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Student Themes. The following student themes, though not perfect, are attempts to make clear how some process is carried through:

HOW TO STUFF PEPPERS

Wash the peppers and cut out the seeds by cutting around the stem. If this is done right, the seed pods will come out on the end of the stem. Be sure that no seeds are left in the peppers.

After the peppers are carefully seeded put them in a pan, pour boiling water over them, and cover them tightly. This is done to take out the strong taste. Leave them in the water half to three quarters of an hour.

While the peppers are soaking prepare the filling. This may be made from cheese, bread, and tomatoes. Break the bread into small bits, and mix with the cheese and tomatoes, also cut very fine. Salt the filling to suit your taste. Peppers may also be filled with beef ground in a meat grinder, bread, and a small piece of onion, and salt and pepper to flavor the filling.

When the peppers have soaked long enough, take them out of the water, drain them, and stuff them with the filling you have prepared. Place them on a flat pan in which there is a half pint of water to keep them from burning. Put the pan in a moderate oven and cook for about an hour.

STUDENT THEMES

HOW TO RUN A FORD CAR

203

There are three pedals used in running a Ford car. The one to the left of the driver is the clutch, the one in the middle is the reverse, and the one to the right is the brake.

To start the car, you turn a key in the small black box at the base of the steering wheel. You then crank the engine.

To go forward you push in on the clutch, which puts the car into low gear. As you are pushing in on the clutch you pull down the lever just below the steering wheel that feeds the engine with gasoline. The car then starts. When it has run about thirty feet, let the clutch out and put the car into high gear.

To stop the car push in the clutch half way and push in on the brake. When the car has stopped, throw it out of gear by pulling back the lever brake.

HOW TO MAKE A COMPOSITION FOLDER

Take two pieces of manila paper such as are used for book covers. Lay one on top of the other with the edges even. Cut a two-inch strip lengthwise from one of the pieces. Call the edge from which you cut this strip the top. Fold the two pieces in the middle like a book, with the smaller piece inside. Then sew them together along the two ends and across the bottom about a quarter of an inch from the edge. This forms two pockets for corrected and uncorrected manuscripts. Paste a piece of composition paper on the outer edge of the left-hand pocket. This is for the score sheet. Head this paper with the words "Stop! Look! Listen!" Under this write "Danger Zone" or something similar. Under this write a lot of mistakes you make, such as margins, spelling, punctuation, possessives, and-sentences, and double sentences.

How To Go FROM COLUMBUS CIRCLE TO LEXINGTON AVENUE
AND FIFTIETH STREET, NEW YORK

At Columbus Circle take the downtown subway train and get off at the second station, which is Times Square. Follow the black line painted on the ceiling of the subway station until you come to the "shuttle" train. Take this train to Grand Central Station. Get out of the shuttle train there and follow the black line to the East Side uptown train. Take a local and get off at Fifty-first Street. The sub

way station is at Lexington Avenue and Fifty-first Street, so to get to Fiftieth Street you would have to walk one block south on Lexington Avenue.

How To Go FROM WALKER'S MILL TO MILLTOWN

Follow the main road till you come to a creek, about two miles from Walker's Mill. Cross this creek and take the right-hand road that follows the creek a mile and a half to a white farmhouse. Take the right-hand road at this farmhouse and climb the hill. On the top of this hill is a church with a cemetery around it. You can see Milltown from the church and it is about two miles farther along the same road.

Clear Speaking and Writing. As a good deal of our conversation consists in telling people how to do things or how to go to places or in making other explanations, it stands us in good stead to be able to give directions plainly, so that any person of average intelligence can follow them. This is by no means easy. We may know how to do a thing ourselves but at the same time may flounder miserably when we try to tell someone else what seems so simple and plain to us. The reason for this is that we have not mastered the art of clear speaking and writing. In what does this art consist?

Exactness and Accuracy.—First, clear expression can come only from clear thinking. We can often do well things about which we do not think at all clearly; we do them just as animals do tricks; that is, with our muscles rather than with our brains. For example, a girl may tell you that when she makes biscuits she puts a little soda into the buttermilk. That is just what she does; but her statement does not help anyone else to follow her receipt. She has learned with her finger tips just how much soda to put into the milk; but if you try to follow her directions, you cannot do so, for you don't know just what "a little soda" means. Suppose she

SELECTING ESSENTIAL POINTS

205 tells you to take up a little soda between your thumb and finger and drop it into the milk until the milk foams freely. Well and good, for that is understandable, and can be followed. If she goes farther and says that with milk of ordinary acidity this reaction will occur when a half teaspoonful of soda is added to a pint of buttermilk, her directions are still more exact and therefore more helpful.

Let us examine the specimens printed on pages 202-204 to see if they are exact and accurate.

Stuffing Peppers. - Do you know just what ingredients you will need for stuffing peppers? Do you know what quantity of each to provide? Do you know what kind of peppers to select? Do you know how long they should soak and how long they should bake?

Running a Ford Car.- Does the writer tell you where the clutch is? Do you know what to do first? when to turn on the gasoline? how far to push the lever that feeds the gasoline? just when to let out the clutch? how to reverse the car? how to stop it? Is this a clear account of how to run a Ford car?

Making a Composition Folder. — Take two pieces of paper as the writer directs and see if you can make a folder according to these directions. What size will your sheets be? Just where are they to be folded? where sewed? In what position are the sheets to be laid together? Is this a clear account of how to make the folder?

Selecting Essential Points. In explaining something with which we are familiar it is very necessary for us to pick out the essential points and neglect all others; otherwise we confuse instead of informing the one we are telling.

If you were a stranger in New York could you tell from the directions given how to go from Columbus Circle to

Lexington Avenue and Fiftieth Street? Is all the necessary information given? Is anything given that is not needed? Can you remember all that is given? Can you write down the main points? Apply the same questions to the directions for going from Walker's Mill to Milltown.

EXERCISE

Apply what you have learned about exactness, accuracy, and essential points to the following account:

HOW TO MAKE A TIE RACK

And then you plane it down
After that is done you measure

The way you make a tie rack. First you get your board sixteen (16) inches long and five (5) inches wide. smooth. It is pretty hard to get smooth. up two and a half inches. And then get the middle of the board. You measure an inch on each side of it. Then after that is done you saw it off. Then you put a piece at the bottom one inch wide and turn it up at the ends with a wood chisel. And then you varnish it and it is done. It is nice-looking when it is finished.

Use of Pronouns.

In the sentence "Then you put a piece at the bottom one inch wide and turn it up at the ends with a wood chisel," to what does it refer? "You measure an inch on each side of it." On each side of what? Again, to what does it refer? Remember that every pronoun must refer to some particular word; a pronoun naturally refers to the noun that most nearly precedes it. It is better to repeat the noun than to use a pronoun ambiguously. In all writing and speaking, be careful that each pronoun refers clearly and unmistakably to the noun for which it stands.

Use of Modifiers. - Another aid to clearness is the accurate use of modifiers. Always place a modifying phrase or clause as near as possible to the word it modifies.

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