equally clear in meaning one may be more pleasing than the other.  One may seem harsh and rough, while the other flows along with a satisfying ease and smoothness.  If the thought that is in our mind fails to clothe itself in suitable language and appropriate figures, we can do little by conscious effort toward improving the beauty of the language; but by avoiding choppy sentences and inharmonious combinations of words and phrases, we may remove from our compositions much that is harsh and rough.  That quality which we call ease or euphony is better detected by the ear than by the eye, and for this reason it has been suggested that you read each theme aloud to yourself before presenting it to the class.  Such a reading will assist you to determine whether you have made your meaning clear and to eliminate some of the more disagreeable combinations.

+17.  Variety.+—­Of the many elements which affect the euphony of a theme none is more essential than variety.  The constant repetition of the same thing grows monotonous and distasteful, while a pleasing variety maintains interest and improves the story.  For the sake of this variety we avoid the continual use of the same words and phrases, substituting synonyms and equivalent expressions if we have need to repeat the same idea many times.

Most children begin every sentence of a story with “and,” or perhaps it is better to say that they conclude many sentences with “and-uh,” leaving the thought in suspense while they are trying to think of what to say next.  High school pupils are not wholly free from this habit, and it is sometimes retained in their written work.  This excessive use of and needs to be corrected.  An examination of our language habits will show that nearly every one has one or more words which he uses to excess.  A professor of rhetoric, after years of correcting others, discovered by underscoring the word that each time it occurred in his own writing that he was using it twice as often as necessary. Got is one of the words used too frequently, and often incorrectly.

EXERCISES

1.  In the following selection notice how each sentence begins.  Compare it with one of your own themes.

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character.  One day when I went out to my woodpile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, and the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with each other.  Having once got hold, they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly.  Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants; that it was not a duellum, but a bellum,—­a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black.  The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and the dying, both red and black.