The forms in the left-hand columns should be used as verbs only, while the ones in the corresponding right-hand columns should be used as verbals only; thus, She did the work well, She has done the work well.

Exercise 80. Composition

Write sentences using correctly the forms given in the above list. Remember that each word in a verb phrase except the first is a verbal.

Exercise 81. Composition

Write a story in which you use as many as you can of the same forms. Think out a sensible plot. Make the story entertaining.

Exercise 82. Class Discussion

Read the passage given below. It contains many words that you have never used, though you have probably heard most of them or seen them in books, and so have a general idea of their meaning. Get the thought of the passage as well as you can, noticing how these new words are used. Then explain their meaning to yourself as well as you can. After this, talk with other persons about them or look them up in the dictionary. Be ready to take part in a class discussion of the questions following the quotation.

"We Americans are fast learning that it is just as easy and just as inexpensive to have homes that are tastefully decorated and grounds that are well planned as it is to have them fantastic and unattractive. With all our hurry we are somehow finding time to care about what is artistic.

1"We are learning that good taste is a higher and safer standard than a mere fad or fashion. Good taste outlasts any passing fancy and is never freakish. It rests on the laws of harmony, which do not change.

"The house owner's first need is a deep conviction that simplicity and appropriateness are the first essentials of an artistic home.

"These two rules of simplicity and fitness are of high importance when applied to the painting of the house and to planning the bits of landscape around it. The house must appear to fit into the place where it has to stand; and the way it fits depends a great deal upon the way it is painted and the way the grounds about it are laid out. There must be harmony in the color scheme itself, harmony in the plan of the grounds, harmony between the house and its neighbors."2

How are these nouns alike in meaning: fashion, fancy, fad? How are they different? Think of something besides homes to which they may be applied. Try to give definite illustrations of their meaning.

Compare these descriptive words: fantastic, freakish.

When is anything, for example, dress, behavior, or a house, in good taste?

What is a standard?

Compare the words harmony and appropriateness. What synonym for one of them do you find in the above quotation? Should there be any other harmony than the ones mentioned in the last sentence of the quotation?

Composition Topics

1. Describe a real or imaginary home that you should call artistic. Use these heads: (1) size, location, and surroundings of piece of ground on which the house is built; (2) location of house on the lot; (3) size and general style of the house; (4) color scheme; (5) planting, - trees, shrubs, flower borders or beds, vegetable garden. If it is a farmhouse, locate the barn.

1 Notice the use of quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph of a long quotation.

2 Adapted from Painting, Protective and Decorative, issued by the National Lead Company.

2. Describe an ideal barn of some kind or a garage. Show that it is in harmony with its surroundings and well adapted to the purposes for which it is built.

3. Describe a hat that is becoming to a certain type of person, and in harmony with her (or his) costume and the occasions on which it is to be worn.

4. How to introduce persons. Explain how forms may differ according to occasions of introductions and the age and sex of the persons introduced.