CHAPTER VIII

PASSING FROM ONE PARAGRAPH TO THE NEXT

A. CONFUSION BY CARELESS TRANSITION

In Chapter VII the emphasis was all put upon "separate topics." If a student had only that one lesson, he might think of paragraphs as blocks set up in a row to form a composition. Yet they are merely stages in one straight line of progress; a reader ought to pass easily from one to the other; in good composition we find that each "transition" (a passing over) is so contrived that we read along smoothly from one paragraph topic to the next.

The great principle that guides a writer in arranging smooth transitions is this: "I now have the reader's attention directed. to a certain topic; he does not know what is coming; I must not jump him blindfold into a new scene, but must show him the way to it." If a writer is telling about laying shingles on a roof, his mind may go-quite logically and in a fraction of a secondto the hardware store where he bought the hammer; but if a reader, who has been on the roof with him and intent on driving nails, suddenly finds himself at a show-case full of knives and scissors, he feels like Alice in Wonderland. Is it necessary to fly away from the roof and to skip back in time? Possibly it is. If so, the reader must be warned of the change and shown where he is going.

Read the following two paragraphs attentively and see how you feel by the time you have reached the third sentence of the second paragraph.

Naturally the masses began to degenerate physically, mentally, and, particularly, morally. It is really the masses that are the lifeblood of a nation; so when they degenerate, the nation degenerates too.

Some writers like Mrs. Browning realized this; and their writings, combined with the terrible plagues and disasters which occurred in the factories and mines, at last waked the people of England up. Then bills were passed in Parliament which have gradually helped the conditions.

The results of the Industrial Revolution have been the same in all countries. The laborers have been wretched, not only in England, but in all countries of the world. To protect themselves they have formed unions. As a result, one of the great questions of all countries today is the question of healing the strife which has been going on so long between the working classes and the capitalists.

The writer carries our mind in his first paragraph up to "bills which have gradually helped conditions"; hence we naturally continue along that line of thought and suppose that "results" means "those better conditions that we have just reached." Lo and behold! in the second sentence we bump squarely into "the laborers have been wretched"; we feel as if we were walking in the dark and must strike a match to find the way. Yet the writer's mind was not very illogical. If he had made a different transition, all would have been clear. When our minds were full of "improved conditions in England," he should have said: "But in spite of good laws the laborers of England-and, indeed, of all countries have been wretched." Thus he would have carried us easily along from "better conditions in England" to "wretchedness all over the world." That is about as wide a gap as there could ever be between the topics of two consecutive paragraphs, and yet the chasm is safely bridged by one thoughtful transition sentence.

B. FOURTEEN SKILFUL TRANSITIONS

A good series of these transitions may be seen in Kenneth Grahame's sketch of a day in a small boy's life, called Dies Irae. Because the author had to follow the quick jumps of childish adventure and fancy as a unified story, it was specially necessary for him to contrive a smooth passing from one paragraph to the next. Any student who will carefully observe the fourteen transitions made by this skilled workman, and will then turn back to

each one as the comment in the text directs, can learn a great Ideal by one hour of study.

(The title means The Day of Wrath. Martha is a servant in an English family of five children: Edward, who is away at school; "I," who is the next son; Harold, the youngest son; and two girls.)

1. Martha began it; and yet Martha was not really to blame. Breakfast was just over; the sun was summoning us, imperious as a herald with clamor of trumpet; I ran upstairs to her with a broken shoelace in my hand, and there she was, crying in a corner, her head in her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the same dismal succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck and hurt like a physical beating; and meanwhile the sun was getting impatient, and I wanted my shoelace.

2. Inquiry below stairs revealed the cause. Martha's brother was dead, it seemed-her sailor brother, Billy; drowned in one of those strange far-off seas it was our dream to navigate one day. We had known Billy well, and appreciated him. There had never

been anyone like Billy in his own particular sphere; and now he was drowned, they said, and Martha was miserable, and-and I couldn't get a new shoelace. They told me that Billy would never come back any more, and I stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right enough, every day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to Martha's sorrow hit home a little, but only because the actual sight and sound of it gave me a dull, bad sort of pain low down inside -a pain not to be actually located. Moreover, I was still wanting my shoelace.

me.

3. This was a poor sort of beginning to a day that, so far as outside conditions went, had promised so well. I wandered off to meet the girls, conscious of a jar and a discordance in the scheme of things. [This long paragraph explains that the four children had recently sent a big hamper of food and presents to Edward at his school; that Edward's acknowledgment had been very curt and ungrateful; and that the girls were angry and sniffling.] To Harold and to me the letter seemed natural and sensible enough. The girls, however, in their obstinate way, persisted in taking their own view of the slight. Hence it was that I received my second rebuff of the morning.

4. Somewhat disheartened, I made my way downstairs and out into the sunlight, where I found Harold, playing Conspirators by himself on the gravel. . . It seemed an excellent occasion for being a

black puma. So I launched myself on him, with the appropriate howl, rolling him over on the gravel.

5. Life may be said to be composed of things that come off and things that don't come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one of the things that didn't come off. From beneath me I heard a shrill cry of, "Oh, it's my sore knee!" And Harold wriggled himself free from the puma's clutches, bellowing dismally. . . . I made halfway advances, however, suggesting we should lie in ambush by the edge. of the pond and cut off the ducks. A fascinating pursuit this, and strictly illicit. But Harold would none of my overtures, and retreated to the house, wailing with full lungs.

What was

There

6. Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for the open country; and even as I made for the gate, a shrill voice from a window bade me keep off the flower-beds. wanted now was a complete change of environment. were pleasant corners where you dived for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big knife. No relations would be likely to come interfering. And yet I did not wish-just yet—to have done with relations entirely. They should be made to feel their position first, to see themselves as they really were, and to wish-when it was too late that they had behaved more 'properly.

7. Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself most thoroughly to the scheme. And the army would march in, and the guns would rattle and leap along the village street, and last of all you-you, the General, the fabled hero-you would enter, on your coal-black charger. You have a coal-black horse, and a saber-cut, and you can afford to be very magnanimous. But all the same you give them a good talking-to.

8. This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty minutes, and then the old sense of injury began to well up afresh, and to call for new plasters and soothing sirups. This time I took refuge in happy thoughts of the sea. The sea was my real sphere, after all. In due course the sloop or felucca would turn up— it always did the rakish-looking craft, black of hull, low in the water, and bristling with guns; the jolly Roger flapping overhead, and myself for sole commander. In all the repertory of heroes none

is more truly magnanimous than your pirate chief.

9. When at last I brought myself back from the future to the actual present, I found that these delectable visions had helped me over a longer stretch of road than I had imagined; and I looked around and took my bearings. To the right of me was a long, low building of gray stone.

I had wandered up there one day, and had been

treated as friend and comrade.

They had also fed me in their dining-hall. I had brought away from that visit, and kept by me for many days, a sense of cleanness, of the freshness that pricks the senses-the freshness of cool spring water; and the large swept spaces of the rooms, the red tiles, and the oaken settles suggested a comfort that had no connection with padded upholstery.

10. On this particular morning I was in much too unsociable a mind for paying friendly calls. Still, something in the aspect of the place harmonized with my humor. Thereupon, out of the depths

of my morbid soul swam up a new and fascinating idea. A severer line of business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that included black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows, too-irrevocable, blood-curdling vows; and an iron grating.. "For me, I am vowed and dedicated, and my relations henceforth are austerity and holy works. Once a month, should you wish it, it shall be your privilege to come and gaze at me through this very solid grating; but " Whack!

11. A well-aimed clod of garden soil, whizzing just past my ear, starred on a tree-trunk behind, spattering me with dirt. The present came back to me in a flash. It was the gardener's boy, I

knew well enough.

Hastily picking up a nice sticky clod in one hand, with the other I delicately projected my hat beyond the shelter of the tree-trunk. I had not fought with Redskins all these years for nothing.

12. As I had expected, another clod, of the first class for size and stickiness, took my poor hat full in the center. Then, Ajax-like, shouting terribly, I issued from shelter and discharged my ammunition. I got another clod in at short range; we clinched on the brow of the hill, and rolled down to the bottom together. When he had shaken himself free and regained his legs, he trotted smartly off in the direction of his mother's cottage; but over his shoulder he discharged at me both imprecation and deprecation, menace mixed up with an undercurrent of tears.

13. But as for me, I made off smartly for the road, my frame tingling, my head high, with never a backward look at the Settlement of suggestive aspect, or at my well-planned future which lay in fragments around it. Life had its jollities, then; life was action, contest, victory! The present was rosy once more, surprises lurked on every side, and I was beginning to feel villainously hungry.

14. Just as I gained the road a cart came rattling by, and I rushed for it, caught the chain that hung below, and swung thrillingly between the dizzy wheels. Abandoning the beaten track, I then struck