who liked travel, but had no taste for dirty southern inns, had four vans that formed a square at night, with a little courtyard in the middle, that was covered with canvas, and served as a spacious dining-room. The arrangement was excellent, but he was considered hopelessly eccentric; yet how slight was the difference between his vans and a train of saloon carriages for the railway? He simply had saloon carriages that were adapted for common roads.

EXERCISE 68.

Write a paragraph mainly of balanced sentences on one of the following topics:

1. Immigrants that we want and immigrants that we do not want.

2. Poverty distinguished from pauperism.

3. Novels that help and novels that hinder.

4. Cæsar compared with Brutus.

5. Which is the greater villain, Shylock or Iago?

6. Compare two public speakers whom you have heard. 7. Contrast Evangeline and Priscilla, or John Alden and Miles Standish.

8. Contrast Grand Pré (in Evangeline) and Plymouth (in Miles Standish).

9. Washington and Lincoln; or, Hamilton and Jefferson; or, Longfellow and Whittier; or, George Eliot and Mrs. Mary Ward.

10. The distinction between socialism and nihilism; or, law and public opinion; or, charity and alms-giving.

11. Compare and contrast two synonyms, two trees, two books, two characters, two dramatic situations, two historical scenes, or two courses of conduct.

LESSON 26.

Combinations of Sentence-Types.

In the preceding lessons we have noticed that the best paragraphs show more than one kind of sentence. Long and short, periodic and loose sentences, with an occasional balanced structure, appear in different forms in the same paragraph, and thus a pleasing variety is secured. ther variety is added and force is gained by the appropriate use of the exclamation and interrogation, and of mixed or composite sentences. These we shall now consider.

The following paragraph shows four exclamatory sen tences and five questions. In the declarative form the first sentence would read, "A university presents a strange picture to the imagination"; the ninth would close, "and you would blot out with them very much of her glory"; the tenth would close in the same way. The fifteenth would close: "The time or people should not be called wholly barbarous; for the human mind could achieve this much, even then and there." As to the questions, sentence 4, if reduced to the declarative form, would read, "Otherwise, the undying lamp of thought would not be fed"; sentence 11, "The history of Spain would look sadly mutilated if,” etc. Sentences 12, 13, and 14, like sentence 11, could be reduced to the declarative form by supplying a word in answer to the question asked in each. Making the changes indicated above, compare the result with the original, and note the loss in enthusiasm, force, and variety when all the sentences are declarative in form.

1. What a strange picture a university presents to the imagination! 2. The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness, -literary men of retired habits, and professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday. 3. Nature has, no doubt for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of

literary labor and seclusion. 4. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought? 5. But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's banner, would blow it out forever. 6. The light of the soul is easily extinguished. 7. And whenever I reflect upon these things, I become aware of the great importance, in a nation's history, of the individual fame of scholars and literary men. 8. I fear that it is far greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. 9. Blot out from England's history the names of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton only and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! 10. Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would be wanting to the completeness of her glory! 11. How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon? 12. What would be the fame of Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire, or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and her Schiller? 13. Nay, what were the nations of old without their philosophers, poets, and historians? 14. Tell me, do not these men, in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings of their country? 15. Yes, and far more than this; for in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its greatness, and say, "Call not the time or people wholly barbarous; for this much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve!"-Longfellow.

Many good sentences, perhaps the majority of good written sentences, are mixed or composite in structure, neither entirely periodic nor entirely loose, but partly one and partly the other. A sentence will sometimes begin as a periodic sentence, continue periodic for half or three-fourths of its entire extent, sometimes even up to the very last clause, and will then become loose. Or a sentence will begin as a loose sentence, and will close as a periodic. A sentence wholly loose may contain a clause which is periodic. In both loose and periodic sentences, a series of clauses of

about the same length and of similar structure are frequently found, or minor details, contrasting in thought, are balanced against one another.

In the following paragraph the third sentence begins as a periodic sentence, the if-clause coming first, and continues periodic down to the appended phrase, "drowning all other sounds"; then, after the semicolon, another periodic sentence begins, continuing down to the appended clause "and you are scanned," etc. In general structure this sentence is also balanced part for part.

I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the cat-bird. Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus a little too conspicuous. If you are listening for the note of another bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted singing, drowning all other sounds; if you sit quietly down to observe a favorite or study a new-comer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and you are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation. Yet I would not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her less conspicuous. — BURROUGHS: Wake Robin.

In the following selection, sentence 4 begins as a periodic sentence, and continues periodic to the first semicolon; then two lines are in balanced form; then the periodic structure is resumed by means of the construction so SO - SO - that, the sentence closing with a balanced clause which grows out of the words so soon. Sentences 5 and 6 are made up of parts constructed on one plan in each sentence. Sentence 7 is, in general structure, loose, but contains a part that is suspended by the word while. Sentence 9 is loose to the semicolon, and then becomes periodic to the close. Sentence 10 is periodic throughout.

1. We live in a most extraordinary age. 2. Events so various and so important, that they might crowd and distinguish centuries, are, in our times, compressed within the compass of a single life.

3. When has it happened that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775? 4. Our own Revolution, which, under other circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, has been achieved; twenty-four sovereign and independent states erected; and a general government established over them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not far the greater wonder that it should have been established at all. 5. Two or three millions of people have been augmented to twelve, the great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful industry, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi become the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the hills of New England. 6. We have a commerce that leaves no sea unexplored; navies which take no law from superior force; revenues adequate to all the exigencies of government, almost without taxation; and peace with all nations, founded on equal rights and mutual respect.

7. Europe, within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty revolution, which, while it has been felt in the individual condition and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the centre her political fabric, and dashed against one another thrones which had stood tranquil for ages. 8. On this, our continent, our own example has been followed, and colonies have sprung up to be nations. 9. Unaccustomed sounds of liberty and free government have reached us from beyond the track of the sun; and at this moment the dominion of European power in this continent, from the place where we stand to the south pole, is annihilated forever.

10. In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been the general progress of knowledge, such the improvements in legislation, in commerce, in the arts, in letters, and above all in liberal ideas and the general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems changed. WEBSTER: First Bunker Hill Oration.

It is because periodic sentences show a more closely knit construction and require, while they are being written, careful attention to the structure and to the best placement