be. The Body of your theme develops the subject by giving details. You must decide just what you mean to include and what to omit. Suppose you are writing about a skating expedition. Make out an outline answering such questions as these:Introduction: Who went? Where did they go? At what time?

Body: At arrival did anybody greet you? How long did it take to put on your skates? In what condition was the ice? How many people were skating? Were there any very expert skaters? How were people dressed? Was there much talking and laughing? Were there any animals on the ice?

Conclusion: Were you sorry to have to go home to dinner?

EXERCISE

Make outlines for the following themes:

1. My visit to a large city.

2. My summer in the country. 3. My uncle's new house.

4. How to play golf.

5. How to wash an automobile.

The Paragraph.

In order to help the reader to know when new ideas are to be introduced, a writer forms a fresh paragraph. Paragraph meant, formerly, a line drawn in the margin to call attention to a change of subject; to-day, paragraph means that section of a composition in which a single unified idea is expressed. A paragraph has been called

a whole composition in miniature." To call attention to the beginning of a new paragraph,

we follow the practice of indenting the first word of the new division of the subject so that a slight break in the body of the text is noticeable to the eye. Look at several books, observing the arrangement of paragraphs.

Study the following paragraph, noting how the author has limited himself to the topic announced in the opening sentence.

The Spanish muleteer has an inexhaustible stock of songs and ballads, with which to beguile his incessant way-faring. The airs are rude and simple, consisting of but few inflexions. These he chants forth with a loud voice, and long drawling cadence, seated sideways on his mule, who seems to listen with infinite gravity, and to keep time with his paces to the tune. The couplets thus chanted are often old traditional romances about the Moors; or some legend of a saint; or some love ditty; or, what is still more frequent, some ballad about a bold contrabandista, or hardy bandalero; for the smuggler and the robber are poetical heroes among the common people of Spain. Often the song of the muleteer is composed at the instant, and relates to some local scene, or some incident of the journey. This talent of singing and improvising is frequent in Spain, and is said to have been inherited from the Moors. There is something wildly pleasing in listening to these ditties among the rude and lonely scenes they illustrate, accompanied, as they are, by the occasional jingle of the mule-bell.

WASHINGTON IRVING: The Alhambra.

Study the following paragraph to see if it possesses unity. Which of the two paragraphs studied is easier to understand? Which one has more words that you know?

It seems to me that my boy's town was a town peculiarly adapted for a boy to be a boy in. It had a river, the great Miami River, which was as blue as the sky when it was not as yellow as gold; and it had another river, called the Old River, which was the Miami's former channel, and which held an island in its sluggish loop; the boys called it The Island; and it must have been about the size of Australia; perhaps it was not so large. Then this town had a Canal and a Canal-Basin, and a First Lock and a Second Lock; you could walk out to the First Lock, but the Second Lock was at the edge of the known world, and, when my boy was very little, the biggest boy had never been beyond it. Then it had a Hydraulic, which brought the waters of Old River for mill power through the heart of the town, from a Big Reservoir and a Little Reservoir; the Big Reservoir was as far off as the Second Lock, and the Hydraulic ran under mysterious culverts at every street-crossing. All these streams and courses had fish in them at all seasons, and all summer long they had boys in them, and now and then a boy in winter, when the thin ice of the mild southern Ohio winter let him through with his skates. Then there were the Commons; a wide expanse of open fields, where the cows were pastured, and the boys flew their kites, and ran races, and practiced for their circuses in the tan-bark rings of the real circuses.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS: A Boy's Town.

CHAPTER VII

NARRATION

Purpose of Narration. A narrative is a recital of events; its aim is to tell clearly and vividly how something happened, and to tell this in such a way that a reader will understand the occurrence almost as well as if he had been a spectator.

Study the following extract, answering the questions below.

(1) When I was about four years old, having been on amicable terms for a while with a black Newfoundland, then on probation for watch-dog at Herne Hill, after one of our long summer journeys my first thought on getting home was to go to see Lion. (2) My mother trusted me to go to the stable with our one servingman, Thomas, giving him strict orders that I was not to be allowed within stretch of the dog's chain. (3) Thomas, for better security, carried me in his arms. (4) Lion was at his dinner, and took no notice of either of us; on which I besought leave to pat him. (5) Foolish Thomas stooped toward him that I might, when the dog instantly flew at me, and bit a piece clean out of the corner of my lip on the left side. (6) I was brought up the back stairs, bleeding fast, but not one whit frightened, except lest Lion should be sent away. (7) Lion indeed had to go; but not Thomas: my mother was sure he was sorry, and I think blamed herself the most.

JOHN RUSKIN: Praeterita.