over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point I wish to make is this McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebræ which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing. Carry a message to Garcia." — ELBERT HUBBARD, A Message to Garcia.

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Very rarely the subject is stated at the beginning of the paragraph and again in another form at the end. This device gives the subject the greatest possible emphasis, since, as you will learn later, these are the two places in a paragraph which most readily catch and hold the reader's eye :

WHAT THRIFT Is

Genuine thrift is not mere saving, but rather "postponed consumption," a laying aside not for the purpose of hoarding, but in order to make a future purchase. The small boy who pointed to a penny bank and said with intense pride, "I banks there," would have been no better for his emotion if his conception of what money is had not got beyond the belief that it is a commodity to hold. The value to him of his bank was that he was learning that money is more useful at one time than at another, and that by depositing it in some safe place, free from the allurements of the candy or the cigarette shop, he was reserving it for a more profitable use. The whole secret of right thrift lies in the formula: Save wisely, so as to be able to spend judiciously in a time of need which will probably be greater than that of the present. — MARY WILLCOX BROWN, The Development of Thrift.

Frequently enough you will find paragraphs that contain no subject-sentence whatever. Usually these are

paragraphs of narration or description, in which case it is difficult and perhaps undesirable to reduce to a single sentence a summary of the events narrated or of the objects. described, or the paragraph is one whose subject is so clear that it is left to the inference of the reader.

Exercise 26

What is the subject-sentence in each of the following paragraphs? Can you account for its position in the paragraph ?1

BURIED ALIVE

What was my horror to find myself buried alive! After a short reflection, I began to work the sand away from the side, that I might turn round. There were some feet of empty space, into which I threw the sand as I worked it away; but the small quantity of air soon made it so foul that I a thousand times wished myself dead, and made several attempts to strangle myself. Thirst almost deprived me of my senses, but as often as I put my mouth to the sand I inhaled fresh air. My sufferings were incredible, and I imagine I passed eight hours in this situation. My spirits fainted; again I recovered and began to labor, but the earth was as high as my chin, and I had no more space where I might throw the sand. I made a more desperate effort, drew my body into a ball, and turned round; I now faced the stone; there being an opening at the top, I respired fresher air. I rooted away the sand under the stone, and let it sink so that I might creep over; at length I once more arrived in my dungeon! — Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck (Holcroft's translation), vol. ii, chap. v.

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD

When the chick first emerges from the shell, the Creator's studio in which he was organized and shaped, it is a very little world with which he finds himself in relation. First the nest, then the hen-coop,

1 If necessary to enforce further the principles of Section 14, this exercise may be continued with other paragraphs in this book or in the textbooks in science, history, and literature.

by and by the barnyard with occasional predatory incursions into the neighbor's garden - and his little universe has reached its boundaries. Just so with my experience of atmospheric existence. The low room of the old house - the little patch called the front yard somewhat larger than the Turkish rug beneath my rocking-chair — the back yard with its wood-house, its carriage-house, its barn, and, let me not forget, its pig-sty. These were the world of my earliest experiences. But from the western window of the room where I was born I could see the vast expanse of the Common, with the far-away "Washington Elm as its central figure—the immeasurably distant hills of the horizon, and the infinite of space in which these gigantic figures were projected — all these, in unworded impressions — vague pictures swimming by each other as the eyes rolled without aim - threw the lights and shadows which floated by them. From this centre I felt my way into the creation beyond. Holmes, in J. T. MORSE's Life and Letters

of Oliver Wendell Holmes, vol. i, chap. ii.

RADIANT HEAT AND RADIANT LIGHT

The radiant heat from the sun goes along with the light from the sun, and when you shut one off, — put a screen so as to intercept the one, — the other is intercepted at the same time. In the case of a solar eclipse, you have the sun's heat as long as you see the smallest portion of the sun's disk. The instant the last portion of the disk is obscured, the heat disappears with the light. That shows that the heat and light take not only the same course, but also the same time to come to us. If the one lagged ever so little behind the other, if the heat disappeared sooner than the light, or the light sooner than the heat, it would show that though they both moved in straight lines, the one moved faster than the other; but the result of observation is that we find, so far as our most delicate measurements show, that heat and light are simultaneously intercepted. - TAIT, Recent Advances, chap. viii.

A REMARKABLE TRADE

I give the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact. A man fell from a housetop in the city of Aberdeen, and was brought into the hospital with broken bones. He was asked what was his trade, and replied that he was a tapper. No one had ever heard of

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such a thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they be sought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighborhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and keep up an industrious bustle on the housetop during the absence of the slaters. When he taps for only one or two the thing is child's-play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is then that he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. Then must he bound from spot to spot, reduplicate, triplicate, sexduplicate his single personality, and swell and hasten his blows, until he produce a perfect illusion for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. It must be a strange sight from an upper window. - STEVENSON, The Amateur Emigrant, chap. vii.

Exercise 27

1. Find five paragraphs, one having the subject-sentence at the beginning, one having it near the middle, one having it at the end, one having it at the beginning and repeating it in another form at the end, and one in which it is omitted. Try in each case to account for the location or omission of the subject-sentence.

2. On one of the following subjects write a paragraph in which you make the subject-sentence as conspicuous as you can. Then, if you have the time, rewrite the paragraph, moving the subject-sentence to some other position in the paragraph. Hand in both versions of your paragraph, and be prepared to defend one or the other of the two positions for the subject-sentence.

1. The story of Pau-Puk-Keewis. (You are to write the story for a child who has never read Hiawatha. Test the worth of your story by reading it to some child.)

1

2. Hints on the decoration of a favorite room. (If you had ten dollars to spend for material, what decorations should you make?) 3. The last air-ship. (Tell what the newspapers say 4. Trouble at school.

about it.)

5. What I have observed about the bobolink (or some other favorite bird).

6. How books should be cared for. (Perhaps you can write most easily on this subject if you tell how books should not be treated. Book-lovers like to imagine that books are persons.)

7. A leaf from my scrap-book. (Find the most curious scrap you have, and write about it.)

8. The fruit vender on the corner. (The tamale man, the flower girl, the apple woman, the pop-corn man, the peanut man, etc.)

9. Mood of a boy unjustly punished. (A real recollection of your childhood.)

10. The manners of the children of the Puritans. (Contrast with the manners of the children of to-day; ask your teacher or librarian for references to the best books on the subject.)

3. Examine the paragraph written by soine member of the class for 2, and tell whether the subject-sentence is well placed.

4. Find in some book of science a paragraph constructed like the one by Tait (Exercise 26). Describe one of your own experiments in the same manner.

5. Read an essay by some author, and make a list of the subject-sentences in it.

SECTION 15

Construction of Paragraphs

Now that you have learned what a paragraph is, how a paragraph subject differs from a whole composition subject, and what a subject-sentence is and where it appears in a paragraph, if it appears at all, you are ready to begin the construction of paragraphs.