(2) An hour spent in waiting for a train at a country railway station. (3) A description of the Van Tassel homestead. 5. Search the recent numbers of the popular magazines, and select five titles of short stories; five of essays; five of poems; five of any sort you think are specially good. 6. Examine the titles in the catalogue of some publisher (you ought to own the catalogues of the most prominent American publishers- a postal will bring any one of them), and make a list of some fifteen or twenty that seem particularly attractive. Do you find any titles you cannot understand? Any very clear titles? Any fanciful titles? 7. Make a list of the novels of one of the following authors: Jane Austen, Scott, Cooper, Frederick Marryat, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, George Eliot, W. D. Howells, Mrs. Humphry Ward, F. Marion Crawford, Thomas Hardy, Stevenson, Kipling. What do you learn from the titles in your list? 8. Suggest other titles for some five of the selections that are quoted in this book. 9. Suggest other titles for at least two of the following poems: Bryant's "Thanatopsis,' ," "To a Water-Fowl"; Drake's " American Flag"; Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris"; Emerson's "Concord Hymn,” The Humblebee"; Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor,” “The Discoverer of the North Cape," "King Robert of Sicily," "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "The Birds of Killingworth"; Whittier's "Angels of Buena Vista,” “Maud Muller," "Barefoot Boy," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "Ichabod"; Poe's "The Haunted Palace," "Annabel Lee," "The Raven"; Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus," "The Last Leaf," "Old Ironsides"; Lowell's "Hebe," "To the Dandelion," "She Came and Went," "The Courtin'"; Taylor's "Bedouin Song”; 66 Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain"; Bret Harte's "Chicago"; Stoddard's "Abraham Lincoln"; J. Miller's "Columbus." 10. Make a list of the titles of the chapters in some recent novel; e.g. in Ford's Janice Meredith, Johnston's To Have and to Hold, Pidgin's Quincy Adams Sawyer, Churchill's Richard Carvel and The Crisis, Thompson's Alice of Old Vincennes, and the like. Exercise 23 Read the following selections, and then suggest an appropriate and attractive title for each : An abbot, a man of wit, and skilled in the construction of new musical instruments, was ordered by Louis XI, King of France, more in jest than in earnest, to procure him a concert of swines' voices. The abbot said that the thing could doubtless be done, but that it would take a good deal of money. The king ordered that he should have whatever he required for the purpose. The abbot then wrought a thing as singular as ever was seen; for out of a great number of hogs of several ages which he got together, and placed under a tent, or pavilion, covered with velvet, before which he had a table of wood painted, with a certain number of keys, he made an organical instrument, and as he played upon the said keys with little spikes, which pricked the hogs, he made them cry in such order and consonance, he highly delighted the king and all his company. A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals (published by John Lane), 90. “Are you afraid, Monsieur Beverley?" she demanded after a short waiting in silence. He laughed now and whipped the air with his foil. you really mean that you want to fence with me?” "Do "If you think because I'm only a girl you can easily beat me, try it," she tauntingly replied, making a level thrust toward his breast. Quick as a flash he parried, and then a merry clinking and twinkling of steel blades kept time to their swift movements. Instantly, by the sure sense which is half sight, half feeling-the sense that guides E the expert fencer's hand and wrist — Beverley knew that he had probably more than his match, and in ten seconds his attack was met by a time thrust in opposition which touched him sharply. Alice sprang far back, lowered her point, and laughed. "Je vous salue, Monsieur Beverley!" she cried, with childlike show of delight. "Did you feel the button?" "Yes, I felt it," he said with frank acknowledgment in his voice, "it was cleverly done. Now give me a chance to redeem myself." He began more carefully and found that she, too, was on her best mettle; but it was a short bout, as before. Alice seemed to give him an easy opening and he accepted it with a thrust; then something happened that he did not understand. The point of his foil was somehow caught under his opponent's hilt-guard while her blade seemed to twist around his; at the same time there was a wring and a jerk, the like of which he had never before felt, and he was disarmed, his wrist and fingers aching with the wrench they had received. MAURICE THOMPSON, Alice of Old Vincennes, chap. vi. There was a hush, and the waves of that vast human sea were stilled. A man, — lean, angular, with coat-tails flapping, - unfolded like a grotesque figure at a side-show. No confidence was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head, and shuddered. Could this shrill falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning? Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled was the agony of those moments! But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him? Surprise? Cautiously he raised his eyes. The hands were coming around to the front. Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined gesture, the head was raised, — and — and his shame was forgotten. In its stead wonder was come. But soon he lost even that, for his mind was gone on a journey. And when again he came to himself and looked upon Abraham Lincoln, this was a man transformed. The voice was no longer shrill. Nay, it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on those who heard. Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to start a stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it broke on the very edge of that vast audience.-WINSTON CHURCHILL, The Crisis, book ii, chap. v. CHAPTER II THE PARAGRAPH SECTION 12 What a Paragraph Is THE easiest way to learn to write is to write innumerable paragraphs. This is because the paragraph is really an essay in little, and therefore contains every element contained in an essay in large, or what is referred to elsewhere in this book as a whole composition. In fact, every rule you learned in Chapter I, which deals primarily with the whole composition, can be applied effectively to the paragraph. You choose, limit, and word a subject for a paragraph in the same way that you do for a composition containing a number of paragraphs; you gather, select, and arrange material for a paragraph in the same way that you do for a longer composition; and you write the first rough draft of a paragraph, and revise it, in precisely the way you write and revise the first rough draft of a long composition. But, since the paragraph is small in compass, you can more readily study and practise it than you can the more cumbersome composition. It is chiefly for these reasons therefore, that, if you once come to understand thoroughly the 1 A paragraph standing alone and complete in itself is of course a whole composition, but I have made this distinction between a paragraph and a whole composition because most whole compositions contain more than a single paragraph. principles of paragraph construction (and the work laid down in this chapter is intended to help you to such an understanding), you will have no real difficulty to overcome, even if you should never study or practise the whole composition by itself, in the mere putting together of paragraphs in the longer articles you will no doubt write in school and in after life. Besides, in the work of the school in particular, there are many practical uses to which you can put your knowledge of the paragraph. Every note you write to a school-mate or to an instructor, every written answer you make to an examination question, whether it be in history, in physics, in mathematics, or what not, to say nothing of the paragraphs you do in one way or another in your English studies, you can make, if you will, just so much profitable practice in the management of the paragraph. It is quite important, then, that you should know what a paragraph is. What a paragraph looks like on the page everybody who reads knows. To the eye it is nothing more than a sentence or a group of sentences set off from similar groups by the indention of the first word in the group. It is not so easy to give a precise definition of a paragraph. It has already been called "an essay in little." More exactly, it may be defined as a sentence or a closely related group of sentences devoted to the development of some very limited aspect of a general subject. It is to the essay what the word is to the sentence, what the sentence is to the paragraph itself. It is an organism in itself, complete in all its parts. While it may consist of a single sentence, it usually consists of a group of sentences. NOTE. As a rule, the first word of a paragraph in printed matter is set back to the right of the flush line of the page or column a dis |