Higher Lessons in English by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg (small books to read TXT) 📖

the letting out of waters—no one knows where it will stop. 4. He spoils your work, disappoints your expectations, exhausts your patience, eats up your substance, abuses your confidence, and hangs a dead weight upon all your plans; and the very best thing an honest man can do with a lazy man is to get rid of him.

1. Indolence promises without redeeming the pledge; a mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory of vows and oaths. 2. The negligence of laziness breeds more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. 3. As poverty waits upon the steps of indolence, so upon such poverty brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. 4. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every plan. 5. Negligence of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton mendacity—these three strides traverse the whole road of lies.

1. Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty as to lying. 2. Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road, and not far apart. 3. In directing the conduct of the Ephesian converts, Paul says, “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good.” 4. The men who were thieves were those who had ceased to work. 5. Industry was the road back to honesty. 6. When stores are broken open, the idle are first suspected.

 

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+The Uses of Words and Groups of Words+.—Find in 1 two compound infinitive phrases and tell their use. Supply the words omitted from the last part of each compound. What shows that the parts of 2 are not closely connected? Would a conjunction bring them more closely together? If a conjunction is used, would you change the punctuation? A sentence that unites with another to make one greater sentence we call a clause. Read the first part of 2 and change somebody’s first to a phrase and then to a clause used like an adjective. What distinction can you make between the use of the semicolon and the use of the comma in 3? The clause if he borrows is joined like an adverb to what verb? If he begs and gets? What pronoun more indefinite than your might take its place in 4? What noun? Explain the use of the semicolon and the comma in 4. Supply that after thing and tell what clause is here used like an adjective. Find the office of that by placing it after do. Find in 4 an infinitive phrase used as attribute complement.

Change the phrase in 1, paragraph 2, to a clause. Find in 2 the omitted predicate of the clause introduced by than. Find a compound subject in 3. Are negligence, falsehood, and mendacity, in 5, used as subjects? Explain their use and punctuation. (See Remark, Lesson 45.)

In 3, paragraph 3, how are the words borrowed from Paul marked? Change the quotation from Paul so as to give his thought but not his exact words. Are the quotation marks now needed? In 3 and 4 find clauses introduced by that, which, and who, and used like adjectives.

+The Grouping of Sentences into Paragraphs+.—You can easily learn the subtopic, or thought, each of these paragraphs develops. See whether you can find it in the first sentence of each. Give the three subtopics. Put together the three thoughts established in these paragraphs and tell what they prove. What they prove is that for which Mr. Beecher is contending; it may be written at the head of the extract as the general topic. What merits of the paragraph, already treated, are admirably illustrated in this extract?

+The Style of the Author+.—This selection is neither descriptive nor narrative; it is +Argumentative+. Mr. Beecher is trying to establish a certain proposition, and in the three paragraphs is giving three reasons, or arguments, to prove its truth. But the argument is not all thought, is not purely intellectual. It is suffused with feeling, is impassioned. Mr. Beecher’s heart is in his work. This feeling warms and colors his style, and stimulates his fancy. As a consequence, figures of speech abound.

Notice that in 1, paragraph 1, the thought is repeated by means of the infinitive phrases. Read the words Indolence inclines a man with each of the four infinitive phrases that follow. You will see that the thought is repeated. It is first expressed in a general way; by the aid of the second phrase we see the same thought from the negative side; the third phrase makes the statement more specific; the fourth puts the specific statement negatively. The needless repetition of the same thought in different words is one of the worst faults in writing. But Mr. Beecher’s repetition is not needless. By every repetition here, Mr. Beecher makes his thought clearer and stronger. Examine the other sentences of this paragraph and see whether they enforce the leading thought by illustration, example, or consequence.

In what sentence is the style made +energetic+ by the aid of short predicates? How does the alternation of short sentences with long throughout the extract affect you? The alternation of plain with figurative sentences? Can you show that the author’s style has +Variety+? Pick out the metaphors in 1, 2, 3, and 5, paragraph 2; and in 1 and 2, paragraph 3. Pick out the comparisons, or similes, in 3, paragraph 1, and in 3, paragraph 2. Figures of speech should add clearness and force. If you think these do, tell how. Indolence in 1 and 3, paragraph 2, and laziness in 2, introduce us to another figure. Something belonging to the men, a quality, is made to represent the men themselves. Such a figure is called +Metonymy+.

SUGGESTIONS FOB COMPOSITION WORK.

TO THE TEACHER.—Exercises in argumentative writing may be continued by making selections from the discussion of easy topics.

For original work we suggest debates on current topics. Compositions should be short.

 

Exercises on the Composition of the Sentence and the Paragraph.

EXTRACT FROM DANIEL WEBSTER.

1. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. 2. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs and reaches the door of the chamber. 3. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.

1. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike. 2. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death. 3. It is the assassin’s purpose to make sure work; and he plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. 4. He even raises the aged arm that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and places it again over the wounds of the poniard. 5. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse. 6. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. 7. It is accomplished. 8. The deed is done.

1. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. 2. He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. 3. The secret is his own, and it is safe.

1. Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. 2. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. 3. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. 4. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection even by men. 5. True it is, generally speaking, that “Murder will out.” 6. True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven by shedding man’s blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery.

 

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+The Uses of Words and Groups of Words+.—Do the phrases in 1, paragraph 1, stand in their usual order, or are they transposed? In what different places may they stand? Does either phrase need to be transposed for emphasis or for clearness? Explain the punctuation. Begin 2 with the lonely hall, and notice that the sentence is thrown out of harmony with the other sentences, and that the assassin is for the moment lost sight of. Can you tell why? Notice that in the latter part of 2 the door is mentioned, and that 3 begins with of this, referring to the door. Can you find any other arrangement by which 3 will follow 2 so naturally? Can you change 3 so as to make the reference of it clearer? What is the office of the till clause? Does the clause following the semicolon modify anything? Would you call such a clause dependent, or would you call it independent? Explain the punctuation of 3.

Give the effect of changing resting in 1, paragraph 2, to the assertive form. Find in 1 a pronoun used adverbially and a phrase used as object complement. Expand the phrase into a clause. Give the modifiers of passes in 2. Read the first part of 3 and put the explanatory phrase in place of it. What is the office of the though clause? Find in this a clause doing the work of a noun and tell its office. In 4 would his in place of the before aged and before heart be ambiguous? If so, why? Find in this paragraph an infinitive phrase used independently. Find the object complement of ascertains in 6. Are 7 and 8 identical in meaning?

Give the modifiers of passes in paragraph 3. Explain the as clause. What does that in 1, paragraph 4, stand for? What kind of clause is introduced by where in 3? By which in 4? Expand the as clause in 4 and tell its office. Find in 4 and 5 an infinitive phrase and a participle phrase used independently. Tell the office of the that clauses in 5 and 6, and of the who clause in 6.

+The Grouping of Sentences into Paragraphs+.—Look (1) at the order of the sentences in each paragraph, and (2) at the order of the paragraphs themselves. Neither order could be changed without making the stream of events run up hill, for each order is the order in which the events happened. Look (3) at the unity of each paragraph, and (4) at the larger unity of the four paragraphs—that of each paragraph determined by the relation of each sentence to the subtopic of the paragraph, and that of the four paragraphs determined by their relation to the general topic of the extract. We add that the obvious reference of the repeated he to the same person, and of that and secret in paragraph 4 demonstrates both unities. Look (5), and lastly, at the fact that the subtopic of each paragraph is found in the first line of each paragraph. Could Webster have done more to make his thought seen and felt?

+The Style of the Author.+—This selection is largely +Narrative.+ Its leading facts were doubtless supplied by the testimony given in the case; but much of the matter must have come from the imagination of Mr. Webster. Everything is so skillfully and