Elementary Composition · Part 21

THE MUSICAL CLUB OF THE CAXTON SCHOOL. OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, CHICAGO, ILL., May 23, 1906.

MR. ELMER HENDERSON, Chairman of Membership Committee, Musical Club of the Caxton School.

DEAR SIR,--

At the last meeting of the Musical Club, the question of the admission to the Club of three pupils from the lower grades was referred to your committee. They are Henry Appleton, in the Fifth Grade, Mary Monkhouse, in the Sixth Grade, and Parsons Latham, in the Fourth Grade. The respective teachers of the above-mentioned pupils represent them as being sufficiently advanced in the study of music to become useful members of our Club.

Your committee is requested to look into the matter and report at the next regular meeting.

Yours very truly, HELEN IRVING, Secretary.

The answer of the committee would be as follows:--

CHICAGO, ILL., May 28, 1906. To the Musical Club of the Caxton School:

The Membership Committee, to whom on the 23d day of the present month was referred the question of the admission to the Musical Club of three pupils from the lower grades, with instructions to ascertain their proficiency in music, respectfully report that they have given due attention to the matter referred to them and find:--

That Henry Appleton plays the violin well enough to play a second part in the quartet.

That Mary Monkhouse has a good voice and reads music at sight fluently.

That Parsons Latham is as yet too uncertain in his mastery of the flute to take a part in our orchestra.

Your committee therefore recommends that the first two be admitted to membership, but not the last.

Respectfully submitted, For the Committee, ELMER HENDERSON, Chairman.

Exercise 141.--1. Write a notice of reference to a committee on entertainment, asking them to decide on a programme for the annual meeting. Answer as from the committee.

2. Write a notice of reference to a committee on finance, asking them to look into the cost of renting a hall for the meeting of a dramatic society. Answer.

3. Write a notice of reference to a committee on finance, asking them to report upon the probable cost of a set of Dickens for the school library. Answer.

A club sometimes wishes to send a member as delegate to an assembly or convention of similar clubs. When he arrives at the convention, he needs something to show that he has been regularly elected a delegate, and this is furnished him by the secretary in the following form:--

COLUMBUS, OHIO, March 30, 1906. To the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the School Branches of the S. P. C. A.:

This certifies that James Harrow has been duly elected a delegate from the Columbus S. P. C. A. to the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the School Branches of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

HENRY SWIFT, Secretary.

Such a letter is called "the delegate's credentials."

All the usual duties of a secretary, so far as his writing goes, have now been stated, but there are other occasions for secretarial writing and for the use of set and customary forms, which arise in connection with the duties of other officers.

The president's report is usually annual, and is presented to the club when he retires to make way for the new president. This report is less formal than other secretarial writing. It is supposed to present in a clear and condensed form a picture of the activities of the Club during the year.

The treasurer should keep the club informed frequently and in detail of the state of its finances. A customary form for the beginning of his report is:--

The undersigned, Treasurer of the Musical Club, respectfully submits the following report for the month ending May 15, 1906:--

The balance on hand at the beginning of the month was three dollars and forty cents. There has been received from all sources during the month two dollars and sixty cents. During the month the expenses amounted to four dollars, leaving a balance in the treasury of two dollars.

The annexed statement will show in detail the receipts and expenditures.

ROBERT HARRIS, Treasurer.

The most difficult form of secretarial writing is the drafting of preambles and resolutions. These are used for many purposes: to convey the thanks of the club to a person who has done something for it, to express condolence with the family of a member who has died, to send good wishes to a member leaving the club on account of change of residence, to voice the sentiments of the club on some matter of public interest.

The preamble or first part (which is not always used) follows in general a fixed form, but to the composing of resolutions applies all that was said of the writing of petitions. They call for a graceful style, a good and melodious choice of words, and they aim to produce a favorable effect on the reader.

Following is an example of a preamble and resolutions:--

WHEREAS the Reverend George S. Stirling has honored this Club by appearing before us and delivering an address, and whereas this club feels deeply the profit and pleasure it gained from his speech, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That we place on record our deep appreciation of the honor which Mr. Stirling did us, and our conviction that he has profoundly influenced for the better all who heard him.

RESOLVED, That we tender to him our warmest thanks for consenting to address us.

RESOLVED, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to Mr. Stirling.

The resolutions would be sent to Mr. Stirling in a letter like the following:--

REVEREND GEORGE S. STIRLING, DEAR SIR,--

At a meeting of the Club, held , the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:--

Whereas, the Reverend George S. Stirling, etc.

GEORGE OLDHAM, HENRY MILLER, Secretary. President.

CHAPTER XVI

VERSIFICATION

94. Poetry is the most beautiful and attractive form of writing, and in the highest sense is by far the most difficult, since it is not only complicated in form, but is highly emotional and stirs deeply the feelings of the reader. To write real poetry is, therefore, out of the reach of most of us, but to write verse is not so difficult as it is usually thought, and it is an excellent exercise in learning control of words. Verse making gives skill in manipulating language and, because of the need for ingenuity and flexibility in sentence construction and for variety in the choice of words, it helps in writing prose. More than this, you will find that some practice in managing verse-forms yourself will enable you to understand and admire more intelligently the poetry you read.

I wander'd lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills; When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

What is the difference between the sentences in this extract and ordinary prose sentences? If you read them over aloud, you will see that they are constructed on a definite plan. You notice that, as in pronouncing aloud every word of more than one syllable, you accent one of them more than the others (páragraph, assúming), just so you accent some syllables in each line of the verse. Your voice naturally falls four times, thus, "I wánder'd lónely ás a cloúd" and in every line it falls the same number of times. The fact that there is a fixed and regular number of accents in each line makes it verse and not prose, and to write correct verse you must keep to a regular recurrence of accents in your lines. A line to which you naturally give three accents is said to have three feet; four accents, four feet, etc. A foot or pattern of syllables which is repeated to make up the line consists of an accented syllable and one or more unaccented ones. The foot is named according to the arrangement of syllables in it, but it is not necessary for you now to know the names, which come from the Greek and are hard to remember. Four of the best-known feet are mentioned here, with examples. The accented syllable is marked ´ and the unaccented [)].

[)I] wánde[)r']d lónel[)y] ás [)a] cloúd. Iambic [)´].

Téll m[)e] nót [)in] moúrnf[)u]l númb[)e]rs. Trochaic [´)].

B[)u]t [)we] steádf[)as]tl[)y] gázed [)o]n t[)h]e fáce th[)a]t w[)a]s déad. Anapestic [) ) ´].

Bírd [)o]f t[)h]e wíld[)er]n[)e]ss, blíthes[)o]me a[)n]d cúmb[)e]rl[)e]ss. Dactylic [´ ) )].

These names refer to the arrangement of syllables in the foot. There are other names that refer to the number of times the foot is repeated in the line. These also come from the Greek and are long and difficult, but are no more necessary for you to learn now than the names of feet. If you can pick out the arrangement of syllables which make up a foot, and the number of feet in a line, you can make a pattern for yourself out of any piece of poetry. The names and examples of the most common meters are here given for reference, however.

1. Three feet to the line, three-accent line or trimeter.

H[)i]s voíce [)no] móre [)is] heárd.

2. Four feet to the line, four-accent line or tetrameter.

Buíld [)me] straíght, [)O] wórth[)y] Mást[)er].

3. Five feet to the line, five-accent line or pentameter.

[)At] lást, w[)i]th héad [)e]rect, th[)u]s críed [)a]loúd.

4. Six feet to the line, six-accent line or hexameter.

T[)h]e Ny['m]phs [)in] tángl[)e]d shádes of t['w]ilig[)ht] thíck[)et]s mou['r]n.

Turn to any collection of poetry, and see how many of the feet and meters you can recognize. You will find, although the accent gradually recurs after a regular number of syllables, that it does not invariably do so; but you will also notice that this does not affect the accenting of the line. For instance, you give three accents to the line, "And I would that my tongue could utter," where there are ten syllables, but you also give three to the line, "Break, break, break." You must learn, therefore, to distinguish one variety of meter from another by the number of times your voice naturally makes an accent in reading it aloud; but for your own verse making it is a simpler and better rule to arrange your line so that there is the same number of syllables between each accent. You will find this a very general rule in all poetry, and it is a good guide for beginners.

You can take, then, any piece of poetry which you admire and make from it a pattern for yourself. Suppose you wish to write a verse describing a rainy day. You turn to Whittier's Snow-Bound as a suitable model:--

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

Reading the lines aloud, you see that they have four accents or feet, and each foot has two syllables, the second of which is regularly accented. Marking the accented and unaccented syllables as shown above, and then taking away the words, you have left a pattern by which you can test your own lines, namely u -- u -- u -- u --. Now, if you wish to write in metrical or verse form the statement that the rain resounding on the roof sounded as though a great many little drums were being beaten, you might write,--

The rain drummed loud as though the elves Were playing soldier.

Your idea is now completely stated, and if you were writing prose you could stop there; but on consulting your pattern you see that you need one accented syllable to finish the last foot you have written, and one more foot to finish your last line. In your effort to add these three syllables, arranged in words which will complete the picture your lines suggest, you will readily hit upon some such phrase as overhead, on the roof, in a crowd, or noisily.

You will then have written two lines of correct verse; but in comparing them with the first two lines of Snow-Bound, your model, you will notice one difference. Of the last words in each pair of lines from Snow-Bound all but the first consonants are the same and have the same sound. These are called rhyming words. Nearly all verse rhymes. Words are considered to rhyme when they have the same accented vowel sound, different consonants preceding the accented vowel sound, and the same sounds following the accented vowel sound. One stumbling-block in the way of beginners in verse making is the fact that English words are spelled so differently from the way they are pronounced. Do not be misled by this. Remember that it is the accented vowel sound that must be the same in both words, and test your rhymes by saying them aloud. Thus vessel and wrestle, despair and bare, gaze and bays, bird and heard, rhyme perfectly, although they look so very different, but door and boor are not good rhymes, although they look just alike, nor are trough and bough, and through and plough. Rhymes usually occur at the end of lines, but not always, as in Snow-Bound, at the end of each pair of lines.

Just as syllables are arranged in feet and feet are arranged in lines, so lines are arranged in stanzas. The shortest stanza is two lines rhymed. This is called a couplet.

Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.

Somewhat more rarely, there are stanzas of three lines, called triplets, with all the lines rhyming.

Dark, deep, and cold the current flows Unto the sea where no wind blows, Seeking the land which no one knows.

The most common form of English verse is written in stanzas of four lines each. The rhymes may be arranged in all the combinations possible. The first and third and the second and fourth may rhyme, as in ballads:--

O Brignal banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green; And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.

Or the first and fourth lines and the second and third may rhyme:--

Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue; And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless sound.

Or the second and fourth lines may be the only ones to rhyme:--

He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.

In longer stanzas the rhymes may be arranged in almost any way, provided that they follow some regular plan. Notice, for instance, the arrangement of rhymes in Browning's well-known song:--

The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world.

A convenient way of indicating briefly how the rhymes in a stanza are arranged is by the use of the letters of the alphabet: thus, a couplet would be said to have its rhymes arranged a a; a quatrain like the Brignal banks, a b a b; the stanza Now rings, a b b a.

There are, of course, many other combinations of syllables in feet, of feet in lines, and of lines in stanzas than have been given here, but these are the most common forms and those that you will be most likely to see in your reading and to use in your verse making.

Exercise 142.--I. Arrange the following in stanza form, letting yourself be guided by the recurrence of a regular number of feet in each line and by the rhyme.

1. Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

2. The ship was cheer'd, the harbor clear'd, merrily did we drop below the kirk, below the hill, below the light-house top. The sun came up upon the left, out of the sea came he, and he shone bright and on the right went down into the sea.

3. We watched her breathing through the night, her breathing soft and low, as in her breast the wave of life kept heaving to and fro. Our very hopes belied our fears, our fears our hopes belied--we thought her dying when she slept and sleeping when she died.

4. Where the bee sucks, there suck I; in a cowslip's bell I lie; there I crouch when owls do cry. On the bat's wing I do fly after summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

5. I loved the brimming wave that swam through quiet meadows round the mill, the sleeping pool above the dam, the pools beneath it never still, the meal sacks on the whiten'd floor, the dark round of the dripping wheel, the very air around the door made misty with the floating meal.

II. Complete the rhymes in the following:--

When I was sick and lay a-bed I had two pillows at my ---- And all my toys beside me lay To keep me happy all the ----

How do you like to go up in a swing Up in the air so blue! Oh, I do think it's the pleasantest ---- Ever a child can ----

Through all the pleasant meadow-side The grass grew shoulder high Till the shining scythes went far and ---- And cut it down to ----.

The fight did last from break of day Till setting of the ---- For when they rang the evening bell The battle was scarce ----

In summer time in Breton The bells they sound so clear. Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and ---- A happy noise to ----

An excellent exercise for training your ear is to have some one read verse aloud to you, leaving you to complete the rhymed lines.

You have now learned a few simple rules about the construction of two or three of the most common forms of verse, and you may ask yourself what use you can make of them.

One way in which you can employ verse is in writing a short story or incident. The simplest anecdote is often so set off by telling it in verse that its interest is doubled; and you will find this sort of familiar, conversational verse unexpectedly easy to write. One very good variety of story to tell in verse is the fable:--

Miss Grasshopper having sung All through summer, Found herself in sorry plight When the wind began to bite; Not a bit of grub or fly Met the little wanton's eye; So she wept for hunger sore At the Ant, her neighbor's door, Begging her just once to bend, And a little grain to lend Till warm weather came again. "I will pay you," cried she, then, "Ere next harvest, on my soul, Interest and principal." Now the Ant is not a lender. From that charge who needs defend her? "Tell me what you did last summer?" Said she to the beggar maid.

"Day and night to every comer I was singing, I'm afraid." "Sing! Do tell! How entrancing! Well then, vagrant, off! be dancing!"