Write an account of an experience of your own watching a parade or the passing of a band.

Write an account of some important event or day in your own life. Write a description of this picture.

44. POSTAL CARDS.

EXERCISE. Cut a slip of heavy paper or cardboard 3 by 51 inches. This represents a United States postal card. On one side indicate the place for the stamp near the upper right corner. On this side address your card to Joseph Howe Company, Penn Avenue and Fifth Street, Columbus, O. Use proper abbreviations, and punctuate and capitalize correctly. On the other side, writing the long way of the card, ask this firm to send you a copy of their latest catalogue. Will it be necessary on a postal card to include that part of the perfect letter form called the Address? Why your answer? Will it be correct to omit any other parts of the perfect letter form?

Write another postal card, this time asking the postmaster at Clarion, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, to forward to you at your home address any letters for you that may be sent to his office. In addressing the card, in place of the name use the words "Post Master."

45. WORDS TO WATCH.

Lend is always a verb, and should never be used as a noun.
Loan is usually a noun, and should rarely be used as a verb.

Exercises.

Ex. I. Insert the proper word:

Will you

not as a gift.

me your knife? He received the watch as a me a dollar.

Ex. II. In sentences, use each of these words correctly three times.

Ex. III. Turn to Composition 28, page 254, and note again the suggestions made there for giving a narrative life and reality. write an account of some recent trip you have taken.

Then

46. THE HEROISM OF JOHN BINNS.

Thirteen years have passed since, but it is all to me as if it had happened yesterday- the clanging of the fire bells, the hoarse shouts of the firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces with the fire glow upon it; and up there, against the background of black smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow ledge, so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could

ever come.

But even then it was coming.

Up from the street, while the crew of the truck company were laboring with the heavy extension ladder that at its longest stretch was many feet too short, crept four men upon long, slender poles with cross-bars, iron-hooked at the end. Standing in one window they reached up and thrust the hook through the next one above, then mounted a story higher. Again the crash of glass, and again the dizzy ascent. Straight up the wall they crept, looking like human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting, reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from the boy. And now the iron hook fell at his feet, and the fireman stood upon the step with the rescued lad in his arms, just as the pent-up flame burst lurid from the attic window, reaching with impotent fury for its prey. The next moment they were safe upon the great ladder waiting to receive them below.

Then such a shout went up! Men fell on each other's necks and cried and laughed at once. Strangers slapped one another on the back with glistening faces, shook hands, and behaved generally like men gone suddenly mad. Women wept in the street. The driver of a car stalled in the crowd, who had stood through it all speechless, clutching the reins, whipped his horses into a gallop and drove away, yelling like a Comanche, to relieve his feelings. The boy and his rescuer were carried across the street without any one knowing how.

TWO. 18.

Policemen forgot their dignity and shouted with the rest. Fire, peril. terror, and loss were alike forgotten in the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin.

Fireman John Binns was made captain of his crew, and the Bennett medal was pinned on his coat on the next parade day. —Jacob A. Riis in "Heroes who Fight Fire" in "The Century" for February, 1898. Used by permission of The Century Company.

Exercises.

Ex. I. Keeping in mind that a composition should consist of an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion, tell what the first paragraph is designed to do. What general picture does it present? What details, or items, are mentioned to suggest that picture? With eyes closed try to see the picture clearly. How many paragraphs make up the middle of the composition? What does the short one do? What does the third paragraph picture? The first time you read this paragraph what effect did it have on you? How did it make you feel? What details are given to produce this effect? What is pictured in the fourth paragraph? What different things are mentioned as being done by the men and women? Why are these things done? What feeling do you have as you read what the different persons did? What is done by the last paragraph? Does each paragraph deal with one main thought or with several?

From the study of this selection draw a principle of composition relative to the power of details in suggesting pictures and in arousing feeling.

Ex. II. Write a brief account of an experience you have had with a fire-when your home was on fire or was likely to be, when a neighbor's house burned, when a great fire occurred in the city, when you saw the engines and trucks going to a fire, when the fire-drill took place at your school.

Be as simple and as clear as possible. Think before you write, and pick out the details that will be most effective in suggesting the pictures and the experiences. Do not forget the value of details of sound and of smell.

Or write of an experience in connection with a flood.

If your own experience seems barren, have your mother or grandmother tell you of an experience she has had or knows of, and write a simple account of it.

47. THE COMMA.

Punctuation marks are used in order that the reader may get the writer's meaning with the least possible effort. A punctuation mark should never be used unless it adds. to clearness.

The fact that the comma is frequently used, even by educated persons, when it is neither necessary nor helpful, suggests the following rule for punctuation :

Never use a comma unless its presence will make the meaning clearer.

It has been shown in 40, Ex. I., p. 268, that words and expressions used in addressing a person are set off by a comma or by commas. The rule is this:

Set off with a comma or with commas every word or expression naming a person addressed (Gr. 6, p. 15); as, John, hand me the book. Hand me the book, my little lad. Will you, dear boy, hand me the book?

Exercise.

Insert the necessary commas: Why Willie did you do that? Be careful my beloved hearers not to think lightly of what he says. Yes sir I will go. No ma'am your pleading will do no good. Listen father I beseech you. Boast not my dear friends of the morrow. Ladies and gentlemen I wish to introduce Mr. Noman. Why sir I did it. Yes sir I will pay for it. He said, "Father I wish to ask you a question." Will you tell me ma'am where Mr. James lives? Well sir that is the end of it. How long will you be gone mother?

48. THE COMMA (Continued).

I like Irving's life of Goldsmith a great deal better than the more authoritative life by Forster, and I think there is a deeper and sweeter sense of Goldsmith in it. W. D. Howells.

In the above sentence put a period in place of the comma after