chief reason why we should rein the Pegasus of youth in this matter is that we shall be missing a great opportunity to bring our students to close quarters with the problems of personal and educational life which they ought to be revolving, and do fitfully revolve at this time. We can teach them to grapple with these pertinent problems in a thorough and systematic, instead of a slipshod, haphazard way. We can induce a habit of reflection and sober second-thinking, a desire to interrogate ready-made opinion and unexamined prejudice; we can help to check hasty generalizations, and demonstrate the necessity of consulting precedent and adducing proof and illustration; we can correct the callow egotism of the intellectual fledgling; and above all, we can give dignity and meaning to the interests and everyday affairs of youth. Our work will be, We shall have on not for display, but usefulness. our hands the important business of helping to form and clarify the public opinion of the school.

In the course of the work on Argumentation and Debate, there will be opportunity for using and reviewing all the other kinds of Composition. Exposition is, of course, involved first of all; and the method of the analytical outline will be that followed in the preparation of the brief, although the brief will permit of parenthetical annotations, for help in speaking, which the expository outline will not include. The appeal to the feelings involved in the attempt to persuade will,

it will early be discovered, require skill in illustration, And, as distinctive feadescription, and narration. tures, considerations of rhythm and verbal effectiveness, of dignity and impressiveness, of elevation yet variety of tone (where, by the way, we shall have to deal in particular with the balanced construction), will occupy us on the side of formal Rhetoric.

And now, in bringing our treatment to a close, we must - omitting many matters of not unimportant detail-mention some general points.

First, as to class methods. The skilful management of class discussion by the teacher is the most vital We have urged that there factor in the situation. should be plenty of reading of the students' productions. Each should feel that he may be called on at any recitation to read what he has written, for the judgIt is they, his peers, rather ment of his classmates. than his teacher, who are to be for him as he writes his audience and critics. Behind them will stand for his imagination, as final appraiser, judge, and court of appeal, the figure of his teacher, of whom he should think as holding him to his very best, as following his every step in progress, as demanding evidence of his having profited by all the help received. The class discussion ought to be the most valuable of aids. Next in importance (though prior in time) is the preliminary discussion in the class of the topics assigned for home work. The teacher's directions as to the kind of com

position desired ought to be adequate; and often it may be desirable to probe the topic in a broad, suggestive way so as to stimulate thought and open up possible methods of treatment, available models, and sources of information.

As to the teacher's correction of work handed in to him, he must be careful not to overdo correction: that discourages; and so does much rewriting. Some of the more serious and significant blunders and shortcomings may be written on the board to be corrected on the spot, or otherwise. Errors in spelling and punctuation may be similarly treated; and let it on no account be forgotten special excellences brought to the notice of the class. Of course, these aids must not be lavish and constant, and must not weaken the students' power to walk alone. Errors below a certain percentage may be corrected on the paper or on a separate sheet. The student or the teacher should keep all compositions for the sake of reference. When a student is doing unusually poor work, the teacher should seek for the deeper, hidden causes, psychological or physical; and aid in remedying them rather than their innumerable results in the defective compositions.

As to the form of the work, and the cultivation of the sense of form, we have already declared our opinions on the point (see pp. 192-193). Rules will help but little; we must work in a larger way for an organic appreciation of comeliness, order, and expressiveness

by spacing and arrangement, pagination, margination, indention, paragraphing, titling. We may try to arouse a sense for clear, formal handwriting as we should for artistic printing. A few specimens of old manuscripts may help. Perhaps an old leisurely dignity may not be beyond recall. We may war against modern rush and flurry.

Finally, we would emphasize the importance of working for sincerity, of escaping, that is, from conventional, ready-made ways of speaking and writing; of commending individuality in seeing and reporting, or, in the case of natures of an imitative cast, individual admirations, a boy's loving pupilage to a favorite author, so only they be genuine and heartfelt. Let us hail differences gladly, keeping our own preferences out of the way, and emphasizing them only when there is a call for the championship of the noble against the petty, the real against the sham. The most fatal of results and a not infrequent oneis when boys write what they think will please the teacher and will jog with his views and whims. The best of results is where, along with an initial humility in the presence of greatness, we can secure a bold reliance upon the truth as our young scholars see it, and that independence of spirit which scorns prevarication and make-believe, the cheap pose and flippant jest.

CHAPTER XVIII

VERSIFICATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

THE course in versification is, as we have already intimated, an integral and vital part of the English work, and not a mere fringe upon it. The ends which are to be gained by it are, (1) a deepened appreciation of poetry in and through the attempt to fashion quasipoetic products, — again an attempt to teach through self-activity; (2) a development of the power to distinguish between the peculiar "notes" of poetry and of prose, that is, between discourse suffused and heightened with emotion, and discourse pitched in the lower key of prose writing; and (3), with this, a craftsman-like way of handling words ingeniously, to manipulate inversions, to scrutinize vocabulary closely, and to command synonyms and rhyme words; and (4) developing this literary tactfulness, by learning to employ simile, metaphor and other figures, alliteration and onomatopoeia, where they may be legitimately employed to gain certain common literary effects light or stately, tripping or slow-footed, humorous or grave.