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PREFACE.

THIS book, now entirely rewritten and greatly enlarged, embodies all those features of former editions of the Composition-Rhetoric and Composition-Literature which in class-room use have been found most successful and most attractive. Of these features the following are perhaps the most important:

Composition is regarded as a social act, and the student is therefore constantly led to think of himself as writing or speaking for a specified audience. Thus not mere expression but communication as well is made the business. of composition.

The simple fundamental principles that underlie alike composition, rhetoric, and literature are discovered inductively by the study of numerous selections, and when discovered are at once applied in the student's practice.

The aim is to keep the student's powers of construction and criticism in proper adjustment. While his chief purpose is to produce something readable, interesting, and perhaps valuable, he is led to consider questions of form at the same time. The effect of such criticism by the text, if it is properly supplemented by the teacher's suggestions, is to increase in each student the power and the will to criticise his own writings before giving them any form of publication.

Experience having proved that concentration on a smaller unit than the essay and a larger unit than the sentence is conducive to the best results, attention is drawn first to the paragraph. The sentence, phrase, and word are studied

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as, structural elements of the paragraph unit. The transition to essays in the four forms of composition is then made with comparative ease.

Other features of the book are believed to be new though they are not untested:

Composition topics are drawn not only from literature and student life, but from the vocations towards which various classes of students are naturally tending. The teacher is thus enabled to take advantage of a powerful means of interest and incitement in making assignments, and to consult the known tastes and inclinations of the individual student.

In the study of the paragraph, attention is called repeatedly to the predication made by the topic statement, in order that students may learn the difference between general subject and immediate topic. This is one of the logical features of composition work that can hardly be overemphasized. Other logical aspects of composition are not neglected. The laws of association of ideas are presented, and practice is afforded in the logical analysis of literary wholes into their constituent units.

Especial attention is paid to oral argument, and explicit instructions are given for the conduct of debates, both formal and informal.

In conclusion, the authors wish to make here a general acknowledgment of indebtedness to the teachers who have kindly assisted in making the book what it is by suggestions drawn from their practical experience.

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