Copyright, 1903, Note. The thanks of the author are due to Dr. Edwin H. Lewis, of the Lewis Institute, Chicago, and to Prof. John F. Genung, Ph. D., of Amherst College, for suggestions made after reading the proof of this series. CONSTRUCTIVE RHETORIC INTRODUCTION. The first essential of a successful composition is that it interest the reader. This should be the sole object of all writing. Compositions that fail to interest are failures in every way. They have no practical utility or reason for existence. Now for the average man or woman the standard textbooks on rhetoric fail in this first, great essential, because they are too theoretical, and theory is the very hardest thing in the world to get any ordinary person interested in. The men who write these textbooks have been from the time of Aristotle men whose lives are devoted to theory, and to teaching theory. They choose as their models of English the great theoretical writers. To them theory is the most naturally interesting subject in the world, and to write in a theoretical vein is to them the highest form of literary art. Ordinary persons are not interested in theory. They are interested in pictures; they are interested in other men and women they can become acquainted with; they are interested in facts that will be of practical utility to themselves. In other words, to use the language of the theorists, the common reader wants the concrete. There are three ways of writing an advertisement. The advertiser may say, "We have the best store in town. Come to our store and you will be treated right. Nobody sells goods as low as we do." This is what might be called the general or theoretical method of advertisement writing. A wiser advertiser will say, "We are selling 5 cent soap for 1 cent today, black taffeta silk worth $1.50 a yard for 98 cents," etc. This is the concrete method in its simplest form. Another advertiser may introduce the story-telling method, give a narrative of how John Jones came to his store and bought furniture for his four-room flat for $100. It was all good furniture, and he is using it to-day. You may go to such and such a place and see it. His neighbor Henry Smith bought similår furniture at some other place for $5 less, and he has, spent $50 replacing articles that have already worn out. Whenever you can give the human touch, you grip the reader's interest with hoops of steel, and hold it to the end. The human touch is at the very antipodes of theory. Perhaps the reader will now perceive that the best possible drill for an advertisement writer will be to study story-writing, since there he is most likely to catch the knack of the human touch. The newspaper writer will also discover that in a story he will find the best drill on light and sprightly conversation, which will help him to give his narratives of facts the human touch; or he will learn what are those nameless little acts of real people which touch the interest and hold the attention of common readers. In Milwaukee they have had wonderful success in teaching a free use of language to children in the lowest grades of the public schools by telling them |