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of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. Το strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered that of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

HELPS TO STUDY: Learn by heart at least a part of this address. A writer in The Spectator (London), May 2, 1891, makes this comment on Lincoln's address: "Lincoln remained master of the emotional and intellectual situation. In three or four hundred words that burn with the heat of their compression, he tells the history of the war and reads its lesson. No nobler thoughts were ever conceived. No man ever found words more adequate to his desire. Here is the whole tale of the nation's shame and misery, of her heroic struggles to free herself therefrom, and of her victory. Had Lincoln written a hundred times as much more, he would not have said more fully what he desired to say. Every thought receives its complete expression, and there is no word employed which does not directly and manifestly contribute to the development of the central thought." Read also Lincoln's First Inaugural Address; his letter to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865; and compare Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States. For the latter, see The Heart of Oak Books, vol. vi.

SECTION 14

The Subject-Sentence

The subject-sentence of a paragraph contains whatever statement it is thought best to make of the paragraph subject. Except in stories, where it is not much used, the subject-sentence is most frequently placed at the beginning of the paragraph, although it may stand anywhere between the beginning and the end, or at the very end of the paragraph. Where the thought of the paragraph is so easily followed that no statement of the paragraph subject is needed, no subject-sentence of course is required. To state the subject of your paragraph in a single sentence, and then to put that sentence wherever in your paragraph it happens to be most effective to tell your reader what you have written about, is a help to yourself, because it induces you to think and to write

clearly, and a help to your reader as well, because it enables him, often at a glance, to tell just what your paragraph is about.

How great a help the subject-sentence may be to the reader is shown by the following paragraph. Read the paragraph as it stands, with the subject-sentence omitted, then read it again, supplying the subject-sentence from the foot-note below, and observe how much more easily at the second reading you catch the thought of the paragraph.

[Position of the omitted subject-sentence.] To be successful, one must possess aptitude for the particular business that engages him. He must love it for its own sake. If, suited to and loving it, he concentrates upon it all his energies, he is tolerably sure to succeed according to the measure of the business itself and of his own capacity. In other words, success is the round peg in the round hole, and the square peg in the square hole, and, big or little, is to be attained in proportion to the coincidence of these requirements with the opportunity and the man. In the cases of Cæsar and Napoleon, they reached the altitudes of human endeavor. In the case of the country lawyer, or doctor, or banker, or merchant, he reaches the lower ranges; but, if happiness be considered one of the ingredients of success, these latter surpass Cæsar and Napoleon, who were not very happy in their lives, and the death of both of whom was tragic.— HENRY WATTERSON, Success, February, 1900.1

In the next paragraph a bit of an introduction has been put in to fit the paragraph into the story to which it belongs. In some instances only a phrase or a clause precedes the subject-sentence, while in others it is preceded by so many sentences that it is delayed until the middle of the paragraph is reached, as in the case of the second paragraph following.

1 [Omitted subject-sentence.] Success in life is largely referable to the fulfilment of two conditions indicated by the terms "aptitude" and "concentration."

HERDING IN INDIA

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and there they lie like logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd-children hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead, and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and wake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying-mantises and make them fight; or string a necklace of red and black jungle-nuts; or watch a lizard basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshipped. Then evening comes, and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of the sticky mud with noises like gun-shots going off one after the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village lights. KIPLING, The Jungle Book.

HELPS TO STUDY: "Herding in India is one of the laziest things in the world," writes Kipling, and then he develops this thought in a purposely long-drawn-out paragraph, by means of which he imparts much of this lazy feeling to the reader. But how does he do it? By the construction of his sentences? Note the effect of the "ands" and "ors." Rewrite a part of the paragraph, omitting most of the "ands" and "ors," read what you have written, and observe the difference in effect. By the words? What words, in particular, add to

this effect? By what he says takes place? What incidents, in par ticular, add to the effect? What mental picture do you get most clearly? Is it "they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village"? Or, is it some other?

THE ECONOMY OF DOG-Sledging

A Siberian dog will pull only a quarter as much as a man can pull, and he needs about a pound of food per day, or half as much as the man. But he requires no sleeping-bag or tent, no extra clothing and boots, no water has to be melted for him, he smokes no tobacco. Best of all, if he gets hurt, or becomes ill or exhausted, you don't have to drag him on the sledge or turn back. You convert him into fresh meat for the survivors. That is the economy of dog-sledging in these dashes for the Pole. Your four-legged comrade drags fifty or sixty pounds of load, and he carries twenty-five or thirty pounds of meat "on the hoof." But killing these faithful fellows who have worked in harness by your side, who lick the hand that is about to smite them, and look up into the murderer's eyes with true dog trustfulness, was the bitterest of all the bitter things we had to do. We killed only half a dozen, using a rifle, and did the job off a little way from the camp, behind a hummock, in a sneaking sort of way, as if we were ashamed of it, as we were. - WALTER WELLMAN, McClure's Magazine, 14: 410.

The subject-sentence is sometimes used to point a story:

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A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba-no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his coöperation, and quickly. What to do! Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it

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