ntrained student
that writing is something done with paper and ink. It is, on the
contrary, something which is done with brains; it is less putting
things on paper than it is thinking things out in the mind.

Before leaving the illustration of a theme on the influence of
college life we may glance a moment more at the difficulty, even
with so simple a subject, of attaining perfect clarity of thinking.
One of the first things which must be determined is the essential
difference of life in a college from ordinary existence. If the
subject be given out to a class of students half the themes handed
in will begin with a remark upon the great change which comes to a
boy who finds himself for the first time freed from the restraints
of home. The moment this idea is presented to the mind it is to be
looked at, not as something with which to fill so much paper, but
as a stepping-stone toward ideas beyond. It is necessary, for
instance, to determine the distinctions between freedom at college
and freedom elsewhere; to decide wherein lie the differences in
the conditions which surround a boy in a university and one who
escapes from the restrictions of home by going away to live in a
city or in a country village, on shipboard or in the army. To be of
value, every thought in an exposition must have been tested by a
comparison with allied ideas as wide and as exhaustive as the
thinker is equal to making.

To learn to think is, after all, the prime essential in
exposition-writing, and the beginning of thought is the realization
of what is already known. The student who patiently examines his
views on the subject of which he is to write, who determines to
discover exactly how much he knows and what is the relative
importance of each of his opinions, is likely soon to come to find
that he is considering the theme chosen not only deeply, but with
tangible results. The value of any exposition, to sum the matter up
in a word, rests primarily and chiefly on the thoroughness of the
thought which produces it.--ARLO BATES.[3]

[3] This selection from Prof. Arlo Bates's _Talks on Writing
English_ is printed by permission of the author and his publishers,
Houghton Mifflin Company.

The _Idylls of the King_ has been called a quasi-epic. Departing
from the conve