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American word for it, the English word is in every case better because it is shorter. He points to tram, for surface-car; and to lift, for elevator. Still though it may be a finer word, hoarding is not shorter than billboard; nor is "dailybreader" shorter than commuter. I think we break about even on that score.

This, however, would seem to be true: where the same words are employed in a somewhat different way the English are usually closer to the original meaning of the word. Saloon bar, for instance, is intended to designate a rather aristocratic. place, above the public bar; while the lowest "gin mill" in the United States would be called a "saloon." I know an American youth who has thought all the while that Piccadilly Circus was a show, like Barnum and Bailey's. With every thing that is round in London called a circus, he must have imagined it a rather hilarious place.

The English "go on" a good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenthrate American author-which is a way they have had in England of judging our literature-with the comment that "that is not the way John Milton wrote." Not long ago Mr. Crosland became involved in a trial in the courts in connection with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas and Robert Ross. He defended himself with much spirit and considerable cleverness. Among other things he said, as reported in the press: "What is this game? This gang are trying to do me down. Here I am a poor man up against two hundred quid (or some such amount) of counsel." Well, that wasn't the way John Milton talked, either.

The English slang for money is a pleasant thing: thick'uns and thin'uns; two quid, five bob; tanners and coppers. And they have a good body of expressive and colorful speech. "On the rocks" is a neat and poetic way of saying "down and

out." It is really not necessary to add the word "resources" to the expression "on his own." A "tripper" is a welldefined character, and so is a "flapper," a "nipper," and a "bounder." There had to be some word for the English "nut," as no amount of the language of John Milton would describe him; and while the connotation of this word as humor is different with us, the appellation of the English, when you have come to see it in their light, hits off the personage very crisply. To say that such a one "talks like a ha'penny book" is, as the English say, "a jolly good job." And a hotel certainly is presented as full when it is pronounced "full up." A "topper" would be only one kind of a hat. Very well, then it is quite possible, we see, to be "all fed up," as they say in England, with English slang.

sometimes

Humorous Englishmen rather fancy our slang; and make naïve attempts at the use of it. In England, for

instance, a man "gets the sack" when he is "bounced" from his job. So I heard a lively Englishman attracted by the word say that so and so should "get the bounce."

In writing, the Englishman usually employs "the language." He has his yellow journals, indeed, which he calls "Americanized" newspapers. But crude and slovenly writing certainly is not a thing that sticks out on him. What a gentlemanly book reviewer he is always! We have here in the United States perhaps a half dozen gentlemen who review books. Is it not true that you would get tired counting up the young English novelists who are as accomplished writers as our few men of letters? Englishman has a basketful of excellent periodicals to every one of ours. And in passing it is interesting to note this. When we are literary we become a little dull. See our high-brow journals! When we frolic we are a little, well, rough. The Englishman can be funny, even hilarious, and unconsciously, confoundedly well bred at the same time. But he does have a rotten lot of popular

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illustrated magazines over there compared to ours.

When you return from a sojourn of several months in the land of "the language" you are immediately struck very forcibly by the vast number of Americanisms, by the richness of our popular speech, by the "punch" it has, and by the place it holds in the printed page at home. In a journey from New York I turned over in the smoking-car a number of papers I had not seen for some time, among them the New York Evening Post, Collier's, Harper's, Puck and the Indianapolis News. Here, generally without quotation marks and frequently in the editorial pages, I came across these among innumerable racy phrases: nothing doing, hot stuff, Right O!, strongarm work, some celebration, has 'em all skinned, made at him, this got him in bad, scared of, skiddoo, beat it, a peach of a place, get away with the job, been stung by the party, got by on his bluff, sore at that fact, and always on the job. I E learned that the weather man had put over his first frost last night, that a town we passed had come across with a sixteen-year-old burglar, and that a discredited politician was attempting to get out from under. Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the Englishman frequently fails to get us.

You note a change in the whole atmosphere of language. A pronounced instance of this difference is found in public signs. You have been seeing in English conveyances the placards in neat type posted about which kindly request the traveller not to expectorate upon the floor of this vehicle, as to do so may cause inconvenience to other passengers or spread disease, and so forth and so on. Over here:

Don't Spit!

This Means You!

This is about the way our signs of this kind go. Now what about all this? I used to think many persons just returned from England ridiculously affected in their speech. And many of them are

those who say caun't when they can't do it unconsciously. That is, over here. In Britain, perhaps, it is just as well to make a stagger at speaking the way the Britains do. When you accidentally step on an Englishman's toe, it is better to say "I'm sorry!" or simply "sorry," than to beg his pardon or ask him to excuse you. This makes you less conspicuous, and so more comfortable. And when you stay any length of time you fall naturally into English ways. Then when you come back you seem to us, to use one of the Englishman's most delightful words, to "swank" dreadfully. And in that is the whole story.

Mr. James declares that in the work of two equally good writers you could still tell by the writing which was that of the Englishman and which that of the American. The assumption of course is that where they differed the American would be the inferior writer. Mr. James prefers the English atmosphere. And the Englishman is inclined to regard us in our deviation as a sort of imperfect reproduction of himself. What is his is ours, it is true; but what's ours is our own. That is, we have inherited a noble literature in common. But we write less and less like an Englishman all the while. Our legacy of language brought over in the Mayflower has become adapted to our own environment, been fused in the "melting-pot," and quickened by our own life to-day. Whether for better or for worse-it may be either-the literary touch is rapidly going by the board in modern American writing. One of the newer English writers remarks: "A few carefully selected American phrases can very swiftly kill a great deal of dignity and tradition."

Why should we speak the very excellent language spoken in the tight little isle across the sea? In Surrey they speak of the "broad Sussex" of their neighbors in the adjoining county. Is it exactly that we caunt? Or that we just don't? Because we have an article more to our purpose, made largely from English material, but made in the United States?

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RGUMENTATION plays a greater rôle in our lives than many of us realize not the technical kind, perhaps, that is preceded by the construction of briefs according to some stereotyped form, such as is required of lawyers, statesmen, and college freshmen; but the offhand mental debate involved in all our decisions, and the oral fencing which results from the necessary frictions of our daily routine. Not an hour passes but we are called upon to prove our statements or to defend our opinions. Indeed, all our actions are the result of certain judgments made often so promptly that the consciousness of the feat is lost. Were it not for this rational control based on silent and expeditious argumentative processes, our deeds would have no significance, and we should be lunatics.

In the field of writing as well, much of our argument is not confined to formal articles with such captions as: Resolved, That the ex-Kaiser should be brought before an international tribunal; or, Does prohibition prohibit? Often it is incidental or of such a nature that it is firmly interwoven with the entire fabric of the thought. Carlyle in Heroes and Hero Worship and Emerson in "Illusions" are never exhaustingly polemic, for they are more interested in the details of their exposition than in their thesis. Even when the chief aim of a book or essay is the acceptance by the reader of a well-defined proposition, that fact in itself by no means precludes an interesting treatment and a pleasant style.

Although often considered a subdivision of Exposition, Argumentation, because of its importance, is usually treated separately. Like Exposition it deals with ideas; but unlike Exposition it subjects those ideas to certain tests, and endeavors to convince some one by a logical process

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of reasoning that an allegation is true, o that a policy is right, expedient, or necessary. Thus Columbus tried to prove to his contemporaries the fact that the earth is round; Thomas M. Osborne submitted evidence to support his opinion that prison reform is needed; and many a politician has sought to convince himself and others that a program, though morally doubtful, is expedient and justified by conditions.

Evidence is necessary either to prove a fact or to support an opinion. It is of two kinds: direct and indirect.

1. Direct Evidence is the supporting statements of witnesses, and may be either oral or written. When special stress is laid upon the statements of some witness because of his accredited knowledge of a certain subject, this is called argument from authority. We must judge the worth of all testimony by at least three tests. First, has the witness the physical and mental capacity to testify concerning the question? You would scarcely credit the statements of a partially deaf man concerning the exact wording of an overheard conversation, or the judgments of a corner-grocery orator upon the new tariff. Second, is the witness morally sound?-that is, would he consciously distort the truth? And finally, is there any personal feeling that might unconsciously bias the judgment of the witness? Northern and Southern historians of the Civil War, without the slightest intention of deceit, sometimes draw very different conclusions from the same incidents, according to their respective points of view.

2. Indirect Evidence is furnished by a peculiar arrangement of circumstances, and is usually called Circumstantial Evidence. Van Wyck Brooks in his Ordeal of Mark Twain undertakes to prove that

the philosophical despair and cynicism which peer through the humor of our "divine amateur" were due not to pose but to the unnatural repression of his creative impulse, leaving in a state of arrested development only the playboy in letters, the humorous entertainer of the masses, never the true satirist nature had designed him to be. This hypothesis of maladjustment—a revolutionary view of Mark Twain based on Freudian principles of psychoanalysis-Mr. Brooks substantiates by finding in certain influences in Mark Twain's early life a sufficient cause for the suppression of his artistic genius: the narrow Puritanism of his mother, the crushing hostility to any signs of individualism among the pioneers of the Nevada gold fields, the bourgeois smugness and morality of his Hartford associates, and the continual insistence on respectability by his wife. These circumstances (says Mr. Brooks) explain how so great a spirit remained discontentedly degrading the beauty he could not himself achieve.

Circumstantial

is

Evidence alone scarcely dependable. A different set of conditions may fit our hypothesis. But when Mr. Brooks adduces Direct Evidence in the shape of anecdotes by such men as Howells and Paine, and a number of Mark Twain's own letters, many written not to be delivered but merely to let off steam, in which the humorist gives vent to his bitterness and distrust in himself and the race, the argument is materially strengthened, for both the Direct and the Indirect Evidence agree.

Before definitely committing one's self to a judgment upon the truth or falsity of the original proposition, one would first consider the Evidence submitted, balance one set of ideas against another, interpret the known facts, draw certain inferences, and finally reach a decision. This thought process brought into play after the Evidence has been submitted is termed Reasoning.

Reasoning may be divided into two kinds: Inductive and Deductive.

I.

Inductive Reasoning means arguing from a number of specific instances to a general law that will include them all. Thus by observation and testimony we know that every human being in the past has come at last to his death. Consequently we may frame a general law, All men are mortal. It is by this type of reasoning that all science advances. So Newton reasoned from the fall of an apple to the law of gravitation, and Huxley from an examination of chalk deposits to the conclusion that certain portions of inhabited Europe were once submerged in the ocean.

2. Deductive Reasoning means arguing from an accepted general law to one specific instance: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. This form of major premise, minor premise, and conclusion is termed a Syllogism. Macaulay employs Deductive Reasoning in his essay on "Milton," arguing that since it is right for men to fight for freedom even though rebellion brings with it many evils, therefore the conduct of Milton in championing the cause of the Commonwealth was justifiable and praiseworthy.

Practically all our argument involves both kinds of Reasoning. When we say that a certain man will surely die, we are basing our conclusion not merely on Deduction, but on the inductive process by which we arrived at the major premise, All men are mortal.

An error in reasoning is called a Fallacy. Very often success in destructive argument depends upon the disputant's ability to discern these fallacies in his opponent's reasoning. In Induction the most common Fallacy is that of hasty generalization following observation of too few specific instances. If we should say, "The new moon is spilling water; there will be a wet month," it would be evident we had made no thorough observation of weather conditions, but were simply voicing a popular superstition.

Sometimes our observation itself is at fault. The scientist who thought he had produced spontaneous germination of life

in a test tube of sterilized matter-a discovery which would have bridged the gap between the era of slime and the era of life in the world's history-was suddenly refuted by another scientist who demonstrated conclusively that the matter in the test tube had not been properly sterilized and still contained life.

Fur

In Deduction the most common error is the assumption of an incorrect major premise. If we start from the general statement that all who say "it don't" are uneducated and vulgar, we can prove some amazing things about certain college professors. As in Induction, correct observation is also necessary before we frame our minor premise. Otherwise there is no connecting link between the major premise and the conclusion. thermore, special care must be taken that the first term of the conclusion be contained in the smaller term of the major premise. Carlyle in Heroes and Hero Worship makes use of a false syllogism that may be formulated thus: All great men are sincere. Mahomet was sincere. Therefore Mahomet was a great man. The only legitimate conclusion one can draw from the original statement is that if Mahomet had been great, he would have been sincere.

It may be wise at this point to distinguish between Argument and Persuasion. The purpose of Argument is to convince. When a disputant appeals to the emotions. of his hearers rather than to their intellects, he is trying to persuade. Persuasion is not Argumentation in its best sense, but none the less it often proves effective as the florid perorations of certain lawyers for the defense amply illustrate. It is justifiable, however, when used to excite human interest in sound argument.

Hitherto we have been dealing largely with definitions. The most important constructive step in any argument is the determination of the Issues. The Issues are those points of dispute around which the discussion will rage most hotly. They are common both to the affirmative and to the negative, and in a formal brief 1 are always put in the form of questions. Consider, for instance, Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress recommending the declaration of a state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government. He discusses three chief issues which may be formulated thus:

1. Is the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants through the ruthless submarine policy of Germany a challenge to the sense of justice of the American people?

2. Is armed neutrality on the part of the United States still practicable?

3. Can peace be maintained by any means other than a partnership of democratic nations among whom the United States shall of

necessity have a place?

The capacity for perceiving these crucial points of discussion is the first requisite demanded of any who engage either in formal debate or in ordinary controversy. The second is the reasoning power to advance by certain logical steps from an accepted proposition to one not yet granted.

1 For a model brief see G. K. Pattee, Practical Argumentation, The Century Company, pages 171-183.

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