English: Composition and Literature. William Franklin Webster
stanza viii. Canto III. Can you describe a voice without using comparison?
Do the introductions to the several cantos form any part of the story? Would they be just as good anywhere else? Would the story be better with them, or without them? What principle of structure do they violate?
The subjects for composition given below are not intended as a course to be followed, but only to suggest a plan for the work. The individual topics for essays may not be the best for all cases. Long lists of topics can be found in rhetorics. Bare subjects, however, are usually unsuggestive. They should be adapted to the class. Put the subjects in such shape that there is something to get hold of. Give the pupils a fair start.
1. through 4. In order to place before the pupils good models for constructing stories, read one like “A Piece of String” in “An Odd Number,” by Maupassant. Stories for this purpose should not be long. Talk the story over with the pupils, bringing out clearly the main incident and the several episodes which contribute to it. Have them notice how characters, time, and place are introduced; and how each succeeding event is possible and natural. Then have it rewritten. This will fix the idea of plan. For this purpose some of Miss Wilkins’s stories are excellent; Kenneth Grahame’s “The Golden Age,” and Miss Jewett’s short stories are good material. Some of the short stories in current magazines serve well.
2. and 6. Read the first of a story and its close,—enough to indicate the main incident and the setting of the story. Have the pupils write it complete.
3. Read the close of a story. The pupils will then write the whole.
4. Read the opening of a story. Have the pupils complete it.
5. Finish “The Circus-Man’s Story” (Text-book, p. 297.)
6. My First Algebra Lesson. Remember that in composition a good story is worth more than a true one. The basis may be a fact. Do not hesitate to fix it up.
7. A delivery horse runs away. No persons are in the wagon. Tell about it.
8. Write about a runaway in which you and your little sister are injured. (I have found it very helpful to use the same subject, but having the relation of the narrator to the incident very different. It serves to bring out a whole new vocabulary in order to express the difference in the feelings of the narrator.)
9. Write the story suggested to your mind by these words: Digging in the sand I found a board much worn by the waves, on which were cut, in characters scarcely traceable, these words: “Dec.–18 9, N. J.”
10. A humorous incident in a street car, in which the joke was on the other fellow.
11. Another in which the joke was on me. The same incident may be used with good effect. The choice of new words to express the difference of feelings makes an excellent exercise.
12. Tell the story that Doreas related to her neighbors about her husband’s escape and her father’s death.
13. To bring out the fact that the language must be varied to suit the character of the reader or listener, tell a fairy story to a sleepy five-year old so that he will not go to sleep. Do not hesitate at exaggerations. Only remember it must be consistent.
14. Have “The Gentle Boy” tell one of the incidents in which he was cruelly treated. This may well be an incident of your own life adapted to its purpose.
15. and 20. Jim was a mean boy. Meanness seemed to be in his blood. He was all mean. His hair was mean; his freckles were mean; his big, chapped hands were mean. And he was always mean. He was mean to his pets; he was meaner to small boys; and he was as mean as he dared to be to his equals in size.
Write one incident to show Jim’s meanness.
Write another to show how Jim met his match, and learned a lesson.
16. Work up the following into a story. It all occurs in one day at the present time. Place, your own city. Characters, a poor sewing girl, her little sick brother, and a wealthy society lady. Incidents: a conversation between brother and sister about some fruit; a conversation between the sewing girl and the lady about money due for sewing; stealing apples; arrest; appearance of the lady. Title: Who was the Criminal?
17. A story of a modern Sir Launfal.
18. The most thrilling moment of my life.
19. Tell the whole story suggested by the stanza of “A Nightingale in the Study,” by Lowell, which begins, “Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars.”
20. Write a story which teaches a lesson. Remember that the lesson is in the story, not at its end.
In the work at this time but little attention can be given to the teaching of paragraphs and sentences. The pupil should learn what a paragraph is, and should have his composition properly divided into paragraphs. But the form and massing of paragraphs cannot be taken up at this time. The same may be said of sentences. He should have no sentences broken in two by periods; nor should he have two sentences forced into one. Grammatical errors should be severely criticised. However, the present work is to get the pupils started; and they cannot get started if there is a teacher holding them back by discouraging criticisms. Mark all mistakes of whatever kind; but put the stress upon the whole composition: its unity, its coherence, its mass, and its movement. Everything cannot be done at once; many distressing faults will have to be passed over until later.
CHAPTER IV
DESCRIPTION
Difficulties of Language for making Pictures. Description has been defined as the form of literature which presents a picture by means of language. In the preceding chapter, it has been pointed out that the sequence of language is perfectly adapted to detail the sequence of action in a narrative. For the purpose of constructing a picture, the means has serious drawbacks. The picture has to be presented in pieces; and the difficulties are much as would be experienced if “dissected maps and animals” used for children’s amusement were to be put together in the head. It would not be easy to arrange the map of the United States from blocks, each containing a small part of it, taken one at a time from a box. Yet this closely resembles the method language forces us to adopt in constructing a picture. Each phrase is like one of the blocks, and introduces a new element into the picture; from these phrases the reader must reconstruct the whole. This means not alone that he shall remember them all, but there is a more serious trouble: he must often rearrange them. For example, a description by Ruskin begins, “Nine years old.” Either a boy or a girl, the reader thinks, as it may be in his own home. In the case of this reader it is a boy, rather tall of his age, with brown hair and dark eyes. But the next phrase reads, “Neither tall nor short for her age.” Now the reader knows it is a girl of common stature. Later on he learns that her eyes are “deep blue;” her lips “perfectly lovely in profile;” and so on through the details of the whole sketch. Many times in the course of the description the reader makes up a new picture; he is continually reconstructing. Any one who will observe his own mind while reading a new description can prove that the picture is arranged and rearranged many times. This is due to the means by which it is presented. Language presents only a phrase at a time,—a fragment, not a whole,—and so fails in the instantaneous presentation of a complete picture.
Painting and Sculpture. The painter or sculptor who upon canvas or in stone flashes the whole composition before us at the same instant of time, has great advantages over the worker in words. In these methods there is needed no reconstruction of previous images, no piecing together of a number of fragments. Without any danger of mistakes which will have to be corrected later, the spectator can take in the whole picture at once,—every relation, every color, every difference in values.
It is because pictures are the surest and quickest means of representing objects to the mind that books, especially text-books, and magazines are so profusely illustrated. No magazine can claim popularity to-day that does not use illustrations where possible; no text-book in science or history sells unless it contains pictures. And this is because all persons accurately and quickly get the idea from a picture.
Advantages of Language. Whatever be the disadvantages of language, there are some advantages.