and thinking. There is no better way of learning to master any subject, to get at the heart of it, and to reproduce its essential points. Similar methods may well be applied often to the mastery of any book lessons-geography, history, reading.

XV (149). Writing an Original Conversation

The especial purpose of this exercise is to give the pupils an opportunity to apply what they have just learned about the conversation paragraph. Before they begin to write, it may be well to take up one of the suggested topics with them orally, letting them give the exact conversation that they would have used, for example, between the two boys discussing the sale of a knife, or a bicycle. What features of the knife will the boy trying to sell it be likely to point out? What different features will the other boy be likely to notice?

As the children write, ask such questions and make such suggestions to them individually as will help each one to do his best. A period may well be devoted to the class discussion, correction, and improvement of typical papers.

XVI (150). Unstudied Dictation A Test

Without preparation or comment, dictate the following story, taken from the Scottish American. If the recent lessons have been well learned, the

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children's papers should be practically perfect in paragraphing.

THE ONE WHO FOLLOWS

One day an old umbrella mender brought his skeleton frames and tinkering tools into the alley at the back of my office. As he sat on a box mending the broken and torn umbrellas, I noticed that he took unusual pains with his work. Being always interested in any one who does his work well, I went out to talk with him. "You seem extra careful," I remarked.

"Yes," he said, "I try to do good work."

"Your customers would not know the difference until you were gone," I suggested.

"No, I suppose not," was his answer.

"Do you expect ever to come back?" "No."

"Then why are you so particular ?"

"So that it will be easier for the next man who comes along," he answered. "If I put on poor cloth or do poor work, these people will find it out in a few weeks, and the next mender who comes along will be turned away. See ?"

Yes, I saw. And I wished that every worker in every trade and profession had as generous an idea of his duty to his fellow workers as this wandering umbrella mender.

Correct papers as in other lessons, giving especial care to the division into paragraphs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ABOUT DESCRIPTIONS AND LETTERS; NOUNS, PRONOUNS, ADJECTIVES, — THEIR CHOICE AND USE

I (151). Studying a Description

FIRST, study with the children the lesson in their book, helping them to understand it thoroughly. Then read to them one or more of the following bits of description by Robert Louis Stevenson, and question in respect to —

I. The viewpoint.

2. The clearness and vividness of the picture. 3. The choice of words.

A

I was walking one night in the veranda of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very dark; the air was extraordinarily clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending with ice and bowlders; a few lights, scattered unevenly among the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation.

B

On all this part of the coast, these great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world like their neighbors ashore; only the salt water sobbing between

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them instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears that caldron boiling.

C

It had snowed overnight. The fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modeled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and Over the white shoulders of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the edge of the cliff, seemed to skirt the shores of creation and void space.

sea.

The questioning on the first bit of description above might be somewhat as follows:

1. The viewpoint.

What was the standpoint of the author from which he wrote this description?

2. The clearness and vividness of the picture.

What appeal does the author make to the sense of sight? (The darkness, with the scattered lights in the distance.)

What appeal does he make to feeling? (Clear, cold, winter weather.)

What appeal to the sense of smell? (Sweet odors from the forests possibly the fragrance of pines and cedars.)

--

What appeal to the sense of hearing? (The noisy struggles of the river far below, contending with the ice and bowlders that were trying to hold it back.)

Can you close your eyes and see in your mind the few scattered lights in the distance? Can you feel the cold crispness of the wintry air, smell the forest fragrance, and hear the rushing river below? If so, the author has succeeded in making for you a clear and vivid picture — a picture like the reality that he had before him.

3. Choice of words.

What word does the author use instead of village? Do you like his word better?

sweet with

Note how the short, concise statements, "It was winter; the night was very dark," give vividness and clearness to the picture. Note the beauty of this expression: "The air the purity of forests." Which words are especially pleasing? How the word contending brings out the idea of struggle and progress!

How much is told, how much made clear, by the words, scattered unevenly! A less skilled writer might say, here and there, at irregular distances, or he might be satisfied with a few lights.

How well the idea of distance is brought out in the last clause!

The other descriptions, B and C, should be studied in the same way. Especially to be noted are the comparisons which serve, in a few words, to paint so much of a picture and to paint it so vividly.

The granite rocks troop down into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day.

The fields were all sheeted up, like children tucked in by a fond mother.