id="pgepubid00020">

FARTHEST NORTH IS RIGHT HERE IN TOWN

Hundreds of persons were attracted yesterday to Brook Avenue, near One Hundred and Forty-ninth Street, to inspect the handiwork in snow of three fourteen-year-old boys.

 They had built a thick-walled cottage, 25 feet high and with 15 × 16 feet ground dimensions. Roof and walls, inside and out, had been smoothed; and a coat of water had turned the snow house into a shimmering glaze.

The interior was divided into four rooms, all bearing out the truthfulness of the sign tacked up without, which read: “House to let, three rooms and bath.” Even the bath, modeled in snow, was there. Rugs, tables, chairs, and sofas made the Esquimau edifice cozy within; and an oil stove kept eggs and coffee sizzling merrily at dinner time.

The builders were three days at their task. They are Tom Brown, of No. 516 East One Hundred and Forty-seventh Street; Arthur Carraher, of No. 430 Brook Avenue; and Walter Waller, of No. 525 East One Hundred and Forty-fifth Street.

V. Notes and Queries

1. State the reason for the use of each capital letter and each mark of punctuation in the model.
2. Tell whether each sentence is simple, complex, or compound.
3. Explain the syntax of each adverb in the model.
4. Point out three words or phrases that have color, character, or distinction.
5. What is the subject of each paragraph?
6. Are the “Four W’s” sufficiently indicated? Point them out.
7. Study the heading. The art of writing good headings is almost as difficult as that of writing good poetry, which it resembles in that, as the poet is limited to a certain number of syllables, the writer of headlines is limited to a fixed number of letters.

VI. Suggested Time Schedule

Monday

Discuss Sections I, II, and III of this chapter. Send the class to the board and dictate the model as an exercise in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Review last week’s work.

Tuesday

Recitation on Notes and Queries.

 Wednesday

Oral Composition: i.e., each pupil will bring to class his news article—not written but in his head—and be prepared to deliver it to the class as if he were a reporter dictating to a stenographer or telephoning his report to his paper.

Thursday

Profiting by Wednesday’s discussion, the pupils will write their articles and hand them to the teacher, who will proof-read them and return them on Monday.

Friday

Public Speaking—Organize the class as a club. Let the officers arrange a program consisting of declamations, debates, essays, dialogues, etc. This day may also be used for the reading of the best articles that members of the class have written.

VII. Organization of Material

After you get your story, you must decide on a plan for its discussion. This will depend largely on its nature. Indeed, the plan and the style of any piece of writing are to the material as are the clothes to the body. They must fit the body. The body determines their shape.

The model in Section IV is a bit of exposition composed partly of description and partly of narration. Its framework is as follows:

1. Par. 1. The “Four W’s”:
   
   • Who = hundreds of people;
   • What = handiwork in snow;
   • When = yesterday;
   • Where = Brook Avenue near One Hundred and Forty-ninth Street.
2. Par. 2. The Exterior of the House.
3. Par. 3. The Interior.
4. Par. 4. The Architects.

VIII. Some Possible Subjects

1. The Gas Engine that Jack built.
2. A Profitable Garden.
3.  How a Boy earned his Education.
4. A Cabinet.
5. How to bind Books.
6. Stocking and keeping an Aquarium.
7. How to build a Flatboat.
8. How to make Dolls from Corn-Husks.
9. Metallic Band Work.
10. A Sled made of Ice.
11. Silk Culture.
12. Chickens.
13. A Good Notebook.
14. A Sketch-Book.
15. A Successful Composition.
16. Skees.
17. A Paper Boat.
18. Toys made in the Manual Training Rooms.
19. A Hat.
20. A Dress.
21. The best subject of all, however, is none of these, but one that the pupil finds himself.

IX. Suggested Reading

Elbert Hubbard’s A Message to Garcia.

X. Memorize

A PSALM OF LIFE (continued from Page 7)

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

  Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

To Teachers. At this point a review of Chapter V, “Proof-Reading” and Chapter VI, “The Correction of Themes,” of Practical English Composition, Book I, will be found an invaluable exercise.
←Contents

 CHAPTER III
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime.”

Longfellow.

I. Assignment

Write a biographical note of about two hundred words concerning a citizen who has just come into public notice.

II. Obtaining the Facts

If the subject of the note is already distinguished, the facts can usually be collected from books and periodicals. Poole’s Index