ter, and for that subtle appeal to your readers' feelings
which lies in vividness and precision of phrasing, considerations with
which I will deal separately further on. Questions of proportion of
space we may consider here.

The only rule that can be laid down for the distribution of your space
is to use your sagacity, and all your knowledge of your subject and of
your audience. In a written argument you have the advantage that you can
let your pen run on your first draft, and then go back and weigh the
comparative force of the different parts of the argument, and cut out
and cut down until your best points for the purpose have the most space.
In a debate the same end is gained by rehearsals of the main speeches;
in the rebuttal, which is best when it is spontaneous, you have to trust
to the judgment gained by practice.

Other things being equal, however, brevity carries an audience. If you
can sum up your case in half the time that it takes the other side to
state theirs, the chances are that your audience will think you have the
right of it. Above all, beware of boring your readers by too exhaustive
explanation of details or of aspects of the case which they care nothing
about. I suppose there is no one of us who has not a worthy friend or
two who will talk through a whole evening on whether a lawn should be
watered in the evening or the early morning, or whether the eighth hole
on the golf course should not be fifty yards longer. One must not be
like the man who in the discussion of bimetallism a few years ago used
to keep his wife awake at night expounding to her the iniquities and
inequalities of a single standard. It is safer to underestimate than to
overestimate the endurance and patience of your audience.

52. The Refutation. The place of the refutation will, as we have
seen in the chapter on planning (see p. 82), vary greatly with the
argument and with the audience. Its purpose is to put out of the way as
effectively as possible the main points urged by the other side. In an
argument of fact this is done both by exposing weak places in the
reasoning and by throwing doubt on the facts cited, either through proof
that they are contradicted by better evidence, or that the evidence
brought forward to establish them is shaky or inconclusive. In an
argument of policy the points on the other side are met either by
throwing doubt on the facts on which they rest, or by showing that the
points themselves have not coer