No Nightingale did ever chaunt A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard Will no one tell me what she sings? Or is it some more humble lay, Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang Means of Connection. 32. If the topics in the plan have been well managed, the reader will not need much help in passing from one topic to the next. Occasionally, however, in a long essay, we find a brief paragraph of transition inserted between the treatment of two topics and containing a reference back to the topic that precedes, and a reference forward to the topic that follows. This is seen in the following. The writer has treated of Milton's poetry, and his next topic is the objections that have been urged against Milton's prose. From Milton's poetry we turn to his prose; and first it is objected to his prose writings that the style is difficult and obscure, abounding in involutions, transpositions, and Latinisms; that his protracted sentences exhaust and weary the mind, and too often yield it no better recompense than confused and indistinct perceptions.-CHANNING: Milton. Channing's next paragraph is occupied with a consideration of these objections to Milton's prose. Usually the transition from one topic to the next requires but a single sentence, clause, or phrase. The first words in a paragraph frequently repeat or echo the thought with which the preceding paragraph closed. Thus : As the education and even the employment of the two sexes are plainly coming nearer together, contrary to what used to be predicted as the result of advancing civilization, — it would seem that the problem of education must be in this respect much the same for both. Yet there are undoubtedly many parents who, while able to see the advantages of a more public education for boys, draw the line there, and demand for their growing daughters what is called "a select school." My own impression is that this distinction is a mistake, and that whatever arguments apply to public school education for boys must reach girls also. In the first place, girls need, even more than boys, to learn at school the qualities and merits of those in a different social circle, because if they do not learn it then, they may never learn it, etc. HIGGINSON: The Contagion of Manners. In the first of the next two paragraphs De Quincey (Autobiography, II, 440) summarizes a long discussion that preceded concerning the number of Wordsworth's friends. His next topic is the touching story of little Catherine Wordsworth. Notice how the summary is managed so as to effect the transition needed. Except, therefore, with the Lloyds, or occasionally with Thomas Wilkinson the Quaker, or very rarely with Southey, Wordsworth had no intercourse at all beyond the limits of Grasmere; and in that valley I was myself, for some years, his sole visiting friend; as, on the other hand, my sole visitors, as regarded that vale, were himself and his family. Among that family... was a little girl whose life... and whose death... connected themselves with the records of my own life by ties of passion so profound, by a grief so frantic,... Make clear the connection between related paragraphs, first, by a logical order of topics, second, when necessary, by the use of transitional paragraphs, repetitions, and reference words. 33. Assignments on Means of Connection. A. Find all of the means of paragraph-connection used in the following selection. Name and explain the relationship which each connective indicates. To create for himself an independent position, a man must be young. Unless he is, he cannot confront without flinching and surmount - the difficulties which bristle at the entrance of all enterprises. Besides, youth is the best age for learning a trade or profession. But the aspiring official is kept in suspense, at least until he is twenty years of age, very often twenty-five, sometimes thirty and beyond. When he has finally lost all hope of success, a great many careers are closed to him; he is too late for any, because beginnings are long, arduous, and illpaid. Besides, the older, the more exacting he is—and the more exacting a man is, the less likely is he to find a situation. Time goes on, the man grows older, and the difficulties increase. Youth is not everything, however; our young man must show natural ability, inclination, technical knowledge. No one is made a farmer, a manufacturer, a merchant, or a tradesman, in one day. All these careers require an apprenticeship, and the best is found in practice and family traditions. Our school training does not prepare for any of these avocations. On the contrary, it inspires the young people with disgust, it teaches them the alleged superiority of public functions. How many heads of families whose positions rest on agriculture, industry, or trade, wonder at hearing their sons-just out of school-declare that they cannot continue the paternal calling! The school has disgusted them with it. This influence on the part of the school is becoming so general that we have come to deplore nowadays the estrangement of French young men from the more usual occupations, which, however, are also the most useful and honorable. In consequence, those young men who, having failed in their examinations, are obliged to throw themselves on such callings, only do so on compulsion, half-heartedly, without natural dispositions or sufficient special education-in short, in the very worst of conditions for assuring success. However, besides official functions, our educational régime particularly predisposes young men to all kinds of office or administrative work as well as the liberal professions. Any preference for the former is easily accounted for by the analogy with the work of public offices. The same aptitudes are required, and there is as little demand for initiative, exercise of will-power, of constant effort; on the other hand, equal security is offered: advancement is slow and sure, inevitable. So young Frenchmen who have failed in their examinations willingly turn to these administrations, as the French word is. We all know that they are besieged by a crowd of candidates, to all of whom it is impossible to give berths. -E. DEMOLINS: Anglo-Saxon Superiority. B. Examine a number of your old essays in order to notice how many of the devices of connection and transition you use in your own composition. C. In the following paragraphs the means of connection have been omitted. Supply them at the points indicated. In reading the Russian papers, the Czar noticed that they were not so outspoken as the papers of other countries. He noticed that, in their guarded utterances, he never found Λ any reference to official abuses which, he knew, must exist in Russia as in other countries. He knew that there is a Λ censorship of the press in his realm, but he had not the slightest idea of the extent to which the censors suppress independent expressions in the papers. He determined A that at least one paper should be perfectly free to criticise the government. Λ he summoned the editor of The St. Petersburg Viedomosti, a paper that has been published for one hundred seventy years, and announced his intention of relieving him of censure. When the high officials learned advised strongly against it. Then the officials had recourse of the Czar's purpose, they The Czar remained firm. Λ to an old and well-tried method of circumventing their |