The Century Vocabulary Builder Part 7

7. Argue one side or the other, or the two successively, of queries listed in Exercise 1 in EXERCISE - Abstract.

8. Give a narrative of:

The earning of your first dollar How somebody met his match An amusing incident An anxious moment A surprise The touchdown That fatal seventh inning How you got the position Why you missed the train When you were lost Your first trip on the railroad (a motor boat, a merry-go-round, snowshoes, a burro) A mishap How Jenkins skated Your life until the present (a summary) Something you have heard your father tell What happened to your uncle Your partner's (chum's) escapade Meeting an old friend Meeting a bore A conversation you have overheard When Myrtle eavesdropped When the girls didn't know Algy was in the parlor A public happening that interests you An incident you have read in the papers An incident from your favorite novel Backward Ben at the party Something that happened to you today.

9. Describe ...

For the mood or general "atmosphere":

Anything you deem suitable in Activity 8 in EXERCISE - Connotation.

An old, deserted house Your birthplace as you saw it in manhood The view from an eminence A city as seen from a roof garden by night Your mother's Bible A barnyard scene The lonely old negro at the supper table A new immigrant gazing out upon the ocean he has crossed The downtown section at closing hour A scene of quietude A scene of bustle and confusion A richly colored scene A scene of dejection A scene of wild enthusiasm A scene of dulness or stagnation.

With attention to homely detail:

The old living-room My aunt's dresses Barker's riding-horse The business street of the village A cabin in the mountains The office of a man approaching bankruptcy The Potters' backyard The second-hand store The ugliest man.

For general accuracy and vividness:

The organ-grinder The signs of an approaching storm The arrival of the train Mail-time at the village post office The crowd at the auction The old fis.h.i.+ng-boat A country fair (or a circus) The inside of a theater (or a church) The funeral procession The political rally The choir.

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For convenience, we have heretofore a.s.sumed that ideas and emotions, together with such expression of them as shall be in itself adequate and faithful, comprise the sole elements that have to be reckoned with in the use of words in combination. But as you go out into life you will find that these things, however complete they may seem, are not in practice sufficient. Another factor--the human--must have its place in our equation. You do not speak or write in a vacuum. Your object, your ultimate object at least, in building up your vocabulary is to address men and women; and among men and women the varieties of training, of stations, of outlooks, of sentiments, of prejudices, of caprices are infinite. To gain an unbiased hearing you must take persistent cognizance of flesh and blood.

In adapting discourse to audience you must have a supple and attentive mind and an impressionable and swiftly responsive temperament as well as a wide, accurate, and flexible vocabulary. Unless you are a fool, a zealot, or an incorrigible adventurer, you will not broach a subject at all to which your hearers feel absolute indifference or hostility. Normally you should pick a subject capable of interesting them. In presenting it you should pay heed to both your matter and your manner. You should emphasize for your listeners those aspects of the subject which they will most respond to or most need to hear, whether or not the phases be such as you would emphasize with other auditors. You should also speak in the fas.h.i.+on you deem most effective with them, whether or not it be one to which your own natural instincts prompt you.

Let us say you are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad--in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. You must speak in one way to employers, in another to employees, possibly in a third to men thrown out of jobs, possibly in a fourth to the general public. Let us say you are discussing education, or literature, or social tendencies, or mechanical principles or processes, or some great enterprise or movement. You must speak in one way to cultivated hearers and in another to men in the street, and if you are a specialist addressing specialists, you will cut the garment of your discourse to their particular measure.

The same principle holds regardless of whether you expound, a.n.a.lyze, argue, recount, or describe. You must always keep a finger on the mental or emotional pulse of those whom you address. But your problem varies slightly with the form of discourse you adopt. In explanation, a.n.a.lysis, and argument the chief barriers you encounter are likely to be those of the mind; you must make due allowance for the intellectual limitations of your auditors, though many who have capacity enough may for some cause or other be unreceptive to ideas. In description you must reckon with the imaginative faculty, with the possibility that your hearers cannot visualize what you tell them--and you must make your words brief. In narration you must vivify emotional torpor; but lest in your efforts to inveigle boredom you yourself should induce it, you must have a wary eye for signals of distress.

EXERCISE - Adapting

1. Explain to (a) a rich man, (b) a poor man the blessings of poverty.

2. Discuss before (a) farmers, (b) merchants the idea that farmers (merchants) make a great deal of money.

3. Explain to (a) the initiate, (b) the uninitiate some piece of mechanism, or some phase of a human activity or interest, which you know at first hand and regarding which technical (or at least not generally understood) terms are employed. (The exact subject depends, of course, upon your own observation or experience; you are sure to be familiar with something that most people know hazily, if at all. Bank clerk, chess player, bridge player, stenographer, journalist, truck driver, backwoods-man, mechanic--all have special knowledge of one kind or another and can use the particular terms it calls for.)

4. Explain to (a) a supporter of the winning team, (b) a supporter of the losing team why the baseball game came out as it did.

5. Discuss before (a) a Democratic, (b) a Republican audience your reasons for voting the Democratic (Republican) ticket in the coming election.

6. Explain to (a) your own family, (b) the man who can lend you the money, why you wish to mortgage your house (any piece of property).

7. Explain to the owner of an ill-conducted business why he should sell it, and to a shrewd business man why he should buy it.

8. Discuss before (a) old men, (b) young men, (c) women the desirability of men's giving up their seats in street cars to women. (Also modify the question by requiring only young men to give up their seats, and then only to old people of either s.e.x, to sick people, or to people with children in their arms.)

9. Explain the necessity of restricting immigration to (a) prospective immigrants, (b) immigrants just granted admission to the country, (c) persons just refused admission, (d) exploiters of cheap labor, (e) ordinary citizens.

10. Discuss the taking out of a life insurance policy with (a) a man not interested, (b) a man interested but uncertain what a policy is like, (c) a man interested and informed but doubtful whether he can spare the money, (d) the man's wife (his prospective beneficiary), whose desires will have weight with him.

11. Discuss the necessity of a reduction in wages with (a) unscrupulous employers, (b) kind-hearted employers, (c) the employees.

12. Advocate higher public school taxes before (a) men with children, (b) men without children.

13. Advocate a further regulation of the speed of automobiles before (a) automobile-owners, (b) non-owners.

14. Urge advocacy of some reform upon (a) a clergyman, (b) a candidate for office.

15. Combat before (a) advertisers, (b) a public audience, (c) a lawmaking body, the defacement of landscapes by advertising billboards.

16. Describe life in the slums before (a) a rural audience, (b) charitable persons, (c) rich people in the cities who know little of conditions among the poor.

17. Describe the typical evening of a spendthrift in a city to (a) a poor man, (b) a miser, (c) the spendthrift's mother, (d) his employer, (e) a detective who suspects him of theft.

18. Describe the city of Was.h.i.+ngton (any other city) to (a) a countryman, (b) a traveler who has not visited this particular city. (If it is Was.h.i.+ngton you describe, describe it also for children in whom you wish to inculcate patriotism.)

19. Give (a) a youngster, (b) an experienced angler an account of your fis.h.i.+ng trip.

20. Recount for (a) a baseball fan, (b) a girl who has never seen a game, the occurrences of the second half of the ninth inning.

21. Describe a fight for (a) your friends, (b) a jury.

22. Narrate for (a) children, (b) an audience of adults some historical event.

23. Give (a) your partner, (b) a reporter an account of a business transaction you have just completed.

24. Narrate an escapade for (a) your father, (b) your cronies in response to a toast at a banquet with them.

IV

INDIVIDUAL WORDS: AS VERBAL CELIBATES

Thus far we have studied words as grouped together into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole compositions. We must now enter upon a new phase of our efforts to extend our vocabulary. We must study words as individual ent.i.ties.

You may think the order of our study should be reversed. No great harm would result if it were. The learning of individual words and the combining of them into sentences are parallel rather than successive processes. In our babyhood we do not acc.u.mulate a large stock of terms before we frame phrases and clauses. And our attainment of the power of continuous iteration does not check our inroads among individual words. We do the two things simultaneously, each contributing to our success with the other. There are plenty of a.n.a.logies for this procedure. A good baseball player, for instance, tirelessly studies both the minutiae of his technique (as how to hold a bat, how to stand at the plate) and the big combinations and possibilities of the game. A good musician keeps unremitting command over every possible touch of each key and at the same time seeks sweeping mastery over vast and complex harmonies. So we, if we would have the obedience of our vocabularies, dare not lag into desultory attention to either words when disjoined or words as potentially combined into the larger units of thought and feeling.

We might therefore consider either the individuals first or the groups first. But the majority of speakers and writers pay more heed to rough general substance than to separate instruments and items. Hence we have thought best to begin where most work is going on already--with words in combination.

As you turn from the groups to the individuals, you must understand that your labors will be onerous and detailed. You must not a.s.sume that by nature all words are much alike, any more than you a.s.sume that all men are much alike. Of course the similarities are many and striking, and the fundamental fact is that a word is a word as a man is a man. But you will be no adept in handling either the one or the other until your knowledge goes much farther than this. Let us glance first at the human variations.

Each man has his own business, and conducts it in his own way--a way never absolutely matched with that of any other mortal being. All this you may see. But besides the man's visible employment, he may be connected in devious fas.h.i.+ons with a score of enterprises the public knows nothing about. Furthermore he leads a private life (again not precisely corresponding to that of any other), has his hobbies and aversions, is stamped with a character, a temperament of his own. In short, though in thousands of respects he is like his fellows, he has after all no human counterpart; he is a distinct, individual self. To know him, to use him, to count upon his service in whatsoever contingency it might bestead you, you must deem him something more than a member of the great human family.

You must cultivate him personally, cultivate him without weariness or stint, and undergo inconvenience in so doing.