conviction, in the stainless rectitude which guided his action and won for him the confidence of the people. Without these things neither the vigor of his intellect nor the firmness of his will would have availed.1

(3) The article of consumption most often neglected is leisure. Leisure is an indispensable element of all enjoyment. It is the thing in which the American, despite his overflowing wealth, is the poorest.

Americans have never taken time and still do not take time for leisure. We seek to telescope our pleasures, to enjoy much in little time. As a nation we are like the instantaneous American traveler who does the Louvre in an hour and the Vatican in half a morning. We are obsessed by the doctrine of a strenuous life, of a life of effort and labor, without leisure or quiet development.

The American conception of leisure has always been one of mild disapprobation. There was rather a feeling that we should live to labor, not labor to live. This conception, which was more or less explicable during the days of the conquest of the continent, is not a little ludicrous to-day, when advanced by the financier who is benefiting by our accumulating surplus. An austere disapprobation of holidays is also given expression by many of our newspapers, and when, to please the Italian vote, a State legislature made Columbus Day a holiday, some of our journals preached eloquent sermons against idle workmen, supine legislators, and reckless Genoese sailors. In the eyes of these journals and many well-meaning manufacturers and professional men, the workman should prefer to work twelve hours instead of eight, if by working four hours more he earns more.

What is, however, more needed in America than almost anything else is a wider leisure and a better knowledge of how to use it. We need shorter hours for workman, merchant, banker, lawyer, doctor, engineer. The American who has made his money and now dies of ennui represents the situation at one end of the line; the Polish workman in a steel mill who labors all day and every day, Sunday, week-day, and holiday, represents it at the other. Between the two we have the "ambitious," "self-respecting," hard-working man, with no idea but labor. What does he earn, this tame, virtuous, selfdriven, over-ambitious drudge? More dollars in the bank, fewer years of life, and fewer pleasures while he lives. Better a "sturdy beggar" or a vermin-infested tramp than a desiccated toiler who works twelve hours a day, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year.2

(4) Of all the devices for promoting a good understanding the old-fashioned Preface was the most excellent. It was not an introduction to the subject, its purpose was personal. In these days the Preface, where it survives, is reduced to the smallest possible space. It is like the platform of an

1 James Bryce, Abraham Lincoln's Speeches and Letters. The Macmillan Company. Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy, Chap. XIX. The Macmillan Com

pany.

electric car which affords the passenger a precarious foothold while he strives to obey the stern demand of the conductor that he move forward. But time was when the Preface was the broad hospitable porch on which the Author and Reader sat for an hour or so and talked over the enterprise that was before them. Sometimes they would talk so long that they almost forgot their ostensible subject.1

(5) The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren.” There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manner of the other.2

III. EFFECTIVENESS IN EXPOSITION

A. IN INSTRUMENTAL EXPOSITION

1. Standards of effectiveness. In the nature of the case, instrumental exposition, which is written to meet some demand for information or opinion, can be effective only when it explains with entire clearness. In untangling some complex financial matter, in giving instruction about some industrial process, in presenting some national problem, in setting forth some principle of science or of art, the writer cannot in any sense succeed if he is not exact beyond the possibility of vagueness, and simple beyond the possibility of obscurity. He must reach the mind of his reader without error and with the minimum of resistance. Incidentally, it is this rigid demand for crystal clearness which makes practice in expository composition particularly valuable to the writer's own mind, clarifying his thought and stimulating his mental activity. But we must admit that this intellectual clearness, without any element of personal feeling or human interest, leaves instrumental exposition too cold and impersonal.

1 Samuel McChord Crothers, The Gentle Reader. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2 Charles Lamb, The Two Races of Men.

Much instrumental exposition,—and sometimes the most authoritative, goes unread, even when it is entirely clear. It fails as communication, simply because the writer is at no pains to relate his writing to his reader's life, to make him feel that what is said really concerns him.

In this connection, too, we must consider making instrumental exposition permanently effective. Of course, so many of the explanations in daily life involve technical or ephemeral material, and so many of them are written hastily, that instrumental exposition is often denied the quality essential to higher literary art. Few business letters are intended to reach more than one individual. The newspaper reporter frankly acknowledges that he writes of a day and for a day. In truth, anyone who attempts to convey facts or ideas to the public is frequently embarrassed by some advance in knowledge which renders his writing out of date and hence valueless. And yet no writer has good reason to be satisfied with his explanation until he has breathed into it the breath of his own personality and made his workmanship as perfect as possible. Any letter, any article, any book will reach more people, be reread oftener, and continue to be read longer, if it is written with charm as well as clearness. Furthermore, it occasionally happens that some piece of instrumental exposition which no longer has much value so far as its information goes, Isaac Walton's Compleat Angler, for example,— is still read by thousands because of the author's personality and his perpetually delightful grace of expression. Full effectiveness in this most practical of all forms of writing, therefore, demands that the writer meet all three of the conditions which have been laid down in the preceding chapter. Without satisfying the demands of good form, as well as having his material thoroughly in hand and enlisting his reader's interest, no writer of instrumental exposition can have more than a superficial or temporary success.

2. The application of general principles. - Any degree of effectiveness in instrumental exposition depends in large measure on the careful following of the general principles and

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procedure which have already been explained in the first part of this book. Indeed, no kind of writing permits as direct an application of the general principles of composition and involves as little modification of them to suit special problems as does formal exposition. Thus the first thing which is essential to the clearness of an explanation is that the writer shall have one thing in mind to say and say it without irrelevancy or digression. But this means nothing more than unity of conception and unity of substance. Another thing which is highly conducive to clearness and intellectual interest is the arrangement of the material; facts or ideas which are logically related must be grouped together and then given the order which the reader can follow most easily. It may be that the material is arranged according to successive steps, as in explaining a process, or according to space relations, as in explaining the structure of an animal or the situation of a city. More often it is arranged so that what is simple comes before what is complex, and what is relatively insignificant before what is highly important. In any case, all of this is simply a matter of the writer's organizing his material according to some plan and making his piece coherent through logical sequence and smooth transitions. Then again, it is desirable that an explanation be well balanced. This is essentially emphasis by proportion. Sometimes, too, it is possible to employ the skillful repetition of important points, — iterative emphasis. In a smaller way, the clearness of an explanation is increased if the central idea of a paragraph is given to the reader explicitly through a topic sentence; and this idea can be brought out sharply if the topic sentence is placed at the beginning or at the end; all of which involves no more than applying the principles of unity and emphasis skillfully to the expository paragraph. Obviously, too, the reader of an explanation ought not to be confused with many words or misled by loose phrasing; that is, the writer should be influenced in his choice of words primarily by precision and economy.

3. Special suggestions. Further than this, some special

suggestions may be given to the writer of instrumental exposition. For instance, it is quite worth while to give attention to the selection of a title. It is generally agreed that a good title in this kind of composition must state the writer's theme as specifically as possible without being too long or otherwise awkward. Accordingly, we find many titles of essays and books and chapters in books which are just plain, accurate labels, such as the following: The Meaning of Education, Imagination in Business, The Moral Equivalent of War. And these are excellent in their way. But it is often possible to get a title which is no less satisfactory for purposes of information or reference and which has also some power of attraction. It may be that the title challenges attention because it is put in the form of a question, as Why go to College? and Democracy or Dynamite? Alliteration, too, may help to make an impression, as in The People at Play, Excursions of an Evolutionist, or Competition in College. Unless it seems wholly incidental and unconscious, however, this device is too artificial and cheap to be really effective. Very often a single vigorous, expressive word will give a title more than ordinary significance, as in Treadmill Justice, The Quest of the Perfect Rose, or China's Grapple with the Opium Evil. Sometimes a title excites interest because it is modeled after some phrase which is very familiar; for example, The Old Order Changeth, The Whole Duty of Critics, and How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day. Furthermore, it is possible to throw the entire title into figurative form, although it may be difficult to make the figure give enough information about the subject to be presented. Kings' Treasuries, The Ghost of the Heath, and Human Bullets are peculiarly appropriate titles for pieces dealing with the riches in books, the reclamation of Danish wastes, and the spirit of the Japanese soldier; they suggest the germ ideas of these three pieces, and are sure to stick in the mind. It may be seen, therefore, that the writer can often afford to sacrifice explicit information in order to make a title attractive, if thereby he can gain initial interest and impress his central thought on the reader's memory.