say or write: "John Smith wishes to earn cake as well as bread and butter."

In most instances general terms are the same as abstract, and specific the same as concrete. Some subtle discriminations may, however, be made. Of these the only one that need concern us here is that the wording of a passage may not be abstract and yet be general. Suppose, for example, you were telling the story of the prodigal son and should say: "He was very hungry, and could; not obtain food anywhere. When he had come to his senses, he thought, 'I should be better off at home.'" This language is not abstract, but it is general rather than specific. When Jesus told the story, he wished to put the situation as poignantly as possible and therefore avoided both abstract and general terms: "And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!" Many a person who shuns abstractions and talks altogether of the concrete things of life, yet traps out circumstance in general rather than specific terms. To do this is always to sacrifice force.

EXERCISE - Abstract

1. Discuss as abstractly as possible such topics as those listed in Activity 1 for EXERCISE - Discourse, or as the following:

Is there any such thing as luck?
Is the Golden Rule practicable in the modern business world?
Is modesty rather than self-assertion regarding his own merits and
abilities the better policy for an employee?
Are substantial, home-keeping girls or girls rather fast and frivolous the
more likely to obtain good husbands?
Is it desirable for a young man to take out life insurance?
Is self-education better than collegiate training?
Should one always tell the truth?

2. Discuss as concretely as possible the topics you have selected from 1. Use illustrations drawn from life.

3. Restate in concrete terms such generalizations as the following:

Experience is the best teacher.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
The bravest are the tenderest.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Pride goeth before destruction.
The evil that men do lives after them.

4. Compare the abstract statement "Truths and high ethical principles are received by various men in various ways" with the concrete presentation of the same idea in Appendix 3. Which expression of the thought would be the more easily understood by the average person? Why? Which would you yourself remember the longer? Why?

5. Compare the statement "The second period of a human being's life is that of his reluctant attendance at school" with Shakespeare's picture of the schoolboy in Appendix 4.

6. Burke, near the close of his speech (Appendix 2), presents an idea, first in general terms, and then in specific terms, thus: "No contrivance can prevent the effect of…distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution, and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system." Find elsewhere in Burke's speech and in the editorial (Appendix I) general assertions which may be made more forceful by restatement in specific terms, and supply these specific restatements.

7. State in your own words the general thought or teaching of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15: 11-24.)

8. Make the following statements more concrete:

In front of our house was a tree that at a certain season of the year displayed highly colored foliage.

A celebrated orator said: "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

On the table were some viands that assailed my nostrils agreeably and others that put into my mouth sensations of anticipated enjoyment.

From this window above the street I can hear a variety of noises by day and a variety of different noises by night.

As he groped through the pitch-dark room he could feel many articles of furniture.

9. State in general terms the thought of the following sentences:

A burnt child dreads the fire.
A stitch in time saves nine.
A cat may look at a king.
A barking dog never bites.
If his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
If two men ride a horse, one must ride behind.
Stone walls do not a prison make.
A merry heart goes all the day.
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.
As the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.

10. Describe a town as seen from a particular point of view, or at a particular time of day, or under particular atmospheric conditions. Make your description as concrete as possible.

11. Compare your description with this from Stevenson: "The town came down the hill in a cascade of brown gables, bestridden by smooth white roofs, and spangled here and there with lighted windows." Stevenson's sentence contains twenty-five words. How many of them are "color" words? How many "motion" words? How many of the first twenty-five words in your description appeal to one or another of the five senses?

12. Narrate as vividly as possible an experience in your own life. Compare what you have written with the account of Crusoe's escape to the island (Appendix 5). Which narrative is the more concrete? How much?

<2. Literal vs. Figurative Terms>

Phraseology is literal when it says exactly what it means; is figurative when it says one thing, but really means another. Thus "He fought bravely" is literal; "He was a lion in the fight" is figurative. Literal phraseology as a rule appeals to our scientific or understanding faculties; figurative to our emotional faculties. Here again, as with abstraction and concreteness, you should learn to express yourself by either method.

Both have their advantages and their drawbacks. We all admire the man who has observed, and can state, accurately. It is upon this belief of ours in the literal that Defoe shrewdly traffics. (See Appendix 5.) He does not stir us as some writers do, but he gains our implicit confidence. Dame Quickly, on the contrary, makes egregious use of the literal. (See paragraph above EXERCISE - Wordiness III above.) Her facts are accurate, yes; but how strictly, how unsparingly accurate! And how many of them are beside the point! She quite convinces us that the devotee of the literal may be dull.

An advantage of the figurative also is that it may make meanings lucid. Thus when Burke near the close of his discussion (Appendix 2) wishes to make it clear that by a law of nature the authority of extensive empires is slighter in its more remote territories, he has recourse to a figure of speech: "In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it." More often, however, the function of the figurative is to drive home a thought or a mood of which a mere statement would leave us unmoved—to make us feel it. Thus Burke said of the Americans "Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing." He added: "Here they felt its pulse, and as they found that beat they thought themselves sick or sound." Had you been one of his Parliamentary hearers, would not that second sentence have made more real and more important the colonial attitude to taxation? The poets of course make frequent and noble use of the figurative. This is how