4. An insurance policy read "grain in cars on sidetrack within one hundred feet of the elevator". 5. Society to live and accomplish life's purpose must have bread. 6. To this we must add as another example of the same philosophy, that one influence counteracts another. 7. Last night the house was filled with guests and their children, as only children can, entertained them. 8. It was clear to me as I watched this great man in action, that in the cause he was defending he saw, with a vision unimpaired and a judgment unclouded by prejudice far beyond the present. 9. As each cluster of flowers was set in place, roses that blossomed in France or England, that blossomed in Canada and South Africa; poppies that thrust their slender stems through blood-drenched Flanders fields; and flowers of every color and hue that blossom under American skies the air grew heavy with the fragrance.

d. Copy the following sentences; add commas where necessary, and give your reasons:

1. Everything was to be forgiven to youth rank and genius. 2. He leaped up with a yell screamed that somebody was killing him and ran for refuge into the river. 3. Then Tom could not restrain himself and gave Maggie two smart slaps on the arm. 4. Everything that could stimulate and everything that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms the acclamations of the whole nation the applause of applauded men the love of lovely women all this world and all the glory of it were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had given violent passions and whom education had never taught to control them.

e. Copy the following sentences; add commas where necessary, and give your reasons:

1. On the seventeenth of June they approached Montreal where the assembled traders greeted them with discharge of small arms and cannon. 2. Instantly all his companions sprang to their feet and hearing in fancy the Iroquois war whoop took to the water splashing diving and wading up to their necks in the blindness of their fright. 3. And yet this Christmas day in spite of Tom's fresh

delight in home was not he thought somehow or other quite so happy as it had always been before. 4. Through black mud spongy moss water knee-deep over fallen trees among slimy logs and entangling roots tripped by vines lashed by recoiling boughs panting under their steel headpieces and heavy corselets the Frenchmen struggled on bewildered and indignant. 5. A nation [Greece] once the first among nations preeminent in knowledge preeminent in military glory the cradle of philosophy of eloquence and of the fine arts had been for ages bowed down under a cruel yoke.

f. Copy the following sentences; add commas and semicolons where necessary, and give your reasons:

reserve.

1. Menendez kissed the royal hand he had another petition in 2. The letters at least those which were sent from Italy are among the best in the language. They are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole they have more matter in them than those of Cowper. 3. Some stripped sheets of bark to cover their camp sheds others gathered wood the forest being full of dead dry trees others felled the living trees for a barricade. 4. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea up the Rhine over the Alps it gradually waxed fainter it died away those who had raised it began to ask each other what after all was the matter about which they had been so clamorous and wished to invite back the criminal whom they had just chased from them. 5. He had been guilty of the offence which of all offences is punished most severely he had been overpraised he had excited too warm an interest and the public with its usual justice chastised him for its own folly. 6. At one end stood an upright tablet or flattened post rudely carved with an intended representation of the features of the deceased. If a chief the head was adorned with a plume. If a warrior there were figures near it of a shield a lance a warclub and a bow and arrows if a boy of a small bow and one arrow and if a woman or a girl of a kettle an earthen pot a wooden spoon and a paddle. 7. Now like a wall bristling at the top with woody islets the Falls of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen cataracts now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs where seeing but unseen the crouched wildcat eyed them from the thicket now through the maze of water

girded rocks which the white cedar and the spruce clasped with serpentlike roots or among islands where old hemlocks darkened the water with deep green shadow. 8. He had no net hook or line and he could not be a fisherman his boat had no cushion for a sitter no paint no inscription no appliance beyond a rusty boat-hook and a coil of rope and he could not be a waterman his boat was too crazy and too small to take in a cargo for delivery and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier.

587. Exercise XLII (§§ 516–545). The topics beginning on page 393 are intended for oral or written work. If you write a narrative, it will consist of three elements, the setting, the characters, and the plot; the outline in § 359 may therefore be divided into three parts, corresponding to these three elements:

the setting, which gives the background, atmosphere, or color;

the characters, whose names and actions should be in keeping with the setting;

the plot, which tells the action, giving the reason, the means, and the result.

For example, the letter on page 153 may be analyzed in the following manner:

Setting: Buck's Harbor, Maine, in the summer of 1922.
Characters: Dick, a schoolboy.

Plot:

Jack, another schoolboy, Dick's chum.
Other boys, Dick's cousins.

Dick is spending a part of his vacation at Buck's
Harbor, with his cousins. While out fishing
alone in a boat, he is caught in a fog, and
cannot find his way. By means of his wits
and the aid of his cousins he reaches safety.

Similar to this would be the analysis of O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi:

Setting:

Plot:

A furnished flat in New York City at eight dollars

a week, on Christmas Eve.

Characters: Mr. James Dillingham Young, husband of Della. Mrs. James Dillingham Young, wife of Jim. Tomorrow is Christmas, and with the James Dillingham Youngs money is scarce. They have, however, two notable possessions: Jim's gold watch (an heirloom) and Della's beautiful hair. Jim sacrifices his watch to buy Della a set of combs; Della sacrifices her hair to buy Jim a chain for his watch. Like the Magi of old (Matthew, ii, 1, 11), they give the best that they possess.

In planning an original story, you may begin with whichever of the three elements you please. If, for example, you have in mind some interesting place, begin with the setting, and invent the characters and the plot to go with it; if you have in mind an interesting or curious person (or animal), make him the central character, and develop the setting and the plot; if you have in mind some strange act or event, begin with the plot, and work out the setting and the characters.

To obtain material for original work, you should keep a notebook in your pocket, and at your leisure develop the outlines. Make a collection of interesting names. Balzac (§ 364) walked the streets of Paris to obtain names for his characters. When he made a good find, he went home radiant. "Matifat, Cardot! What delightful names!" he exclaimed. Matifat; he'll have the wan face of a cat, and a very little corpulence."

I see my

Make your plot simple. Condense the action into a fairly short space of time, usually not more than a day or a few

hours, avoiding a rambling chronicle of several days' adventures. Try to tell the story in scenes; that is, select certain episodes for detailed treatment, including conversation and specific action. End the story with a strong climax, and do not run on after you have reached the point of highest interest.

Read your work aloud every time that you rewrite it. Read good stories aloud. Nowadays collections of good stories are easily obtainable. The Gift of the Magi, outlined above, will be found in the volume entitled The Four Million. Read the story. In this same volume read and analyze the following stories: The Romance of a Busy Broker, By Courier, The Cop and the Anthem, Mammon and the Archer, and The Furnished Room. You should also read stories by Poe (The Cask of Amontillado, The Gold-Bug, The Fall of the House of Usher), by de Maupassant (The Necklace, The Piece of String), by Leonard Merrick (The Tragedy of a Comic Song, The Doll in the Pink Silk Dress, both of these being in the volume entitled A Chair on the Boulevard), by Stevenson (Markheim), and by other writers.

The following topics are intended to suggest places, persons, or actions which may be useful in creating settings, characters, and plots:

1. Our neighbor's dog. 2. How my dog trained me. 3. Why I like farm (city) life. 4. Two cousins. 5. At the bend of the road. 6. Caught in the rain (snow). 7. A beggar in disguise. 8. How I learned to swim. 9. My dog (horse, rabbits, doves). 10. The books I like best. 11. Training my sister (brother). 12. My first trip to the seashore (city, country, mill, river). 13. My new acquaintance. 14. Washing the dog (kittens). 15. Helping mother. 16. My country (city) cousins. 17. Reading after supper. 18. The friends I had for vacation. 19. What I like (dislike) to do. 20. How I tore (mended) my clothes. 21. In the zoölogical garden (museum, woods). 22. Making candy (cake, pies). 23. My fall on the ice (sidewalk, in