196 



Till-: STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



\ ... -ation AN oration. \ 



ev-ion. his rallini:. his 1. . 



that occupy 



him incidentally. Miss Bro\\ 

 teaching; her avocations are embroidering and 

 painting. 



\\a\-. >ngly used for "The 



house is a long ways off." should he -...-/ off. 



\\ rll \\ h\ . 



lice. l~n- 

 M. lately nece-sary in a sentence 



\N barf. See Dock. 



\\ hat. II- R iKl not think hut what 1 



hut that. 



Whriirr. :i't " l-'rom 



from Nvhat 

 place, soi ; 



\\ holt- of. Ml of the school." not the 

 ichoU of the school. 



\\ idoNN \\ oiliail. In not iri-hni-K al- 

 Another error of this sort is 

 brot> 



\\ i ili out 1 a preposition and should not 



be place of the connective unlcxx; as, "I 



.-hall not pi without my father consents." should 



iftleM my lather consents, or. without my 



father's consent. In this last expression with- 



ion. 



\\or-t Kind. A vulgarism \ve sometimes 

 hear used in the sense of tvr// much. " I want to 



-t /.-/'//." 



Worst \\'ay. This belongs in the same 

 TV with worst lei ml. 



FORMS OF LANGUAGE 

 COMPOSITION 



lollowinir tahle includes the principal 

 of language composition: 



(1). 



i ION. Letters, journals, memoirs, biog- 

 raphies, history, travel, news, fiction. 



(2) DESCRIPTION. - Ih-M-nptions of external ob- 



of character and its development, of 

 intellectual processes. 



(3) EXPO- -:iys, treatises, editorials, re- 



(O A - Argumentative essays, debates, 



. OK ORATORY. Orations, addresses, 

 lectures, M-rmons. 

 PRY. 



NAK I:\TIVI I'OKTRY. The great 

 rical romance-, metrical tales, bal- 

 lads, pastorals. idylls. 



Deluding all narrative poetry which 

 pres. i-eakintr ami acting for 



themselves). - Traircdy. comedy, farce, oj ( era, 

 BMlodzama, rn:>-k. intcriml. 



(3) I.YKK . < >des, sacred and secular songs, elegy, 



-'-. simple i 



(4) DIDACTIC. Moral essays in verse, satiric poetry , 



the object of words to convey thought; 

 but in order to present connected thought, 

 mUBl be properly arranged with a definite 

 end in view. Such an arrangement of words 

 i- called a laniruaire composition. There are two 

 types of composition, prose and poetry. prose 

 is the plain language of every-day speech in 

 di-tinction from the more emotional and artistic 

 language of poetry. 



The chief varieties of prose composition are: 



narration, description, exposition, argument. 



-ion. 



Narration present.- events in sequence of 

 time, it presents a .-tory; description paints a 

 picture; exposition defines a term or explains a 

 proposition; argument establishes the truth or 

 falsity of a statement; persuasion arouses the 

 emotions, and influences the will. Narration pre- 

 sents events with special reference to time and 

 place and persons, with their attendant motives 

 and circumstances. It is the aim of narration 

 to make the reader an eye-witness of the events 

 related. 



I'nder narration may be classed letters, jour- 

 nals, memoirs, biographies, history, travel, 

 news, fiction, and that great body of literature 

 comprehended under the term "stories." 



The sequence of events in narration may be 

 with or without plot. If it be simply a sequence 

 of time, then the narration is said to be without 

 plot, as in letters, diaries, news of the day, 

 journals, memoirs, biographies; but if there 

 I be a subtle relation of cause and effect, which 

 binds together the sequence of events, then we 

 have a narrative with a plot, such as stories, 

 and novels, and dramas. A plot has been de- 

 fined as "any arrangement of the parts of a 

 narrative so that the reader's interest is aroused 

 concerning the result of the series of events 

 detailed." 



Letters, books of travel, memoirs, biographies, 

 owe their interest to the charm with which 

 they are told, and the real worth of the succes- 

 sive incidents treated. Letters of Thoreau to 

 his friends, of Emerson, Hawthorne, Channing, 

 Alcott, give us the charm of Concord life in 

 the golden days of those philosophers, and also 

 give us a model of letter-writing in their simple 

 beauty of style, and the value of their subject 

 matter. 



Books of Travel have all the personal 

 charm of letters, and added to that the deep 

 interest of new scenes, visited by an apprecia- 

 tive narrator. Travels consist largely of de- 

 scription, which should be well selected and 

 accurate. Stanley's " In Darkest Africa," 

 Roberts' "Forty-one Years in India," Grey's 

 "Travels in Australia," are interesting books 

 of travel. 



Memoirs relate chiefly to matters of mem- 

 ory, events that have come under the author's 

 personal experience. Memoirs are related to 

 history, but are less systematic and more con- 

 versational in style. "Yesterdays with Au- 

 thors," by J. T. Fields, is a volume of memoirs 

 of noted literary men he knew. 



Biography is a history of an individual 

 life, somewhat more extended than a memoir. 

 An autobiography is a life history written by a 

 person himself. Biographies form a very im- 

 portant branch of history. If one would know 

 the history of a time he must know the men of 

 that time. The Autobiography of Benjamin 

 Franklin furnishes a much better picture of life 

 in his times than pages of our best histories. 

 American Men of Letters series, American 

 Statesmen series, give a fine study of the develop- 

 ment of the American nation. 



History is a formal and connected account 

 of the life of a nation. Historical narration ex- 



