“You simply must take me to Aurora!” I said, with intense earnestness.

“I can’t do it,” he answered.  “But I believe you are what you represent yourself to be, and I will lend you the money personally.  It is only one dollar and twelve cents.”

“Well, sir, you could have knocked me down with the flat side of a palm-leaf fan.  I had more than two thousand dollars in currency in my pocket, but it had never for an instant occurred to me that I could pay my fare and ride on that train.  I showed the conductor a wad of money that made his eyes stick out.

“I thought it was funny,” said he, “that a man in your position couldn’t raise one dollar and twelve cents.  It was that that made me believe you were playing a trick to see if I would violate the rule.”

“The simple truth was, I had ridden everywhere on passes so many years, that it did not occur to me that I could ride in any other way.”

+Oral Composition III.+[Footnote:  Oral compositions should be continued throughout the course.  A few minutes may be profitably used once or twice each week in having each member of the class stand before the class and relate briefly some incident which he has witnessed since the last meeting of the class.  Exercises like those on page 53 also will furnish opportunities for oral work.]—­Relate to the class some personal incident suggested by one of the following subjects:—­

1.  A day with my cousin. 2.  Caught in the act. 3.  A joke on me. 4.  My peculiar mistake. 5.  My experience on a farm. 6.  My experience in a strange Sunday school. 7.  What I saw when I was coming to school.

(In preparation for this exercise, consider the point of your story.  What must you tell first in order to enable the hearers to understand the point?  Can you say anything that will make them want to know what the point is without really telling them?  Can you lead up to it without too long a delay?  Can you stop when the point has been made?)

+8.  Theme Writing and Correcting.+—­Any written exercise, whether long or short, is called a theme throughout this book.  Just as one learns to skate by skating, so one learns to write by writing; therefore many themes will be required.  Since the clear expression of thought is one of the essential characteristics of every theme, theme correction should be primarily directed to improvement in clearness.  The teacher will need to assist in this correction, but the really valuable part is that which you do for yourself.  After you leave school you will need to decide for yourself what is right and what is best, and it is essential that you now learn how to make such decisions.

To aid you in acquiring a habit of self-correction, questions or suggestions follow the directions for writing each theme.  In Theme I you are to express clearly to others something that is already clear to you.

+Theme I.+-Write a short theme on one of the subjects that you have used for an oral composition.