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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 776 



wind. The criticism of details is for a time 

 kept in the background. The instructor 

 pretends to believe, what no one really 

 believes in these days, that the secondary 

 schools have found time to teach grammar, 

 spelling and punctuation. Faults in these 

 may be weeded out later, but for the pres- 

 ent it is remarkably sound doctrine that to 

 pull out the tares destroys the wheat. 

 There is an old moral story of a merchant 

 who, wishing to test the quality of two 

 boys who had applied for work, gave each 

 the half of a garret to be set in order. One, 

 the hero of the tale, sorted all the rubbish 

 with infinite pains, brads and tacks, 

 crooked and straight. The other, with a 

 fine impatience, swept things into heaps 

 and threw them from the window. The 

 second lost the place, but I confess he has my 

 sympathy; he seems to me to have had a 

 justcr notion of relative values than the 

 other. At all events his temper of mind is 

 like that of the average student. No young 

 man of promise will work conscientiously 

 at correcting minor errors in work which 

 is confessedly rubbish. He must seek first 

 the task in which he can take a vital in- 

 terest, and then all these things shall be 

 added unto him. 



Greater closeness of relation with the 

 instructor, as well as the habit of writing 

 for classmates, will both tend to bring out 

 clearly the central problem of writing— 

 the adaptation of work to a particular 

 audience. Even when themes are written 

 directly for the instructor, the attempt is 

 usually made, by preliminary conferences 

 with the student, to impress upon him 

 that he is not writing for a general court 

 of appeal, but for an individual mind, with 

 definite prejudices, ascertainable limits 

 of knowledge, and individuality of point 

 of view. In teaching the writing of 

 essays in literary criticism or of sonnets, the 

 instructor may well set up to be the em- 

 bodiment of the laws of taste and good 



use. If he is accused of urging as authori- 

 tative opinions which ought rather to be 

 regarded as personal, he can hide behind a 

 multitude of admitted classical instances 

 where it is very hard indeed to find him. 

 In attempting, on the other hand, to teach 

 an engineering student straightforward 

 English prose for business purposes, it is 

 necessary to assume a somewhat simpler 

 attitude. One says, not "This is bad," 

 but "I dislike it"; not "Your expression 

 lacks force," but "Tou have not brought 

 your argument home to me, and thus you 

 have failed; for your whole object was to 

 produce an effect on my mind." The stu- 

 dent who sees his work treated from this 

 point of view begins to find the problem of 

 writing simplified. Composition for him 

 takes on the look of a practical art, for it 

 is after all only one department of the 

 great business for which he is being edu- 

 cated, the business of dealing with men. 

 Before it had seemed a mystery, like the 

 concoction of some foreign dish. A com- 

 pound of so much force, so much unity, 

 and the rest, would make a dainty to tickle 

 the teacher's palate. One had first to get 

 together the somewhat mysterious ingredi- 

 ents—by no means an easy task ; and in the 

 end one was left wondering whether the 

 teacher had not acquired a perverted taste. 

 Instead of these unnatural relations, the 

 pupil who has been taught to write directly 

 for some classmate or for his teacher finds 

 himself in a simplified position where he 

 knows definitely what is expected of him, 

 can himself measure the degree of his suc- 

 cess or failure, and may keep within a safe 

 distance of the 'manner and the matter to 

 which his daily life and his conversations 

 with his fellows have acciistomed him. 



As the term progresses and men get the 

 notion that their writing is to serve some 

 useful end, all sorts of other plans may be 

 tried. They may even be assigned subjects, 

 of a reasonable sort. At some time during 



