1. The function of the setting 2. The handling of the setting III. EFFECTIVENESS IN NARRATION THE ART OF WRITING ENGLISH CHAPTER I— INTRODUCTION I. THE FIELD OF COMPOSITION OUR success in learning to write will be determined very largely by the spirit in which we go about our work. This spirit, in turn, will depend in no small measure on the clearness with which we see how our ability to write is related to our immediate or remote well-being. If we attach no importance to good writing, we shall probably drudge through the hours of practice as a slave would, cursing fate because of our hard lot, and lamenting the labor wasted in a vain attempt to make useless progress. If, on the other hand, we write with the full assurance that unceasing practice will some time result advantageously, we shall find that learning to put thoughts on paper is not humdrum work and is not impossibly difficult. At the outset, then, let us ask ourselves how skill in composition, and the training designed to develop that skill, may contribute to a fuller life. A. COMPOSITION A KIND OF COMMUNICATION We shall find our question partly answered as soon as we reflect upon the essential character of writing. Writing is not a mysterious art that died with the Ancients, the Elizabethans, or the Victorians. Neither is it a magic skill that belongs exclusively to any specially favored class of people now living. Nor is it a mere educational device placed in the hands of teachers for the purpose of forcing students to compare their own efforts with the masterpieces of a few literary giants fame is secure in the idealized past. Viewed rightly, it a very necessary means of communication which men ha veloped in order that they might be clearly and perma understood on an endless variety of matters. Conseq instead of being an activity in which only a few persons e or in which many of us engage only on exceptional occ it is one in which all of us must employ ourselves more habitually. A few who believe they have something which would be of much more than ordinary interest well, use writing for a special purpose; that is, they en to write literature. An incomparably larger number of it only as an everyday tool; we employ it in writing 1 applying for positions, reporting investigations, recording actions, or setting forth our opinions on public que Thus, whether our chief concern in life is to satisfy ou taste and that of other people by producing fine art in lang or whether it is merely to gain ordinary workaday comfor are confronted with the necessity of expressing oursel writing. B. THE NECESSITY OF MASTERING COMPOSITION This necessity, felt in some degree since the times whe began to write, is made exceedingly pressing to-day. A sand inventions and discoveries have brought society into organization than ever before. Things which in our daily we regard as too ordinary to have any wide significance, limited transcontinental trains, the trolley cars, the imp telegraph, the universally used telephone, rural mail del and daily newspapers, have drawn the world into such compass that an entire continent is only a large neighbo with all the intensity of neighborhood interests. At on can see that such a condition necessarily brings about a general and a more perfect diffusion of intelligence. Me women in every corner of the country read daily abou |