10. Point out the errors in brief-drawing in these cases and indicate what the proper form should be:

A. Socrates went about asking questions trying to

find out if he was wiser than any one else:

1. The Delphic oracle had said that he was the wisest of all men.

2. He wished to see in what way he was wiser than the other philosophers.

A. Capital punishment makes punishment uncertain:
1. Many eminent jurors agree that the severer the
penalty the more likely the criminal is to be
acquitted:

a. The number of executions compared with the
number of well-authenticated

crime is small.

cases of

III. The United States did not undertake the Spanish-
American War for territorial acquisition :

A. The United States still hold the Philippine
Islands:

1. The inhabitants of these islands are not yet

competent to govern themselves.

C. Under the republican form of government in China financial conditions have improved and social and administrative reforms have been pushed forward:

1. Social progress of the people has been great.

II. The republic in China will solve the problem of succession:

3. Yuan Shih Kai's own children are unfit

to succeed him, therefore

a. It will be easy to get an elective strong man to succeed him.

B. In order to advance in medicine and surgery we must have new drugs and a greater knowledge which can only be gained through vivisection, hence

a. Vivisection is absolutely necessary for the study and remedy of human diseases.

2. Dr. Weir Mitchell practiced and endorsed vivisection, because

a. He believed in its value.

11. Construct the introduction of a brief from Huxley's Three Hypotheses Respecting the History of Nature, or A. S. Johnson's Case against the Single Tax. (Both in College Readings, pages 232-239.)

12. Brief any of these arguments in College Readings: E. D. Durand's Council Government vs. Mayor Government; Sir William Anson's Defense of the House of Lords; W. H. Taft's Monroe Doctrine; F. Franklin's Intellectual Powers of Woman; O. C. Barber's Popular Control of National Wealth.

13. Write a persuasive letter appealing for money for a charity. 14. Copy into your notebook five examples of persuasion in Lincoln's speeches.

15. What use of persuasion is made in the arguments in College Readings, 301, 304, and 308?

CHAPTER IV

DESCRIPTION

76. Definition, Kinds, and Purposes.

Whereas Exposition tells how a thing works, Description tells how it looks. To tell how a thing looks may be a matter of explanation, or it may be a matter of arousing in the mind of the reader a certain general effect of amusement, gloom, rapture, or quiet enjoyment such as the thing described has aroused in the mind of the writer. If the purpose of the description is to instruct the reader in the precise details of an object, we call the description scientific. Such is the following paragraph from a considerably longer description of a building:1

It is about sixty-seven and one-half feet high to the top of the main roof and has one eighty-five feet centre aisle commanded by two ten-ton travelling cranes, and two thirty-nine feet side aisles with single five-ton cranes. The general design of the building conforms closely to advanced steel-shop construction in this country, but the details vary considerably from it in some of the important members. The wall columns, twentythree feet apart, carry the side aisle roof trusses directly, and the centre-aisle columns, sixty-nine feet apart, carry riveted longitudinal trusses about fourteen feet deep, each of which supports two intermediate centre and side-aisle roof trusses, while every third roof truss is carried directly on the columns. 1 Reprinted in full in College Readings, pages 375-376.

The centre-aisle columns are double with two H-shape shafts four and a half feet apart transversely, with their feet riveted between the webs of a single long, wide, structural-steel pedestal. In the passage on page 125, however, the purpose of the writer was to imitate in words the general impression made upon him by Chartres Cathedral. In spite of the difference in purpose these are both more or less sustained descriptions. But small bits of description are used to flavor almost every kind of writing: to be able to describe a person vividly is important for the biographer; to set the scene, to describe the people, and to indicate the action which accompanies dialogue is necessary in order to make narrative real. Even exposition and argument, though their main purpose is far from being descriptive, make some use of description in a subordinate way.

77. Material. The materials which we put into description come to us from one or more of three sources: from observation, from reading, and from imagination. If we take a piece of paper and a pencil, sit down in front of a building or a landscape or a picture on our walls, and glancing at the object from time to time, try to reproduce on paper the effect of what we see, we are describing from observation. Such a method, although it saves us at times from untruthfulness, and though it should furnish us with plenty of material, is not ordinarily so good as to describe from our recollections of actual observation. By observing carefully and then allowing a short interval to occur, we find that the less important details have become dim or have altogether disappeared, while the main points still stand out. It is a fair assumption that whatever a well-trained observer remembers most vividly will appeal most vividly to his reader.

Although every one wishes to be as original as possible in description as in other kinds of writing, a great deal is to be learned by reading the descriptions of others. Perhaps no writer has described precisely what I wish to describe; yet many have described something similar and have used words and devices which may be useful to Without copying from them anything which does not fully apply to my subject, I can get suggestions here and there. One of the great pleasures in reading such men as Stevenson and Mr. Kipling is the study of their swift and telling description.

me.

In all description there is a further element, — the element of imagination. Daring writers like Poe occasionally go so far as to write long descriptions of imaginary scenes. Although this practice is not to be commended to beginners, yet even they should remember to flavor fact with imagination. Imagination is, indeed, in part made up by observation and reading strangely changed and recombined.

78. Use all of your Senses. The mass of sensations which make up the reality of any moment consist of some which are immediate and vividly realized and others which are subordinate and hardly thought of until they cease. It is especially to be noted that these sensations are not by any means all visual impressions: sound, smell, touch, and taste all play their part. The camera merely sees what is within its range; a sensitive person feels things behind him, hears the whistle of a bird's wings overhead or sees its shadow on the ground, smells the new-cut hay or the freshly ploughed earth or the wood smoke, or perhaps the gentler odor of lavender or sandalwood. All this, in addition to what we see, makes up the