III

WORDS IN COMBINATION: HOW MASTERED

The more dangerous pitfalls for those who use words in combination—as all of us do—have been pointed out. The best ways of avoiding these pitfalls have also been indicated. But our work together has thus far been chiefly negative. To be sure, many tasks assigned for your performance have been constructive as well as precautionary; but the end held ever before you has been the avoidance of feeble or ridiculous diction. In the present chapter we must take up those aspects of the mastery of words in combination which are primarily positive.

<Preliminaries: General Purposes and Methods>

Before coming to specific aspects and assignments, however, we shall do well to consider certain large general purposes and methods.

<I. A Ready, an Accurate, or a Wide Vocabulary?>

First, what kind of vocabulary do we wish to acquire? A facile, readily used one? An accurate one? Or one as nearly as may be comprehensive? The three kinds do not necessarily coexist. The possession of one may even hinder and retard the acquisition of another. Thus if we seek a ready vocabulary, an accurate vocabulary may cause us to halt and hesitate for words which shall correspond with the shadings of our thought and emotion, and a wide vocabulary may embarrass us with the plenitude of our verbal riches.

But may is not must. Though the three kinds of vocabulary may interfere with each other, there is no reason, except superficially, why they should. Our purpose should be, therefore, to acquire not a single kind but all three. We should be like the boy who, when asked whether he would have a small slice of apple pie or a small slice of pumpkin pie, replied resolutely, "Thank you, I will take a large piece of both."

That the assignments in this chapter may help you develop a vocabulary which shall be promptly responsive to your needs, you should perform some of them rapidly. Your thoughts and feelings regarding a topic may be anything but clear, but you must not pause to clarify them. The words best suited to the matter may not be instantly available, but you must not tarry for accessions of language. Stumble, flounder if you must, yea, rearrange your ideas even as you present them, but press resolutely ahead, comforting yourself with the assurance that in the heat and stress of circumstances a man rarely does his work precisely as he wishes. When you have finished the discussion, repeat it immediately—and with no more loitering than before. You will find that your ideas have shifted and enlarged, and that more appropriate words have become available. Further repetitions will assist you the more. But the goal you should set yourself, as you proceed from topic to topic, is the attainment of the power to be at your best in the first discussion. You may never reach this goal, but at least you may approach it.

That the assignments in this chapter may assist you in making your vocabulary accurate, you should perform some of them in another way. When you have selected a topic, you should first of all think it through. In doing this, arrange your ideas as consistently and logically as you can, and test them with your reason. Then set them forth in language which shall be lucid and exact. Tolerate no slipshod diction, no vaguely rendered general meanings. Send every sentence, every word like a skilful drop-kick—straight above the crossbar. When you have done your best with the topic, lay it by for a space. Time is a great revealer of hidden defects, and you must not regard your labors as ended until your achievement is the maturest possible for you. If the quantity of what you accomplish is meager, suffer no distress on that account. The desideratum now is not quantity, but quality.

The assignments in this chapter will do less toward making your vocabulary wide than toward making it facile and precise. To be sure, they will now and then set you to hunting for words that are new. Better still, they will give you a mastery over some of your outlying words—words known to your eyes or ears but not to your tongue. But these advantages will be somewhat incidental. Means for the systematic extension of your verbal domain into regions as yet unexplored by you, are reserved for the later chapters of this book.

<2. A Vocabulary for Speech or for Writing?>

In the second place, are we to develop a vocabulary for oral discourse or a vocabulary for writing? It may be that our chief impediment or our chief ambition lies in one field rather than in the other. Nevertheless we should strive for a double mastery; we ought to speak well and write well. Indeed the two powers so react upon each other that we ought to cultivate both for the sake of either. True, some men, though inexpert as writers, have made themselves proficient as speakers; or though shambling and ineffective as speakers, have made themselves proficient as writers. But this is not natural or normal. Moreover these men might have gleaned more abundantly from their chosen field had they not shut it off from the acres adjacent. Fences waste space and curtail harvests.

The assignments in this chapter are of such a nature that you may perform them either orally or in writing. You should speak and write alternately, sometimes on the same topic, sometimes on topics taken in rotation.

In your oral discussions you should perhaps absent yourself at first from human auditors. A bedstead or a dresser will not make you self-conscious or in any way distract your attention, and it will permit you to sit down afterward and think out the degree of your failure or success. Ultimately, of course, you must speak to human beings—in informal conversations at the outset, in more ambitious ways later as occasion permits.

In your writing you may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition that easy reading is devilish hard writing.

These purposes and methods are general. We now come to the specific fields in which we may with profit cultivate words in combination. Of these fields there are four.

<I. Mastery through Translation>

If you read a foreign language, whether laboriously or with ease, you should make this power assist you to amass a good English vocabulary. Take compositions or parts of compositions written in the foreign tongue, and turn them into idiomatic English. How much you should translate at a given time depends upon your leisure and your adeptness. Employ all the methods—the spontaneous, the carefully perfected, the oral, the written—heretofore explained in this chapter. In your final work on a passage you should aim at a faultless rendition, and should spend time and ransack the lexicons rather than come short of this ideal.

The habit of translation is an excellent habit to keep up. For the study of an alien tongue not only improves your English, but has compensations in itself.

EXERCISE - Translation

1. Translate from any accessible book in the foreign language you can read.

2. Subscribe for a period of at least two or three months for a newspaper or magazine in that language, if it is a modern one. Translate as before, but give most of your time to rapid oral translation for a real or imaginary American hearer.

3. When you have completed your final written translation of a passage from the foreign language, make yourself master of all the English words you have not previously (1) known or (2) used, but have encountered in your work of translation.

<2. Mastery through Paraphrasing>

It may be that you are not familiar with a foreign language. At any rate you have some knowledge of English. Put this knowledge to use in paraphrasing; for thus you will enrich your vocabulary and make it surer and more flexible. The process of paraphrasing is simple, though the actual work is not easy. You take passages written in English—the more of them the better, and the more diversified the better—and both reproduce their substance and incarnate their mood in words you yourself shall choose.

You may have a passage before you and paraphrase it unit by unit. More often, however, you should follow the plan adopted by Franklin when he emulated Addison by rewriting the Spectator Papers. That is, you should steep yourself in the thought and emotion of a piece of writing, and then lay the piece aside until its wording has faded from your memory, when you should reëmbody the substance in language that seems to you natural and fitting. Much of the benefit will come from your comparing your version, as Franklin did his, with the original. When you perceive that you have fallen short, you should consider the respects wherein your inferiority lies—and should make another attempt, and yet another, and another. When you perceive that in any way you have surpassed the original, you should feel a just pride in your achievement—and should resolve that next time your cause for pride shall be greater still. Even after you have desisted from formal paraphrasing, you should cling to the habit, formed at this time, of observing any notable felicities in whatever you read and of comparing them with the expression you yourself would likely have employed.

EXERCISE - Paraphrasing

1. Paraphrase the editorial in Appendix 1. You should improve upon the original. Keep trying until you do.

2. Paraphrase the second paragraph in Burke's speech (Appendix 2). Burke lacked the cheap tricks of the ordinary orator, but his discussions were based upon a comprehensive knowledge of facts, a sympathetic understanding of human nature, a vast depth and range of thought, and a well-meditated political philosophy. In short, he is a model for elaborated discussions. Set forth the leading thought of this paragraph; you can give it in fewer words than he employs. But try setting it forth with his full accompaniments of reflection and information; you will be bewildered at his crowding so much into such small compass.

3. Try to rival the pregnant conciseness of the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3).

4. Paraphrase in prose the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). Catch if possible the mood, the "atmosphere," of each of the pictures painted by Shakespeare. Condense your paraphrase as much as you can.

5. In each of the preceding exercises compare your vocabulary with that of the original as to size, precision, and the grace and ease with which words are put together. Does the original employ terms unfamiliar to you? If so, look up their meaning and make them yours; then observe, when you next paraphrase the passage, whether your mastery of these terms has improved your expression.

<3. Mastery through Discourse at First Hand>

Models have their use, but you can also work without models. It is imperative that you should. You must learn to discuss, explain, analyze, argue, narrate, and describe for yourself. Here again you should diversify your materials to the utmost, not only that you may become well-rounded and versatile in your ability to set forth ideas and feelings in words, but also that your knowledge and your sensibility may receive stimulation.

It is feasible to begin by discussing or explaining. Most of the intercourse conducted through language consists in either discussion or explanation. Analysis, ordinarily, is almost ignored. Argument is indulged in, and so is description (though less freely), but they are of the bluntest and broadest. Narration—the recounting of incidents of everyday existence—is, however, widely employed.

In your work of discussion or explanation you may seize upon any current topic—industrial, social, political, or what not—that comes into your mind. Or you may make a list of such topics, writing each on a separate piece of paper; may jumble the slips in a hat; and may thus have always at your elbow a collection of satisfactory themes from which you may take one at random. Or you may invest in language of your own selection the substance of an address or sermon you have heard, or give the burden of some important conversation in which you have participated, or explain the tenor of an article you have read. You should of course try to interest your hearers, and above all, you should impart to what you say complete clarity.

In analyzing you should select as your topic a process fairly obscure, the implications of a certain statement or argument, the results to be expected from some action or policy that has been advocated, or the exact matter at issue between two disputants. Any topic for discussion, explanation, or argument may be treated analytically. Your analysis in its final form should be so carefully considered that its soundness cannot be impeached.

In arguing you may take any subject under the sun, from baseball to Bolshevism, for all of them are debated with vehemence. Any topic for discussion or explanation becomes, when approached from some particular angle, material for argument. Thus the initial topic in the exercise that follows is "The aeroplane's future as a carrier of mail." You may convert it into a question for debate by making it read: "The aeroplane is destined to supplant the railroad as a carrier of mail," or "The aeroplane is destined to be used increasingly as a carrier of transcontinental mail." In arguing you may propose for yourself either of two objectives: (1) to silence your opponent, (2) to refute, persuade, and win him over fairly. The achievement of the first end calls for bluster and perhaps a grim, barbaric strength; you must do as Johnson did according to Goldsmith's famous dictum—if your pistol misses fire, you must knock your adversary down with the butt end of it. This procedure, though inartistic to be sure, is in some contingencies the only kind that will serve. But you should cultivate procedure of a type more urbane. Let your very reasonableness be the most potent weapon you wield. To this end you should form the habit of looking for good points on both sides of a question. As a still further precaution against contentiousness you should uphold the two sides successively.

In narrating you should, as a rule, stick to simple occurrences, though you may occasionally vary your work by summarizing the plot of a novel or giving the gist and drift of big historical events. You should confine yourself, in large part, to incidents in which you have been personally involved, or which you yourself have witnessed, as mishaps, unexpected encounters, bickerings, even rescues or riots. You should omit non-essentials and make the happening itself live for your hearer; if you can so interest him in it that he will not notice your manner of telling it, your success is but the greater.

Finally, in describing you should deal for the most part with beings, objects, and appearances familiar to you. Description is usually hard to make vivid. This is because the objects and scenes are likely to be immobile and (at least when told about) to lack distinctiveness. Try, therefore, to lay hold of the peculiar quality of the thing described, and use words suggestive of color and motion. Moreover be brief. Long descriptions are sure to be wearisome.

EXERCISE - Discourse

1. Select topics from the following list for discussion or explanation:

The aeroplane's future as a carrier of mail
The commercial future of the aeroplane
A recent scientific (or mechanical or electrical) invention
A better type of newspaper—its contents and makeup
A better type of newspaper—how it can be secured
The connection between the advertising and news departments
of a newspaper—the actual condition
The connection between the advertising and news departments
of a newspaper—the ideal
Special features in a newspaper that are popular
A single standard for the sexes—is it possible?
A single standard for the sexes—how it can be attained (or approximated)
Should the divorce laws be made more stringent?
Should a divorced person be prohibited from remarrying?
What further marriage restrictions should be placed upon the
physically or mentally unfit?
What further measures should be taken by the cities (states, nation) for
the protection of motherhood?
Is the division of men into strongly contrasted groups as to wealth
one of nature's necessities, or is it the result of a social and
economic system?
Some shortcomings of the labor unions
Are the shortcomings of the labor unions accidental or inherent?
Some ways of bettering the condition of the working classes
How municipal (state, national) bureaus for finding employment
for the laborer may become more serviceable
Wrongs committed by big business (or some branch of it)
Should a man's income above a stipulated amount be confiscated
by the government?
Income taxes—what exemptions should be granted?
The right basis for business—competition or coöperation?
Are the courts equally just to labor and capital?
How can legal procedure be changed to enable individuals to secure just
treatment from corporations without resorting to prolonged and expensive
lawsuits?
Where our interests clash with those of Great Britain
How our relations with Great Britain may be further improved
How our relations with Japan may be further improved
How may closer commercial relations with other countries be promoted?
What to do about the railroads and railroad rates
A natural resource that should be conserved or restored
Do high tariffs breed international ill-will?
Should we have a high tariff at this juncture?
To what extent should osteopathy (chiropractic) be permitted
(or protected) by law?
What is wrong with municipal government in my city
How woman suffrage affects local government
How to make rural life more attractive
The importance of the rotation of crops
The race problem as it affects my community
The class problem as it affects my community
The school-house as a social center
How to Americanize the alien elements in our population
To what extent, if at all, should foreign-born citizens of our
country be encouraged to preserve their native traditions and culture?
Censorship of the moving picture
Educational possibilities of the moving picture
How to bring about improvement in the quality of the moving picture
The effect of the moving picture upon legitimate drama
A church that men will attend
How young men may be attracted to the churches
How far shall doctrine be insisted upon by the churches?
To what extent shall the church concern itself with social
and economic problems?
To what extent, if at all, shall Sunday diversions be restricted?
The advantages of using the free public library
Can the cities give children in the slums better opportunities for
physical (mental, moral) development?
Should all cities be required to establish zoölogical gardens,
as well as schools, for the children?
How my city might improve its system of public parks
The most interesting thing about the work I am in
Opportunities in the work I am in
The qualities called for in the work I am in
The ideals of my associates
Something I have learned about life
Something I have learned about human nature
A book that has influenced me, and why
A person who has influenced me, and how
My favorite sport or recreation
Why baseball is so popular
What I could do for the people around me
What I should like for the people around me to do for me.

2. Discuss or explain the ideas listed in Exercise 3 for 'Abstract vs. Concrete' in "Words in Combination: Some Pitfalls" above.

3. Analyze the debatable questions included in the two preceding exercises or suggested by them. That is, find the issues in each question, and show what each disputant must prove and what he must refute.

4. Analyze the results to be expected from the adoption of some policy or course of action by:

A newspaper
A business firm
The city
The farmers
The producers in some business or industry
The consumers
The retail merchants of your city
Some group of reformers
Some social group
Those interested in a social activity, as dancing
Your neighbors
Yourself.

5. Analyze or explain:

The testing of seed grain
How to raise potatoes (any other vegetable)
How to utilize and apportion the space in your garden
How to keep an automobile in good shape
How to run an automobile (motor boat)
How to make a rabbit trap
How to lay out a camp
How to catch trout (bass, codfish, tuna fish, lobsters)
How to conduct a public meeting
How a bill is introduced and passed in a legislative body
How food is digested
How to extract oxygen from water
How a fish breathes
How gold is mined
How wireless messages are sent
How your favorite game is played
How to survey a tract of land
How stocks are bought and sold on margins
How public opinion is formed
How a man ought to form his opinions
The responsibility of individuals to society
The responsibility of society to the individual.

6. Argue one side or the other, or the two successively, of queries contained or implied in Exercises 1 and 2.

7. Argue one side or the other, or the two successively, of queries listed in Exercise 1 in EXERCISE - Abstract.

8. Give a narrative of:

The earning of your first dollar
How somebody met his match
An amusing incident
An anxious moment
A surprise
The touchdown
That fatal seventh inning
How you got the position
Why you missed the train
When you were lost
Your first trip on the railroad (a motor boat, a merry-go-round,
snowshoes, a burro)
A mishap
How Jenkins skated
Your life until the present (a summary)
Something you have heard your father tell
What happened to your uncle
Your partner's (chum's) escapade
Meeting an old friend
Meeting a bore
A conversation you have overheard
When Myrtle eavesdropped
When the girls didn't know Algy was in the parlor
A public happening that interests you
An incident you have read in the papers
An incident from your favorite novel
Backward Ben at the party
Something that happened to you today.

9. Describe …

For the mood or general "atmosphere":

Anything you deem suitable in Activity 8 in EXERCISE - Connotation.
An old, deserted house
Your birthplace as you saw it in manhood
The view from an eminence
A city as seen from a roof garden by night
Your mother's Bible
A barnyard scene
The lonely old negro at the supper table
A new immigrant gazing out upon the ocean he has crossed
The downtown section at closing hour
A scene of quietude
A scene of bustle and confusion
A richly colored scene
A scene of dejection
A scene of wild enthusiasm
A scene of dulness or stagnation.

With attention to homely detail:

The old living-room
My aunt's dresses
Barker's riding-horse
The business street of the village
A cabin in the mountains
The office of a man approaching bankruptcy
The Potters' backyard
The second-hand store
The ugliest man.

For general accuracy and vividness:

The organ-grinder
The signs of an approaching storm
The arrival of the train
Mail-time at the village post office
The crowd at the auction
The old fishing-boat
A country fair (or a circus)
The inside of a theater (or a church)
The funeral procession
The political rally
The choir.

<4. Mastery through Adapting Discourse to Audience>

For convenience, we have heretofore assumed that ideas and emotions, together with such expression of them as shall be in itself adequate and faithful, comprise the sole elements that have to be reckoned with in the use of words in combination. But as you go out into life you will find that these things, however complete they may seem, are not in practice sufficient. Another factor—the human—must have its place in our equation. You do not speak or write in a vacuum. Your object, your ultimate object at least, in building up your vocabulary is to address men and women; and among men and women the varieties of training, of stations, of outlooks, of sentiments, of prejudices, of caprices are infinite. To gain an unbiased hearing you must take persistent cognizance of flesh and blood.

In adapting discourse to audience you must have a supple and attentive mind and an impressionable and swiftly responsive temperament as well as a wide, accurate, and flexible vocabulary. Unless you are a fool, a zealot, or an incorrigible adventurer, you will not broach a subject at all to which your hearers feel absolute indifference or hostility. Normally you should pick a subject capable of interesting them. In presenting it you should pay heed to both your matter and your manner. You should emphasize for your listeners those aspects of the subject which they will most respond to or most need to hear, whether or not the phases be such as you would emphasize with other auditors. You should also speak in the fashion you deem most effective with them, whether or not it be one to which your own natural instincts prompt you.

Let us say you are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad—in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. You must speak in one way to employers, in another to employees, possibly in a third to men thrown out of jobs, possibly in a fourth to the general public. Let us say you are discussing education, or literature, or social tendencies, or mechanical principles or processes, or some great enterprise or movement. You must speak in one way to cultivated hearers and in another to men in the street, and if you are a specialist addressing specialists, you will cut the garment of your discourse to their particular measure.

The same principle holds regardless of whether you expound, analyze, argue, recount, or describe. You must always keep a finger on the mental or emotional pulse of those whom you address. But your problem varies slightly with the form of discourse you adopt. In explanation, analysis, and argument the chief barriers you encounter are likely to be those of the mind; you must make due allowance for the intellectual limitations of your auditors, though many who have capacity enough may for some cause or other be unreceptive to ideas. In description you must reckon with the imaginative faculty, with the possibility that your hearers cannot visualize what you tell them—and you must make your words brief. In narration you must vivify emotional torpor; but lest in your efforts to inveigle boredom you yourself should induce it, you must have a wary eye for signals of distress.

EXERCISE - Adapting

1. Explain to (a) a rich man, (b) a poor man the blessings of poverty.

2. Discuss before (a) farmers, (b) merchants the idea that farmers (merchants) make a great deal of money.

3. Explain to (a) the initiate, (b) the uninitiate some piece of mechanism, or some phase of a human activity or interest, which you know at first hand and regarding which technical (or at least not generally understood) terms are employed. (The exact subject depends, of course, upon your own observation or experience; you are sure to be familiar with something that most people know hazily, if at all. Bank clerk, chess player, bridge player, stenographer, journalist, truck driver, backwoods-man, mechanic—all have special knowledge of one kind or another and can use the particular terms it calls for.)

4. Explain to (a) a supporter of the winning team, (b) a supporter of the losing team why the baseball game came out as it did.

5. Discuss before (a) a Democratic, (b) a Republican audience your reasons for voting the Democratic (Republican) ticket in the coming election.

6. Explain to (a) your own family, (b) the man who can lend you the money, why you wish to mortgage your house (any piece of property).

7. Explain to the owner of an ill-conducted business why he should sell it, and to a shrewd business man why he should buy it.

8. Discuss before (a) old men, (b) young men, (c) women the desirability of men's giving up their seats in street cars to women. (Also modify the question by requiring only young men to give up their seats, and then only to old people of either sex, to sick people, or to people with children in their arms.)

9. Explain the necessity of restricting immigration to (a) prospective immigrants, (b) immigrants just granted admission to the country, (c) persons just refused admission, (d) exploiters of cheap labor, (e) ordinary citizens.

10. Discuss the taking out of a life insurance policy with (a) a man not interested, (b) a man interested but uncertain what a policy is like, (c) a man interested and informed but doubtful whether he can spare the money, (d) the man's wife (his prospective beneficiary), whose desires will have weight with him.

11. Discuss the necessity of a reduction in wages with (a) unscrupulous employers, (b) kind-hearted employers, (c) the employees.

12. Advocate higher public school taxes before (a) men with children, (b) men without children.

13. Advocate a further regulation of the speed of automobiles before (a) automobile-owners, (b) non-owners.

14. Urge advocacy of some reform upon (a) a clergyman, (b) a candidate for office.

15. Combat before (a) advertisers, (b) a public audience, (c) a lawmaking body, the defacement of landscapes by advertising billboards.

16. Describe life in the slums before (a) a rural audience, (b) charitable persons, (c) rich people in the cities who know little of conditions among the poor.

17. Describe the typical evening of a spendthrift in a city to (a) a poor man, (b) a miser, (c) the spendthrift's mother, (d) his employer, (e) a detective who suspects him of theft.

18. Describe the city of Washington (any other city) to (a) a countryman, (b) a traveler who has not visited this particular city. (If it is Washington you describe, describe it also for children in whom you wish to inculcate patriotism.)

19. Give (a) a youngster, (b) an experienced angler an account of your fishing trip.

20. Recount for (a) a baseball fan, (b) a girl who has never seen a game, the occurrences of the second half of the ninth inning.

21. Describe a fight for (a) your friends, (b) a jury.

22. Narrate for (a) children, (b) an audience of adults some historical event.

23. Give (a) your partner, (b) a reporter an account of a business transaction you have just completed.

24. Narrate an escapade for (a) your father, (b) your cronies in response to a toast at a banquet with them.