they are chiefly valuable for study and practice in training the mind to orderly thought. They also bring the pupil to a sense of the unity and coherence in good paragraphs, and he will then develop his own accordingly.

23. Development by Repetition. Since the paragraph must have unity, and unity results from a relation of each part to the topic-sentence, the most obvious development of the topic-sentence will be by repetition. The repetition must, of course, give the thought greater definiteness, make it more emphatic or of larger import, or present it in some new form. This method is effective in exposition where explanation is needed, and in argument where the reader is to be convinced. The following paragraph will illustrate development by repetition :

"A good summer storm is a rain of riches. If gold and silver rattled down from the clouds, they would hardly enrich the land so much as soft, long rains. Every drop is silver going to the mint. The roots are machinery, and catching the willing drops, they assay them, refine them, roll them, stamp them, and turn them out coined berries, apples, grains, and grasses! When the heavens send clouds, and they bank up the horizon, be sure they have hidden gold in them.”

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Sentence I is the topic sentence to be developed. Sentence 2 presents the idea in a new form and more definitely. Sentence 3 gives still another turn to the idea in sentence I and greater definiteness. Sentence 4 carries out the idea in sentence 3, and emphasizes it.

Sentence 5 again repeats the idea in sentences 1, 2, and 3, but in a new form. The entire group of sentences leaves upon the mind the single impression that rain is a source of riches.

Look over the following paragraphs carefully, point out the repetitions, and explain in what way each one develops the thought of the topic-sentence.

It is difficult for anyone who cares for justice to read party journals without frequent irritation, and it does not signify which side the newspaper takes. Men are so unfair in controversy that we best preserve the serenity of the intellect by studiously avoiding all literature that has a controversial tone. By your new rule of abstinence from newspapers you will no doubt gain almost as much in serenity as in time. To the ordinary newspaper reader there is little loss of serenity, because he reads only the newspaper that he agrees with, and however unfair it is, he is pleased by its unfairness. But the highest and best culture makes us disapprove of unfairness on our own side of the question also. We are pained by it; we feel humiliated by it, we lament its persistence and its perversity. P. G. HAMERTON: Intellectual Life.

The fact is, that the qualities that raise man above the ani-. mal are superimposed on those which he shares with the animal, and that it is only as he is relieved from the wants of his animal nature that his intellectual and moral nature

can grow. Compel a man to drudgery for the necessities

of animal existence, and he will lose the incentive to industry the progenitor of skill- and will do only what he is forced to do. Make his condition such that it cannot be much worse, while there is little hope that anything that he can do will make it much better, and he will cease to look beyond the day. Deny him leisure, and leisure does not mean the want of employment, but the absence of need which forces to uncongenial employment — and you can

not, even by running the child through a common school and supplying the man with a newspaper, make him intelligent. HENRY GEORGE: Progress and Poverty.

After all, a naval war upsets all calculations, and it is full of inconsistencies. The silence of the "wizards" who were going to annihilate any and all our haughty foes in new and dreadful ways became positively oppressive after hostilities actually began. The novel things which we fixed up ourselves for the same purpose we guessed, on the whole, we would not bother with for the present. We just relied on men and guns, and in so doing took the least possible risk, as we knew very well, although the rest of the world did not. And as for our inconsistencies, we can admit them cheerfully enough, since they do not seem to have affected the general result. Some of them, no doubt, revealed us in a new light, perhaps shed much luminosity on our way of waging horrid war. And I suppose in this respect none of them is more typical than the conduct of that captain of a blockading warship, who, while his vessel was lying off a lighthouse held by the Spaniards, discovered that the half-starved lighthouse keeper was destitute of supplies and had a very sick baby, and thereupon proceeded to send to that baby every morning, under a flag of truce, a can of condensed milk. The Independent.

The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his flower-garden, and the maturity of his fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business

and the success of a commercial enterprise. Even those less fortunate individuals, who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has its grass-plot and flower-bed; and every square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleaming with refreshing verdure. WASHINGTON IRVING: Sketch Book.

24. Development by Detail. A second method of developing the topic-sentence is by giving details. These details should be such as are appropriate to the topicsentence, and should add something to the thought in each case, just as in the method by repetition; indeed, the two methods are closely related, for in giving details we repeat to some extent the idea of the topic-sentence. This method is used in all kinds of discourse. times, as in the last selection of the preceding section, the two methods are combined.

Some

The following paragraph will illustrate the method of development by detail:-

The country was yet naked and leafless; but English scenery is always verdant, and the sudden change in the temperature of the weather was surprising in its quickening effects upon the landscape. It was inspiring and animating to witness this first awakening of spring; to feel its warm breath stealing over the senses; to see the moist, mellow earth beginning to put forth the green sprout and the tender blade; and the trees and shrubs, in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the promise of returning foliage and flower. The cold snow-drop, that little borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its

chaste white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The bleating of the new-dropt lambs was faintly heard from the fields. The swallows twittered about the thatched eaves and budding hedges; the robin threw a livelier note into his late querulous wintry strain; and the lark, springing up from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the bright, fleecy cloud, pouring forth torrents of melody.

WASHINGTON IRVING: The Sketch Book.

It will be readily seen that the topic-sentence in this paragraph is, "It was inspiring and animating to witness this first awakening of spring." In the sentences that follow Irving enumerates in detail some of the things that characterize the awakening of spring. Each sentence and each clause adds something to the thought, and makes more emphatic the general idea in the topic-sen

tence.

Study the following paragraphs, point out what sentences give details developing the topic-sentence, and say how they add to the thought:

1. Much good had come to Florence since the dim time of struggle between the old patron and the new; some quarreling and bloodshed, doubtless, between Guelf and Ghibelline, between Black and White, between orthodox sons of the Church and heretic Paterini; some floods, famine, and pestilence; but still much wealth and glory. 2. Florence had achieved conquests over walled cities once mightier than itself, and especially over hated Pisa, whose marble buildings were too high and beautiful, whose masts were too much honored on Greek and Italian coasts. 3. The name of Florence had been growing prouder and prouder in all the courts of Europe, nay, in Africa itself, on the strength of purest gold coinage, finest dyes and