Prove in the same way: Subjects The woods of Autumn make them a poet's dream. The campaigns of Hannibal give him the repute of a general. Take any other person, place, or thing and prove by the choice of proper qualities in its parts that some assertion about the topic is true. 5. Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting, - SOUTHEY: Cataract of Lodore. Describe by right words the actions of light, rain, wind, crowds on the street, fire, etc. 6. I remember the solemnity of Webster, the grace of Everett, the rhetoric of Choate; I know the eloquence that lay hidden in the iron logic of Calhoun; I have melted beneath the magnetism of Sargent S. Prentiss, who wielded a power few men ever had. But I think all of them together never surpassed and no one of them ever equalled O'Connell. WENDELL PHILLIPS: O'Connell. The nouns represent for the writer the right words for each orator's eloquence. Choose nouns to describe different cities or towns you know. Write a letter telling why you prefer your place of vacation to other places which you characterize with the right nouns. So also of streets of a city, buildings, flowers, fruits, vegetables, books, characters in fiction or history. (Condemn or praise as the truth de mands. Don't exaggerate.) 7. Webster could awe a senate, Everett could charm a college, and Choate could cheat a jury; Clay could magnetize the millions, and Corwin, lead them captive. O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, Everett, and Webster in one. Before the courts, logic; at the bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified; on the platform, grace, wit, and pathos; before the masses, a whole man. PHILLIPS: O'Connell. The writer describes exactly the different effects of eloquence on different audiences by different speakers. Note the right verbs and Different books with varied effects on different readers. So also different studies with their attractions or drawbacks. Substitute for speakers, musicians, states, towns, rivers, dishes. 8. The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense concourse assembled round the place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and horror were on every face; yet to the last the multitude could hardly believe that the English really purposed to take the life of the great Brahmin. At length the mournful procession came through the crowd. Nuncomar sat up in his palanquin, and looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had just parted from those who were most nearly connected with him. Their cries and contortions had appalled the European ministers of justice, but had not produced the smallest effect on the iron stoicism of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The moment that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, as if to purify themselves from the guilt of having looked on such a crime. These feelings were not confined to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly excited; and the population of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of grief and dismay. MACAULAY: Warren Hastings. Various words are used to express grief and horror. Arrange these terms in the order of intensity. Nuncomar's conduct helps by contrast to make the feelings of the others more prominent. Introduce, if you can, some contrast in the exercises. Use accurate terms for: Subjects Joy at news of a victory, a holiday, etc. Pity at the sight of a disaster. Gladness of Columbus and followers on landing in America. New hope and courage for France at America's entrance into the Great War. Enthusiasm at some great speech. Delight to the readers of a great book. (KEATS: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.) 9. At ten the Court again met. The crowd was greater than ever. The jury appeared in their box, and there was a breathless stillness. Sir Samuel Astry spoke: "Do you find the defendants, or any of them, guilty of the misdemeanor whereof they are impeached, or not guilty?" Sir Roger Langley answered, "Not guilty." As the words passed his lips, Halifax sprang up and waved his hat. At that signal, benches and galleries raised a shout. In a moment ten thousand persons, who crowded the great hall, replied, with a still louder shout, which made the old oaken roof crack; and, in another moment, the innumerable throng without set up a third huzza, which was heard at Temple Bar. The boats which covered the Thames gave an answering cheer. A peal of gunpowder was heard on the water, and another, and another; and so, in a few moments, the glad tidings went flying past the Savoy and the Friars to London Bridge, and to the forest of masts below. As the news spread, streets and squares, marketplaces and coffee-houses, broke forth in acclamations. Yet were the acclamations less strange than the weeping. For the feelings of men had been wound up to such a point that at length the stern English nature, so little used to outward signs of emotion, gave way, and thousands sobbed for very joy. Meanwhile, from the outskirts of the multitude, horsemen were spurring off to bear along the great roads intelligence of the victory of the Church and nation. Yet not even that astounding explosion could awe the bitter and intrepid spirit of the Solicitor. Striving to make himself heard above the din, he called on the Judges to commit those who had violated by clamor the dignity of a court of justice. -MACAULAY: History of England. Note the words and phrases denoting degrees of joy and noise. Arrange the expressions in the order of their intensity. What loss would there be if the various expressions were interchanged? Change the emotion of the model when writing the exercises. Subjects Expressing exactly the emotions: Tell how the news of Lincoln's death was carried. So also of any other sad event of history. An invasion of the enemy and its terrors, e.g., Vandals, Huns, Turks. Tell the admiration awakened by some heroic deed. The alarm and fear excited by a great fire in city or forest. II. Clearness in Sentences 5. Sentences will be clear if obscure reference is avoided by proper arrangement and by judicious repetition. Arrangement 6. Keep words, phrases, and clauses as near as possible to the parts of the sentence which they qualify (nearness of modifiers). Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on the life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biographer whose performances he has taken such pains to illustrate without some expressions of contempt. Rearrange the last phrase for clearness. MACAULAY: Johnson. 7. Do not put such words as, only, even, and the like, where they may qualify two or more ideas (squinting construction). The following statement may be differently interpreted: In this sentence the misplacing of words only obscures the meaning. 8. Do not break up the thought by parenthetical remarks or overburden it by many qualifiers (excess of modifiers). In the following paragraphs the thought lacks perfect clearness because of excessive qualifying. It is otherwise in his case: and a general fling at the sex we may deem pardonable, for doing as little harm to womankind as the stone of an urchin cast upon the bosom of mother Earth; though men must look some day to have it returned to them, which is a certainty; and indeed full surely will our idle-handed youngster, too, in his riper season, be heard complaining of a strange assault of wanton missiles, coming on him he knows not whence; for we are all of us distinctly marked to get back what we give, even from the thing named inanimate nature. MEREDITH: Diana of the Crossways. And in a world of daily nay, almost hourly-journalism, where every clever man, every man who thinks himself clever, or whom anybody else thinks clever, is called upon to deliver his judgment point-blank and at the word of command on every conceivable subject of human thought, or, on what sometimes seems to him very much the same thing, on every inconceivable display of human want of thought, there is such a spendthrift waste of all those commonplaces which furnish the permitted staple of public discourse that there is little chance of beguiling a new tune out of the one-stringed instrument on which we have been thrumming so long. -LOWELL: Democracy. Lowell seems to be furnishing an instance of the very thing he deprecates. 9. Express similar and contrasted ideas by like forms (parallel structure). Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he does not. BACON Studies and Books. When phrases and clauses are balanced or pointedly opposed, the understanding of one side of the parallel helps to the clear understanding of the other side. This pairing of word with word, if excessive, makes the style stiff and formal. |