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be a great many more crimes than there now are, if wicked men were not afraid of the consequences of wrong-doing. Fear of being drowned makes boys more careful about going into the water. Fear of bad marks or of other kinds of punishment sometimes keeps scholars from misbehaving, or from neglecting their lessons. Horses and dogs and other animals are made to mind through fear of their master; but that is not the only motive, for they often seem to do things from affection, and even from ambition and from pride.

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3. Though fear is a mental, not a bodily affection, it shows itself by bodily signs. When a horse is frightened, he often trembles all but generally he runs away, looking wildly out of his eyes. When a dog is afraid, he hangs his head and sneaks away, with his tail drooping between his legs. Almost all animals crouch and lower their heads when they are afraid. In men, fear shows itself chiefly in their loss of color. A man who is very much terrified generally becomes ghastly white. I have seen it stated that the reason of this is that the blood leaves the face and rushes back toward the heart. People who are frightened look wild out of the eyes also, just as horses and other animals do. Another common sign of fear, both with animals and with men, is that it leads them to cry out, scream, roar, or make some other frantic noise.

4. Fear is unreasonable when it is without any good cause, or when the danger apprehended is imaginary. It is this kind of fear which leads ignorant people to be afraid of the dark, or of witches and ghosts. Horses often get frightened at imaginary danger. They see a leaf stir at the side of the street, and they seem to think it is some monster about to spring upon them, and off they jump to the other side of the street. Horses seem more easily frightened than any other animals by unreal danger. When a person looks down from the top of a house or of a high tower, he is apt to be afraid, even though there is a strong railing, so that he could not fall over if he tried. This seems to be an unreasonable fear, and yet almost everybody feels it. We have the same feeling when standing on the platform of a railroad station, as the engine comes thundering up. We know we are beyond its reach, and yet we involuntarily shrink back from the monster.

5. Fear is reasonable when the evil apprehended is real, and is of such magnitude that it is likely to cause us great distress. If a man had fallen upon the railroad track, and his feet had caught fast in the timbers, so that he could not get off, and he should see the train coming at full speed, he would be horribly afraid, and his fear would be perfectly reasonable. If a man had murdered another, or

had committed any great crime, he would have reason to be afraid, because the hand of justice may at any time overtake him. The Bible says, "Be sure your sin shall find you out." A man who commits a crime is like a man who is entangled on a railroad track, and he knows not when the engine will come rushing along, and overwhelm him. It is said that thieves and burglars, though sometimes desperate, are great cowards, and, indeed, they have reason to be. There is one fear which we should all have, and that is the fear of God our Maker.

NOTE. In beginning a composition on a subject like the foregoing, it will often be found convenient to begin by taking a definition from the dictionary. It is not necessary, however, always to begin in this way. The teacher should see to it that the method is varied.

Example. Subject, MEMORY.

Outline.

1. The importance of being able to remember what we have seen or heard of.

2. How far back the writer can go in his recollection of things which happened to himself.

3. Instances of very great memory which we have known or read of.

4. Methods of improving the memory. 5. Danger of overtaxing the memory. 6. Indications of memory in animals.

Friendship,
Hatred,

Perseverance,

Industry,
Ambition,

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OTHER SUBJECTS.

Improvement of Time,
Advantages of a Good Education,
A Habit of Procrastination,
The Danger of Bad Company,
The Use of Profane Language.

NOTE. Subjects like these are very common, and inay be multiplied indefinitely at the discretion of the teacher.

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TO TEACHERS.- Exercises like those already given, if persistently followed up, can hardly fail to beget in the pupil some readiness of invention, as well as some facility of expression. But there is danger, if the plan is followed exclusively, of its leading to a sort of mechanical and monotonous formalism. Something is needed, therefore, to stir the imagination, which in the young is almost always capable of great activity, if properly appealed to. The best method of awakening this faculty is to assign unreal subjects, in which the scholar has no resource but simply to make up something out of his own head. Teachers who have never tried this plan will be surprised to find how inventive the young mind naturally is. Such a plan is only employing, in the exercise of composition, the dramatic and creative talent which almost all children show in their sports.

Examples of this sort of compositions are given here, for practical convenience in exhibiting those of the same kind together. But in actual teaching, it is better to use exercises of this kind interchangeably with those described in Chapters I., II., and III. The teacher may begin to assign subjects of the kind now under consideration as soon as the scholar has written two or three compositions like those in Chapter I., and so the practice may be continued as an occasional variation all through the exercises in the first three chapters. Indeed, the practice is a good one at every stage of the process of learning to compose, though most valuable in the early stages.

In assigning these imaginary subjects, no preliminary outline is needed. None, indeed, is possible. An outline is based upon logical considerations, whereas here there is no basis of logic to build upon, but the whole thing is left designedly to the caprice of the imagination, working according to "its own sweet will."

Instead of making up examples under this head, I give some which were actually written as school exercises, and without any expectation on the part of the writers that the exercises would ever appear in print. They are given with all their imperfections, as thereby showing better the real character of the exercise. Some of them, it is hardly necessary to say, are from extremely juvenile authors.

Examples. Subject, THE MAN IN THE MOON.

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1. By a young Miss of ten.

I do not know from whence this phrase originated. It is certainly false, for there is no such thing as a man in the moon.

But I know

by my own experience, that the longer you look at the moon, the plainer you can see the face. This is all imagination. The dark places that we see, are caused by the reflection of the sun shining on the mountains. The sailors think there is a man in the moon, for they have been to sea [see]. Some old bachelors say, that the reason why the girls look so much at the moon, is because there is a man in it. I do not know anything more about this subject than "the man in the moon."

2. By a Miss of thirteen.

It has been ascertained by scientific observation that the moon is uninhabited, by reason of its being so hot as to be unable to support life. A man with salamandrine qualities might possibly be an inhabitant of the lunar realms, and only a man with such qualities can we suppose the man in the moon to be; but, oh! what a stretch our imagination has to take to imagine such a marvellous thing.

The man with whom I have formed an acquaintance came into existence about a century after the Creation. Jove, finding that if the moon had not something to temper its light to mortal eyes, it would so dazzle as to blind us, placed his deformed child Vulcan in the subterranean vaults of Mount Etna, there to manufacture a shield to protect us from its brilliancy.

Vulcan, being very ingenious, first constructed a woman, but finding she had so great a propensity for running after the sun that she was never in her place, he threw her into the crater of Vesuvius, and then set about constructing something more enduring. He wished to make something just the opposite of woman, and his mind immediately settled on a man as her antipodes. So he sent his workmen to Stromboli while it was in a state of eruption, to collect the burning lava; and having brought it to Etna, he moulded it with his own hands into the shape of a man. Vulcan then cooled it, and, when sufficiently cold, carried it to the court of Jove for his inspection.

Jove was delighted with it, and wishing to confer as great an honor as possible on Vulcan, he breathed into the nostrils of the lava man, this being the greatest honor that could be bestowed. Vulcan then carried it back to Etna, and having heated it to the highest pitch, transported it up to the moon, where, instead of placing it directly in the interior, he suspended it by a cord from the throne of Jove at the back of it. He then inclined the man so that his nose, mouth, and eyes projected from the outside of the

moðn, thus tempering the light, and making it more pleasant to our eyes.

This is the origin of the man in the moon.

The features of the man projecting have given rise to the story of the mountains in the moon.

3. By a Miss of fifteen.

From early childhood I have always entertained the most profound respect for this personage, and presume I ever shall, for reasons some of which will be stated in my brief account of him.

Even the mention of his name, unequalled in the annals of time for simplicity, fills one with admiration and awe. He bears no surname, and his family name is unknown. This was lost by a fatal accident. A comet went whirling around the moon once, and by its extreme velocity ignited the parchments containing the record of this illustrious family: thus was lost to succeeding generations one of the brightest names that ever illuminated the solar system. There is a tradition that he declined even the noted names of the Grecian gods, and scornfully rejected the honorable ones of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Mars, Mercury, and many others, but sent them to the planets which now bear these names. He does not depend, however, upon such trifling coincidences for reputation.

If there are other inhabitants of his native orb, he is sufficiently renowned to be universally known by the unostentatious cognomen of "the man," and even at the distance of two hundred and forty thousand miles, the simple title "the man in the moon "is proclaimed with reverence among the nations.

Having exhausted my knowledge in regard to my hero's name, I will proceed to describe his personal appearance, hoping he will not be lowered in my hearers' estimation by the account.

He has a very open countenance, but lacks expression, and if one views him only when turned full face, he has anything but an animated countenance.

But I can evade the startling fact no longer. Although his features are good, he is either all head and face, or else he possesses the other attributes of the human frame in a very diminutive form, that is, according to our physiological ideas; but undoubtedly correct principles of this science as believed by the inhabitants of Luna are far superior to our own.

Well, we will naturally speak of his position in life next. He has always stood very, very high in society; even the greatest kings and queens of earth have been obliged to look up to him. His character

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