Practical English Composition: Book II.: For the Second Year of the High School
John Stuart Mill · en
[13] Reprinted by permission of _The Outlook_.
IV. Analysis
Observe the framework. Paragraph 1 states the point to be proved.
Paragraphs 2-5 are composed of examples, arranged thus:
1. The War of 1871.
2. The War of 1905.
3. The Present War.
(a) France.
(b) England.
(c) Germany.
The order, in other words, is at once the order of chronology and that
of climax, which combine to make the facts easy to remember. Paragraph 6
summarizes the argument and clinches it by a sharp antithesis.
V. Exercises
1. Using a similar framework, write an editorial disproving by
examples the point made by the writer of the model.
2. Write an editorial proving by examples any proposition which you
believe to be true and in which you are deeply interested.
3. Prove or disprove by example any one of the following
propositions:
(a) Left-hand batters are better than right-hand batters.
(b) Germans are better ball-players than Irishmen.
(c) Frenchmen cannot play ball.
(d) Men write better than women.
(e) Asphalt pavements are more durable than brick pavements.
(f) Germany has contributed more to the world's culture than
England.
(g) College graduates are more successful as statesmen than are
self-made men.
(h) Very tall men have ever very empty heads.
(i) Athletes usually succeed well in after life.
(j) Dr. Samuel Johnson was a great wit. (For Johnson, substitute,
if you wish, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Francis
Bacon, Samuel Butler, Alexander Pope, Charles Lamb, Sidney
Smith, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, or Mark
Twain.)
In the model there are twenty-two examples. In your composition there
must be at least ten.
VI. Model II
WHAT DOES A MAN PRODUCE?
Among the banners of the unemployed in New York when they came
in collision with the police was one reading, "We Want All We
Produce."
There is a common impression among Socialistic workmen,
encouraged by some of the new-fangled college professors, that
the weaver produces all the cloth that comes off the loom he
tends, and he is robbed if his wages are only a part of the
value of the cloth. But he is only one of a long line of
producers, each of whom has to get some of the money for which
that cloth is sold.