xercise, (_a_) give several
original examples of compound images, and (_b_) construct brief
descriptions of the scenes imagined. For example, the falling of a
bridge in process of building.

12. Read the following observantly:

The strikers suffered bitter poverty last winter in New York.

Last winter a woman visiting the East Side of New York City saw
another woman coming out of a tenement house wringing her hands.
Upon inquiry the visitor found that a child had fainted in one
of the apartments. She entered, and saw the child ill and in
rags, while the father, a striker, was too poor to provide
medical help. A physician was called and said the child had
fainted from lack of food. The only food in the home was dried
fish. The visitor provided groceries for the family and ordered
the milkman to leave milk for them daily. A month later she
returned. The father of the family knelt down before her, and
calling her an angel said that she had saved their lives, for
the milk she had provided was all the food they had had.

In the two preceding paragraphs we have substantially the same story,
told twice. In the first paragraph we have a fact stated in general
terms. In the second, we have an outline picture of a specific
happening. Now expand this outline into a dramatic recital, drawing
freely upon your imagination.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: _Inquiries into Human Faculty_.]

[Footnote 30: Consult any good rhetoric. An unabridged dictionary will
also be of help.]

[Footnote 31: For a full discussion of the form see, _The Art of
Story-Writing_, by J. Berg Esenwein and Mary D. Chambers.]

CHAPTER XXVII

GROWING A VOCABULARY

Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds;
You can't do that way when you're flying words.
"Careful with fire," is good advice we know,
"Careful with words," is ten times doubly so.
Thoughts unexpressed many sometimes fall back dead;
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.

--WILL CARLETON, _The First Settler's Story_.

The term "vocabulary" has a special as well as a general meaning. True,
_all_ vocabularies are grounded in the everyday words of the language,
out of which grow the special vocabularies, but each such specialized
group possesses a number of words of peculiar value for its own objects.
These words may be used in other vocabularies also, but the fact that
they are suited