[i]

NEW CENTURY
SPEAKER and WRITER

BEING

A Standard Work on Composition
and Oratory

CONTAINING

RULES FOR EXPRESSING WRITTEN THOUGHT IN A CORRECT AND ELEGANT
MANNER; MODEL SELECTIONS FROM THE MOST FAMOUS AUTHORS;
SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITIONS AND HOW TO TREAT THEM; USE
OF ILLUSTRATIONS; DESCRIPTIVE, PATHETIC AND
HUMOROUS WRITINGS, ETC., ETC.

TOGETHER WITH A

Peerless Collection of Readings and Recitations,
Including Programmes for Special
Occasions

FROM AUTHORS OF WORLD-WIDE RENOWN, FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES,
COLLEGES, LODGES, SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND
SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS

THE WHOLE FORMING AN

UNRIVALED SELF-EDUCATOR FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

by Henry Davenport Northrop
Author of “Delsarte Manual of Oratory,” “Golden Gleanings of Poetry, Prose and Song,” etc., etc.

Embellished with a Galaxy of Charming Engravings

NATIONAL PUBLISHING CO.
239, 241, 243 South American St.
Philadelphia

[ii]

ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1901, BY
D. Z. HOWELL
IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, AT WASHINGTON, D. C., U. S. A.

Millions of young people in America are being educated, and hence there is a very great demand for a Standard Work showing how to express written thought in the most elegant manner and how to read and recite in a way that insures the greatest success. To meet this enormous demand is the aim of this volume.

Part I.—How to Write a Composition.—The treatment of this subject is masterly and thorough, and is so fascinating that the study becomes a delight. Rules and examples are furnished for the right choice of words, for constructing sentences, for punctuation, for acquiring an elegant style of composition, for writing essays and letters, what authors should be read, etc. The directions given are all right to the point and are easily put into practice.

The work contains a complete list of synonyms, or words of similar meaning, and more than 500 choice subjects for compositions, which are admirably suited to persons of all ages. These are followed by a charming collection of Masterpieces of Composition by such world-renowned authors as Emerson, Hawthorne, George Eliot, Lord Macaulay, Washington Irving, C. H. Spurgeon, Sarah J. Lippincott, Mrs. Stowe and many others.

These grand specimens of composition bear the stamp of the most brilliant genius. They are very suggestive and helpful. They inspire the reader to the noblest efforts, and teach the truth of Bulwer Lytton’s well-known saying that “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Part II.—Readings and Recitations.—The second part of this incomparable work is no less valuable, and a candid perusal will convince you that it contains the largest and best collection of recitations ever brought together in one volume. These are of every variety and description. Be careful to notice that every one of these selections, which are from the writings of the world’s best authors, is especially adapted for reading and reciting. This is something which cannot be said of any similar work.

All the Typical Gestures used in Reciting are shown by choice engravings, and the reader has in reality the best kind of teacher right before him. The different attitudes, facial expressions and gestures are both instructive and charming. These are followed by Recitations with Lesson Talks. Full directions are given for reciting the various pieces, and this is done by taking each paragraph or verse of the selection and pointing out the gestures, tone of voice, emphasis, etc., required to render it most effectively. The Lesson Talks render most valuable service to all who are studying the grand art of oratory.

The next section of this masterly volume contains Recitations with Music.[iv] This is a choice collection of readings which are rendered most effective by accompaniments of music, enabling the reader by the use of the voice or some musical instrument to entrance his audience.

These charming selections are followed by a superb collection of Patriotic Recitations which celebrate the grand victories of our army and navy in the Philippines and West Indies. These incomparable pieces are all aglow with patriotic fervor and are eagerly sought by all elocutionists.

There is space here only to mention the different parts of this delightful volume, such as Descriptive and Dramatic Recitations; Orations by Famous Orators; a peerless collection of Humorous and Pathetic Recitations, and Recitations for Children and Sunday Schools.

Parents are charmed with this volume because it furnishes what the little folks want and is a self-educator for the young. It marks a new era in book publishing.

Part III.—Programmes for Special Occasions.—These have been prepared with the greatest care in order to meet a very urgent demand. The work contains Programmes for Fourth of July; Christmas Entertainments; Washington’s Birthday; Decoration Day; Thanksgiving Day; Arbor Day; Public School and Parlor Entertainments; Harvest Home; Flower Day, etc. Beautiful Selections for Special Occasions are contained in no other work, and these alone insure this very attractive volume an enormous sale.

Dialogues, Tableaux, etc.—Added to the Rich Contents already described is a Charming Collection of Dialogues and Tableaux for public and private entertainments. These are humorous, pithy, teach important lessons and are thoroughly enjoyed by everybody.

In many places the winter lyceum is an institution; we find it not only in academies, and normal schools, but very frequently the people in a district or town organize a debating society and discuss the popular questions of the day. The benefit thus derived cannot be estimated. In the last part of this volume will be found by-laws for those who wish to conduct lyceums, together with a choice selection of subjects for debate.

Thus it is seen that this is a very comprehensive work. Not only is it carefully prepared, not only does it set a very high standard of excellence in composition and elocution, but it is a work peculiarly fitted to the wants of millions of young people throughout our country. The writer of this is free to say that such a work as this would have been of inestimable value to him while obtaining an education. All wise parents who wish to make the best provision for educating their children should understand that they have in this volume such a teacher in composition and oratory as has never before been offered to the public.

The correct and pleasing expression of one’s thoughts in writing is an accomplishment of the highest order. To have little or no ability in the art of composition is a great misfortune.

Who is willing to incur the disgrace and mortification of being unable to write a graceful and interesting letter, or an essay worthy to be read by intelligent persons? What an air of importance belongs to the young scholar, or older student, who can pen a production excellent in thought and beautiful in language! Such a gifted individual becomes almost a hero or heroine.

When I was a pupil in one of our public schools the day most dreaded by all of the scholars was “composition day.” What to write about, and how to do it, were the most vexatious of all questions. Probably nine-tenths of the pupils would rather have mastered the hardest lessons, or taken a sound whipping, than to attempt to write one paragraph of a composition on any subject.

While some persons have a natural faculty for putting their thoughts into words, a much larger number of others are compelled to confess that it is a difficult undertaking, and they are never able to satisfy themselves with their written productions.

Let it be some encouragement to you to reflect that many who are considered excellent writers labored in the beginning under serious difficulties, yet, being resolved to master them, they finally achieved the most gratifying success. When Napoleon was told it would be impossible for his army to cross the bridge at Lodi, he replied, “There is no such word as impossible,” and over the bridge his army went. Resolve that you will succeed, and carry out this good resolution by close application and diligent practice. “Labor conquers all things.”

WHAT TO DO, AND HOW TO DO IT.

Study carefully the lessons contained in the following pages. They will be of great benefit, as they show you what to do and how to do it.

These lessons are quite simple at first, and are followed by others that are more advanced. All of them have been carefully prepared for the purpose of furnishing just such helps as you need. You can study them by yourself; if you can obtain the assistance of a competent teacher, so much the better. I predict that you will be surprised at the rapid progress you are making. Perhaps you will become fascinated with your study; at least, it is to be hoped you will, and become enthusiastic in your noble work.

Be content to take one step at a time. Do not get the mistaken impression that you[18] will be able to write a good composition before you have learned how to do it. Many persons are too eager to achieve success immediately, without patient and earnest endeavor to overcome all difficulties.

Choose a subject for your composition that is adapted to your capacity. You cannot write on a subject that you know nothing about. Having selected your theme, think upon it, and, if possible, read what others have written about it, not for the purpose of stealing their thoughts, but to stimulate your own, and store your mind with information. Then you will be able to express in writing what you know.

The Treatment of the Subject.

The principal reason why many persons make such hard work of the art of composition is that they have so few thoughts, and consequently so little to say, upon the subjects they endeavor to treat. The same rule must be followed in writing a composition as in building a house—you must first get your materials.

I said something about stealing the thoughts of others, but must qualify this by saying that while you are learning to write, you are quite at liberty in your practice to make use of the thoughts of others, writing them from memory after you have read a page or a paragraph from some standard author. It is better that you should remember only a part of the language employed by the writer whose thoughts you are reproducing, using as far as possible words of your own, yet in each instance wherein you remember his language you need not hesitate to use it. Such an exercise is a valuable aid to all who wish to perfect themselves in the delightful art of composition.

Take any writer of good English—J. G. Holland, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Irving, Cooper, or the articles in our best magazines—and read half a page twice or thrice; close the book, and write, in your own words, what you have read; borrowing, nevertheless, from the author so much as you can remember. Compare what you have written with the original, sentence by sentence, and word by word, and observe how far you have fallen short of the skilful author.

A Frequent Change of Authors.

You will thus not only find out your own faults, but you will discover where they lie, and how they may be mended. Repeat the lesson with the same passages twice or thrice, if your memory is not filled with the words of the author, and observe, at each trial, the progress you have made, not merely by comparison with the original, but by comparison with the previous exercises.

Do this day after day, changing your author for the purpose of varying the style, and continue to do so long after you have passed on to the second and more advanced stages of your training. Preserve all your exercises, and occasionally compare the latest with the earliest, and so ascertain what progress you have made.

Give especial attention to the words, which, to my mind, are of greater importance than the sentences. Take your nouns first, and compare them with the nouns used by your author. You will probably find your words to be very much bigger than his, more sounding, more far-fetched, more classical, or more poetical. All young writers and speakers fancy that they cannot sufficiently revel in fine words. Comparison with the great masters of English will rebuke this pomposity of inexperience, and chasten and improve your style.

You will discover, to your surprise, that our best writers eschew big words and do not aim to dazzle their readers with fine words. Where there is a choice, they prefer[19] the pure, plain, simple English noun—the name by which the thing is known to everybody, and which, therefore, is instantly understood by all readers. These great authors call a spade “a spade;” only small scribblers term it “an implement of husbandry.” If there is a choice of names, good writers prefer the one best known, while an inexperienced writer is apt to select the most uncommon.

The example of the masters of the English tongue should teach you that commonness (if I may be allowed to coin a word to express that for which I can find no precise equivalent) and vulgarity are not the same in substance. Vulgarity is shown in assumption and affectation of language quite as much as in dress and manners, and it is never vulgar to be natural. Your object is to be understood. To be successful, you must write and talk in a language that everybody can understand; and such is the natural vigor, picturesqueness and music of our tongue, that you could not possess yourself of a more powerful or effective instrument for expression.

Right Choice of Words.

It is well for you to be assured that while, by this choice of plain English for the embodying of your thoughts, you secure the ears of ordinary people, you will at the same time please the most highly educated and refined. The words that have won the applause of a political meeting are equally successful in securing a hearing in Congress, provided that the thoughts expressed and the manner of their expression be adapted to the changed audience.

Then for the sentences. Look closely at their construction, comparing it with that of your author; I mean, note how you have put your words together. The placing of words is next in importance to the choice of them. The best writers preserve the natural order of thought. They sedulously shun obscurities and perplexities. They avoid long and involved sentences. Their rule is, that one sentence should express one thought, and they will not venture on the introduction of two or three thoughts, if they can help it.

Obscure Sentences.

Undoubtedly this is extremely difficult—sometimes impossible. If you want to qualify an assertion, you must do so on the instant; but the rule should never be forgotten, that a long and involved sentence is to be avoided, wherever it is practicable to do so.

Another lesson you will doubtless learn from the comparison of your composition with that of your model author. You will see a wonderful number of adjectives in your own writing, and very few in his. It is the besetting sin of young writers to indulge in adjectives, and precisely as a man gains experience do his adjectives diminish in number. It seems to be supposed by all unpracticed scribblers that the multiplication of epithets gives force. The nouns are never left to speak for themselves.

It is curious to take up any newspaper and read the paragraphs of news, to open the books of nine-tenths of our authors of the third and downward ranks. You will rarely see a noun standing alone, without one or more adjectives prefixed. Be assured that this is a mistake. An adjective should never be used unless it is essential to correct description. As a general rule adjectives add little strength to the noun they are set to prop, and a multiplication of them is always enfeebling. The vast majority of nouns convey to the mind a much more accurate picture of the thing they signify than you can possibly paint by attaching epithets to them.

[20]

Yet do not push to the extreme what has just been said. Adjectives are a very important part of language, and we could not well do without them. You do not need to say a “flowing river;” every river flows, but you might wish to say a “swollen river,” and you could not convey the idea you desire to express without using the adjective “swollen.” What I wish to caution you against is the needless multiplication of adjectives, which only serve to overload and weaken the expression of your thought.

Express Your Own Ideas.

When you have repeated your lesson many times, and find that you can write with some approach to the purity of your author, you should attempt an original composition. In the beginning it would be prudent, perhaps, to borrow the ideas, but to put them into your own language. The difficulty of this consists in the tendency of the mind to mistake memory for invention, and thus, unconsciously to copy the language as well as the thoughts of the author.

The best way to avoid this is to translate poetry into prose; to take, for instance, a page of narrative in verse and relate the same story in plain prose; or to peruse a page of didactic poetry, and set down the argument in a plain, unpoetical fashion. This will make you familiar with the art of composition, only to be acquired by practice; and the advantage, at this early stage of your education in the arts of writing and speaking, of putting into proper language the thoughts of others rather than your own is, that you are better able to discover your faults. Your fatherly love for your own ideas is such that you are really incompetent to form a judgment of their worth, or of the correctness of the language in which they are embodied.

The critics witness this hallucination every day. Books continually come to them, written by men who are not mad, who probably are sufficiently sensible in the ordinary business of life, who see clearly enough the faults of other books, who would have laughed aloud over the same pages, if placed in their hands by another writer, but who, nevertheless, are utterly unable to recognize the absurdities of their own handiwork. The reader is surprised that any man of common intelligence could indite such a maze of nonsense where the right word is never to be found in its right place, and this with such utter unconsciousness of incapacity on the part of the author.

Write Exactly What You Mean.

Still more is he amazed that, even if a sensible man could so write, a sane man could read that composition in print, and not with shame throw it into the fire. But the explanation is, that the writer knew what he intended to say; his mind is full of that, and he reads from the manuscript or the type, not so much what is there set down, as what was already floating in his own mind. To criticise yourself you must, to some extent, forget yourself. This is impracticable to many persons, and, lest it may be so with you, I advise you to begin by putting the thoughts of others into your own language, before you attempt to give formal expression to your own thoughts.

You must habitually place your thoughts upon paper—first, that you may do so rapidly; and, secondly, that you may do so correctly. When you come to write your reflections, you will be surprised to find how loose and inaccurate the most vivid of them have been, what terrible flaws there are in your best arguments.

You are thus enabled to correct them, and to compare the matured sentence with the rude conception of it. You are thus trained to weigh your words and assure yourself[21] that they precisely embody the idea you desire to convey. You can trace uncouthness in the sentences, and dislocations of thought, of which you had not been conscious before. It is far better to learn your lesson thus upon paper, which you can throw into the fire unknown to any human being, than to be taught it by readers who are not always very lenient critics and are quick to detect any faults that appear in your production.

READING AND THINKING.

Having accustomed yourself to express, in plain words, and in clear, precise and straightforward sentences, the ideas of others, you should proceed to express your own thoughts in the same fashion. You will now see more distinctly the advantage of having first studied composition by the process I have recommended, for you are in a condition to discover the deficiencies in the flow of your own ideas. You will be surprised to find, when you come to put them into words, how many of your thoughts were shapeless, hazy and dreamy, slipping from your grasp when you try to seize them, resolving themselves, like the witches in Macbeth,

What You Should Read.

Thus, after you have learned how to write, you will need a good deal of education before you will learn what to write. I cannot much assist you in this part of the business. Two words convey the whole lesson—Read and think. What should you read? Everything. What think about? All subjects that present themselves. The writer and orator must be a man of very varied knowledge. Indeed, for all the purposes of practical life, you cannot know too much. No learning is quite useless. But a speaker, especially if an advocate, cannot anticipate the subjects on which he may be required to talk. Law is the least part of his discourse. For once that he is called upon to argue a point of law, he is compelled to treat matters of fact twenty times.

And the range of topics is very wide; it embraces science and art, history and philosophy; above all, the knowledge of human nature that teaches how the mind he addresses is to be convinced and persuaded, and how a willing ear is to be won to his discourse. No limited range of reading will suffice for so large a requirement. The elements of the sciences must be mastered; the foundations of philosophy must be learned; the principles of art must be acquired; the broad facts of history must be stamped upon the memory; poetry and fiction must not be slighted or neglected.

Our Great Writers.

You must cultivate frequent and intimate intercourse with the genius of all ages and of all countries, not merely as standards by which to measure your own progress, or as fountains from which you may draw unlimited ideas for your own use, but because they are peculiarly suggestive. This is the characteristic of genius, that, conveying one thought to the reader’s mind, it kindles in him many other thoughts. The value of this to speaker and writer will be obvious to you.

Never, therefore, permit a day to pass without reading more or less—if it be but a single page—from some one of our great writers. Besides the service I have described in the multiplication of your ideas, it will render you the scarcely lesser service of preserving purity of style and language, and preventing[22] you from falling into the conventional affectations and slang of social dialogue.

For the same reason, without reference to any higher motive, but simply to fill our mind with the purest English, read daily some portion of the Bible; for which exercise there is another reason also, that its phraseology is more familiar to all kinds of audiences than any other, is more readily understood, and, therefore, is more sufficient in securing their attention.

Three Kinds of Reading.

Your reading will thus consist of three kinds: reading for knowledge, by which I mean the storing of your memory with facts; reading for thoughts, by which I mean the ideas and reflections that set your own mind thinking; and reading the words, by which I mean the best language in which the best authors have clothed their thoughts. And these three classes of reading should be pursued together daily, more or less as you can, for they are needful each to the others, and neither can be neglected without injury to the rest.

So also you must make it a business to think. You will probably say that you are always thinking when you are not doing anything, and often when you are busiest. True, the mind is active, but wandering, vaguely from topic to topic. You are not in reality thinking out anything; indeed, you cannot be sure that your thoughts have a shape until you try to express them in words. Nevertheless you must think before you can write or speak, and you should cultivate a habit of thinking at all appropriate seasons.

But do not misunderstand this suggestion. I do not design advising you to set yourself a-thinking, as you would take up a book to read at the intervals of business, or as a part of a course of self-training; for such attempts would probably begin with wandering fancies and end in a comfortable nap. It is a fact worth noting, that few persons can think continuously while the body is at perfect rest. The time for thinking is when you are kept awake by some slight and almost mechanical muscular exercise, and the mind is not busily attracted by external subjects of attention.

Thus walking, angling, gardening, and other rural pursuits are pre-eminently the seasons for thought, and you should cultivate a habit of thinking during those exercises, so needful for health of body and for fruitfulness of mind. Then it is that you should submit whatever subject you desire to treat to careful review, turning it on all sides, and inside out, marshalling the facts connected with it, trying what may be said for or against every view of it, recalling what you may have read about it, and finally thinking what you could say upon it that had not been said before, or how you could put old views of it into new shapes.

Learning to Think.

Perhaps the best way to accomplish this will be to imagine yourself writing upon it, or making a speech upon it, and to think what in such case you would say; I do not mean in what words you would express yourself, but what you would discourse about; what ideas you would put forth; to what thoughts you would give utterance.

At the beginning of this exercise you will find your reflections extremely vague and disconnected; you will range from theme to theme, and mere flights of fancy will be substituted for steady, continuous thought. But persevere day by day, and that which was in the beginning an effort will soon grow into a habit, and you will pass few moments of your working life in which, when not occupied from without, your mind will not be usefully employed within itself.

Having attained this habit of thinking, let[23] it be a rule with you, before you write or speak on any subject, to employ your thoughts upon it in the manner I have described. Go a-fishing. Take a walk. Weed your garden. Sweep, dust, do any sewing that needs to be done. While so occupied, think. It will be hard if your own intelligence cannot suggest to you how the subject should be treated, in what order of argument, with what illustrations, and with what new aspects of it, the original product of your own genius.

At all events this is certain, that without preliminary reflection you cannot hope to deal with any subject to your own satisfaction, or to the profit or pleasure of others. If you neglect these precautions, you can never be more than a wind-bag, uttering words that, however grandly they may roll, convey no thoughts. There is hope for ignorance; there is none for emptiness.

To sum up these rules and suggestions: To become a writer or an orator, you must fill your mind with knowledge by reading and observation, and educate it to the creation of thoughts by cultivating a habit of reflection. There is no limit to the knowledge that will be desirable and useful; it should include something of natural science, much of history, and still more of human nature. The latter must be your study, for it is with this that the writer and speaker has to deal.

Remember, that no amount of antiquarian, or historical, or scientific, or literary lore will make a writer or orator, without intimate acquaintance with the ways of the world about him, with the tastes, sentiments, passions, emotions, and modes of thought of the men and women of the age in which he lives, and whose minds it is his business to instruct and sway.

HOW TO ACQUIRE A CAPTIVATING STYLE.

You must think, that you may have thoughts to convey; and read, that you may have words wherewith to express your thoughts correctly and gracefully. But something more than this is required to qualify you to write or speak. You must have a style. I will endeavor to explain what I mean by that.

As every man has a manner of his own, differing from the manner of every other man, so has every mind its own fashion of communicating with other minds. This manner of expressing thought is style, and therefore may style be described as the features of the mind displayed in its communications with other minds; as manner is the external feature exhibited in personal communication.

But though style is the gift of nature, it is nevertheless to be cultivated; only in a sense different from that commonly understood by the word cultivation.

Many elaborate treatises have been written on style, and the subject usually occupies a prominent place in all books on composition and oratory. It is usual with teachers to urge emphatically the importance of cultivating style, and to prescribe ingenious recipes for its production. All these proceed upon the assumption that style is something artificial, capable of being taught, and which may and should be learned by the student, like spelling or grammar.

But, if the definition of style which I have submitted to you is right, these elaborate trainings are a needless labor; probably a positive mischief. I do not design to say a style may not be taught to you; but it will be the style of some other man, and not your own; and, not being your own, it will no[24] more fit your mind than a second-hand suit of clothes, bought without measurement at a pawn-shop, would fit your body, and your appearance in it would be as ungainly.

But you must not gather from this that you are not to concern yourself about style, that it may be left to take care of itself, and that you will require only to write or speak as untrained nature prompts. I say that you must cultivate style; but I say also that the style to be cultivated must be your own, and not the style of another.

How to Cultivate Style.

The majority of those who have written upon the subject recommend you to study the styles of the great writers of the English language, with a view to acquiring their accomplishment. So I say—study them, by all means; but not for the purpose of imitation, not with a view to acquire their manner, but to learn their language, to see how they have embodied their thoughts in words, to discover the manifold graces with which they have invested the expression of their thoughts, so as to surround the act of communicating information, or kindling emotion, with the various attractions and charms of art.

Cultivate style; but instead of laboring to acquire the style of your model, it should be your most constant endeavor to avoid it. The greatest danger to which you are exposed is that of falling into an imitation of the manner of some favorite author, whom you have studied for the sake of learning a style, which, if you did learn it, would be unbecoming to you, because it is not your own. That which in him was manner becomes in you mannerism; you but dress yourself in his clothes, and imagine that you are like him, while you are no more like than is the valet to his master whose cast-off coat he is wearing.

There are some authors whose manner is so infectious that it is extremely difficult not to catch it. Hawthorne is one of these; it requires an effort not to fall into his formula of speech. But your protection against this danger must be an ever-present conviction that your own style will be the best for you, be it ever so bad or good. You must strive to be yourself, to think for yourself, to speak in your own manner; then, what you say and your style of saying it will be in perfect accord, and the pleasure to those who read or listen will not be disturbed by a sense of impropriety and unfitness.

Nevertheless, I repeat, you should cultivate your own style, not by changing it into some other person’s style, but by striving to preserve its individuality, while decorating it with all the graces of art. Nature gives the style, for your style is yourself; but the decorations are slowly and laboriously acquired by diligent study, and, above all, by long and patient practice. There are but two methods of attaining to this accomplishment—contemplation of the best productions of art, and continuous toil in the exercise of it.

Make Your Composition Attractive.

I assume that, by the process I have already described, you have acquired a tolerably quick flow of ideas, a ready command of words, and ability to construct grammatical sentences; all that now remains to you is to learn to use this knowledge that the result may be presented in the most attractive shape to those whom you address. I am unable to give you many practical hints towards this, because it is not a thing to be acquired by formal rules, in a few lessons and by a set course of study; it is the product of very wide and long-continued gleanings from a countless variety of sources; but, above all, it is taught by experience.

If you compare your compositions at intervals of six months, you will see the progress[25] you have made. You began with a multitude of words, with big nouns and bigger adjectives, a perfect firework of epithets, a tendency to call everything by something else than its proper name, and the more you admired your own ingenuity the more you thought it must be admired by others. If you had a good idea, you were pretty sure to dilute it by expansion, supposing the while that you were improving by amplifying it. You indulged in small flights of poetry (in prose), not always in appropriate places, and you were tolerably sure to go off into rhapsody, and to mistake fine words for eloquence. This is the juvenile style; and is not peculiar to yourself—it is the common fault of all young writers.

But the cure for it may be hastened by judicious self-treatment. In addition to the study of good authors, to cultivate your taste, you may mend your style by a process of pruning, after the following fashion. Having finished your composition, or a section of it, lay it aside, and do not look at it again for a week, during which interval other labors will have engaged your thoughts. You will then be in a condition to revise it with an approach to critical impartiality, and so you will begin to learn the wholesome art of blotting. Go through it slowly, pen in hand, weighing every word, and asking yourself, “What did I intend to say? How can I say it in the briefest and plainest English?”

Compare with the plain answer you return to this question the form in which you had tried to express the same meaning in the writing before you, and at each word further ask yourself, “Does this word precisely convey my thought? Is it the aptest word? Is it a necessary word? Would my meaning be fully expressed without it?” If it is not the best, change it for a better. If it is superfluous, ruthlessly strike it out.

The work will be painful at first—you will sacrifice with a sigh so many flourishes of fancy, so many figures of speech, of whose birth you were proud. Nay, at the beginning, and for a long time afterwards, your courage will fail you, and many a cherished phrase will be spared by your relenting pen. But be persistent, and you will triumph at last. Be not content with one act of erasure. Read the manuscript again, and, seeing how much it is improved, you will be inclined to blot a little more. Lay it aside for a month, and then read again, and blot again as before. Be severe toward yourself.

THE CHOICE OF LANGUAGE.

Simplicity is the crowning achievement of judgment and good taste. It is of very slow growth in the greatest minds; by the multitude it is never acquired. The gradual progress towards it can be curiously traced in the works of the great masters of English composition, wheresoever the injudicious zeal of admirers has given to the world the juvenile writings which their own better taste had suffered to pass into oblivion. Lord Macaulay was an instance of this. Compare his latest with his earliest compositions, as collected in the posthumous volume of his “Remains,” and the growth of improvement will be manifest.

Yet, at first thought, nothing appears to be easier to remember, and to act upon, than the rule, “Say what you want to say in the fewest words that will express your meaning clearly; and let those words be the plainest, the most common (not vulgar), and the most intelligible to the greatest number of persons.” It is certain that a beginner will adopt[26] the very reverse of this. He will say what he has to say in the greatest number of words he can devise, and those words will be the most artificial and uncommon his memory can recall. As he advances, he will learn to drop these long phrases and big words; he will gradually contract his language to the limit of his thoughts, and he will discover, after long experience, that he was never so feeble as when he flattered himself that he was most forcible.

Faults in Writing.

I have dwelt upon this subject with repetitions that may be deemed almost wearisome, because affectations and conceits are the besetting sin of modern composition, and the vice is growing and spreading. The literature of our periodicals teems with it; the magazines are infected by it almost as much as the newspapers, which have been always famous for it.

Instead of an endeavor to write plainly, the express purpose of the writers in the periodicals is to write as obscurely as possible; they make it a rule never to call anything by its proper name, never to say anything directly in plain English, never to express their true meaning. They delight to say something quite different in appearance from that which they purpose to say, requiring the reader to translate it, if he can, and, if he cannot, leaving him in a state of bewilderment, or wholly uninformed.

Worse models you could not find than those presented to you by the newspapers and periodicals; yet are you so beset by them that it is extremely difficult not to catch the infection. Reading day by day compositions teeming with bad taste, and especially where the style floods you with its conceits and affectations, you unconsciously fall into the same vile habit, and incessant vigilance is required to restore you to sound, vigorous, manly, and wholesome English. I cannot recommend to you a better plan for counteracting the inevitable mischief than the daily reading of portions of some of our best writers of English, specimens of which you will find near the close of the First Part of this volume. We learn more by example than in any other way, and a careful perusal of these choice specimens of writing from the works of the most celebrated authors will greatly aid you.

You will soon learn to appreciate the power and beauty of those simple sentences compared with the forcible feebleness of some, and the spasmodic efforts and mountebank contortions of others, that meet your eye when you turn over the pages of magazine or newspaper. I do not say that you will at once become reconciled to plain English, after being accustomed to the tinsel and tin trumpets of too many modern writers; but you will gradually come to like it more and more; you will return to it with greater zest year by year; and, having thoroughly learned to love it, you will strive to follow the example of the authors who have written it.

Read Great Authors.

And this practice of daily reading the writings of one of the great masters of the English tongue should never be abandoned. So long as you have occasion to write or speak, let it be held by you almost as a duty. And here I would suggest that you should read them aloud; for there is no doubt that the words, entering at once by the eye and the ear, are more sharply impressed upon the mind than when perused silently.

Moreover, when reading aloud you read more slowly; the full meaning of each word must be understood, that you may give the right expression to it, and the ear catches the general structure of the sentences more perfectly. Nor will this occupy much time.[27] There is no need to devote to it more than a few minutes every day. Two or three pages thus read daily will suffice to preserve the purity of your taste.

Your first care in composition will be, of course, to express yourself grammatically. This is partly habit, partly teaching. If those with whom a child is brought up talk grammatically, he will do likewise, from mere imitation; but he will learn quite as readily anything ungrammatical to which his ears may be accustomed; and, as the most fortunate of us mingle in childhood with servants and other persons not always observant of number, gender, mood, and tense, and as even they who have enjoyed the best education lapse, in familiar talk, into occasional defiance of grammar, which could not be avoided without pedantry, you will find the study of grammar necessary to you under any circumstances. Your ear will teach you a great deal, and you may usually trust to it as a guide; but sometimes occasions arise when you are puzzled to determine which is the correct form of expression, and in such cases there is safety only in reference to the rule.

Fortunately our public schools and academies give much attention to the study of grammar. The very first evidence that a person is well educated is the ability to speak correctly. If you were to say, “I paid big prices for them pictures,” or, “Her photographs always flatters her,” or, “His fund of jokes and stories make him a pleasant companion,” or, “He buys the paper for you and I”—if you were guilty of committing such gross errors against good grammar, or scores of others that might be mentioned, your chances for obtaining a standing in polite society would be very slim. Educated persons would at once rank you as an ignorant boor, and their treatment of you would be suggestive of weather below zero. Do not “murder the King’s English.”

PUTTING WORDS INTO SENTENCES.

Having pointed out the importance of correct grammar and the right choice of language, I wish now to furnish you with some practical suggestions for the construction of sentences. Remember that a good thought often suffers from a weak and faulty expression of it.

Your sentences will certainly shape themselves after the structure of your own mind. If your thoughts are vivid and definite, so will be your language; if dreamy and hazy, so will your composition be obscure. Your speech, whether oral or written, can be but the expression of yourself; and what you are, that speech will be.

Remember, then, that you cannot materially change the substantial character of your writing; but you may much improve the form of it by the observance of two or three general rules.

In the first place, be sure you have something to say. This may appear to you a very unnecessary precaution; for who, you will ask, having nothing to say, desires to write or to speak? I do not doubt that you have often felt as if your brain was teeming with thoughts too big for words; but when you came to seize them, for the purpose of putting them into words, you have found them evading your grasp and melting into the air. They were not thoughts at all, but fancies—shadows which you had mistaken for substances, and whose vagueness you would never have detected, had you not sought to embody them in language. Hence you will need to be assured that you have thoughts to express, before you try to express them.

[28]

And how to do this? By asking yourself, when you take up the pen, what it is you intend to say, and answering yourself as you best can, without caring for the form of expression. If it is only a vague and mystical idea, conceived in cloudland, you will try in vain to put it into any form of words, however rude. If, however, it is a definite thought, proceed at once to set it down in words and fix it upon paper.

Vague and Hazy Ideas.

The expression of a precise and definite thought is not difficult. Words will follow the thought; indeed, they usually accompany it, because it is almost impossible to think unless the thought is clothed in words. So closely are ideas and language linked by habit, that very few minds are capable of contemplating them apart, insomuch that it may be safely asserted of all intellects, save the highest, that if they are unable to express their ideas, it is because the ideas are incapable of expression—because they are vague and hazy.

For the present purpose it will suffice that you put upon paper the substance of what you desire to say, in terms as rude as you please, the object being simply to measure your thoughts. If you cannot express them, do not attribute your failure to the weakness of language, but to the dreaminess of your ideas, and therefore banish them without mercy, and direct your mind to some more definite object for its contemplations. If you succeed in putting your ideas into words, be they ever so rude, you will have learned the first, the most difficult, and the most important lesson in the art of writing.

The second is far easier. Having thoughts, and having embodied those thoughts in unpolished phrase, your next task will be to present them in the most attractive form. To secure the attention of those to whom you desire to communicate your thoughts, it is not enough that you utter them in any words that come uppermost; you must express them in the best words, and in the most graceful sentences, so that they may be read with pleasure, or at least without offending the taste.

Your first care in the choice of words will be that they shall express precisely your meaning. Words are used so loosely in society that the same word will often be found to convey half a dozen different ideas to as many auditors. Even where there is not a conflict of meanings in the same word, there is usually a choice of words having meanings sufficiently alike to be used indiscriminately, without subjecting the user to a charge of positive error. But the cultivated taste is shown in the selection of such as express the most delicate shades of difference.

Suit the Word to the Thought.

Therefore, it is not enough to have abundance of words; you must learn the precise meaning of each word, and in what it differs from other words supposed to be synonymous; and then you must select that which most exactly conveys the thought you are seeking to embody. There is but one way to fill your mind with words, and that is, to read the best authors, and to acquire an accurate knowledge of the precise meaning of their words—by parsing as you read.

By the practice of parsing, I intend very nearly the process so called at schools, only limiting the exercise to the definitions of the principal words. As thus: take, for instance the sentence that immediately precedes this,—ask yourself what is the meaning of “practice,” of “parsing,” of “process,” and such like. Write the answer to each, that you may be assured that your definition is distinct. Compare it with the definitions of the same word in the dictionaries, and observe[29] the various senses in which it has been used.

You will thus learn also the words that have the same, or nearly the same, meaning—a large vocabulary of which is necessary to composition, for frequent repetition of the same word, especially in the same sentence, is an inelegance, if not a positive error. Compare your definition with that of the authorities, and your use of the word with the uses of it cited in the dictionary, and you will thus measure your own progress in the science of words.

An Amusing Exercise.

This useful exercise may be made extremely amusing as well as instructive, if friends, having a like desire for self-improvement, will join you in the practice of it; and I can assure you that an evening will be thus spent pleasantly as well as profitably. You may make a merry game of it—a game of speculation. Given a word; each one of the company in turn writes his definition of it; Webster’s Dictionary, or some other, is then referred to, and that which comes nearest the authentic definition wins the honor or the prize; it may be a sweepstakes carried off by him whose definition hits the mark the most nearly.

But, whether in company or alone, you should not omit the frequent practice of this exercise, for none will impart such a power of accurate expression and supply such an abundance of apt words wherein to embody the delicate hues and various shadings of thought.

So with sentences, or the combination of words. Much skill is required for their construction. They must convey your meaning accurately, and as far as possible in the natural order of thought, and yet they must not be complex, involved, verbose, stiff, ungainly, or full of repetitions. They must be brief, but not curt; explicit, but not verbose. Here, again, good taste must be your guide, rather than rules which teachers propound, but which the pupil never follows.

Not only does every style require its own construction of a sentence, but almost every combination of thought will demand a different shape in the sentence by which it is conveyed. A standard sentence, like a standard style, is a pedantic absurdity; and, if you would avoid it, you must not try to write by rule, though you may refer to rules in order to find out your faults after you have written.

Lastly, inasmuch as your design is, not only to influence, but to please, it will be necessary for you to cultivate what may be termed the graces of composition. It is not enough that you instruct the minds of your readers; you must gratify their taste, and win their attention, giving pleasure in the very process of imparting information. Hence you must make choice of words that convey no coarse meanings, and excite no disagreeable associations. You are not to sacrifice expression to elegance; but so, likewise, you are not to be content with a word or a sentence if it is offensive or unpleasing, merely because it best expresses your meaning.

Graces of Composition.

The precise boundary between refinement and rudeness cannot be defined; your own cultivated taste must tell you the point at which power or explicitness is to be preferred to delicacy. One more caution I would impress upon you, that you pause and give careful consideration to it before you permit a coarse expression, on account of its correctness, to pass your critical review when you revise your manuscript, and again when you read the proof, if ever you rush into print.

And much might be said also about the music of speech. Your words and sentences[30] must be musical. They must not come harshly from the tongue, if uttered, or grate upon the ear, if heard. There is a rhythm in words which should be observed in all composition, written or oral. The perception of it is a natural gift, but it may be much cultivated and improved by reading the works of the great masters of English, especially of the best poets—the most excellent of all in this wonderful melody of words being Longfellow and Tennyson. Perusal of their works will show you what you should strive to attain in this respect, even though it may not enable you fully to accomplish the object of your endeavor. Aim at the sun and you will shoot high.

ERRORS TO BE AVOIDED.

The faculty for writing varies in various persons. Some write easily, some laboriously; words flow from some pens without effort, others produce them slowly; composition seems to come naturally to a few, and a few never can learn it, toil after it as they may. But whatever the natural power, of this be certain, that good writing cannot be accomplished without study and painstaking practice. Facility is far from being a proof of excellence. Many of the finest works in our language were written slowly and painfully; the words changed again and again, and the structure of the sentences carefully cast and recast.

There is a fatal facility that runs “in one weak, washy, everlasting flood,” that is more hopeless than any slowness or slovenliness. If you find your pen galloping over the paper, take it as a warning of a fault to be shunned; stay your hand, pause, reflect, read what you have written; see what are the thoughts you have set down, and resolutely try to condense them. There is no more wearisome process than to write the same thing over again; nevertheless it is a most efficient teaching. Your endeavor should be to say the same things, but to say them in a different form; to condense your thoughts, and express them in fewer words.

Compare this second effort with the first, and you will at once measure your improvement. You cannot now do better than repeat this lesson twice; rewrite, still bearing steadily in mind your object, which is, to say what you desire to utter in words the most apt and in the briefest form consistent with intelligibility and grace. Having done this, take your last copy and strike out pitilessly every superfluous word, substitute a vigorous or expressive word for a weak one, sacrifice the adjectives without remorse, and, when this work is done, rewrite the whole, as amended.

And, if you would see what you have gained by this laborious but effective process, compare the completed essay with the first draft of it, and you will recognize the superiority of careful composition over facile scribbling. You will be fortunate if you thus acquire a mastery of condensation, and can succeed in putting the reins upon that fatal facility of words, before it has grown into an unconquerable habit.

Simplicity is the charm of writing, as of speech; therefore, cultivate it with care. It is not the natural manner of expression, or, at least, there grows with great rapidity in all of us a tendency to an ornamental style of talking and writing. As soon as the child emerges from the imperfect phraseology of his first letters to papa, he sets himself earnestly to the task of trying to disguise what he has to say in some other words than such as plainly express his meaning and nothing more. To him it seems an object of ambition—a[31] feat to be proud of—to go by the most indirect paths, instead of the straight way, and it is a triumph to give the person he addresses the task of interpreting his language, to find the true meaning lying under the apparent meaning.

Come Right to the Point.

Circumlocution is not the invention of refinement and civilization, but the vice of the uncultivated; it prevails the most with the young in years and in minds that never attain maturity. It is a characteristic of the savage. You cannot too much school yourself to avoid this tendency, if it has not already seized you, as is most probable, or to banish it, if infected by it.

If you have any doubt of your condition in this respect, your better course will be to consult some judicious friend, conscious of the evil and competent to criticism. Submit to him some of your compositions, asking him to tell you candidly what are their faults, and especially what are the circumlocutions in them, and how the same thought might have been better, because more simply and plainly, expressed. Having studied his corrections, rewrite the article, striving to avoid those faults.

Submit this again to your friendly censor, and, if many faults are found still to linger, apply yourself to the labor of repetition once more. Repeat this process with new writings, until you produce them in a shape that requires few blottings, and, having thus learned what to shun, you may venture on self-reliance.

But, even when parted from your friendly critic, you should continue to be your own critic, revising every sentence, with resolute purpose to strike out all superfluous words and to substitute an expressive word for every fine word. You will hesitate to blot many a pet phrase, of whose invention you felt proud at the moment of its birth; but, if it is circumlocution, pass the pen through it ruthlessly, and by degrees you will train yourself to the crowning victory of art—simplicity.

When you are writing on any subject, address yourself to it directly. Come to the point as speedily as possible, and do not walk round about it, as if you were reluctant to grapple with it. There is so much to be read nowadays that it is the duty of all who write to condense their thoughts and words. This cannot always be done in speaking, where slow minds must follow your faster lips, but it is always practicable in writing, where the reader may move slowly, or repeat what he has not understood on the first passing of the eye over the words.

Arranging Your Words.

In constructing your sentences, marshal your words in the order of thought—that is the natural, and therefore the most intelligible shape for language to assume. In conversation we do this instinctively, but in writing the rule is almost always set at defiance. The man who would tell you a story in a plain, straightforward way would not write it without falling into utter confusion and placing almost every word precisely where it ought not to be. In learning to write, let this be your next care.

Probably it will demand much toil at first in rewriting for the sake of redistributing your words; acquired habit of long standing will unconsciously mould your sentences to the accustomed shape; but persevere and you will certainly succeed at last, and your words will express your thoughts precisely as you think them, and as you desire that they should be impressed upon the minds of those to whom they are addressed.

So with the sentences. Let each be complete in itself, embodying one proposition.[32] Shun that tangled skein in which some writers involve themselves, to the perplexity of their readers and their own manifest bewilderment. When you find a sentence falling into such a maze, halt and retrace your steps. Cancel what you have done, and reflect what you design to say. Set clearly before your mind the ideas that you had begun to mingle; disentangle them, range them in orderly array, and express them in distinct sentences, where each will stand separate, but in its right relationship to all the rest.

This exercise will improve, not only your skill in the art of writing, but also in the art of thinking, for those involved sentences are almost always the result of confused thoughts; the resolve to write clearly will compel you to think clearly, and you will be surprised to discover how often thoughts, which had appeared to you definite in contemplation, are found, when you come to set them upon paper, to be most incomplete and shadowy. Knowing the fault, you can then put your wits to work and furnish the remedy.

Exercises in Composition.

SIMPLE SENTENCES.

SUBJECT AND PREDICATE.

The sentence ‘John writes’ consists of two parts:—

and

Similarly the sentence ‘Fire burns’ consists of two parts:—

Every sentence has two such parts.

The name of the person or thing spoken about is called the Subject.

What is said about the Subject is called the Predicate.

Exercise 1.

Point out the Subjects and the Predicates.

Exercise 2.

Place Predicates (Verbs) after the following Subjects:—

Exercise 3.

Place Subjects before the following Predicates:—

[33]

SUBJECT, PREDICATE, AND OBJECT.

The Predicate always is, or contains, a Verb. In many sentences the Predicate is a Verb alone. When it is a Verb in the Active Voice, it has an Object, thus:—

Exercise 4.

Pick out the Subjects, Predicates, and Objects.

Exercise 5.

You will readily understand what is required to complete the sentences in Exercises 5, 6 and 7. A poet writes poems. The smith strikes the iron, etc.

Supply Predicates.

Exercise 6.

Supply Objects.

Exercise 7.

Supply Subjects.

Enlarged Subject.

Subjects may be enlarged by Adjuncts. Thus the sentence “Boys work” may, by additions to the subject, become

Exercise 8.

Point out the Subject and its Adjuncts.

Exercise 9.

Add Adjuncts to each Subject.

Enlarged Objects.

Objects, like Subjects, may be enlarged by Adjuncts. Thus the sentence “Boys learn[34] lessons” may, by additions to the Object, become

Exercise 10.

Point out the Object and its Adjuncts.

Exercise 11.

Add Adjuncts to each Object.

Enlarged Predicate.

Predicates, like Subjects and Objects, may be enlarged by Adjuncts. Thus the sentence “Boys work” may, by additions to the Predicate, become

Exercise 12.

Pick out Predicate and its Adjuncts.

Exercise 13.

Add Adjuncts to each Predicate in Exercises 8, 9, 10 and 11.

Verbs of Incomplete Predication.

Some Verbs do not convey a complete idea, and therefore cannot be Predicates by themselves. Such Verbs are called Verbs of Incomplete Predication, and the words added to complete the Predicate are called the Complement.

Examples of Verbs of Incomplete Predication.

Exercise 14.

Point out the Verbs of Incomplete Predication and the Complements.

Supply Complements.

PRACTICE IN SIMPLE SENTENCES.

A sentence when written should always begin with a capital letter, and nearly always end with a full stop.

[35]

Exercise 15.

Make sentences about

Exercise 16.

Make sentences introducing the following pairs of words:

Exercise 17.

Write complete sentences in answer to the following questions:—

Exercise 18.

Make three sentences about each of the following:—

Exercise 19.

Combine each of the following facts into a sentence and write it out:

[36]

SENTENCES COMBINED.

A number of simple sentences may sometimes be combined so as to form one.

The combined sentence tells us as much as the separate sentences, and tells it in a shorter, clearer, and more pleasing way.

Exercise 20.

Combine the following sets of sentences:—

Sentences are often combined by means of Conjunctions or other connecting words.

Sentences are combined, by means of the Conjunction and.

These may be combined into single sentences, as follows:—

Note the use of the comma when more than two words or sets of words are joined by and:—

The comma is used in the same way with or.

Exercise 21.

Combine the following set of sentences by means of the Conjunction and:—

Sentences are combined by means of the Conjunction or, thus:—

These sentences may be combined as follows:—

Remember to put in the commas when more than two words or sets of words are joined by or, thus:—

Exercise 22.

Combine the following sets of sentences by means of the Conjunction or:—

Sentences may be combined by either ... or, and neither ... nor, thus:—

These sentences may be combined thus:—

Exercise 23.

Combine the following sets of sentences:—(a) By either ... or. (b) By neither ... nor.

Sentences may be combined by both ... and, thus:—

These sentences may be combined in the following:—

Exercise 24.

Combine, by means of both ... and, the sets of sentences given in Exercise 23.

Sentences may be combined by means of Conjunctions of Cause, Consequence or Condition, such as if, though, although, because, thus:—

Combine these sentences as follows:—

Exercise 25.

Combine the following sets of sentences:—

(a) By means of if.

(b) By means of though or although.

(c) By means of because; also by means of as and since.

Sentences may be combined by means of Conjunctive Adverbs (such as where with its compounds, also when, whence, why), and of Conjunctions of Time (such as after, before while, ere, till, until, since).

Exercise 26.

Combine, by means of one of the words given in the last paragraph, the following sets of sentences:

Supply the omitted clauses:

Sentences may be combined by means of Relative Pronouns, thus:

Combine as follows:

Exercise 27.

Combine, as in the examples just given, the following pairs of sentences:

PUNCTUATION.

If the proper stops are left out, the meaning of a sentence may be doubtful. Take, for example, the toast at a public dinner:

The misplacing of the stops may make nonsense of a sentence. Take the sentence:

The Full Stop.

A Full Stop is placed at the end of every sentence.

Exercise 28.

Insert full stops where wanted. Place a capital letter after each.

Write the following, insert stops where wanted, and make good sense of it.

Exercise 29.

Correct the punctuation.

The Note of Interrogation.

Every direct question is followed by a Note of Interrogation; as, “How do you do?” “When did you see your father?” “I suppose, sir, you are a doctor?”

Sometimes a question forms part of a larger sentence, as,

Except in such cases, a note of interrogation is always followed by a capital letter.

Carefully observe the full stops and notes of interrogation in the following:

Exercise 30.

Insert full stops and notes of interrogation.

The Comma.

The Comma is the most frequently used of all stops.

As a general rule, it may be stated that when, in reading, a slight pause is made, a comma should be inserted in writing; thus:—

When a Noun or Pronoun in Apposition is very closely connected with the preceding word, no comma is needed, as,

When the connection is not so close, or when the words in apposition are qualified, the phrase should have commas before and after, as,

Exercise 31.

Insert the necessary commas.

A Nominative of Address is marked off by commas, as,

Should the Nominative of Address have any qualifying words joined to it, the whole phrase is marked off by commas, as,

Exercise 32.

Insert the necessary commas.

An Adverbial phrase or clause let into a sentence should be marked off by commas, as,

Exercise 33.

Supply commas where necessary.

Words, phrases, or clauses of the same kind, coming after one another, must be separated by commas, except when joined by Conjunctions, as,

[42]

Exercise 34.

Supply commas where necessary.

A participial phrase is generally marked off by commas; as,

Exercise 35.

Insert commas where necessary.

Exercise 36.

Insert commas where necessary in the following sentences:—

The Semi-colon.

It may be generally stated that a Semi-colon is used in a complex sentence when a comma would not be a sufficient division.

Co-ordinate clauses or sentences, especially if not joined by Conjunctions, are generally separated by semi-colons.

Examples of the use of semi-colons.

Exercise 37.

Supply semi-colons where necessary.

The Note of Admiration or Exclamation.

The Note of Admiration or Exclamation is used

Exercise 38.

Insert notes of exclamation where necessary.

Quotation Marks.

A Quotation is said to be direct when the exact words are given; it is said to be indirect when the substance is given, but not the exact words; thus:—

Direct quotations.

Indirect quotations.

Exercise 39.

Turn the direct quotations into indirect.

A direct quotation always begins with a capital letter, and is placed within inverted commas, thus:—

The titles of books are generally placed within inverted commas, thus:—

Exercise 40.

Place all direct quotations within inverted commas.

The student should write out all of the above sentences and place the quotation marks where they belong. You have enough examples to guide you.

Sometimes, in the course of a quotation, words are inserted which form no part of the quotation; thus,

In such cases every separate part of the quotation is marked off by inverted commas. A capital letter is placed only at the beginning of the quotation, or after a full stop.

Exercise 41.

Place all direct quotations within inverted commas.

When double inverted commas are used for an ordinary quotation, a quotation within a quotation is marked by single inverted commas; thus,

Exercise 42.

Place all direct quotations within inverted commas.

[45]

A colon (:) is used to separate parts of a sentence that are complete in themselves and nearly independent, often taking the place of a conjunction, thus:—

A period (.) brings the sentence to a full stop, thus:—

Exercise 43.

You now come to a very important part of these exercises. You are to turn to practical account what you have learned concerning Punctuation. Write the lines that follow, and make good sense by dividing them into sentences and placing the punctuation marks where they belong. Take time for this and do it thoroughly.

The following Example will aid you in carrying out your instructions. The sentences are first printed without punctuation. I then construct the sentences and give them punctuation marks:

Insert the necessary stops and capital letters.

[46]

Exercises in Easy Narratives.

In the preceding pages you have been advised to practice the writing of compositions by reading the productions of authors, and then writing from memory what you have read. This may not be easy at first. You will, however, find it less difficult as you proceed. You could not become an expert typewriter or pianist without faithful practice, yet we have expert typewriters and pianists.

It is so with learning to express your thoughts in writing. What is hard at first becomes “second nature” afterward. I have prepared some helpful rules and examples to aid you.

When writing a Story which you have read or heard, observe the following directions:—

1. Before beginning to write, think over the whole story, to make sure that you remember all the points, and the order in which they come.

2. Before beginning to write each sentence, arrange the whole of it in your mind.

3. Make short sentences.

4. Use no word of which you do not know the exact meaning.

5. Do not use long words if you can find short ones.

[47]

6. Arrange the different parts of each sentence so that they convey the meaning which you intend.

7. When you have written your story, always read it over, and correct all the mistakes which you can find.

SHORT STORIES TO BE READ CAREFULLY, AND THEN WRITTEN FROM MEMORY.

The Fox and the Goat.

A fox that had fallen into a well tried in vain to get out again. By-and-by a goat came to the place to quench her thirst. Seeing the fox below she asked if the water was good. “Yes,” answered the cunning creature, “it is so good that I cannot leave off drinking.” Thereupon the goat, without a moment’s thought, jumped in. The fox at once scrambled on her back and got out. Then, looking down at the poor fool, he said coolly, “If you had half as much brains as beard, you would look before you leap.”

The Vain Jackdaw.

A vain jackdaw found some peacocks’ feathers and stuck them amongst his own. Then he left his old companions and boldly went amongst the peacocks. They knew him at once, in spite of his disguise; so they stripped off his borrowed plumes, pecked him well, and sent him about his business. He went back to the daws as if nothing had happened, but they would not allow him to mix with them. If he was too good for them before, they were too good for him now. Thus the silly bird, by trying to appear better than he was, lost his old friends without making any new ones.

The Ant and the Grasshopper.

One frosty day a grasshopper, half dead with cold and hunger, knocked at the door of an ant, and begged for something to eat. “What were you doing in the summer?” asked the ant. “Oh, I was singing all the time.” “Then,” said the ant, “if you could sing all the summer you may dance all the winter.”

The Wolf and the Lamb.

A wolf, coming to a brook to drink, saw a lamb standing in the stream, some distance down. He made up his mind to kill her, and at once set about finding an excuse. “Villain,” he said, “how dare you dirty the water which I am drinking?” The lamb answered meekly, “Sir, it is impossible for me to dirty the water which you are drinking, because the stream runs from you to me, not from me to you.” “Be that as it may,” replied the wolf, “you called me bad names a year ago.” “Sir,” pleaded the lamb, “you are mistaken; a year ago I was not born.” “Then,” said the hungry beast, “if it was not you it was your father, and that is as bad. It is of no use trying to argue me out of my supper.” Thereupon he fell upon the poor creature and ate her up.

What the Bear Said.

As two friends were traveling through a wood, a bear rushed out upon them. One of the men without a thought to his companion, climbed up into a tree, and hid among the branches. The other, knowing that alone he had no chance, threw himself on the ground, and pretended to be dead; for he had heard that bears will not touch a dead body. The creature came and sniffed him from head to foot, but, thinking him to be lifeless, went away without harming him. Then the man in the tree got down, and, hoping to pass his cowardice off with a joke, he said, “I noticed that the bear had his mouth very close to your ear; what did he whisper to you?” “Oh,” answered the other, “he only told me never to keep company with those who in time of danger leave their friends in the lurch.”

Bad Company.

A farmer who had just sown his fields placed a net to catch the cranes that came to steal his corn. After some time he went to look at the net, and in it he found several cranes and one stork. “Oh, sir, please spare me,” said the stork; “I am not a crane, I am an innocent stork, kind to my parents, and——” The farmer would hear no more. “All that may be very true,” he said, “but it is no business of mine. I found you amongst thieves, and you must suffer with them.”

[48]

Mercury and the Woodmen.

A woodman was working beside a deep river when his axe slipped, and fell into the water. As the axe was his living, he was very sorry to lose it, and sat on the bank to weep. Mercury, hearing his cries, appeared to him, and, finding what was the matter, dived, and brought up a golden axe. “Is this the one which you lost?” asked the god. “No,” said the woodman. Then the god dived a second time, and brought up a silver axe, and asked if that was the one. The woodman again answered “No.” So Mercury dived a third time, and then he brought up the axe which had been lost. “That is mine,” cried the woodman joyfully. The god gave it to him, and presented him with the other two as a reward for his truth and honesty.

One of the woodman’s neighbors, hearing what had happened, determined to see if he could not have the same good luck. He went to the bank of the river, began to fell a tree, purposely let his axe slip into the water, and then pretended to cry. Mercury appeared as before, dived, and brought up a golden axe. The man, in his eagerness to grasp the prize, forgot to act as his neighbor had done; so when the god asked, “Is that yours?” he answered “Yes.” To punish him for his lying and dishonesty, the god would neither give him the golden axe nor find his own.

Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Siddons.

Dr. Johnson always spoke scornfully of actors and actresses, but he treated the famous actress, Mrs. Siddons, with great politeness. She called on him, and his servant could not readily find a chair for her. “You see, madam,” said the doctor, “wherever you go no seats can be got.”

Clever Children.

An ignorant Englishman once visited Paris. After his return he was talking to some of his friends about the wonders he had seen. “I was most surprised,” he said, “with the cleverness of the children. Boys and girls of seven or eight spoke French quite as easily as the children in this country speak English.”

One Good Turn Deserves Another.

A Cambridge student sent to another student to borrow a book. “I never lend my books out,” was the answer, “but if the gentleman chooses to come to my rooms he may use them there.” A few days after the book owner sent to the other student to borrow a carpet sweeper. “I never lend my carpet sweeper,” replied he, “but if the gentleman chooses to come to my rooms he may use it there.”

Learning Rewarded.

A rich farmer sent his son to a famous university. The young man was rather foolish, and brought home more folly than learning. One night, when there were two fowls for supper, he said, “I can prove these two fowls to be three.” “Let us hear,” answered the old man. “This,” said the scholar, pointing to the first, “is one; this,” pointing to the second, “is two; and two and one make three.” “Since you have made it out so well,” replied the father, “your mother shall have the first fowl, I will have the second, and you may keep the third for your great learning.”

Daring a Dutchman.

A Dutch vessel and an English vessel were lying near each other. One of the Dutch sailors wished to show his activity, so he ran up the mast, and stood upon his head on the top of it. One of the English sailors (who did not like to be beaten by a Dutchman) also tried to stand upon his head on the top of the mast. He, however, fell. The rigging broke his fall and he alighted on the deck unhurt. “There, you lubber,” he cried, “do that if you dare.”

The Miserly Planter.

A very miserly planter formerly lived in the island of Jamaica. He often gave his poor slaves too little food. They complained, and he answered that he could not help himself, because the provision ships had been taken by pirates. This lying excuse satisfied them once, twice, thrice, and again, but in the end long fasting made them impatient. Then they went to their master and said to him, “Is it not strange that the pirates have so often taken the ships bringing food, but have never taken the ships bringing pickaxes and hoes?”

A Precious Turnip.

Before Louis the Eleventh became king he used to visit a peasant whose garden produced excellent fruit. After his accession, the peasant brought him as a present a very large turnip which had grown in his garden. The king, remembering the pleasant hours that he had spent under the old man’s roof, gave him a thousand crowns. The lord of the village, hearing of this, thought that if one who gave a paltry turnip received so large a reward, one who gave a really valuable present would receive a still larger reward. He, therefore, offered a splendid horse. The king accepted it and, calling for the big turnip, said, “This cost me a thousand crowns; I give it to you in return for your horse.”

[49]

The Dangers of a Bed.

A carpenter asked a sailor, “Where did your father die?” The sailor answered, “My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather were all drowned at sea.” “Then,” said the carpenter, “are you not afraid of going to sea, lest you should be drowned too?” Instead of replying, the sailor asked, “Where did your father die?” “In his bed.” “And your grandfather?” “In his bed.” “And your great-grandfather?” “In his bed also.” “Then,” said the sailor, “why should I be more afraid of going to sea than you are of going to bed?”

How to treat Enemies.

A Scotch minister had in his parish a man who sometimes used to get drunk. One day the minister, reproving him for his bad habit, said, “You love whisky too much, Donald; you know very well that it is your worst enemy.” “But,” answered the man slily, “have you not often told us that we ought to love our enemies?” “True, Donald, but I never told you that you ought to swallow them.”

The Secret of Success.

During the long struggle between England and France, two ignorant old ladies were discussing the war as they went to church. One said, “Is it not wonderful that the English always beat the French?” “Not at all,” answered the other; “don’t you know that the English always say their prayers before going into battle?” “But,” replied the first, “can’t the French say their prayers as well?” “Tut, tut,” said the second; “poor jabbering bodies, who can understand them?”

The Preacher for Prisoners.

When David Dewar was a member of the Prison Board the question of appointing a chaplain for the jail came up. The favorite candidate of the other members of the Board was an unsuccessful clergyman. David, when asked to vote for him, said, “I have no objection; I hear that he has already preached a church empty, and if he will only preach the jail empty too, he is just the man for our money.”

The Squire and his Servant.

A Scotch squire was one day riding out with his man. Opposite a hole in a steep bank the master stopped and said, “John, I saw a badger go in there.” “Did you?” said John; “will you hold my horse, sir?” “Certainly,” answered the squire, and away rushed John for a spade. He got one and dug furiously for half an hour, the squire looking on with an amused look. At last John exclaimed, “I can’t find him, sir.” “I should be surprised if you could,” said the squire, “for it is ten years since I saw him go in.”

Proper Payment.

A boy went into a baker’s shop and bought a five-cent loaf. It seemed to him rather small, so he said that he did not believe it to be of full weight. “Never mind,” answered the baker, “you will have the less to carry.” “True,” replied the lad, and throwing four cents on the counter he left the shop. The baker called after him, “Hi! this is not enough money.” “Never mind,” said the boy, “you will have the less to count.”

The Corporal’s Watch.

A corporal in the life-guards of Frederick the Great was a brave but rather vain fellow. He could not afford a watch, but managed to buy a chain, and this he wore with a bullet at the end. The king, hearing of this, thought he would have a little fun at the soldier’s expense, so he said to him, “It is six o’clock by my watch; what time is it by yours?” The man drew the bullet from his pocket and answered, “My watch does not mark the hour, but it tells me every moment that it is my duty to face death for your Majesty.” “Here, my friend,” said Frederick, offering him his own costly watch, “take this, that you may be able to tell the hour also.”

Three Toasts.

When the Earl of Stair was ambassador in Holland he was once at a banquet with the French and Austrian ambassadors. The Frenchman proposed the health of his master, calling him, “The Sun.” The Austrian then proposed the health of his mistress, calling her “The Moon.” The Earl of Stair was equal to the occasion, for when his turn came he proposed the health of his sovereign as “Joshua, who made the sun and moon to stand still.”

Going to Sleep in Church.

A Scotch clergyman had a youth in his congregation who was underwitted, and was commonly spoken of as being half daft. One Sunday the clergyman observed that all his hearers were asleep except this youth. After the service the minister congratulated him upon being awake, when he naively replied, “Maybe if I hadn’t been half daft I would have been asleep too.”

Striking Back.

A little girl complained to her brother that a boy had struck her. “Why did you not strike back?” he asked. “O,” said the innocent creature, “I did that before he hit me.”

[50]

Outlines to be Turned into Narratives.

The following is an outline of one of Æsop’s fables:—

This outline may be filled in thus:—

In the fable, as thus told, there are several points (printed in italics) which are not in the outline. Such little details help to make the story more real.

The Snake’s Ingratitude.

This outline may be filled in as follows:—

The Lion and the Mouse.

The Frog and the Ox.

The Hare and the Tortoise.

Dividing the Spoils.

The Wind and the Sun.

The Bundle of Sticks.

[51]

The Goose with the Golden Eggs.

The Frogs asking for a King.

The Battle of the Birds and Beasts.

The Hart and the Vine.

The Lion and the Bulls.

Saved by the Life-boat.

Story of a Tramp.

Stories in Verse to be Turned into Prose.

The following poem, by Charles Kingsley, tells a touching little story:—

Three fishers went sailing away to the west,

Away to the west as the sun went down;

Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,

And the children stood watching them out of the town.

For men must work, and women must weep,

And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,

Though the harbor bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,

And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;

They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,

And the night-rack came rolling up, ragged and brown!

But men must work, and women must weep,

Though storms be sudden and waters deep,

And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,

In the morning gleam, as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands

For those who will never come home to the town.

For men must work, and women must weep,

And the sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep,

And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

[52]

Here is the same story, told in prose:—

Note that in this prose rendering there is no attempt to preserve the poetry. Attention has been paid to the story only, and that has been told in the simplest manner. I here append a cluster of poems to be turned into prose.

THE SANDS OF DEE.

“O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands of Dee!”

The western wind was wild and dark with foam,

And all alone went she.

The creeping tide came up along the sand,

And o’er and o’er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see;

The blinding mist came up and hid the land,

And never home came she.

Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,—

A tress of golden hair,

Of drownèd maiden’s hair,

Above the nets at sea?

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,

Among the stakes of Dee!

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

The cruel, crawling foam,

The cruel, hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea;

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home

Across the sands of Dee.—Charles Kingsley.

THE WAY TO WIN.

There’s always a river to cross,

Always an effort to make,

If there’s anything good to win,

Any rich prize to take.

Yonder’s the fruit we crave,

Yonder the charming scene;

But deep and wide, with a troubled tide,

Is the river that lies between.

PRESS ON.

Press on! there’s no such word as fail;

Press nobly on! the goal is near;

Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!

Look upward, onward—never fear!

Press on! if once, and twice thy feet

Slip back and stumble, harder try;

From him who never dreads to meet

Danger and death, they’re sure to fly.

To coward ranks the bullet speeds;

While on their breasts who never quail,

Gleams, guardian of chivalric deeds,

Bright courage, like a coat of mail.

Press on! if fortune play thee false

To-day, to-morrow she’ll be true;

Whom now she sinks, she now exalts,

Taking old gifts and granting new.

The wisdom of the present hour

Makes up for follies past and gone;

To weakness strength succeeds, and power

From frailty springs:—Press on! Press on!—Park Benjamin.

THE DYING WARRIOR.

A wounded chieftain, lying

By the Danube’s leafy side,

Thus faintly said, in dying,

“Oh! bear, thou foaming tide,

This gift to my lady bride.”

’Twas then, in life’s last quiver,

He flung the scarf he wore

[53]

Into the foaming river,

Which, ah, too quickly, bore

That pledge of one no more!

With fond impatience burning,

The chieftain’s lady stood,

To watch her love returning

In triumph down the flood,

From that day’s field of blood.

But, field, alas! ill-fated,

The lady saw, instead

Of the bark whose speed she waited,

Her hero’s scarf, all red

With the drops his heart had shed.

One shriek—and all was over—

Her life-pulse ceased to beat;

The gloomy waves now cover

That bridal flower so sweet,

And the scarf is her winding-sheet.—Thomas Moore.

THE BOY THAT LAUGHS.

I know a funny little boy,

The happiest ever born;

His face is like a beam of joy,

Although his clothes are torn.

I saw him tumble on his nose,

And waited for a groan;

But how he laughed! Do you suppose

He struck his funny bone?

There’s sunshine in each word he speaks;

His laugh is something grand;

Its ripples overrun his cheeks

Like waves on snowy sand.

He laughs the moment he awakes,

And till the day is done,

The school-room for a joke he takes,

His lessons are but fun.

No matter how the day may go,

You cannot make him cry.

He’s worth a dozen boys I know,

Who pout and mope and sigh.

THE CAT’S BATH.

As pussy sat washing her face by the gate,

A nice little dog came to have a good chat;

And after some talk about matters of state,

Said, with a low bow, “My dear Mrs. Cat,

I really do hope you’ll not think I am rude;

I am curious, I know, and that you may say—

Perhaps you’ll be angry; but no, you’re too good—

Pray why do you wash in that very odd way?

“Now I every day rush away to the lake,

And in the clear water I dive and I swim;

I dry my wet fur with a run and a shake,

And am fresh as a rose and neat as a pin.

But you any day in the sun may be seen,

Just rubbing yourself with your red little tongue;

I admire the grace with which it is done—

But really, now, are you sure you get yourself clean?”

The cat, who sat swelling with rage and surprise

At this, could no longer her fury contain,

For she had always supposed herself rather precise,

And of her sleek neatness had been somewhat vain;

So she flew at poor doggy and boxed both his ears,

Scratched his nose and his eyes, and spit in his face,

And sent him off yelping; from which it appears

Those who ask prying questions may meet with disgrace.

THE BEGGAR MAN.

Around the fire, one wintry night,

The farmer’s rosy children sat;

The fagot lent its blazing light,

And jokes went round, and careless chat;

When, hark! a gentle hand they hear

Low tapping at the bolted door;

And thus, to gain their willing ear,

A feeble voice was heard implore:—

“Cold blows the blast across the moor,

The sleet drives hissing in the wind;

Yon toilsome mountain lies before,

A dreary, treeless waste behind.

“My eyes are weak and dim with age,

No road, no path can I descry;

And these poor rags ill stand the rage

Of such a keen, inclement sky.

“So faint I am, these tottering feet

No more my palsied frame can bear;

My freezing heart forgets to beat,

And drifting snows my tomb prepare.

“Open your hospitable door,

And shield me from the biting blast:

[54]

Cold, cold it blows across the moor,

The weary moor that I have passed!”

With hasty steps the farmer ran,

And close beside the fire they place

The poor half-frozen beggar man,

With shaking limbs and pale-blue face.

The little children flocking came,

And chafed his frozen hands in theirs;

And busily the good old dame

A comfortable mess prepares.

Their kindness cheered his drooping soul;

And slowly down his wrinkled cheek

The big round tear was seen to roll,

Which told the thanks he could not speak.

The children then began to sigh,

And all their merry chat was o’er;

And yet they felt, they knew not why,

More glad than they had done before.—Aiken.

THE SHOWER-BATH.

Quoth Dermot (a lodger at Mrs. O’Flynn’s),

“How queerly my shower-bath feels!

It shocks like a posse of needles and pins,

Or a shoal of electrical eels.”

Quoth Murphy, “Then mend it, and I’ll tell you how

It’s all your own fault, my good fellow:

I used to be bothered as you are, but now

I’m wiser—I take my umbrella.”—James Smith.

QUEEN MARY’S RETURN TO SCOTLAND.

After a youth by woes o’ercast,

After a thousand sorrows past,

The lovely Mary once again

Set foot upon her native plain;

Knelt on the pier with modest grace,

And turned to heaven her beauteous face.

’Twas then the caps in air were blended,

A thousand thousand shouts ascended,

Shivered the breeze around the throng,

Gray barrier cliffs the peals prolong;

And every tongue gave thanks to heaven,

That Mary to their hopes was given.

Her comely form and graceful mien

Bespoke the lady and the queen;

The woes of one so fair and young

Moved every heart and every tongue.

Driven from her home, a helpless child,

To brave the winds and billows wild;

An exile bred in realms afar,

Amid commotions, broils, and war.

In one short year, her hopes all crossed

A parent, husband, kingdom, lost!

And all ere eighteen years had shed

Their honors o’er her royal head.

For such a queen, the Stuart’s heir,—

A queen so courteous, young, and fair,—

Who would not every foe defy?

Who would not stand—who would not die?

Light on her airy steed she sprung,

Around with golden tassels hung;

No chieftain there rode half so free,

Or half so light and gracefully.

How sweet to see her ringlets pale

Wide waving in the southland gale,

Which through the broomwood blossoms flew,

To fan her cheeks of rosy hue!

Whene’er it heaved her bosom’s screen,

What beauties in her form were seen!

And when her courser’s mane it swung,

A thousand silver bells were rung.

A sight so fair, on Scottish plain,

A Scot shall never see again!—Hogg.

THE EAGLE AND SERPENT.

In the air do I behold indeed

An eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight,

And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,

Before th’ aerial rock on which I stood,

The eagle hovering wheeled to left and right,

And hung with lingering wings over the flood,

And startled with its yells the wide air’s solitude.

A shaft of light upon its wings descended,

And every golden feather gleamed therein,

Feather and scale inextricably blended:

The serpent’s mailed and many-colored skin

Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within,

With many a swoln and knotted fold; and high

And far the neck receding lithe and thin,

Sustained a crested head, which warily

Shifted, and glanced before the eagle’s steadfast eye.

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,

With clang of wings and scream the eagle sailed

Incessantly; sometimes on high concealing

Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,

Drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed,

And, casting back its eager head, with beak

And talon unremittingly assailed

The wreathèd serpent, who did ever seek

Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.—Shelley.

[55]

ASK AND HAVE.

“Oh, ’tis time I should talk to your mother,

Sweet Mary,” says I;

“Oh, don’t talk to my mother,” says Mary,

Beginning to cry:

“For my mother says men are deceivers,

And never, I know, will consent;

She says girls in a hurry who marry,

At leisure repent.”

“Then, suppose I would talk to your father,

Sweet Mary,” says I;

“Oh, don’t talk to my father,” says Mary,

Beginning to cry:

“For my father, he loves me so dearly,

He’ll never consent I should go—

If you talk to my father,” says Mary,

“He’ll surely say ‘No.’”

“Then how shall I get you, my jewel?

Sweet Mary,” says I;

“If your father and mother’s so cruel,

Most surely I’ll die!”

“Oh, never say die, dear,” says Mary;

“A way now to save you I see;

Since my parents are both so contrary—

You’d better ask me.”—Lover.

WHAT WAS HIS CREED?

He left a load of anthracite

In front of a poor widow’s door

When the deep snow, frozen and white,

Wrapped street and square, mountain and moor—

That was his deed:

He did it well;

“What was his creed?”

I cannot tell.

Blessed “in his basket and his store,”

In sitting down and rising up;

When more he got he gave the more,

Withholding not the crust and cup;

He took the lead

In each good task;

“What was his creed?”

I did not ask.

His charity was like the snow,

Soft, white, and silken in its fall;

Not like the noisy winds that blow

From shivering trees the leaves; a pall

For flower and weed,

Dropping below;

“What was his creed?”

The poor may know.

He had great faith in loaves of bread

For hungry people, young and old;

And hope inspired, kind words he said,

To those he sheltered from the cold,

For he must feed

As well as pray;

“What was his creed?”

I cannot say.

THE OLD REAPER.

Mid the brown-haired and the black-haired men,

With ruddy faces aglow,

The old man stood in the harvest field,

With a head as white as snow.

“Let me cut a sheaf, my boys,” he said,

“Before it is time to go.”

They put the sickle within his hand:

He bowed to the windy wheat;

Pleasantly fell the golden ears,

With the corn flowers at his feet.

He lifted a handful, thoughtfully;

It was ripe and full and sweet.

“Many and many a sheaf,” he said,

“I have cut in the years gone past;

And many and many a sheaf these arms

On the harvest wains have cast.

But, children dear, I am weary now,

And I think this is—the last.

“Let me rest awhile beneath the tree;

For I like to watch you go,

With sickles bright, through the ripe, full wheat,

And to feel the fresh wind blow.”

And they spread their working coats for him

’Mong the grasses sweet and low.

When the sun grew high they came again,

For a drink and their bread and meat;

And in the shadow he sleeping lay,

With sunshine on his feet.

Like a child at night, outspent with play,

He lay in slumber sweet.

THE GALLANT SAIL-BOAT.

The boat, impatient of delay,

With spreading, white wings flew away,

Pushed its bold venture more and more.

Left far behind the fading shore,

And glided on, swan-like and free,

A thing of life, sylph of the sea.

The speed grew swift, each eager sail

Swelled as it caught the gentle gale,

[56]

And so, with canvas all unfurled,

Around the prow the waters curled,

And wreaths of spray, formed one by one,

Made rainbows in the shining sun.

The lively breeze then stiffer grew,

The sail-boat leaped and darted through

Each billow as it struck her breast,

Or, mounting upward, skimmed the crest,

Plunged down into the hollow graves,

Made by the fast advancing waves,

Then rose again with graceful bound,

Wet with the white-caps splashing round,

And in her frolicsome advance,

Moved like a maiden in the dance.

Careening low upon her side,

No bird that cuts the air could glide

More deftly than she gaily flew,

Light-hearted, o’er the waters blue.

And just as gay were those on board,

Their youthful spirits in accord.

As well-tuned strings wake with a thrill,

Touched by the harpist’s facile skill,

So these young hearts were in attune,

And carolled like the birds of June.

The pleasure-seekers, side by side,

Rode with the wind, rode with the tide,

While sparkling jest and blithesome song,

And bursts of laughter loud and long,

Spontaneous mirth and shouts of glee,

Went floating o’er the ruffled sea.—Davenport.

WOOING.

A little bird once met another bird,

And whistled to her, “Will you be my mate?”

With fluttering wings she twittered, “How absurd!

Oh, what a silly pate!”

And off into a distant tree she flew,

To find concealment in the shady cover;

And passed the hours in slily peeping through

At her rejected lover.

The jilted bird, with drooping heart and wing,

Poured forth his grief all day in plaintiff songs;

Telling in sadness to the ear of spring

The story of his wrongs.

But little thought he, while each nook and dell

With the wild music of his plaint was thrilling,

That scornful breast with sighs began to swell—

Half-pitying and half-willing.

Next month I walked the same sequestered way,

When close together on a twig I spied them;

And in a nest half-hid with leaves there lay

Four little birds beside them.

Coy maid, this moral in your ear I drop:

When lover’s hopes within their hearts you prison,

Fly out of sight and hearing; do not stop

To look behind and listen.—Soule.

MISS LAUGH AND MISS FRET.

Cries little Miss Fret,

In a very great pet:

“I hate this warm weather; it’s horrid to tan.

It scorches my nose,

And blisters my toes,

And wherever I go, I must carry a fan.”

Chirps little Miss Laugh:

“Why, I couldn’t tell half

The fun I am having this bright summer day.

I sing through the hours,

I cull pretty flowers,

And ride like a queen on the sweet smelling hay.”

MONTEREY.

We were not many, we who stood

Before the iron sleet that day;

Yet many a gallant spirit would

Give half his years if but he could

Have with us been at Monterey.

Now here, now there, the shot it hailed

In deadly drifts of fiery spray,

Yet not a single soldier quailed

When wounded comrades round him wailed

Their dying shout at Monterey.

And on, still on, our column kept

Through walls of flame its wavering way;

Where fell the dead, the living stepped,

Still charging on the guns which swept

The slippery streets of Monterey.

The foe himself recoiled aghast,

When, striking where he strongest lay,

We swooped his flanking batteries past,

And braving full their murderous blast,

Stormed home the towers of Monterey.

Our banners on those turrets wave,

And there our evening bugles play,

Where orange-boughs above their grave,

Keep green the memory of the brave

Who fought and fell at Monterey.

[57]

We are not many, we who pressed

Beside the brave who fell that day;

But who of us has not confessed

He’d rather share their warrior rest

Than not have been at Monterey?—Hoffman.

A WOMAN’S WATCH.

Oh, I am a woman’s watch, am I,

But I would that I were not;

For if you knew, you would not deny

That mine is a sorry lot.

She will let me rest for a great long while,

Then all of a sudden seek

To twist me up so tight that I’ll

Keep going for a week.

She leaves me open when she will,

Till I’m sick of dirt and things;

Of pins and hair I have got my fill,

And of buttons, hooks and strings.

There’s a four-leaf clover in me, too,

And a piece of a photograph;

I’m stuffed completely through and through

With toothpicks, cloves and chaff.

My hands are twisted to and fro,

I’m thumped and jarred, alack!

And then, if I fail to straightway go,

I’m pounded front and back.

With her hat-pin all my wheels she’ll pry

Till she breaks them every one,

And then she’ll say: “I don’t see why

This mean old thing won’t run!”

LOVE LIGHTENS LABOR.

A good wife rose from her bed one morn,

And thought, with a nervous dread,

Of the piles of clothes to be washed, and more

Than a dozen mouths to be fed,

“There’s the meals to be got for the men in the field,

And the children to fix away

To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned;

And all to be done this day.”

It had rained in the night, and all the wood

Was wet as it could be;

There were puddings and pies to bake, besides

A loaf of cake for tea.

And the day was hot, and her aching head

Throbbed wearily as she said.

“If maidens but knew what good wives know,

They would not be in haste to wed!”

“Jennie, what do you think I told Ben Brown?”

Called the farmer from the well;

And a flush crept up to his bronzed brow,

And his eyes half-blushingly fell:

“It was this,” he said, and coming near

He smiled, and stooping down,

Kissed her cheek—“’twas this, that you were the best

And the dearest wife in town!”

The farmer went back to the field, and the wife,

In a smiling, absent way,

Sang snatches of tender little songs

She’d not sung for many a day.

And the pain in her head was gone, and the clothes

Were white as the foam of the sea;

Her bread was light, and her butter was sweet,

And as golden as it could be.

“Just think,” the children all called in a breath,

“Tom Wood has run off to sea!

He wouldn’t, I know, if he’d only had

As happy a home as we.”

The night came down, and the good wife smiled

To herself, as she softly said:

“’Tis so sweet to labor for those we love—

It’s not strange that maids will wed!”

ABOU BEN ADHEM.

Abou Ben Adhem—may his tribe increase!

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel, writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the Presence in the room he said,

“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,

And, with a look made all of sweet accord,

Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.—Leigh Hunt.

[58]

ESSAYS TO BE WRITTEN FROM OUTLINES.

It is considered best by most experienced writers to prepare a plan of the composition, of whatever character it may be. In this way you are able to properly arrange your thoughts, and are less likely to omit something which ought to be treated.

There are authors who map out in their minds a general plan without committing it formally to paper. The disadvantage of this method is that something is liable to be forgotten, or inserted in the wrong place. Many authors compose a whole book with nothing more in mind than the general outline: others draw out what lawyers would call a “brief,” from which they build up their production step by step.

To aid you in learning how to write compositions, I have inserted here the outlines of essays from which the complete productions are to be written. Many of these subjects will compel you to consult books in order that you may obtain the information you require, yet this will only be a benefit to you, and will amply repay all the time and labor you expend.

You do not need to confine yourself to the thoughts suggested in these outlines. Think for yourself; do not always go on crutches. Introduce new matter and express whatever is suggested to your mind, that will make your production complete and interesting.

The following is an outline of a brief and simple essay on “The Cat.”

The outline may be filled in thus:—

Dog.

Kinds of Dogs.

Hay.

Grain.

Flour.

[59]

Bread.

Butter.

Lion.

Tiger.

Elephant.

Stories of Elephants.

Owl.

Swallow.

Cuckoo.

Tea.

Coffee.

Coal.

[60]

Iron.

Spring.

Christmas.

Your School.

Any Town.

Linen.

Blind Man’s Buff.

Base Ball.

The Blacksmith’s Shop.

The Carpenter’s Shop.

Soldier.

A Farm Laborer.

A Visit to Washington.

Cleanliness.

Lying.

Cruelty to Animals.

Thrift.

Make Hay while the Sun Shines.

A Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss.

“Virtue is its Own Reward.”

Easy Subjects for Compositions.

Rabbit. Fox. Pig. Mouse. Bear. Camel. Monkey. Sheep. Goat. Cow. Hen. Duck. Robin. Lark. Canary. Ostrich. Eagle. Pigeon. Gull. Sparrow. Whale. Seal. Bee. Spider. Fly. Butterfly. Shark. Herring. Mackerel. Crab. Cod. Frog. Crocodile. Turtle. Adder. Cocoa. Sugar. Sago. Cork. India rubber. Potato. Turnip. Salt. Lead. Tin. Copper. Gold. Knife. Glass. Paper. Soap. Pins. Needles. Candles. Cotton. Silk. Woollen cloth. Autumn. Winter. Any game with marbles. Making and flying kites. Boating. Swimming. Fishing. Football. Skating. Lawn tennis. Punctuality. Industry. Perseverance. Obedience. Bad language. Good manners. Good habits. Temperance. Honesty. The “Golden Rule.” How to make yourself useful at home.

Describe:—(a) A house. (b) A street. (c) A church. (d) Any village. (e) Any town. (f) A farm. (g) A mill. (h) The sea-side. (i) Common spring flowers. (j) The most beautiful place you have seen. (k) A snow-storm. (l) A thunder-storm.

Describe the life and work of:—(a) A mason. (b) A gardener. (c) A teacher. (d) A doctor. (e) A sailor. (f) A policeman. (g) A postman. (h) A tailor. (i) A baker. (j) A shepherd. (k) A fisherman. (l) An errand-boy. (m) A painter.

Describe a visit to:—(a) The seaside. (b) Chicago or some other large town. (c) The Zoological Gardens or a menagerie. (d) A circus. (e) A school exhibition. (f) A department store. (g) A country dairy. (h) A picture gallery.

Tell a story about:—(a) A dog. (b) A cat. (c) A horse. (d) A monkey. (e) A parrot. (f) An elephant. (g) A hen.

[62]

Tell any stories you know illustrating the following sayings:—

Explain and illustrate the following proverbs:—

Use of Illustrations.

An apt illustration is always a help to a writer or speaker. The mind of the reader or hearer is interested in tracing the comparison, and receives a stronger impression than it does when the thought is stated simply by itself.

Many of the most famous orators have been very gifted in employing similes to express their meaning. You should cultivate the habit of using illustrations. Although there is sometimes danger in employing them, yet where carefully and rightly used they not only ornament the composition, but render its thoughts and ideas more striking, more impressive and more easily remembered.

A Simile is a comparison explicitly stated; as,

A Metaphor is a condensed Simile. The comparison is implied, but not expressed at length; thus:—

Similes and Metaphors are employed

1. To aid the understanding.

2. To intensify the feelings; as

3. To give point and force to what we wish to express.

The following rules should be observed in the conduct of Metaphors:—

Examples of Apt Illustrations.

Examples of Faulty Illustrations.

How to Compose and Write Letters.

To be a good letter writer is an accomplishment as desirable as it is rare. Few persons possess the faculty of writing an interesting letter, politely and gracefully expressed. Unless you are an exception to the general rule you become stiff and formal when you attempt to express your thoughts to a friend, or make known your wants to a man of business. The epistle is labored, unnatural and lacking in that ease which is the charm of conversation.

“I now take my pen in hand,” etc. Do get rid of all old, set forms of expression. Imagine the person to whom you are writing as placed right before you, and talk to him with your pen as you would with your tongue.

There can be but one opinion concerning the general value of correspondence. How often people complain that they do not get letters from their friends. Neglect can be shown in no way more effectively than by failing to answer a letter when it ought to be written.

In writing a letter, care should be taken that the different parts are properly arranged.

First comes the Address of the Writer.

After the address comes the Date of Writing.

Next comes the Form of Address.

After the form of address comes the Letter.

After the letter comes the Subscription, as,

A business letter ends with the Address of the Person to whom it is Sent.

[65]

Examples of Letters.

Application for a Situation.

Letters of Invitation.

Notes of Invitation.

[66]

Letters of Congratulation.

Love Letters.

Outlines to be Expanded into Letters.

Inviting a Friend to Tea.

Accepting Invitation.

Declining Invitation.

From a Town Child to a Country Child.

Answer from Country Child to Town Child.

Do not consider yourself too ambitious when you make an earnest effort to express your thoughts so well that your productions will compare favorably with those of the best writers. You should have specimens of the best composition before you. The following pages contain such, and you will readily see how the most famous authors construct their sentences, what apt words they choose, and how easily, yet forcibly, they express their ideas.

Do not be disheartened if you fail to come up to the standard here placed before you. It is related of the great painter, Correggio, that he was once almost ready to fling away his brush, exclaiming, “I can never paint like Raphael.” But he persevered, and at length the great painter whom he admired so much said, “If I were not Raphael, I would wish to be Correggio.” You should take the best writers for your models and set your standard high. Be a severe critic of yourself, and do your very best.

GETTING THE RIGHT START.

By J. G. Holland.

In clear expression of thought and use of plain, forcible English, the works of Doctor Holland are superior to those of most authors. He does not employ large, overgrown words, but such as are easily understood. This is one secret of the popularity of his writings. Dr. Holland was born at Belchertown, Mass., in 1819, and died October 12, 1881. He was associate editor of the “Springfield Republican,” and in 1870 became editor of “Scribner’s Magazine.” Both as a writer of prose and poetry he is held in high esteem by all lovers of elevated thought and pure diction.

Society demands that a young man shall be somebody, not only, but that he shall prove his right to the title; and it has a right to demand this. Society will not take this matter upon trust—at least, not for a long time, for it has been cheated too frequently. Society is not very particular what a man does, so that it proves him to be a man: then it will bow to him, and make room for him.

I know a young man who made a place for himself by writing an article for the North American Review: nobody read the article, so far as I know, but the fact that he wrote such an article, that it was very long, and that it was published, did the business for him. Everybody, however, cannot write articles for the North American Review—at least I hope everybody will not, for it is a publication which makes me a quarterly visit; but everybody, who is somebody, can do something. There is a wide range of effort between holding a skein of silk for a lady and saving her from drowning—between collecting voters on election day and teaching a Sunday-school class.

A man must enter society of his own free will, as an active element or a valuable component, before he can receive the recognition that every true man longs for. I take it that this is right. A man who is willing to enter society as a beneficiary is mean, and does not deserve recognition.

There is no surer sign of an unmanly and[68] cowardly spirit than a vague desire for help, a wish to depend, to lean upon somebody, and enjoy the fruits of the industry of others. There are multitudes of young men, I suppose, who indulge in dreams of help from some quarter, coming in at a convenient moment, to enable them to secure the success in life which they covet.

The vision haunts them of some benevolent old gentleman with a pocket full of money, a trunk full of mortgages and stocks, and a mind remarkably appreciative of merit and genius, who will, perhaps, give or lend them anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars, with which they will commence and go on swimmingly. Perhaps he will take a different turn, and educate them. Or, perhaps, with an eye to the sacred profession, they desire to become the beneficiaries of some benevolent society, or some gentle circle of female devotees.

To me, one of the most disgusting sights in the world is that of a young man with healthy blood, broad shoulders, presentable calves, and a hundred and fifty pounds, more or less, of good bone and muscle, standing with his hands in his pockets, longing for help. I admit that there are positions in which the most independent spirit may accept of assistance—may, in fact, as a choice of evils, desire it; but for a man who is able to help himself, to desire the help of others in the accomplishment of his plans of life, is positive proof that he has received a most unfortunate training, or that there is a leaven of meanness in his composition that should make him shudder.

Do not misunderstand me: I would not inculcate that pride of personal independence which repels in its sensitiveness the well-meant good offices and benefactions of friends, or that resorts to desperate shifts rather than incur an obligation. What I condemn in a young man is the love of dependence; the willingness to be under obligation for that which his own efforts may win.

Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise, is not only essential in securing the success which you seek, but it is essential to that preparation of your mind which is requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. It is the general rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Providence, that the process of earning success shall be the preparation for its conservation and enjoyment.

So, day by day, and week by week; so, month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that process gain strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it.

The development which you will get in this brave and patient labor, will prove itself, in the end, the most valuable of your successes. It will help to make a man of you. It will give you power and self-reliance. It will give you not only self-respect, but the respect of your fellows and the public.

Never allow yourself to be seduced from this course. You will hear of young men who have made fortunes in some wild speculations. Pity them; for they will almost certainly lose their easily won success. Do not be in a hurry for anything. Are you in love with some dear girl, whom you would make your wife? Give Angelina Matilda to understand that she must wait; and if Angelina Matilda is really the good girl you take her to be, she will be sensible enough to tell you to choose your time.

You cannot build well without first laying a good foundation; and for you to enter[69] upon a business which you have not patiently and thoroughly learned, and to marry before you have won a character, or even the reasonable prospect of a competence, is ultimately to bring your house down about the ears of Angelina Matilda, and such pretty children as she may give you. If, at the age of thirty years, you find yourself established in a business which pays you with certainty a living income, you are to remember that God has blessed you beyond the majority of men.

DINAH THE METHODIST.

By George Eliot.

The works of Marian Evans Cross created unusual interest when first published in England. Her “Adam Bede,” “The Mill on the Floss” and “Silas Marner,” immediately placed her in the highest rank of the writers of fiction. For some time her identity was concealed, yet there were critics who suspected that “George Eliot” was the assumed name of a female author. Her writings are characterized by a keen insight into character, intellectual vigor and sympathy with the advanced thought of the day. She was born in 1819, and died in 1880. The selection from “Adam Bede,” here given, is an excellent specimen from one of her well-known works.

Several of the men followed Ben’s lead, and the traveler pushed his horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly, and in advance of her companions, toward the cart under the maple tree. While she was near Seth’s tall figure she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart, and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of woman, though in reality she did not exceed it—an effect which was due to the slimness of her figure, and the simple line of her black stuff dress.

The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and mount the cart—surprise, not so much for the feminine delicacy of her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanor. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured step, and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her face would be mantled with a smile of conscious saintship, or else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of Methodist—the ecstatic and the bilious.

But Dinah walked as simply as if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward appearance as a little boy; there was no blush, no tremulousness, which said, “I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach;” no casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no attitude of the arms, that said, “But you must think of me as a saint.”

She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keenness in her eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects.

The eyebrows, of the same color as the hair, were perfectly horizontal and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes, though no darker, were long and abundant; nothing was left blurred or unfinished.

It was one of those faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of color on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of expression; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that no accusing scowl, no light sneer, could help melting away before their glance.

[70]

Joshua Rann gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben wondered how Seth had the pluck to think of courting her.

“A sweet woman,” the stranger said to himself, “but surely Nature never meant her for a preacher.”

GODFREY AND DUNSTAN.

By George Eliot.

An excellent example of dialogue in fiction.

Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy felt that it was her husband. She turned from the window with gladness in her eyes, for the wife’s chief dread was stilled.

“Dear, I’m so thankful you’re come,” she said, going towards him. “I began to get”—

She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat with trembling hands, and turned towards her with a pale face and a strange, unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as part of a scene invisible to herself. She laid her hand on his arm, not daring to speak again; but he left the touch unnoticed, and threw himself into his chair.

Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. “Tell her to keep away, will you?” said Godfrey; and when the door was closed again he exerted himself to speak more distinctly.

“Sit down, Nancy—there,” he said, pointing to a chair opposite him. “I came back as soon as I could to hinder anybody’s telling you but me. I’ve had a great shock—but I care most about the shock it’ll be to you.”

“It isn’t father and Priscilla?” said Nancy, with quivering lips, clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.

“No, it’s nobody living,” said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate skill with which he would have wished to make his revelation. “It’s Dunstan—my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago. We’ve found him,—found his body—his skeleton.”

The deep dread Godfrey’s look had created in Nancy made her feel these words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness to hear what else he had to tell. He went on:

“The stone pit has gone dry suddenly,—from the draining, I suppose; and there he lies—has lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great stones. There’s his watch and seals, and there’s my gold-handled hunting whip, with my name on. He took it away, without my knowing, the day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen.”

Godfrey paused! it was not so easy to say what came next. “Do you think he drowned himself?” said Nancy, almost wondering that her husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been augured.

“No, he fell in,” said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: “Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner.”

The blood rushed to Nancy’s face and neck at this surprise and shame, for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship with crime as a dishonor.

“O Godfrey!” she said, with compassion[71] in her tone, for she had immediately reflected that the dishonor must be felt more keenly by her husband.

“There was money in the pit,” he continued, “all the weaver’s money. Everything’s been gathered up, and they have taken the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you. There was no hindering it; you must know.”

He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy would have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she refrained, from an instinctive sense that there was something behind,—that Godfrey had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as he said:

“Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. I’ve lived with a secret on my mind, but I’ll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn’t have you know it by somebody else, and not by me—I wouldn’t have you find it out after I’m dead. I’ll tell you now. It’s been ‘I will’ and ‘I won’t’ with me all my life; I’ll make sure of myself now.”

Nancy’s utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife met with an awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.

“Nancy,” said Godfrey slowly, “when I married you, I hid something from you,—something I ought to have told you. That woman Marner found dead in the snow—Eppie’s mother—that wretched woman—was my wife; Eppie is my child.”

He paused, dreading the effects of his confession. But Nancy sat quite still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her lap.

“You’ll never think the same of me again,” said Godfrey after a little while, with some tremor in his voice. She was silent.

“I oughtn’t to have left the child unowned; I oughtn’t to have kept it from you. But I couldn’t bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led away into marrying her; I suffered for it.”

Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost expected that she would presently get up and say she would go to her father’s. How could she have any mercy for faults that seemed so black to her, with her simple, severe notions?

But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. There was no indignation in her voice; only deep regret.

“Godfrey, if you had told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child. Do you think I’d have refused to take her in, if I’d known she was yours?”

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more agitation.

“And—oh, Godfrey—if we’d had her from the first, if you’d taken to her as you ought, she’d have loved me for her mother—and you’d been happier with me; I could better have bore my little baby dying, and our life might have been more like what we used to think it ’ud be.”

The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak.

“But you wouldn’t have married me then, Nancy, if I’d told you,” said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. “You may think you would now, but you wouldn’t then. With your pride and your father’s, you’d have hated having anything to do with me after the talk there’d been.”

“I can’t say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should never have[72] married anybody else. But I wasn’t worth doing wrong for; nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand; not even our marrying wasn’t, you see.” There was a faint, sad smile on Nancy’s face as she said the last words.

“I’m a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy,” said Godfrey rather tremulously. “Can you forgive me ever?”

“The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey. You’ve made it up to me; you’ve been good to me for fifteen years. It’s another you did the wrong to; and I doubt it can never be all made up for.”

“But we can take Eppie now,” said Godfrey. “I won’t mind the world knowing at last. I’ll be plain and open for the rest o’ my life.”

“It’ll be different coming to us, now she’s grown up,” said Nancy, shaking her head sadly. “But it’s your duty to acknowledge her and provide for her; and I’ll do my part by her, and pray to God Almighty to make her love me.”

“Then we’ll go together to Silas Marner’s this very night, as soon as everything’s quiet at the Stone Pits.”

RIP VAN WINKLE.

By Washington Irving.

This charming author, who is a master of pure style, beautiful sentiment and pleasing humor, has been called the father of American literature. If this be not strictly true, it is a matter of record that no American authors before his time achieved any remarkable success. Mr. Irving was born in 1783, and died in 1859. He was particularly happy in portraying the quaint character and customs of the old Dutch settlers in our country. He published a number of volumes, including “The Sketch Book,” “Tales of a Traveler,” “Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” etc. One of Irving’s best known and most delightful short productions is “Rip Van Winkle,” from which the following extract is taken. The easy-going, inoffensive character of Rip is delightfully pictured.

The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble.

He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences.

The women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them;—in a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some outdoor work to do; so that, though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was[73] little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn, and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in a pair of his father’s cast-off trousers, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family.

Morning, noon and night her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that by frequent use had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair, and his only alternative to escape from the labor of the farm, and the clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with his dog Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution.

“Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee.” Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

THE PURITANS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

By Lord Macaulay.

Distinguished as a descriptive poet by his fine “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and yet more distinguished as a master of English prose by his “Essays” and his noble “History of England,” Thomas Babington Macaulay stands prominent as the most learned and eloquent of the essayists and critics of the nineteenth century. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, known as the warm friend and co-laborer of Wilberforce and Clarkson, and was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800, and died in 1859. In 1818 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1822. Here he gave proof of his great intellectual powers, obtaining a scholarship, and twice gaining the Chancellor’s medal for a poem called “Pompeii.” To crown his triumphs, he secured a “Craven Scholarship,”—the highest distinction in classics which the university confers.

Lord Macaulay’s glowing description of the Puritans has been pronounced the finest writing of its kind to be found in our language. It is the product of pre-eminent literary ability, and the highest genius.

We would first speak of the Puritans of the sixteenth century, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced.

Those who roused the people to resistance—who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years—who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the[74] finest army that Europe had ever seen—who trampled down king, church, and aristocracy—who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth—were no vulgar fanatics.

Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive; we regret that a body, to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles I., or the easy good breeding for which the court of Charles II. was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death’s head and the Fool’s head, and fix our choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence.

They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions.

The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed.

They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God; if their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life; if their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away.

On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language—nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged—on whose slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest—who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.

Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen and flourished and decayed; for his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe; he had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun[75] had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

ON BEING IN TIME.

By C. H. Spurgeon.

When we examine Mr. Spurgeon’s writings we are able to discover one great secret of his power. As no preacher of modern times was more successful, in like manner no other had such a vigorous command of plain English in the pulpit. The great majority of his words are short and simple, reminding one of the terse writings of the old Puritan authors. Mr. Spurgeon was born in 1834 and died in 1893. No other writer has published so many sermons and volumes of miscellaneous writings, and no other author of similar works has been so widely read. He was the marvel of his generation.

He who begins a little late in the morning will have to drive fast, will be constantly in a fever, and will scarcely overtake his business at night; whereas he who rises in proper time can enjoy the luxury of pursuing his calling with regularity, ending his work in fit season, and gaining a little portion of leisure.

Late in the morning may mean puffing and blowing all the day long, whereas an early hour will make the pace an easy one. This is worth a man’s considering. Much evil comes of hurry, and hurry is the child of unpunctuality.

We once knew a brother whom we named “the late Mr. S⸺,” because he never came in time. A certain tart gentleman, who had been irritated by this brother’s unpunctuality, said that the sooner that name was literally true the better for the temper of those who had to wait for him. Many a man would much rather be fined than be kept waiting. If a man must injure me, let him rather plunder me of my cash than of my time.

To keep a busy man waiting is an act of impudent robbery, and is also a constructive insult. It may not be so intended, but certainly if a man has proper respect for his friend, he will know the value of his time, and will not cause him to waste it. There is a cool contempt in unpunctuality, for it as good as says: “Let the fellow wait; who is he that I should keep my appointment with him?”

In this world, matters are so linked together that you cannot disarrange one without throwing others out of gear; if one business is put out of time, another is delayed by the same means. The other day we were traveling to the Riviera, and the train after leaving Paris was detained for an hour and a half. This was bad enough, but the result was worse, for when we reached Marseilles the connecting train had gone, and we were not only detained for a considerable time, but were forced to proceed by a slow train, and so reached our destination six hours later than we ought to have done. All the subsequent delay was caused through the first stoppage.

A merchant once said to us: “A. B. is a good fellow in many respects, but he is so frightfully slow that we cannot retain him in our office, because, as all the clerks work into each other’s hands, his delays are multiplied enormously, and cause intolerable inconvenience. He is a hindrance to the whole system, and he had better go where he can work alone.”

The worst of it is that we cannot send unpunctual people where they can work alone. To whom or whither should they go? We cannot rig out a hermitage for each one, or[76] that would be a great deliverance. If they prepared their own dinners, it would not matter that they dropped in after every dish had become cold. If they preached sermons to themselves, and had no other audience, it would not signify that they began consistently seven minutes behind the published hour. If they were their own scholars, and taught themselves, it would be of no consequence if the pupil sat waiting for his teacher for twenty minutes.

As it is, we in this world cannot get away from the unpunctual, nor get them away from us, and therefore we are obliged to put up with them; but we should like them to know that they are a gross nuisance, and a frequent cause of sin, through irritating the tempers of those who cannot afford to squander time as they do.

If this should meet the eye of any gentleman who has almost forgotten the meaning of the word “punctuality,” we earnestly advise him to try and be henceforth five minutes too soon for every appointment, and then perhaps he will gradually subside into the little great virtue which we here recommend.

Could not some good genius get up a Punctuality Association, every member to wear a chronometer set to correct time, and to keep appointments by the minute-hand? Pledges should be issued, to be signed by all sluggish persons who can summon up sufficient resolution totally to abstain from being behind time in church or chapel, or on committee, or at dinner, or in coming home from the office in the evening. Ladies eligible as members upon signing a special pledge to keep nobody waiting while they run upstairs to pop on their bonnets. How much of sinful temper would be spared, and how much of time saved, we cannot venture to guess. Try it.

JOHN PLOUGHMAN’S TALK ON HOME.

By C. H. Spurgeon.

The famous London minister wrote a book entitled, “John Ploughman’s Talk.” His object was to express plain and homely truths in a quaint, humorous way, and thus gain the attention of common people whose reading is confined mostly to murder and divorce cases in newspapers. The enjoyment of the public in reading Mr. Spurgeon’s pithy sayings was evinced by the enormous sale of the book. The extract here given is a fair specimen of its unique style.

That word home always sounds like poetry to me. It rings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart. It does not matter whether it means thatched cottage or manor-house, home is home, be it ever so homely, and there’s no place on earth like it. Green grow the houseleek on the roof forever, and let the moss flourish on the thatch.

Sweetly the sparrows chirrup and the swallows twitter around the chosen spot which is my joy and my rest. Every bird loves its own nest; the owl thinks the old ruins the fairest spot under the moon, and the fox is of opinion that his hole in the hill is remarkably cozy. When my master’s nag knows that his head is towards home he wants no whip, but thinks it best to put on all steam; and I am always of the same mind, for the way home, to me, is the best bit of road in the country. I like to see the smoke out of my own chimney better than the fire on another man’s hearth; there’s something so beautiful in the way in which it curls up among the trees.

Cold potatoes on my own table taste better than roast meat at my neighbor’s, and the[77] honeysuckle at my own door is the sweetest I ever smell. When you are out, friends do their best, but still it is not home. “Make yourself at home,” they say, because everybody knows that to feel at home is to feel at ease.

“East and west,

Home is best.”

Why, at home you are at home, and what more do you want? Nobody grudges you, whatever your appetite may be; and you don’t get put into a damp bed. Safe in his own castle, like a king in his palace, a man feels himself somebody, and is not afraid of being thought proud for thinking so. Every cock may crow on his own dunghill; and a dog is a lion when he is at home. No need to guard every word because some enemy is on the watch, no keeping the heart under lock and key; but as soon as the door is shut it is liberty hall, and none to peep and pry.

It is a singular fact, and perhaps some of you will doubt it—but that is your unbelieving nature—our little ones are real beauties, always a pound or two plumper than others of their age; and yet it don’t tire you half so much to nurse them as it does other people’s babies. Why, bless you, my wife would be tired out in half the time, if her neighbor had asked her to see to a strange youngster, but her own children don’t seem to tire her at all. Now my belief is that it all comes of their having been born at home.

Just so it is with everything else: our lane is the most beautiful for twenty miles round, because our home is in it; and my garden is a perfect paradise, for no other particular reason than this very good one, that it belongs to the old house at home.

Husbands should try to make home happy and holy. It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest, a bad man who makes his home wretched. Our house ought to be a little church, with holiness to the Lord over the door; but it ought never to be a prison, where there is plenty of rule and order, but little love and no pleasure.

Married life is not all sugar, but grace in the heart will keep away most of the sours. Godliness and love can make a man, like a bird in a hedge, sing among thorns and briars, and set others a-singing too. It should be the husband’s pleasure to please his wife, and the wife’s care to care for her husband. He is kind to himself who is kind to his wife. I am afraid some men live by the rule of self, and when that is the case home happiness is a mere sham. When husbands and wives are well yoked, how light their load becomes!

It is not every couple that is a pair, and the more’s the pity. In a true home all the strife is which can do the most to make the family happy. A home should be a Bethel, not a Babel. The husband should be the house-band, binding all together like a corner-stone, but not crushing everything like a millstone.

Nothing is improved by anger, unless it be the arch of a cat’s back. A man with his back up is spoiling his figure. People look none the handsomer for being red in the face. It takes a great deal out of a man to get into a towering rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit, and time has been when men have actually choked themselves with passion, and died on the spot. Whatever wrong I suffer, it cannot do me half so much hurt as being angry about it; for passion shortens life and poisons peace.

When once we give way to temper, temper will get right of way, and come in easier every time. He that will be in a pet for any little thing, will soon be out at elbows about nothing at all. A thunder-storm curdles the milk, and so does a passion sour the heart and spoil the character.

[78]

LITTLE PEARL AND HER MOTHER.

By Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hawthorne is justly regarded as one of the masters of English prose, although the shadowed side of his life predominated and often gave a somewhat gloomy tinge to his writings. Yet through the morbid drapery by which he surrounds himself the light of his superb genius shines brilliantly. His style is a model of clearness, choice words and elevated sentiment. The extract given below is from “The Scarlet Letter,” one of his best works of fiction, and, in fact, one of the best that enriches our American literature. He possessed great originality, a rare power of analyzing character, a delicate and exquisite humor and marvelous felicity in the use of language. Mr. Hawthorne was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, and died in 1864.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land.

Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat.

Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste; the whole being of Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the governor’s paternal home.

On the table—in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind—stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men.

At about the center of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skillful armorer in London the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel headpiece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor.

This bright panoply was not meant for[79] mere idle show, but had been worn by the governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye and Finch as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl—who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house—spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

“Mother,” cried she, “I see you here. Look! Look!”

Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it.

Pearl pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the headpiece, smiling at her mother with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl’s shape.

THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB.

By Grace Greenwood.

The following selection is an excellent example of sprightly and vivacious writing, a kind of composition that is always entertaining to the reader. Under the assumed name of Grace Greenwood, Mrs. Sarah J. Lippincott was for many years a well-known and popular contributor to various periodicals. She also published several volumes, including works of fiction and stories of travel. She wrote poems that possessed much merit, thus exhibiting a wide range of talent. Her fine thoughts were expressed in a style of great ease, simplicity and beauty. Mrs. Lippincott was born in Onondaga County, New York, in 1825, and died in 1898.

“Annie! Sophie! come up quick, and see baby in her bath-tub!” cries a charming little maiden, running down the wide stairway of an old country house, and half-way up the long hall, all in a fluttering cloud of pink lawn, her soft dimpled cheeks tinged with the same lovely morning hue.

In an instant there is a stir and gush of light laughter in the drawing-room, and presently, with a movement a little more majestic and elder-sisterly, Annie and Sophie float noiselessly through the hall and up the soft-carpeted ascent, as though borne on their respective clouds of blue and white drapery, and take their way to the nursery, where a novel entertainment awaits them. It is the first morning of the eldest married sister’s first visit home, with her first baby; and the first baby, having slept late after its journey, is about to take its first bath in the old house.

“Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting her dairy, and Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left poor Ned all to himself in the garden, lonely and disconsolate, and I am torn from my books, and Sophie from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a nine-months-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub! What simpletons we are!”

[80]

Thus Miss Annie, the proude ladye of the family; handsome, haughty, with perilous proclivities toward grand socialistic theories, transcendentalism, and general strong-mindedness; pledged by many a saucy vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to studies artistic, æsthetic, philosophic, and ethical; a student of Plato, an absorber of Emerson, an exalter of her sex, a contemner of its natural enemies.

“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, aunt of the baby on the other side, and “Cousin Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close by the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal baptism from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood,—“simpletons, indeed! Did I not once see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the ‘Crouching Venus?’

“And this is a sight a thousand times more beautiful; for here we have color, action, life, and such grace as the divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to entrance in marble. Just look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple holding a tiny, sparkling drop,—these rosy, plashing feet and hands,—this laughing, roguish face,—these eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes of fairy land,—these ears, like dainty sea shells,—these locks of gold, dripping diamonds,—and tell me what cherub of Titian, what Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely? I say, too, that Raphael himself would have jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she sits there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened dignity of young maternity—of painting her as Madonna.”

CANDACE’S OPINIONS.

By Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Mrs. Stowe is particularly happy in portraying negro character. It requires for this a great appreciation of humor, and her writings abound in this, while her imagination and fine command of language make many of her writings brilliant and even poetical.

Mrs. Stowe is the most celebrated American authoress. Her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has been more widely read than any other work of fiction ever published. While in this work her conspicuous genius appears to fine advantage, she has nevertheless written other works, some of them describing New England life and character, which are masterpieces. She was born at Litchfield, Conn., on the 14th of June, 1812, and died at Hartford July 1st, 1896.

“I intend,” said Mr. Marvyn, “to make the same offer to your husband, when he returns from work to-night.”

“Laus, Mass’r—why, Cato, he’ll do jes’ as I do—dere a’n’t no kind o’ need o’ askin’ him. Course he will.”

A smile passed round the circle, because between Candace and her husband there existed one of those whimsical contrasts which one sometimes sees in married life. Cato was a small-built, thin, softly-spoken negro, addicted to a gentle chronic cough; and, though a faithful and skillful servant, seemed, in relation to his better half, much like a hill of potatoes under a spreading apple-tree. Candace held to him with a vehement and patronizing fondness, so devoid of conjugal reverence as to excite the comments of her friends.

“You must remember, Candace,” said a good deacon to her one day, when she was ordering him about at a catechizing, “you ought to give honor to your husband; the wife is the weaker vessel.”

“I de weaker vessel?” said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom[81] she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest—“I de weaker vassel! Umph!”

A whole woman’s rights convention could not have expressed more in a day than was given in that single look and word. Candace considered a husband as a thing to be taken care of—a rather inconsequent and somewhat troublesome species of pet, to be humored, nursed, fed, clothed, and guided in the way that he was to go—an animal that was always losing off buttons, catching colds, wearing his best coat every day, and getting on his Sunday hat in a surreptitious manner for week-day occasions; but she often condescended to express it as her opinion that he was a blessing, and that she didn’t know what she’d do if it wasn’t for Cato.

She sometimes was heard expressing herself very energetically in disapprobation of the conduct of one of her sable friends, named Jinny Stiles, who, after being presented with her own freedom, worked several years to buy that of her husband, but became afterwards so disgusted with her acquisition, that she declared she would “neber buy anoder nigger.”

“Now, Jinny don’t know what she’s talkin’ about,” she would say. “S’pose he does cough and keep her awake nights, and take a little too much sometimes, a’n’t he better’n no husband at all? A body wouldn’t seem to hab nuffin to lib for, ef dey hadn’t an old man to look arter. Men is nate’lly foolish about some tings—but dey’s good deal better’n nuffin.”

And Candace, after this condescending remark, would lift with one hand a brass kettle in which poor Cato might have been drowned, and fly across the kitchen with it as if it were a feather.

MIDSUMMER IN THE VALLEY OF THE RHINE.

By George Meredith.

An example of beautiful description.

An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells and on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook tinkled it was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of water. Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the shadows of their verges; the distances sharply distinct, and with the colors of day but slightly softened.

Richard beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle-mark. The breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; couched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk of the forest.

On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood gray topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark dry ground.

He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were expended in action. He[82] sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow westward from the south. Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did not observe them, or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky. Then heavy thunder-drops struck his cheek, the leaves were singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him and behind. All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.

Up started the whole forest in violent fire. He saw the country at the foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished. Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture.

THE POWER OF NATURAL BEAUTY.

By Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“The Sage of Concord,” as Mr. Emerson was called, expresses the estimate the American public placed upon his writings. His profound thought and originality are unquestioned. To these grand qualities he added a poetic imagination which diffused a fine glow over all his productions.

Mr. Emerson was born in Boston in 1803, graduated from Harvard College in 1821, and entered the ministry of the Unitarian Church, from which, however, he shortly resigned, and soon devoted himself to literary pursuits. His works have a high reputation among scholars and speculative thinkers. His style is singularly terse and at times almost abrupt, but his thoughts are masterly and striking. He died in 1882.

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do; but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. “All those things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue;” said an ancient historian. “The winds and waves,” said Gibbon, “are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven.

When a noble act is done—perchance in a scene of great natural beauty; when Leonides and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylæ; when Arnold Winkelreid, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America;—before it the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane; the sea behind; and the purple mountains of the Indian Archipelago around, can we separate the[83] man from the living picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm groves and savannahs as fit drapery?

Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill sitting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, “You never sate on so glorious a seat.” Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russel to be drawn in an open coach through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. “But,” to use the simple narrative of his biographer, “the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side.”

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere.

The noonday darkness of the American forest, the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where the living columns of the oak and fir tower up from the ruins of the trees of the last millennium; where, from year to year, the eagle and the crow see no intruder; the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet touched with grace by the violets at their feet; the broad, cold lowland, which forms its coat of vapor with the stillness of subterranean crystallization; and where the traveler, amid the repulsive plants that are native in the swamp, thinks with pleasing terror of the distant town; this beauty—haggard and desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the snow and the rain repaint and vary, has never been recorded by art, yet is not indifferent to any passenger.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes. What mean these journeys to Niagara; these pilgrims to the White Hills? Men believe in the adaptations of utility always. In the mountains they may believe in the adaptations of the eye.

Undoubtedly the changes of geology have a relation to the prosperous sprouting of the corn and peas in my kitchen garden; but not less is there a relation of beauty between my soul and the dim crags of Agiocochook up there in the clouds. Every man, when this is told, hearkens with joy, and yet his own conversation with nature is still unsung.

To aid you in writing compositions a lengthy list of subjects is here furnished. These, you will see, are adapted to persons of various ages and capacities. Many of them are comparatively simple and require no profound thought, while others are deep enough to tax all your powers of reason.

Do not choose a subject that is too abstruse and difficult. Plain narration and description should go before profound argument. Yet do not be satisfied with a simple theme if you are capable of writing upon one that demands more study and thought. When you have chosen your subject, you should be guided by the practical hints and directions contained in the first pages of this volume, which you should faithfully study.

Many of the subjects here presented will require a good deal of reading and research before you can write upon them intelligently. This is true especially of the historical and biographical subjects. If you find history to be a fascinating study, as it is to most persons, you will become so filled and enamored with your theme, that you can write upon it easily.

Never consider it too much trouble to prepare yourself thoroughly to write your compositions. If you would have nuggets of gold you must dig for them. Success is worth all it costs, however much that may be. Remember Bulwer Lytton’s saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

HISTORICAL SUBJECTS.

• The Landing of the Pilgrims.
• Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.
• The French and Indian War.
• The Siege of Quebec.
• King Philip’s War.
• Washington at Valley Forge.
• The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.
• The Discovery of the Mississippi River.
• Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia.
• The Pequod War.
• Witchcraft at Salem, Massachusetts.
• The Old Charter Oak at Hartford.
• Destruction of Tea in Boston Harbor.
• The Battles of Lexington and Concord.
• The Famous Ride of Paul Revere.
• The Siege of Boston.
• The Battle of Long Island.
• The Battle of the Brandywine.
• The Murder of Miss McCrea.
• The Battle of Monmouth.
• The Surrender of Burgoyne’s Army.
• The Siege of Savannah.
• Washington Crossing the Delaware.
• The Massacre of Wyoming.
• The Treason of Benedict Arnold.
• The Execution of Major André.
• The Duel Between Hamilton and Burr.
• The Battle of Monterey.
• The Battle of Chapultepec.
• The Siege of Vicksburg.
• General Sherman’s March to the Sea.
• Jackson’s Victories in Virginia.
• The Death of “Stonewall Jackson.”
• The Story of Cuban Insurrections.
• The Great Naval Battle at Manila.
• The Great Naval Battle at Santiago.
• The Exploits of the “Rough Riders” at San Juan.
• The Execution of John Brown.
• The Massacre at Fort Dearborn.
• The Discovery of Gold in California.
• The Opening of the Pacific Railroad.
• The Discovery of Gold in Alaska.
• The Massacre of General Custer.[85]
• The Indian Wars in the Northwest.
• The World’s Fair at Chicago.
• The Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia.
• The Story of the Old Liberty Bell at Philadelphia.
• The Great Flood at Johnstown, Pa.
• The Destruction of the Battleship Maine.
• The Invention of Printing.
• Magna Charta, the Charter of Rights.
• Constantinople Taken by the French.
• The Moors Driven Out of Spain.
• The Reformation in England.
• The Invasion of Peru by Pizarro.
• The Battle of Trafalgar.
• The Spanish Armada.
• The Battle of Balaklava.
• The Gunpowder Plot (1605).
• The Atrocities of the Paris Commune.
• The Execution of Charles I.
• The Bursting of the South Sea Bubble.
• The Battle of Waterloo.
• The Dismemberment of Poland.
• The Great Mutiny in India.
• The French Revolution.
• The Martyrdom of Joan of Arc.
• The Crusades.
• The Siege of Troy.
• The Great Plague in London.
• The Battle of the Boyne.
• The Imprisonment of James I. of Scotland.
• The Story of Mary, Queen of Scots.

BIOGRAPHICAL SUBJECTS.

• Miles Standish.
• Cotton Mather.
• Benjamin Franklin.
• John Jay.
• Samuel Adams.
• Fisher Ames.
• George Washington.
• William Penn.
• Marquis de Lafayette.
• Count Pulaski.
• General Israel Putnam.
• General Anthony Wayne.
• General Ethan Allen.
• Thomas Jefferson.
• Andrew Jackson.
• Martha Washington.
• Commodore Perry.
• Commodore Decatur.
• Daniel Webster.
• Henry Clay.
• Patrick Henry.
• John Hancock.
• General Winfield Scott.
• Zachary Taylor.
• The Indian Chief Tecumseh.
• William Henry Harrison.
• John C. Fremont.
• Abraham Lincoln.
• Robert E. Lee.
• Ulysses S. Grant.
• James A. Garfield.
• General William T. Sherman.
• Mary Lyon.
• Frances E. Willard.
• Susan B. Anthony.
• Clara Barton.
• Henry W. Longfellow.
• William Cullen Bryant.
• The Cary Sisters.
• Washington Irving.
• James Fenimore Cooper.
• Francis Scott Key.
• John Howard Payne.
• Daniel Boone.
• David Crockett.
• General Sam Houston.
• Lord Nelson.
• The Duke of Wellington.
• Napoleon Bonaparte.
• The Duke of Marlborough.
• Robert Bruce.
• Robert Burns.
• John Bright.
• William E. Gladstone.
• Alfred Tennyson.[86]
• Daniel O’Connell.
• Robert Emmet.
• Florence Nightingale.
• John Knox.
• Julius Cæsar.
• Demosthenes.
• Cicero.
• Hannibal.
• Alexander the Great.
• Socrates.
• Xantippe.
• Queen Elizabeth.
• Oliver Cromwell.
• William Pitt.
• Frederick the Great.
• Captain Kidd.
• Ferdinand de Soto.
• Hernando Cortez.
• Sir John Franklin.
• Elisha Kent Kane.
• Cyrus W. Field.
• Professor Samuel B. F. Morse.
• Alexander T. Stewart.
• Peter Cooper.
• John Jacob Astor.
• William H. Vanderbilt.

SUBJECTS FOR NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION.

• A New England Thanksgiving.
• The Puritan Sabbath.
• The Deserted Farm.
• The Dangers of Frontier Life.
• Natural Resources of the United States.
• Social Customs of the Last Century.
• A Spanish Bull Fight.
• The Falls of Niagara.
• The Hudson River.
• Mount Washington.
• A Western Prairie.
• The Cotton Fields of the South.
• The Orange Groves of Florida.
• “The Father of Waters.”
• The Rapid Growth of Western Cities.
• A Ranch in the South-West.
• The Cowboys of the Plains.
• The Great Trees of California.
• The Geysers of the Yellowstone Park.
• The Instinct in Animals.
• Some Recent Invention.
• Some Public Institutions.
• The Physical Characteristics of your State.
• A Country Farm.
• Your Home Enjoyments.
• Fresh Air and its Uses.
• Town and Country Schools.
• Some Out Door School Games.
• The Beauties of Summer.
• The Remarkable Instinct of Birds.
• An Arctic Expedition.
• A Railway Station.
• A Picture Gallery.
• Electric Lights.
• Winds and Clouds.
• The Pastime of Fishing.
• The Pastime of Skating.
• Agricultural Implements.
• Habits of Domestic Animals.
• A Flower Garden.
• Singing Birds.
• Migration of Birds.
• The American Eagle.
• The Uses of Cats and Dogs.
• The Game of Foot Ball.
• The Game of Base Ball.
• Your Favorite Book.
• The County in which your School is Situated.
• School Life: its Joys and Difficulties.
• Castles in the Air.
• The Pleasures of Christmas.
• Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• The Vatican at Rome.
• St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
• The Capitol at Washington.
• The White House at Washington.
• The Suspension Bridge between New York and Brooklyn.[87]
• Bunker Hill Monument.
• Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
• Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
• An Ocean Steamship.
• An American Battleship.
• Coal Mines of Pennsylvania.
• A Seaside Watering Place.
• A Country Picnic.
• A Clam Bake by the Sea-shore.
• A Sleigh Ride.
• A Century Run on Bicycles.
• Your Favorite Walk.
• The Value of Sunshine.
• A Thunder Storm.
• A Summer Vacation.

POPULAR PROVERBS.

• More Haste, Less Speed.
• Necessity is the Mother of Invention.
• What Can’t be Cured must be Endured.
• Well Begun is Half Done.
• All that Glitters is not Gold.
• Evil Communications Corrupt Good Manners.
• Honesty is the Best Policy.
• A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.
• Prevention is Better than Cure.
• A Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss.
• Make Hay while the Sun Shines.
• Birds of a Feather Flock Together.
• Knowledge is Power.
• Take Care of the Pennies and the Dollars will take Care of Themselves.
• A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush.
• The Longest Way Around is the Shortest Way Home.
• The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating.
• If you would Shoot High you must Aim High.
• Marry in Haste and Repent at Leisure.
• People who Live in Glass Houses should not Throw Stones.
• Be Sure you are Right, then Go Ahead.
• It is an Ill Wind that Blows Good to no One.
• Every Crow Thinks her own Little Crows the Blackest.
• You Cannot Make a Silk Purse out of a Sow’s Ear.
• The Least Said, the Soonest Mended.
• Speech is Silver, Silence is Golden.
• Manners Make the Man.

SUBJECTS TO BE EXPOUNDED.

• Benefits of Industry.
• Evils of Idleness.
• Summer Sports in the Country.
• Winter Amusements in Cities.
• Shop Windows at Christmas Time.
• Habits of Economy.
• Advantages of Travel.
• Temptations of Riches.
• Dangers of Trades Unions.
• Benefits of Application.
• Advantages of Muscular Exercise.
• Physical and Moral Perils of Muscular Exercise.
• Effects of Machinery upon Manual Labor.
• Pleasures of Literature.
• Sources of National Wealth.
• Benefits of Self-Control.
• Modern Methods of Benevolence.
• Responsibilities of Scholars.
• Causes of Commercial Decline.
• Advantages of a National Bankrupt Law.
• Peculiarities of the New England Poets.
• The Character of Wilkins Micawber.
• Claims of the Indians to Government Protection.
• Evils of Immigration.
• Characteristics of the English Novel.
• Incentives to Literary Exertion.
• Reforms Suggested in “Oliver Twist.”
• American Tendencies to Extravagance.
• Uses of Gold.
• Uses of Public Libraries.[88]
• Infirmities of Genius.
• Excellencies of the Puritan Character.
• Miseries of Authorship.
• Blessings of Liberty.
• Pleasures in Contemplating Nature.
• Dangers that Threaten our Republic.
• Advantages of Method.
• Distinctions in Society.
• Rewards of Literary Labor.
• Struggles for Civil Freedom.
• Advantages of Competition.
• Uses of Adversity.
• Advantages of Self-Reliance.
• Evils of Prejudice.
• The Colonial Period of Our History.
• Uses of Art.
• Self-Made Men.
• Dickens’ Caricatures of English Schools.
• Irving’s Portraitures of the Dutch Settlers.
• Injuries of Stimulants.
• Evils of Centralization.
• Advantages of Modern Inventions.
• Uses of Coal.
• Sources of Corruption in Civil Offices.
• Elements of Success in Life.
• Dangers of the French Republic.
• Changes of Fashion.
• Social Dangers from Anarchists.
• Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.”
• Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”
• Oliver Wendell Holmes’s Humor.
• Character of Eugene Field’s Poetry.
• Characteristics of American Humor.
• Hardships of the New England Settlers.
• Persecution of the Jews.
• Causes of Nihilism in Russia.
• English Ideas of America.
• Methods of Reform in the Civil Service.
• Benefits of Mechanical Exhibitions.
• Strikes and Arbitrations.
• Time: its Use and Abuse.
• Employers and Men: their Rights and Relations.
• The Study of Modern Languages.
• The Study of Ancient Languages.
• Industry and Energy.
• The Duty of Cleanliness.
• Punctuality.
• Courage.
• Fortitude.
• Cruelty to Animals.
• The Law of Supply and Demand.
• “Right before Might.”
• The Telescope and Microscope.
• Manhood Suffrage.
• “The New Woman.”
• Uses and Abuses of Money.
• The Cultivation of Music.
• Amusements for Young People.
• The Great Discoverers of Queen Elizabeth’s Reign.
• Pleasures of the Imagination.
• Natural History as a Study.
• Your Favorite Female Character.
• The Cultivation of Memory.
• Mental Discipline from the Study of Mathematics.
• Knowledge the Best Kind of Wealth.
• The Position and Prospects of the United States.
• The Influence of Scenery on Character.
• Sketch of the Plot of Any One of Shakespeare’s Plays.
• How to Best Help the Poor.
• Influence of Works of Fiction.
• Description of Any One of Sir Walter Scott’s Poems and Novels.
• Changes Caused by the Invention of the Typewriter.
• The Saloon in Modern Politics.
• The Evils of Great Trusts.
• Utility of Shorthand.
• Great Poets of England.
• Dante’s Inferno.
• The Alhambra.
• The Catacombs of Rome.
• The Style of John Bunyan.
• The Consolations of Age.[89]
• The Dangers Arising from Great Trusts.
• The Coast Guard Service.
• The Wrongs of Ireland.
• Plot of any one of Bret Harte’s Novels.
• The Lives of the Poor in Large Cities.
• On Making Music a Profession.
• The Novel Entitled “Lorna Doone.”
• The Duty of Cheerfulness.
• Cervantes, the Soldier and the Writer.
• Our American Humorists.
• Martin Luther’s Moral Courage.
• Truth the Standard of Excellence.
• The Evils of Prejudice.
• The Power of Ridicule.
• The Power of Early Impressions.
• The Exiles of Siberia.
• Politics as a Profession.

SUBJECTS FOR ARGUMENT.

• Should a Polygamist be Admitted to Congress?
• Should Eight Hours Constitute a Day’s Labor?
• Should Political Spoils Belong to the Victors?
• Is a National Debt a Benefit?
• Is Poverty an Incentive to Crime?
• Should the United States Maintain a Large Standing Army?
• Should Office Holders be Assessed for Party Expenses?
• Is Drunkenness any Excuse for Murder?
• Would Harmony in Human Beliefs be Desirable?
• Should There be a Uniform Divorce Law in All Our States?
• Can a Country be Free Without Free Trade?
• Should Church Property be Exempt from Taxation?
• Should Capital Punishment be Abolished?
• Do Luxuries Become Necessities?
• Should a Man Vote Who Cannot Read?
• Was Thackeray a Cynic?
• Should Public School Money be Given to Religious Sects?
• Should Writers Adopt Phonetic Spelling?
• Is a Man of Business Benefited by a Classical Education?
• Is Literature Indicative of National Progress?
• Is Electricity Destined to Become the Greatest Motive Power?
• Should the Inventor Monopolize His Invention?
• Should Cremation Supersede Burial?
• Was the Execution of André Unjust?
• Is Crime in Our Country on the Increase?
• Does the Press in Our Country have too much Freedom?

SUBJECTS FOR COMPARISON.

• Falsehood and Truth.
• Practice and Habit.
• Wit and Humor.
• Extravagance and Thrift.
• Confusion and Order.
• The Democrats and Whigs.
• Natural and Acquired Ability.
• The Comparative Value of Iron and Gold.
• Foreign and Domestic Commerce.
• The Cavalier and the Puritan.
• Waterloo and Sedan.
• The Stage Coach and the Locomotive.
• The Uses and Abuses of Fashion.
• Capital and Labor.
• Genius and Talent.
• Romance and Reality.
• “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword.”
• Notoriety and Reputation.
• Resolution and Action.
• Working and Dreaming.
• Leo X and Martin Luther.
• The Statesmanship of Hamilton and Jefferson.
• War and Arbitration.
• Helen and Andromache.[90]
• “When the Law Ends, Tyranny Begins.”
• “Deep Versed in Books, and Shallow in Himself.”
• The Victories of Peace and of War.
• Hypocrisy and Sincerity.
• Solitude and Society.
• Affection and Naturalness.
• Brusque People and Fawning People.

MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITIONS.

• Looking on the Bright Side.
• The Character of Busybodies.
• Benevolence and Greed.
• Character of the Pilgrims.
• Painting and Sculpture.
• The Head and the Heart.
• Party Spirit and Good Government.
• The Responsibility of Our Country to Mankind.
• The Obligation of Treaties.
• Great Men the Glory of their Country.
• Ancient and Modern Eloquence.
• Conscience and the Will.
• The Heroism of the Indian.
• Religion and Pleasure.
• Spiritual Freedom.
• The Present Age.
• The Humorousness of Love Matches.
• The Influence of Woman.
• The Mission of Reformers.
• The True Aristocracy.
• The Expansion of the Republic.
• The Bible and the Iliad.
• The Huguenots in Carolina.
• Puritan Intolerance.
• The Compensations of Calamity.
• Stateliness and Courtesy.
• Truth and Tenderness.
• Loungers in Corner Groceries.
• A Defense of Enthusiasm.
• The Ancient Mound Builders.
• The Power of Words.
• The Advantages of Playing Golf.
• College Athletics.
• The Physique of Americans.
• The Influence of Climate on Physical Characteristics.
• “Home is Where the Heart is.”
• Coral Treasures of the Sea.
• Sublimity of the Ocean.
• The Beauty of Sea Waves.
• The Power of Maternal Love.
• The Beauty of Heroic Deeds.
• The Ravages of War.
• Children and Flowers.
• Earning Capital.
• The Sacredness of Work.
• “The Boy is the Father of the Man.”
• The Last Hours of Socrates.
• The Discoveries of Astronomy.
• Luck and Labor.
• The Achievements of Earnestness.
• The Ideal Citizen.

[91]

Synonyms and Antonyms.

We use words to express ideas and thoughts. The best words are those which best express the thought or idea. All writers are frequently at a loss for the exact word or phrase that will express their meaning the most forcibly, and are compelled to ransack and search their vocabulary in order to get out of the difficulty.

The number of words used by the majority of persons is very small, and they are therefore in constant danger of the fault of repetition. We do not like to hear a speaker use the same word too frequently. To do so detracts seriously from the force and beauty of his address. While there are instances in which a repetition of a word is called for, and to make use of another would weaken the sentence and fail to fully give the meaning of the writer or speaker, it is nevertheless true that constant repetitions are not only a blemish, but a fault that should be corrected.

For the purpose of avoiding too much repetition in writing and speaking it is necessary to have a Dictionary of words of similar meaning. A Synonym is one of two or more words of similar significance which may often be used interchangeably. An Antonym is a word of opposite meaning. In the following list the Synonyms are first given; then follow, in parenthesis, the Antonyms, or words of opposite meaning.

All persons who would acquire an elegant style in literary composition, correspondence or ordinary conversation, will find this comprehensive Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms of great value. Jewels of thought should be set in appropriate language.

In this table the letter a means adjective; v means verb; n means noun or substantive.