CHAPTER VI.

INTRODUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS.

be

OTHER things being equal, the shorter the exordium or the peroration the better. The following paragraph, with which Webster opened the White murder case, is a model in its kind :

"I am little accustomed, gentlemen, to the part which I am now attempting to perform. Hardly more than once or twice has it happened to me to be concerned on the side of the Government in any criminal prosecution whatever; and never, until the present occasion, in any case affecting life.1

"But I very much regret that it should have been thought necessary to suggest to you that I am brought here to 'hurry you against the law and beyond the evidence.' I hope I have too much regard for justice, and too much respect for my own character, to attempt either; and, were I to make such attempt, I am sure that in this court nothing can be carried against the law, and that gentlemen, intelligent and just as you are, are not, by any power, to be hurried beyond the evidence. Though I could well have wished to shun this occasion, I have not felt at liberty to withhold my professional assistance, when it is supposed that I may be in some degree useful in investigating and discovering the truth respecting this most extraordinary murder. It has seemed to be a duty incumbent on me, as on every other citizen, to do my best and my utmost to bring to light the perpetrators of this crime. Against the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice; but I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how great soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a

1 See also Cicero: Oratio in Caec. (Divinatio) i. i.

hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice."1

The following paragraph, which forms the conclusion. of Webster's address on the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, is another model:

"And now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is time to bring this discourse to a close.

"We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy, under any form of government. Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable, which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, 'Thank God, I—I also AM AN AMERICAN!'

2

1 Webster: Works, vol. vi. p. 51.

2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 106.

Young writers often have to be told to begin at the beginning, and to end at the end. They do not know how to get at a subject, nor how to get away from it, as an awkward visitor does not know how to get into or out of a drawing-room. They should make it a rule not to put in a word of introduction that is not closely connected with what is to follow and necessary to prepare the way for it, by giving necessary information, by engaging attention, or by winning regard; and not to add a word at the end beyond what is needed to strengthen the conclusion, to recapitulate arguments, or to point a moral. The only valuable exordium is that which leads up to the subject; the only valuable peroration, that which grows out of the subject. "What is he coming to?" "Will he never get through?" are fatal questions.

The objection which is sometimes made to abrupt beginnings or endings is not so well founded. It is far better to take firm hold of the subject at once than to approach it "doubtfully and far away;" and the mental shock caused by a sudden ending may be just what is needed to clench the argument.

1 See Sir Arthur Helps: Social Pressure, chap. viii. (The Art of Leaving Off.)

APPENDIX.

I.

GENERAL RULES FOR PUNCTUATION.

JUDGMENT determines the relations, whether of thought or of language, which marks of punctuation indicate; taste determines the choice, when good usage admits of a choice, between two modes of indicating those relations: judgment and taste are, therefore, the guides to correct punctuation.

Since punctuation is one of the means by which a writer communicates with his readers, it naturally varies with thought and expression: the punctuation of "Tristram Shandy" will therefore differ from that of "The Rambler;" and in a less degree the punctuation of Burke's Orations, from that of Macaulay's Essays. Hence no one writer even were books printed correctly, as is rarely the case-can be taken as a model. Hence, too, a system of rules loaded with exceptions, though founded upon the best usage and framed with the greatest care, is as likely to fetter thought as to aid in its communication.

Assistance may, however, be obtained from a few simple rules founded upon the principle that the purpose of every point is to indicate to the eye the construction of