aulay wishes to explain to us the rather striking and novel idea that to learn a new language is to acquire a new soul. He makes the thought clear by connecting it with the events in the progress of a scholar-any scholar, not a particular one who is learning a new language.

It was justly said by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that to learn a new language was to acquire a new soul. He who is acquainted only with the writers of his native tongue, is in perpetual danger of confounding what is accidental with what is essential, and of supposing that tastes and habits of thought, which belong only to his own age and country, are inseparable from the nature of man. Initiated into foreign literature, he finds that principles of politics and morals, directly contrary to those which he has supposed to be unquestionable, because he never heard them questioned, have been held by large and enlightened communities; that feelings, which are so universal among his contemporaries that he had supposed them instinctive, have been unknown to whole generations; that images, which have never failed to excite the ridicule of those among whom he has lived, have been thought sublime by millions. He thus loses that Chinese cast of mind, that stupid contempt for everything beyond the wall of his celestial empire, which was the effect of his former ignorance. New associations take place among his ideas. He doubts where he formerly dogmatized. He tolerates where he formerly execrated. He ceases to confound that which is universal and eternal in human passions and opinions with that which is local and temporary. This is one of the most useful effects which result from studying the literature of other countries; and it is one which the remains of Greece, composed at a remote period, and in a state of society widely different from our own, are peculiarly calculated to produce.

The following is a generalized narrative of the singular nervous seizure known as "buck fever :

In its mysterious attack it gets entire control of a man's nerves, and at a most inopportune time. He may have been standing for an hour or more, with rifle cocked, waiting eagerly for the coming of a buck that in doubling his tracks will be sure to approach within easy reach of his shot. The buck does approach, bounding toward him with such rapidity that the very sight upsets the nerves of the green hunter and throws his anatomy out of gear. His eyes bulge, his teeth chatter, his knees knock together, and even his memory is so far dethroned that he forgets he has a rifle. If he does remember it, and attempt to raise the weapon to his shoulder,. there is nothing in it that is likely to do any damage to the buck, for its wabbling muzzle sends the ball either into the earth or among the clouds.

114.

Assignments in Generalized Narrative.

A. By means of a generalized narrative explain one of the following processes for a person who wishes to make personal use of the information:

(1) Finding the Pole Star. (2) Measuring the height of a tree (or of any other tall object the top of which is inaccessible). (3) Making chocolate creams at home. (4) Teaching a pointer (or setter). (5) Figure skating. (6) Sailing against the wind.

B. Imagine yourself to be a visitor at a colonial homestead of two hundred years ago. Explain, as if you had witnessed it, the process of spinning wool with an old-fashioned spinning-wheel.

C. By means of a generalized narrative explain the process of drawing a book from the public library.

D. By means of a generalized narrative give a clear understanding of one of the following. Pretend to give the events or experiences of a day, or of a week, in each case. Remember that

the events or experiences must be typical, that is, representative of the class, and likely to happen to any one in it.

(1) The farm hand. (2) The athlete. (3) The shop-girl. (4) The newsboy. (5) The commuter. (6) The shopper. (7) The borrower. (8) The banker. (9) The village storekeeper. (10) The society girl.

E. Suppose George Washington should come back to see how things are going, and should engage in conversation with you; and suppose you should happen to mention or he should happen to catch sight of some of the following: sewing-machines, phonographs, telegrams, automobiles, street-cars, ocean liners, Pullman cars, electric lights, sky-scrapers, gasoline, asphalt, trunk lines, fountain pens, repeating arms, X-rays, breakfast foods, suffragettes, postage stamps, quinine, conservation, Sunday schools, searchlights, Dreadnaughts, subways, Christian Endeavorers, Boy Scouts, hobbleskirts, diet kitchens, composite photographs, roller skates. Do you see how by the narrative method, or by the dialogue method, you could make an exposition of the theme, "Social Change in America during the Last Century"? Try it.

Comparison or Analogy.

115. Sometimes the meaning of the obscure idea can be brought out most effectively by means of comparison or analogy, a specific instance or an example. The ideas chosen for this comparison should be ideas with which the reader is likely to be familiar. Thus Mr. Bryce, wishing to make clear the dangers of representative government, uses in the following an easily understood analogy: —

The mass of a nation are, and must be, like passengers on board an ocean steamer, who hear the clank of the engine and watch the stroke of the piston, and admire the revolution of the larger wheels, and know that steam acts by expansion, but do not know how the less conspicuous but not

less essential parts of the machinery play into the other parts, and have little notion of the use of fly-wheels and connecting-rods and regulators. . . . In the early stages of national life, the masses are usually as well content to leave governing to a small class, as passengers are to trust the captain and the engineers. But when the masses obtain, and feel that they have obtained, the sovereignty of the country, this acquiescence can no longer be counted on. Men without the requisite knowledge or training; men who, to revert to our illustration, know no more than that steam acts by expansion, and that a motion in straight lines has to be converted into a rotary one; men who are not even aware of the need for knowledge and training; men with little respect for precedents, and little capacity for understanding their bearing-may take command of engines and ship, and the representative assembly may be filled by those who have no sense of the dangers to which an abuse of the vast powers of the assembly may lead.

Macaulay, in order to explain the somewhat puzzling statement that freedom is the only cure for the evils of freedom, uses the familiar idea of the prisoner newly released from his cell:

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The

scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.

116. Assignments in Comparison or Analogy.

A. What comparison, contrast, or analogy is used to explain the main idea of the following?

1. Do you know, the more I look into life, the more things it seems to me I can successfully lack — and continue to grow happier. How many kinds of food I do not need, nor cooks to cook them, how much curious clothing, nor tailors to make it, how many books that I never read, and pictures that are not worth while! The farther I run the more I feel like casting aside all such impedimenta―lest I fail to arrive at the far goal of my endeavor. I like to think of an old Japanese nobleman I once read about who ornamented his house with a single vase at a time, living with it, absorbing its message of beauty, and when he tired of it, replacing it with another. I wonder if he had the right way, and we, with so many objects to hang on our walls, place on our shelves, drape on our chairs, and spread on our floors, have mistaken our course and placed our hearts upon the multiplicity rather than the quality of our possessions! GRAYSON: A Day of Pleasant Bread.

2. In England athletics are ruled by the spirit of sport; in the United States, by the spirit of competition. The sweeping popularity of American football is the most conspicuous feature of a national awakening to the importance of a hardy, outdoor play as a vital part of modern education. It is true, however, that the young American is not genuinely fond of organized athletic sports unless they carry the chance of "whipping" somebody else, which is