promising boy, or aiding a widow to carry on her husband's farm; and these are not done with ostentation. People seem to take their troubles more lightly than they do in Europe, and to be more indulgent to the faults by which troubles are caused. It is a land of hope, and a land of hope is a land of good humor. And they have also, though this is a quality more perceptible in women than in men, a remarkable faculty for enjoyment, a power of drawing more happiness from obvious pleasures, simple and innocent pleasures, than one often finds in overburdened Europe. As generalizations like this are necessarily comparative, I may be asked with whom I am comparing the Americans. With the English, or with some other attempted average of European nations? Primarily I am comparing them with the English, because they are the nearest relatives of the English. But there are other European countries, such as France, Belgium, Spain, in which the sort of cheerful friendliness I have sought to describe is less common than it is in America. Even in Germany and German Austria, simple and kindly as are the masses of the people, the upper classes have that roideur which belongs to countries dominated by an old aristocracy, or a plutocracy trying to imitate aristocratic ways. The upper class in America (if one may use such an expression) has not in this respect differentiated itself from the character of the nation at large.

If the view here presented be a true one, to what causes are we to ascribe this agreeable development of the original English type, a development in whose course the sadness of Puritanism seems to have been shed off?

Perhaps one of them is the humorous turn of the American character. Humor is a sweetener of temper, a copious spring of charity, for it makes the good side of bad things even more visible than the weak side of good things; but

humor in Americans may be as much a result of an easy and kindly turn as their kindliness is of their humor. Another is the perpetuation of a habit of mutual help formed in colonial days. Colonists need one another's aid more constantly than the dwellers in an old country, are thrown more upon one another, even when they live scattered in woods or prairies, are more interested in one another's welfare. When you have only three neighbors within five miles, each of them covers a large part of your horizon. You want to borrow a plough from one; you get another to help you to roll your logs; your children's delight is to go over for an evening's merry-making to the lads and lasses of the third. It is much pleasanter to be on good terms with these few neighbors, and when others come one by one, they fall into the same habits of intimacy. Any one who has read those stories of rustic New England or New York life which delighted the English children of thirty years ago I do not know whether they delight children still, or have been thrown aside for more highly spiced food will remember the warm-hearted simplicity and atmosphere of genial good-will which softened the roughness of peasant manners and tempered the sternness of a Calvinistic creed. It is natural that the freedom of intercourse and sense of interdependence which existed among the early settlers, and which have always existed since among the pioneers of colonization in the West as they moved from the Connecticut to the Mohawk, from the Mohawk to the Ohio, from the Ohio to the Mississippi, should have left on the national character traces not effaced even in the more artificial civilization of our own time. Something may be set down to the feeling of social equality, creating that respect for a man as a man, whether he be rich or poor, which was described a few pages back; and something to a regard for the sentiment of the multitude, a

sentiment which forbids any man to stand aloof in the conceit of self-importance, and holds up geniality and good fellowship as almost the first of social virtues. I do not mean that a man consciously suppresses his impulses to selfishness or gruffness because he knows that his faults will be ill regarded; but that, having grown up in a society which is infinitely powerful as compared with the most powerful person in it, he has learnt to realize his individual insignificance, as members of the upper class in Europe never do, and has become permeated by the feeling which this society entertains that each one's duty is not only to accept equality, but also to relish equality, and to make himself pleasant to his equals. Thus the habit is formed even in natures of no special sweetness, and men become kindly by doing kindly acts.- BRYCE, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, pp. 664–667.

How to Group Facts.

9. In grouping the facts for a composition and putting the facts in order, every writer instinctively, if not consciously, tries to observe some principle of arrangement. He brings together certain topics (1) because they are closely associated in thought, or (2) because they are contrasted one with another, or (3) because they are related as cause and effect. These three principles we shall now consider in their order.

Grouping by Association.

10. Often in setting down notes for a plan, we bring two topics together simply because one suggests the other; the topics seem to touch each other as we think about them. This principle of arrangement is by associa tion, or, as it is sometimes called, contiguity.

Arrangement by association is most obvious when the topics are events. Here we adopt the time order, because in that order the events are naturally connected. But the order of association appears almost as plainly when we are preparing to write about objects in space. Here we plan to take up the objects one after another as they are seen by the spectator: first the most conspicuous objects in the order of their nearness to one another, with the details of each; then the less conspicuous, in the same order, with the details of each. that are near one another will be brought in so as to indicate their nearness.

The details

In like manner ideas, as well as objects and events, are often arranged on the principle of association because they are felt to be near one another. One's first notes of an article on the character of John Quincy Adams might include remarks upon : (1) his industry, (2) his political heroism, (3) his conscientiousness, (4) his energy. In rearranging these before writing, one would be almost certain to exchange the places of 2 and 4, so as to bring the topics, industry and energy, close together. They are felt to be closer to each other in thought than they are to the other two topics.

Grouping by Contrast or Antithesis.

11. A second principle of arrangement is used when ideas are in contrast or antithesis. One about to discuss some of the characters of Scott's Talisman, and having made note of (1) Richard's frankness, nobility, impulsiveness, impatience, haughtiness, (2) Berengaria's childishness, capriciousness, (3) Saladin's reserve, shrewdness, de

liberateness, patience, humility, (4) Edith's maturity, firmness would in all probability see the advantage of adopting an order that would bring into relief the striking contrast between Richard and Saladin and between Berengaria and Edith, as well as the contrasted characteristics of each person; thus:

A. The two men contrasted:

1. Richard

(a) Impulsiveness, impatience, haughtiness.
(b) Frankness, nobility.

2. Saladin —

(a) Deliberation, patience, humility.
(b) Reserve, shrewdness.

B. The two women contrasted:

1. Berengaria

(a) Capriciousness.
(b) Childishness.

2. Edith

(a) Firmness.

(b) Maturity.

Grouping by Cause and Effect.

12. When two topics are related to one another as cause and effect, it is well to bring them near together in the plan. Suppose, for example, that a pupil, about to write a composition on The Future of Aëroplanes, sets down the following notes:

1. Aëroplanes necessarily made of fragile materials. 2. Cannot take the place of passenger trains. 3. Easily destroyed in time of war by explosive shells. 4. Large percentage of aviators killed or injured. 5: Passenger capacity