swivel chair, with his short, plump legs propped on a table and his pudgy hands locked across his stomach, which gently rose and fell with his breathing. His straw hat was on the table, and in a corner leaned his inevitable traveling companion in summer weather — a vast and cavernous umbrella of a pattern that is probably obsolete now, an unkempt old drab slattern of an umbrella with a cracked wooden handle and a crippled rib that dangled away from its fellows as though shamed by its afflicted state. The campaigning had been hard on the old judge. The Monday before, at a rally at Temple's Mills, he had fainted, and this day he had n't felt equal to going to Shady Grove. Instead he had come to his office after dinner to write some letters and had fallen asleep. He slept on for an hour, a picture of pink and cherubic old age, with little beadings of sweat popping out thickly on his high bald head and a gentle little snoring sound, of first a drone and then a whistle, pouring steadily from his pursed lips. Outside a dry-fly rasped the brooding silence up and down with its fret-saw refrain. In the open spaces the little heat waves danced like so many stress marks, accenting the warmth and giving emphasis to it; and far down the street, which ran past the courthouse and the jail and melted into a country road so imperceptibly that none knew exactly where the street left off and the road began, there appeared a straggling, irregular company of men marching, their shapes more than half hid in a dust column of their own raising. The Massac men were coming. I believe there is a popular conception to the effect that an oncoming mob invariably utters a certain indescribable, sinister, muttering sound that is peculiar to mobs. For all I know, that may be true of some mobs, but certain it was that this mob gave vent to no such sounds. The mob came on steadily, making no more noise than any similar group of seventy-five or eighty men tramping over a dusty road might be expected to make. Their number was obscured by the dust their feet lifted. It was as if each man at every step crushed with his toes a puffball that discharged its powdering particles upward into his face. Some of them carried arms openly-shotguns and rifles. The others showed no weapons, but had them. . . . Not one was masked or carried his face averted. Nearly all were grown men and not one was under twenty. A certain definite purpose showed in their gait. It showed also in the way they closed up and became a more compact formation as they came within sight of the trees fringing the square. Down through the drowsing town edge they stepped, giving alarm only to the chickens that scratched languidly where scruboaks cast a skimpy shade across the road, but as they reached the town line they passed a clutter of negro cabins clustering about a little doggery. A negro woman stepped to a door and saw them. Distractedly, fluttering like a hen, she ran into the bare, grassless yard, setting up a hysterical outcry. A negro man came quickly from the cabin, clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her back inside, slamming the door to behind him with a kick of his bare foot. Unseen hands shut the other cabin doors and the woman's half-smothered cries came dimly through the clapboarded wall; but a slim black darky darted southward from the doggery, worming his way under a broken, snaggled fence and keeping the straggling line of houses and stables between him and the marchers. This fleeing figure was Jeff, Judge Priest's negro body-servant, who had a most amazing faculty for always being wherever things happened. He ran fast now, the surest of all Jeff was lithe and slim and he could run fast. snatching off his hat and carrying it in his hand signs that a negro is traveling at his top gait. A good eighth of a mile in advance of the mob, he shot in at the back door of the courthouse and flung himself into his employer's room. "Jedge! Jedge!" he panted tensely, "Jedge Priest, please, suh, wake up the mobbers is comin'!" Try again Exercise 58 or Exercise 61. You may use the same scene or a different one. Put into this composition all that you have learned about definiteness and sincerity. EXERCISE 67 - Oral REVIEW OF DEFINITENESS Bring to class three good questions on the points discussed in this chapter. Ask and be prepared to answer these questions in class. As you go on with other work, do not forget to be definite in subject, in details, in point of view, and in words. Gather in new words as you would put money in the bank, capital for the future. Do not think that you have mastered a new word until you really own it and use it. Try keeping a list of your newly-acquired property in a convenient note-book; enter any word that comes to you in your study of any lesson, your reading, or your listening. Look over the list from time to time, and use the words from it in speaking and in writing. EXERCISE 68 - Dictation ACQUIRING DEFINITE WORDS Study the following paragraph and prepare to write it from dictation. Notice the commas used in a series of like words. Why then do we hesitate to swell our words to meet our needs ? It is a nonsense question. There is no reason. We are simply lazy, too lazy to be comfortable.... Like the bad cook, we seize the frying-pan to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we wonder why all our dishes taste alike while in the next house the food is appetizing. It is all unnecessary. Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any one who wants to see himself grow resolve to adopt two new words each week. It will not be long before the endless and enchanting variety of the world will begin to reflect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, in "Self-Cultivation in English" RULES AND EXERCISES IN GOOD FORM1 I. PUNCTUATION Rule 21. Use the comma to separate the words and expressions of a series. Exercise A Memorize for writing: Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, New birth of our new soil, the first American. LOWELL, Commemoration Ode" NOTE 1. A series more than two of short sentences, very closely connected in thought, may be separated by commas only. Exercise B Study the following selection, explain the use of the commas, and be ready to write from dictation. Note that in the second half of the stanza, to mark a somewhat greater pause in the thought, the semicolon is used instead of the comma. She left the web, she left the loom, The Lady of Shalott. TENNYSON, “The Lady of Shalott ” NOTE 2. When each member of a series is joined to the rest by and or or, no comma is used unless the writer wishes to emphasize each item of the series separately. 1 Continued from page 24. EXAMPLES: Truth and honor and character were sacrificed to his selfish ambition. Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found, [Enoch] Crept to the gate, and opened it, and closed, As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door. TENNYSON, "Enoch Arden" NOTE 3. When only the last member of a series is joined to the rest by and, but, or or, a comma is used before the and, etc., unless the last two members are more closely connected than the others. EXAMPLES: He darted away over the fence, across the meadow, through the orchard gate, and into the woods. We had for dinner turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, celery, tea, bread and butter. Rule 22. Use the hyphen (a) to denote the division of a word, especially at the end of a line, and (b) to join the parts of many compound words. NOTE 1. In dividing a word at the end of a line, never divide a syllable, and always place the hyphen at the end, not at the beginning of a line. NOTE 2. Usage regarding the hyphen in compound words is not at all consistent. We write greenhouse, text-book, and class room. In general, use the hyphen when the compound is unusual, like clean-winged. Exercise C Notice besides the use of the hyphen in this selection the apostrophe, the question marks, and the commas. Why is not its written with an apostrophe? The old rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; |