ossibly a fortnight, passed in silent struggle, then the
distracted teacher of expression went to the president of the school
with these questions: "Of what avail are one hundred and twenty-five
rules for the use of words when these children have less than that
number of words to use, and no desire to acquire more? Could you make
teachers of these normal students by giving a hundred and more laws for
the governing of pupils and the imparting of the material of knowledge,
if you furnished neither pupils nor material upon which to test the
laws?" "Certainly not!" was the restful reply of one of the wisest of
the educators I have known. "May I lay aside the text-book and read with
these students in English for a little?" "You may teach them to write
English in any way you can!"

The next day the class in composition was discovered eagerly reading
Tennyson's _Holy Grail_, stopping to note this felicitous phrase, that
happy choice of words, the pertinent personnel of a sentence or
paragraph. The first examination of the term consisted in a series of
single questions, written on separate slips of paper and laid face down
on the teacher's desk. Each student took one of these slips which read,
"Tell in your own words the story of _The Coming of Arthur_, the _Holy
Grail_, _Lancelot and Elaine_ or _Guinevere_," as the chance of the
chooser might allot a given idyl. The experiment was a success. The
president was satisfied with the papers in English composition. Each
student had had "something to say" and had said it. Each student had
words at his command little dreamed of in his vocabulary before the
meeting with the Knights of the Round Table.

The first step toward a mastery of Verbal Expression had been
successfully taken! The consciousness of need--the need of a
vocabulary--had been awakened. The desire to supply that need--to
acquire a vocabulary--had been aroused. A way to acquire a vocabulary
had been made manifest. Out of such consciousness alone is born the
willingness to work upon which progress in the mastery of any art
depends. To the teacher of expression it seemed no more advisable now
than it had seemed before, to ask the students to learn either "by
heart" or by number the one hundred and twenty-five rules of technique.
But the great laws governing the use of a vocabulary she now found her
students eager to study, to understand, and to apply. She found her
class willing to enter upon the drudgery which a mastery