s, ran his
train on a certain siding, which resulted in the death of thirty or forty
people. The engineer of a mill, at Rochester, N.Y., thought the engine
would stand a higher pressure than the safety valve indicated, so he tied
a few bricks to the valve to hold it down; result--four workmen killed, a
number wounded, and a mill blown to pieces. The _City of Columbus_, an iron
vessel fitted out with all the means of preservation and escape in use on
shipboard, was wrecked on the best-known portion of the Atlantic coast, on
a moonlight night, at the cost of one hundred lives, because the officer
in command took it into his head to save a few ship-lengths in distance by
hugging the shore, in direct disobedience to the captain's parting orders.
The best-ventilated mine in Colorado was turned into a death trap for half
a hundred miners because one of the number entered with a lighted lamp the
gallery he had been warned against. Nobody survived to explain the
explosion of the dynamite-cartridge factory in Pennsylvania, but as that
type of disaster almost always is due to heedlessness, it is probable that
this instance is not an exception to the rule.

--Wolstan Dixey: _Mind Your Business_.

EXERCISES

_A._ Which sentences make the general statements, and which furnish
specific instances, in the following paragraphs?

My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers who came down
from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls. A short, ruddy,
middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and
evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady,
afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the
safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for
the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy.
Another traveler, a native American, and no rare character among us,
produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust
Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new
idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a
printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of
which, by means of an ever pointed pencil, the cataract was made
to thunder. In a little talk which we had together, he awarded his
approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island,
observing that it should have been thrown farther to th