after the proposition is announced, trusting that each will somehow get acquainted with the whole subject while reading for his own special part of it. The time that is seemingly gained by this is usually lost later when team practice begins. If each debater would begin his conversation, planning, general reading, and note-taking promptly, the need of haste to divide the field would not be so urgent.

Team Work.

159. Immediately after the proposition is announced, regular weekly meetings of the team should begin. At the first few of these meetings each should read his notes and call for criticism, inform the rest about his progress, and announce his plan of work for the next week. The members should help one another over difficulties, suggest reading matter and references to one another, and above all bring forward objections that have been discovered to any argument proposed. If there is a lazy member of the team, he should be reformed or compelled to resign before the work has gone far. The substitute (and every team should have a substitute or two) should be treated as a member of the team and should work as if it were certain that he would have to be called into service in the final debate. When each member has made a brief, showing the main issues as he conceives them to be, these individual briefs at an appointed time should be brought in, compared, criticised, and welded into a single team brief. From this time forward, the composite brief having been made, and the issues assigned

severally to the members, individual practice may begin at the meetings.

Individual Practice.

160. This means that each member should come to the meeting with a speech on his part of the brief, to be read from manuscript and not to be memorized until it has undergone severe criticism from the other members, and from some teacher, some old debater of the school, or some mature guest who has been invited to the meeting with instructions to interrupt the reading, to doubt, to question, and, if he will, to rise and reply to any argument that seems inconclusive. After this process, the speech should be revised and finally learned.

The Second Team.

161. Meanwhile another team of the school has been doing, independently, precisely what the first team has been doing, only on the opposite side of the proposition. Up to the time of completing individual practice it is best for the teams to see nothing of one another. But when each member of both teams has become master of a set speech, the teams should hold frequent meetings together for practice debates.

Practice Debates.

162. The first practice debate should be preceded by an exchange of briefs between the two teams. The object of this is to enable each debater to introduce new matter suggested by a reading of the opponent's brief. The chief purpose of these practice debates is training

in rebuttal. After the main speeches have been given at two meetings, and are pretty well in mind, they may be omitted at some of the subsequent meetings, that the whole time may be devoted to the rebuttal speaking. This is the crucial test of ability in debate and requires the largest share of the time for training. Successful rebuttal is never an accident. It comes from the thorough study of the question, in the course of which every objection is discovered and a way is found for meeting it. For the well-informed debater there are no surprises in the final debate. Everything that really counts has been foreseen and provided against some one of the team is ready to answer; and as the objections are brought forward, they look like old friends whose coming is expected. Each speaker should know beforehand what objections he is to attend to personally and at the beginning of his own speech if an objection has been made that is to be answered by some other debater, should not hesitate to say, "My colleague will answer that objection. I wish now to call attention to another," etc. All first speeches, except the opening one on the affirmative, even if memorized, should be timed to leave a margin of a minute or two for noticing an objection that has been raised just before, and if it belongs to the speaker to refute it, the most effective plan is to refute first and follow the refutation immediately with the corresponding direct argument. But one should be economical in refutation; one should not allow one's intended speech to be broken in pieces by attempting too much in the way of refutation. It is sufficient to use the first minute or two or the last minute or two for this

66

purpose. Otherwise, stick to the speech as planned. The first speaker on the affirmative has the extra duty of explaining the proposition, stating and defining the issues, and thus dividing the work for his colleagues. He will usually have time also to establish one of the chief arguments. At the close of the debate he will summarize the points proved. The leader of the negative will also include a summary in his final speech just preceding. In all of this practice work, each speaker will also practise fairness and courtesy to opponents, especially in restating the objections that they have raised. He will try to keep cool without losing earnestness; and will try to maintain his earnestness without losing his good humor.

163. Ruskin says that poetry is "the suggestion by the imagination, in musical words, of noble grounds. for noble emotions, love, veneration, admiration, and joy, with their opposites." The poet working upon the imagination creates or awakens in us new and beautiful conceptions of the world.

The object of poetry is the communication of exalted pleasure; and thus the term poetry implies an antithesis to the term science, since the object of science is not pleasure, but truth, "hard facts." Poetry is usually expressed in verse, and science in prose; but not everything that is written in verse is poetry, and poetic thought is often found in prose form.

In style, poetry is rhythmical and regular; that is, its preferred form is verse arranged in lines of fixed lengths, composed of regularly recurring accented and unaccented syllables. In diction, poetry may employ abbreviated expressions, picturesque expressions, epithets, and archaic words, in cases in which these would be out of place in prose. Poetry frequently takes other liberties which would not be permitted to prose, in an unusual order of words and sentence-elements.

The materials of poetry are drawn (1) from external