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Elements of Composition for Secondary Schools
Elements of Composition for Secondary Schools Author:Henry Seidel Canby, John Baker Opdycke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE SENTENCE The Simple Sentence. — So far we have been busy with the selection, the division, and arrangement of our experiences or our informat... more »ion, in the attempt to get it ready to write or speak about. We have been working like the architect, who first considers the general nature of the house he is to build, then sketches the first rough plans for the building. But before the actual construction begins, he must perfect the details of his plan; and we must now do likewise. Our business is expression, and the plans we have made are to be used to express thoughts. A sentence expresses a thought; a paragraph expresses a larger thought; a composition a larger thought still. Let us take the sentence in this chapter. iVJastery of the sentence, ability to pack a thought clearly and accurately into a sentence, brings power with it. The Sentence Thought. — Your mind and mine,' as they touch upon experience, are constantly being flooded with ideas that insist upon expression. These ideas are mere perceptions of things or qualities in the world about us, or in ourselves. The sight of bread may flash the idea " food " into our mind; the memory of a good friend may give us the idea of " honor " or " faithfulness." If we express these ideas as ideas, we voice them as "truth," "honesty," "dull pain," " hunger." But after early childhood we more usually think about them before we express them. That is, we relate one idea to another, and so form a thought. When we feel hunger, the idea of hunger comes to us and is related by ourmind to another idea, pain. So we say — " hunger is a dull pain." The idea of truth links itself to the idea of honesty, and we think — " honesty demands that we tell the truth." Thus a group of ideas, all related to one another, is called a Thought. ...« less