often demand considerable variation from them. After once using the book it will be easier to adapt it to the needs of the individual class, and to vary from it where it seems advisable.

The author lays no claim to originality in this book. It is simply applying the method of experiment, the laboratory method, to a subject readily adaptable to it. This method has proved successful in teaching Rhetoric in schools of different grades, in widely separated localities, and it is hoped that it may prove successful elsewhere. For much of the thought of the book the author is indebted to the several authorities given as references, and to them others are referred for a fuller treatment of the various topics than can be given in a book planned as this is.

The only true test of the book will be its availability in the class-room, its success in making the pupils enjoy the study of Rhetoric, and in making it a living reality to them now and in the future. To this end suggestions and criticisms are invited and will be most heartily welcomed. Anything which can make the book more useful will be gladly received, and results of experiments will be utilized in future editions should they be called for.

The author desires to express her most hearty thanks for valuable suggestions and criticisms to Professor A. F. Lange, of the University of California, to Miss M. E. Plimpton, of the University of Arizona, and to Miss E. A. Packard, of the Oakland (Cal.) High School, and also to Mrs. C. E. Hulst, of the Grand Rapids (Mich.) High School, and Professor I. B. Burgess, of Morgan Park Academy, for careful and scholarly proof-reading.

PREFACE.

TO THE PUPIL: This book is not intended to give you the facts and principles of Rhetoric, but to help you to discover them for yourself. Instead of telling you what other people have thought upon certain subjects, we shall try to help you to find out what you yourself think on these subjects, and to express your thoughts as clearly as if you were writing a Rhetoric yourself. As the rules of grammar are derived from the everyday speech of those who speak well, so the rules and principles of Rhetoric are derived from the writings of those who write well; and each one of us, if he will think for himself honestly and carefully, may find them in those writings by observant reading. We wish to show you how this may be done, and we feel sure that you will enjoy such a voyage of discovery, and will find it far more interesting to form your own opinion from what you read than to commit to memory the printed opinions of others. We hope too that in this way your study of Rhetoric will make what you learn more fully a part of your mental furnishing, and that you will not only learn Rhetoric, but also how to think for yourself on all other subjects.

In order, however, to have the study of Rhetoric do for you all we wish it to do, we must have your hearty coöperation. In the first place we ask you to do your work as thoroughly as you know how. Let every

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question have an answer, every direction be followed

as closely as you can. In the second place we ask you to be honest: first with yourself, — be sure that whatever you take as an opinion is your own honest thinking, not what you believe it is proper to think, nor what people in general think, nor what your teacher thinks, nor what a spirit of contradiction prompts you to think, but what you think, even though as you grow older you are likely in some matters to change your opinion; secondly, with your teacher and classmates, be sure that whatever you give as an opinion is your own, not "cribbed" from somebody else's note-book, not borrowed from some Rhetoric or work on Literature, but your own unaided thinking. For only by thinking for yourself in this way, will you learn to think independently, to rely upon your own power to think, and to feel that you have as good a right and as efficient a power to think as others have.

Not that we would have you imagine that Rhetoric is merely a matter of opinion, and that it does not matter what you think so long as you think it; but you will be surprised to find, after a little of this honest thinking, how similar are your own honest conclusions to those of other men and women on the same subjects. We have found that honest people, thinking honestly about matters in which their own personal affairs are not directly involved, think very much alike; and so under the guidance of your teacher you will virtually make your own Rhetoric, and that you may enjoy doing it is the sincere desire of

THE AUTHOR.