boy who had lived in the streamless desert country of the West, than for, let us say, a New London boy who had fished always, though not for trout. An explanation of your coaching methods in basket ball which would satisfy a girl from a high school elsewhere in the state, would be extremely insufficient for an English girl from one of the London schools.

Choice of Words. Likewise, we must adjust not only our information and the amount of it, but our language, to the needs of the hearer. Explaining to a child how a willow whistle is made requires a much simpler form of expression, for instance, than explaining to a grown-up how a steam whistle is constructed. If we were called upon to explain to our parents our daily school program and its operation, we should have to be much clearer and more detailed in our choice of explanatory terms than in discussing the same thing with a young student from another city. In the latter case we could use many technical terms, or terms local to school life. In the former we should have to omit all these. "Rapid dismissal," "recitation," "study period," are probably terms more or less vague to our parents. But our school friend in another city knows at once what they mean, and we may use them in our letter to him without fear of misunderstanding. Talk and write with the other person's point of view and knowledge always in mind, then you add enormously to your chances of being clear.

EXERCISES

I. Write two brief expositions of any American gáme, one for a middle-aged American, one for an English boy or English girl.

II. Write two brief expositions of the important features of your school life, one for a student at another school, one for an Italian immigrant.

III. Write two brief expositions of a simple chemical or physical experiment, one for a schoolmate, one for a laboring man with only a common-school education.

IV. Discuss briefly the causes of some important historical event, once in the form of a report to your teacher of history, once for a boy or girl several years younger than yourself. Completeness. Nothing is so essential to clarity as that completeness which gives us Unity in our work. Leave one step out of your explanation and the stairway to a complete understanding is broken. The worthlessness of most sets of directions on patent card games, many recipes, and many guidebooks, may be either humorous or tragic according to the circumstances. They are worthless, because they are not clear, and they are not clear because they are incomplete. One point is left out, and that wrecks all. The value of the famous Baedeker series of guidebooks lies very much in their completeness. Every direction necessary, no matter how slight, is included. Test your plan for Completeness, if you wish to be clear when you write it out.

The best way to secure Completeness is to follow some order of explanation which corresponds to the development of the thing to be explained. We shall treat this more thoroughly when we come to the methods of exposition, but let us experiment a little with it under this heading, for clearness depends upon a successful result. Suppose we are called upon to explain how bread is made. We would not start our explanation by saying, "Put it in the oven and bake about one hour." This would be to begin almost at the very end. No, we would start with mixing the flour, and then proceed, step by step, through the different processes until we were ready to depict the brown loaves as taken from the This would be logical and chronological; that is, our explanation would follow the necessary processes in

oven.

the order both of operation and of time. And we would be equally careful, of course, not to omit any of the various operations. If, for instance, we omitted to mention the division into loaves, our listener would be bewildered on hearing the word "loaves" when we came to speak finally of the completed baking. It is the same with the other operations; if one is omitted, we shall have broken a link in a chain of thought. The following plan will indicate clearly a logical and complete course of procedure in dealing with this subject

HOME-MADE Bread

I. Materials.

1. Flour.

2. Water or milk.

3. Yeast.

4. Salt.

5. Sugar.

II. Mixing to form a sponge.

1. Preparation.

2. Stirring.

3. Treatment.

a. Set in warm place to aid yeast development.

III. Raising period.

1. Raising of sponge.

2. Kneading in lump.

3. Second raising.

IV. Molding into loaves.

1. Raising in loaves.

V. Baking.

1. Object.

a. To cook starch.

b. To kill yeast.
c. To expel alcohol.

To illustrate further, suppose some one asks us how he can best go from some given place to another. To make our explanation logical we must start from the place where the question is asked and proceed in our imagination with him, step by step. To make our explanation complete, we must omit no single detail of the way, no connection or change along the course of his travel. Nor must we include any detail that is not directly connected with the route. We must tell all that is necessary, and no more than is necessary. "Over-completeness is just as serious a fault as incompleteness, though we do not hear nearly so much about it. Selecting just the right material and just the right amount of it, gives us that happy medium, completeness, which is necessary for Unity in our expression. If we were asked in Chicago to explain an interesting route to Odessa, we should frame our information as follows:

1. By rail to New York.

a. Twentieth Century Limited.

2. By water to Liverpool.

a. Cunard Flyers.

3. By rail to London.

4. By rail and water to Paris.

a. Via Dover and Calais.

5. By rail to Constantinople.

a. Via International Express. 6. By water to Odessa.

We have indicated clearly and logically every step of the journey for one of the pleasantest routes to Odessa from the place where we were asked the question. Our main headings indicate changes; our subheadings indicate means. Let any one of these be omitted, and our explanation will not be complete. If we omit 4 and say for 5 "by rail and water to Constantinople," the traveler will be misled into thinking

that he is not obliged to change cars in Paris. Our plan, therefore, as it stands, is coherent and unified. Any rearrangement or omission of topics will lead to confusion.

EXERCISES

I. Examine and criticize the following plans from the point of view of completeness:

1. Introduction.

MEDIEVAL MANORS

A. What they were.

B. When they were.

C. Who lived in them.

2. Discussion.

A. Situation.

1. The lord's house.

2. The court.

3. The serfs' houses.

4. The church.

B. Occupants.

1. How they made their living.

2. What they did.

C. The rules.

1. The lord head of it.

2. His representatives.

3. The duties of the court.

4. The duties of the serfs.

3. Conclusion.

A. What good for the world.

B. How they broke up.

REGULATION Of Vehicular TRAFFIC

1. Definition. Vehicles include everything on wheels or runners, except street cars and baby carriages.

2. Origin.

A. Deputy Police Commissioner Piper was sent abroad in 1902.