features in their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them: which wasn't often) that, having absolute license to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun free to fire cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delight in the experience than ourselves. On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the failures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid therein. The mysterious sources -sources as of old Nile that fed the duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians, nor recked they anything of bisons or pirates (with pistols !), though the whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared not about exploring for robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of their time stuffily indoors. a power It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk over our heads during meals, for instance of this or the other social or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life. We illuminati, eating silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told them what real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on fire to get back to it. Of course we didn't waste the revelation on them; the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in thought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile fate, a power antagonistic ever, we lived to evade, we had no confidants save ourselves. This strange anæmic order of beings was further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who shared our natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by an abiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympians ever to defend, retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept similar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the cat out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I was wrong, as a gentleman should. But was the matter allowed to end there? I trow not. Again, when Harold was locked up in his room all day, for assault and battery upon a neighbor's pig, an action he would have scorned, being indeed on the friendliest terms with the porker in question, there was no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the imprisonment, indeed he had very soon escaped by the window, with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for his release, as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but of course that word was never spoken.1 READINGS AND EXERCISES I. Read the first chapter of Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. You will find some passages which illustrate helpfully the relations of exposition and description. For instance, his account of his sleeping sack is primarily descriptive, yet it is really equivalent to an explanation of how all such sacks can be made. When he speaks of the horse as "a fine lady among animals," he makes a general characterization; but when he passes to Father Adam's donkey, he gives a particular picture. 2. To fix in mind the differences between the forms of composition, try to write pieces of exposition, description, and narration on each of the following: Frost, ice-harvesting, hazing, football, Hallowe'en, country school, James Whitcomb Riley. 3. If you have never realized how the dividing of a subject into parts helps to avoid confusion, read the humorous attempt at explaining baseball to a foreigner given in Gardiner, Kittredge, and Arnold's Manual of Composition and Rhetoric, pp. 163-164. 4. Try your own powers of analysis by preparing systematic answers to these questions: Why do college freshmen spell badly? Why are dogs interesting? Why do people go to church? Why is history a favorite study? Why do boys smoke cigarettes? Why do students "flunk"? Why is the New York Sun a widely known newspaper? 5. Study definition as an expository method by working out your conception of a well-educated man, of a well-dressed man, of college loyalty, and of sport for sport's sake. Are you content to use definition alone? 6. Huxley was a master of comparison. Read his explanation of three hypotheses about the splitting up of sugar during fermentation, in his lecture on Yeast. He compares them with three ways of 1 Used by permission of the John Lane Company. destroying a card house. Read further in his lectures and essays to find other examples of simple, illuminating comparison. 7. Can you explain the difference between wit and humor, imagination and fancy, speculation and investment, socialism and anarchy, grammar and rhetoric, "cramming" and study, the Atlantic Monthly and the Century Magazine? What methods besides contrast would be helpful in these cases? 8. Explain the following character types, using different expository methods in combination: The teacher's pet, the "tightwad," the infant terrible, the baseball fan, the health crank, the "mollycoddle," the village patriarch, the college sport, the river rat. 9. How does the relation of the writer to the reader differ in an article in a trade journal, a textbook, a newspaper editorial, and a personal essay? How does the difference in this relation affect methods of presentation and standards of effectiveness? 10. What do you think of the following as titles for pieces of instrumental exposition? The Grist of the Gods; America's Greatest Menace; The Chemistry of Sleep; Making Bad Boys into Good Men; Young China at School; The Man in the Cage; Industrial Education; It; New Trials for Old Favorites; The Great American Sneeze; The Ghost of the Third Term; The College Man and Music; The Effect of Natural Scenery on National Character; Should Smith go to Church? II. Observe the various ways which expository writers find of beginning, and try to classify their methods, as you would the openings for a chess game. Can you make an absolute classification? 12. Have you ever tried to make your way about in a strange city with a guide? Did his occasional "Cross here" or "Turn to the right now" help you to avoid wrong turns and moments of confusion? Did his remark that "This street runs parallel with the river" or "All our avenues run north and south" help you to get some conception of the city as a whole? Do you expect the same kind of guidance from an author whom you read? How do skillful expository writers give these "directions at the corners," and yet save their work from being too stiff ? 13. A preacher who was very successful in reaching the masses once said: "A sermon without illustrations is like a house without windows." With this thought in mind study some piece of effective exposition like Mr. Bryce's The American Commonwealth and observe the author's use of description and narrative. 14. Have you ever tried to illustrate any of your expository writing with diagrams or photographs or original sketches? What are the essentials of a really serviceable illustration ? 15. Read Ernest Poole's article on How the Chicago Art Institute Reaches the People, in the Outlook, March 23, 1907, and Walter Weyl's article on The Call of America, in the same magazine, April 23, 1910. Can you find other examples of exposition done entirely or largely through the concrete? Are they effective? 16. Study the ending of Chapter XIV in The American Commonwealth. Observe the ways in which other skillful writers close their pieces of exposition. Do you ever find them using several methods in combination? 17. Independent criticism of a simple kind affords excellent training. Read Professor Brewster's Introduction to his Specimens of Modern English Literary Criticism, or Professor Gardiner's Forms of Prose Literature, pp. 88-101, in order to become familiar with the principal types of criticism. Then write out your opinions of a current novel, a volume of poems, or the whole body of an essayist's work. You need not confine yourself to books of literature if you are more deeply interested in music or painting or engineering. 18. Have you read Dean Briggs's School, College, and Character? Could you write an interesting opinion of the chapter on College Honor or the one on Fathers, Mothers, and Freshmen ? 19. Could you comment informally and interestingly upon any of the following matters? Early rising, dreams, owning books, loaning books, reading aloud, umbrellas, blue Sunday, magic lines, photographs, nicknames, old-fashioned folks. 20. Do not fail to read something from the pen of each of the following present-day essayists: Samuel McChord Crothers, Henry Van Dyke, Kenneth Grahame, Augustine Birrell, Agnes Repplier, Edward Verrall Lucas. ART WRIT. ENG. - -17 CHAPTER VIII - ARGUMENTATION I. THE FIELD OF ARGUMENTATION A. THE RELATION OF ARGUMENTATION TO EXPOSITION ARGUMENTATION is the form of composition that seeks to produce belief or conviction concerning a matter about which there is doubt or indifference. It is like exposition in that it has explanation for its first purpose; it is unlike exposition in that it explains matters about which there is difference of belief or conviction, while exposition explains only those things about which there are different degrees of understanding. Sometimes a full explanation is all that is required to change a person's opinion or to convince him of his own error. In such cases, it may be seen at once, exposition performs the function of argumentation. Usually, however, when a person's understanding is interwoven with personal interest, personal desire, personal prejudice, and the personal indifference that sometimes results from prejudice, a successful effort to make him understand from one's own point of view involves awakening him from his indifference, breaking down his prejudice, appealing to his power of reason, and if need be, showing that the dictates of reason are favorable to his own selfish or unselfish interests. To accomplish all of these things is the work of him who would argue effectively. The element of exposition in argumentation ought to save us from the error of confusing an argument with mere contentious strife. All of us, no doubt, are familiar with the man who is ever looking for an "argument," not in the hope that he may modify anybody's opinions, but that he may succeed in humiliating an opponent by proving him an ignoramus or a liar in the presence of others. This man ordinarily reveals his cheap |