at the theatres bearing the badges of their political sect. The schism extended Λ to the most remote counties of England.

Treat in the same way the elliptical passages in Appendix C XXII 10, 11, 26, 32; also in the paragraph from Macaulay's "Samuel Johnson," quoted above, 25, 1.

4. Apply the method of inversion' wherever possible in C XXII 41. Use inversion to improve the following sen

tences:

The public documents were destroyed by fire and afterwards restored from memory. But it can be seen that they could have been written with little accuracy.

I was homesick and lonesome during the first few days after my arrival at school. I thought that I should never get accustomed to the place, although the teachers tried to make it as pleasant for me as they could. After I became better acquainted with the boys my attacks of homesickness left me and I was as jolly as any one in school.

27. Proportion and Emphasis. The paragraph is a composition in miniature, and it is by virtue of this fact that we are applying to it the same laws that were applied to the whole composition-the laws of unity, coherence, and proportion. In regard to this last in particular little more can be done than to restate what has already been stated in 13, 4. The matters of chief importance should in general have the important positions, the beginning and the end; and they should not be obscured by intrusive details.

EXERCISE.

As a general exercise it will be well to make at this point outlines or abstracts of several magazine articles, such as were recommended under 10, exercise 3, supplemented with somewhat detailed criticisms. The following directions and questions may serve as a guide:

1. First put into a single sentence, if possible, the substance of each paragraph.

2. Next make an abstract, if possible, by larger sections.

3. Are these sections arranged in a natural (logical) order? What is the basis of the division: classification of articles, order of events, climacteric enumeration of arguments, or what? Does any section seem disproportionately full or scant?

4. Is the paragraph structure good? That is, is each paragraph confined to a single idea? Or are there several topics in one paragraph? Or is one topic divided into several paragraphs?

5. Does the writer, in passing from one paragraph to another, use relation-words to indicate the connection of thought? Does he ever summarize what has been said before proceeding to the next point?

6. Does the piece have unity? Does it keep close to the central theme, or does it ramble? Does the title fit?

7. Is the composition narrative, descriptive, expository, or argumentative? Is the character indicated by the title? Is it indicated in the introduction? Is it indicated by any summary at the close?

THE SENTENCE AND ITS CLAUSES.

I. NATURE OF THE SENTENCE.

28. Definition.-A Sentence is a word or collection of words expressing a complete thought. It is the real unit of discourse, the necessary medium of intelligent communication, and therefore the most vital element of composition. It is largely by the development of an acute "sentence-sense" that one becomes master of a good style.

In printing and writing the conventional outward marks of a sentence are the capital letter at the beginning and the period (or interrogation-point or exclamation-point) at the end.

Two parts, expressed or understood, are essential to every sentence: the Subject, about which something is said, and the Predicate, which says it. To these may be added other parts-additional subjects and predicates, and qualifiers or modifiers.

A term that merely presents an idea or concept, or merely raises a picture in the mind, does not constitute a sentence. Thus: horse, walking, black. Even the combination of these into a single phrase, black horse walking, does not yet make what is technically called a sentence: there is no actual predication. It is clear, however, that this is logically a rude form of sentence, the explicit addition of is or goes or I see being scarcely necessary. And in all cases where the implication is made clear by punctuation

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or by intonation of the voice, as in Go (= Go thou), A horse! (I see a horse, or I want a horse), Where? (= Where is it?), we have sentences that fall legitimately within the definition. Prepositional, participial, and infinitive phrases, relative clauses, and combinations of subject and predicate introduced by subordinating conjunctions are not sentences and should not be treated as such. The punctuation in the following examples is therefore wrong:

The forest reservations have until the last year had absolutely no protection, and the sheep-herders have used them for pasturage as before. The only difference being that they were not open for entry.

I watched the men put out the "log" and learned its use. Also that of the compass and chart.

In the selections from Hawthorne's "Note Books" given under section 6, 1, many such fragments of sentences are to be found. But they were not intended to be anything more than memoranda: they are but jottings upon which the art of composition has not been exercised at all. Occasionally, however, writers will take the license of introducing such incomplete sentences into formal composition. In general this occurs only where the missing portion is easily supplied from what has gone before. Take an example from Lowell:

A pair of pe-wees have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five each are raised there every summer.

So Ruskin, after describing the poor who live inside of the town of Geneva, begins a new paragraph, "But outside the ramparts, no more poor." Kipling sometimes. punctuates a relative clause as a separate sentence-a practice that may easily be abused:

That letter made Agnes Leiter very unhappy, and she cried and

put it away in her desk, and became Mrs. Somebody Else for the good of her family. Which is the first duty of every Christian maid.

A short descriptive passage at the beginning of a piece may be treated in the same way, the purpose being simply to present the features of a scene as a painting might present them. Care should be taken not to mingle complete and incomplete sentences indiscriminately.

A dirty little office. Pieces of paper scattered over the floor, brown with its accumulation of tobacco filth. Cobwebs and much dust collected in the corners of the room.

Of course these fragments could be easily combined into a single sentence by summing them up at the end and supplying a verb. Thus:

A dirty little office; pieces of paper scattered over the floor, brown with its accumulation of tobacco filth; cobwebs and much dust collected in the corners of the room-such was the scene that met my gaze.

It is evident that these fragmentary sentences would be wholly out of place in sober scientific or technical prose. They are partly artistic devices, partly a natural form of expression where some feeling lies behind the utterance. They are often made frankly exclamatory.

EXERCISE.

Determine which of the following expressions come within the definition of a sentence, and which may and which may not be allowed to stand as punctuated:

Sail on the weather beam!

Some people say that there is no romance in India. Those people are wrong. Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for us. Sometimes more.

But what good has this done him with the government? None in the world.

They were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all,