the popinjay, the coxcomb, these are butterflies of differ ent summers. There is here endless variation, but no advancement. One fashion comes after another, but we cannot call it better. One would like to see representatives of the different generations together in full dress. What variety in oaths and small talk! What anachronisms in swords and canes and eyeglasses, in ruffles, in collars, in wigs! What affluence in powders and perfumes and colors! But would they "know each other there”? The real gentlemen would be sure to recognize each other. Abraham and Marcus Aurelius and Confucius would find much in common. Lancelot and Sir Philip Sidney and Chinese Gordon would need no introduction. Montaigne and Mr. Spectator and the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table would fall into delightful chat. But would a "swell" recognize a "spark"? And might we not expect a "dude" to fall into immoderate laughter at the sight of a "popinjay"?

-CROTHERS: The Evolution of a Gentleman, Atlantic, 81:715.

2. In his effective answer to Mr. Herbert Spencer's argument against the metric system, which, oddly enough, is like spelling reform in that it finds its chief opponents in Great Britain, President Mendenhall remarked that "ignorant prejudice" is not so dangerous an obstacle to human progress, nor so common, as what may be called "intelligent prejudice," meaning thereby "an obstinate conservatism which makes people cling to what is or has been, merely because it is or has been, not being willing to take the trouble to do better, because already doing well, all the while knowing that doing better is not only the easier, but is more in harmony with existing conditions. Such conservatism is highly developed among English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic." It is just such conservatism as

this that must be overcome by those of us who wish to see our English orthography continue its lifelong efforts toward simplification. MATTHEWS: Simplification of English Spelling, Century, 62: 617.

3. To get the knowledge of individual aptitude and desire, and to help in the resultant choice of school work, is the province of the mysterious being whom I call the Vocation Teacher.

The Vocation Teacher, as such, does not exist. A good many regular teachers and parents try to assist the youth with whom they come in contact to choose their life-work wisely; but this advice and help should not be a merely incidental duty: it should occupy the whole time of a carefully trained vocational expert. In every high school there should be a vocational expert.

113. A method of connecting new ideas with old that has often proved useful in expository writing is the narrative method. By this method the writer adopts a plausible time-order for the steps or stages of his exposition. The time-order is for a typical case, not for any particular case. That is, the events are related not as they actually happened in the experience of a particular person, but as they might have happened, logically, to any person of a certain class under given circumstances. Hence this kind of narrative is said to be generalized. Generalized narrative is frequently used to explain the principle underlying mental development, experiments, processes of manufacture, feats of skill, and the like. The following selection illustrates this method. Mac

aulay wishes to explain to us the rather striking and novel idea that to learn a new language is to acquire a new soul. He makes the thought clear by connecting it with the events in the progress of a scholar-any scholar, not a particular one who is learning a new language.

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It was justly said by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that to learn a new language was to acquire a new soul. He who is acquainted only with the writers of his native tongue, is in perpetual danger of confounding what is accidental with what is essential, and of supposing that tastes and habits of thought, which belong only to his own age and country, are inseparable from the nature of man. Initiated into foreign literature, he finds that principles of politics and morals, directly contrary to those which he has supposed to be unquestionable, because he never heard them questioned, have been held by large and enlightened communities; that feelings, which are so universal among his contemporaries that he had supposed them instinctive, have been unknown to whole generations; that images, which have never failed to excite the ridicule of those among whom he has lived, have been thought sublime by millions. He thus loses that Chinese cast of mind, that stupid contempt for everything beyond the wall of his celestial empire, which was the effect of his former ignorance. New associations take place among his ideas. He doubts where he formerly dogmatized. He tolerates where he formerly execrated. He ceases to confound that which is universal and eternal in human passions and opinions with that which is local and temporary. This is one of the most useful effects which result from studying the literature of other countries; and it is one which the remains of Greece, composed at a remote period, and in a state of society widely different from our own, are peculiarly calculated to produce.

The following is a generalized narrative of the singular nervous seizure known as "buck fever":

In its mysterious attack it gets entire control of a man's nerves, and at a most inopportune time. He may have been standing for an hour or more, with rifle cocked, waiting eagerly for the coming of a buck that in doubling his tracks will be sure to approach within easy reach of his shot. The buck does approach, bounding toward him with such rapidity that the very sight upsets the nerves of the green hunter and throws his anatomy out of gear. His eyes bulge, his teeth chatter, his knees knock together, and even his memory is so far dethroned that he forgets he has a rifle. If he does remember it, and attempt to raise the weapon to his shoulder, there is nothing in it that is likely to do any damage to the buck, for its wabbling muzzle sends the ball either into the earth or among the clouds.

114. Assignments in Generalized Narrative.

A. By means of a generalized narrative explain one of the following processes for a person who wishes to make personal use of the information:

(1) Finding the Pole Star. (2) Measuring the height of a tree (or of any other tall object the top of which is inaccessible). (3) Making chocolate creams at home. (4) Teaching a pointer (or setter). (5) Figure skating. (6) Sailing against the wind.

B. Imagine yourself to be a visitor at a colonial homestead of two hundred years ago. Explain, as if you had witnessed it, the process of spinning wool with an old-fashioned spinning-wheel.

C. By means of a generalized narrative explain the process of drawing a book from the public library.

D. By means of a generalized narrative give a clear understanding of one of the following. Pretend to give the events or experiences of a day, or of a week, in each case. Remember that

the events or experiences must be typical, that is, representative of the class, and likely to happen to any one in it.

(1) The farm hand. (2) The athlete. (3) The shop-girl. (4) The newsboy. (5) The commuter. (6) The shopper. (7) The borrower. (8) The banker. (9) The village storekeeper. (10) The society girl.

E. Suppose George Washington should come back to see how things are going, and should engage in conversation with you; and suppose you should happen to mention or he should happen to catch sight of some of the following: sewing-machines, phonographs, telegrams, automobiles, street-cars, ocean liners, Pullman cars, electric lights, sky-scrapers, gasoline, asphalt, trunk lines, fountain pens, repeating arms, X-rays, breakfast foods, suffragettes, postage stamps, quinine, conservation, Sunday schools, searchlights, Dreadnaughts, subways, Christian Endeavorers, Boy Scouts, hobbleskirts, diet kitchens, composite photographs, roller skates. Do you see how by the narrative method, or by the dialogue method, you could make an exposition of the theme, "Social Change in America during the Last Century"? Try it.

Comparison or Analogy.

115. Sometimes the meaning of the obscure idea can be brought out most effectively by means of comparison or analogy, a specific instance or an example. The ideas chosen for this comparison should be ideas with which the reader is likely to be familiar. Thus Mr. Bryce, wishing to make clear the dangers of representative government, uses in the following an easily understood analogy:

The mass of a nation are, and must be, like passengers on board an ocean steamer, who hear the clank of the engine and watch the stroke of the piston, and admire the revolution of the larger wheels, and know that steam acts by expansion, but do not know how the less conspicuous but not