in a shirt. The front and back1 of the waist are stitched together, and are fitted over the shoulders but left loose under the arms. The sleeve is set in so that the seam comes under the arm.2

4. A little later I witnessed William's escape, when Mrs. Todd had taken the foolish risk of going down cellar. There was a horse and wagon outside the garden fence, and presently we stood where we could see him driving up the hill with thoughtless speed.

EXERCISE CLVI

Rewrite each passage in such a way as to keep one point of view:

The unpopularity of one of these tutors raised a rebellion at Yale. Edwards does not appear to have taken any part in the outbreak.

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD

A very interesting four-year-old child lives in my street. Since she has been able to talk, every passer-by must answer some question. If he happens to have a bunch of flowers, he rarely passes without her asking for one. If he has only one flower, she will ask for it, feeling well satisfied if she receives a petal. Last June this little one, on asking a girl for an azalea and receiving one of the petals, took her flower in to her mother for her to admire it.

AN EVENING AT HOME

Last night we had a musicale at our house, to which about fifteen ladies and gentlemen had been invited. It was a very informal affair, and every one who could sing a song or play a tune contributed his mite to the general enjoyment of the company, without being begged. Dr. L. had brought his cornet; we sent Jack home for his violin; there was a banjo and a guitar.

A very attractive young woman accompanied the singers on the piano.3

THE SQUIRRELS OF CAMBRIDGE

Since my coming to Cambridge, I have been highly interested in the frisky little squirrels that seem to be everywhere.

1 See pages 249-251.

2 In rewriting this paragraph, bring together the details about each part of the waist.

8 Amend the division by paragraphs, and make the connection between sentence and sentence plain.

If you take a walk early in the morning, you can see them running along on the public highways, from one side of the street to the other. Now they are up one tree and down another as lively as you please, seemingly very sure that no harm will come to them.

LOUISTON

This city of about eight thousand inhabitants faces the Mississippi, and is located about ninety miles north of St. Louis, between and on the sides of three beautiful hills.

No place has more natural advantages than Louiston, with its navigable river front, its three railroads, and its rich agricultural surroundings. We need some energetic and progressive person to start a summer resort by building residences upon the beautiful bluffs, thereby showing the inhabitants that they may be used for other purposes than 5 pastures for cows.

6

4

Our greatest need is a first-class sewerage system. The health of the inhabitants demands it, as they suffer from the much-dreaded malaria, fevers of all kinds, and chills. All these diseases could be easily prevented by the right kind of a sewerage system. The natural drainage is toward the river, therefore the expense of the proceeding would be much lessened. Through the centre of the town runs a small creek, that could be used to great advantage as a part of the sewerage system.

1 See pages 131-133.

2 See page 231.

8 To what does this participle belong? 4 To what does this pronoun refer?

5 Is any other word needed?

6 See page 328.

7 See page 246.

CHAPTER II

SENTENCES

I. LONG OR SHORT SENTENCES?

SOME writers prefer long sentences to short, others short to long; but it is far less important that a sentence should be of a certain length than that it should conform to the English idiom and should present a single idea with distinctness. A sentence, whether short or long, that is heterogeneous in substance and obscure or confused in form is a bad sentence.

Try again.

Haste makes waste.

Whatever is, is right.

Our antagonist is our helper.

There's no such word as "fail."

Enough is as good as a feast.

When bad men conspire, good men must combine.

As the church door was open, I stepped in.

The young prince, for all his cleverness, was not happy.

A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream.

One would think that in personifying itself a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroic, and imposing, but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the English, and of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have embodied their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a threecornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel.

Although the last sentence, which comes from Washington Irving, contains precisely the same number of words (sixty-nine) as all the other sentences taken together, it is

so arranged that a reader of ordinary intelligence, far from being confused by its length, goes with ease and speed from word to word and from clause to clause.

Mingled with the more headlong and half-drunken crowd there were some sharp-visaged men who loved the irrationality of riots for something else than its own sake, and who at present were not so much the richer as they desired to be, for the pains they had taken in coming to the Treby election, induced by certain prognostics gathered at Duffield on the nomination-day that there might be the conditions favorable to that confusion which was always a harvesttime.

This sentence from George Eliot, though it contains only nine words more than that quoted from Irving, is much more difficult to follow. The difficulty lies partly in the fact that the main assertion in the sentence the assertion that in the crowd were some would-be thieves is not plainly expressed, and partly in the unwieldiness of the last part of the sentence, beginning with the word "induced."

I cannot, from observation, form any decided opinion as to the extent in which this strange delight in nature influences the hearts of young persons in general; and, in stating what has passed in my own mind, I do not mean to draw any positive conclusion as to the nature of the feeling in other children;1 but the inquiry is clearly one in which personal experience is the only safe ground to go upon, though a narrow one; and I will make no excuse for talking about myself with reference to this subject, because, though there is much egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a man thinks of doing,—and, though there is much work to be done in the world, it is often the best thing a man can do, to tell the exact truth about the movements of his own mind; and there is this farther reason, that whatever other faculties I may or may not possess, this gift of taking pleasure in landscape I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men; it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labor.

1 Perhaps a colon here would have marked the division of thought more plainly than the semicolon does.

In the first part of this sentence (extending to the semicolon after "children"), Ruskin says that he does not "mean to draw any positive conclusion" from his own experience that shall apply to other children. In the second part (extending to the semicolon after "mind "), he says that he considers personal experience as "the only safe ground to go upon," and that he will make no excuse for talking about himself because often the best thing a man can do is "to tell the exact truth about the movements of his own mind." In the third and last part, he gives as a further reason for talking about himself the fact that he possesses in a greater degree than most men the "gift of taking pleasure in landscape." As a whole, this sentence is well put together. In the last half of the second part, it is true, some obscurity arises from the ambiguous position of the two clauses "it is often the last thing a man thinks of doing" and "it is often the best thing a man can do": a hasty reader might suppose that "it" points back to the clause "I will make no excuse for talking about myself," instead of pointing forward to the phrase "to tell the exact truth," etc. In spite of this obscurity, the care with which the author keeps the subject-matter which belongs in each part of the sentence within that part makes the sentence as a whole easy of comprehension.

In the work of young writers, long sentences are so often obscure that teachers of English sometimes condemn them altogether, as the late Dr. E. A. Freeman is reported to have done. The story runs that, during that distinguished historian's visit to this country some years ago, he happened to be in a college class-room while a teacher of English composition was laboriously trying to make a young woman understand what she must do to improve her style. "Tell her," broke in Dr. Freeman, who was not the most patient of men, "tell her to write short sentences."