see the principle underlying this device, and will often be able upon hearing a poem read to determine how it should be indented. Note, for example, the indention of "Snowflakes," considering the reasons. One poem, absolutely mastered so that it can be reproduced from memory in accurate printer's copy, is worth a hundred poems half learned.

Page 82 Children will enjoy trying to determine the indention of a poem by hearing it read line by line, noting the number of syllables which take a decided accent. One lesson spent in studying the indention used in any volume of Longfellow's poems, and in considering the reasons for such indention, will open a new line for observation while reading. In some volumes of poems with double columns, all lines are made to align at margin, so that there is no indention for the alignment of the riming lines.

The indention of the sonnets may be especially noted, since usually this helps to show the sonnet structure. The following simple plan shows this, and a similar plan may be used to illustrate the rime scheme of any poem.

Shak

I and II are the most common arrangements as to rime. spere's "Sonnets," the form of which is shown in III, were not really in the sonnet form at all, tho going under that name. to consist of three quatrains and a riming couplet. the sestet may be arranged in many ways. There is usually a break in

They will be seen You will find that

thought between the octave and the sestet, the latter embodying the sentiment awakened by the thought in the former.

CHAPTER XI Page 85 The words yard, court, garden, close, croft, garth (and formerly orchard, from wort + yard, garden for herbs), have a meaning common up to a certain point. All these signify small enclosures adjoining a house or other building. Beyond this common ground, each term takes the special meaning slightly peculiar to itself, and in this meaning it becomes constantly more firmly fixed.

The gradual process of separation, or growing apart, in the meanings of words once synonymous is called desynonymization. This is one of the most active and most powerful forces constantly going on in our living English.

See note upon defining words in preface to the Standard Dictionary. The difference between describing an object and defining the term which names that object should be clearly recognized.

It is often necessary to turn to the dictionary for the definition of words, but this slow method is not always the most desirable one. Children use intelligently every day hundreds of words which they could not define, and their teachers do the same thing. Even a two-year-old baby knows and uses the words cup, spoon, bed, foot, ride, and others, as correctly as he will ever use them; yet he cannot define them. Moreover, the exact, scientific definitions of most everyday words would probably not at once carry to most minds in any adequate degree the ideas which the words themselves would convey. If this be doubted, let someone read aloud a score or so of definitions, as of bed, chair, table, and see whether the objects defined come instantly to mind. We can only picture the specific object, hence the greater value of concrete terms over abstract ones. Professor Liddell says that accurate definition of many common words is impossible; as, for example, affair, matter, force, business, situation, concern, fact, way, means, thing, regard, account, article, position, respect, state. He further says that "every man must be his own specializer," because no two minds contain precisely the same associations with any single word.

Defining by dictionaries does not precede the use of words, but comes

afterward.

The dictionary merely reports the use of words, defining them in accordance with such usage; and the wise student of the dictionary gets as much light from its citations as from its definitions. Much dictionary work for the purpose of definition is a waste of time for either children or adults. The student who expects to master a foreign language chiefly by dictionary and grammar will never make rapid progress. He should read, and read, and read, till the words and groups of words begin to become familiar to him. He must guess at words, or must even not make a guess, until from the context the meanings dawn upon him.

In a published address Dr. Alexander Graham Bell says:

I may allude here to an experiment that I made upon myself which has an important bearing on this whole subject. I obtained a work upon the education of the deaf, written in the Spanish language (of which language I knew nothing). I determined to ascertain how far I should come to understand the language by forcing myself to read the book. I read very carefully thirty or forty pages, and could make but little of it. The Latin roots helped a little, and I understood a few technical words here and there, but that was all. I refused, at first, the aid of a dictionary, for a dictionary stops the current of thought. I read thirty or forty pages and then paused.

Now, a number of words had occurred so frequently that I remembered them though I knew not their meaning. These words I sought in the dictionary, and then I resumed my reading. I found that these words formed the key to the next thirty or forty pages, and that the meaning of many expressions that would otherwise have been obscure became manifest. New words also explained themselves by the context.

Every now and then, after reading a few pages, I resorted to the dictionary and sought the meaning of those unknown words that I could remember without looking at the book. I then turned back to the beginning and read the whole a second time, and I was delighted to find that a very great portion of the meaning of that book revealed itself to me. Indeed, I felt convinced that if I wanted to comprehend the Spanish language all I had to do was to read, and read, and read, and I should come to understand it. I would have a deaf child read books in order to learn the language, instead of learning the language in order to read books.

To illustrate this, take the line from a dialect poem:

An' smokeless now avore the zun

Did stan' the ivy-girded tun.

We may not know what tun is, and we may feel perplexed, even distressed; but read further:

When woonce above the tun the smoke

Did wreathy blue above the trees,

Or take the line,

and at once we see town in tun, and all is clear.

Aw know when first aw coom to th' leet,

we may hesitate over leet, but when we read to the lines

Oh, there's summut i' th' leet o' yon two blue e'en
That plays the dule with me,

at once we think light, or, that is to say, we think light until leet means instantly just as much to us as light, and then we no longer translate it. In reading aright lies the path to a world of intellectual gain.

The connotation of a word, or all that it implies by habit and association, is fully as important as the denotation, or scientific definition, of that word. This is a point too often quite forgotten. A word means to us all that it implies, all that we think of in connection with it. Hence, words are usually best comprehended by numerous examples of their use in sentences. For we can not include the connotations of words in their definitions. It is easy to see that this matter of word-habit is the thing which makes most difficulty in learning to speak foreign languages.

The instances given in Chapter VIII, Exercise III, of double synonyms become idioms, will be found in "Words and Their Ways in English Speech," by Greenough and Kittredge, page 226. See page 114 of the same work for further examples of this once popular habit of repeating the same idea by two or more words.

Page 86 In connection with the extract from "The Rivals," it will be well to ask pupils to consider whether the following terms might have been appropriately used for certain of the malaprops: prodigy, symbols, fractions, paradigms, informatory, parabolical, ingenuousness, artlessness, superficial, geography, contiguous, orthography, apprehend, superfluous. Inasmuch as "The Rivals" is played at least occasionally by high school pupils, it would seem not unsuitable that pupils in grammar grades should at some convenient time give enough study to the same to make them intelligent listeners during its presentation.

America has a Mrs. Malaprop of her own, who is quite as enjoyable as her more famous rival, altho she lacks the advantage which comes from the stage-setting of a popular drama. If the "Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington," by Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, is available, pupils and teacher alike will delight in its fun, which is usually more obvious than is that of Mrs. Malaprop. Here are specimens of Mrs. Partington's remarks: "Ike's horse is so spirituous that it goes right off into a decanter."

"Some people can bathe in water as cold as Greenland's icy mountains and Injy's coral strand, but for my part, I'd rather have it a little torpid."

Page 88 Exercises A capital exercise in synonyms is found in the teacher's naming a word and letting the class as rapidly as possible supply synonyms, someone writing these upon the board as they are named. This brushes up the wits of everybody. Thus, the teacher may name wander, and the class may supply roam, rove, range, stroll, gad, stray, err, straggle, swerve, deviate, depart.

CHAPTER XII Page 94 As a rule the words made directly from the Latin are likely to be our longest and most sonorous words. Much use of such words is called Johnsonese, from Dr. Samuel Johnson, who so loved every pompous and high-sounding phrase. In the following extract Macaulay calls Johnsonese a dialect, and this it practically may become to those who use it constantly by preference.

It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the "Journey to the Hebrides" is the translation, and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were taken upstairs," says he in one of his letters," a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the "Journey" as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal,'" he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet; " then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to keep it from putrefaction."

We see at once how much stronger the first form is in both these instances.