Chapter XI: Retrospect (2)

4. Give a surveyor's or a tax assessor's or a conveyancer's description of a piece of land. Then describe the land through figures of speech which will vivify its outward appearance or its emotional significance to the owner.

5. Observe that the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3) is an extended figure of speech. Is the main figure effective? Are its detailed applications effective?

6. The Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4) is also an extended figure of speech. Does it, as Shakespeare intends, bring vividly to your consciousness the course, motives, stages, evolution of a human being's life? There are several subsidiary figures. Do these add force, definiteness to the picture Shakespeare is drawing at that moment?

7. Observe from Appendix 3, Appendix 4, and the sentences listed in Activity 9 for EXERCISE - Abstract above, that a thing meant to be concrete is likely to be stated figuratively.

8. Examine The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its proportionate use of literal and figurative elements. See Activity 2 of EXERCISE - Wordiness III above for a statement of Defoe's purpose. Could he have effected this purpose so well had he employed more figures of speech?

9. Examine Appendix 2 for its use of figures. Are the figures appropriate to the subject matter? Are there enough of them?

10. Galvanize the thought of any sentence or paragraph in editorial (Appendix 1) by the use of a figure of speech.

11. Summarize or illustrate your opinion on any of the topics listed in Activity 1 for EXERCISE - Discourse, through the employment of figure of speech.

12. Are these figures effective?

Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. The flower of our young manhood is scaling the ladder of success.

Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
In my head
Many thoughts of trouble come,
Like to flies upon a plum!

Let me tell you first about those barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye.

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Mountains stood out like pimples or lay like broken welts across the habitable ground.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves.

13. Recast the following sentences to eliminate the clashing of literal and figurative elements:

Life is like a rich treasure entrusted to us, and to sustain it we must have three square meals a day.

She glanced at the mirror, but did not really see herself. She was trying to puzzle out the right course, and could only see as through a glass darkly.

Arming himself with the sword of zeal and the buckler of integrity, he wrote the letter.

He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of sunshine in the office. He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.

<3. Connotation>

The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional association it carries--often quite apart from its dictionary definition. Thus the words _house_ and _home_ in large measure overlap in meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all. You can say _house_ without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter the word _home_ it will call back, however slightly, tender and cherished recollections. _Bald heads_ and _gray hair_ are both indicative of age; but you would pronounce the former in disparaging allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration. You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the _fiddle_, but of Fritz Kreisler that he plays the _violin_. And just as you unconsciously adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are less gross.

Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken. You may be called "old dog" in an insulting manner, or (especially if a slap on the shoulder accompanies the phrase) in an affectionate manner. You may properly say, "Calhoun had logic on his side"; add, however, the words "but his face was to the past," and you spoil the sentence,--for _face_ gives a reflex connotation to _side_, slight perhaps and momentary, but disconcerting. Think over the funny stories you have heard. Many of them turn, you will find, on the outcropping of new significance in a phrase because of its environment. Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next his silk shirt, and finally his very underclothing--"and then," added the minister, "he came to himself." Only by unresting vigilance can you evade verbal discords, if not of this magnitude, at least of much frequency and stylistic harm.

EXERCISE - Connotation

1. Note the contrast in emotional suggestion that comes to you from hearing the words:

"Sodium chloride" and "salt" "A test-tube of H2O" and "a cup of cold water" "A pair of brogans" and "a little empty shoe" "Bump" and "collide" "A brilliant fellow" and "a flashy fellow" "Bungled it" and "did not succeed" "Tumble" and "fall" "Dawn" and "6 A.M." "Licked" and "worsted" "Fat" and "plump" "Wept" and "blubbered" "Cheek" and "self-assurance" "Stinks" and "disagreeable odors" "Steal" and "embezzle" "Thievishness" and "kleptomania" "Educated" and "highbrow" "Job" and "position" "Told a lie" and "fell into verbal inexactitude" "A drunkard" (a stranger) and "a drunkard" (your father).

2. Make a list of your own similar to that in Exercise 1.

3. Read the sentences listed in EXERCISE - Slovenliness III and IV. What do these sentences suggest to you as to the social and mental qualifications of the person who employs them?

4. Read the second paragraph of Appendix 2. What does it suggest to you as to Burke's social and mental qualifications?

5. Suppose you were told that a passage of twenty-eight lines contains the following expressions: "mewling and puking," "whining schoolboy," "satchel," "sighing like furnace," "round belly," "spectacles on nose," "shrunk shank," "sans [without] teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." Would you believe the passage is poetry?--that its total effect is one of poetic elevation? Read the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). _Is_ it poetry? How does Shakespeare reconcile the general poetic tone with such expressions as those quoted?

6. What is wrong with the connotation of the following?

The servant told us that the young ladies were all in. All my poor success is due to you. He insisted on carrying a revolver, and so the college authorities fired him. The carpenter too had his castles in Spain. He rested his old bones by the wayside, and his gaunt dog stood sniffing at them. On the other hand, he had a white elephant to dispose of. When he came to the forks of the road, he showed he was not on the square. Body, for funeral purposes, must be sold at once. City Automobile Agency.

7. Can you express the following ideas in other words without sacrifice of emotional suggestion? Try.

The music, yearning like a god in pain.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.

It was night in the lonesome October.
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight.

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,--
'Tis the natural way of living.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

8. With the most connotative words at your command describe the following:

Your first sweetheart A solemn experience A ludicrous experience A terrifying experience A mysterious experience The circus parade you saw in your boyhood A servant girl A dude An odd character you have known The old homestead Your boarding house A scene suggesting the intense heat of a midsummer day Night on the river The rush for the subway car The traffic policeman Your boss Anything listed in the first part of Activity 9 of EXERCISE - Discourse.

III

WORDS IN COMBINATION: HOW MASTERED

The more dangerous pitfalls for those who use words in combination--as all of us do--have been pointed out. The best ways of avoiding these pitfalls have also been indicated. But our work together has thus far been chiefly negative. To be sure, many tasks assigned for your performance have been constructive as well as precautionary; but _the end_ held ever before you has been the avoidance of feeble or ridiculous diction. In the present chapter we must take up those aspects of the mastery of words in combination which are primarily positive.

<Preliminaries: General Purposes and Methods>

Before coming to specific aspects and assignments, however, we shall do well to consider certain large general purposes and methods.

<I. A Ready, an Accurate, or a Wide Vocabulary?>

First, what kind of vocabulary do we wish to acquire? A facile, readily used one? An accurate one? Or one as nearly as may be comprehensive? The three kinds do not necessarily coexist. The possession of one may even hinder and retard the acquisition of another. Thus if we seek a ready vocabulary, an accurate vocabulary may cause us to halt and hesitate for words which shall correspond with the shadings of our thought and emotion, and a wide vocabulary may embarrass us with the plenitude of our verbal riches.

But _may_ is not _must_. Though the three kinds of vocabulary may interfere with each other, there is no reason, except superficially, why they should. Our purpose should be, therefore, to acquire not a single kind but all three. We should be like the boy who, when asked whether he would have a small slice of apple pie or a small slice of pumpkin pie, replied resolutely, "Thank you, I will take a large piece of both."

That the assignments in this chapter may help you develop a vocabulary which shall be promptly responsive to your needs, you should perform some of them rapidly. Your thoughts and feelings regarding a topic may be anything but clear, but you must not pause to clarify them. The words best suited to the matter may not be instantly available, but you must not tarry for accessions of language. Stumble, flounder if you must, yea, rearrange your ideas even as you present them, but press resolutely ahead, comforting yourself with the assurance that in the heat and stress of circumstances a man rarely does his work precisely as he wishes. When you have finished the discussion, repeat it immediately--and with no more loitering than before. You will find that your ideas have shifted and enlarged, and that more appropriate words have become available. Further repetitions will assist you the more. But the goal you should set yourself, as you proceed from topic to topic, is the attainment of the power to be at your best in the first discussion. You may never reach this goal, but at least you may approach it.

That the assignments in this chapter may assist you in making your vocabulary accurate, you should perform some of them in another way. When you have selected a topic, you should first of all think it through. In doing this, arrange your ideas as consistently and logically as you can, and test them with your reason. Then set them forth in language which shall be lucid and exact. Tolerate no slipshod diction, no vaguely rendered general meanings. Send every sentence, every word like a skilful drop-kick--straight above the crossbar. When you have done your best with the topic, lay it by for a space. Time is a great revealer of hidden defects, and you must not regard your labors as ended until your achievement is the maturest possible for you. If the quantity of what you accomplish is meager, suffer no distress on that account. The desideratum now is not quantity, but quality.

The assignments in this chapter will do less toward making your vocabulary wide than toward making it facile and precise. To be sure, they will now and then set you to hunting for words that are new. Better still, they will give you a mastery over some of your outlying words--words known to your eyes or ears but not to your tongue. But these advantages will be somewhat incidental. Means for the systematic extension of your verbal domain into regions as yet unexplored by you, are reserved for the later chapters of this book.

<2. A Vocabulary for Speech or for Writing?>

In the second place, are we to develop a vocabulary for oral discourse or a vocabulary for writing? It may be that our chief impediment or our chief ambition lies in one field rather than in the other. Nevertheless we should strive for a double mastery; we ought to speak well _and_ write well. Indeed the two powers so react upon each other that we ought to cultivate both for the sake of either. True, some men, though inexpert as writers, have made themselves proficient as speakers; or though shambling and ineffective as speakers, have made themselves proficient as writers. But this is not natural or normal. Moreover these men might have gleaned more abundantly from their chosen field had they not shut it off from the acres adjacent. Fences waste space and curtail harvests.

The assignments in this chapter are of such a nature that you may perform them either orally or in writing. You should speak and write alternately, sometimes on the same topic, sometimes on topics taken in rotation.

In your oral discussions you should perhaps absent yourself at first from human auditors. A bedstead or a dresser will not make you self-conscious or in any way distract your attention, and it will permit you to sit down afterward and think out the degree of your failure or success. Ultimately, of course, you must speak to human beings--in informal conversations at the outset, in more ambitious ways later as occasion permits.

In your writing you may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition that easy reading is devilish hard writing.

<The Mastery of Words in Combination>

These purposes and methods are general. We now come to the specific fields in which we may with profit cultivate words in combination. Of these fields there are four.

<I. Mastery through Translation>

If you read a foreign language, whether laboriously or with ease, you should make this power assist you to amass a good English vocabulary. Take compositions or parts of compositions written in the foreign tongue, and turn them into idiomatic English. How much you should translate at a given time depends upon your leisure and your adeptness. Employ all the methods--the spontaneous, the carefully perfected, the oral, the written--heretofore explained in this chapter. In your final work on a passage you should aim at a faultless rendition, and should spend time and ransack the lexicons rather than come short of this ideal.

The habit of translation is an excellent habit to keep up. For the study of an alien tongue not only improves your English, but has compensations in itself.

EXERCISE - Translation

1. Translate from any accessible book in the foreign language you can read.

2. Subscribe for a period of at least two or three months for a newspaper or magazine in that language, if it is a modern one. Translate as before, but give most of your time to rapid oral translation for a real or imaginary American hearer.

3. When you have completed your final written translation of a passage from the foreign language, make yourself master of all the English words you have not previously (1) known or (2) used, but have encountered in your work of translation.

<2. Mastery through Paraphrasing>

It may be that you are not familiar with a foreign language. At any rate you have some knowledge of English. Put this knowledge to use in paraphrasing; for thus you will enrich your vocabulary and make it surer and more flexible. The process of paraphrasing is simple, though the actual work is not easy. You take passages written in English--the more of them the better, and the more diversified the better--and both reproduce their substance and incarnate their mood in words you yourself shall choose.

You may have a passage before you and paraphrase it unit by unit. More often, however, you should follow the plan adopted by Franklin when he emulated Addison by rewriting the _Spectator Papers_. That is, you should steep yourself in the thought and emotion of a piece of writing, and then lay the piece aside until its wording has faded from your memory, when you should reëmbody the substance in language that seems to you natural and fitting. Much of the benefit will come from your comparing your version, as Franklin did his, with the original. When you perceive that you have fallen short, you should consider the respects wherein your inferiority lies--and should make another attempt, and yet another, and another. When you perceive that in any way you have surpassed the original, you should feel a just pride in your achievement--and should resolve that next time your cause for pride shall be greater still. Even after you have desisted from formal paraphrasing, you should cling to the habit, formed at this time, of observing any notable felicities in whatever you read and of comparing them with the expression you yourself would likely have employed.

EXERCISE - Paraphrasing

1. Paraphrase the editorial in Appendix 1. You should improve upon the original. Keep trying until you do.

2. Paraphrase the second paragraph in Burke's speech (Appendix 2). Burke lacked the cheap tricks of the ordinary orator, but his discussions were based upon a comprehensive knowledge of facts, a sympathetic understanding of human nature, a vast depth and range of thought, and a well-meditated political philosophy. In short, he is a model for _elaborated_ discussions. Set forth the leading thought of this paragraph; you can give it in fewer words than he employs. But try setting it forth with his full accompaniments of reflection and information; you will be bewildered at his crowding so much into such small compass.

3. Try to rival the pregnant conciseness of the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3).

4. Paraphrase in prose the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). Catch if possible the mood, the "atmosphere," of each of the pictures painted by Shakespeare. Condense your paraphrase as much as you can.

5. In each of the preceding exercises compare your vocabulary with that of the original as to size, precision, and the grace and ease with which words are put together. Does the original employ terms unfamiliar to you? If so, look up their meaning and make them yours; then observe, when you next paraphrase the passage, whether your mastery of these terms has improved your expression.

<3. Mastery through Discourse at First Hand>

Models have their use, but you can also work without models. It is imperative that you should. You must learn to discuss, explain, analyze, argue, narrate, and describe for yourself. Here again you should diversify your materials to the utmost, not only that you may become well-rounded and versatile in your ability to set forth ideas and feelings in words, but also that your knowledge and your sensibility may receive stimulation.

It is feasible to begin by discussing or explaining. Most of the intercourse conducted through language consists in either discussion or explanation. Analysis, ordinarily, is almost ignored. Argument is indulged in, and so is description (though less freely), but they are of the bluntest and broadest. Narration--the recounting of incidents of everyday existence--is, however, widely employed.

In your work of discussion or explanation you may seize upon any current topic--industrial, social, political, or what not--that comes into your mind. Or you may make a list of such topics, writing each on a separate piece of paper; may jumble the slips in a hat; and may thus have always at your elbow a collection of satisfactory themes from which you may take one at random. Or you may invest in language of your own selection the substance of an address or sermon you have heard, or give the burden of some important conversation in which you have participated, or explain the tenor of an article you have read. You should of course try to interest your hearers, and above all, you should impart to what you say complete clarity.

In analyzing you should select as your topic a process fairly obscure, the implications of a certain statement or argument, the results to be expected from some action or policy that has been advocated, or the exact matter at issue between two disputants. Any topic for discussion, explanation, or argument may be treated analytically. Your analysis in its final form should be so carefully considered that its soundness cannot be impeached.

In arguing you may take any subject under the sun, from baseball to Bolshevism, for all of them are debated with vehemence. Any topic for discussion or explanation becomes, when approached from some particular angle, material for argument. Thus the initial topic in the exercise that follows is "The aeroplane's future as a carrier of mail." You may convert it into a question for debate by making it read: "The aeroplane is destined to supplant the railroad as a carrier of mail," or "The aeroplane is destined to be used increasingly as a carrier of transcontinental mail." In arguing you may propose for yourself either of two objectives: (1) to silence your opponent, (2) to refute, persuade, and win him over fairly. The achievement of the first end calls for bluster and perhaps a grim, barbaric strength; you must do as Johnson did according to Goldsmith's famous dictum--if your pistol misses fire, you must knock your adversary down with the butt end of it. This procedure, though inartistic to be sure, is in some contingencies the only kind that will serve. But you should cultivate procedure of a type more urbane. Let your very reasonableness be the most potent weapon you wield. To this end you should form the habit of looking for good points on both sides of a question. As a still further precaution against contentiousness you should uphold the two sides successively.

In narrating you should, as a rule, stick to simple occurrences, though you may occasionally vary your work by summarizing the plot of a novel or giving the gist and drift of big historical events. You should confine yourself, in large part, to incidents in which you have been personally involved, or which you yourself have witnessed, as mishaps, unexpected encounters, bickerings, even rescues or riots. You should omit non-essentials and make the happening itself live for your hearer; if you can so interest him in it that he will not notice your manner of telling it, your success is but the greater.

Finally, in describing you should deal for the most part with beings, objects, and appearances familiar to you. Description is usually hard to make vivid. This is because the objects and scenes are likely to be immobile and (at least when told about) to lack distinctiveness. Try, therefore, to lay hold of the peculiar quality of the thing described, and use words suggestive of color and motion. Moreover be brief. Long descriptions are sure to be wearisome.

EXERCISE - Discourse

1. Select topics from the following list for discussion or explanation:

The aeroplane's future as a carrier of mail The commercial future of the aeroplane A recent scientific (or mechanical or electrical) invention A better type of newspaper--its contents and makeup A better type of newspaper--how it can be secured The connection between the advertising and news departments of a newspaper--the actual condition The connection between the advertising and news departments of a newspaper--the ideal Special features in a newspaper that are popular A single standard for the sexes--is it possible? A single standard for the sexes--how it can be attained (or approximated) Should the divorce laws be made more stringent? Should a divorced person be prohibited from remarrying? What further marriage restrictions should be placed upon the physically or mentally unfit? What further measures should be taken by the cities (states, nation) for the protection of motherhood? Is the division of men into strongly contrasted groups as to wealth one of nature's necessities, or is it the result of a social and economic system? Some shortcomings of the labor unions Are the shortcomings of the labor unions accidental or inherent? Some ways of bettering the condition of the working classes How municipal (state, national) bureaus for finding employment for the laborer may become more serviceable Wrongs committed by big business (or some branch of it) Should a man's income above a stipulated amount be confiscated by the government? Income taxes--what exemptions should be granted? The right basis for business--competition or coöperation? Are the courts equally just to labor and capital? How can legal procedure be changed to enable individuals to secure just treatment from corporations without resorting to prolonged and expensive lawsuits? Where our interests clash with those of Great Britain How our relations with Great Britain may be further improved How our relations with Japan may be further improved How may closer commercial relations with other countries be promoted? What to do about the railroads and railroad rates A natural resource that should be conserved or restored Do high tariffs breed international ill-will? Should we have a high tariff at this juncture? To what extent should osteopathy (chiropractic) be permitted (or protected) by law? What is wrong with municipal government in my city How woman suffrage affects local government How to make rural life more attractive The importance of the rotation of crops The race problem as it affects my community The class problem as it affects my community The school-house as a social center How to Americanize the alien elements in our population To what extent, if at all, should foreign-born citizens of our country be encouraged to preserve their native traditions and culture? Censorship of the moving picture Educational possibilities of the moving picture How to bring about improvement in the quality of the moving picture The effect of the moving picture upon legitimate drama A church that men will attend How young men may be attracted to the churches How far shall doctrine be insisted upon by the churches? To what extent shall the church concern itself with social and economic problems? To what extent, if at all, shall Sunday diversions be restricted? The advantages of using the free public library Can the cities give children in the slums better opportunities for physical (mental, moral) development? Should all cities be required to establish zoölogical gardens, as well as schools, for the children? How my city might improve its system of public parks The most interesting thing about the work I am in Opportunities in the work I am in The qualities called for in the work I am in The ideals of my associates Something I have learned about life Something I have learned about human nature A book that has influenced me, and why A person who has influenced me, and how My favorite sport or recreation Why baseball is so popular What I could do for the people around me What I should like for the people around me to do for me.

2. Discuss or explain the ideas listed in Exercise 3 for 'Abstract vs. Concrete' in "Words in Combination: Some Pitfalls" above.

3. Analyze the debatable questions included in the two preceding exercises or suggested by them. That is, find the issues in each question, and show what each disputant must prove and what he must refute.

4. Analyze the results to be expected from the adoption of some policy or course of action by:

A newspaper A business firm The city The farmers The producers in some business or industry The consumers The retail merchants of your city Some group of reformers Some social group Those interested in a social activity, as dancing Your neighbors Yourself.

5. Analyze or explain:

The testing of seed grain How to raise potatoes (any other vegetable) How to utilize and apportion the space in your garden How to keep an automobile in good shape How to run an automobile (motor boat) How to make a rabbit trap How to lay out a camp How to catch trout (bass, codfish, tuna fish, lobsters) How to conduct a public meeting How a bill is introduced and passed in a legislative body How food is digested How to extract oxygen from water How a fish breathes How gold is mined How wireless messages are sent How your favorite game is played How to survey a tract of land How stocks are bought and sold on margins How public opinion is formed How a man ought to form his opinions The responsibility of individuals to society The responsibility of society to the individual.

6. Argue one side or the other, or the two successively, of queries contained or implied in Exercises 1 and 2.

7. Argue one side or the other, or the two successively, of queries listed in Exercise 1 in EXERCISE - Abstract.

8. Give a narrative of:

The earning of your first dollar How somebody met his match An amusing incident An anxious moment A surprise The touchdown That fatal seventh inning How you got the position Why you missed the train When you were lost Your first trip on the railroad (a motor boat, a merry-go-round, snowshoes, a burro) A mishap How Jenkins skated Your life until the present (a summary) Something you have heard your father tell What happened to your uncle Your partner's (chum's) escapade Meeting an old friend Meeting a bore A conversation you have overheard When Myrtle eavesdropped When the girls didn't know Algy was in the parlor A public happening that interests you An incident you have read in the papers An incident from your favorite novel Backward Ben at the party Something that happened to you today.

9. Describe ...

For the mood or general "atmosphere":

Anything you deem suitable in Activity 8 in EXERCISE - Connotation. An old, deserted house Your birthplace as you saw it in manhood The view from an eminence A city as seen from a roof garden by night Your mother's Bible A barnyard scene The lonely old negro at the supper table A new immigrant gazing out upon the ocean he has crossed The downtown section at closing hour A scene of quietude A scene of bustle and confusion A richly colored scene A scene of dejection A scene of wild enthusiasm A scene of dulness or stagnation.

With attention to homely detail:

The old living-room My aunt's dresses Barker's riding-horse The business street of the village A cabin in the mountains The office of a man approaching bankruptcy The Potters' backyard The second-hand store The ugliest man.

For general accuracy and vividness:

The organ-grinder The signs of an approaching storm The arrival of the train Mail-time at the village post office The crowd at the auction The old fishing-boat A country fair (or a circus) The inside of a theater (or a church) The funeral procession The political rally The choir.

<4. Mastery through Adapting Discourse to Audience>

For convenience, we have heretofore assumed that ideas and emotions, together with such expression of them as shall be in itself adequate and faithful, comprise the sole elements that have to be reckoned with in the use of words in combination. But as you go out into life you will find that these things, however complete they may seem, are not in practice sufficient. Another factor--the human--must have its place in our equation. You do not speak or write in a vacuum. Your object, your ultimate object at least, in building up your vocabulary is to address men and women; and among men and women the varieties of training, of stations, of outlooks, of sentiments, of prejudices, of caprices are infinite. To gain an unbiased hearing you must take persistent cognizance of flesh and blood.

In adapting discourse to audience you must have a supple and attentive mind and an impressionable and swiftly responsive temperament as well as a wide, accurate, and flexible vocabulary. Unless you are a fool, a zealot, or an incorrigible adventurer, you will not broach a subject at all to which your hearers feel absolute indifference or hostility. Normally you should pick a subject capable of interesting them. In presenting it you should pay heed to both your matter and your manner. You should emphasize for your listeners those aspects of the subject which they will most respond to or most need to hear, whether or not the phases be such as you would emphasize with other auditors. You should also speak in the fashion you deem most effective with them, whether or not it be one to which your own natural instincts prompt you.

Let us say you are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad--in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. You must speak in one way to employers, in another to employees, possibly in a third to men thrown out of jobs, possibly in a fourth to the general public. Let us say you are discussing education, or literature, or social tendencies, or mechanical principles or processes, or some great enterprise or movement. You must speak in one way to cultivated hearers and in another to men in the street, and if you are a specialist addressing specialists, you will cut the garment of your discourse to their particular measure.

The same principle holds regardless of whether you expound, analyze, argue, recount, or describe. You must always keep a finger on the mental or emotional pulse of those whom you address. But your problem varies slightly with the form of discourse you adopt. In explanation, analysis, and argument the chief barriers you encounter are likely to be those of the mind; you must make due allowance for the intellectual limitations of your auditors, though many who have capacity enough may for some cause or other be unreceptive to ideas. In description you must reckon with the imaginative faculty, with the possibility that your hearers cannot visualize what you tell them--and you must make your words brief. In narration you must vivify emotional torpor; but lest in your efforts to inveigle boredom you yourself should induce it, you must have a wary eye for signals of distress.

EXERCISE - Adapting

1. Explain to (a) a rich man, (b) a poor man the blessings of poverty.

2. Discuss before (a) farmers, (b) merchants the idea that farmers (merchants) make a great deal of money.

3. Explain to (a) the initiate, (b) the uninitiate some piece of mechanism, or some phase of a human activity or interest, which you know at first hand and regarding which technical (or at least not generally understood) terms are employed. (The exact subject depends, of course, upon your own observation or experience; you are sure to be familiar with something that most people know hazily, if at all. Bank clerk, chess player, bridge player, stenographer, journalist, truck driver, backwoods-man, mechanic--all have special knowledge of one kind or another and can use the particular terms it calls for.)

4. Explain to (a) a supporter of the winning team, (b) a supporter of the losing team why the baseball game came out as it did.

5. Discuss before (a) a Democratic, (b) a Republican audience your reasons for voting the Democratic (Republican) ticket in the coming election.

6. Explain to (a) your own family, (b) the man who can lend you the money, why you wish to mortgage your house (any piece of property).

7. Explain to the owner of an ill-conducted business why he should sell it, and to a shrewd business man why he should buy it.

8. Discuss before (a) old men, (b) young men, (c) women the desirability of men's giving up their seats in street cars to women. (Also modify the question by requiring only young men to give up their seats, and then only to old people of either sex, to sick people, or to people with children in their arms.)

9. Explain the necessity of restricting immigration to (a) prospective immigrants, (b) immigrants just granted admission to the country, (c) persons just refused admission, (d) exploiters of cheap labor, (e) ordinary citizens.

10. Discuss the taking out of a life insurance policy with (a) a man not interested, (b) a man interested but uncertain what a policy is like, (c) a man interested and informed but doubtful whether he can spare the money, (d) the man's wife (his prospective beneficiary), whose desires will have weight with him.

11. Discuss the necessity of a reduction in wages with (a) unscrupulous employers, (b) kind-hearted employers, (c) the employees.

12. Advocate higher public school taxes before (a) men with children, (b) men without children.

13. Advocate a further regulation of the speed of automobiles before (a) automobile-owners, (b) non-owners.

14. Urge advocacy of some reform upon (a) a clergyman, (b) a candidate for office.

15. Combat before (a) advertisers, (b) a public audience, (c) a lawmaking body, the defacement of landscapes by advertising billboards.

16. Describe life in the slums before (a) a rural audience, (b) charitable persons, (c) rich people in the cities who know little of conditions among the poor.

17. Describe the typical evening of a spendthrift in a city to (a) a poor man, (b) a miser, (c) the spendthrift's mother, (d) his employer, (e) a detective who suspects him of theft.

18. Describe the city of Washington (any other city) to (a) a countryman, (b) a traveler who has not visited this particular city. (If it is Washington you describe, describe it also for children in whom you wish to inculcate patriotism.)

19. Give (a) a youngster, (b) an experienced angler an account of your fishing trip.

20. Recount for (a) a baseball fan, (b) a girl who has never seen a game, the occurrences of the second half of the ninth inning.

21. Describe a fight for (a) your friends, (b) a jury.

22. Narrate for (a) children, (b) an audience of adults some historical event.

23. Give (a) your partner, (b) a reporter an account of a business transaction you have just completed.

24. Narrate an escapade for (a) your father, (b) your cronies in response to a toast at a banquet with them.

IV

INDIVIDUAL WORDS: AS VERBAL CELIBATES

Thus far we have studied words as grouped together into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole compositions. We must now enter upon a new phase of our efforts to extend our vocabulary. We must study words as individual entities.

You may think the order of our study should be reversed. No great harm would result if it were. The learning of individual words and the combining of them into sentences are parallel rather than successive processes. In our babyhood we do not accumulate a large stock of terms before we frame phrases and clauses. And our attainment of the power of continuous iteration does not check our inroads among individual words. We do the two things simultaneously, each contributing to our success with the other. There are plenty of analogies for this procedure. A good baseball player, for instance, tirelessly studies both the minutiae of his technique (as how to hold a bat, how to stand at the plate) and the big combinations and possibilities of the game. A good musician keeps unremitting command over every possible touch of each key and at the same time seeks sweeping mastery over vast and complex harmonies. So we, if we would have the obedience of our vocabularies, dare not lag into desultory attention to either words when disjoined or words as potentially combined into the larger units of thought and feeling.

We might therefore consider either the individuals first or the groups first. But the majority of speakers and writers pay more heed to rough general substance than to separate instruments and items. Hence we have thought best to begin where most work is going on already--with words in combination.

As you turn from the groups to the individuals, you must understand that your labors will be onerous and detailed. You must not assume that by nature all words are much alike, any more than you assume that all men are much alike. Of course the similarities are many and striking, and the fundamental fact is that a word is a word as a man is a man. But you will be no adept in handling either the one or the other until your knowledge goes much farther than this. Let us glance first at the human variations. Each man has his own business, and conducts it in his own way--a way never absolutely matched with that of any other mortal being. All this you may see. But besides the man's visible employment, he may be connected in devious fashions with a score of enterprises the public knows nothing about. Furthermore he leads a private life (again not precisely corresponding to that of any other), has his hobbies and aversions, is stamped with a character, a temperament of his own. In short, though in thousands of respects he is like his fellows, he has after all no human counterpart; he is a distinct, individual self. To know him, to use him, to count upon his service in whatsoever contingency it might bestead you, you must deem him something more than a member of the great human family. You must cultivate him personally, cultivate him without weariness or stint, and undergo inconvenience in so doing.

Even so with a word. Commonplace enough it may seem. But it has its peculiar characteristics, its activities undisclosed except to the curious, its subtle inclinations, its repugnances, its latent potentialities. There is no precise duplicate for it in all the wide domain of language. To know it intimately and thoroughly, to be on entirely free terms with it, to depend upon it just so far as dependence is safe, to have a sure understanding of what it can do and what it cannot, you must arduously cultivate it. Words, like people, yield themselves to the worthy. They hunger for friendship--and lack the last barrier of reserve which hedges all human communion. Thus, linguistically speaking, you must search out the individuals. You must step aside from your way for the sake of a new acquaintance; in conversations, in sermons, in addresses, in letters, in journalistic columns, in standard literature you must grasp the stranger by the hand and look him straight in the eye. Nor must you treat cavalierly the words you know already. You must study them afresh; you must learn them over and learn them better; you must come to understand them, not only for what they are, but for what they will do.

<What Words to Learn First>

What, then, is your first task? Somebody has laid down the injunction-- and, as always when anything is enjoined, others have given it currency-- that each day you should learn two new words. So be it,--but which two? The first two in the dictionary, or hitherto left untouched in your systematic conquest of the dictionary? The first two you hear spoken? The first two that stare at you from casual, everyday print? The first two you can ferret from some technical jargon, some special department of human interest or endeavor? In any of these ways you may obey the behest of these mentors. But are not such ways arbitrary, haphazard? And suppose, after doing your daily stint, you should encounter a word it behooves you to know. What then? Are you to sulk, to withhold yourself from further exertion on the plea of a vocabulary-builder's eight-hour day?

To adopt any of the methods designated would be like resolving to invest in city lots and then buying properties as you encountered them, with no regard for expenditure, for value in general, or for special serviceability to you. Surely such procedure would be unbusinesslike. If you pay out good money, you meditate well whether that which you receive for it shall compensate you. Likewise if you devote time and effort to gaining ownership of words, you should exercise foresight in determining whether they will yield you commensurate returns.

What, then, is the principle upon which, at the outset, you should proceed? What better than to insure the possession of the words regarding which you know this already, that you need them and should make them yours?

<The Analysis of Your Own Vocabulary>

The natural way, and the best, to begin is with an analysis of your own vocabulary. You are of course aware that of the enormous number of words contained in the dictionary relatively few are at your beck and bidding. But probably you have made no attempt to ascertain the nature and extent of your actual linguistic resources. You should make an inventory of the stock on hand before sending in your order for additional goods.

You will speedily discover that your vocabulary embraces several distinct classes of words. Of these the first consists of those words which you have at your tongue's end--which you can summon without effort and use in your daily speech. They are old verbal friends. Numbered with them, to be sure, there may be a few with senses and connotations you are ignorant of-- friends of yours, let us say, with a reservation. Even these you may woo with a little care into uncurbed fraternal abandon. With the exception of these few, you know the words of the first class so well that without thinking about it at all you may rely upon their giving you, the moment you need them, their untempered, uttermost service. You need be at no further pains about them. They are yours already.

A second class of words is made up of those you speak on occasions either special or formal--occasions when you are trying, perhaps not to show off, but at least to put your best linguistic foot foremost. Some of them have a meaning you are not quite sure of; some of them seem too ostentatious for workaday purposes; some of them you might have been using but somehow have not. Words of this class are not your bosom friends. They are your speaking acquaintance, or perhaps a little better than that. You must convert them into friends, into prompt and staunch supporters in time of need. That is to say, you must put them into class one. In bringing about this change of footing, you yourself must make the advances. You must say, Go to, I will bear them in mind as I would a person I wished to cultivate. When occasion rises, you must introduce them into your talk. You will feel a bit shy about it, for introductions are difficult to accomplish gracefully; you will steal a furtive glance at your hearer perchance, and another at the word itself, as you would when first labeling a man "my friend Mr. Blank." But the embarrassment is momentary, and there is no other way. Assume a friendship if you have it not, and presently the friendship will be real. You must be steadfast in intention; for the words that have held aloof from you are many, and to unloose all at once on a single victim would well-nigh brand you criminal. But you will make sure headway, and will be conscious besides that no other class of words in the language will so well repay the mastering. For these are words you _do_ use, and need to use more, and more freely--words your own experience stamps as valuable, if not indeed vital, to you.

The third class of words is made up of those you do not speak at all, but sometimes write. They are acquaintance one degree farther removed than those of the second class. Your task is to bring them into class two and thence into class one--that is, to introduce them into your more formal speech, and from this gradually into your everyday speech.

The fourth class of words is made up of those you recognize when you hear or read them, but yourself never employ. They are acquaintance of a very distant kind. You nod to them, let us say, and they to you; but there the intercourse ends. Obviously, they are not to be brought without considerable effort into a position of tried and trusted friendship. And shall we be absolutely honest?--some of them may not justify such assiduous care as their complete subjugation would call for. But even these you should make your feudal retainers. You should constrain them to membership in class three, and at your discretion in class two.

Apart from the words in class four, you will not to this point have made actual additions to your vocabulary. But you will have made your vocabulary infinitely more serviceable. You will be like a man with a host of friends where before, when his necessities were sorest, he found (along with some friends) many distant and timid acquaintance.

Outside the bounds of your present vocabulary altogether are the words you encounter but do not recognize, except (it may be) dimly and uncertainly. Some counselors would have you look up all such words in a dictionary. But the task would be irksome. Moreover those who prescribe it are loath to perform it themselves. Your own candid judgment in the matter is the safest guide. If the word is incidental rather than vital to the meaning of the passage that contains it, and if it gives promise of but rarely crossing your vision again, you should deign it no more than a civil glance. Plenty of ways will be left you to expend time wisely in the service of your vocabulary.

EXERCISE - Analysis

1. Make a list of the words in class two of your own vocabulary, and similar lists for classes three and four. (To make a list for class one would be but a waste of time.) Procure if you can for this purpose a loose-leaf notebook, and in the several lists reserve a full page for each letter of the alphabet as used initially. Do not scamp the lists, though their proper preparation consume many days, many weeks. Try to make them really exhaustive. Their value will be in proportion to their accuracy and fulness.

2. Con the words in each list carefully and repeatedly. Your task is to transfer these words into a more intimate list--those in class four into class three, those in three into two, those in two into one. You are then to promote again the words in the lower classes, except that (if your judgment so dictates) you may leave the new class three wholly or partially intact. To carry out this exercise properly you must keep these words in mind, make them part and parcel of your daily life. (For a special device for bringing them under subjection, see the next exercise.)