Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

it as a good trick. His innocence dimly seemed to him impossible to prove, his trickiness being so well known, and he felt struck to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.

Then he began again to tell of his adventure, adding new arguments each time, more energetic protests, and more solemn oaths which he thought out in his hours of solitude, his mind being occupied with the story of the string. People believed him the less, the more subtle and complicated his argument became.

"Ha! liar's proofs those!" they said behind his back. He felt it; it gnawed at his vitals; he wore himself out with useless efforts.

The jokers now made him tell "The Story of the String" for their amusement, as a soldier who has been on a campaign is made to tell of the battle.

His mind, deeply affected, grew weak.

Toward the end of December he took to his bed.

He died early in January, and in the delirium of his death agony he protested his innocence, repeating:

"A li'l' string, a li'l' string, — see, here it is, your honor."

With the help of the following questions study the structure of the story you have just read.

Is the obstacle external or internal? What is the real obstacle? In what passages are you made aware of it? Point out the passage in which we are told that the peasant himself recognizes the true nature of the obstacle.

What paragraphs are devoted to the setting or the environment? Does the description of the people also characterize them? Do their characteristics make the tragic outcome any more plausible?

Where is the chief character introduced? What is his first act? In itself the act is harmless; but is it in character? Notice carefully every detail in the fifth paragraph. What motives are established? At this point, what is your estimate of Hauchecorne's character as hinted by his actions? Where are your sympathies ? The "middle now begins. What is the purpose of the town

[ocr errors]

crier incident

- in the matter of movement? Why must there be noise and publicity? Consider the movement of the succeeding incidents, the arrest, the examination by the magistrate, the defence. What does the elaborate argument of the accused really indicate? What does his continual talk about it indicate? Where is the centre of interest or turning point? You can tell it by asking at what precise point you are sure that a tragic and not a comic end is inevitable.

Where does the solution, the dénouement, the end, begin? Are his mental unbalancing and his death the crisis? The climax? If not, where are these?

State the point of the story, the meaning, the significance. Is it anywhere expressed or hinted? Examine the bits of dialogue. What, in character or in action, is hinted by each bit? Are the motives and the acts in harmony everywhere? Illustrate. Where does suspense begin? How far does it continue?

CHAPTER IX.

EXPOSITION.

The Nature of Exposition.

98. We may begin our study of this type of dis course, known also as explanation, by examining a good specimen of it:

The word "exact" has a practical and a theoretical meaning. When a grocer weighs you out a certain quantity of sugar very carefully, and says it is exactly a pound, he means that the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the pound weight he employs is too small to be detected by his scales. If a chemist had made a special investigation, wishing to be as accurate as he could, and told you this was exactly a pound of sugar, he would mean that the mass of the sugar differed from that of a certain standard piece of platinum by a quantity too small to be detected by his means of weighing, which are a thousandfold more accurate than the grocer's. But what would a mathematician mean, if he made the same statement? He would mean this. Suppose the mass of the standard pound to be represented by a length, say a foot, measured on a certain line; so that half a pound would be represented by six inches, and so on. And let the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the standard pound be drawn upon the same line to the same scale. Then, if that difference were magnified an infinite number of times, it would still be invisible. This is the theoretical meaning of exactness. - W. K. CLIFFORD.

One who reads this selection carefully will notice in it the following characteristic features:

(1) The writer seems to take it for granted that he understands the subject under discussion better than his readers do, and hence that he is prepared to enlighten them upon it. He does not say this anywhere; perhaps we should not like him to say it; but his way of putting things seems (without offence) to imply it.

(2) His chief concern appears to be that those for whom he writes shall understand precisely what the subject means. One can imagine him saying to the reader, "Now I want this idea to be just as clear to you as it is to me. This is the way in which I myself look at it. See if you can't look at it in the same way. If you do, I am sure you cannot fail to understand it."

(3) The subject in which the writer is interested is a general idea, not a particular thing. He speaks indeed of particular things, as the weight, the scales, and the pound of sugar; but it is evident that he is using them only as illustrations. His main interest is not in these objects, but in what they mean- in the law or principle that they exemplify. Other objects, provided that they brought out clearly the same meaning of the general idea “theoretical exactness," would answer his purpose quite as well.

This specimen is a typical example of exposition, the

kind of discourse in which the writer's aim is to make others see the meaning of some idea as clearly as he himself sees it. Its subject-matter is general ideas, laws, or principles, not (as in description and narration) particular things. Its indispensable quality is clearness. No one,

of course, should attempt to write an explanation of any subject unless his ideas upon it are entirely clear. What a writer does not himself understand he is not likely to make intelligible to others.

99. Assignments on the Nature of Exposition.

A. Select from the list below the subject that you know the most about, and come to the class prepared to speak on it. First the thing is to be described very briefly; next its principle or law is to be explained as fully as necessary for clearness.

1. Describe a lump of coal; then explain how it came to be what it is.

tion.

2. Describe yeast; then explain the principle of its action.
3. Describe baking-powder; then explain how it acts and why.
4. Describe a pulley; then explain the principle of its opera-

5. Describe a freshet; then explain the causes of freshets. 6. Describe voting; then explain the meaning and significance of voting.

7. Describe a strike; then explain what strikes signify.

8. Describe a mission Sunday School; then explain its signifi

cance.

9. Describe a Boy Scout; then explain the Boy Scout Movement.

10. Describe a department store; then explain the principle of its organization.

B. What idea is made clearer by each of the following paragraphs?

1. One of the best equipped observers of American life, and one of the shrewdest, also, -Professor Giddings, - faces the future fearlessly. He holds that in the coming years a mixture of elements not Anglo-Teuton "will soften the emotional nature" and "quicken the poetic and artistic

« AnteriorContinuar »