English, the South. Notice that negro and gypsy are not begun with capital letters.

(4) Personal titles, whenever, they are equivalent to proper nouns. In compound titles, each part begins with a capital.

The President and the Governor of Rhode Island are here. The Attorney-General of the United States.

For titles of books, see § 16.

(5) Personified nouns, and names of great events or bodies of men.

"While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves."
It was a cool day in autumn.1

At the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
While the Legislature is sitting.

EXERCISE 29

I. Construct sentences containing in all twenty words that should be begun with capital letters.

II. Which words in the following sentences should begin with capitals? Why?

1. He added, with a look of curiosity, "you must be a stranger." 2. "I like," said he, "to lie down upon the grass." 3. In 1827 he entered the senate, serving there until the president appointed him secretary of state. 4. At length I reached fourth street. 5. It was easter morning. 6. He has always voted the republican ticket. 7. There are more negroes in the south than in the west. 8. No one imagined that he would make a good emperor. 9. The king died on tuesday. 10. I shall see you this summer.

1 Notice that the names of the seasons do not begin with capitals unless they are personified.

CHAPTER VII

THE SENTENCE: ITS RHETORICAL STRUCTURE

68. RHETORICAL STRUCTURE A QUESTION OF Judgment and Taste. -69. THE FIRST ESSENTIAL: THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE MUST BE EVIDENT. -70. WHEN THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE IS MOST EVIDENT. -71. RULE FOR AVOIDING INTRICATE CONSTRUCTIONS. EXERCISE 30. - 72. THE SECOND ESSENTIAL: A SENTENCE MUST NOT BE TOO LONG.-73. THE GOOD SHORT SENTENCE. -74. A SERIES OF SHORT SENTENCES. -75. THE GOOD LONG SENTENCE. - 76. THE BAD LONG SENTENCE. -77. RULE AS TO THE LENGTH OF SENTENCES. EXERCISE 31.- 78. THE EFFECTIVE USE OF SHORT AND LONG SENTENCES IN COMBINATION. EXERCISE 32.-79. THE THIRD ESSENTIAL: THE FORM OF THE SENTENCE SHOULD OFTEN STIMULATE THE READER. 80. THE PERIODIC SENTENCE AND THE LOOSE SENTENCE: DEFINITIONS. EXERCISE 33.-81. HOW TO MAKE A LOOSE SENTENCE PERIODIC. — EXERCISE 34. -82. THE GOOD PERIODIC SENTENCE. — EXERCISE 35.-83. THE BAD PERIODIC SENTENCE. 84. THE GOOD LOOSE SENTENCE. EXERCISE 36. -85. SUSPENSION OF THOUGHT EVEN IN THE LOOSE SENTENCE. - EXERCISE 37.86. THE BAD LOOSE SENTENCE. — EXERCISE 38.-87. RULE AS TO THE PERIODIC AND THE LOOSE SENTENCE. - EXERCISE 39.88. THE FOURTH ESSENTIAL: PARALLEL STRUCTURE. EXERCISE 40.- 89. RULE AS TO PARALLEL STRUCTURE. -90. THE VALUE OF IMITATION. EXERCISE 41. — 91. IMITATIVE PRACTICE IN SENTENCE BUILDING.-EXERCISE 42.-92. SUMMARY.-EXERCISE 43.

68. Rhetorical Structure a Question of Judgment and Taste. In the preceding chapter we discussed the laws of grammatical construction, laws which, to insure correctness, must be followed in every sentence. But sentences may be grammatically correct and yet be obscure or ineffective. We must now see how

sentences may not only be correct but satisfy the judgment and the taste.

69. The First Essential: the Grammatical Structure must be Evident. The essential parts of a sentence are, grammatically, the subject and the predicate. It must not be forgotten that these parts of a sentence are essential to its grammar only because they are essential to its thought. With very few exceptions, all thoughts that are expressed in language must be expressed in just this way, by an assertion made by means of a verb about a something which is represented by a noun or its equivalent. It is therefore of the utmost importance that sentences should be constructed in such a way that these essential parts the subject and the predicate shall stand out clearly, for they are the parts on which the thought chiefly depends and to which the mind must be mainly directed.

70. When the Grammatical Structure is most Evident. It is obvious that the most satisfactory sentence, from this point of view, is the simple sentence. In the simple sentence, unless there are many modifying phrases, it is almost impossible for the subject and the predicate not to stand out clearly. Next in order come the short complex sentence and the short compound sentence; and last the more intricate complex and compound sentences. As an illustration of the value of the more simple sentence-forms in making thought clear, notice the ease with which the mind grasps the essential elements of the thought in

(a) below, and the difficulty, comparatively speaking, with which the same process is carried on in (b).

(a) "Such language, in letters the most private, never meant to be seen by other eyes than those to which they were addressed, gives touching testimony to the sincere piety of his [William of Orange's] character. No man was ever more devoted to a high purpose, no man had ever more right to imagine himself, or less inclination to pronounce himself, entrusted with a divine mission. There was nothing of the charlatan in his character. His nature was true and steadfast. No narrow-minded usurper was ever more loyal to his own aggrandizement than this large-hearted man to the cause of oppressed humanity. Yet it was inevitable that baser minds should fail to recognize his purity. While he exhausted his life for the emancipation of a people, it was easy to ascribe all his struggles to the hope of founding a dynasty. It was natural for grovelling natures to search in the gross soil of self-interest for the sustaining roots of the tree beneath whose branches a nation found its shelter. What could they comprehend of living fountains and of heavenly dews?"

(b) "Authors shall be ranked here [in the procession of life], whom some freak of Nature, making game of her poor children, had imbued with the confidence of genius, and strong desire of fame, but has favored with no corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied with the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery, by which ethereal endowment must be manifested to mankind. All these, therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and wellintentioned persons, who by a want of tact — by inaccurate perceptions-by a distorting imagination — have been kept

continually at cross purposes with the world, and bewildered upon the path of life. Let us see if they can confine themselves within the line of our procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who have encountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune than their abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the pets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their hoary hair; politicians, whom some malicious contingency of affairs has thrust into conspicuous station, where, while the world. stands gazing at them, the dreary consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth hour."

- The

71. Rule for avoiding Intricate Constructions. following rule will be of great service to the inexperienced writer in helping him to avoid intricate constructions:

Until you have attained considerable skill in framing sentences, use only simple sentences, and complex and compound sentences in which there are only one or two subordinate clauses.

EXERCISE 30

Rewrite

The following sentences are intricate. them, expressing the same ideas in shorter sentences, more simple in structure.

[The first sentence, for example, may be changed as follows: "Where the slopes came together to form a basin, the water lay in the hollow of the rocks. The lake was at first concealed by the clouds that hung over the surface. As the process went on, however, it came into view in the clear light of the sun."]

1. As the process went on the lake, which had at first been concealed by clouds hanging over the surface of the