PART III

EXPRESSION OF IDEAS IN THE LONG THEME

LESSON XXVII

I. The Paragraph in the Expression of Ideas.

1. We have been expressing our ideas in paragraph themes all the year, but nothing has been said definitely in the Lessons about the form and content of the paragraph. The following Lessons will consider the individual paragraph as a unit and also as a part of a whole composition.

2. The paragraph defined. A paragraph is a collection of sentences all bearing upon one easily discovered subject; as, for example, the following paragraph, where the subject is easily discovered to be, "The human species is composed of two distinct races."

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. To these original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other.-Lamb: Essays of Elia.

II. The Paragraph as a Part or as a Whole.

A paragraph may represent a natural division of thought in a whole composition, or it may exist as a complete composition in itself.

Of the following examples, the first is very evidently one of the natural divisions of a whole composition; the second seems to be a complete composition in itself.

1.

THE SAGACITY OF A WILLOW-WREN,

Topic: A farther instance of sagacity in a yellow-wren.

A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow-wren, which had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and myself had observed as she sat in her nest, but were particularly careful not to disturb her, though we saw she eyed us with some degree of jealousy. Some days after, as we passed that way, we were desirous of remarking how this brood went on, but no nest could be found, till I happened to take a large bundle of long green moss, as it were, carelessly thrown over the nest in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder.-White: Natural History of Selborne.

2.

THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN.

An Ass, finding the skin of a Lion, put it on; and, going into the woods and the pastures, threw all the flocks and herds into a terrible consternation. At last, meeting the owner, he would have frightened him, also; but the good man, seeing his long ears stick out, presently knew him, and with a good cudgel made him sensible that, notwithstanding his being dressed in a Lion's skin, he was really no more than an Ass.-Esop's Fables.

III. Indentation.

The distinguishing mark of a paragraph is that it is indented, that is, the first line is set in from the margin, as in the following:

EPPIE'S WEDDING DAY.

There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe to be especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great lilacs and laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk. People were not so busy then as they must become when the full cheesemaking and the mowing had set in; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to advantage.

Happily the sunshine fell more warmly then usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at once.

Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her husb.and's arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father Silas

"You won't be giving me away, father," she had said before they went to church; "you'll only be taking Aaron to be a son to you." Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the little bridal procession.-George Eliot: Silas Marner.

Exercise 1. In the examples accompanying this Lesson, show how each paragraph bears out the definition of a paragraph.

Exercise 2. Show which paragraphs in the examples given are natural divisions of thought, and which exist by themselves as complete compositions, and why.

Exercise 8. In the following selections, find subjects

for the separate paragraphs, and for combinations of paragraphs; tell which paragraphs seem to be complete compositions and which seem to be part of an incomplete whole and why.

1.

I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial compositiondoes pervade the whole living world.—Huxley: The Physical Basis of Life.

2.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecratewe cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before usthat from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,~~ and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.-Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address.