Entry

“ Now there are three noble figgers at the entrance that you can't forgit. Inspiration standin' up above the main entrance is jest where she should be. Inspiration, breath of the Most High breathed into some of His children below anon or oftener, and then on each side is Truth and Nature. ”

“ But when any class of complex objects becomes the subject of conversation, of which I have seen many individuals, as a castle or an army, some property or circumstance belonging to it is peculiarly alluded to ”

“ In our profession, when travellers have caught, let us suppose, ten subscribers to the ‘Children’s Journal,’ they say, ‘I’ve got ten Children,’ just as I say when I get ten subscriptions to a newspaper called the ‘Movement,’ ‘I’ve got ten Movements.’ Now don’t you see? ”

“ He suddenly sprang up and went over to my study-table—sat straight down there as if to write me my passport. Then it was—at the mere sight of his back, which was turned to me—that I felt the spell work. I simply sat and watched him with the queerest, deepest, sweetest sense in the world—the sense of an ache that had stopped. ”

“ Sometimes, in a scene which employs the ‘Let us in!’ formula, or on other ground looks like a threshold scene, we are suddenly pulled up either by a suggestion of the host that we are ‘in’ his house or under his roof, or by an indication that persons outside are to be brought ‘in’. ”

“ A carved book-rest should hold the dictionary in place close to the working-chair, and a revolving case within arm’s reach should bring to it desired works of reference and such especially treasured volumes from which ideas may be collected—another name for inspiration. ”

“ Let me urge here the advantage of a complete collection, or one as nearly complete as the industry of the collectors would allow, of all the notices in our literature, which mark, and would serve as dates for, the first incoming of new words into the language. These notices are of the most various kinds. Sometimes they are protests and remonstrances, as that just quoted, against a new word’s introduction; sometimes they are gratulations at the same; while many hold themselves neuter as to approval or disapproval, and merely state, or allow us to gather, the fact of a word’s recent appearance. ”

“ There were times when all the wires in the country seemed to start from the little hole-and-corner where she plied for a livelihood, and where, in the shuffle of feet, the flutter of 'forms,' the straying of stamps and the ring of change over the counter, the people she had fallen into the habit of remembering and fitting together with others, and of having her theories and interpretations of, kept up before her their long procession and rotation. ”

“ But there are two sorts of 'listing.' There is the listing which is the yielding to the mob of ignoble passions and clamant desires of the animal nature within us, and there is the 'listing' which is obeying the impulses of a higher will, that has been blended with ours. ”

“ The observations which obtain in the presentation and acceptance of a material object—as a book, a silver tea set, a medal, an art gallery—apply just as well to the bestowal and acceptance of an honor, such as a degree from a university, an office, an appointment as head of a committee or as foreign representative, or membership in a society. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. One path of Enterprise belongs distinctly to modern adventurers—the search after interesting remains of antiquity, and investigation of their present actual condition. Such enterprises of discovery have often their source in a love of Art, which can only exist in the most cultivated minds. ”

“ All literature, then, may be separated into five classes,—narration, description, exposition, argument, and persuasion.
Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look. Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances. Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon a proposition. Exposition explains; argument 4 convinces; persuasion arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the five forms of discourse. ”

“ If we could learn to treat English people as they treat us in the matter of introductions, it would be a great advance. The English regard a letter of introduction as a sacred institution and an obligation which cannot be disregarded. ”

“ Accordingly, the first promoters of the plan endeavoured, in the invitations which they circulated, to assemble personages of distinction, who were universally considered and acknowledged as friendly to the interests of literature, and men of literary character, whose studies and productions had conciliated the general esteem. ”

“ Body of the Story.—In writing the body of the story, the first thing to strive for is proper coherence with the lead. This caution is worth particular heed when the lead contains a single-sentence quotation, an indirect question, or a paragraph of direct statement from somewhere in the body of the speech. Few things are more incongruous in a story than a clever epigrammatic lead and a succession of quoted statements following, none of which exhibits a definite bearing on the lead. ”

“ The provision, then, which we have here made is no other than Human Nature. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended, because I have named but one article. ”

“ I here use ‘scene’ in the sense of a continuous section of action in an unchanged locality, and do not follow either the usage of the playwrights, which tends to be based upon the neo-classical principle that the entrance or exit of a speaker of importance constitutes a fresh scene, or the divisions of the editors, who often assume a change of locality where none has taken place ”

“ Antonyms: ENTRANCE. Synonyms:
Entrance, the act of entering, refers merely to the fact of passing from without to within some enclosure; admission and admittance refer to entering by or with some one's consent, or at least to opportunity afforded by some one's act or neglect. We may effect or force an entrance, but not admittance or admission; those we gain, procure, obtain, secure, win. Admittance refers to place, admission refers also to position, privilege, favor, friendship, etc. An intruder may gain admittance to the hall of a society who would not be allowed admission to its membership. ”

“ These great axioms of modern life passed silently from the special homes of religious employment to those of civil; from the cloisters and cells of men who, when they were not engaged in worship, were engaged in field-work or book-work,--clearing the forest, extending cultivation, multiplying manuscripts--to the guild of the craftsman, the shop of the trader, the study of the scholar. ”

“ It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been a traveller himself, that with study and reflection hereupon he may be able to determine his own place and rank in the catalogue;—it will be one step towards knowing himself ”

“ I now turn to the record of our Society, and when we look at the length of some ten feet which the bound volumes take up on the bookshelf we cannot but feel gratified at the amount which has been accomplished during the past years. ”

“ Admission into this society is an affair of the most strict and ceremonious proof, as to the sixteen quarterings in the arms of the candidate, each of which must be unblemished by any plebeian symptoms. ”

“ For, if it be not a misnomer, we are prompted to say that "Enquire Within" is peopled with hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, who have approved of the plan of the work, and contributed something to its store of useful information. There they are, waiting to be questioned, and ready to reply. Within each page some one lives to answer for the correctness of the information imparted, just as certainly as where, in the window of a dwelling, you see a paper directing you to "Enquire Within," some one is there to answer you. ”

“ These three classes are the principals, the agents, and the operatives. The principals are in the thought of ends. They have the direction, decide what shall be done, and set the others to doing it. Thus they represent the head, and afford an illustration of the third or highest heaven whose denizens are in ends, or in the thought of ends. The agents are in the thought of means or causes. They know how the intention of the principals is to be executed. ”

“ Facility in writing familiar letters may be increased by the habit of mentally recording, before inditing them, as opportunity affords material, such incidents of travel, items of personal interest, or gossiping intelligence, etc., as may be thought best suited to the tastes of your correspondents. ”

“ Lord, in which the objects, or agents, of one class are, without any formal notice, employed in the place of the persons or things of which the passages in which they occur treat; and they are exhibited either as exerting, or as subjected to an agency proper to their nature, in order to represent by analogy, the agency which those persons are to exert, or of which those things are to be the subjects. ”

“ And when the deed is done, the scenery has been libelled. Our eyes behold the photograph, and go through another process of selection. In short, whatever they look upon, men and women are selecting ceaselessly. ”

“ The chief stages, no doubt, were house-building, agriculture, and, above all, speech. Every single word has been the invention of a single man, as, indeed, we still see, if we leave out of consideration the merely technical terms. ”

“ Still, the whole has that look of dignity which always accompanies high finish; and the entrance, far from being commonplace, because it has nothing quaint or surprising about it, has a certain ample serenity which it is rare to find. ”

“ Two Kinds of Leads.—The story, technically, is [Pg 69] [A] made up of two parts—the lead and the body. The lead is easily the more important. If a reporter can handle successfully this part of the story, he will have little trouble in writing the whole. The lead is the first sentence or the first group of sentences in the story and is of two kinds, the summarizing lead and what may be called the informal lead. The summarizing lead gives in interesting, concise language the gist of the story. ”

“ The fixed disposition and modes of action, or in a word, the character, of the true Scholar, when contemplated from the highest point of view, can, properly speaking, only be described, not by any means enacted or imposed. ”

“ Skill in division is valuable not only as a method of exposition but it is linked closely with an effective method of proving to be explained in the next chapter—the method of residues. Can you recall any extracts given in this book in which some form of division is used? Is this form of material likely to be more important in preparation or in the finished speech? Explain your opinion—in other words, present a specimen of exposition.
Definition. One of the simplest ways of explaining is to define a term. Dictionary definitions are familiar to everyone. ”

“ With a very carefully chosen nucleus and some little elaboration in the admission of new members—whose works might be submitted to the report of a critical jury—such a Guild might be made fairly representative of literary capacity. ”

“ Of one or other, or both of these kinds, are, I conceive, all that vast pile of books which pass under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs, histories, &c., some of which a single traveller sends into the world in many volumes, and others are, by judicious booksellers, collected into vast bodies in folio, and inscribed with their own names, as if they were indeed their own travels: thus unjustly attributing to themselves the merit of others. ”

“ If the address is written at the close of the letter, the introductory words should commence on a line with the body of the letter, that is, with the marginal line; as,—
Dear Manning,—
Rest you merry in your own opinion. Opinion is a species of property; and though I am always desirous to share with my friend to a certain extent, I shall ever like to keep some tenets, and some property, properly my own. ”

“ If then a reader asks for a work received before 1875 the attendant guesses in which 'fonds' it is and what subject it treats of; if he does not find it where he looks first he tries some other division. ”

“ The contributions to The Offering were on a great variety of subjects. There were allegories, poems, conversations on physiology, astronomy, and other scientific subjects, dissertations on poetry, and on the beauties of nature, didactic [115] pieces on highly moral and religious subjects, translations from French and Latin, stories of factory and other life, sketches of local New England history, and sometimes the chapters of a novel. ”

“ The Course that must be held, in the Election and Admission of a Keeper to his Office, and the manner of delivering the Library-Keys into his Hands, shall be always like to that, which is yearly put in Practice in the Choice of the Proctors. ”

“ A [87] speaker should carefully think over all the possibilities under which his speech will be brought forward, then prepare the best introduction to suit each set.
Spirit of the Introduction. The combination of circumstances and material will determine what we shall call the spirit of the introduction. In what spirit is the introduction treated? There are as many different treatments as there are human feelings and sentiments. The spirit may be serious, informative, dignified, scoffing, argumentative, conversational, startling, humorous, ironic. ”