affection suggested an expedient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring. 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.1 TRAINING THE EYE The eye is susceptible of more training than perhaps any other of the senses. Fineness of sight, length of vision, comprehensiveness, or the number of things taken in at once, and rapidity, these may be so far developed that the educated eye is as far above the uneducated as a refined and cultivated mind is beyond a savage one. Houdin, the great French necromancer, relates the practice of himself and son in preparing for one part of their jugglery. They trained their eyes to take in at a glance, from a shop window, from a store full of varieties, from the face of books in a library, the greatest number of things. They came to such perfection that in simply walking past a library case they could afterward tell you nearly every book on its shelves, and its relative position. Their eyes seemed to be acted upon in a manner not unlike the photographic process. A picture was instantly formed. And afterward, it rose up before their memories as if the original thing stood before them. Such incidents show how little use is yet made of eyes, and how little we suspect their capabilities of education. HENRY WARD BEECHer. 1 A great many nature books have been recently published, and in these can be found any number of paragraphs containing examples and specific instances which illustrate facts about our familiar birds and animals similar to that so interestingly treated by White. . Exercise 35 1. Bring to class a paragraph containing a single example; another containing several examples. Can you discover any rule for the arrangement of two or more examples in a paragraph? Has climax anything to do with the matter? 2. Give an example of your own to illustrate each subject developed in Exercise 34. 3. After you have had time to study one of the following subjects at first hand, illustrate it by specific examples: 1. The habits of the English sparrow. 2. The preparation of the apple tree for winter. 3. The hawk and owl as birds of prey. 4. How the robin builds its nest. 5. How seeds are scattered by the wind. (Observe the dandelion, maple, elm, linden, ash, thistle, etc.) 6. How seeds are scattered by animals and men. (Study the burdock, hound's-tongue, tick-trefoil, beggar-ticks, enchanter's nightshade, etc.) 7. The metamorphosis of insects. (Collect cocoons of moths, butterflies, etc., and watch development.) 8. Insect and flower. (How the insect assists in the fertilization of the flower, and how the flower furnishes nectar as food for the insect.) 9. Gnawing habits of the squirrel, woodchuck, or rat. 10. Burrowing habits of the mole. 11. The harm done by insects. (For example, by rose-beetles, grain-weevils, flies, mosquitoes, flees, tent-caterpillars, elm-leaf beetles, grasshoppers, locusts, squash-bugs, red ants, etc.) 12. Usefulness of insects. (Dragon-flies, burying-beetles, ichneumon-flies, white-faced hornet, paper-wasp, etc.) 4. Write a paragraph on one of the following subjects, developing your subject-sentence by means of examples : 1. The fads of fashion. 2. A private lesson from a bulldog. 3. How to make a dull boy read. 4. The common "hop-toad's" mode of life. 5. The value of a common school education. 6. A bicyclist's opinion of road (some road you know). 7. The strange tricks memory plays us. 8. Some observations on changes in the color of leaves. SECTION 21 Construction of Paragraphs 6. BY TELLING A THING IN MORE THAN ONE WAY: RESTATEMENT In oral discourse, where one thought slips away as soon as another takes its place, it is often necessary to say a thing four or five times over before it can be lastingly impressed on the mind. The cleverest speaker, other things being equal, is he who continually repeats himself, at each repetition giving some new turn to his thought. So adept was Pitt in the art of restatement that Lord Stanhope once said of him, "He knew that to the multitude one argument stated in five different forms is, in general, equal to five new arguments." And this is true in general; that is, when the restatements are so skilfully made as to produce the illusion of originality. In written discourse, where the reader may go over what he reads as often as he please, the principle of restatement also holds good, but to a less extent. Here, as in oral discourse, an important statement, if it is to produce conviction, cannot be allowed to stand alone. A thing must be looked at from different points of view. It must be set before the reader in different lights. If a thought has been stated in abstract, it may be restated in figure or in concrete; if it has been stated with conciseness, it may be restated with some diffuseness-it will be all the clearer; a new form may give it more definiteness, more familiarity, more terseness, more breadth. The restatement, in brief, should in some way enlarge the thoughtit is the idea that is restated, and not the words that are repeated. To do this is to tell a thing in more than one way. The method is illustrated by the following paragraph. The subject-sentence, "One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds," would hardly be understood if standing by itself. Its central idea, the humanness of weeds, is therefore restated, but with a new turn of thought, in sentences two and three, where we have the added thought about what weeds do that is human; it is restated once more in sentence four, where we have the added thought about why weeds win our affection. Few paragraphs are constructed by any one method, and from this point on to the close of the paragraph example is made greater use of than restatement. But even in this latter half of the paragraph some ideas are restated. The central idea of the subject-sentence is restated in "what a homely human look they have;" "they are an integral part of every old homestead" is restated in "your smart new place," etc.; 66 one comes to regard them with positive affection" is restated in "how kindly one comes to look upon it; " and the first clause of the last sentence is restated in the last clause of that sentence- but in all of these restatements some new turn is given the thought, whereby it becomes more clear and definite. Even the words "cling," "follow," "crowd," "throng," "jostle," "override," and the like-help in this process of restatement, help to show the human quality of weeds, for they are just the words we should use in speaking of persons. THE HUMANNESS OF WEEDS [Subject-sentence.] One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds. [Restatements.] How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets his foot! How they crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his garden and jostle and override each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection. [Examples.] Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard - what a homely human look they have! they are an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart new place will wait long before they draw near it. Our knot-grass, that carpets every old door-yard, and fringes every walk, and softens every path that knows the feet of children, or that leads to the spring, or to the garden, or to the barn, how kindly one comes to look upon it! Examine it with a pocket glass and see how wonderfully beautiful and exquisite are its tiny blossoms. It loves the human foot, and when the path or the place is long disused other plants usurp the ground.-JOHN BurROUGHS, A Bunch of Herbs. Exercise 36 Show how restatement is used in the following selection, which is an extract from the argument made by Webster at the trial of John Francis Knapp for the murder of Joseph White, of Salem, in Essex County, Massachusetts, on the night of the 6th of April, 1830: THE MURDERER AND HIS SECRET BY DANIEL WEBSTER Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. In some respects, it has hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New Eng |