3. Show that "It is never too late to mend " and that "As the twig

is bent the tree is inclined."

4. Point a moral by means of an amusing story.

5. Show the benefits derived from attending the circus.

In each of your compositions:

a. What point have you made in each paragraph?

b. What special advantage is gained by the order in which have arranged your paragraphs?

you

c. What method of development have you used in each para

graph?

d. By what word or words have you given transition between

paragraphs?

B. Read each of your themes to see that each paragraph develops a point essential to develop the main point of the composition, that the paragraphs are coherent within themselves and with one another, that they are so arranged as to emphasize the point of the whole composition.

C. Examine each theme to see: (1) that every sentence is grammatical, and is properly punctuated; (2) that each word is properly spelled. D. Read any two themes to your class.

E. Rewrite each of your themes, making the corrections suggested by class criticism.

CHAPTER VI

THE SENTENCE

A COMPOSITION of any length, while in itself a unit of thought, is an aggregate of smaller units of thought, the smallest of which is a sentence.

Definition.

A sentence is a word or a group of words expressing one complete thought.

Sentence usually a Unit in a Composition. - Occasionally a single sentence is in itself an entire composition. Ordinarily, however, a sentence is one of many similar units which together form a composition. A sentence which is a unit in a composition may be a complete description; as, for example:

A brown, decayed old town Piacenza is, -a deserted, solitary, grassgrown place, with ruined ramparts; half-filled-up trenches, which afford a frowzy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about them; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning at the other houses over the way.

Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose from the meadows,
There was a stir and sound in the slumbering village of Plymouth;
Clanging and clinking of arms, and the order imperative, "Forward!"
Given in tones suppressed, a tramp of feet and then silence;
Figures ten in the mist, marched slowly out of the village.

It may be a complete narrative; as, for example:

Born of the poorest family in a district of poverty, his earliest recollection being the forced sale by auction of the few sticks of furniture that belonged to his widowed mother, David Lloyd-George has climbed, by

sheer force of genius, indomitable hard work, and unflinching courage, to the second highest position in the British Empire. — ROBERT Barr.

It may be a complete exposition; as, for example:

Each man's outfit of garments consisted of two pairs of Jaeger pajama trousers, singlet, shirt, guernsey, Burberry overalls, ten pairs of heavy socks, three pairs of finneskoe, Balaclava cap for the head, with Burberry covering, large muffler, and fur mitts, hung from the neck by pieces of lampwick so that they would not be lost when taken from the hands. In the Heart of the Antarctic, SHACKLETON.

It may be a complete argument; as, for example:

Considering that the murder was effected by a conspiracy; considering that he was one of the four conspirators; considering that two of the conspirators have accounted for themselves on the night of the murder, and were not in Brown Street; considering that the prisoner does not account for himself, nor show where he was; considering that Richard Crowninshield, the other conspirator and the perpetrator, is not accounted for, nor shown to be elsewhere; considering that it is now past all doubt that two persons were seen lurking in and about Brown Street at different times, avoiding observation, and exciting so much suspicion that the neighbors actually watched them; considering that, if these persons thus lurking in Brown Street at that hour were not the murderers, it remains to this day wholly unknown who they were or what their business was; considering the testimony of Miss Jaqueth, and that the club was afterwards found near this place; considering, finally, that Webster and Southwick saw these persons, and then took one of them for the defendant, and that Southwick then told his wife so, and that Bray and Mirick examined them closely, and now swear to their belief that the prisoner was one of them: it is for you to say, putting these considerations together, whether you believe the prisoner was actually in Brown Street at the time of the murder. — Speech on the Murder of Captain Joseph White, DANiel Webster.

It may be a complete expression of persuasion; as, for example:

O masters, if I were disposed to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,

Who, you all know, are honorable men;

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.

-Julius Cæsar, SHAKESPEARE.

Sentence composed of Elements differing in Nature.

While

a sentence must be in the main descriptive, narrative, expositional, argumentative, or persuasive in nature, it may be made up of elements of different kinds. The following quotation from The Mill on the Floss is an example of such a sentence: Three weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its prettiest moment in all the year, the great chestnuts in blossom, and the grass all deep and daisied, — Tom Tulliver came home to it earlier than usual in the evening, and as he passed over the bridge, he looked with the old deep-rooted affection at the respectable red brick house, which always seemed cheerful and inviting outside, let the rooms be as bare and the hearts as sad as they might inside.

This sentence is narrative in nature, yet it contains both descriptive and expositional elements needed to give information concerning the time of the event, the place of happening, and the state of mind of the performer of the act recounted.

No matter how many kinds of material a sentence contains, it is a unit when the ideas are so selected, so arranged, and so expressed as to convey a single thought.

EXERCISE I

1. Bring to class five sentences that are complete descriptions.

2. Bring to class five sentences that are complete expositions, i.e., complete explanations.

3. Bring to class five sentences that are in the main narrative, but that contain descriptive or expositional elements.

4. Bring to class five sentences that are pure narrative, i.e., that contain no other than narrative elements.

5. Bring to class five sentences that are convincing as argument.

THEME I

1. In a single sentence, describe a comfortable chair, a hat, a flower bed, a wood road, a dog or a cat, or a tree.

2. In a single sentence, explain how to chop wood, how to rake a lawn, how to serve a ball at tennis, how to use a paddle, or how to sew on a button.

3. In a single sentence, give your reasons for choosing the course you elected at school, for preferring your favorite pastime to all others, or for selecting the particular thing that you bought last.

The structure and the length of sentences, as well as the kind of material of which they consist, depend entirely upon the nature of the thought to be brought out.

The Simple Sentence. A thought that is not complicated naturally finds expression in a simple sentence. If the thought to be expressed is a command to be given peremptorily, the simple sentence may consist of but one word, as "Go!" or "Hurry!" When one word is not enough to express the thought accurately, other words or groups of words are added until the exact thought is stated, as "Go to-day," "Go yourself to-morrow on the noon train," etc. For any thought that does not express a command, at least two words, a subject and a predicate, are necessary, as "John laughed." Such a sentence as this, however, can be rightly only a link between two more interesting or more important thoughts. If "John" is of much importance, it may be necessary to indicate who he is, how he appears as he laughs, what his manner of laughing is, what he laughs at, etc., as "John, my brother's most intimate friend, throwing back his head, laughed heartily at my little sister's antics." Often the exact expression of a thought requires the use of a simple sentence in which the subject and the predicate have both been developed by the addition of many words and phrases. The following sentence is an example of this:

The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the open door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the strings of things