So let us use our dictionary in this way. Do not be satisfied when you have looked up a word simply to know how to spell and pronounce the word and understand somewhat of its meaning. Do not be satisfied until it has become a live word to you. Have a clear image and understanding of just what each word stands for. Use the words in sentences of your own. Use them in your conversation. Make them a part of your every-day life.
Do not pass over any of the words in the lesson without understanding their meaning. Study the poem Abou Ben Adhem in this week's lesson. After you have read it over a number of times, close the book and rewrite the poem in prose in your own language. Then compare your version with the poem. Note where you have used different expressions and decide which is the better, the words used in the poem or your own words. Rewrite it several times until you have a well-written version of this poem.
Exercises such as this will increase your vocabulary and quickly develop the power of expression. No power can come in any department of life without effort having been expended in its acquisition. Our great writers have been careful students. Robert Louis Stevenson says that he has often spent a half a day searching for the particular word which he needed to express precisely the idea in mind. Stevenson is a master of the English and this power came to him by this sort of studious and earnest work.
Yours for Education,
THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.
AN IMPORTANT WORD
309. Things are not always to be judged by their size. Sometimes the most important things are very small and unimportant in appearance. A great machine is before you. You see its giant wheels, its huge levers. These may seem to be the most important parts of the machine, but here and there throughout this great machine are little screws and bolts. These bind the giant parts together. Without these connecting links, the great wheels and levers and revolving belts could not work together. Let a little bolt slip out of its place in the mechanism, and the great wheels stop, the throbbing machinery comes to a standstill. No work is possible until this little bolt has been replaced.
So in our sentence building, the preposition is the bolt that joins words together. The importance of the preposition in a language increases just in proportion as the nation learns to think more exactly and express itself more accurately.
We found in our last lesson that by changing a preposition we can change the entire meaning of the sentence. A man's life may depend upon the use of a certain preposition. You may swear his life away by bearing testimony to the fact whether you saw him within the house, or without the house; or before dark, or after dark.
310. The preposition is an important word in the sentence. We can use it to serve our purpose in various ways. We have found, for instance, that we can use it: