Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,—
'Tis the natural way of living.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
8. With the most connotative words at your command describe the following:
Your first sweetheart
A solemn experience
A ludicrous experience
A terrifying experience
A mysterious experience
The circus parade you saw in your boyhood
A servant girl
A dude
An odd character you have known
The old homestead
Your boarding house
A scene suggesting the intense heat of a midsummer day
Night on the river
The rush for the subway car
The traffic policeman
Your boss
Anything listed in the first part of Activity 9 of EXERCISE - Discourse.
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.