3. Intelligent voting demands higher qualifications in the voter than ever before.

4. The high schools afford a training in morality.

5. Every community is cursed by numbers of people who have never been taught to do anything useful.

6. The high schools open the way to a still higher education for many of their pupils.

7. The high schools teach civics and politics.

(g) Read Bryant's Thanatopsis and Longfellow's Psalm of Life. Make a plan for a brief essay contrasting these two poems, and write the essay.

(h) Read Lowell's The Heritage, and make a plan showing all of the contrasts in it.

(i) If you have read Bacon's Essay on Beauty and his Essay on Deformity, make a plan showing all of the contrasts between the two.

(j) Make a plan for an essay on the subject," A Comparison and Contrast between Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.”

(k) In Figures 1 and 2 (pages 74 and 75) are two representations, by different artists, of the same scene from Dickens's Christmas Carol. Make a plan for an essay describing the two drawings. See that your plan suggests plainly the points both of likeness and of difference. Then write the essay.

(1) You are to make a short after-dinner speech at a class banquet on the subject, "Our School." In your note-book you have set down the following suggestions :—

2. Our first ac

1. When the school was established. quaintance with it. 3. Things about the school that we like to remember. 4. Our victories in athletics and oratory. 5. Our teachers. 6. Some amusing incidents. 7. What we have learned.

Select from these the topics you can use, add others if necessary, and arrange them in an orderly way. Then write the speech. Beware of trying to say too much.

CHAPTER IV.

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE COMPOSITION.

23. Paragraphs. While the composition is being written, each topic in the plan- each fact or group of related facts-grows into a group of sentences that belong together. These groups of related sentences, called paragraphs, are by careful writers marked off for the benefit of the reader, each new group being begun a little to the right of the left margin. But whether carefully marked off or carelessly run together, the groups are there, and in all good writing are easily recognized by the reader as the related units which make up the whole composition.1

One writer has said, "Look to the paragraphs and the discourse will look to itself, for, although a discourse as a whole has a method or plan suited to its nature, yet the confining of each paragraph to a distinct topic avoids some of the worst faults of composition, besides which,

1 The indention that marks the beginning of a paragraph should be distinguished from indentions made for other purposes.

1. In conversational passages the speeches of different persons are separated by indention, and explanatory matter coming between the speeches is usually combined with the speech to which it is most nearly related. Thus : —

"How is this privileged person?' Mrs. Blunt asked.

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'You shall see,' said Edith. 'I am glad you came, for I wanted very much to consult you. I was going to send for you.'

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'Well, here I am. But I didn't come about the baby. I wanted to consult you. We miss you, dear, every day.' And then Mrs. Blunt began to speak about some social and charitable arrangements, but stopped sud

he that fully comprehends the method of a paragraph will also comprehend the method of an entire work.”

In good writing the reader can easily discover what topic in the plan each paragraph represents. He can usually pick out one of the sentences which states briefly and clearly the main idea or topic of the paragraph. Usually this sentence, which is called the topic statement, is at the very beginning of the paragraph; sometimes it comes after a sentence or two of introduction; occasionally it is left until the very end of the paragraph. Sometimes the topic statement occupies two sentences; again it is found in a single phrase or clause. If the reader finds no topic statement he can usually make one for himself, from what the paragraph says as a whole.

The test of a good paragraph is the possibility of expressing all that it stands for in one brief but comprehensive statement. A series of such statements, following the order of the paragraphs, would reproduce the plan or outline of the whole composition, and would present its leading ideas in brief or abstract.

denly. 'I'll see the baby first. Good morning, Mrs. Henderson.' And she left the room."

2. Lines of verse and long quotations of prose are usually distinguished by indention. Thus:

"The good old times! where and when were those good old times, All times when old are good,"

says Byron.

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Dedicating the book [Arcadia] to his 'Dear lady and fair sister the Countess of Pembroke,' he [Sir Philip Sidney] says:

"You desired me to do it, and your desire, to my heart, is an absolute commandment. Now it is done only for you, only to you.' Aubrey tells us that Sidney 'was wont to take his table-book out of his pocket and write down his notions as they came into his head, as he was hunting on Sarum's pleasant plains.' It was in 1580 that Sidney began the composition of his romance."-SAUNDERS: The Story of Some Famous Books.