18.  Describe the city of Washington (any other city) to (a) a countryman, (b) a traveler who has not visited this particular city. (If it is Washington you describe, describe it also for children in whom you wish to inculcate patriotism.)

19.  Give (a) a youngster, (b) an experienced angler an account of your fishing trip.

20.  Recount for (a) a baseball fan, (b) a girl who has never seen a game, the occurrences of the second half of the ninth inning.

21.  Describe a fight for (a) your friends, (b) a jury.

22.  Narrate for (a) children, (b) an audience of adults some historical event.

23.  Give (a) your partner, (b) a reporter an account of a business transaction you have just completed.

24.  Narrate an escapade for (a) your father, (b) your cronies in response to a toast at a banquet with them.

IV

    INDIVIDUAL WORDS:  AS VERBAL CELIBATES

Thus far we have studied words as grouped together into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole compositions.  We must now enter upon a new phase of our efforts to extend our vocabulary.  We must study words as individual entities.

You may think the order of our study should be reversed.  No great harm would result if it were.  The learning of individual words and the combining of them into sentences are parallel rather than successive processes.  In our babyhood we do not accumulate a large stock of terms before we frame phrases and clauses.  And our attainment of the power of continuous iteration does not check our inroads among individual words.  We do the two things simultaneously, each contributing to our success with the other.  There are plenty of analogies for this procedure.  A good baseball player, for instance, tirelessly studies both the minutiae of his technique (as how to hold a bat, how to stand at the plate) and the big combinations and possibilities of the game.  A good musician keeps unremitting command over every possible touch of each key and at the same time seeks sweeping mastery over vast and complex harmonies.  So we, if we would have the obedience of our vocabularies, dare not lag into desultory attention to either words when disjoined or words as potentially combined into the larger units of thought and feeling.

We might therefore consider either the individuals first or the groups first.  But the majority of speakers and writers pay more heed to rough general substance than to separate instruments and items.  Hence we have thought best to begin where most work is going on already—­with words in combination.