Everything in your composition may have a bearing on the subject, your paragraphs may all fit together, but there is still an important question to answer: Will your hearer sift from all the details you give him the one or two points you wish him to note with especial care? In other words, how can you secure emphasis ? We shall proceed to examine two ways.

150. Emphasis Through Position

We have already seen in our study of paragraphs that what we put first attracts attention, and that we may expect people to remember longest what comes last. In other words, emphasis may be secured by position.

Exercises

461. If you were to use the following topics in writing an autobiography, in what order would you arrange them, and why?

Birth

Plans for the future.

Early boyhood. Tastes.

462. If you were to write a paper on your interest in the following games, in what order would you arrange them, and why?

Football. Tennis.

Baseball. Golf.

151. Emphasis Through Proportion

If in the talk on your school you give half of your space to athletics, one naturally infers that you consider athletics of most importance. If you dismiss studies with two or three sentences, it is an equally natural inference that you consider that part of the school life of little interest - at least to your audience. In the long composition, then, as well as in the paragraph, emphasis is a matter of proportion.

Exercises

463. Choose a limited subject with which you are familiar, and which you consider suitable for a three-minute talk. Make the following preparation in writing:

1. Fix the point of view.

2. Fix the order of the topics.

3. Allot to each topic the proportion of time it deserves.

464. After getting all the help you can at home or from your friends, give the talk to the class.

465. Bring to class a plan and use it in writing the story of some novel you have recently read.

466. A pupil just back from a two weeks' vacation in Marble-head wrote an account which was planned as follows:

I. My visit to Marblehead.

II. The historic Marblehead.

1. The War of 1812.

a. Marblehead's defensive work.

b. Marblehead's offensive work. III. The present Marblehead.

1. Population.

a. Size, compared with early times.

b. Kind.

In this theme, II received emphasis by proportion and III emphasis by position. If the pupil were asked to write a letter about Marblehead to a man who is thinking of making his home there, how much of the above plan would he probably use? How much of it would he find useful in talking to a historical society ?

467. Point out the value of making a careful plan even if you do not follow it closely. Explain Mr. J. M. Barrie's account of his experience:

There are writers who can plan out their story beforehand as clearly as though it were a railway journal, and adhere throughout to their original design - they draw up what playwrights call a scenario - but I was never one of those. I spend a great deal of time, indeed,-in looking for the best road in the map, and mark it with red ink; but at the first by-path off my characters go. "Come back," I cry, "you are off the road !" "We prefer this way," they reply. I try bullying. "You are only people in a book," I shout, "and it is my book, and I can do what I like with you, so come back !" But they seldom come, and it ends with my plodding after them.

468. Keeping in mind the suggestions derived from this study of the above plan, make a similar plan for a theme addressed to your class.

469. Revise your plan so that it will be adapted to an entirely different audience.

470. The following outline was written in preparing a theme to show what a pupil had accomplished during his "first year in the high school. If possible,' suggest improvements in it - perhaps in the order of topics.

The First Year In The High School

I. English. 1. Reading. 2. Writing. II. Shop work. 1. Carving. 2. Carpentry.

III. History. 1. Roman.

2. Greek.

3. English.

IV. Drawing.

1. Free-hand.

2. Mechanical. V. Algebra.

1. Factoring.

2. Equations.

471. Make an outline of the school work you have done this year. Arrange your work so as to end with what has interested you most. Indicate carefully the main and the subordinate divisions of the subject.

472. Make an outline of an account of your own life, testing it thoroughly. Write the account.

473. Prepare an outline of a subject on which you would like to write, and for which you need several paragraphs. These subjects may be suggestive:

1. Lincoln's Boyhood.

2. The Preservation of Forests.

3. Ought Football to be played in High Schools ?

4. Rome at her Greatest.

5. Scott's Boyhood.

6. The Italians of To-day.

7. The Autobiography of a Public Carriage.

8. The Persecution of the Jews.

9. A Letter to an Editor on a Timely Subject.

474. After testing the outline as thoroughly as you know how, write the composition. Then apply the same tests to the composition.