the time generally allotted to the subject in secondary schools. For these reasons the book aims to concentrate the attention upon the leading form, and to give thought to the other kinds of composition, for the most part, only as they enter into combination with this.

While the structural, or fundamental, work in this study of the method of composition is carried as a unit throughout the book, the correlated features are adequately treated. One entire chapter, for instance, is devoted to ornamentation used in description; and exercises in punctuation, choice of words, sentence structure, and other materials employed in constructive work form a part of the text. In this way grammatical, mechanical, and rhetorical details are brought in incidentally, as they should be, and only as they are required in the student's composition. The young writer should be taught to handle the word, the sentence, and the paragraph as parts of a concrete and larger whole which he is creating, just as the mason learns to handle and fit his bricks by laying them in an actual wall. By interspersing a few spelling exercises and review lessons in grammar, the authors aim to make the student feel that the break between highschool English and grammar-school English is not very marked. In the themes drawn from life an effort has been made to keep the commonplace from deteriorating into the trivial or the insipid, by suggesting a treatment of these subjects which is vivid and dramatic. If both theme and treatment are allowed to be ordinary, there is little chance for growth in vocabulary or general literary appreciation. Thus, the social side of composition, that which connects it with everyday life, has two problems: one to open the student's eyes to the heroic element in common life; and the other to teach him how to make the unheroic and the ordinary interesting by the manner in which he deals with his subject. The authors urge that students be encouraged to select their own subjects.

The Teacher's Manual, which accompanies the book, suggests certain departures from the order in which subjects are presented in the student's book. The logical order which is demanded in a text-book is not

always, as every teacher knows, the pedagogical order, that demanded by the natural interests of the child. This guide is also intended to enable teachers to anticipate certain errors to which students are prone in the use of the method of composition here outlined.

PART I.

NARRATION

CHAPTER I.

THE SITUATION

I. How to Begin a Story. In our work in composition we shall study first the art of telling a story naturally. Most of us are more interesting when we talk than when we write, because we are then more spontaneous; that is, more informal. The art of being natural when we are writing is something most of us have to learn, and we must learn it by studying the methods by which stories are told in our ordinary conversation.

First let us ask, "How does a person naturally begin in conversation to tell of something he has witnessed?" It is by listening to people talking that we shall learn how to begin a story. Literature, in order to be spontaneous, must derive its method as well as its material from life. The origin in colloquial speech of certain types of literary construction is one of the subjects that will recur again and again in our work.

Imagine a dinner table around which the members of a family are assembled for their evening meal. The father is saying, "As I was on my way to

the office this morning I met Henry Jones in front of Smith's drug store, hurrying for the doctor."

Does this sound natural and familiar to you? Would it be likely to lead to further conversation in which perhaps the story of an accident to some member of Mr. Jones's family would be told? Might it lead to the story of a long illness dating back several years?

2. Elements of a Good Beginning. When we examine the beginning quoted above we find that it contains the following elements:

r. A mention of the time, "this morning."

2.

A mention of the characters, "Henry Jones" and "I."

3. A mention of the place, "in front of Smith's drug store."

4. A mention of the occasion, or the circumstances which caused the different characters to be in the place mentioned at a particular time, "on my way to the office," "hurrying for a doctor."

Our next question would naturally be, "Do we find writers sometimes beginning stories in this way?" The answer is, "Yes, very often."

We shall study but two illustrations from literature here, though many others will occur in our later work.

I.

The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o'clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion for all that. They were going