4. Drummond once wrote: "There is a disease called 'touchiness'- a disease which, in spite of its innocent name, is one of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world." 5. If you once ask the devil to dinner, it will be hard to get him out of the house again; better to have nothing to do with him. 6. If you want to sleep soundly, buy a bed of a man who is in debt; surely it must be a very soft one, or he never could have rested so easy on it. 7. Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever living, ever working universe; it is a seed grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a banyan grove; perhaps, alas, as a hemlock forest, after a thousand years. 8. Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave. At home, a friend; abroad, an introduction; in solitude, a solace; and in society, an ornament. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage. 9. We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs: he most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 10. Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third ("Treason!" cried the speaker)—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it. 11. As long as he (William the Silent) lived, he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation; and when he died, the little children cried in the streets. 12. A course in composition should accomplish two results: it should enable the pupil to make his thoughts clear to others, and it should develop his appreciation of good literature. 13. Stand! the ground's your own, my braves! Hope ye mercy still? What's the mercy despots feel? Read it on yon bristling steel! Ask it, ye who will! 14. Aye, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they Freedom to worship God.- Felicia Hemans. PART THREE Letter Writing BEING the most useful of the several kinds of composition, letter writing should be if there is any difference the most thoroughly mastered. Not every person can reasonably aspire to write essays or books for the general reader, but every person writes letters. What one needs to do so often, one should learn to do well. Only one letter in a hundred would, perhaps, be adjudged a model letter in both form and matter. At least the mechanical requisites of a good letter should be mastered by every pupil. KINDS OF LETTERS.— There are two general classes of letters: informal or private, and formal or business letters. A good business letter is clear, courteous, and brief. Its language is definite. It conveys its meaning in the fewest words consistent with ordinary politeness. It observes the best forms of address and signature. It is free from brusque remarks and curt abbreviations. It contains nothing personal or irrelevant. Very different, however, are the tone and manner of a personal or social letter. Professor Meiklejohn writes: "In private letter writing let yourself go a little be entirely natural. Remember that you are not writing in an examination room. This of itself will 141 10-ESSENTIALS probably cause you to write in a natural style. Nothing is so tiresome, nothing gives so little pleasure to receive, as a 'composition' letter. In private letters anything like a formal style is disagreeable; indeed, much more laxity of expression - even to colloquialism is both admissible and pleasant. If you are writing to a friend, write to him as you would talk to him, and not as if the eye of the examiner were always upon you." To impart to a social letter the tone that represents exactly the relation between the two persons is not an easy task. The nicest tact is necessary to insure the writer against being too stiff on the one hand or too familiar on the other. PARTS OF LETTERS.— The conventional letter consists, as to form, of seven parts: the heading; the address; the salutation; the body, or letter proper; the complimentary close, or leave-taking; the signature; and the superscription, or what is written on the envelope. By the heading of a letter is meant the name of the place at which the letter is written, and the date. If a letter is written in a city, the door number, the name of the street, the name of the city, and the name of the state should be clearly given. If the writer is staying at a hotel or at a school, or at any well-known institution, its name takes the place of that of the street and the number, as may also the number of his post-office box. If the letter is written at a village or other country place, the name of the county, as well as that of the post office and that of the state, should be given. Begin the heading about an inch and a half from the top edge of the paper. The heading should be well toward the right-hand edge of the page. When it occupies more than one line, the second line should begin a little farther to the right than the first, and the third a little farther than the second. The date always comes last, and should never be omitted. But the rest of the heading the place - need not be given in full, if the one to whom the letter is written knows perfectly well where the sender lives. In social correspondence, but never in a business letter, the name of the place and the date may be placed below the signature, toward the left edge of the page. As a rule, each item of the heading is set off by a comma. But some of the present-day authorities use the marks of punctuation more sparingly. For example, Mr. Alfred M. Hitchcock wrote in 1906, regarding the punctuating of the heading of a letter: "Note that where two or more items are in the same line they are separated by the comma, but that no comma is placed at the end of a line, and no periods are used except after abbreviations. In other words, punctuation marks are placed only where they are actually needed." He then gives this example: 158 Corporal St., Hartford, Conn. Oct. 25, 1904 |