Composition-Rhetoric Part 30

2. Mrs. Homer A. Payne invites Miss Eva Milton to dine with her next week Thursday at eight o'clock. Write out a formal invitation.

3. Write regrets to Mrs. Payne's invitation.

4. Write an acceptance of the same invitation.

5. Write a formal invitation to a party to be given in honor of your guest, Miss Grace Mason.

+106. Informal Notes.+--Informal invitations and replies may contain the same subject-matter as formal invitations and replies. The only difference is in the form in which they are written. The informal invitation is in form similar to a letter except that the same exactness about the heading is not required. Sometimes the heading is written and sometimes it is omitted entirely. The address of the one sending the invitation and the date may be written below the body of the note to the left of the signature. The reply to an informal invitation should always be informal, but the date and hour should be repeated as in replies to formal invitations.

A great many informal notes not included in invitations and replies are constantly written. These are simply brief letters of friends.h.i.+p, and the purposes for which they are written are exceedingly varied. When we write congratulations or words of condolence, when we introduce one friend to another, when we thank some one for a gift, and when we give words of advice, and in many other instances, we make use of informal notes. They should be simple, personal, and as a rule confined to but one subject.

Notice the following examples of informal notes:--

(1) _________________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Mrs. Lathrop, | | | | Will you not give us the pleasure of your company | | at dinner, on next Friday evening at seven o'clock? Miss Todd | | of Philadelphia is visiting us, and we wish our friends to meet | | her. | | | | Very sincerely yours, | | Ethel M. Trainor. | | 840 Forest Avenue, | | Dec. 5, 1905. | | |

(2) _________________________________________________________________ | | | Dec. 6, 1905. | | | | My dear Mrs. Trainor, | | | | I sincerely regret that I cannot accept your invitation | | to dinner next Friday evening, for I have made a previous | | engagement which it will be impossible for me to break. | | | | Yours most sincerely, | | Emma Lathrop. | | |

(3) _________________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Blanche, | | | | Mr. Gilmore and I are planning for a little party | | Thursday evening of this week. I hope you have no other | | engagement for that evening, as we shall be pleased to have | | you with us. | | Very cordially yours, | | Margaret Gilmore. | | |

(4) ______________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Margaret, | | | | Fortunately I have no other engagement for this | | week Thursday evening, and I shall be delighted to spend an | | evening with you and your friends. | | | | Very sincerely yours, | | Blanche A. Church. | | |

EXERCISE

Write the following informal notes:--

1. Write to a friend, asking him or her to lend you a book.

2. Write an invitation to an informal trolley, tennis, or golf party.

3. Write the reply.

4. Invite one of your friends to spend his or her vacation with you.

5. Write a note to your sister, asking her to send you your theme that you left at home this morning.

6. Mrs. Edgar A. Snow invites Miss Mabel Minard to dine with her. Write out the invitation.

7. Write the acceptance.

VII. POETRY

[Footnote: _To the Teacher._--Since the expression of ideas in metrical form is seldom the one best suited to the conditions of modern life, it has not seemed desirable to continue the themes throughout this chapter.

The study of this chapter, with suitable ill.u.s.trations from the poems to which the pupils have access, may serve to aid them in their appreciation of poetry. This appreciation of poetry will be increased if the pupils attempt some constructive work. It is recommended, therefore, that one or more of the simpler kinds of metrical composition be tried. For example, one or two good ballads may be read and the pupils asked to write similar ones. Some pupils may be able to write blank verse.]

+107. Purpose of Poetry.+--All writing aims to give information or to furnish entertainment (Section 54). Often the same theme may both inform and entertain, though one of these purposes may be more prominent than the other. Prose may merely entertain, or it may so distinctly attempt to set forth ideas clearly that the giving of pleasure is entirely neglected. In poetry the entertainment side is never thus subordinated. Poetry always aims to please by the presentation of that which is beautiful. All real poetry produces an aesthetic effect by appealing to our aesthetic sense; that is, to our love of the beautiful.

In making this appeal to our love of the beautiful, poetry depends both upon the ideas it contains and upon the forms it uses. Like prose, it may increase its aesthetic effect by appropriate phrasing, effective arrangement, and subtle suggestiveness, but it also makes use of certain devices of language such as rhythm, rhyme, etc., which, though they may occur in writings that would be cla.s.sed as prose, are characteristic of poetry. Much depends upon the ideas that poetry contains; for mere nonsense, though in perfect rhyme and rhythm, is not poetry. But it is not the idea alone which makes a poem beautiful; it is the form as well. The merely trivial cannot be made beautiful by giving it poetical form, but there are many poems containing ideas of small importance which please us because of the perfection of form. We enjoy them as we do the singing of the birds or the murmuring of the brooks. In fact, poetry is inseparable from its characteristic forms. To sort out, re-arrange, and paraphrase into second-cla.s.s prose the ideas which a poem contains is a profitless and harmful exercise, because it emphasizes the intellectual side of a work which was created for the purpose of appealing to our aesthetic sense.

+108. Rhythm.+--There are several forms characteristic of poetry, by the use of which its beauty and effectiveness are enhanced. Of these, rhythm is the most prominent one, without which no poetry is possible. In its widest sense, rhythm indicates a regular succession of motions, impulses, sounds, accents, etc., producing an agreeable effect. Rhythm in poetry consists of the recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables in regular succession. In poetry, care must be taken to make the accented syllable of a word come at the place where the rhythm demands an accent. The regular recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables produces a harmony which appeals to our aesthetic sense and thus enhances for us the beauty of poetry. Read the following selections so as to show the rhythm:--

1.

We were crowded in the cabin; Not a soul would dare to speak; It was midnight on the waters And a storm was on the deep.

--James T. Fields.

2.

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

--Tennyson.

3.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor

--Poe.

4.

Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.

--Tennyson.

5.

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage.

--Lovelace.

6.