The method of developing the paragraph topic will depend, obviously, upon the nature of the topic and the purpose of the paragraph. In narrative and descriptive writing, the method of development consists ordinarily in grouping together details according to the principle of their time or space relations, or according to the principles of resemblance and of contrast. In the first of the following narrative paragraphs, for example, we have a fairly clear statement of the topic at the beginning and then a grouping together of the events illustrating it according as they happened in time; in the second, no topic is expressed, but one is implied in the opening sentences and fully developed later through the enumeration of the various incidents arising out of the situation depicted:

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "What brought him to

the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!" 1

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion. "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together." The cheerful gaiety of the young man and Mr. Oakhurst's calm infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid of pine-boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheek through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to "chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cachéd. "And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky," said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction

that it was "square fun." 2

The typical method of development in the descriptive paragraph, that is, by means of the systematic grouping of the striking or characteristic details of the object, may be illustrated by the following:

1 From Irving's Rip Van Winkle.

2 From Bret Harte's Outcasts of Poker Flat.

I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick-set, like a little bull,-a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large, blunt head; his muzzle black as night, a tooth or two being all he had-gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long, the mobility, the instantaneousness, of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it were of the oddest and swiftest.1

Development in the descriptive paragraph by means of contrast or comparison may be observed in the following:

Rosamund and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet table near the window while Rosamund took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied little touches of her finger-tips to her hair-hair of infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs

1 From John Brown's Rab and His Friends.

the one in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children at Middlemarch looked blonde by the side of Rosamund, and the slim figure displayed by her riding habit had delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner! she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues.1

Expository and argumentative paragraphs are, as a rule, somewhat different in structure from descriptive and narrative paragraphs. The topic is more commonly expressed here than in the descriptive or narrative paragraph, and the development may take other forms. Besides the forms of development already mentioned, those of enumerating details or particulars and of comparing or contrasting,—we may have the development in expository and argumentative paragraphs take, for example, one or more of the following forms: (1) the defining or fixing the limits of the topic; (2) the amplifying or enlarging upon the content of the topic; (3) the citing of instances or examples for the purpose of illustrating, or making application of, a truth or principle laid down in the topic sentence; (4) the specifying of 1 From George Eliot's Middlemarch.

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reasons for, or the causes or results of, something expressed in the topic sentence. Other methods of development might be mentioned, but these are, perhaps, the most common.

A few examples will suffice.

(1) Development by the method of definition:

The kinetic theory of gases is now generally accepted by men of science, and all modern investigations of the mathematical relations of molecular forces and centers are based upon this theory. It asserts that a gas consists of a collection of molecules, simple or compound, which are in extremely rapid motion and which intermingle freely, coming into collision with each other, probably, and certainly with the confining surfaces of the chamber in which they may be contained, with a violence which depends upon their velocities; which velocities, in turn, are determined by the temperature of the mass. In fact, the supposed motion of these particles is that mode of motion known as heat. The intermolecular spaces, and hence the free paths of the molecules, are comparatively large, and each molecule moves over distances of considerable length, as compared to its own diameter, on the average, without collision with its neighbor molecules; but the continual motion of all produces great variations in the momentary distances of particle from particle, and while the mean density of the mass at any point is preserved, the number of molecules within any prescribed space is never the same at any two consecutive instants.1

(2) Development by the method of amplification:

Yet one more cause of failure in our lives here may be briefly spoken of-the want of method or order. Men do

1 From R. H. Thurston's Heat as a Form of Energy.