of euphonious words; giving an example substantially as follows: "The noble mansion in which I first inhaled the invigorating ambient air and playfully and peacefully passed the most delighting days of my mundane existence is, at this sad moment, in a startling state of inflammation." And he was greatly pleased with the alliteration; but after having learned to write, he said that he should have conveyed the information as follows: "The house in which I was born is on fire."

Quotations, to illustrate or confirm a statement, ordinarily should be brief, or made in abstract with precision and accuracy. But sometimes it is necessary to quote

whole paragraphs.

Sentences, properly arranged, greatly enhance the literary value of any work. The artistic writer studiously avoids continuous short, jerky sentences as well as many successive sentences of medium length and also extremely long sentences. Those of the first category distract attention by the little electroid mental shocks which they cause; those of the second are monotonous; and those of the third are tedious, exhausting to the reader's mind, and of difficult apprehension. An example of extraordinary macrology is to be found, in one of the works of an eminent medical writer, in the form of a sentence covering seven octavo pages and containing four thousand two hundred words; the highest sign of punctuation being the semicolon, with an occasional dash. Good literary taste demands that, in any work, there be judiciously interspersed short, medium, and long sentences.

To convey meaning with precision and clearness requires no little care and attention; but even then errors of momentary inadvertence sometimes occur, in the disposition of members of certain sentences, which make the writer express the opposite of what he had intended to say. An example may be drawn from a sentence in this very conference; the fault was detected on the first revision. The sentence was originally as follows: "He rejects eponyms and seeks the right names of things as he does sonorous big, empty words." The real intention was to say: He seeks the right names of things and rejects eponyms as he does sonorous, big, empty words. It is only by repeated careful revision that such and many other errors of inadvertence are detectable; the reviser looking also for faulty punctuation which so often mars the best writings.

Punctuation, rightly used is of much importance to the writer or speaker who, of course, is desirous of being clearly understood, for he knows that the omission of a dash or a comma has been known to change entirely the meaning of a sentence; as exemplified in the oft-quoted instance of the offering of a toast at an entertainment, as follows: "Woman-without her, man would be a savage." When this reached the printing house, it was set up as follows: "Woman without her man would be a savage."

A mark of punctuation which merits attention and which is much used by the Spanish, is the inverted interrogation point at the beginning of an interrogatory sentence besides the regular mark at the end of the sentence; and so with the exclamatory. This would be serviceable

in making easy and smooth the reading of any English composition wherever the first word does not clearly indicate the interrogatory or the exclamatory character of the sentence. A writer cannot be too particular in his use of signs of punctuation, which are so essential to the right apprehension of his expressions and to the avoidance of confusion in the mind of the reader.

Parentheses are not generally necessary to the writer who has the skill to frame sentences which clearly express his thoughts. The young writer, therefore, should train himself so thoroughly that he will seldom be obliged to use explanatory parenthetic phrases or sentences, which are so wearisome and so much distract attention. A prolific writer of three decades ago contracted the habit of over-using parentheses and went so far as to crowd parenthetic phrases into parenthetic sentences. His works were thus rendered extremely tedious and of laborious perusal, though they possessed merit. The bracket as well as the dash should be but rarely used. The first chiefly in purely technical articles.

On paragraphs, only a few suggestions relating to their construction are needed for the guidance of young writers. They may be short or as long as necessary for the elucidation of the main points. A paragraph may embody one or several thoughts expressed in one, two, or several sentences with any required illustration. Among the preceding paragraphs is a fair example which contains the expression of several thoughts ending with an illustration.

Extremely long paragraphs, on careful revision, may be divided with advantage to the reader. If this be done at the close of a complete sentence it will not disturb the train of thoughts sought to be conveyed. These very long paragraphs, like sentences of inordinate length, are sometimes so tedious to the reader as to require their division even when the main points cannot all be given in paragraphs of moderate length. Illustrative examples, when consisting of several sentences, may be placed as separate paragraphs. The observance of these cautions tends to prevent verbosity. Let it be remembered that the first paragraph of an essay is of difficult composition and its initial sentence still more difficult, requiring to be rewritten several times; and that therefore too much attention cannot be given to this exordium which, if good, will make, or otherwise mar the whole work.

Medical "bulls," which sometimes occur in written as well as in oral discourses, require but a few moments' attention. These "bulls" often excite loud demonstrations of mirth among the listeners to a speech, much to the confusion and embarrassment of the unconscious perpetrator, but the habitual offender, ever unaware of his "bulls" is wont to attribute the levity of the auditors to some intended affront and forthwith makes a worse "bull" during the by-speech expressive of his indignation. One of the learned men in the profession, an inveterate “bullist," once said to a friend that he had just come from an alarming post-partum hæmorrhage in the case of Doctor John Jones, the house-physician. The listener, being a

junior, suppressed incipient laughter for fear of giving offense. This same chronic "bullist," a charming and much-loved man, published an elaborate and interesting paper illustrated by many rare instances and artistic drawings, ending with the expression of much regret that he was not able to furnish more data, since "post-mortem examinations had been made only on the fatal cases." When his attention was called to the "bull," by an intimate friend, he said, of course post-mortem examinations were made only on those patients that had died! These two examples typify his innumerable bulls which many of his surviving friends are wont to rehearse.

A word in regard to style. The avoidance of the evils decried, and the observance of the suggestions made, in the foregoing remarks, are essential to the perfection of the art of intelligible writing. But the beginner generally wants something more; he is overanxious about the acquirement of style which, however, he soon learns, is not to be sought outside of the individual himself, and which the accomplished writer Buffon characterized so succinctly: "Le style c'est l'homme." Indeed the nature of the man scarcely ever fails to show itself in the style of his writings. The vivacious, the excitable, the querulous very generally leave in their writings traces of their peculiar characteristics, as do the forceful, the exact, the refined, and as do the pompous, the bombastic, the pretentious. And this, notwithstanding the degree of their technical knowledge, or of their mastery in science and letters, of their wealth of diction, skill in the choice of words variations in modes of