circumstance. Youth is the noblest of God's gifts.
The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American
people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not
entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And
therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of
Washington--he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached
through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed
passions of riotous youth.--_Conservatism; the Spirit of National
Self-Restraint_, ALBERT BEVERIDGE.
We have noted in our introduction the close analogy which exists between
the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal
expression. Let us not fail to follow this analogy through the various
studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun
our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What
corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?
Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English
composition, called _The Forms of Prose Literature_,[1] discusses these
forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and
the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-titles which
all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of
literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not
find the _exact_ parallel for our study in direct appeal under these
subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of
English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in
interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of
_exposition_, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression
corresponding to the question of _vitality in thinking_, which is our
first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary
study" in composition.
[1] _The Forms of Prose Literature_, courtesy of Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner
says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite
unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it
should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument
must move its reader, we begin to pass from the realm of pure thought,
in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a
necessary preliminary to action. How large
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