In a similar way we may
make our own thoughts clear and definite by attempting to prepare in
advance an outline of a paragraph that we are about to write. Arranging
the material that we have in mind and deciding upon the order in which we
shall present it, will both help us to understand the thought ourselves,
and enable us to present it more effectively to others.
EXERCISES
_A._ Prepare for recitation the following selection from Newcomer's
introduction to Macaulay's _Milton and Addison:_--
There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind that set his work far apart
from other work in the same field,--the faculties of organization and
illustration. He saw things in their right relation and he knew how to
make others see them thus. If he was describing, he never thrust minor
details into the foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got ahead of
his story." The importance of this is not sufficiently recognized. Many
writers do not know what organization means. They do not know that in all
great and successful literary work it is nine tenths of the labor. Yet
consider a moment. History is a very complex thing: divers events may be
simultaneous in their occurrence; or one crisis may be slowly evolving
from many causes in many places. It is no light task to tell these things
one after another and yet leave a unified impression, to take up a dozen
new threads in succession without tangling them and without losing the old
ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion.
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