Practical English Composition: Book II by Edwin L. Miller (best books to read fiction .txt) 📕
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Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
Longfellow, The Birds of Killingworth.
←Contents
CONSTRUCTIVE NEWSPAPER WRITING
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.”
Lord Byron.
I. IntroductionThe worst thing about most news articles is that they tell of destruction, failure, and tragedy instead of construction, success, and happiness. If one were to judge from the papers, one would be forced to conclude that the world is rapidly advancing from civilization to barbarism. To test the truth of this assertion, you have only to examine almost any current newspaper. A man may labor honorably and usefully for a generation without being mentioned; but if he does or says a foolish thing, the reporters flock to him as do cats to a plate of cream. The reason is obvious. Tragedy is more exciting than any other form of literature; it contains thrills; it sells papers. However, aside from the fact that the publication of details concerning human folly and misfortune is often cruel and unjust to the sufferers, its influence upon the public is debasing in the same way, if not in the same degree, as public executions were debasing.
Newspaper writing should, therefore, deal with progress rather than with retrogression. Most newspaper men admit that this is true, but declare that the public will not buy the kind of papers which all sensible people approve. Just as soon as such papers can be made to pay, they say, we shall have them. One of the objects of this course is to create a taste for constructive rather than destructive newspapers.
As an exercise tending to produce this result, the student should each day examine the local paper for the purpose of ascertaining how many columns of destruction and how many of construction it contains. The result should be reported to the class and thence to the papers as news.
There are three kinds of items which boys and girls can write and which are constructive. These are:
Items dealing with progress. Humorous stories. Items based on contrast.The work this week will be on the first of these.
II. ModelsSt. Louis, Feb. 22.—L. C. Phillips will plant 1,000 acres of his southeast Missouri land in sunflowers this year as a further demonstration that this plant can be cultivated with profit on land where other crops may not thrive so well. Phillips has been experimenting for several years in the culture of sunflowers, whose seed, when mixed with other seed, makes excellent chicken and hog feed. Last year he planted nearly 100 acres in sunflowers. The cost of planting and harvesting is about $6 an acre, he says, and the returns from $35 to $48.
Halifax, N.S., Dec. 25.—One of the most extraordinary endowments bestowed by nature on any land is enjoyed by the fortunate group of counties round the head of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.
Along the shores of this bay there are great stretches of meadow land covered with rich grass and dotted with barns. These meadows have been brought into existence by the power of the tides in the Bay of Fundy, which have no parallel elsewhere on the globe. There is sometimes a difference of sixty feet between the levels of the water at low and at high tide. The tide sweeps in with a rush, carrying with it a vast amount of solid material scoured out of its channel.
The accumulated deposits of the ages have produced a soil seventy or eighty feet deep. Owing to its peculiarities, this meadow land retains its fertility in a marvelous way, producing heavy crops of hay annually without diminution and without renewal for an indefinite number of years.
When renewal is desired it is only necessary to open a dike, which allows the tide to flood the land again and leave a fresh deposit of soil.
Washington, Dec. 25.—Michigan holds sixth place among the States in the value of its mineral production, with an output in 1912 valued at $180,062,486, according to the United States Geological Survey, its prominence being due to its great wealth in copper and iron. Ranking second only to Minnesota in the production of iron ore, it is third in the production of copper, being exceeded only by Arizona and Montana. It also stands first in the production of salt, bromine, calcium chloride, graphite, and sand lime brick.
In 1911 Michigan’s production of iron ore was 8,945,103 long tons, valued at $23,810,710, and in 1912 it increased to 12,717,468 long tons, valued at $28,003,163.
The production of copper in Michigan, the value of which in the last two years has exceeded that of the output of iron ore, amounted in 1912 to 218,138,408 pounds, valued at $135,992,837, a decrease in quantity, but an increase in value of over $8,000,000.
The mining of copper in Michigan is of prehistoric origin, the metal having been used by the North American Indians before the advent of the white man. The records since 1810, or for a little more than 100 years, show that the total production of copper in Michigan from that date to the close of 1912 has amounted to over 5,200,000,000 pounds, which is about 30 per cent of the total output of the United States.
III. Oral CompositionAll three of these items are evidently condensations of longer articles. The writers have boiled down a vast amount of material into the form in which it here appears. The student will find similar material in abundance in The Literary Digest, in The Scientific American, in The National Geographical Magazine, in many government reports, and in almost any daily newspaper. In preparing for this exercise he should observe the following steps:
Find his material. Boil it down, to the size desired, which is a most useful exercise of the judgment. Make a careful framework, in doing which the models will be useful. Get the whole so well in mind that he can present it fluently. Hesitation should not be tolerated. IV. Suggested Time Schedule Monday —Dictation. Tuesday —Notes and Queries. Wednesday —Oral Composition. Thursday —Written Composition. Friday —Public Speaking. V. Notes, Queries, and Exercises. Write an appropriate heading for each item. Point out the “Four W’s” in each. Tell whether each sentence is simple, compound, or complex. Explain the syntax of the nouns in Model I, the pronouns in II, the verbs in III. Explain the location of St. Louis, Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy, Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, and Montana. Where is the copper country of Michigan? The salt, bromine, calcium, chloride, graphite, and brick regions? Explain the etymological signification of “demonstration,” “extraordinary,” “accumulated,” “Nova Scotia,” “annually,” “geological,” “Arizona,” “Montana,” “advent.” How many words does Model I contain? II? III? Discover and write out the framework of each model. Find one subject on which you could make an item like Model I. Do the same for II and III. VI. Written CompositionRemember that you are writing for the compositor. Every letter must be right. If you do a good piece of work it is altogether probable that your composition will get into one of the local papers.
VII. Suggested ReadingMark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, or Roughing It.
VIII. MemorizeWhere many a man had died
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide:
A man stood up in Panama,
And the mountains stood aside.
With a continent for his theme,
And he wrote with flood and fire
To forge a planet’s dream,
And the derricks rang his dithyrambs
And his stanzas roared in steam.
He leads the liners through,
And the Horn that tossed Magellan
Bellows a far halloo,
For where the navies never sailed
Steamed Goethals and his crew;
Need poleward warp and veer,
But on through the Gates of Goethals
The steady keels shall steer,
Where the tribes of man are led toward peace
By the prophet-engineer.
Percy MacKaye.1
←Contents
HUMOROUS ITEMS
“To laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day from his birth.”—Pliny.
I. IntroductionLaughter, when it hurts nobody, is wholesome. It is the handmaid of happiness. It enriches life. Pleasant but not silly humor and wit are therefore altogether desirable in a paper. Few days in anybody’s life are devoid of incidents that tickle the fancy. Material for good humorous stories is abundant everywhere. The faculty of recognizing it when it is seen, and the ability to present it effectively, however, need a little training. To make a beginning in these directions is the object of the exercises that follow.
II. AssignmentFind, but not in a book or a paper, a humorous story, and tell it, first orally, then in writing.
III. ModelsCalled on to decide the ownership of a hen claimed by George Bass and Joseph Nedrow, of Arnold City, Justice of the Peace John Reisinger hit upon a “Solomonesque” solution. “Take this fowl to Arnold City,” he directed his constable, “and release it near the poultry yards of these two men. In whose hen house it goes to roost, to him it belongs.” The constable, accompanied by Bass and Nedrow, did as directed. When liberated, the bird promptly flew into the chicken yard of Charles Black, where the constable decided it would have to stay under the justice’s ruling. The costs in the case amount to ten times the value of the hen.
James M. I. Galloway, veterinary surgeon of Kirkintilloch, Scotland, arrived yesterday from Glasgow with photographs of a cow with a wooden leg on the starboard quarter, which the veterinary says is almost as good to the cow as an ordinary leg of beef and much more effective in knocking out folks who try to milk her on the wrong side.
Other veterinaries laughed at Galloway, who is young and of an experimental temperament, when he decided to save the life of this cow after the leg had been cut off by a locomotive. He insisted, however, on fitting the wooden leg, which he regards as much more useful than wooden heads on Scotch veterinaries.
The only time the wooden leg gets the cow into trouble is when she stands too long in a damp field and the leg sinks in a foot or so.
The written orders of Mr. J. W. Brooks, a once celebrated American railroad manager of Michigan, were, it is said, almost beyond deciphering. On a certain occasion, when a double track had been laid on one of his roads, it was reported at headquarters that the barn of an old farmer stood partly upon land which the company had bought, and dangerously near to passing trains. Mr. Brooks, who was just getting ready for a trip down the Mississippi, wrote to the farmer that he must move his barn from the company’s land at once. If he delayed he would be liable to a suit for damages. The old farmer duly received the letter, and was able to make out the manager’s signature, but not another word could he decipher. He took it to the village postmaster, who, equally unable to translate the hieroglyphics, was unwilling to acknowledge it. “Didn’t you sell a strip of land to the railroad?” he asked. “Yes.” “Well, I guess this is a free pass over the road.” And for over a year the farmer used the manager’s letter as a pass, not one of the conductors
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