Practical English Composition: Book II - Edwin L. Miller (i read book .TXT) 📗
- Author: Edwin L. Miller
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As usual, except that on Friday one number of the program may be a magazine composed of the best stories written during the week by pupils.
VI. Oral CompositionBe sure that your story has a good point; is free from slang; and possesses a beginning, a middle, and an end.
VII. Written CompositionSuggestion: Imagine that the classroom is the local room of a daily paper, the pupils reporters, and the teacher the editor. The stories may be written in class.
VIII. MemorizeWhen all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s;—he takes the lead
In summer luxury;—he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
John Keats.
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THE USE OF CONTRAST
“Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”—Isaiah.
I. IntroductionAntithesis, or contrast, is one of the two most effective devices at the disposal of any artist, whether he works with words or colors. Its skillful use often enables a newspaper writer to make a good item out of trifling material. The object of this week’s work is to teach a little of the art of using antithesis effectively in reportorial work.
II. ModelsLondon, Dec. 25.—Mrs. Rebecca Clarke, who is 109 years of age, presided this morning at the wedding breakfast of her baby son, Harry, who is 67. This is Mr. Clarke’s second venture on the matrimonial sea. His two brothers are sprightly bachelors of 70 and 73 years. Mrs. Clarke toasted the newly married couple and ate the first slice of the wedding cake. She attended the Christmas wedding celebration in the evening.
Commuters in Yonkers took advantage of the Christmas holiday to mow their lawns. The grass has been getting longer and longer, owing to the spring weather, until it just had to be cut.
Players on the Dunwoodie Country Club course, also at Yonkers, had to keep moving to keep warm yesterday, but they played on greens which had been mowed only a few days ago, and those who were fond of flowers stopped now and then to pick a buttercup.
The greens keeper at Dunwoodie says that the greens have been mowed four times since the latter part of September, when in ordinary seasons the grass is mowed for the last time until spring. The condition of the course is about the same as in May, according to the greens keeper.
Up in Bronx Park the grass has not been mowed recently, but it is unusually long for the time of year, and so it is in the other city parks. The same condition prevails in the nearby cemeteries. Out in New Jersey a fine crop of grass is in evidence.
Farmers in the vicinity of New York are saving on their usual bills for winter fodder, for with the spring weather and the long grass the animals can pick up a living out of doors.
New York, Dec. 31.—An order for $2,000,000 worth of shrapnel, to be used in the war in Europe, has been rejected by the Commonwealth Steel Company of Granite City, Ill., it was learned to-day, because Clarence H. Howard, president of the organization, believes warfare should not be recognized.
Mr. Howard, who lives in St. Louis, is known all over the country as the “Golden rule steel man,” because he tries to run his plant in accordance with the Golden Rule by sharing profits with the employes.
He is stopping at the Biltmore Hotel. Although he talked freely of the trouble in Europe, he frowned at the report about the $2,000,000 shrapnel order, and then said with blazing eyes:
“Why, our company would not accept an order for $15,000,000 worth of shrapnel! The war itself is a bitter shame. It is something that does not belong in the general scheme of enlightened humanity. If men would only think in unison, and think purely and strongly for the abolition of war, it would stop. There should be a general movement in the United States in this direction.
“When I was a youngster I left my home in Centralia, Ill., to win my own way in the world, and my mother gave me five maxims—one for each finger—which I since have followed with great profit. They are:
“‘Seek company among those whom you can trust and association with whom will make you better.
“‘Never gamble or go where gambling is done.
“‘Never drink or go where drinking is done.
“‘As to smoking, it isn’t so bad as drinking or gambling, but take my advice and let it alone.
“‘When in doubt about where to go, stop and ask if it would be a good place to take your mother.’
“Platitudes, eh! Some might call them that; but they have brought me happiness, and they have brought happiness to others. Not long ago I sat down and figured how much I had saved by not drinking, gambling, or the like. I figured it out at $1,000 a year, and it had been 30 years since my mother gave me the advice.”
III. Notes The contrast in Model I consists in the incongruity between the ages of the people and their occupations; in II the contrast is obviously the same as that alluded to in Byron’s famous line,“Seek roses in December, ice in June”;
in III Mr. Howard’s ideas, ideals, and conduct are in contrast with those of some men. Antithesis between the actual and the normal is always interesting. IV. Queries and Exercises Explain the syntax of all nouns, adverbs, and infinitives in the models. Find a metaphor in I. Discuss the meaning and etymology of the following words: matrimonial, commuters, Christmas, December, animals. Is “nearby” a better word than “adjacent”? Where is Yonkers? Tell whether the sentences are simple, compound, or complex. What is the subject of each paragraph in II and III? Write double headings for I and II. “Double” means in two parts. For example:CELEBRATION
PLANS ADVANCE
President of Drama League Tells of Interest in Tercentenary Observances
Remember that you can use only a fixed number of letters in each line. Define antithesis and metaphor. Find an example of each in to-day’s paper. V. Composition Choosing a Subject. Select an incident that has come within the circle of your own observation; that has never, as far as you know, been described in print; and that is sufficiently unique to present a good contrast to the usual course of events. Collecting Material. Get as many concrete details as possible. Generalities never glitter. They are useful only to cure insomnia. Arranging Material. Look out for the “Four W’s.” Make a framework that is definite. It should be determined, in the last analysis, not by the model but by the material. Oral Composition. Rehearse your article to your mother or to any other person whom you can induce to listen. Written Composition. “Festinâ lente.” “Hasten slowly.” When a French student takes his college entrance examinations, he is plucked if he misspells one word, misplaces one capital letter, or makes a single mistake in punctuation. Lord Bacon somewhere says: “Let us proceed slowly that we may sooner make an end.” Sheridan wrote:But easy writing’s curst hard reading.”
Care in No. 5 will eliminate No. 6. Revision and rewriting. VI. Suggested Reading
Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
VII. MemorizeI hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that’s fair, from all that’s foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
To Teachers. At this point a review of Chapter XII, “Vade Mecum, or Catechism,” of Practical English Composition, Book I, will be found an invaluable exercise.
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THRILLERS
Stranger than fiction.”
Byron.
I. Assignments Relate the most exciting adventure that has occurred to you. Use the third person. Reporters usually are not allowed to use the pronoun “I.” Relate the most exciting adventure that has befallen any person whom you personally know well enough to interview on the subject. If you can obtain material in neither of the foregoing ways, get a story from the movies, after the manner suggested in the following dispatch:Journalism Instructors at Columbia Use Films to Develop Students’ Faculty of Observation.
Reporters’ “copy” telling in graphic style of the Balkan War poured into the “city room” of the newspaper plant at the Columbia University School of Journalism yesterday. The reason was that moving pictures had been adopted as a means of giving to the students an opportunity to exercise their powers of observation and description in such a fashion as would be required of them in real newspaper work.
The idea of using a moving picture machine to train future newspaper reporters in accuracy of observation was originated by Professor Walter B. Pitkin, and was approved immediately by Dr. Talcott Williams, director of the school. Dr. C. E. Lower, instructor in English, is the official operator, but this work will probably be given later to a student.
A last resort is literature. In Stevenson, Poe, or Conan Doyle, you can probably find a story that can be translated into a sufficiently thrilling newspaper dispatch. II. ModelsColonel Folque, commander of a division of artillery at the front, recently needed a few men for a perilous mission, and called for volunteers. “Those who undertake this mission will perhaps never come back,” he said, “and he who commands will be one of the first sons of France to die for his country in this war.”
Volunteers were numerous. A young graduate of a polytechnic school asked for the honor of leading those who would undertake the mission.
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