Composition-Rhetoric Part 15

1. No man ever made a complete new system of law and gave it to a people.

No monarch, however absolute or powerful, ever had the power to change the habits of a people to that extent. Revolution generally means, not a change of law, but merely a change of government officials; even when it is a change from monarchy to democracy. Our Revolution made practically no changes in the criminal and civil laws of the colonies.

--Clark: _The Government_.

2. People talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty to do just what a man likes. I call that man free who fears doing wrong, but fears nothing else.

I call that man free who has learned the most blessed of all truths,--that liberty consists in obedience to the power, and to the will, and to the law that his higher soul reverences and approves. He is not free because he does what he likes; but he is free because he does what he ought, and there is no protest in his soul against the doing.

--Frederick William Robertson.

3. This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they had lived from childhood, and where they were as much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book. Nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk; a sc.r.a.pe on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears.

--Theodore Roosevelt: _The Winning of the West_.

4. Public enterprises, whether conducted by the munic.i.p.ality or committed to the public service corporation, exist to render public services.

Streets are public highways. They exist for the people's use. Nothing should be placed in them unless required to facilitate their use by or for the people. Only the general need of water, gas, electricity, and transportation justifies the placing of pipes and wires and tracks in the streets. The public need is the sole test and measure of such occupation.

To look upon the streets as a source of private gain, or even munic.i.p.al revenue, except as incidents of their public use, is to disregard their public character. Adequate service at the lowest practicable rates, not gain or revenue, is the test. The question is, not how much the public service corporation may gain, but what can be saved to the people by its employment.

--Edwin Burrett Smith: _The Next Step in Munic.i.p.al Reform_ ("Atlantic Monthly").

+Theme XXVII.+--_Develop one of the following topic statements into a paragraph, using the method, of repet.i.tion as far as possible:_--

1. It is difficult to become angry with one who is always good-natured.

2. It is gloomy in the woods on a rainy day.

3. The government is always in need of honest men.

4. Rural free delivery of mail will have a great effect on country life.

5. Not every boy in school uses his time to the best advantage.

6. Haste is waste.

7. Regular exercise is one of the essentials of good health.

(Have the repet.i.tions really made the idea of the topic sentence clearer or more emphatic or more definite? What other methods of development have you used?)

+51. Development by a Combination of Methods.+--A paragraph should have unity of thought, and, so long as this unity of thought is kept, it does not matter what methods of development are used. A dozen paragraphs taken at random will show that combinations are very frequent. Often it will be difficult to determine just how a paragraph has been developed. In general, however, it may be said that an indiscriminate mixture of methods is confusing and interferes with unity of thought. If more than one is used, it requires skillful handling to maintain such a relation between them that both contribute to the clear and emphatic statement of the main thought.

The paragraph from Dryer, page 74, shows a combination of cause and effect with specific ill.u.s.trations; that from Wolstan Dixey, page 81, shows a combination of repet.i.tion with specific instances.

EXERCISES

What methods of paragraph development, or what combinations of methods, are used in the following selections?

1. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his power, or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not think much of themselves on that account.

Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done"; Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and wors.h.i.+p them; they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be anything else than G.o.d made them. And they see something divine and G.o.d-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, and incredibly merciful.

--Ruskin.

2. The first thing to be noted about the dress of the Romans is that its prevalent material was always woolen. Sheep raising for wool was practiced among them on an extensive scale, from the earliest historic times, and the choice breeds of that animal, originally imported from Greece or Asia Minor, took so kindly to the soil and climate of Italy that home-grown wool came even to be preferred to the foreign for fineness and softness of quality. Foreign wools were, however, always imported more or less, partly because the supply of native wools seems never to have been quite sufficient, partly because the natural colors of wools from different parts varied so considerably as to render the art of the dyer to some extent unnecessary. Thus, the wools of Ca.n.u.sium were brown or reddish, those of Pollentia in Liguria were black, those from the Spanish Baetica, which comprised Andalusia and a part of Granada, had either a golden brown or a grayish hue; the wools of Asia were almost red; and there was a Grecian fleece, called the crow colored, of which the natural tint was a peculiarly deep and brilliant black.

--Preston and Dodge: _'The Private Life of the Romans_.

3. Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled, and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe. Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, s.p.a.cious streets and squares have been laid out; churches, halls, and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which drew artists from all parts of the world.

--Taylor: _Views Afoot_.

4. In all excursions to the woods or to the sh.o.r.e the student of ornithology has an advantage over his companions. He has one more, avenue of delight. He, indeed, kills two birds with one stone and sometimes three. If others wander, he can never get out of his way. His game is everywhere. The cawing of a crow makes him feel at home, while a new note or a new song drowns all care. Audubon, on the desolate coast of Labrador, is happier than any king ever was; and on s.h.i.+pboard is nearly cured of his seasickness when a new gull appears in sight.

--Burroughs: _Wake Robin_.

+Theme XXVIII.+--_Write a paragraph, using any method or combination of methods which best suits your thought. Use any of the subjects. .h.i.therto suggested that you have not already used._

(Is every sentence related to the topic statement so that your paragraph possesses unity? What methods of development have you used?)

+52. The Topical Recitation.+--In conducting a recitation the teacher may ask direct questions about each part of a paragraph or she may ask a pupil to discuss some topic. Such a topical recitation should be an exercise in clear thinking rather than in word memory, and in order to prepare for it, the pupil should have made a careful a.n.a.lysis of the thought in each paragraph similar to that discussed on page 74. When this a.n.a.lysis has been made he will have clearly in mind the topic statement and the way it has been developed, and will be able to distinguish the essential from the non-essential elements.

A topical recitation demands that the pupil know the main idea and be able to develop it in one of the following methods, or by a combination of them: (1) by giving specific instances, (2) by giving details, (3) by giving comparisons or contrasts, (4) by giving causes or effects, and (5) by repet.i.tion.

Thoughts so mastered are our own. We understand them and believe them; and consequently we can explain them, or describe them, or prove them to others. We can furnish details or instances, originate comparisons, or state causes and effects. _When ideas gained from language have thus become our own, we do not need to remember the language in which they were expressed, and not until then do they become proper material for composition purposes._

+53. Outlining Paragraphs.+--Making an outline of a paragraph that we have read brings the thought clearly before our mind. In a similar way we may make our own thoughts clear and definite by attempting to prepare in advance an outline of a paragraph that we are about to write. Arranging the material that we have in mind and deciding upon the order in which we shall present it, will both help us to understand the thought ourselves, and enable us to present it more effectively to others.

EXERCISES

_A._ Prepare for recitation the following selection from Newcomer's introduction to Macaulay's _Milton and Addison:_--

There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind that set his work far apart from other work in the same field,--the faculties of organization and ill.u.s.tration. He saw things in their right relation and he knew how to make others see them thus. If he was describing, he never thrust minor details into the foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got ahead of his story." The importance of this is not sufficiently recognized. Many writers do not know what organization means. They do not know that in all great and successful literary work it is nine tenths of the labor. Yet consider a moment. History is a very complex thing: divers events may be simultaneous in their occurrence; or one crisis may be slowly evolving from many causes in many places. It is no light task to tell these things one after another and yet leave a unified impression, to take up a dozen new threads in succession without tangling them and without losing the old ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion.

Such is the narrator's task, and it was at this task that Macaulay proved himself a past master. He could dispose of a number of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for example, runs his account of the dramatist Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman." On the other hand, when it is a question of a great crisis, like the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of the highest dramatic power.