3.  Try to rival the pregnant conciseness of the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3).

4.  Paraphrase in prose the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4).  Catch if possible the mood, the “atmosphere,” of each of the pictures painted by Shakespeare.  Condense your paraphrase as much as you can.

5.  In each of the preceding exercises compare your vocabulary with that of the original as to size, precision, and the grace and ease with which words are put together.  Does the original employ terms unfamiliar to you?  If so, look up their meaning and make them yours; then observe, when you next paraphrase the passage, whether your mastery of these terms has improved your expression.

3.  Mastery through Discourse at First Hand

Models have their use, but you can also work without models.  It is imperative that you should.  You must learn to discuss, explain, analyze, argue, narrate, and describe for yourself.  Here again you should diversify your materials to the utmost, not only that you may become well-rounded and versatile in your ability to set forth ideas and feelings in words, but also that your knowledge and your sensibility may receive stimulation.

It is feasible to begin by discussing or explaining.  Most of the intercourse conducted through language consists in either discussion or explanation.  Analysis, ordinarily, is almost ignored.  Argument is indulged in, and so is description (though less freely), but they are of the bluntest and broadest.  Narration—­the recounting of incidents of everyday existence—­is, however, widely employed.

In your work of discussion or explanation you may seize upon any current topic—­industrial, social, political, or what not—­that comes into your mind.  Or you may make a list of such topics, writing each on a separate piece of paper; may jumble the slips in a hat; and may thus have always at your elbow a collection of satisfactory themes from which you may take one at random.  Or you may invest in language of your own selection the substance of an address or sermon you have heard, or give the burden of some important conversation in which you have participated, or explain the tenor of an article you have read.  You should of course try to interest your hearers, and above all, you should impart to what you say complete clarity.

In analyzing you should select as your topic a process fairly obscure, the implications of a certain statement or argument, the results to be expected from some action or policy that has been advocated, or the exact matter at issue between two disputants.  Any topic for discussion, explanation, or argument may be treated analytically.  Your analysis in its final form should be so carefully considered that its soundness cannot be impeached.