at a distance, to address absent and widely scattered audiences at the same moment of time, to transmit our knowledge and our opinions to those who shall come after us-these are real everyday needs of modern life.

And since these needs are most easily met through the medium of written words, in the mastery of this medium we find our second task. Yet even on this mechanical side composition is not a mystery. It is not the cult of a literary sect. It does not mean flowery rhetoric. It means good, plain English, and its mastery. involves only the ability to write with clearness and effect. Nevertheless, the attendant difficulties must not be underrated. Few men can communicate their simplest thoughts or desires with no waste of words and with immediate intelligibility. "I know but I cannot tell," is a familiar answer in the schoolroom, and we are inclined to smile at the paltriness of the excuse. But it is too often sadly true. Ask a cook how she makes her excellent salad; ask a friend to instruct you in the rules of a certain game. The chances are that both know far better than they can tell. "Printed directions," whether for hanging a door, or dyeing a scarf, or carving a turkey, are likely to be puzzling in the extreme. Business men and school boards could tell of many an applicant for a position who met with no favor because he could not state plainly what he wanted and what his qualifications were. The phraseology of state papers, statutes, and legal documents generally, betrays how difficult a matter it is to make language say one thing clearly and one thing only. Words are tricksy Ariels-they do so much more than we dream; or they grow stubborn on our hands, and will do nothing at all. Study will make us alive to the possibilities of misunderstanding which lie in the most innocent-looking phrase; practice will open up to us the résources for avoiding such misunderstanding and for securing the richest results with the least labor and waste. *

* By a curious coincidence, this sentence affords an illustration of its own truth. It was originally written thus: "Study will make us alive to the possibilities of misunderstanding that lie in the most innocent-looking phrase." When the sentence was transcribed on the typewriter, it chanced that the words "misunderstanding that lie" fell at the end of a line, so that the words were naturally read as a single phrase-"lie" as a noun, "that" as a demonstrative, and " misunderstanding" as a verb governing "lie." The ambiguity was remedied by changing "that" to "which."

But composition should bear another relation than that to the end served a relation to the composer. Force of language can come only from force of character. Clean writing can come only out of clean thinking and, in a measure, clean living. Certain it is that no high degree of success can attend any style that is not grounded in character. It will not pay to try to get far from yourself, to be unnatural or untrue to yourself. The vitality of the relationship between the arts we practise and the life we live should never be lost sight of. Mark in the "Travels and Adventures" of Captain John Smith how the decisive word goes with the decisive deed. Or read in the famous letter of Dr. Johnson to Lord Chesterfield a perfect example of the truth of Buffon's saying, "Style is the man himself." When you write, write yourself, with an eye single to the thing yourself desires to say. You can never do better than that.

If such a conception of the art of composition can be fixed, students will no longer present themselves at college for examination in this branch with the idea that they must " compose " in a style suited to the occasion, or that they will be judged by their ability to elaborate figures of speech.

II. THE SUBJECT.

2. Range of Subjects. From the foregoing it follows naturally that one must look for subjects within one's self, that is to say, within the range of one's own experience, or interest, or knowledge, or power. Only upon such subjects can one say anything worth saying, and to have something worth saying is the first essential. It is of no use to cultivate a worthy manner unless one have worthy matter. That worthy matter is to be sought at home. What do you care about? What do you know about? What do you wish to know about to extend, fix, and systematize your knowledge of? This is your material, and you should have no difficulty in finding it. One who is without themes has no business with the art of composition.

Theoretically, seeing that we have insisted upon treating composition broadly and upon emphasizing its relation to all departments of life, the range of subjects is world-wide. Actually, for the individual, it is limited by the individual limitations spoken of in the last paragraph. And, in the world of affairs, the choice must further be regulated by considerations of time and place. But if we set out with the "relation" idea, the means-to-anend" idea, of composition strong in our minds, these things will follow of course. The purpose of the essay will always stand in our minds before the essay itself, keeping us in the right path.

In practice work, the closer we keep to real conditions, the better. One can nearly always write in response to some actual demand, without or within. Some public question will bear comment, some matter of local interest requires discussion, some personal experience is worth recording, some fantasy of the brain seems fair enough to preserve. Only let the personal limitations be always kept in view.

A list of subjects of some variety is here appended, but it is given more to show the kinds of themes that have lent themselves to successful treatment than to furnish actual ready-made subjects for the use of others.

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3. Nature of the Subject.-Perhaps one warning is needed here. The immature and inexperienced are not competent to write upon abstract or moral themes—upon "Self-reliance," upon "The Illusions of Hope," upon "True Merit Wins." Such subjects are affected by those who have the false idea of composition which we are trying to remove. They lead invariably to vague thinking, and to the cultivation of manner before matter-two things fatal to any genuine success in this art.

Read one such essay:

LUCK.

Is there such a thing as luck or chance is a question which every one has at some time pondered upon. It is extremely difficult to believe that luck does not exist when we see men about us favored with fortune upon fortune, merited, seemingly, by no exertion whatever. It is an acknowledged fact that luck arising from trivial every-day occurrences, such as finding horseshoes, etc., is believed in only by the weak, ignorant, and superstitious. But often that happens which we can account for in no way but by its being genuine good luck. Emerson says that if we look back we shall find that luck has arisen from some previous action, perhaps unconsciously performed: everything is compensated for. It is certainly much more pleasing to think that we can, to a certain degree, restrain ill fortune and insure that which is good, than to believe ourselves ruled entirely by the caprice of fitful luck. Let us not therefore give ourselves up to waiting for this uncertain visitor, but rather strive after the good fortune which faithful labor is sure to bring.

It is simple enough, and sensible enough on the whole. But the reader is not interested, and he is not put in possession of any valuable facts or any helpful ideas. The writer should have left the subject to such men as Emer

son.

Take a paragraph from another essay of this kind: