Chapter XII: Part II: The Pillar of Fire by Night (3)

When you have chosen a subject consult encyclopedias and other works of reference and find out all you can that is peculiarly interesting to you. Do not make any attempt to record all the facts that you may learn. Select those that make some deep appeal to you and that will be likely to have unusual interest for others. When you write do all that you can to avoid the encyclopedia method. Write in a pleasantly familiar manner that will carry your interests and your personality.

FOOTNOTES:

[87] From “Pen and Ink” by Brander Matthews. Copyright, 1888, by Longmans. Printed here by special permission of Professor Matthews.

[88] Author of the _Marseillaise_. Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836). An enthusiastic French Captain who composed the _Marseillaise_ at Strasburg on April 24, 1792, as a song for the Army of the Rhine.

[89] Author of the _Wacht am Rhein_. Max. Schneckenburger (1819-1849).

[90] Tyrtæan Bard. Tyrtæus (7th century B.C.) was an unknown crippled Greek school teacher who wrote songs of such power that they inspired the Spartans to victory.

[91] Lauriger Horatius. The first words of a well-known college song written in Latin.

[92] Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842). Author of _Hail Columbia!_ He was the son of Francis Hopkinson who signed the Declaration of Independence.

[93] Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910). Author of the _Battle Hymn of the Republic_, which she wrote in 1861 as the result of a visit to a great camp near Washington.

[94] _Beggars' Opera_. An opera written by John Gay (1685-1732). The songs in the opera made use of well-known Scotch and English tunes. The opera itself is a satire on dishonesty in public life.

[95] Walter Crane (1845-1915). An English painter and producer of children's books.

LOCOMOTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY[96]
By H. G. WELLS

_(1866--). A leading novelist, essayist and historian. Through
his energy and high ability he won his way to a place in the
educational world, and ultimately to a commanding position in the
literary world. He writes with unusual vigor and originality. Some
of his most stimulating books are_ The Time Machine; The War of
the Worlds; When the Sleeper Wakes; Anticipations; Tono Bungay;
The Future of America; Social Forces in England and America; The
History of the World.

=Some essays go beyond the world of little things and set forward
their writers' meditations on matters of great import. Such essays
look back across the whole field of history or look forward into
the remoteness of the future. In essays of this kind Mr. H. G.
Wells has done much to stimulate thought.=

=In the selection that follows Mr. Wells traces the development of
locomotion from the days of wagons to the days of steam. At the
close of the selection Mr. Wells suggests to the reader that the
advance to be made in the future may be as great as that which has
been made in the past.=

The beginning of this twentieth century happens to coincide with a very interesting phase in that great development of means of land transit that has been the distinctive feature (speaking materially) of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century, when it takes its place with the other centuries in the chronological charts of the future, will, if it needs a symbol, almost inevitably have as that symbol a steam-engine running upon a railway. This period covers the first experiments, the first great developments, and the complete elaboration of that mode of transit, and the determination of nearly all the broad features of this century's history may be traced directly or indirectly to that process. And since an interesting light is thrown upon the new phases in land locomotion that are now beginning, it will be well to begin this forecast with a retrospect, and to revise very shortly the history of the addition of steam travel to the resources of mankind.

A curious and profitable question arises at once. How is it that the steam locomotive appeared at the time it did, and not earlier in the history of the world?

Because it was not invented. But why was it not invented? Not for want of a crowning intellect, for none of the many minds concerned in the development strikes one--as the mind of Newton, Shakespeare, or Darwin[97] strikes one--as being that of an unprecedented man. It is not that the need for the railway and steam-engine had only just arisen, and--to use one of the most egregiously wrong and misleading phrases that ever dropped from the lips of man--the demand created the supply; it was quite the other way about. There was really no urgent demand for such things at the time; the current needs of the European world seem to have been fairly well served by coach and diligence in 1800, and, on the other hand, every administrator of intelligence in the Roman and Chinese empires must have felt an urgent need for more rapid methods of transit than those at his disposal. Nor was the development of the steam locomotive the result of any sudden discovery of steam. Steam, and something of the mechanical possibilities of steam, had been known for two thousand years; it had been used for pumping water, opening doors, and working toys before the Christian era. It may be urged that this advance was the outcome of that new and more systematic handling of knowledge initiated by Lord Bacon[98] and sustained by the Royal Society;[99] but this does not appear to have been the case, though no doubt the new habits of mind that spread outward from that center played their part. The men whose names are cardinal in the history of this development invented, for the most part, in a quite empirical way, and Trevithick's[100] engine was running along its rails and Evans'[101] boat was walloping up the Hudson a quarter of a century before Carnot[102] expounded his general proposition. There were no such deductions from principles to application as occur in the story of electricity to justify our attribution of the steam-engine to the scientific impulse. Nor does this particular invention seem to have been directly due to the new possibilities of reducing, shaping, and casting iron, afforded by the substitution of coal for wood in iron works, through the greater temperature afforded by a coal fire. In China coal has been used in the reduction of iron for many centuries. No doubt these new facilities did greatly help the steam-engine in its invasion of the field of common life, but quite certainly they were not sufficient to set it going. It was, indeed, not one cause, but a very complex and unprecedented series of causes, set the steam locomotive going. It was indirectly, and in another way, that the introduction of coal became the decisive factor. One peculiar condition of its production in England seems to have supplied just one ingredient that had been missing for two thousand years in the group of conditions that were necessary before the steam locomotive could appear.

This missing ingredient was a demand for some comparatively simple, profitable machine, upon which the elementary principles of steam utilization could be worked out. If one studies Stephenson's “Rocket”[103] in detail, as one realizes its profound complexity, one begins to understand how impossible it would have been for that structure to have come into existence _de novo_,[104] however urgently the world had need of it. But it happened that the coal needed to replace the dwindling forests of this small and exceptionally rain-saturated country occurs in low, hollow basins overlying clay, and not, as in China and the Alleghenies, for example, on high-lying outcrops, that can be worked as chalk is worked in England. From this fact it followed that some quite unprecedented pumping appliances became necessary, and the thoughts of practical men were turned thereby to the long-neglected possibilities of steam. Wind was extremely inconvenient for the purpose of pumping, because in these latitudes it is inconstant: it was costly, too, because at any time the laborers might be obliged to sit at the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England--rather as a toy than in earnest--before the middle of the seventeenth century, and the attempt to employ it was so obvious as to be practically unavoidable.[105] The water trickling into the coal measures[106] acted, therefore, like water trickling upon chemicals that have long been mixed together, dry and inert. Immediately the latent reactions were set going. Savery,[11] Newcome,[107] a host of other workers culminating in Watt,[108] working always by steps that were at least so nearly obvious as to give rise again and again to simultaneous discoveries, changed this toy of steam into a real, a commercial thing, developed a trade in pumping-engines, created foundries and a new art of engineering, and, almost unconscious of what they were doing, made the steam locomotive a well-nigh unavoidable consequence. At last, after a century of improvement on pumping-engines, there remained nothing but the very obvious stage of getting the engine that had been developed on wheels and out upon the ways of the world.

Ever and ever again during the eighteenth century an engine would be put upon the roads and pronounced a failure--one monstrous Palæoferric creature[109] was visible on a French high-road as early as 1769--but by the dawn of the nineteenth century the problem had very nearly got itself solved. By 1804 Trevithick had a steam locomotive indisputably in motion and almost financially possible, and from his hands it puffed its way, slowly at first, and then, under Stephenson, faster and faster, to a transitory empire over the earth. It was a steam locomotive--but for all that it was primarily _a steam-engine for pumping_ adapted to a new end; it was a steam-engine whose ancestral stage had developed under conditions that were by no means exacting in the matter of weight. And from that fact followed a consequence that has hampered railway travel and transport very greatly, and that is tolerated nowadays only through a belief in its practical necessity. The steam locomotive was all too huge and heavy for the high-road--it had to be put upon rails. And so clearly linked are steam-engines and railways in our minds, that, in common language now, the latter implies the former. But, indeed, it is the result of accidental impediments, of avoidable difficulties, that we travel to-day on rails.

Railway traveling is at best a compromise. The quite conceivable ideal of locomotive convenience, so far as travelers are concerned, is surely a highly mobile conveyance capable of traveling easily and swiftly to any desired point, traversing, at a reasonably controlled pace, the ordinary roads and streets, and having access for higher rates of speed and long-distance traveling to specialized ways restricted to swift traffic and possibly furnished with guide rails. For the collection and delivery of all sorts of perishable goods also the same system is obviously altogether superior to the existing methods. Moreover, such a system would admit of that secular progress in engines and vehicles that the stereotyped conditions of the railway have almost completely arrested, because it would allow almost any new pattern to be put at once upon the ways without interference with the established traffic. Had such an ideal been kept in view from the first, the traveler would now be able to get through his long-distance journeys at a pace of from seventy miles or more an hour without changing, and without any of the trouble, waiting, expense, and delay that arise between the household or hotel and the actual rail. It was an ideal that must have been at least possible to an intelligent person fifty years ago, and, had it been resolutely pursued, the world, instead of fumbling from compromise to compromise as it always has done, and as it will do very probably for many centuries yet, might have been provided to-day, not only with an infinitely more practicable method of communication, but with one capable of a steady and continual evolution from year to year.

But there was a more obvious path of development and one immediately cheaper, and along that path went short-sighted Nineteenth Century Progress, quite heedless of the possibility of ending in a _cul-de-sac_.[110] The first locomotives, apart from the heavy tradition of their ancestry, were, like all experimental machinery, needlessly clumsy and heavy, and their inventors, being men of insufficient faith, instead of working for lightness and smoothness of motion, took the easier course of placing them upon the tramways that were already in existence--chiefly for the transit of heavy goods over soft roads. And from that followed a very interesting and curious result.

These tram-lines very naturally had exactly the width of an ordinary cart, a width prescribed by the strength of one horse. Few people saw in the locomotive anything but a cheap substitute for horseflesh, or found anything incongruous in letting the dimensions of a horse determine the dimensions of an engine. It mattered nothing that from the first the passenger was ridiculously cramped, hampered, and crowded in the carriage. He had always been cramped in a coach, and it would have seemed “Utopian”[111]--a very dreadful thing indeed to our grandparents--to propose travel without cramping. By mere inertia the horse-cart gauge--the 4 foot 8-1/2 inch gauge--_nemine contradicente_,[112] established itself in the world, and now everywhere the train is dwarfed to a scale that limits alike its comfort, power, and speed. Before every engine, as it were, trots the ghost of a superseded horse, refuses most resolutely to trot faster than fifty miles an hour, and shies and threatens catastrophe at every point and curve. That fifty miles an hour, most authorities are agreed, is the limit of our speed for land travel so far as existing conditions go.[113] Only a revolutionary reconstruction of the railways or the development of some new competing method of land travel can carry us beyond that.

People of to-day take the railways for granted as they take sea and sky; they were born in a railway world, and they expect to die in one. But if only they will strip from their eyes the most blinding of all influences, acquiescence in the familiar, they will see clearly enough that this vast and elaborate railway system of ours, by which the whole world is linked together, is really only a vast system of trains of horse-wagons and coaches drawn along rails by pumping-engines upon wheels. Is that, in spite of its present vast extension, likely to remain the predominant method of land locomotion, even for so short a period as the next hundred years?

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What, according to Mr. Wells, was the distinctive feature of the
nineteenth century?

2. Why did steam locomotion appear when it did?

3. How many of the principles of steam locomotion had been known
before the nineteenth century?

4. Name all the causes that contributed to the development of steam
locomotion.

5. Explain the relation between the mining of coal and steam
locomotion.

6. What characteristics of wagons appear in steam locomotives?

7. In what ways is modern steam locomotion unsatisfactory?

8. What are some of the possibilities for future locomotion?

9. On what fields of information is the essay based?

10. What are the characteristics of Mr. Wells' style?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. The Development of Steam 11. Steps Toward the Use of
Boats Motor Trucks
2. The Development of the 12. The Improvement of
Automobile Highways
3. The Development of the 13. The Evolution of Good
Airplane Sidewalks
4. The Development of the 14. The Development of
Bicycle the Telephone
5. The Story of Roller Skates 15. Improved Railway Stations
6. The Development of Comfort 16. The Use of Voting Machines
in Travel
7. The Story of the Sleeping Car 17. The Protection of the
Food Supply
8. The Development of the 18. The Increase of Forest
Dining Car Protection
9. Comfort in Modern Carriages 19. The Work of the Weather
Bureau
10. The Development of the Mail 20. The Development of the
System Wireless Telegraph.

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Before you can write upon any such subject as the one upon which Mr. Wells wrote it will be necessary for you to obtain a wide amount of information. Go to any encyclopedia and find lines along which you can investigate further. Then consult special books that you may obtain in a good library. When you have gained full information remember that it is your business not to transmit the information that you have gained, but to put down on paper the thoughts to which the information has led you. Try to show the relation between the past and the present, and to indicate some forecast for the future. Do all this in a pleasantly straightforward style as though you were talking earnestly.

FOOTNOTES:

[96] From “Anticipations” by H. G. Wells. Copyright by the North American Review Publishing Company, 1901; copyright by Harper and Brother, 1902.

[97] Newton, Shakespeare, or Darwin. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). A great English mathematician, especially noted for his establishment of knowledge of the law of gravitation. William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The great English dramatist, regarded as the greatest of English writers. Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The English naturalist, who established a theory of evolution. Three of the most intellectual men of all time.

[98] Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). A great English philosopher, who established the inductive study of science, that is, study through investigation and experiment.

[99] The Royal Society. Established about 1660 in London, England, for the study of science. It has had a great influence in developing scientific knowledge.

[100] Richard Trevithick (1771-1833). An English inventor who did much to improve the steam engine. In 1801 his locomotive conveyed the first passengers ever carried by steam.

[101] Oliver Evans (1755-1819). An American inventor who was one of the first to use steam at high pressure.

[102] Sadi Carnot (1796-1832). A French physicist whose “principle” concerns the development of power through the use of heat.

[103] Stephenson's Rocket. A locomotive made in 1829 by George Stephenson (1781-1848), which was so successful that it won a prize of £500. Stephenson was one of the most potent forces in developing steam locomotion.

[104] _De Novo._ As something entirely new.

[105] It might have been used in the same way in Italy in the first century, had not the grandiose taste for aqueducts prevailed.

[106] And also into the Cornwall mines, be it noted.

[107] Captain Thomas Savery (1650?-1715). An English engineer who made one of the first steam engines in 1705, working in connection with Thomas Newcome.

[108] James Watt (1736-1819). A Scotch inventor who in 1765 perfected the condensing steam engine.

[109] Palæoferric creature. Ancient iron creature.

[110] _Cul-de-sac._ A passage closed at one end.

[111] Utopian. In 1516 Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) wrote about an island called Utopia on which was an ideal government. The word “Utopian” means “ideal beyond hope of attainment”.

[112] _Nemine contradicente._ No one saying anything against it.

[113] It might be worse. If the biggest horses had been Shetland ponies, we should be traveling now in railway carriages to hold two each side at a maximum speed of perhaps twenty miles an hour. There is hardly any reason, beyond this tradition of the horse, why the railway carriage should not be even nine or ten feet wide, the width that is, of the smallest room in which people can live in comfort, hung on such springs and wheels as would effectually destroy all vibration, and furnished with all the equipment of comfortable chambers.

THE WRITING OF ESSAYS
By CHARLES S. BROOKS

_(1878--). After some years of business life, following his
graduation from Yale, Mr. Brooks turned entirely to literary work.
He has written_ A Journey to Bagdad; Three Pippins and Cheese to
Come; Chimney-Pot Papers. _During the World War he served with the
Department of State in Washington._

=Here is a delightful, easy-going essay that presents most
effectively the ideals and the methods of essay writing.=

=An essayist, Mr. Brooks says, has no great literary purpose to
accomplish: he is a reader, a thinker, a person who is interested
in all sorts of subjects just because they are interesting. He
writes of the little things in life because he loves them. He is
essentially a lover of books and of libraries; one who dwells in
the companionship of pleasant thoughts; one who gives us a sort of
happy gossip that comes across the years, redolent with the charm
of personality.=

An essayist needs a desk and a library near at hand, because an essay is a kind of back-stove cookery. A novel needs a hot fire, so to speak. A dozen chapters bubble in their turn above the reddest coals, while an essay simmers over a little flame. Pieces of this and that, an odd carrot, as it were, a left-over potato, a pithy bone, discarded trifles, are tossed in from time to time to feed the composition. Raw paragraphs, when they have stewed all night, at last become tender to the fork. An essay, therefore, cannot be written hurriedly on the knee. Essayists, as a rule, chew their pencils. Their desks are large and are always in disorder. There is a stack of books on the clock-shelf; others are pushed under the bed. Matches, pencils, and bits of paper mark a hundred references. When an essayist goes out from his lodging he wears the kind of overcoat that holds a book in every pocket; his sagging pockets proclaim him. He is a bulging person, so stuffed even in his dress with the ideas of others that his own leanness is concealed. An essayist keeps a note-book and he thumbs it for forgotten thoughts. Nobody is safe from him, for he steals from every one he meets. Like the man in the old poem, he relies on his memory for his wit.

An essayist is not a mighty traveler. He does not run to grapple with a roaring lion. He desires neither typhoon nor tempest. He is content in his harbor to listen to the storm upon the rocks, if now and then by a lucky chance he can shelter some one from the wreck. His hands are not red with revolt against the world. He has glanced upon the thoughts of many men, and as opposite philosophies point upon the truth, he is modest with his own and tolerant of others. He looks at the stars and, knowing in what a dim immensity we travel, he writes of little things beyond dispute. There are enough to weep upon the shadows; he, like a dial, marks the light. The small clatter of the city beneath his window, the cry of peddlers, children chalking their games upon the pavement, laundry dancing on the roofs, and smoke in the winter's wind--these are the things he weaves into the fabric of his thoughts. Or sheep upon the hillside, if his window is so lucky, or a sunny meadow is a profitable speculation. And so, while the novelist is struggling up a dizzy mountain, straining through the tempest to see the kingdoms of the world, behold the essayist, snug at home, content with little sights! He is a kind of poet--a poet whose wings are clipped. He flaps to no great heights, and sees neither the devil nor the seven oceans nor the twelve apostles. He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish and, as he is able, he mends small habits here and there.

And therefore, as essayists stay at home, they are precise, almost amorous, in the posture and outlook of their writing. Leigh Hunt[114] wished a great library next his study. “But for the study itself,” he writes, “give me a small snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it, looking on trees.” How the precious fellow scorns the mountains and the ocean! He has no love, it seems, for typhoons and roaring lions. “I entrench myself in my books,” he continues, “equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes down the passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables.” And by movables he means his books. These were his screen against cold and trouble. But Leigh Hunt had been in prison for his political beliefs. He had grappled with his lion. So perhaps, after all, my argument fails.

Mr. Edmund Gosse[115] had a different method to the same purpose. He “was so anxious to fly all outward noise” that he wished for a library apart from the house. Maybe he had had some experience with Annie and her clattering broomstick. “In my sleep,” he writes, “'when dreams are multitude,' I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden. The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man.... It sounds like having a castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia.”[116]

Montaigne's[117] study was a tower, walled all about with books. At his table in the midst he was the general focus of their wisdom. Hazlitt[118] wrote much at an inn at Winterslow, with Salisbury Plain around the corner of his view. Except for ill health, and a love of the South Seas (here was the novelist showing itself), Stevenson[119] would probably have preferred a windy perch overlooking Edinburgh.

It does seem as if rather a richer flavor were given to a book by knowing the circumstance of its composition. Consequently readers, as they grow older, turn more and more to biography. It is not chiefly the biographies that deal with great crises and events, but rather the biographies that are concerned with small circumstance and agreeable gossip.

Lately in a book-shop at the foot of Cornhill[120] I fell in with an old scholar who told me that it was his practice to recommend four books, which, taken end on end, furnished the general history of English writing from the Restoration[121] to a time within his own memory. These books were Pepy's “Diary,”[122] Boswell's “Johnson,”[123] the “Letters and Diaries” of Madame D'Arblay,[124] and the “Diary” of Crabbe Robinson.[125]

Beginning almost with the days of Cromwell, here is a chain of pleasant gossip the space of more than two hundred years. Perhaps at the first there were old fellows still alive who could remember Shakespeare; who still sat in chimney-corners and babbled through their toothless gums of Blackfriars and the Globe.[126] And at the end we find a reference to President Lincoln and his freeing of the slaves.

Here are a hundred authors, perhaps a thousand, tucking up their cuffs, looking out from their familiar windows, scribbling their masterpieces.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Why does the writer of an essay need a desk and a library?

2. Explain the figure of speech that compares an essay with
something that cooks slowly.

3. Why must essays be written slowly?

4. Why does an essayist make great use of books?

5. Why does an essayist keep a note-book?

6. Why is an essayist “modest with his own thoughts and tolerant of
others”?

7. Why does the essayist enjoy the little things of life?

8. What is meant by “mending small habits here and there”?

9. In what ways are many books of biography like essays?

10. Prove that Mr. Brooks' article is an essay.

11. Point out unusual expressions, or striking sentences.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. The Writing of School 11. A Clerk in a Store
Compositions
2. The Preparation of a Debate 12. A Teacher of Chemistry
3. The Writing of Letters 13. Preparing an Experiment
4. A Pupil in School 14. The Work of a Book Agent
5. The Work of a Blacksmith 15. Buying a Dress
6. The Leader of an Orchestra 16. Selecting a New Hat
7. The Cheer-Leader at a Game 17. Being Photographed
8. Memorizing a Speech 18. The Senior
9. The Janitor of a School 19. The Freshman
10. The Editor of a Paper 20. The Alumnus

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Your aim is to write an essay in imitation of the one written by Mr. Brooks. Read Mr. Brooks' essay so carefully that you will know just what to imitate.

Notice how easily and how pleasantly Mr. Brooks writes, and especially how he makes use of figurative language rather than of direct statement. Then, too, he uses some very striking expressions, such as “He desires neither typhoon nor tempest,” and “He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish.” At the same time he uses common expressions now and then, as if to give a touch of familiarity or of humor,--“He flaps to no great heights,” “He mends small habits,” “Who still sat in chimney corners and babbled through their toothless gums.” With it all, he gives a clear conception of the essayist and his work.

Try to imitate all this in your own writing. Avoid being stiff and formal, and try to write easily, familiarly, originally, and with dignity. Remember that your aim is to give pleasure rather than information.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). A famous English essayist and poet, noted for his love of books. When he was imprisoned because of an article ridiculing the Prince Regent he sent for so many books that he made his prison a sort of library.

[115] Edmund Gosse (1849- ). A noted English poet, critic, and student of literature. Since he based much of his writing on close study he naturally wished for quiet.

[116] A castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia. Places of perfect happiness, where all desired things may be obtained. Arcadia is a mountain-surrounded section of Greece noted for its happy shepherd life.

[117] Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). The great French essayist who invented the familiar essay.

[118] William Hazlitt (1778-1830). An English essayist, lecturer, biographer and critic; a student of literature.

[119] Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). A British poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At various times he lived in France, Switzerland, the United States and the South Sea Islands. He was buried in Samoa.

[120] Cornhill. A famous street in London.

[121] The Restoration. The restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 after its overthrow by the Parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell.

[122] Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). An English business man, office-holder and lover of books. For nine years he kept a most personal, self-revealing diary, which he wrote in shorthand. The diary gives an accurate picture of the age in which he lived.

[123] James Boswell (1740-1795). A Scotch advocate and author, noted especially for his _Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D._, a book that many pronounce the best biography ever written. The work makes one intimately acquainted with Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a great essayist, poet, biographer, play-writer, and author of a famous dictionary of the English language. Dr. Johnson was a leader of the learned men of his time.

[124] Frances Burney D'Arblay (1752-1840). An English novelist, author of _Evelina_, and a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Her _Letters_ and _Diary_ give an intimate account of her entire life.

[125] Henry Crabbe Robinson (1775-1867). An English war-correspondent and social leader. His _Diary_ gives intimate information concerning the great men of his time, with nearly all of whom he was personally acquainted.

[126] Blackfriars and the Globe. London theaters in which Shakespeare's plays were first produced.

THE RHYTHM OF PROSE
By ABRAM LIPSKY

_(1872- ). A teacher in the high schools of the City of New York.
Among his works is a volume entitled “Old Testament Heroes.” Dr.
Lipsky writes for many publications._

=_The Rhythm of Prose_ is a meditation on the music of language, on
the “tune” that accompanies thought. The essay is not severe and
formal,--as it would be if it were a treatise on prose rhythm,--but
is easy-going and almost conversational. It is an interesting
example of the didactic type of essay.=

=“Good prose is rhythmical because thought is: and thought is
rhythmical because it is always going somewhere, sometimes
strolling, sometimes marching, sometimes dancing.”=

The rhythm of prose is inseparable from its sense. This sense-rhythm is abetted and supported by the mechanical rhythm of syllables, but its larger outlines are staked out by tones of interrogation, by outcries, expostulations, threats, entreaties, resolves, by the tones of a multitude of emotions. These are heard as interior voices, and have their accompaniment of peculiar bodily motions, such as gritting of teeth, holding of breath, clenching of fists, tensions, and relaxations of numberless obscure muscles. All the organs of the body compose the orchestra that plays the rhythm of prose, which is not only a rhythm, but a tune. In short, the really important sort of rhythm in prose is that of phrase, clause, and sentence, and this rhythm is marked not merely by stresses, but by tones, which are of as great variety as the modes of putting a proposition, dogmatic, hypothetical, imperative, persuasive; or as the emotional tone of thought, solemn, jubilant, placid, mysterious.

Good prose is rhythmical because thought is; and thought is rhythmical because it is always going somewhere, sometimes strolling, sometimes marching, sometimes dancing. Types of thought have their characteristic rhythms, and a resemblance is discernible between these and types of dancing. Note, for example, the Oriental undulation of De Quincey,[127] the sprightly two-stepping of Stevenson,[128] the placid glide of Howells,[129] the march of Gibbon.[130] A man who wishes to put the accent of moral authority into his style writes in a sententious, staccato rhythm. One who would appear profound adopts the voluminous, long-winded German period. The apocalyptic spirit manifests itself in a buoyant, shouting, leaping rhythm. Meditative calmness adopts the gliding movement that suggests the waltz.

Now, why do we become uneasy the moment we suspect a writer of aiming at musical effects? It is because we know instinctively that every thought creates its own rhythm, and that when a writer's attention is upon his rhythm, he is bent upon something else than his thought processes. The only way of giving the impression of thought that is not original or spontaneous is by imitating the rhythm of that thought. For real meanings cannot be borrowed. They are always new. Real thought is an action, an original adventure. It pulsates, and the body pulsates with it. No writer can produce this sense of original adventure in us unless he has it himself.

The various classes of writers and talkers whose business it is to sway the minds of others understand as well as the medicine-man in the primitive tribe the part that rhythm plays in their work. The rhythm of each is characteristic. The swelling, pompous senatorial style that suggests the weight of nations behind the speaker is familiar.

I admit that there is an ultimate violent remedy, above the
Constitution and in defiance of the Constitution, which may be
resorted to when a revolution is to be justified. But I do not
admit that, under the Constitution and in conformity with it, there
is any mode in which a state government, as a member of the Union,
can interfere and stop the progress of the general Government by
force of her own laws under any circumstances whatever.

Rhythm of this sort is not a matter of accented and unaccented syllables, but of length of phrase and suspension of voice as it gathers volume and momentum to break finally in an overwhelming roar.

Then there is the suave, insinuating clerical style that lulls opposition and penetrates the conscience of the listener with its smooth, unhalting naïveté.

How many of us feel that those who have committed grave outward
transgressions into which we have not fallen because the motives
to them were not present with us, or because God's grace kept us
hedged round by influences which resisted them--may nevertheless
have had hearts which answered more to God's heart, which entered
far more into the grief and joy of His Spirit, than ours ever did.

Or, if the preacher is of the apocalyptic variety, we get the explosive shocks, the hammer-blows, and the thunderous reverberations.

Ah, no, this deep-hearted son of the wilderness with his burning
black eyes and open, social, deep soul, had other thoughts in him
than ambition.... The great mystery of existence, as I said, glared
in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendors; no hear-says
could hide that unspeakable fact, “Here am I.”

Editorial omniscience clothes itself in a martial array of unwavering units. There is no quickening or slackening in their irresistible advance. There is no weakening in their ranks, nor are they subject to sudden accessions of strength. All is as it was in the beginning, perfect wisdom without flaw.

All this is in prose what conventional meter is in verse. The writer sets himself a tune, which he follows. The political orator, the preacher, the editorial writer, the philosopher, the rhapsodist, knows that his writing acquires prestige from the class wisdom whose rhythm he chants. The reader who does not examine the thought too critically, but who recognizes the rhythm, is satisfied with the writer's credentials and bolts the whole piece. The reverence the average man has for print is largely due to the hypnotizing effect of its rhythm.

What we find intolerable is the setting of the tune at the start and the grinding it out to the end. In revenge the reading world consigns the much-vaunted Sir Thomas Browne's[131] “Urn Burial,” De Quincey's “Levana,”[132] and Pater's[133] famous purple patch about Mona Lisa to the rhetorical museums; but it never ceases to read “Robinson Crusoe,”[8] “Pilgrim's Progress,”[8] and “Gulliver's Travels,”[134] and it devours G. B. Shaw[135] with delight.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Explain just how prose rhythms aid in communicating thought.

2. Show that it is perfectly natural to adapt prose rhythm to
thought.

3. What honesty of style does the writer demand?

4. Why is an artificial rhythm unsuccessful?

5. Why is a continued rhythm unsuccessful?

6. What sort of prose rhythm does Dr. Lipsky advocate?

7. Point out figurative language in the essay? Why is it used? What
effect does it produce?

8. Point out conversational expressions in the essay. Why are they
used? What effects do they produce?

9. What advantage is gained by making references to various
authors?

10. Why does the writer quote from several authors?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Public Speaking 11. Stories in School Papers
2. Tone in Conversation 12. School Editorial Articles
3. Selling Goods 13. Written Translations
4. Style in Letter Writing 14. Laboratory Note Books
5. The Art of Advertising 15. The Sort of Novel I Like
6. Coaching a Team 16. Good Preaching
7. Style in Debating 17. Interesting Lectures
8. The Best Graduation Oration 18. Directions
9. Newspaper Articles 19. Good Teaching
10. School Compositions 20. Useful Text Books

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Think of a thesis, or statement, in which you believe strongly. Explain, first of all, that it is entirely natural for any one to act in accordance with your thesis. Illustrate your thought by making definite references to well-known characteristics, and by making apt quotations. End your work by writing a paragraph that will correspond with the last paragraph of Dr. Lipsky's essay.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). A celebrated English essayist, noted for the poetic beauty of his prose style.

[128] Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). A great modern novelist and essayist whose style has both vigor and beauty of rhythm.

[129] William Dean Howells (1837-1920). A modern realistic novelist and literary critic who wrote in a serene and quiet style.

[130] Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). A great English historian, author of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. His style is stately and impressive, as befits a great subject.

[131] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). A writer of essay-like books that are notable because of unusual beauty of phrasing and rich suggestiveness of expression.

[132] _Levana._ One of the most poetic of Thomas De Quincey's essays.

[133] Walter Pater (1839-1894). An English essayist noted for the richness of his prose style.

[134] _Robinson Crusoe_, by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), and _Pilgrim's Progress_, by John Bunyan (1628-1688), are both written in plain, unaffected style.

[135] George Bernard Shaw (1856--). A present-day dramatist and critic who adapts his style to his thought.

THE REALISTIC STORY

THE CHINAMAN'S HEAD
By WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT

_(1886). Formerly with_ Century Magazine, _and at present associate
editor of_ The Literary Review. _Contributor, particularly of
poems and humorous verse, to many magazines. He is the author of_
Merchants from Cathay; The Falconer of God; The Great White Wall;
The Burglar of the Zodiac; Perpetual Light (_memorial_).

=Humor depends upon incongruity, exaggeration, misunderstanding,
ignorance, the unexpected, and the use of the absurd in a thousand
different ways. Humor that is spontaneous is always most effective.=

=A good humorous story is realistic, its humor apparently created
from within, by the characters, rather than from without, by the
author.=

=_The Chinaman's Head_ is an example of the simple, humorous
story. It gives sufficient character indication to support the
incongruity, the misunderstanding, and the unexpected on which the
humor of the story depends. The brevity of the story contributes to
its effect.=

There must be oodles of money in it, I thought, and what a delightful existence, just one complication after another. I can imagine a beginning: “As he looked more nearly at the round object in the middle of the sidewalk, he discovered that it was the completely severed head of a Chinese laundryman.” There you have it at once--mystery! Gripping! Big! Large! In fact, immense! Then your story covers twenty-five chapters, in which you unravel why it was a Chinese laundryman and whose Chinese laundryman it was. Excellent! I shall write mystery stories.

I lit another cigarette and sat thinking of mystery. Did you ever realize this about mystery? It gets more and more mysterious the more you think of it. It was getting too mysterious for me already. Just then my wife called me to lunch.

“Did you ever think, my dear,” I said affably as I unfolded my napkin and the roll in it bounced to the floor. They always do with me. It seems a rather cheap form of amusement, putting rolls in napkins. “Did you ever think,” I said, recovering the roll.

“Oh, often,” said my wife.

This somewhat disconcerted me.

“I mean,” I said, accidentally ladling the cold consomme into my tea-cup--“I mean, what would you do if you found a Chinaman's head on the sidewalk?”

“Step on it,” said my wife, promptly.

It was quite unexpected.

“I mean _seriously_,” I said, handing her my tea-cup, which she refused.

“I am quite serious,” said my wife; “but I wish you would watch what you are doing.”

I spent the next few minutes doing it.

“I am thinking,” I said gravely over my cutlet, “of writing mystery-stories.”

“That will be quite harmless,” returned the woman I once loved with passion.

I ignored her tone.

“The mystery-story,” I said, “is a money-maker. Look at 'Sherlock Holmes,' and look at--well, look at 'Old and Young King Brady'!”

“All those dime novels are written by the same man,” said my wife, unemotionally.

“_Were_, my dear. I believe that man is dead now.”

“Then it's his brother,” said my wife.

“But I am not going to descend to the dime novel,” I went on. “I am going to write the higher type of mystery-story. My first story will concern the Oriental of whom I have spoken. It will be called 'The Chinaman's Head.' Don't you think it a good idea?”

“But that isn't all of it?” the rainbow fancy of my lost youth questioned, at the same time making a long arm for the olives.

“Of course not. There are innumerable complications. They--er--they complicate--”

“Such as?”

“Of course,” I said, “I conceived this idea just before lunch. I have had no time as yet to work out the mere detail.”

“Oh,” said my lifelong penance, chewing an end of celery.

But after lunch I sat down at my desk and began to concentrate upon my complications. I wrote down some names of characters that occurred to me, and put them into a hat. Then I took them out of the hat and wrote after them the type of person that belonged to the name. Then I put them into the hat again, shook the hat, and drew them out. This is entirely my own invention in writing a mystery-story. The first name that came out was that of “Rudolph Habakkuk, soap manufacturer.”

It was an excellent beginning. I was immediately interested in the story. I began it at once.

“'Ha!' exclaimed Rudolph Habakkuk, soap manufacturer, starting violently at what he saw before him upon the broad pavements of Fifth Avenue. The round, yellow object glistened in the oblique rays of the afternoon sun. It was a Chinaman's head!”

I thought it excellent, pithy, precise. Scene, the whole character of one of the principal figures in the story, the crux of the mystery--all at a glance, as it were. And what more revealing than that simple, yet complete, designation, soap manufacturer! I couldn't resist going into the next room and reading it to my wife. I said:

“Doesn't it arouse your curiosity?”

“Yes,” said my wife, biting off a thread. “But how did it get there?”

“What? The Chinaman's head? Oh, that is the mystery.”

“I should say it was,” said my wife to herself.

I left the begrudging woman and returned to my study. I sat down to think about how it got there. I thought almost an hour about how it got there. Do you know, it quite eluded me? I took my hat and overcoat and went down the street to talk to Theodore Rowe, who is an author of sorts.

“Let's hear your plot,” said Theodore, giving me a cigarette and a cocktail.

“Well,” I started off immediately, with decision, “you see, this Rudolph Habakkuk is a wealthy soap manufacturer. On Christmas day, when he is walking down Fifth Avenue, he is arrested--”

“Ah,” said Theodore. “Arson, or just for being a soap manufacturer?”

“I did not think _you_ would interrupt,” I said solemnly. “He is arrested by a Chinaman's head.”

“Really,” said Theodore, “don't you think that's drawing the long bow a bit? Is it 'Alice in Wonderland' or a ghost-story?”

“He sees it on the pavement,” I pursued as well as I could. “It is entirely cut off. I mean it is decapitated, you know. The head is decapitated.”

“Yes,” answered Theodore, slowly, “I see. It would be, Heads get that way.”

“Well,” I said, “what do you think of it?”

“I haven't heard the story yet,” remarked Theodore.

“Oh,” I replied a trifle impatiently, I am afraid. “But that is the idea. The details are to be worked out later. Don't you think it's a striking idea?”

“I should say so,” said Theodore, rising; “almost too striking. Have another cocktail. They're good for what ails you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But, you see, the fact is I _have_ got a bit--er--perplexed about how to explain the appearance of the head. Possibly you could suggest?”

“We-ll,” said Theodore, pursing his lips in deep thought, “let me see. Have you thought of the Chinaman being in a manhole? Only his head showing, you know.” He turned his back on me and drew out his handkerchief. He seemed to have a very bad cold.

“No,” I said emphatically, “this is a severed head.”

“It might have been dropped from a ballooo--_achoo!_” gargled Theodore, his back still turned.

“Really, Theodore,” I said, rising, “thank you for the drinks, but I must say your mind doesn't seem to fire to a true mystery-story. I must have something better than that. I shall have to find it.”

As I was going down the front steps, Theodore opened the door.

“Oh, Tuffin,” he called after me, “how did he know it was a Chinaman?”

“By the queue wound round the neck,” I called back. It was rather good for an impromptu, I think. “The man had been murdered.”

I then found myself colliding with a policeman. He looked after me suspiciously.

* * * * *

My wife reminded me that we were to dine at the Royles's that night. As I dressed I was still turning over in my mind the unlimited possibilities of my first mystery-story. I could see the colored jackets of the book, the publisher's announcements, other volumes in the same series, “The Musical Fingerbowls,” “The Pink Emerald,” “The Green Samovar,” “The Purple Umbrella.” Imagination flamed. My wife said she had called me three times, but I know it was only once.

I had expected it to be rather a dull dinner party, but really Mrs. Revis quite brightened it for me. She was immediately interested in my becoming an author, and she began to talk about Dostoyevsky.

“Well, you know--just at first,” I rejoined in modest deprecation of my own talents.

“And tell me your first story. What is it to be?” She leaned toward me with large and shining eyes. I had a moment of wishing the title were not quite so sensational.

“It is to be called 'The Chinaman's Head,'” I said, hastening to add, “You see, it is a very deep mystery-story.”

“A-ah, mystery!” said Mrs. Revis, clasping her beautiful hands and gazing upward. “I _adore_ mystery!”

“The plot is,” I said--“well, you see, there is a soap manufacturer--”

“A-ah, soup!” softly moaned Mrs. Revis, gazing at hers.

“No; soap,” I said. “The soap manufacturer is walking along Fifth Avenue--”

“They really shouldn't allow them,” exclaimed my confidante.

“Yes, but he is--and--and he sees a Chinaman's head.”

“Where?”

“A-ah,” I said, “that is the touch--a severed head at his feet!”

Her dismay was pleasing. I had aroused her. She choked over her soup.

“Tell me more!” she gasped.

“Certainly,” I said. “The--the way it got there--”

What an infernal thing a mystery-story is! How should I know how it got there! Isn't the effect enough? Some day I shall write a story entirely composed of effects.

As I drew our Ford up at our door, my wife suddenly turned to me.

“It isn't late, George, and Sam Lee is just down at the corner. He should have brought the laundry this afternoon. I entirely forgot about it, and to-morrow's Sunday.”

“But surely they close up.”

“Oh, no; he'll be open. Maida went for it two Saturdays ago at about this time. They work all night, you know. Please, George!”

“Oh, all right,” I said resignedly. I jogged and pulled things and ambled down the block. Sure enough, the laundry was still lighted and doing business. It always smells of lychee-nuts and bird's nest soup inside. The black-haired yellow boy grinned at me. “How do!”

I explained my errand and secured the large parcel. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. The very thing! These Orientals were full of subtlety. I would put it to him.

“John,” I said impressively, “listen!” His name was Sam, but I always call them John.

He listened attentively, watching me with beady black eyes.

“John,” I said, “what would you do if your head--no; I mean--what would you do if a soap manufacturer--no; perhaps we had better get at it this way. If a Chinaman's head was cut off--see what I mean?” I leaned forward and indicated by an appropriate and time-honored gesture the process of decapitation. John--I mean Sam--took two steps hastily backward, and his eyes became pin-points. He jabbered something at his friend in the rear room.

“Now, John--I mean Sam,” I said mollifyingly, “don't be foolish. Just come back nearer--”

“That'll be all of that shenanigan,” said a very Irish voice behind me. I turned, and saw the policeman with whom I had so nearly collided that afternoon.

“That'll be all, I say,” remarked Roundsman Reardon, as I afterward found his name to be. “Sur-r, ain't yees ashamed of yerself, scarin' the likes o' these Chinks into the fright o' their shadow?” He leveled a large, pudgy finger at me. “An' I hear-rd ye this afternoon. I seen ye an' I hear-rd ye. An' ye may be thankful I know ye by repitation to be har-rmless. But ye'll come with me quiet, an' I'll escar-rt ye back to yer own house, an' leave the wife to put ye to bed. Ain't ye ashamed to be drinkin' this way an' makin' a sneak with the la'ndry without payin', by hopes of frightenin'--”

“That is not true,” I answered hotly, for my blood was up. “I intend to pay. I had forgotten.”

“Ye had forgotten,” said Reardon, a whit contemptuously. “An' ye was askin' the China boy how he w'u'd like to be murthered!”

“I will explain to you, Officer,” I said in the street. “I am writing a story. I was merely seeking a native impression.”

“That'll be as it may be,” said Reardon. “Ye give me the impression--”

“Suppose you had _your_ head cut off--” I began affably enough. But I got no further.

“It is as I thought,” said Reardon, gloomily. He got in beside me, and he helped me out at my own house, though I needed absolutely no assistance. He seemed to want to give me a bit of advice.

“Lay off the stuff, sur-r,” he said ponderously. “An' ye wid the fine wife you have!” He shook his head a number of times, glanced with sad

(_page 234_)

resignation at my wife as she led me in, and departed, still shaking his head. I can't tell you how all that head-shaking annoyed me.

* * * * *

I started awake in the middle of the night. It was unbelievably excellent.

“Jane!” I said to my wife, “Jane, it's wonderful. It's come to me!”