, Jean-Marie, — a conversation admirable for the revelation it gives us of both characters : Dr. Desprez always rose early. Before the smoke arose, before the first cart rattled over the bridge to the day's labor in the fields, he was to be found wandering in his garden. Now he would pick a bunch of grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellis; now he would draw all sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he would go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber landing-place at which he moored his boat. There was no time, he used to say, for making theories like the early morning. " I rise earlier than any one else in the village," he once boasted. " It is a fair consequence that I know more and wish to do less with my knowledge." The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of his 240 NARRATION garden, and had a long look at the running water. This he called prayer; but whether his adorations were addressed to the goddess Hygeia or some more orthodox deity, never plainly appeared. For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimes declaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes extolling it as the great moral preacher, continually preaching peace, continuity, and diligence to man's tormented spirits. After he had watched a mile or so of the clear water running by before his eyes, seen a fish or two come to the surface with a gleam of silver, and sufficiently admired the long shadows of the trees fall- ing half across the river from the opposite bank, with patches of moving sunlight in between, he strolled once more up the garden and through his house into the street, feeling cool and renovated. On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately recognized Jean-Marie. " Aha ! " he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on either knee. " So we rise early in the morning, do we? It appears to me that we have all the vices of a philosopher." The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation. " And how is our patient ? " asked Desprez. It appeared the patient was about the same. "And why do you rise early in the morning?" he pur- sued. Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he hardly knew. "You hardly know?" repeated Desprez. "We hardly know anything, my man, until we try to learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come, push me this inquiry home. Do you like it ? " " Yes," said the boy slowly ; " yes, I like it." CHARACTERIZATION 241 " And why do you like it? " continued the Doctor. " (We are now pursuing the Soeratic method.) Why do you like it?" " It is quiet/' answered Jean -Marie ; " and I have nothing to do; and then I feel as if I were good." Dr. Desprez took a seat at the opposite side. He was beginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly thought before he spoke, and tried to answer truly. "It appears you have a taste for feeling good," said the Doctor. " Now, there you puzzle me extremely ; for I thought you said you were a thief; and the two are in- compatible." " Is it very bad to steal? " asked Jean-Marie. " Such is the general opinion, little boy," replied the Doctor. " No, but I mean as I stole," exclaimed the other. " For I had no choice. I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right to have bread, there comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat me cruelly if I returned with nothing," he added. "I was not ignorant of right and wrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest, who was very kind to me." (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word " priest.") " But it seemed to me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it was a different affair. I would not have stolen for tartlets, I believe; but any one would steal for baker's bread." " And so I suppose," said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, " you prayed God to forgive you, and explained the case to him at length." " Why, sir? " asked Jean-Marie. " I do not see." "Your priest would see, however," retorted Desprez. " Would he ? " asked the boy, troubled for the first time. " I should have thought God would have known." "Eh?" snarled the Doctor. " I should have thought God would have understood me," 242 NARRATION replied the other. "You do not, I see; but then it was God that made me think so, was it not ? " "Little boy, little boy," said Dr. Desprez, "I told you already you had the vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I must go. I am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain and temperate nature in her common walks; and I cannot preserve my equanimity in presence of a monster. Do you understand?" " No, sir," said the boy. " I will make my meaning clear to you," replied the Doctor. "Look there at the sky — behind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then up and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it is already as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful color? Does it not please the heart? We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown in with our familiar thoughts. Now," changing his tone, " suppose that sky to become suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the color of clear coals, and growing scarlet toward the top — I do not say it would be any the less beautiful; but would you like it as well?" " I suppose not," answered Jean-Marie. "Neither do I like you," returned the Doctor, roughly. " I hate all odd people, and you are the most curious little boy in all the world." Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and then raised his head again and looked over at the Doctor with an air of candid inquiry. " But are not you a very curious gentle- man ? " he asked. The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him on both cheeks. " Admirable, admirable imp ! " he cried. " What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of forty-two! No," he con- tinued, apostrophizing heaven, " I did not know such boys existed; I was ignorant they made them so; I had doubted ACTION 243 of my race; and now! It is like," he added, picking up his stiek, " like a lovers* meeting." ^ 4. ACTION Characterization, as we have seen, may play as important a part in narration as action. Nevertheless, it is to the action rather than to the characterization that we must look for the real essence of narration. The purpose of narration is not simply the delineation of character, but rather the presentation of character in action. We may have character presented by means of description, — ^that is, character in its static aspect, so to speak; character in its dynamic aspect can be properly presented only by means of narration. We judge a man's character not so much by what is said of him as by what he does. Moreover, as between his own word and deed, we judge of him by the deed rather than by the word; ** actions," so runs the old adage, ** speak louder than words." The action of a narrative may be either simple or complex. It is simple when there is but a single thread of story followed, a single course of events marked out and followed uninterruptedly to the end. It is complex, on the other hand, when several threads of story are taken up, one after another, or when the main current of events, so to speak, meets with cross or counter currents, and is checked for a moment or deflected from the course which it would otherwise take. Most short historical and biographical sketches are examples of narratives with simple action. The *From The Treasure of Franchard, 244 NARRATION selection from Franklin's Autobiography given below, for instance, will serve as an illustration of tlie type. Of the narrative with complex action, almost any novel will suffice for an example. In all narratives, whether the action be simple or complex, there must be unification of the action. This unification is accomplished by means of what is called plot. All narratives therefore which are whole, — that is, which proceed from some definite beginning to some definite conclusion, — ^have plot. The term *' plot " is used here, of course, in its widest possible sense. In its narrower and more usual sense, it is applied only to that complication or entanglement of the course of action in a fictitious narrative the resolution of which we expect to find at or near the end of the narrative. But even if we use the term in this restricted sense only, no sharp line of dis- tinction can be drawn between those narratives which have plot and those which have not. The complica- tion of the action may be so slight as to be almost imperceptible. In the following short tale, for example, we have plot, but plot reduced almost to its lowest terms : The Little Match Girl It was terribly cold; it snowed and was already almost dark, and evening came on, the last evening of the year. In the cold and gloom a poor little girl, bareheaded and barefoot, was walking through the streets. When she left her own house she certainly had slippers on; but of what use were they? They were big slippers, and her mother had used them till then, so big were they. The little maid ACTION 245 lost them as she slipped across the road, where two car- riages were rattling by terribly fast. One slipper was not to be found again, and a boy had seized the other, and run away with it. He thought he could use it very well as a cradle, some day when he had children of his own. So now the little girl went with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and a bundle of them in her hand. No one had bought of her all day, and no one had given her a farthing. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, a picture of misery, poor little girl! The snowflakes covered her long fair hair, which fell in pretty curls over her neck; but she did not think of that now. In all the windows lights were shining, and there was a glorious smell of roast goose, for it was New Year's Eve. Yes, she thought of that ! In a comer formed by two houses, one of which pro- jected beyond the other, she sat down cowering. She had drawn up her little feet, but she was still colder, and she did not dare to go home, for she had sold no matches, and did not bring a farthing of money. From her father she would certainly receive a beating, and besides it was cold at home, for they had nothing over them but a roof through which the wind whistled, though the largest rents had been stopped with straw and rags. Her little hands were almost benumbed with the cold! Ah! a match might do her good, if she could only draw one from the bundle, and rub it against the wall, and warm her hands at it. She drew one out. R-r-atch! how it sput- tered and burned! It was a warm, bright flame, like a little candle, when she held her hands over it ; it was a won- derful little light! It really seemed to the little girl as if she sat before a great polished stove, with bright brass feet and a brass cover. How the fire burned ! how comforta- ble it was! But the little flame went out, and the stove 246 NARRATION vanished, and she had only the remains of the burned match in her hand. A second was rubbed agaiHst the wall. It burned up, and when the light fell upon the wall it became transparent, like a thin veil, and she could see through it into the room. On the table a snow-white cloth was spread; upon it stood a shining dinner service; the roast goose smoked gloriously, stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more splendid to behold, the goose hopped down from the dish, and waddled along the floor, with a knife and fork in its breast, to the little girl. Then the match went out, and only the thick, damp, cold wall was before her. She lighted another match. Then she was sitting under a beau- tiful Christmas tree; it was greater and more ornamental than the one she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant's. Thousands of candles burned upon the green branches, and colored pictures like those in the print shops looked down upon them. The little girl stretched forth her hand toward them; then the match went out. The Christmas lights mounted higher. She saw them now as stars in the sky: one of them fell down, forming a long line of fire. " Now some one is dying," thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now dead, had told her when a star fell down a soul mounted up to God. She rubbed another match against the wall; it became bright again, and in the brightness the old grandmother stood clear and shining, mild and lovely. " Grandmother ! " cried the child, " oh ! take me with you ! I know you will go when the match is burned out. You will vanish like the warm fire, the warm food, and the great glorious Christmas tree ! " And she hastily rubbed the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to hold her grandmother fast. And the matches ACTION 247 burned with such a glow that it became brighter than in the middle of the day ! grandmother had never been so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and both flew in brightness and joy above the earth, very, very high; and up there was neither cold, nor hunger, nor care — they were with God! But in the corner, leaning against the wall, sat the poor girl with red cheeks and smiling mouth, frozen to death on the last evening of the Old Year. The New Year's sun rose upon a little corpse ! The child sat there, stiff and cold, with the matches of which one bundle was burned. " She wanted to warm herself," the people said. No one imagined what a beautiful thing she had seen, and in what glory she had gone in with her grandmother to the New Year's Day. Though there is little or nothing of what is usually called plot here, the causal connection of the events is obvious. From the very beginning, the culmination — the death of the little girl by freezing — is foreseen, and everything in the tale leads up to it. The tale is a unit, and it is a unit not simply because the events mentioned happened to one person, — many things might have happened to the little girl which would have had no place in this tale, — ^but because they have a direct bearing upon one another, and because all point in one direction, namely, to the conclusion. This is one of the best marks of a good plot, the fact that everything in the narrative points unmistakably to the conclusion, and that one feels when one reaches the conclusion that it is the inevita- ble result of the cooperation or conflict of all the forces that have taken part in the action. 248 NARRATION It is evident, therefore, that in narration, no less than in description, the writer must select and arrange his details with as much care as possible. The story- teller cannot tell everything that has happened to his characters. He can mention only the significant things. The beginner, therefore, if he would succeed in the art of story-telling, should get, in the first place, a clear conception of the general course his narrative is to take, so that the main points of his story will stand out with some distinctness; then he should fill in between these points with the most signifi- cant details available. Significant details, he should remember, moreover, are those, and those only, which serve to help forward the plot, or to give the reader a clearer and better understanding of the characters or situations involved; all others are irrelevant and should be rejected. Irrelevant or unimportant de- tails add weight without contributing any correspond- ing strength, and are therefore a clog upon the story. Such details, also, as tend to lead the reader 's interest away from the main thread of the story should be religiously avoided. Digressions, however interesting in themselves, are seldom or never justifiable; they destroy continuity, and are to be condemned on that score, if on no other. 5. ORDER OP EVENTS AND MOVEMENT Important things for the writer to determine, as soon as he has clearly in mind the general course his story is to take, are the way in which he is to begin and the precise order in which the events of ORDER OF EVENTS AND MOVEMENT 249 the story are to be recounted. The natural order to follow in recounting a series of events is, of course, that in which the events themselves happened. This is the order, therefore, that the narrative writer ought, in general, to observe. The novice, at any rate, had better not risk any departure from it. To succeed by beginning in the middle of the story, as the epic poets usually do, with a striking incident or situation, and afterwards going back and recounting the events leading up to this point, requires considerable skill on the part of the writer. One great difficulty is to provide a natural and easy way of acquainting the reader with what has happened previous to the open- ing scene. Another is to prevent the reader *s interest from flagging when the drop is made from the com- paratively high level of the opening scene to the lower level of the main body of the story. A writer has always to be on his guard against anything like an anti-climax. Hence it is much safer to begin on a comparatively low level and try to climb up a little, than to open with a striking scene and follow it up with scenes less likely to attract the reader ^s attention. "Where the narrative is made up of several threads of story more or less separate from one another, as is usually the case in history and frequently in the novel, the writer must, of course, often neglect the strict chronological order of the events and shift his attention now to this, and now to that thread of his story. If this shifting is done skilfully, no con- fusion in the mind of the reader is likely to result; but it necessarily involves some slight loss of vivid- ness in the narrative, and should never be resorted to 250 NARRATION unless it is unavoidable. It should be unnecessary to add tliat where the writer is obliged to manage several threads of story in the same narrative, he should be careful to see that they all lead to the culmination of his story. Whether a narrative begins with the first event in the series to be recounted, or with some other, there should be a general and steady movement forward to the end. Nothing in narration is more important than this. Movement, progression from one event to that which follows, is the very essence of narration. If a story does not go forward, it is no story at all. Movement may be retarded by crowding the narra- tive with incidents which have little or no bearing upon the main course of action, or by the introduction of extended descriptive passages. In either case there is apt to be a tax upon the reader's patience. As already said, incidents which have no significance for the purpose in hand clog the story, and for that reason should be avoided. The same thing may be said of long descriptions. They interrupt the course of the story and should be used, if at all, very rarely. Set- ting is, to be sure, an important element in a narra- tive, but it should always be kept strictly subordinate to the action. As to the rate at which the events of a story should move, that will depend, of course, largely upon the scope of the narrative. In a novel, for example, the movement, as a rule, is much more rapid than in a short story, where the events have to be crowded into a comparatively brief space of time. Whatever the general rate of movement in a narrative may be, how- ORDER OF EVENTS AND MOVEMENT 251 ever, it should always be varied somewhat, so that in the crises, or moments of highest excitement, it will be rather more rapid than in the quieter scenes. Often, indeed, it will be found effective, in leading up to crises, purposely to retard the movement and keep the reader in suspense for a moment or so. Notice how, in the following account of the start in a boat race, the writer, by skilfully dwelling upon unimportant details, and so retarding the movement before the critical moment, the actual start, heightens the interest in that moment: Hark! — the first gun. The report sent Tom's heart into his mouth again. Several of the boats pushed off at once into the stream; and the crowd of men on the bank began to be agitated, as it were, by the shadow of the coming excitement. The St. Ambrose fingered their oars, put a last dash of grease on their rowlocks, and settled their feet against the stretchers. "Shall we push her off?" asked bow. " No ; I can give you another minute," said Miller, who was sitting, watch in hand, in the stem ; " only be smart when I give the word." The captain turned on his seat, and looked up the boat. His face was quiet, but full of confidence, which seemed to pass from him into the crew. Tom felt calmer and stronger, as he met his eye. "Now mind, boys, don't quicken," he said cheerily ; " four short strokes to get way on her, and then steady. Here, pass up the lemon." And he took a sliced lemon out of his pocket, put a small piece in his own mouth, and then handed it to Blake, who followed his example, and passed it on. Each man took a piece; and just as bow had secured the end, Miller called out, — 252 NARRATION " Now, jackets off, and get her head out steadily." The jackets were thrown on shore, and gathered up by the boatmen in attendance. The crew poised their oars, No. 2 pushing out her head, and the captain doing the same for the stern. Miller took the starting rope in his hand. "How the wind catches her stern," he said; "here, pay out the rope one of you. No, not you — some fellow with a strong hand. Yes, you'll do," he went on, as Hardy stepped down the bank and took hoM of the rope ; " let me have it foot by foot as I want it. Not too quick; make the most of it — that'll do. Two and three, just dip your oars in to give her way." The rope paid out steadily, and the boat settled to her pla<;e. But now the wind rose again, and the stern drifted in towards the bank. " You must back her a bit. Miller, and keep her a little further out or our oars on stroke side will catch the bank." " So I see; curse the wind. Back her, one stroke all. Back her, I say ! " shouted Miller. It is no easy matter to get a crew to back her an inch just now, particularly as there are in her two men who have never rowed a race before, except in the torpids, and one who has never rowed a race in his life. However, back she comes; the starting rope slackens in Miller's left hand, and the stroke, unshipping his oar, pushes the stern gently out again. There goes the second gun! one short minute more, and we are off. Short minute, indeed! you wouldn't say so if you were in the boat, with your heart in your mouth and trembling all over like a man with the palsy. Those sixty seconds before the starting gun in your first race — why, they are a little lifetime. "By Jove, we are drifting in again," said Miller, in horror. The captain looked grim but said nothing; it was ORDER OF EVENTS AND MOVEMENT 253 too late now for him to be unshipping again. " Here, catch hold of the long boat-hook, and fend her off." Hardy, to whom this was addressed, seized the boat- hook, and, standing with one foot in the water, pressed the end of the boat-hook against the gunwale, at the full stretch of his arm, and so, by main force, kept the stern out. There was just room for the stroke oars to dip, and that was all. The starting rope was as taut as a harp- string; will Miller's left hand hold out? It was an awful moment. But the coxswain, though al- most dragged backwards off his seat, is equal to the occasion. He holds his watch in his right hand with tiller rope. " Eight seconds more only. Look out for the flash. Re- member, all eyes in the boat." There it comes, at last — ^the flash of the starting gun. Long before the sound of the report can roll up the river, the whole pent-up life and energy which has been held in leash, as it were, for the last six minutes, is loose, and breaks away with a bound and a dash which he who has felt it will remember for his life, but the like of which, will he ever feel it again? The starting ropes drop from the coxswain's hands, the oars flash into the water, and gleam on the feather, the spray flies from them, and the boats leap forward.^ Of the various ways in which the course of a narra- tive may be enlivened, the most effective, perhaps, is the employment of dialogue. Apart from the fact that it appeals to the eye, as it appears on the printed page, dialogue, when skilfully used, tends to give to a narrative an air of lifelikeness and reality. On the principle that impressions received at first hand are always more vivid than those received at second * From Hughes's Tom Brown at Oxford, 254 NARRATION hand, the actual words used by a character in a story will interest the reader more readily than any report of those words which the writer may give. In dia- logue the characters are actually placed before the reader. His imagination is thus the better able to make them seem real. The novice needs to beware, however, of the temp- tation to introduce dialogue into his narrative merely for the sake of '^ making talk." Desultory conversa- tion in a story is wearisome in the extreme. To be good, dialogue must have point ; that is, every speech or observation which a character makes must be sig- nificant, must serve as a means either of revealing the speaker 's own personality, or of contributing some- thing to the action of the narrative. The way in which a narrative ends is responsible for no small part of its success or failure. The end is that point towards which the whole course of the iiarrative tends and in which it receives completeness and definiteness of form. Beyond this point the reader's interest should never be tempted to go. Not only that, but the reader should be made to feel that anything added after the end is once reached is dis- tinctly irrelevant, is matter " belonging to another story, ' ' as Mr. Kipling is wont to say. In story-telling, to go too far is as bad as not to go far enough. If a story is not complete, it is, of course, unsatisfactory; if it is more than complete, it may be just as un- satisfactory. Descriptive details, or details that in any way tend to retard the movement of the story, should never be brought in near the end, for, as a rule, the movement ORDER OF EVENTS AND MOVEMENT 255 should be more rapid toward the end than at any other point. As a general rule, also, the end should have something of the nature of a climax; that is to say, the emphasis should be so distributed that the interest will tend to heighten toward the end and be greatest at or near the conclusion. SPECIMENS OF NARRATION Franklin's Account of His Early Studies ^ From my infancy I was passionately fond of reading, and all the money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of books. I was very fond of voyages. My first acquisition was Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections. They were small chap- men's books, and cheap, forty volumes in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read. I have often regretted that at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge more proper books bad not fallen in my way, since it was resolved I should not be bred to divinity. There was among them Plutarch's Lives, which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of Defoe's, called An Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called An Essay to Do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life. Tliis bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, although he had already one son, James, of that profession. In 1717 my brother James re- turned from England, with a press and letters, to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of * From Franklin's Autobiography. 256 SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 257 my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To pre- vent the apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded, and signed the indenture, when I was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve an apprenticeship till I was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year. In a little time I made a great progress in the business, and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon, and clean. Often I sat up in my chamber reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening, and to be returned in the morning, lest it should be found missing. After some time a merchant, an ingenious, sensible man, Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of books, frequented our printing-office, took notice of me, and in- vited me to see his library, and very kindly proposed to lend me such books as I chose to read. I now took a strong inclination for poetry, and wrote some little pieces. My brother, supposing it might turn to account, encour- aged me, and induced me to compose two occasional ballads. One was called The Light-House Tragedy, and contained an account of the shipwreck of Captain Worthilake with his two daughters; the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of the famous Teach, or Blackbeard, the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in street-ballad style; and when they were printed, my brother sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold prodigiously, the event being recent, and hav- ing made a great noise. This success flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by criticising my perform- ances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. Thus I escaped being a poet, and probably a very bad 258 NARRATION one; but, as prose writing has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how in such a situation I acquired what little ability I may be supposed to have in that way. There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument and very desirous of confuting one another; which disputa- tious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice, and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, it is productive of disgusts, and perhaps enmities, with those who may have occasion for friendship. I had caught this by reading my father's books of dispute on religion. Per- sons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh. A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me on the propriety of educating the female sex in learning and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, having a greater plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, I was vanquished more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered and I replied. Three or four letters on a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the sub- ject in dispute, he took occasion to talk to me about my manner of writing; observed that though I had the advan- SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 259 tage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which he attributed to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method, and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to my manner of writing, and determined to endeavor to im- prove my style. About this time I met with an odd volume of the Specta- tor, I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished if possible to imitate it. With that view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should occur to me. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time, if I had gone on making verses; since the con- tinual search for words of the same import, but of different length to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales in the Spectator, and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well for- gotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the subject. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By comparing my 260 NARRATION work with the original, I discovered many faults, and cor- rected them; but I sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in certain particulars of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. The time I allotted for writing exercises and for reading was at night, or before work began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house, avoiding as much as I could the constant attendance at public worship which my father used to exact of me, when I was under his care, and which I still con- tinued to consider a duty, though I could not afford time to practise it. When about sixteen years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vege- table diet. I determined to go into it. My brother being yet unmarried did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconvenience, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty-pudding and a few others, and then proposed to my brother that if he would give me weekly half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I pres- ently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying of books; but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and dispatching presently my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water), had the rest of the time till their return for study; in which I made the greater progress from that greater SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 261 clearness of head and quicker apprehension which generally attend temperance in eating and drinking. Now it was that (being on some occasion made ashamed of my ig- norance in figures, which I had twice failed learning when at school) I took Cocker's book on Arithmetic, and went through the whole by myself with the greatest ease. I also read Seller's and Sturny's book on Navigation, which made me acquainted with the little geometry it contains; but I never proceeded far in that science. I read about this time Locke On the Human Understanding, and The Art of Thinking, by Messrs. de Port-Royal. While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), having at the end of it two little sketches on the Arts of Rhetoric and Logic, the latter finishing with a dispute in the Socratie method; and soon after I procured Xenophon'ar Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many examples of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradictions and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, made a doubter, as I already was in many points of our religious doctrines, I found this method the safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; there- fore I took delight in it, practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people even of superior knowledge into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining vic- tories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using, when I advance anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness 262 NARRATION to an opinion; but rather say I conceive, or apprehend, a thing to be so-and-so; It appears to me, or I should not think it, so-or-so, for such-and-such reasons; or, I imagine it to he so; or, It is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting. The Chase ^ After Tete Rouge had alarmed the camp, no further dis- turbance occurred during the night. The Arapahoes did not attempt mischief, or if they did the wakefulness of the party deterred them from effecting their purpose. The next day was one of activity and excitement, for about ten o'clock the man in advance shouted the gladdening cry of buffalo! buffalo! and in the hollow of the prairie just below us, a band of bulls were grazing. The temptation was irresistible, and Shaw and I rode down upon them. We were badly mounted on our traveling horses, but by hard lashing we overtook them, and Shaw, running along- side of a bull, shot into him both balls of his double- barreled gun. Looking around as I galloped past I saw the bull in his mortal fury rushing again and again upon his antagonist, whose horse constantly leaped aside, and avoided the onset. My chase was more protracted, but at length I ran close to the bull and killed him with my pistols. Cutting off the tails of our victims by way of trophy, we rejoined the party in about a quarter of an hour after we left it. Again and again that morning rang out the same welcome cry of buffalo! buffalo! Every few moments, in the broad meadows along the river, we would see bands of bulls, who, raising their shaggy heads, would gaze in stupid amaze- * From Parkman'a Oregon Trail, SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 263 merit at the approaching horsemen, and then breaking into a clumsy gallop, would file off in a long line across the trail in front, toward the rising prairie on the left. At noon the whole plain before us was alive with thousands of buf- falo — ^buUs, cows, and calves — all moving rapidly as we drew near; and far-off beyond the river the swelling prairie was darkened with them to the very horizon. The party was in gayer spirits than ever. We stopped for a " nooning " near a grove of trees by the river-side. " Tongues and hump-ribs to-morrow," said Shaw, looking with contempt at the venison steaks which Delorier placed before us. Our meal finished, we lay down under a tem- porary awning to sleep. A shout from Henry Chatillon aroused us, and we saw him standing on the cart-wheel, stretching his tall figure to its full height while he looked toward the prairie beyond the river. Following the direc- tion of his eyes, we could clearly distinguish a large dark object, like the black shadow of a cloud, passing rapidly over swell after swell of the distant plain ; behind it followed another of similar appearance, though smaller. Its motion was more rapid, and it drew closer and closer to the first. It was the hunters of the Arapahoe camp pursuing a band of buffalo. Shaw and I hastily caught and saddled our best horses, and went plunging through sand and water to the farther bank. We were too late. The hunters had al- ready mingled with the herd, and the work of slaughter was nearly over. When we reached the ground we found it strewn far and near with numberless black carcasses, while the remnants of the herd, scattered in all directions, were flying away in terror, and the Indians still rushing in pursuit. Many of the hunters, however, remained upon the spot, and among the rest was our yesterday's acquaint- ance, the chief of the village. He had alighted by the side of a cow, into which he had shot five or six arrows, and his squaw, who had followed him on horseback to the hunt. 264 NARRATION was giving him a draught of water out of a canteen, pur- chased or plundered from some volunteer soldier. Re- crossing the river, we overtook the party, who were already on their way. We had scarcely gone a mile when an imposing spectacle presented itself. From the river-bank on the right, away over the swelling prairie on the left, and in front as far as we could see, extended one vast host of buffalo. The outskirts of the herd were within a quarter of a mile. In many parts they were crowded so densely together that in the distance their rounded backs presented a surface of uniform blackness; but elsewhere they were more scattered, and from amid the multitude rose little columns of dust where the buffalo were rolling on the ground. Here and there a great confusion was perceptible, where a battle was going forward among the bulls. We could distinctly see them rushing against each other, and hear the clattering of their horns and their hoarse bellowing. Shaw was riding at some distance in advance with Henry Chatillon. I saw him stop and draw the leather covering from his gun. Indeed, with such a sight before us, but one thing could be thought of. That morning I had used pistols in the chase. I had now a mind to try the virtue of a gun. Delorier had one, and I rode up to the side of the cart; there he sat under the white covering, biting his pipe be- tween his teeth and grinning with excitement. " Lend me your gun, Delorier," said I. " Oui, Monsieur, oui," said Delorier, tugging with might and main to stop the mule, which seemed obstinately bent on going forward. Then everything but his moccasins dis- appeared as he crawled into the cart and pulled at the gun to extricate it. "Is it loaded?" I asked. " Oui, bien charge, you'll kill, mon bourgeois; yes, you'll kill — e'est un bon fusil." SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 265 I handed him my rifle and rode forward to Shaw. " Are you ready ? " he asked. " Come on," said I. "Keep down that hollow," said Henry, "and then they won^t see you till you get close to them." The hollow was a kind of ravine, very wide and shallow; it ran obliquely toward the buffalo, and we rode at a canter along the bottom until it became too shallow; when we bent close to our horses' necks, and then finding that it could no longer conceal us, came out of it and rode directly toward the herd. It was within gunshot ; before its outskirts numerous grizzly old bulls were scattered, holding guard over their females. They glared at us in anger and aston- ishment, walked toward us a few yards, and then turning slowly around retreated at a trot, which afterward broke into a clumsy gallop. In an instant the main body caught the alarm. The buffalo began to crowd away from the point toward which we were approaching, and a gap was opened in the side of the herd. We entered it, still re- straining our excited horses. Every instant the tumult was thickening. The buffalo, pressing together in large bodies, crowded away from us on every hand. In front and on either side we could see dark columns and masses, half- hidden by clouds of dust, rushing along in terror and con- fusion, and hear the tramp and clattering of ten thousand hoofs. That countless multitude of powerful brutes, igno- rant of their own strength, were flying in a panic from the approach of two feeble horsemen. To remain quiet longer was impossible. "Take that band on the left," said Shaw; "I'll take these in front." He sprang off, and I saw no more of him. A heavy Indian whip was fastened by a band to my wrist; I swung it into the air and lashed my horse's flank with all the strength of my arm. Away she darted, stretching close 266 NARRATION to the ground. I could see nothing but a cloud of dust before me, but I knew that it concealed a band of many hundreds of buffalo. In a moment I was in the midst of the cloud, half -suffocated by the dust and stunned by the trampling of the flying herd; but I was drunk with the chase and cared for nothing but the buffalo. Very soon a long dark mass became visible, looming through the dust; then I could distinguish each bulky carcass, the hoofs flying out beneath, the short tails held rigidly erect. In a moment I was so close that I could have touched them with my gun. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the hoofs were jerked upward, the tails flourished in the air, and amid a cloud of dust the buffalo seemed to sink into the earth before me. One vivid impression of that instant remains upon my mind. I remember looking down upon the backs of several buffalo dimly visible through the dust. |We had run unawares upon a ravine. At that moment I was not the most accurate judge of depth and width, but when I passed it on my return, I found it about twelve feet deep and not quite twice as wide at the bottom. It was impossible to stop; I would have done so gladly if I could; so, half -sliding, half -plunging, down went the little mare. I believe she came down on her knees in the loose sand at the bottom; I was pitched forward violently against her neck and nearly thrown over her head among the buffalo, who, amid dust and confusion, came tumbling in all around. The mare was on her feet in an instant, and scrambling like a cat up the opposite side. I thought for a moment that she would have fallen back and crushed me, but with a violent effort she clambered out and gained the hard prairie above. Glancing back I saw the huge head of a bull clinging, as it were, by the forefeet at the edge of the dusty gulf. At length I was fairly among the buffalo. They were less densely crowded than before, and I could see nothing but bulls, who always run at the rear SPECIMENS OP NARRATION 267 of a herd. As I passed amid them they would lower their heads, and turning as they ran, attempt to gore my horse; but as they were already at full speed there was no force in their onset, and as Pauline ran faster than they, they were always thrown behind her in the effort. I soon began to distinguish cows amid the throng. One just in front of me seemed to my liking, and I pushed close to her side. Dropping the reins, I fired, holding the muzzle of the gun within a foot of her shoulder. Quick as lightning she sprang at Pauline; the little mare dodged the attack, and I lost sight of the wounded animal amid the tumultuous crowd. Immediately after I selected another, and urging forward Pauline, shot into her both pistols in succession. For a while I kept her in view, but in attempting to load my gun, lost sight of her also in the confusion. Believing her to be mortally wounded and unable to keep up with the herd, I checked my horse. The crowd rushed onward. The dust and tumult passed away, and on the prairie, far behind the rest, I saw a solitary buffalo galloping heavily. In a moment I and my victim were running side by side. My firearms were all empty, and I had in my pouch nothing but rifle-bullets, too large for the pistols and too small for the gun. I loaded the latter, however, but as often as I leveled it to fire, the little bullets would roll out of the muzzle and the gun returned only a faint report like a squib, as the powder harmlessly exploded. I gal- loped in front of the buffalo and attempted to turn her back; but her eyes glared, her mane bristled, and lowering her head, she rushed at me with astonishing fierceness and activity. Again and again I rode before her, and again and again she repeated her furious charge. But little Pauline was in her element. She dodged her enemy at every rush, until at length the buffalo stood still, ex- hausted with her own efforts; she panted, and her tongue hung lolling from her jaws. 268 NARRATION Riding to a little distance, I alighted, thinking to gather a handful of dry grass to serve the purpose of wadding, and load the gun at my leisure. No sooner were my feet on the ground than the buffalo came bounding in such a rage toward me that I jumped back again into the saddle with all possible dispatch. After waiting a few minutes more, I made an attempt to ride up and stab her with my knife; but the experiment proved such as no wise man would repeat. At length, bethinking me of the fringes at the seams of my buckskin pantaloons, I jerked off a few of them, and reloading the gun, forced them down the barrel to keep the bullet in its place; then approaching, I shot the wounded buffalo through the heart. Sinking to her knees, she rolled over lifeless on the prairie. To my aston- ishment I found that instead of a fat cow I had been slaughtering a stout yearling bull. No longer wondering at the fierceness he had shown, I opened his throat, and cutting out his tongue, tied it at the back of my saddle. My mistake was one which a more experienced eye than mine might easily make in the dust and confusion of such a chase. Then for the first time I had leisure to look at the scene around me. The prairie in front was darkened with the retreating multitude, and on the other hand the buffalo came filing up in endless unbroken columns from the low plains upon the river. The Arkansas was three or four miles distant. I turned and moved slowly toward it. A long time passed before, far down in the distance, I dis- tinguished the white covering of the cart and the little black specks of horsemen before and behind it. Drawing near, I recognized Shaw's elegant tunic, the red flannel shirt conspicuous far off. I overtook the party, and asked him what success he had met with. He had assailed a fat cow, shot her with two bullets, and mortally wounded her. But neither of us were prepared for the chase that after- SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 269 noon, and Shaw, like myself, had no spare bullets in his pouch; so he abandoned the disabled animal to Henry Chatillon, who followed, dispatched her with his rifle, and loaded his horse with her meat. We encamped close to the river. The night was dark, and as we lay down we could hear mingled with the bowl- ings of wolves the hoarse bellowing of the buffalo, like the ocean beating upon a distant coast. Rip Van Winkle^ Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must re- member the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he * From The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving. 270 NARRATION rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed win- dows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks. In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good- natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribu- lation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long- suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some re- spects, be Considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy when- ever he approached. He assisted at their sports, mada their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 271 Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was sur- rounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clam- bering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity ; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. The great error in Rip^s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartarus lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging hus- bands would not do for them. In a word. Rip was ready to attend to anybody^s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were con- tinually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages ; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do ; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 272 NARRATION His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather. Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled disposition, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment ; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was inces- santly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces and take to the outside of the house — the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband. Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scouted the woods — but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 273 fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any states- man's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary, and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place. The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Yedder, a patriarch of the village, and land- lord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly under- 274 NARRATION stood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When any thing that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs ; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect ap- probation. From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with en- couraging her husband in habits of idleness. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. " Poor Wolf," he would say, " thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it ; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee ! " Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day. Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and reechoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 275 brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with frag- ments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village; and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Winkle ! '* He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air : " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Winkle ! " — at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and per- ceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he has- tened down to yield it. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the 276 NARRATION singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion — a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist — several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of his new acquaintance. Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheater, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity. On entering the amphitheater, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the center was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 277 similar style with that of the guide^s. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock^s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stock- ings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole gi'oup reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder. As Rip and his companion approached them, they sud- denly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack- luster countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and 278 NARRATION was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste pro- voked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes — it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. " Surely," thought Rip, " I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor — the mountain ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — the woe-begone party at nine-pins — the flagon — " Oh ! that flagon ! that wicked flagon ! " thought Rip — " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ! " He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen. He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. " These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen : he found the gully SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 279 up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path. At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheater; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man^s perplexities. What was to be done? The morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, 280 NARRATION involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long! He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his fa- miliar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors — strange faces at the windows — every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not be- witched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill moun- tains — there ran the silver Hudson at a distance — ^there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been — Rip was sorely perplexed — " That flagon last night," thought he, " has addled my poor head sadly ! " It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half- starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed — " My very dog," sighed poor Rip, " has forgotten me ! " He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness over- came all his connubial fears — he called loudly for his wife and children — the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 281 the village inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes — all this was strange and incomprehensi- ble. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters. General Washington. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citi- zens — elections — members of congress — liberty — Bunker's Hill — heroes of seventy-six — ^and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army o£ women and children at his heels, soon attracted the atten- tion of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, 282 NARRATION eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, " Whether he was Federal or Democrat ? " Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other rest- ing on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, " what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoul- der, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" — "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!" Here a general shout burst from the by-standers — "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him ! " It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the un- known culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. "Well — who are they? — Name them." Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, " Where's Nicholas Vedder?" There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, " Nicholas Vedder ! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 283 tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that^s rotten and gone too." "Where's Brom Butcher?" " Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know — he never came back again." "Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" " He went off to the wars too, was a great militia gen- eral, and is now in congress." Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war — congress — Stony Point; — he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, " Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" " Oh, Rip Van Winkle ! " exclaimed two or three, " Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain; apparently as lazy, and cer- tainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his be- wilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name ? " God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' end ; " I'm not myself — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — that's somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am ! " The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, 284 NARRATION wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their fore- heads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. " Hush, Rip," cried she, " hush, you little fool ; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman ? " asked he. "Judith Gardenier." "And your father's name?" " Ah, poor man. Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since — his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl." Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: " Where's your mother? " " Oh, she too had died but a short time since ; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence, The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. " I am your father ! " cried he — " Young Rip Van Winkle once — old Rip Van Winkle now! — Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?" All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, " Sure enough ! SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 285 it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor — Why, where have you been these twenty long years?" Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and the self-impor- tant man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head — upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and cor- roborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill moun- tains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first dis- coverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half -moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine- pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder. To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. 286 NARRATION Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else but his business. Rip now resumed his old walks and habits ; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times " before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war — that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was — petticoat govern- ment. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resig- nation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 287 He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and in- sisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine- pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. The Ambitious Guest ^ One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees, that had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found the "herb heart's-ease " in the bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in the winter, giving their * From Tivice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 288 NARRATION cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dan- gerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that the stones would often tumble down its sides and startle them at midnight. The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveler whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning away from the door. Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveler pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kind- ness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 289 if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs. The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped the chair with her apron to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter. " Ah ! this fire is the right thing," cried he, " especially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett." " Then you are going toward Vermont ? " said the master of the house as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man^s shoulders. " Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. " I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night, but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you and make myself at home." The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in pass- ing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct. " The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget him," said the landlord, recovering himself. 290 NARRATION " He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree together pretty well upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest." Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the moun- tain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had traveled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his com- panions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves and sep- aration from the world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth? The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an undis- tinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave. Yearn- ing desire had been transformed to hope, and hope, long SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 291 cherished, had become like certainty that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway, though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him. "As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm — " as yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you — that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, ^Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then let Death come; I shall have built my monument." There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed. " You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing himself. " You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country round-about. And truly that would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue." " It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though no- body thinks about us." " I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, " there is something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just 292 NARRATION the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass." "Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he will do when he is a widower ? " " No, no ! " cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. " When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or some other township round the White Mountains, but not where they could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called squire and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one, with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest mian and died a Christian." " There, now! " exclaimed the stranger; " it is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man." "WeVe in a strange way to-night," said the wife, with tears in her eyes. " They say it's a sign of something when folks' minds go a- wandering so. Hark to the children ! " They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in another room, but with an open door between ; so that they could be heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 293 of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother : " I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he ; "I want you and father and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger, too, to start right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume." Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leav- ing a warm bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the Flume — a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and stopped a moment before the door. It ap-. peared to contain two or three men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song which re- sounded in broken notes between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the night. " Father," said the girl, " they are calling you by name." But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronize his house. He there- fore did not hurry to the door, and, the lash being soon applied, the travelers plunged into the Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain. " There, mother ! " cried the boy again ; " they'd have given us a ride to the Flume." Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, start- ing and blushing, she looked quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinkinsr of. 294 NARRATION "Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only I felt lonesome just then." " Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people^s hearts," said he, half seriously. " Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feel- ings into words ? " " They would not be a girFs feelings any longer if they could be put into words," rejlied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye. All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth ; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and the proud, con- templative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by sim- plicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the children peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and care- ful mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam still knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was the next to speak. SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 295 " Old folks have their notions," said she, " as well as young ones. YouVe been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one thing and another till youVe set my mind a wandering too. Now, what should an old woman wish for when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you." "What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife, at once. Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years before — a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if anjrthing were amiss with a corpse if only the ruff were not smooth or the cap did not set right — the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the clouds, would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous. " Don^t talk so, grandmother," said the girl, shuddering. " Now," continued the old woman with singular earnest- ness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly, " I want one of you, my children, when your mother is dressed and in the coffin, — I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all's right." " Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the stranger youth. " I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking and they, unknown and undis- tinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean, that wide and nameless sepulcher?" For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so en- grossed the minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad; 296 NARRATION deep and terrible before the fated group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled : the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips: "The slide! The slide!" The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway of destruc- tion. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into two branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of that great slide had ceased to roar among the mountains the mortal agony had been endured and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found. The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage chimney, up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smoldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide, and would shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has been told far and wide, and will forever be a legend of these mountains. Poets have sung their fate. There were circumstances which led some to suppose that Sk stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful SPECIMENS OF NARRATION 297 night, and had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person utterly un- known, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt, — ^whose was the agony of that death moment? EXERCISES 1. Limit each of the following general subjects in such a way as to make it suitable for a theme of about three hundred words: Balloons. PoHtics. Newspapers. Labor unionism. Municipal government. The theater. Bees. Department stores. The Olympic games. Arctic explorations. American universities. Japan. 2. Outline the plan of the following: a. How to make New Varieties of Plants. b. Franklin's Account of his Early Studies. c. The Influence of the Press in America. 3. Analyze the paragraph structure in any one of the selections illustrating expository writing, from the point of view of, a. The position of the topic sentence. h. The methods used in developing the topic. c. The placing of the emphasis. d. The use of parallel structure. e. The means used to effect transitions. 299 300 EXERCISES 4. Develop the following paragraph topics in such a way as to produce a coherent theme on the subject, College Spirit: a. What college spirit is. h. Ways in which it may properly manifest itself. c. Its value, both to the student and to the college. 5. Discuss the paragraph structure in any one of the selections used to illustrate descriptive and narra- tive composition, from the point of view of unity and coherence. 6. Outline the plan of each of the following para- graphs : a. The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many respects, to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the Guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed, has cantered along Regent Street, has visited St. PauFs, and noted down its dimensions; and has then departed, thinking that he has seen England. He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and public EXERCISES 301 ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of the practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who would understand these things rightly must not con- fimie his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the retreats of misery. He who wishes to understand the condition of mankind in former ages must proceed on the same principle. If he attends only to public transactions, to wars, con- gresses, and debates, his studies will be as unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from having gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with a few great ofl&cers. b. She clung perhaps to her popularity the more pas- sionately that it hid in some measure from her the terrible loneliness of her life. She was the last of the Tudors, the last of Henry's children; and her nearest relatives were Mary Stuart and the House of Suffolk, one the avowed, the other the secret claimant of her throne. Among her mother's kindred she found but a single cousin. Whatever womanly tenderness she had, wrapt itself around Leicester; but a marriage with Leicester was impossible, and every other union, could she even have bent to one, was denied to her by the political difficulties of her position. The one cry of bitterness which burst from Elizabeth revealed her terrible sense of the solitude of her life. " The Queen of Scots," she cried at the birth of James, "has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock." But the loneliness of her 302 EXERCISES position only reflected the loneliness of her nature. She stood utterly apart from the world around her, sometimes above it, sometimes below it, but never of it. It was only on its intellectual side that Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. It was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when honor and enthusiasm took colors of poetic beauty, and religion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men around her touched Elizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her. She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives were only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whom the news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for vengeance; and while England was thrilling with its triumph over the Armada, its Queen was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of the spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. To the voice of grati- tude, indeed, she was for the most part deaf. She accepted services such as were never rendered to any other English sovereign without a thought of return. Walsingham speat his fortune in saving her life and her throne, and she left him to die a beggar. But, as if by a strange irony, it was to this very want of sympathy that she owed some of the grander features of her character. If she was without love, she was without hate. She cherished no petty re- sentments j she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She was indifferent to abuse. Her good humor was never ruffled by the charges of wanton- ness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last the mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the one hardest to bring home to her. Even EXERCISES 303 when the Catholic plots broke out iii her very household she would listen to no proposals for the removal of Cath- olics from her court. 7. What methods of developing the topic are em- ployed in the following paragraphs? a. As the nature of any given thing is the aggregate of its powers and properties, so Natui-e in the abstract is the aggregate of the powers and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening; the unused capabilities of causes being as much a part of the idea of Nature as those which take effect. Since all phe- nomena which have been sufficiently examined are found to take place with regularity, each having certain fixed conditions, positive and negative, on the occurrence of which it invariably happens; mankind have been able to ascertain, either by direct observation or by reasoning processes grounded on it, the conditions of the occurrence of many phenomena; and the progress of science mainly consists in ascertaining those conditions. When discov- ered they can be expressed in general propositions, which are called laws of the particular phenomenon, and also, more generally, Laws of Nature. Thus, the truth that all material objects tend towards one another with a force directly as their masses and inversely as the square of theii- distance, is a law of Nature. The proposition that air and food are necessary to animal life, if it be as we have good reason to believe, true without exception, is also a law of Nature, though the phenomenon of which it is the law is special, and not, like gravitation, universal. h. It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme 304 EXERCISES case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that ; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments. e. The great charm, however, of English scenery is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sober well-estab- lished principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages of regular and peaceful existence. The old church of remote architecture, with its low massive portal; its gothic tower; its windows rich with tracery and painted glass, in scrupulous preserva- tion; its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the same altar — the parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and occupants — the stile and foot- path leading from the church-yard, across pleasant fields, and along shady hedge-rows, according to an immemorial right of way — the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race have sported — the an- tique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene: all these common features of English EXERCISES 305 landscape evince a calm and settled security, and hereditary transmission of homebred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation. d. Though really a good-hearted, good-tempered old fel- low at bottom, yet he is singularly fond of being in the midst of contention. It is one of his peculiarities, however, that he only relishes the beginning of an affray; he always goes into a fight with alacrity, but comes out of it grum- bling even when victorious; and though no one fights with more obstinacy to carry a contested point, yet, when the battle is over, and he comes to the reconciliation, he is so much taken up with the mere shaking of hands, that he is apt to let his antagonist pocket all that they have been quarreling about. It is not, therefore, fighting that he ought so much to be on his guard against, as making friends. It is difficult to cudgel him out of a farthing; but put him in a good humor, and you may bargain him out of all the money in his pocket. He is like a stout ship, which will weather the roughest storm uninjured, but roll its masts overboard in the succeeding cahn. 8. Point out cases of parallelism in the sentence structure in the following paragraphs: a. Pride, under such training, instead of running to waste in the education of the mind, is turned to account; it is called self-respect; and ceases to be the disagreeable, uncompanionable quality which it is in itself. Though it be the motive principle of the soul, it seldom comes to view ; and when it shows itself, then delicacy and gentleness are its attire, and good sense and sense of honor direct its mo- tions. It is no longer a restless agent, without definite aim; it has a large field of exertion assigned to it, and 306 EXERCISES it subserves those social interests which it would naturally trouble. It is directed into the channel of industry, fru- gality, honesty, and obedience; and it becomes the very staple of the religion and morality held in honor in a day like our own. It becomes the safeguard of chastity, the guarantee of veracity, in high and low; it is the very household god of society, as at present constituted, inspiring neatness and decency in the servant girl, propriety of car- riage and refined manners in her mistress, uprightness, man- liness, and generosity in the head of the family. It diffuses a light over town and country; it covers the soil with handsome edifices and smiling gardens; it tills the field, it stocks and embellishes the shop. It is the stimulating prin- ciple of providence on the one hand, and of free expenditure on the other; of an honorable ambition, and of elegant en- joyment. It breathes upon the face of the community, and the hollow sepulcher is forthwith beautiful to look upon. h. She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove; graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it sud- denly withering, when it should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it with decay. c. The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it had been completed. It was continued in the following session. When at length the committee had con- cluded its labors, enlightened and impartial men had little difficulty in making up their minds as to the result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the authority EXERCISES 307 of all the most sacred laws which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of states. But it was equally clear that he had displayed great talents and even great virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his country and to the people of India ; and that it was in truth not for his dealings with Meer Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he had practised on Omichund, but for his determined re- sistance to avarice and tjrranny that he was now called in question. d. A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of commu- nities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity — ^these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of deieats and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers and of the rise of profligate favorites. But we must remember how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system. e. But if courage intrinsically consists in the defiance of danger and pain, the life of the Indian is a continual exhibition of it. He lives in a state of perpetual hostility 308 EXERCISES and risk. Peril and adventure are congenial to his nature; or rather seem necessary to arouse his faculties and to give an interest to his existence. Surrounded by hostile tribes, whose mode of warfare is by ambush and surprisal, he is always prepared for fight, and lives with his weapons in his hands. As the ship careers in fearful singleness through the solitudes of ocean; — as the bird mingles among clouds and storms, and wings its way, a mere speck, across the pathless fields of air; — so the Indian holds his course, silent, solitary, but undaunted through the boundless bosom of the wilderness. His expeditions may vie in distance and danger with the pilgrimage of the devotee, or the crusade of the knight-errant. He traverses vast forests, exposed to the hazards of lonely sickness, of lurking ene- mies, and pining famine. Stormy lakes, those great inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings: in his light canoe of bark he sports, like a feather, on their waves, and darts, with the swiftness of an arrow, down the roaring rapids of the rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hard- ships and dangers of the chase: he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract. 9. Comment upon the structure of the following sentences : a. He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner, near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in lit- erature, to his own house, where the earl of Dorset, cele- brated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased EXERCISES 309 with his proficiency that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education. 5. I think you will find my Latin exercises, at all events, as good as my cousin's. c. I tried to match the ribbons she gave me, during my stay in town. d. The master of the ship continued his course at full speed in thick weather, when he must have known that his vessel was in the immediate neighborhood of the headlands, without taking any steps to verify his position. e. The spirit of the suffering people of France found its embodiment in Joan of Arc, whose execution left a dark stain on the English escutcheon, though her trial took place at the instance of the University of Paris, and al- most all concerned in it were Frenchmen of the Burgundian party, while the belief in sorcery was the superstition of the age, and Joan owed to it her victories as well as her cruel death. 10. Rewrite the following sentences so as to put the emphasis on different parts of the sentence : a. A momentous and auspicious change came noise- lessly and almost in disguise about this time. h. I abhor lying from the depths of my soul. c. Romulus, according to the ancient legend, founded Rome. d. The poet's art is the noblest of all arts. e. Of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. 11. Rearrange or recast the following sentences in periodic form: 310 EXERCISES a. It was a poor day for the game, so far as the specta- tors were concerned. 6. It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind that application is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is as absurd to expect them without it as to hope for a harvest where we have not sown the seed. c. The German drama is the glory of our contemporary European literature; while the French is its disgrace. d. The vision of life fell too powerfully and too early upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and twenties over every thousand years. e. It is Homer's invention that strikes us principally, on whatever side we may contemplate him. /. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn by the Duke of Marlborough. g. The company at the wedding awaited his arrival with impatience, trusting that the strange awe, which had gath- ered over him throughout the day, would now be dispelled. 12. Comment upon the following definitions : a. Capital is the accumulated stock of human labor. h. Education is training for complete living. c. Education is training for social efficiency. d. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life. e. Lyric poetry is the expression of the personal feel- ings of the poet translated into rhythms analogous to the nature of his emotions. /. Tin is a metal lighter than gold. g. Logic is the art of reasoning. h. Cheese is a caseous preparation of milk. i. A state is an ethnic unit which lies within a geo- graphical unit. j. Thunder is a sound following a flash of lightning. EXERCISES 311 h. A college is an institution for the education of young men. I. A republic is a government by the people. m. Government is an institution created by the people for the protection of their lives and liberties. w. A bachelor is an unmarried man. o. A gentleman is a man who has no visible means of support. p. Spiritual is that which is not material. 13. Wherein, if at all, are the following classifica- tions faulty? a. Students may be divided naturally into three groups, — the athletic, the idle, and the industrious. h. The chief poetic forms are the epic, the narrative poem, the lyric, the elegy, the ode, and the sonnet. c. Education: primary, secondary, collegiate, technical, scientific, and professional. 14. Comment upon the reasoning in the following: a. He who is content with what he has is truly rich. No envious man is content with what he has. No envious man, therefore, is truly rich. 6. If this candidate used money to secure his election, he deserved defeat. But he did not use money for this purpose. Therefore he did not deserve defeat. c. Whatever abridges liberty abridges happiness. But law abridges liberty. Therefore law abridges happiness. d. No sensible man is indifferent to money. This man is not indifferent to money. Therefore he is a sensible man. 312 EXERCISES e. " He has no appreciation of beauty, for he has no taste for pictures." /. " War is a blessing, not an evil. Show me the nation that has ever become great without blood-letting." g. " No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable except that each person, as far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happi- ness. . . . Each person^s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of persons." fe. "Whatever benefits industry, benefits the country; and this measure, if it becomes law, will cause fac- tories to spring up where now there is nothing but waste and desolation." i, " I am sure he must have known of the plan ; for only members of the committee knew of it, and he was a member of the committee." j, " There should be no restriction of debate in Congress, because freedom of speech is one of our most sacred rights." 15. Analyze Stevenson's descriptive method in his picture of the Sea Fogs, with regard to, a. The selection and grouping of details. 6. The means employed to indicate the point of view. c. The use of movement. d. The means used to secure vividness. 16. Analyze Hawthorne's The Ambitious Guest from the point of view of, a. Unity. 6. Plot. EXERCISES 313 c. Characterization. d. Setting. e. The moral. /. Diction. 17. Determine roughly the relative proportions of description and narration in Irving *s Eip Van Winkle. INDEX Accuracy in the choice of words, 47 Action, 243, 244 Alliteration, 189 Ambiguous term, The, 132, 183 Analogy, The argument from, 130-131 Antecedent probability, 129 Arguing beside the point, 133- 134 Argumentation, nature of, 110- 112 Arnold, Matthew, 25, 32, 120 Association of ideas, laws of, 9 Authority, The argument from, 128 Baker, G. P., 115 Baker and Huntington, 130 Begging the question, 133 Beginning and ending of the composition, 11-12 Bigelow, Frank H., 98 Bookman, The, 108 Borrowing thought, 4 Brewster, E. T., 101 Brief, The, 136-137 Brown, John, 18 Brown, Norris, 165 Bryce, James, 84 Burroughs, John, 5, 6, 9, 71, 227 Carlyle, Thomas, 212 Century, The, 227 Characterization, 236-239, 243 Choice of words. The, 43 Circumstantial evidence, kinds of, 128 Classification, 65; rules of, 67 Clearness, in the choice of words, 44; in exposition, 53 Coherence, in the composition, 8-9; in the paragraph, 24; in the sentence, 35 Composition, fallacy of, 134 Congruity, 188 Connotation, 187 Conviction, 113-114 Crawshaw, W. H., 81 Creighton, J. E., 152, 153 Criticism, 74 Dana, R. H,, 99, 220 Darwin, Charles, 33, 87, 112 Deductive reasoning, 144, 151 Definition, logical, 58-59; test- ing the validity of a, 59-61 DeQuincey, Thomas, 189 Description, nature of, 191-193, 195; effectiveness in, 196; point of view in, 199; vivid- ness in, 211 Development of the paragraph topic, 16-22 Dialogue, 253-254 Dickens, Charles, 214 Digressions in narration, 248 Division, logical, 65; rules of, 67; the fallacy of, 134 Ease, 186 Elements of narration, 234 Eliot, George, 19, 192 Emphasis, in the paragraph, 24; in the sentence, 41-42 Ending, of the composition, 12; of the narrative, 254-255 Enthymemes, 146 Euphony, 188-189 315 316 INDEX Evidence, 125-128 Exposition, nature of , 53; typi- cal moods of, 58 ; defining and classifying, 58; descrip- tive and illustrative, 70; criti- cal, 74 Expressiveness, 186 Fallacies, 132 False cause, The, 134 Force, 49 Franklin, Benjamin, 244, 256 Garden Magazine, The, 90 Harte, Bret, 15 Hasty generalization, 134-135 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 202,206, 210, 288, 287 Hazlitt, William, 106 Hearn, Lafcadio, 80, 198, 204, 211 Hughes, Thomas, 253 Huxley, T. H., 63, 65, 70, 127 Hypothesis, 152, 153 Imitation, 1, 2, 3 Incoherence in the sentence, 36-38 Individuality in writing, 5 Inductive reasoning, 144, 151, 152 Intelligibility, 47 Invention, 4 Irving, Washington, 14, 215, 218, 269 Issues, defining the, 119-120 Jevons, W. S., 118 Jowett, Benjamin, 21 Laughlin, J. L., 67 Length, of the paragraph, 26; of the sentence, 32'-35 Lewes, G. H., 102 Lowell, J. R., 12 Macaulay, Lord, 23, 30, 32 McClure's Magazine, 25, 101 Minto, W., 1 Models, use of, 3 Moffatt, Cleveland, 25 Movement, in description, 202, 204, 206 ; in narration, 250- 251 Narration, nature of, 232-234; elements of, 234 Narrowing the subject, 7-8 Nation, The, 162 Newman, J. H., 25, 32, 65, 77, 117 Observation, cultivating habits of, 6; as a basis of induction, 152 Oppenheim, James, 108 Order of events, 248-250 Outline, The, in exposition, 54- 55 Outlook, The, 157, 165 Paragraph, The, function of, 12-13; typical scheme of, 13; the, topic of, 15 ; developing the topic of, 16-22; unity in, 22; coherence in, 24; em- phatic conclusion in, 24 Parkman, Francis, 74, 262 Periodic sentence. The, 43 Persuasion, 113-116 Phrasing, 187-188 Planning the composition, 6-9 Plot, 244, 247, 248 Poe, E. A., 235 Point of view, 199-202, 209 Popular Science Monthly, The, 98 Premises, establishment of the, 147 Proof. 125-126 Proposition, The, 117-118 Punctuation, 39 Reasoning, methods of, 144 Ueductio ad dbsurdum, 135 Refutation, 132 Resemblance, The argument from. 130 INDEX 317 Roget, P. M., 48 Roosevelt, Theodore, 28 Ruskin, John, 189, 216 Scott, Sir Walter, 68 Scribnefa Magazine, 22 Sentence, The, unity in. 28-29; coherence in, 35 ; emphasis in, 41; periodic type of, 43 Setting, 234-235 Shaler. N. S., 96 Sign, The argument from, 129 Slang, 45-46 Sources of material, 4 Stevenson, R. L., 2, 33, 43, 192, 195, 197, 200, 208, 221, 237, 239 Style, 43, 44, 186 Suspense in narration, 251 Syllogism, The, 144-146 Talfourd, T. N., 213 Term, logical, 118 Testimony, 128 Thoreau, H. D., 197 Thurston. R. H., 20 Topic, developing the para- graph, 16-22 Torricelli, 154 Transitions, 27 Tyndall, John, 176 Van Dyke, Henry, 207, 208 Van Dyke, J. C, 72 Variety in the sentence, 41 Verification, 152-156 Vividness in description, 211 Wallace, A. R., 94, 164 Webster, Daniel, 135. 147 Words, choice of, 43-44 lOAN DEPT. Renewed books are subject to immedia -^«*#t^?::f^' T.D 2lA-40m-4,'63 (D6471sl0)476B YB 02207 M176255 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY