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BARDWELL MABIE
 LIBRARY

BUREAU OF EDUCATION

*
 Elementary
English in Action
GRADE V
BY

R. W. BARD WELL
Superintendent of Schools, Madison, Wisconsin

ETHEL MABIE
Director of Curriculum, Public Schools,
Madison, Wisconsin

J. C. TRESSLER
Author of English in Action, Grammar in Action
and co-author of Junior English in Action

With Drawings by
C. E. B. BERNARD
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Copyright, 1935,
-7%- BY
R. W. Bardwell
Ethel Mabie
J. C. Tressler

No part of the material covered by this

copyright may be reproduced in any form
without written permission of the publisher.
3^ 5

DEC 1 6 1935
U, S, OfHCfc OF FDUCrfTiO*

J~/BraBS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

©21 A 84394
JUN 21 1J35 .
 PREFACE
The organization of this book is based upon the principle —
generally accepted in schools today — that every situation
in the school requiring or stimulating social intercommuni¬
cation or individual self-expression affords significant op¬
portunity for developing language ability. These situations,
which are vital and meaningful to the pupils, are found in
the current life of the school, and particularly in the social
studies and the natural science classes.
In the first part of the book will be found typical units
embodying these vital situations — units taken from the
fields of social science, natural science, and the general school
life, and rich in opportunities for language training.
While the pupil is dealing with these natural and provoc¬
ative units assembled in Part I, he discovers that he needs
certain information about the use of language and that he
needs to acquire or to perfect certain skills in order to remedy
faults in his verbal expression. The informational and drill
material in this book is assembled mainly in Part II, where
it becomes a ‘Pupil's Handbook/ instantly available for
reference, yet out of the way when not wanted. This sepa¬
ration of the two aspects of English work — the occasions for
expression and the mechanics of expression — is an outstand¬
ing feature of this series that will be endorsed by all teachers,
whichever aspect they prefer to stress.
The features of Elementary English in Action that teachers
will appreciate may be stated briefly as they are exemplified
in Part I and in Part II.

In Part I
1. Selection of content has been based upon (a) a thorough
survey of numerous courses of study, (b) a canvass of scien¬
tific studies of the interests and natural activities of children
iii
IV PREFACE

of different ages and grade levels, and (c) the evidence of

classroom experience.
2. The language activities themselves that the children are
asked to use are just those activities in which children of
these ages normally engage: conversing; writing letters, in¬
vitations, and notices; reporting; discussing; telephoning;
interviewing; gathering information; and the like. An ef¬
fort has been made to maintain in the book the same balance
between these activities that is found in life.
3. Classroom experience and close contact with children in
teaching and observation on the part of the authors has
guided the selection both of the units and of the language
activities. It is true in elementary-school English, if any¬
where in the wv>rk of the school, that arm-chair theory as to
what may or may not be done is liable to fail under the acid
test of classroom trial.
4. The approach to each unit is carefully designed to arouse
interest and stimulate expression. The aim is to provoke
thought and discussion and thus to develop naturally in the
child a conscious need for correct and effective expression.
This meets a fundamental principle of learning; namely,
that those things are most rapidly and effectively acquired
that satisfy a need, rather than a demand from without.
5. Progression in the difficulty of the material is such that
language skills acquired in any one grade are maintained and
developed further in subsequent grades. The examples, the
explanations, and the standards have been carefully planned
to carry the language abilities — letter-writing, story-tell¬
ing, discussing, and so forth — to a higher level in each grade.
6. An explanation, a model, and a practice are provided to
guide the pupil whenever a new language ability is required.
7. Standards for self-rating by the pupils are given wher¬
ever appropriate. These criteria are set forth in chart form
so that they attract attention and are easily referred to by the
pupil. It is unnecessary to argue the importance of develop¬
ing these habits of self-criticism.
 PREFACE y

8. The initiative of the pupil is engaged generally through¬

out this book. The method employed is especially designed
to encourage the pupil to search for, and to find, assistance
in his language difficulties. It is reasonable to expect that
this habit of self-criticism and self-correction will extend into
all activities and studies in which language difficulties may
be encountered.
9. Continuity of effort and freedom from distraction are
gained by removing from Part I the material used to improve
the mechanics of English expression, to correct errors, and to
drill upon skills. This material is instantly available in
Part II. Placed there, it does not turn the pupil aside from
his immediate objectives in the use of language or destroy
his interest in expression.
10. The material is easily adaptable to varying school con¬
ditions without conflicting with other courses of study. At
the same time, many of the units do serve as illustrations of
the methods by which other school subjects may be made the
material for language instruction, with the result that every
teacher of every subject becomes a teacher of language.

In Part II
1. The selection of material has been made after careful
examination of courses of study and of scientific investi¬
gations.
2. The grade placement of this material, and hence the
sequence of items grade by grade, has been controlled par¬
ticularly by three considerations: (a) the child’s need for
the skill at the time, (b) the difficulty of acquiring the skill,
and (c) the comparative importance of the skill in adult life.
3. A maintenance program is provided by a cycle plan of
drills and exercises, so that the various language skills will
be thoroughly acquired.
4. A minimum of mechanics has been included in the ma¬
terial selected, in accordance with the present trend toward
simpler capitalization, punctuation, and form.
VI PREFACE

5. Progress from grade to grade in mechanics of expression

is assured by a definite plan of organization and instruction.
Each set of skills is checked to insure the mastery of those
previously taught before additional ones are developed.
6. Meaning and understanding underlying each new skill
are developed before drill upon the skill is introduced. The
drill is thus an intelligent, not a purely mechanical, process.
7. Individual differences are provided for by frequent diag¬
nosis of the needs of the class and of individual pupils and
by optional exercises.
8. Self-reliance in the discovery of difficulties and in remedy¬
ing them is everywhere encouraged. The pupil is challenged
to use the Handbook on his own initiative.
9. The organization of the Handbook, though concise, is
on the child’s level and its vocabulary and style likewise permit
the child to use the Handbook freely and easily as a tool for
improving his expression in language.
10. A standard of achievement for his grade is developed
for the pupil by the many examples of the work done by
pupils of his grade.

We appreciate the assistance of the principals and teachers

of the schools in Madison and elsewhere who used this ma¬
terial experimentally and read it critically. We are grateful,
also, for the cooperation of many school children whose
letters, reports, poems and other writings have been used in
the books.
For valuable suggestions and assistance we are grateful to
Miss Bess Goodykoontz, Assistant Federal Commissioner of
Education, Washington, D.C.; Mr. Roger Hill, Principal
of the Todd School, Woodstock, Illinois; Miss Eleanor M.
Johnson, formerly Assistant Superintendent of Schools,
Lakewood, Ohio; Miss Berenice Maloney, Elementary
Supervisor, South Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Professor Sally
Marks, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North
Carolina; Miss Mabel O’Donnell, Supervisor of Elementary
 PREFACE Vll

Education, East Aurora, Illinois; Miss Amelia Peters, School

of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana;
Miss Margaret Chenoweth, Supervisor of Elementary
Schools, Janesville, Wisconsin; Miss Marjorie Pratt, Curric¬
ulum Coordinator, Shorewood, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and
Miss Beatrice Wolfe, teacher of English in grade six, New
York City.
In directing the typing and preparation of the manuscripts
and securing permissions for quoted material Miss Irma
Kahle, of Madison, Wisconsin, has been most generous with
time and effort.
R. W. B.
E. M.
J. C. T.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers
and authors for permission to use selections held under copyright:
American Education Press, Inc.: To Mr. W. C. Blakey for per¬
mission to use, in some exercises, content from My Weekly Reader.
D. Appleton-Century Company: for the excerpt “Wahb, the
Grizzly, on Vacation,” from The Biography of a Grizzly, by
Ernest Thompson Seton.
Herbert N. Casson: for the adaptation “The Birth of the Tele¬
phone,” from his book, The History of the Telephone.
Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.: for the three adaptations in Unit I,
taken from How They Carried the Mail, by Joseph Walker. Copy¬
right, 1930, by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.: for the poem “City Rain,”
from Taxis and Toadstools, by Rachel Field. Copyright, 1926,
by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.
Educational Publishing Corporation: for Christina Rossetti’s poem
“ The Rainbow,” from Poems for Children, arranged by Melvin Hix.
Follett Publishing Company: for the poem by Rowena Bastin
Bennett taken from her book, Around a Toadstool Table.
Harper & Brothers: for the adapted puppet scene, “Whitewashing
the Fence,” from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain.
Little, Brown & Company: for the excerpt, “Building the Beavers’
Lodge,” from Followers of the Trail, by Zoe Meyer.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons: for the stanza from “Ode to the Norther,”
by William L. Chittenden, from his volume, Ranch Verses.
Miss Carrie Rasmussen, Longfellow School, Madison, Wisconsin:
for her poem, “Jack, the Puppet,” written expressly for this book.
Charles Scribner’s Sons: for the excerpt, “The New Pupil,” from
The Hoosier School Boy, by Edward Eggleston.
Elizabeth Hough Sechrist: for the adapted excerpt, “The Beginning
of Halloween,” from her A Little Book of Hallowe’en, published
by J. B. Lippincott Co.
Silver, Burdett & Company, publishers, and Emma Seri, author:
for the excerpt, “A Lucky Escape,” from In the Animal World.
Frederick A. Stokes Company: for the poem “It Isn’t Only Flakes
that Fall,” by Annette Wynne, reprinted by permission from
For Days and Days: A Year-Round Treasury of Verse for Children.
Copyright, 1919, by Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Nancy Byrd Turner: for her poem “Contrary Mary.”
viii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

FIFTH GRADE

Part I. Your Program of Activities

PAGE

Unit I. Carrying Messages Far and Wide ... 3

The First Royal Post. 3
Indian Messengers. 5
The Beginning of Our Postal System. 6
America’s First Mail Service. 7
The Pony Express. 8
The Overland Mail. 11
The Mail Trains. 14
The Air Mail. 14
Helping the Mail Service. 16

Unit II. Holiday Programs — Fall Semester . 18

Labor Day. 18
Young Workers. 20
Halloween. 22
How Halloween Started. 22
Our Celebration of Halloween. 23
The Harvest Festival — Thanksgiving. 25
The First Thanksgiving. 26
Christmas. 27
The Christmas Tree. 27
Christmas in France. 28

Unit III. Radio News. 30

Making Plans. 30
Your Radio Staff. 30
IX
X TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Your Programs. 32
School News. 32
Community News. 33
Current Events. 34
The Weather. 35
Announcements. 36
Making More Complete News Reports. 37
Special Numbers. 39
Planning Improvements. 39

Unit IV. Overland Travel. 40

Outline for Studying Land Travel. 41
Gathering Materials on Travel. 42
A Book Shelf. 42
A Bibliography. 42
Writing for Information. 44
Committee Outlines. 45
Reporting on Your Topics. 46
The Chairman’s Job. 46
The Committee Member’s Oral Report. 47
A Written Report. 48
Discussing the Reports. 49
Story-Telling. 50

Unit V. Moods of the Air. 52

A Weather Diary. 53
New Words. 53
A Weather Bibliography. 54
The Air. 55
The Sun. 57
Sun Myths. 58
The Wind. 59
Wind Speeds. 61
Wet Weather. 62
 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

PAGE
Forecasting the Weather. 64
The Weather and Occupations. 66

Unit VI. In the Bookstore. 68

Sharing Your Knowledge of Books. 69
A Trip to the Bookstore. 70
An Interview with the Manager. 71
A Bookstore of Your Own. 73
Preparing for Business. 73
Letters to Publishers. 74
Advertising Books. 75
Book Posters. 76
Judging Books. 77
A Record of Your Reading .. 78
Dramatizing Stories. 79

Unit VII. Electrical Messages. 81

The Invention of the Telegraph. 81
The Morse Code. 82
Writing a Telegram. 83
Messages across the Ocean. 85
The Telephone. 86
Using the Telephone. 89
Dramatizing the Magic of the Telephone .... 90
Messages through the Air. 91
The Wireless Telephone. 92

Unit VIII. Holiday Programs — Spring Semester 94

Washington’s Birthday. 94
Enjoying the Beauty of Washington. 96
Reports about Washington. 98
April Fool’s Day.100
Funny Experiences and Funny Pictures.100
Nonsense Poetry. 101
Humorous Stories.103
A Program of Nonsense.103
Entertaining Your Guests.104
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Mother’s Day.104
Planning Your “At Home”.105
Inviting Your Guests.106
Receiving and Introducing Your Guests .... 106

Unit IX. Wild Animals.107

The Bear.108
The Grizzly.110
The Busy Beaver: An Animal Engineer.113
The Hazards of the Forest.115
Conserving Wild Animal Life.116
Forest Trails.118

Unit X. Our School.120

The First Day in School.120
Changing to a New School.121
Early Schools.124
Learning about Earlier Schools.124
Your School Building.127
School Citizenship.127
Changes in Books.129
New School Subjects.133

Unit XI. The Growth of Cities.135

Entering a Big City.135
A Bird’s-Eye View of the City.136
New Words.137
Why Do Great Cities Grow So Large?.138
Cities in the Old and in the New World .... 139
Getting Information.141
Cities Protect Their People.142
Cities Serve Their People.144
Helping Your City.145

Unit XII. Puppets and Marionettes.147

How to Make Puppets.149
The Puppet Theatre.150
 TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
Puppet Sketches and Plays.152
Marionettes .154
Making Marionettes.155
Stringing Them Up.155
Your First Marionette Play .157
Inviting Guests. 158
Making Up a Play of Your Own .159

Part II. Your Handbook

Section I. Form of Written Work.165

Changes in Style.165
Margins.166
The Placing of the Title.168
Pules for Arrangement.170

Section II. Using Book Tools .171

The Table of Contents.171
The Index.172
Section Headings.174
List of Illustrations.175
List of Maps.176
The Card Catalog.176
Other Information on the Card.178
Book Lists.179
Your Dictionary.180
Keys to Pronunciation.181
Accents.181
Pronunciation Symbols.182
Diacritical Marks.182
The Key Line.183
Syllable Division.183
Alphabetical Arrangement.184
Guide Words.185
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Section III. Letter-Writing.187
How Important Are Letters?.187
Your Letter File .188
A Letter Exchange.189
Forwarding.190
Committee Work.192
Letter Courtesy.194
Good Form for Letters.195
Invitations.196
A Letter File of Invitations.197
Invitations to be Written This Year.198
Letters Asking Favors.198
Other Letters of This Kind.201
Letters of Appreciation.201
Business Letters.203
Finding Out for Yourselves.203
A Letter to Study.205

SectionIV. Good Usage.209

Working for Better Usage.210
Recording Your Own Difficulties and Your Improve¬
ment .211
Courtesy in Criticism.212
Review Practices on Good Usage.213
New Word Habits to Learn.217
Double Negatives.218
The Use of Gave and Came.219
The Use of Said.220
The Use of Themselves and Himself.220
The Use of Doesn't.221
The Use of Brought.222
The Use of Is and Are.223
The Use of Broke and Broken.224
The Use of Drank and Drunk.224
The Use of A and An.225
 TABLE OF CONTENTS xv
PAGE
Section V. Capital Letters.228
Review Rules for Capital Letters.228
Planning What to Study.231
Review Practices. 233
New Rules for the Fifth Grade.240
Practices on the New Rules.242
Testing What You Have Learned.245

Section YI. Punctuation.247

Reviewing Punctuation Rules.248
Sentence-Ending Marks.248
Abbreviations.248
Contractions.248
Possessives.249
Quotations.249
Commas.249
Review Practices.251
New Things about Quotations .257
Divided Quotations.257
Quotations Several Sentences Long.258
New Things about the Comma.259
The Comma with the Name of the Person Ad¬
dressed .259
The Comma with Yes and No.260
A New Punctuation Mark.261
Possessives.263
The Apostrophe with Possessives.263
Singulars and Plurals.264
Your Dictionary Helper.266
Making Singular Words Possessive.266
Making Plural Words Possessive.267

Section VII. Sentences.270

Clear and Complete Sentences.270
Sentence Puzzles.272
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Other Sentence Faults.273
Punctuating Sentences.275
Proof-Reading.275
A Fourth Kind of Sentence.276
Building Clear, Complete Sentences of Your Own . 279
Summary Sentences.280
Using Summary Sentences for Outlines.281
Judging Your Own Sentences.282

Section VIII. Paragraphs.284

Paragraph Signs.284
Paragraph Detours.285
Making Paragraphs without Detours.287
Keep Moving.288
Judging Paragraphs.289
Criticizing Your Own Paragraphs.292
Paragraphing Conversation.292
Telling Things in Order.294
Paragraphs and Outlines.295
 Part I

YOUR
PROGRAM OF ACTIVITIES
The Aztec Runners Deliver the Scroll Message
to Their Emperor
 UNIT I

CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE

THE FIRST ROYAL POST

In the throne room of the king of Assyria, on a day
almost five thousand years ago, were gathered the lead¬
ing men of the realm. King Sargon had called to his
court his lords and vassals from the most distant parts
of his kingdom.
In front of the throne stood the herald, with his
trumpet richly inlaid with gold. At the third blast of
the trumpet twenty young men marched up the center
of the great hall. Each man was lightly clothed, as
for a foot race. Around each man’s head was a band of
gold — the badge of the king. As the men reached the
throne, they knelt and awaited the king’s command.
King Sargon arose and spoke in a clear voice:
“Know, all my subjects, that it pleases the King to
start on this day a royal post. It shall run on stated
days, carrying my words to the ends of the world, and
bringing back any news or advice helpful to my gov¬
ernment.”
Then the king gave his first message to his subjects.
When he had ended, the trumpet blew again. The
3
4 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

messengers arose, and the king said: “These be my

messengers to bear my words to all men. Give ear to
them and treat them with respect.”
— Adapted

That day the people stood upon the walls of the city
and watched the messengers of the king’s post disap¬
pear into the distance — north, south, east, and west.
As they watched, little did they dream that the post
which King Sargon established that day would be
spoken of thousands of years later, that it would be
known as the first postal system established by a gov¬
ernment and would be remembered when their great
city had crumbled to dust and King Sargon’s empire
was only a memory.

Practice 1 — Conversing
How did King Sargon’s plan for sending his messages
to his people compare with the postal system of today?
What would be the difficulty of such a system in our
country? What are the different ways by which the
President presents his messages to the people today?
What part do newspapers play? How is the radio
used? Few people could read in King Sargon’s day.
What difference did that make in sending messages
to the people?

Practice 2 — Writing a Paragraph

Write a paragraph telling the differences in the way
in which King Sargon sent his messages to distant
places in his empire and the way in which the Presi¬
dent of the United States communicates with us. Your
first sentence will state whether or not there are great
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 5
differences. This is called the topic sentence of your
paragraph. The other sentences will tell what you
consider the differences to be. For help in writing a
good paragraph, turn to your Handbook, Section VIII,
on "Paragraphs.”
INDIAN MESSENGERS
In America the first messages were also delivered
by men who traveled on foot. When the Aztec
Indians saw the Spaniards landing on the Mexican
coast, they sent the news to their emperor with the
greatest speed. Their artists drew pictures of the in¬
vaders and of their horses and cannon. Every small
item was shown by the picture-makers; not one detail
was left untold.
The pictures were rolled in a scroll, and two runners
were chosen to carry them to the emperor almost three
hundred miles away. Day and night the Indian mes¬
sengers traveled. Through forest trails, over treeless
plains, across hills and valleys they ran. On the fourth
day, nearly exhausted, but proud of their achievement
in bringing the news with such speed, they delivered
the scroll to their emperor.

Practice 3 — Discussing Pictures in

News Reports
Pictures still help to give us a better understanding
of a news report. When a "big story” of some im¬
portant happening is headlined on the front page of
the newspaper, there are usually pictures to illustrate
it. How do the newspapers get the pictures so quickly?
Can you find out what is meant by a newspaper
"morgue”? Have you seen pictures that were marked
6 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

“telephoto”? What does that mean? How do modern

ways of sending pictures as a part of messages differ
from the way of the Aztecs?

THE BEGINNING OF OUR POSTAL SYSTEM

Three hundred years ago (1635) the first public post
was established in England. It took three days to
carry a message from London to Edinburgh. About
every twenty miles there was a station or post for the
riders carrying the government mail. The keeper of
each post had to have at least two horses ready at
all times to carry government messages. The riders
were expected to make seven miles an hour in summer
and five miles an hour in winter.
It was not until one hundred fifty years later that
the English started carrying the mail in wagons. The
mail coaches, as they were called, were very striking in
appearance with their gilt and bright red and blue
paint. Royal guards rode on top of them to protect the
mail.

Practice 4 — Writing a Description

[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs]

Study the picture of the English Royal Mail. Write

a paragraph describing it. The first sentence of your
paragraph will be the important one.

Here is a sample beginning sentence:

What a wonderful sight the Royal Mail must have been as
it rolled through the streets of English towns a hundred
years ago.

The other sentences will tell some of the things you

see in the picture that will give the reader of your para-
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 7

Courtesy of the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild

The English Royal Mail

graph a clear idea of the mail coach. These sentences

will tell of the horses, the guards, the passengers, or the
richly decorated body of the coach.

AMERICA’S FIRST MAIL SERVICE

The first regular mail carrier in America set out on
horseback from New York to Boston on New Year’s
Day, 1672. Once a month this postman made the trip
by ferry, ford, and bridle path. There were no post
offices, and when he returned to New York he would
empty his bag on the table in a coffeehouse. This was
the place where the most people were gathered together.
There they got their mail when the post rider ar¬
rived.
One of the first acts of the Continental Congress
was to establish a colonial system of mails. Benjamin
8 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Franklin was the first postmaster general. In those

early days it was rather costly to send a letter. The
charge was from four pence to one shilling (eight to
twenty-five cents in present-day money) for each letter,
depending upon the weight and the distance the letter
was to go. People were very careful to use only a few
sheets of paper to avoid a double charge. Sometimes
this meant that they wrote both ways on the sheet of
paper — from side to side, as we do, and also from top
to bottom.

Practice 5 — Discussing Early Mail Service

The colonies were all near the ocean. How do you
think much of their mail was carried besides by riders
on horseback? What effect do you think a postal rate
of twenty-five cents for one letter would have on mail
today? Why was it very necessary for a letter-writer
in colonial times to be a good penman?

Practice 6—Finding Information

[Handbook , Section II y Using Book Tools]
There are several places where you can find out
about the early history of our postal system. Your
post office can give you some information. Your refer¬
ence books will have a short history of the post-office
department, and your library will have books that
tell something about this subject. How good are you
as searchers? Report to the class what you find on
the beginnings of our post-office department.

THE PONY EXPRESS

In 1860 much of the vast country west of the Missis¬
sippi River was a trackless wilderness of barren desert
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 9

The United States Post-Office Department

The Pony Express Rider

and frowning mountains. A quick and certain method

of communication was needed. Plans were made for
a fleet of fast riders to be called the Pony Express.
Eighty of the best riders were employed, and over four
hundred horses were used. Each horse covered about
fifteen miles between stations, and travel was at top
speed night and day all the way. The time for carry¬
ing the mail from the Missouri River to San Francisco
was eight days.
10 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL MAIL BY PONY EXPRESS

The opening day at St. Joseph, Missouri, was a gay occa¬

sion. A great crowd had assembled in the streets, and excite¬
ment was at fever heat. Flags were flying everywhere, and
a brass band added to the hubbub. The train bringing the
mail from the East was due in the afternoon. At last the
waiting throng heard the train, on time.
Scarcely had it stopped when busy hands were transferring
the mail pouches to a wagon, which rattled down the street to
the post office. A few minutes more and the Pacific mail was
sorted out and ready for the Express rider. The letter
pouch was adjusted to the saddle. It was limited to twenty
pounds and contained, besides letters and a New York news¬
paper printed on tissue paper, a message of congratulation
from President Buchanan to Governor Downey, of Califor¬
nia. As the last buckle was adjusted, the rider sprang into
the saddle, and down the main street of St. Joseph he went
at a mad gallop, the people shouting themselves hoarse.
At the foot of the street, at the Missouri River landing,
a ferry boat was waiting for him, and onto it he dashed.
Hardly had his horse’s hoofs struck the planking when the
bells clanged and the boat pushed off into midstream. The
first trip of the Pony Express was begun.
— Adapted

Practice 7 — Writing a Paragraph

Imagine that you are an old-time Western rancher.
For a month you have had no news from the East
and your old home town. One afternoon you look
across the prairie and see a cloud of dust. It’s the
Pony Express with mail! Write as if you were the
rancher, and tell how the rider and horse look as they
draw up to your door.
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 11

THE OVERLAND MAIL

For several years before the completion of the rail¬
road to the west coast the mail was carried in four-
horse or six-horse wagons instead of by the Pony
Express. These wagons were very much like the stage¬
coaches that carried the mail and passengers in the
colonial days. They were heavy, with wide iron tires
on their wheels. They were usually painted bright
red or green. Inside were three long seats, each large
enough for three passengers. More passengers could
be carried on top with the luggage. This was not
such a good place to ride when it stormed. The
driver sat in a high seat in front, and the mail was
carried wherever space could be found.
“Stations” were located all the way across the t
country, about forty miles apart. Here the horses
could be fed. Sometimes a complete new set of horses
was provided. The passengers, too, could get food
and lodging if the mail wagon stayed overnight.
Twenty-five days was the average time that it took
the Overland Mail to reach California from St. Louis.

Practice 8 — Making a Report

Many exciting adventures are told of the Pony
Express riders and the Overland Mail. Not only were
there hostile Indians, but there were also bands of
robbers who wanted to get any valuables that the
mail might carry.
Stories of the courage of the drivers in protecting the
passengers and the mail were as common for many years
as stories of brave airplane pilots are today. Many of
these stories you can find in library books.
12 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

MAIL ON THE OVERLAND STAGE

Down the main street of old Denver a cloud of dust arose,

and from its midst appeared a confused vision of plunging
horses and a huge, lumbering carriage. Nearer it came and a
clearer view showed six madly galloping horses and a driver
who sat on top of the coach and cracked his whip. The stage
drew up to the little station with a flourish. No matter how
hard the journey between stations might have been, the stage
always came in with a roar.
As passengers climbed out and others got in, an alert¬
looking fellow with a brace of pistols in his belt and a gun
slung from his shoulder climbed nimbly down from his seat
alongside the driver and handed a mail sack to a waiting man.
Other sacks were neatly piled on top. He represented Uncle
Sam. This was the government Overland Mail.
— Adapted

You will find more stories of these adventures in the

following books:
Roughing It — Mark Twain
The Danger Trail — J. W. Schultz
Trail-Makers of the Northwest — P. L. Howarth
Children's Stories of American Progress — H. C. Wright
Heroes of Progress in America — C. Morris
Westward to the Pacific — Marion G. Clark
The Bullwhacker — W. F. Hooker
Frontier Law — W. J. McConnell
Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail — Ezra Meeker
The White Indian Boy — E. N. Wilson

From your reading select one incident or adventure

that you think will interest your class and make a
report of it to them. On the next page are some stand¬
ards that you should have in mind to make your re¬
port a good one.
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 13

Standards for Telling a Story

1. Make the first sentence important. It must in¬

terest your hearers and make them want to hear
the rest of your story.
2. Choose an adventure that you enjoyed and one
that you will take pleasure in telling to your
classmates.
3. Proceed easily from one point to the next, with¬
out hesitating or telling unimportant details.
4. End your report while your listeners are still in¬
terested. Do not ramble on until your audience
is tired.

Practice 9 — Using Your Dictionary

[Handbook, Section II, Using Book Tools']

To have a good picture in your mind of the Over¬

land stage just described, you must know the meaning
of every word. Here is a list of those you may need
to look up in your dictionary.
confused lumbering journey nimbly
vision flourish alert represented

Practice 10 — Conversing about the Overland Mail

How would you like to have been the driver on the
Overland Mail stage with six horses to manage at one
time? Or would you rather have been the mail guard?
Why did he need to carry two pistols? What were
some of the dangers he might meet? What sort of
man was needed for this work? Are there jobs today
for the same kind of men?
14 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

THE MAIL TRAINS

After the year 1830 railroads began to take the place
of stagecoaches in the eastern part of the United
States. The United States postal service used the rail¬
roads for carrying letters. The cost of sending a let¬
ter by mail became less and less. People began to use
the postal service much more widely.
Most of our mail is still carried by the railroads.
The man in charge of your post office will be glad
to show you how the mail is sorted and sent out on
the mail trains to all parts of the country. Your class,
or a committee, can visit your nearest post office and
get much information about the sending and receiving
of mail.

Practice 11 — Reporting on a Trip

When you have visited your post office, write a re¬
port on what you learned about the handling of the
mail. Here are some of the questions you may answer
in your report.
1. How many times each day does the post office send
mail out on the trains? How many times does it receive
mail from the railroad station or the main post office?
2. How does the clerk cancel the stamps on the letters?
Why is every stamp canceled?
3. How are the letters sorted so that some letters will go
east, others west, some north, and others south?
4. What are the different kinds of mail?

THE AIR MAIL

The most recent and the fastest mail service is the
air mail. The railroad takes from three to four days
to carry a letter from New York to San Francisco.
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 15

The mail plane covers this distance in a little over

one day and travels on schedule every day. What a
difference in time this is when compared with the
twenty-five days that the Overland Mail took in carry¬
ing the mail from St. Louis to California! A visit
to the airport at the time the mail plane takes off or
lands is an experience that you will enjoy if you live
in a city that is on one of the air-mail routes. The
air-mail service is increasing from year to year, and
it may be that some day the greater part of all the
mail will be carried in airplanes.
The Post-Office Department at Washington will send
you information about the air-mail service if you write
for it. On the next page is a letter that you may use
as a model.

Practice 12 — Writing a Letter

Write a class letter to the Post-Office Department
at Washington, asking for information that you would
like in your study of air-mail service.
16 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Center School
Aurora, Illinois
January 9, 1935

Second Assistant Postmaster General

Post Office Department
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir:

We are studying the development of the air

mail in our class. If you have any maps that
show the air-mail routes and any pamphlets that
tell about the advantages and the cost of sending
letters by air mail, we shall appreciate receiving
them.
Yours truly,
Fifth Grade

HELPING THE MAIL SERVICE

How can everyone, including fifth-grade boys and
girls, help the post-office workers in their efforts to
have the mail come through quickly and correctly?
There are several things you can do to help. You
can direct your letters very clearly, so that the address
of the person to whom the letter is going can be read
easily. You can avoid using abbreviations which may
not be understood, such as “Cal.” for “California”
and “Col.” for “Colorado.” These look much alike
in handwriting. You can be sure always to place a
return address in the upper left corner of the envelope.
You can be sure to have the correct amount of postage
on the envelope, especially if it is heavier than the
 CARRYING MESSAGES FAR AND WIDE 17

ordinary letter. You can provide good mail boxes to

receive letters in, and place them so that they will be
convenient for your postmen. These are some of the
things which fifth-grade boys and girls, as good citi¬
zens, can do to help the post-office department of their
government.

Practice 13 — Making a Bulletin Board Exhibit

During the past one hundred years great changes
have taken place in the method and speed with which
written messages are carried. Arrange an exhibit of
pictures and statements that show this progress.
Mount them and exhibit them on your bulletin board.
Have one section of the exhibit arranged to show How
We Can Help the Post-Office Workers.
 UNIT II

HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — FALL SEMESTER

LABOR DAY
On the first Monday in September people all over
our country celebrate Labor Day. On that day stores
and factories close. Meetings are held and parades
march down the streets. Do you know why we have
this celebration? Even if Labor Day is past when your
school begins, you will be interested to learn why we
have a day in honor of labor.
Many years ago in far-away Europe the workers
who made things for people did not get much for their
labor. Often they had to work in dark, unhealthful
places. They were poor and their families sometimes
did not have enough to eat. To make things better
for themselves, they joined together in a sort of club.
This club was called a “guild” (gild). The guild
helped the workers to have better wages and better
places in which to work. Then both the workers and
the men for whom they worked were happier. To
show their joy, they held fairs and parades. From this
18
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — FALL SEMESTER 19

custom has come our celebration of Labor Day. The

parade of the Knights of Labor in New York City in
1882 began the annual celebration, which comes on the
first Monday of September.
Now in nearly all our states Labor Day is a holi¬
day. On that day we honor the men and women
whose work provides us food, clothing, homes, and the
many things we use each day.

Practice 1 — Discussing Kinds of Work

What kinds of work have you seen being done by
the grown-up people in your community? Make a
list of all the workers that members of your class have
seen during the summer. Which ones were working
in order to get food for people? Clothing? Homes,
and the things used in homes? Transportation? What
other things do workers do for people?
After your discussion you may write some paragraphs
and draw pictures for a Labor Day booklet. One fifth-
grade boy wrote this paragraph to show how important
he thought one worker was.
AN IMPORTANT WORKER

I shall tell you why I think the work of the plumber is

important. Last winter our family went to visit my grand¬
mother over New Year’s Day. The day we got back I was
going down to the basement to get my sled when I heard the
sound of running water. Imagine my surprise to see a big
stream coming out of a broken pipe near the basement win¬
dow. I called to Mother. When she saw it, she rushed to
the telephone and called the plumber. In ten minutes he
came and soon the pipe was fixed. I don’t know what we
would have done that day without the help of the plumber.
— Ralph B.
20 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 2 — Writing a Paragraph

[Handbook, Section V, Capital Letters, and Section VI, Punctuation]
Select one of the ten workers listed here or some
other worker whom you know. Write a paragraph
telling why you believe that his is one of the most
important kinds of work.
After you have written your first copy, go over it
carefully to be sure your paragraph is capitalized and
punctuated correctly.
Carpenter Auto repair man
Plumber Garment maker
Grocer Steel worker
Farmer Truck driver
Painter Railroad worker

Young Workers
Years ago, before Labor Day was celebrated, small
children were allowed to work long hours in factories.
This was not good, because it kept many of them
from growing up to be strong and healthy men and
women. Now children in many of our states are not
permitted to do work that is harmful to them.
But there are many kinds of work at home that
boys and girls can do without harming their health.
And there are many ways in which they can help older
people at home. Indeed, some kinds of work can be
as much fun as play. It would be interesting to have
your own Labor Day celebration in your classroom
sometime in September. You can plan a program of
talks on work you have done during the summer va¬
cation and an exhibit of things you have made or
collected or grown.
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — FALL SEMESTER 21

Practice 3 — Giving a Short Talk

What kind of work do you like best to do? Do you
like helping your father or mother or some other person?
Do you like sometimes to work at something that is
your own, like furnishing a doll house, or making a
racing car with the wheels from an old coaster wagon?
Collecting, making playthings, raising vegetables or
flowers, sewing, shoveling snow — all of these some
fifth-grade boys and girls have done. Tell your class¬
mates in a short talk of some work that you have done
or like to do.
Here are some standards that you may want to use,
so that your classmates will enjoy your talk.

Standards for a Short Talk

1. Be well prepared. Know what you want to say.

2. Start with a sentence that tells something inter¬
esting about the topic.
3. Keep to the point; don’t ramble.
4. Speak clearly and loudly enough for your listeners
to hear you.
5. Stop before your listeners lose interest.

Practice 4 — Having an Exhibit and Program

Things you have made, collections of different kinds,
flowers or vegetables you have raised, are some of the
things that you can bring to school for your exhibit.
You will need to write labels telling about each item
in your exhibit. Write your labels in complete sen-
22 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

tences. When the exhibit is all arranged, you can

give a program at which some pupils may give their
short talks on the work they like best to do.

HALLOWEEN
Why do we celebrate Halloween? Who were the
first people to observe it? These questions very few
persons can answer. The celebration of Halloween
started many years ago, and in many different countries.

How Halloween Started

THE BEGINNING OF HALLOWEEN

Once upon a time the land that is now England was in¬
habited by people called “ Celts.” The Celts were sun-
worshippers. They built huge
fires on their hilltops in honor of
their sun-god.
The priests of the Celts were
called “druids.” The druids had
charge of religious ceremonies.
At these festivals in honor of
their sun-god they used sacred
fire. It is from these early fire
rites that the use of fire in our
own celebrations has come.
When you see the blaze in the
jack-o'-lantern, you can hardly
realize that its use was started
hundreds of years ago by the
druids.
There Was a Mad One of the most important
Race Down the Hill festivals presided over by the
druids came on the last day of
October. It was called by them “Samhain” (sa-win),
meaning “summer's end." Although Samhain was also the
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS —FALL SEMESTER 23

beginning of a new year for them, it was a rather sad festival.

The people seemed to be fearful of evil spirits. They be¬
lieved strongly in fairies.
On the eve of Samhain huge bonfires were lighted on the
hills, and from these fires the Celts took burning sticks to
light fires in their homes. The hilltop fires were watched
carefully by the people of the village until every red ember
had turned to gray ashes. Then there was a mad race down
the hill, with much shouting and excitement, for they be¬
lieved that the devil would get the last one down.
When the Roman people came to England, this holiday
was no longer called Samhain. It came to be known as
Halloween.
— Adapted from A Little Booh of Halloween
by Elizabeth H. Sechrist

Practice 5 — Giving an Oral Explanation

Using this story of the beginning of Halloween and
any other information you can find in reference books,
prepare your own explanation of “ Where Halloween
Came From.” If you are able to tell it well, you will
find many people interested in your story.

Our Celebration of Halloween

In our land today Halloween has come to be a time
for fun and merrymaking, for jests and pranks. The
warm evenings of Indian summer are coming to an end,
the falling leaves give the night a sense of mystery, and
the very air seems to call for adventure. So American
children venture forth on their Halloween pranks.

Practice 6 — Discussing Halloween Fun

What kind of Halloween jokes do you play? Can
some Halloween fun be harmful? Is it possible that
24 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

people may suffer from Halloween fun? Can a group

of children have a good time on Halloween without
causing someone harm? Name some stunts that are
not good. Discuss others that give the group a lot
of fun but do not cause anyone real harm.

Practice 7 — Making Rules

[Handbook, Section VII, Sentences]
Think of several good rules that you might observe
in planning Halloween fun. Write them out in clear
sentences. If you think that any one of the rules is
especially good, print it and post it on the school
bulletin board. Here is one rule. Surely you can
think of another good one.

Let’s have a lot of fun,

But let’s not hurt anyone
On Halloween.

Practice 8 — Explaining a Game

In making plans for Halloween, you will want to
know about the best games to play. Can you explain
a good Halloween game? Here is a list of good ones.
If you don’t know them, you will find them explained
in A Little Book of Halloween by Elizabeth H. Sechrist.
Bobbing for Apples Ghost Feet
A Peanut Race Cracker Race
Peanut Straws Suitcase Race
Your Eyes Betray Obstacle Walk
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — FALL SEMESTER 25

THE HARVEST FESTIVAL — THANKSGIVING

It has been the custom of people in all countries, as

far back as records go, to celebrate the gathering in of
the winter food at harvest time. Many years ago

The First Thanksgiving

This first American harvest festival was celebrated in October,

1621. There were sermons and prayers as well as three days of
feasting in which the Indians joined the Pilgrims.

people offered the first fruits of the harvest to spirits

or gods to express their joy over a successful summer
and a completed harvest. The harvest festival of our
own country is called Thanksgiving. Sometimes people
do not realize that there have been, and still are, other
harvest festivals and that Thanksgiving is really the
most recent of them.
26 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 9 — Making a Report * 1

From interviews with older persons, library books,
or encyclopedias, learn about one of the following and
make a report to the class:
The Greek Festival of Demeter
The Roman Festival of Ceralia
The Hebrew Feast of the Ingathering
Old English Harvest Home Festival
Scottish Kern Festival
Canadian Fete of the Big Sheaf
French Festival of the Sheaves
German Harvest Home Festival
Hungarian Grape Festival
Indian Corn Dances
American Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving

The story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving
Day is well known to all. However, it is one that we
like to have retold again and again. In your history
you have been reading stories of the Pilgrims and
their travels and hardships. At Thanksgiving time it
will be interesting to tell this story by dramatizing it.

Practice 10 Dramatizing the Story

—

of the Pilgrims
The story of the Pilgrims can be divided into four
parts, each part to be presented by a committee of
pupils in a scene that they will prepare. These four
scenes will be:

1 Practices with an asterisk (*) are optional. Your teacher will decide
whether you are to do them or not.
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS —FALL SEMESTER 27

Scene 1 — The life of the Pilgrims in Scrooby, showing

why they left England
Scene 2 — The life of the Pilgrims in Holland, showing
why they sailed for America
Scene 3 — The first days in America, showing hardships
Scene 4 — The celebration of the harvest — the first
Thanksgiving

CHRISTMAS

The Christmas Tree

Have you ever wondered why we decorate the ever¬
green tree with lights and tinsel at Christmas time?
This is a Christmas custom that has come down to us
from years ago. The fir tree was first used at Christ¬
mas time in Germany. It was brought into the house
secretly and was beautifully decorated. When the
children saw it on Christmas morning, they believed
that the Christ child had visited their home in the
night.

Practice 11 — Making an Oral Report

Different countries have different customs at Christ¬
mas time. Here is a list of some customs. Select one
and find out what country has it and how it is observed.
Bringing in the yule log Decorating the tree with tinsel
Hanging the mistletoe Placing lighted candles in windows
Decorating with holly Placing shoes at the fireplace
Visit from Santa Claus Hanging stocking by the fireside

Here are some books that will help you to learn about
Christmas customs:
1. The World Book Encyclopedia
2. Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia
28 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. Chambers, Robert — Book of Days (2 volumes)

4. Dier, J. C. — Children's Book of Christmas
5. Pringle, Mary and Urann, Clara — Yuletide in Many
Lands
6. Sechrist, Elizabeth H. — Christmas Everywhere

Christmas in France
The children of France sing this song as they prepare
for Christmas:
Have you not seen the little Noel
Running about from door to door,
Coming down from heaven above?
Have you not seen the little Noel
Bringing joy to those we love?

Noel is their name for the Christ child, who is sup¬

posed to be with them at Christmas time. On Christ¬
mas Eve the family sit around the fire and tell stories
about early days in the lives of the parents, grand¬
parents, aunts, and uncles. Children listen to these
stories and ask questions. Just as the stories end, the
log in the fireplace seems to explode, and candies and
nuts are thrown into the room for everyone to gather.
The log has been filled with these good things by the
parents and a spring has been fixed with a sprinkle
of powder at its latch. When the log becomes warm,
the spring is loosened and throws the goodies out over
the floor.

Practice 12 — Telling Stories

Christmas is a good time for telling stories. There
are the stories of the coming of the Christ child and
other beautiful stories of Christmas time. Choose one
that you like and prepare to tell it to your class. It
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — FALL SEMESTER 29

may be that you will have a chance to tell it at home

on Christmas Eve.
Here are some books that have Christmas stories
in them.
1. Daglish, Alice and Rhys, E.—A Christmas Holiday Book
2. Dalgliesh, Alice — Christmas, A Book of Stories Old and
New
3. Dickinson, A. D. and Skinner, A. M. — Children’s Book
of Christmas Stories
4. Pringle, Mary and Urann, Clara — Yuletide in Many
Lands
5. St. Nicholas Christmas Book
6. Sechrist, Elizabeth H. — Christmas Everywhere
7. Smith, Elva and Hazeltine, Alice—Christmas in Legend
and Story.
8. Walters, Maude — A Book of Christmas Stories for
Children

Practice 13 — Writing Christmas Letters

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing]
Do you have Christmas customs in your home or
your community that are followed every year? Many
communities have a large tree in a square or a park
that they light at a Christmas Eve ceremony. In
many towns the families have developed the beautiful
custom of putting lighted Christmas trees out in front
of their homes or decorating evergreens with colored
lights. Sometimes you find a whole street of them,
half a mile or even a mile long. Write a letter describ¬
ing some Christmas custom that you know from ex¬
perience. If you write about a family custom, some
friend or relative will be interested to know of it. If
you write about a city custom, send your letter to a
child in another city.
 UNIT III

RADIO NEWS
Do you listen to the news reports over the radio
every day? Many persons enjoy the flashes of news
that are given in two or three sentences each day by
the newscasters, as the radio news reporters are called.
Part of your language period each day can be used
for radio news. Your "flashes” can tell about hap¬
penings at school, in your community, or in the affairs
of the nation.

MAKING PLANS

Your Radio Staff

You will need a staff, or group of workers, to be
responsible for the news each day. If the same staff
serves for a week, the members will have time to plan
their work carefully, and yet everyone in your class
will have a chance to take part.
Choose an announcer, who will introduce the reporter
each day of the week. You will need five reporters
who will gather news and write the news flashes for
30
 RADIO NEWS 31

the week. Each one will read the news on one day.
He will help the other reporters on the other four days.
Select your staff on Thursday every week, so they can
be ready to begin work the next Monday.

Practice 1 — Choosing Your Staff

You will each have a vote in choosing your staff.
The one who receives the largest number of votes will
be elected announcer for the week. Do not elect the
same person twice until everyone has had a turn.
In selecting an announcer think of these qualities:
1. Promptness. An announcer must be prompt because
he must broadcast at exactly the same time each day.
Minutes are precious on the radio; so there is no time to
wait for anyone.
2. Clear speech. Every word must be pronounced dis¬
tinctly if the listeners are to understand the news. Your
announcer should have the habit of speaking clearly and
in a tone that can be heard easily.
3. Dependability. Your announcer will be responsible
each day for deciding which reporter will give his news and
for seeing that the news flashes are ready to be given.
Choose someone whom you can depend upon to do that.
Your teacher will choose, or appoint, the five re¬
porters each week.

Practice 2 — Discussing Plans for Broadcasting

You will have many questions to settle in making
plans. Talk them over together and decide what you
will do. Give everyone a chance to take part in your
discussion. Here are four of the questions you will
need to discuss.
32 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

1. What time of day will be best for your news flashes?

The announcer will give the time just before he introduces
the reporter each day.
2. Where will your broadcasters stand so that they can
be heard but not seen?
3. What materials will you need? A gong? A table for the
reporter’s notes? A make-believe microphone?
4. Do you wish to name your station? What letters will
you use?
YOUR PROGRAMS

School News
Your class will be interested in what is happening in
other classes in your school. Things like this will
make interesting news flashes:
1. First-grade pupils made a booklet that is a class direc¬
tory. Each child drew his own
picture and put his name below
it. When they learn to write
their addresses, they will draw
pictures of their homes, too.
2. The third grade saw some
rugs being woven in the craft
shop.
3. A woman who had just
come back from a trip to Russia
told the sixth grade about the
schools which the children of
Russia attend.

Practice 3 — Writing School News Flashes

[Handbook, Section VII, Sentences']

Before you begin your broadcasts you can all be

reporters and write news flashes. Select some happen-
 RADIO NEWS 33

ing to report. Write two or three sentences telling

as much as possible in a few words. Which of these
reports is the better for a news flash?
1
A nurse knows a lot about preventing sickness as well as
making people well after they get sick. The third grade
invited a nurse to talk to them about colds. The children
have had so many colds this year. They are all going to try
to keep from taking cold now.
2
A nurse from City Hospital, Miss Della Hansen, talked to
the third grade yesterday about how to prevent colds. She
told them to wear warm clothing, to keep their feet dry, and
to keep away from other children who have colds.

These standards will help you to write good reports.

Standards for News Flashes

1. Make your report as short as possible.

2. Tell in your first sentence what the news is, when
it happened, and to whom.
3. Give names of persons and places correctly.
4. Be definite. Don’t waste words in general re¬
marks. Make each sentence really tell something.

Community News
All good citizens keep informed about what is going
on in their communities. Your reporters will skim
through the newspaper each day to find city news that
will be interesting to the class. This choosing of the
34 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

best news to report will not be easy. All papers print

some news that is not really worth reading. Very few
persons read everything in a paper. They select what
they want to read.

Practice 4 — Using Judgment in Selecting News

Some of the news items below would be worth being
made into news flashes for your radio programs. Which
ones would not be?
1. The new library being opened
2. Election of mayor and council
3. A campaign for safer driving
4. A bandit robbing a bank
5. A famous tennis player in the city
6. A murder trial
7. A concert by the high-school band
8. Plans for a new city playground

Practice 5 — Writing News of the Community

In writing your flashes of community happenings,
be sure to select something interesting and suitable
for your report. Follow the standards for news flashes.
You may add, “ See page 4 of last night’s (or this morn¬
ing’s) paper for a complete report.”

Current Events
You are all interested in news of our country and
of the rest of the world, too. Newspapers, magazines,
and the radio all tell you of current events. If you
are a reporter for the week, keep your eyes open for
interesting news to report.
The reports in the papers will be too long for a
 RADIO NEWS 35

radio flash. You will need to select the main points

to put into one or two sentences.

Practice 6 — Cutting a News Report

This selecting of one or two points is called cutting
a report. Make this long report into a news flash for
a radio program by cutting it:
The Chicago and Northwestern Railway sent over the
rails between Chicago and Minneapolis last week a train
called The J/JO. It covers 400 miles in 400 minutes and is to
date the fastest train scheduled on the American Continent.
To all appearances a standard, all-steel, air-conditioned
train, The 400 was hauled by an ordinary, big, black, puffing
steam locomotive.
A year of scientific study and preparation and $100,000
made the new train possible. The roadbed had to be made
over for safety, the boiler pressure of the engine was in¬
creased, and the locomotive made to burn oil instead of coal
so as to prevent the need for stops.
The 400 costs 95^ a mile for operation, but the fare on the
train is the same as on other trains that cost 75^ a mile to run.
Other railroads have been placing fast trains on their lines.
The race for speed goes on.

The Weather
Weather reports are part of all radio news flashes.
You can get your information from the newspapers,
from real radio news, or from the daily weather report
cards sent out by the United States Weather Bureau.

Practice 7 — Reporting the Unusual

Weather reports that are most interesting are the
unusual ones. Cold winds and snow in Florida or
California are unusual. Heavy rain in one city with
36 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

no rain in a neighboring city is real weather news.

A heavy dust storm in the West is news.
The Weather Bureau tells ahead of time, or 'predicts,
the weather for the next day or two. That is always
news because people are curious to know what the
weather will be.
Try to make your weather reports interesting.

Announcements
The radio is excellent for announcements. The news
reaches many persons quickly. You can make all class
announcements during your radio news broadcasts.
Announcements should be clear, complete, and brief.
If anyone in your class has an announcement to
make, he may write it and give it to one of the re¬
porters before it is time for the news to be read. The
announcement may be about something that has been
lost, about a committee meeting, about a program to
which the class has been invited, or about a notice
from the principal. Are these good announcements?
1
Ross Lewis has lost a fountain pen somewhere in the
building. If anyone finds one, please let Ross know.
2
There will be a meeting of the Safety Patrol in Miss Bar¬
rett’s office at 4:00 p.m. today.

Practice 8 — Writing Announcements

Write an announcement about one of these items:
1. A lost library book
2. Meeting of the committee in charge of a Christmas
program
 RADIO NEWS 37

3. An invitation from the sixth grade to an exhibit of

pictures and souvenirs of Switzerland
4. New playground rules about snowballing
5. A free swim at the Y.M.C.A. for all boys over nine
years of age
Write an announcement of something in your own
school.

Making More Complete News Reports

Sometimes you may wish to write out longer and
more complete stories of the news that you told briefly
in your radio report. These papers may be put up
on the bulletin board, where anyone who wishes may
read them. Sometimes you may wish to put on the
bulletin board the printed article from the newspaper.
Then over the radio, after the news flash, you might
say, “A longer report of this event will be posted on
the bulletin board.”
This longer report of the news should be clearly
written. Keep the margins even and the page neat.
Is the announcement on the next page about the school
exhibit a good example?

Practice 9 — Writing Longer News Reports *

[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs']

Write a news flash and then a longer report of any

of these happenings:

1. A severe storm
2. A holiday celebration in your school
3. An important person visiting your community
4. The number of pupils absent from your room the last
week and the reasons for absence
38 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION
 RADIO NEWS 39

Special Numbers
Sometimes you may wish to have special numbers
on your programs. For example, your announcer may
arrange to have a short poem or a book review given.

Practice 10 — Preparing a Special Number *

Prepare some special number for each week’s pro¬

gram. You may read your favorite poem, begin the
telling of an interesting story, or make a talk about
something for the good of the school. This last talk
will be like an editorial in the newspaper. It may be
about order in the halls, or the care of books, or per¬
haps the welcoming of new pupils in the school.

PLANNING IMPROVEMENTS

At the end of each week talk over the news reports

for the past week and plan how to improve them.

Practice 11 — Discussing Improvements

These questions will guide your discussion:
1. Was the news always interesting and worth while?
2. Were the reporters well prepared?
3. Did they read their notes clearly?
4. Did they have different kinds of news each day?
5. Did the news flashes make you want to read the more
complete reports in the newspapers?

How should the reporters receive your criticisms?

A courteous, kindly voice is very important in giving
others suggestions. You are not likely to get others to
agree with you if you give your criticisms in an annoy¬
ing manner. Remember this during your discussion.
 UNIT IV

OVERLAND TRAVEL

In the center of Africa there is a country into which

very few white men have gone. The native tribes live
there today very much as they did thousands of years
ago. The climate is always warm. There are two sea¬
sons, however: the wet season when heavy rains fall
day and night, and the dry season when the people
are better able to go out to hunt and to gather food.
In the wet season the tribes live in the hills or higher
land. When the dry season comes, they move down
into the lowlands.
How do you think these African tribes move from
one place to another? They have no railroads, no
automobiles, no wagons, not even horses. In fact,
they do not have any roads like ours. When they
move, they go on foot, carrying their belongings on
their backs. This is the way our own ancestors traveled
thousands of years ago. WRat a great change has
come about in our ways of traveling! This unit traces
the progress that man has made in his method of going
from place to place.
40
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 41

OUTLINE FOR STUDYING LAND TRAVEL

There are so many things to find out about in the

study of land transportation that it will be best to
divide the work and let committees of pupils select
the topics they would like to study. Here is an out¬
line — a list of topics — from which each committee
may choose the one it will prepare.
I. Man carries a pack
A. In ancient times
B. Today (Boy Scout)
II. The litter and the sedan chair
A. In ancient times
B. Today (Red Cross)
III. Horseback
A. The post rider
B. The cowboy
C. The pack horse
IV. Travel by other animals
A. Oxen
B. Dogs
C. Camels
D. Reindeer
E. Elephants
V. The first use of the wheel
VI. Carts hauled by men
A. Chinese carts
B. Wheelbarrows
C. Jinrikishas
D. Bicycles
VII. Carts hauled by animals
A. Chariots
B. Coaches
42 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

C. Wagons and buggies

D. Covered wagons
VIII. The steam train
A. The first locomotive
B. The development of tracks
C. How engines and railroad cars have improved
IX. Streetcars
X. Automobiles
A. The first automobiles
B. How automobiles have improved

GATHERING MATERIALS ON TRAVEL

A Book Shelf
Here are some ways of getting your materials to¬
gether and using them.
With so many topics and with committees searching
for information on every one, it will save time and
energy if, before the committees start to work, all the
pupils search for every bit of material they can find on
transportation by land. This they can bring into the
schoolroom and place on a special table or shelf.
Geographies, history books, story books, encyclopedias,
magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, circulars, adver¬
tisements — anything that tells something of interest
about ways of travel will be of value.

A Bibliography
When you have gathered as much material as you can
find, then you can all become bibliographers for a while.
What does this mean? It means that you are going
to make it possible for any committee to get the most
out of your collection of material in the shortest time
possible. You can see that, if you have many books
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 43

and other sources, each committee will waste time if it

has to go through each book looking for just the material
on its topic. So you will all work together to make a
bibliography.

Practice 1 — Making a Bibliography

[Handbook, Section II, Using Book Tools]
This is the way you will work. Each pupil will take
one book or magazine from the book shelf. He will
also take a plain card. At the top of the card he will
write the author’s name and the title of the book, thus:

Brigham and McFarlane

Ho w the World Lives and Works

Then he will look through the table of contents and

the index of the book and find out what is given there
on any of the topics listed in the outline on travel.
Sometimes he may glance at the pages of the book to
make sure that the topic listed in the contents or in
the index is the right one. His card will then look
something like this:

Brigham and McFarlane

How the World Lives and Works
1. Man carries a pack p. 294 {picture)
—

6. Carts hauled bg men p. 294

—

7. Carts hauled bg animals pp. 294-295

—

8. The steam train pp. 295-501

—

10. Automobiles pp. 519-320

—
44 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

When each pupil has finished going through his book

and writing the topics on his card, he will place the
card in a box where the cards from all the pupils are
being collected. In this way thirty pupils can make
out thirty bibliography cards for thirty different books
in a short time.

Writing for Information

In your search for the best material on your topic
you may want to write to someone for information
or for printed material. One committee learned that
a manufacturing company published an interesting
pamphlet on transportation. They wrote a letter like
this one:

Horace Mann School

Manchester, New Hampshire
March 15, 1935

Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild

Detroit
Michigan

Gentlemen:

In our class study of transportation our committee

has selected the topic “ Carts Hauled by Animals.”
We have been told that you publish a pamphlet called
“ An Outline History of Transportation,” which will be
of help to us. We should appreciate very much your
sending us a copy.

Yours truly,
Jeanette Miller
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 45

Practice 2 — Writing a Business Letter

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing]
As you read your books and magazines, you will
find reference to other materials that you may obtain
if you write for them. This calls for the ability to
write a letter which will meet these standards:

Standards for a Business Letter

1. If the letter is handwritten, it should be clear and

neat, so that it can be read without difficulty.
There should be no misspelled word in it. The
different parts of the letter should be in their
proper places, with good margins.
2. The letter should be courteous. You are asking a
favor.
3. Your request should be clear, so that there will be
no misunderstanding.

Committee Outlines
Each committee will find in planning its work that
an outline will be helpful. Each member of the com¬
mittee may then choose one topic of the outline to
report upon.
Here is an example of an outline that the committee
reporting on the automobile might use.
THE AUTOMOBILE

1. The invention of the gas engine

2. The first electric automobile
3. Early gas automobiles
4. The improvement of automobiles
5. Uses of automobiles today
46 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 3 — Making an Outline *

When your committee has selected or been given

its topic, make an outline and divide the different
topics among the members to report upon.

REPORTING ON YOUR TOPICS

The Chairman’s Job

The chairman of a committee is an important per¬
son in the success of the committee report. Do you
believe the committee members were helped in starting
their reports by what Chairman George said in the
example that follows?

Teacher: Yesterday we heard an interesting report on

“Travel by Horseback.” This morning we are to hear the
report of the committee on “Travel by Other Animals,”
George Reynolds, Chairman of the Committee.
Chairman George: When our committee started to
work on the topic “Travel by Other Animals,” we didn’t
realize how interesting it would be. It has taken us to
many parts of the world and back to the time when traveling
was a very simple matter. One of the first methods of travel
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 47

was by oxen. Jane and Helen will show you some pictures
and tell you the story of this beast of burden.

Practice 4 — Introducing a Committee

As each committee is ready to report, the chairman
will introduce the speakers. He should announce the
topic and arouse the interest of the class by his open¬
ing sentence. He can make it easy and natural for
each committee member to give his report.

The Committee Member’s Oral Report

When a committee member is introduced by his
chairman and rises to give his report, he should tell
something interesting and of value to his classmates.
Here is an oral report made by a fifth-grade girl.
Is it interesting?
I wish to tell you about the first bicycles. The first bicycle
had no pedals. The rider had to push it with his feet.
This bicycle was invented in
1817 and for many years it
was the only kind of bicycle.
We should hardly call it a
bicycle today. It was more
like a child’s “scooter.”
Next came the velocipede.
It was called by this name
because it could go swiftly.
It was moved by pedals that
were attached to one of the
wheels which was larger than
the other. With the veloc¬
ipede many people began to ride for pleasure. The veloc¬
ipede was much improved by the use of the chain sprocket,
48 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

which has the same effect as the large wheel without being
heavy and unwieldy.
Bicycles are used in Europe much more generally than
they are in our country. Dorothy will show you some of
the interesting pictures of the different kinds of bicycles
that we found in our reading.—Mary Lee

Practice 5 — Making an Oral Report

[Handbook, Section IV, Good Usage]

As a member of a committee you will make an oral

report on some topic that has especially interested you
and that your committee has agreed you should study.
Can you make your report as good as Mary Lee’s?
Can you really interest your classmates in what you
have to tell them?

A Written Report
Sometimes it is better for a committee member to
write out his report in full, instead of just giving it
orally from an outline. This is especially true when
the report contains numbers, dates, or the names of
persons. The following is an example of a short writ¬
ten report:
THE BEGINNING OF THE AUTOMOBILE

The automobile is not much more than forty years old,

but for a hundred years people had been experimenting with
engines that would run on the highways. The steam engine
was too heavy. The gasoline engine was the invention that
made the automobile possible. In 1896 there were only four
automobiles driven by gasoline engines in the United States.
There are several persons who claim to be the inventor of the
first automobile. It is probable that no one person deserves
that credit. Between 1879 and 1895 George Selden, Charles
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 49

Duryea, Ellwood Haynes, and Henry Ford had all produced

gas-driven cars. Since that time cars have been greatly
improved and their number enormously increased. In 1930
if all the automobiles had formed one long parade, they
would have reached seventeen times across our country.

Practice 6 — Making a Written Report

When a committee makes its complete report to the
class, it will probably have at least one of its members
read a report that he has written in full. Here are
standards for a good written report.

Standards for a Written Report

1. The report should be written legibly, so that the

reader will not have to hesitate because he cannot
read a word.
2. Correct spelling is important.
3. Proper margins and indented first lines of para¬
graphs help the reader.
4. The first sentence of the report is important. It
should arouse the interest of those who read it or
hear it read.
5. If there are two or more different ideas presented
in the report, the sentences telling about each idea
should be grouped into a paragraph.

DISCUSSING THE REPORTS

After each committee has made its report, you will
find it interesting to ask questions and to discuss the
most interesting parts of their report.
50 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 7 — Discussing Transportation

Here are seven questions that the study of transpor¬
tation may bring up in your mind.
1. After the horse, what animal is the most important in
travel?
2. What would be the effect if there were no wheel in your
community?
3. How do the stagecoach and the modern Pullman car
compare in traveling convenience?
4. What changes has the automobile brought to life on
the farm?
5. What advantages have motor busses and motor trucks
brought to your community?
6. Why are railroads still a necessary method of trans¬
portation for your community?
7. What are the latest improvements in trains?

Standards for Class Discussion

1. Ask questions courteously. Do not interrupt a

speaker.
2. Make your answers clear and understandable.
3. Speak so that all can hear you.
4. Use complete sentences.
5. See that each question is answered before an¬
other is discussed.

Story-Telling
There are exciting stories connected with transpor¬
tation, stories just as thrilling as any ever told. You
 OVERLAND TRAVEL 51

can have an interesting true-story hour telling these

adventures.

Practice 8—Telling a True Story

You may use one of these happenings, or tell some
other adventure that you have read:
Buffalo Bill, the Pony Express Rider
An Attack by Indians while the Railroad Was Being Built
The Golden Spike
By Dog Sled with Byrd
The Race with the First Locomotive

You can find stories of this kind in your history

books or in the library.

Standards for Story-Telling

1. Did I know my story well?

2. Did I choose the main incidents and leave out
unimportant details?
3. Did I speak clearly and use good sentences?
4. Did I watch my listeners and keep them interested?
5. Did I make the exciting parts sound exciting?

Practice 9 — Making a Booklet

Using the best written reports and pictures, either
those drawn or painted by pupils, or those cut from
old magazines or newspapers, make a class booklet
that will tell about the various kinds of travel by land.
 UNIT V

MOODS OF THE AIR

Have you ever noticed how often people talk about

the weather? When your mother goes into the grocery
store to do her purchasing for the day, the grocer
greets her with some remark about the weather, such
as, “Good morning, Mrs. Martin, it’s a little crisp
today. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if we had some
snow before night.”
Everyone seems to be interested in the weather.
Do you know why? Is it because people have nothing
else to talk about? Or is it because the weather
is something that is really important to all of us?
How important is the weather? Does it affect all
of us?
If the weather is important, wouldn’t it be a fine
thing to learn more about it? Early peoples had many
queer ideas about the reasons for the weather. Every¬
one is curious and interested in the changes taking place
in the air. One purpose of this unit is to make you
more intelligent listeners and speakers when the weather
is the topic of conversation.
 MOODS OF THE AIR 53

A WEATHER DIARY
A record of the weather from day to day is called
a weather diary. This is a sample entry:
Dec. 20 — The thermometer on our front porch registered
10° this morning. Snow is falling and the wind is increasing.
Mr. Martin thinks we are in for a blizzard.

Practice 1 — Keeping a Weather Diary

[Handbook, ,
Section VII Sentences]
Begin at once to keep a weather diary, writing a
little paragraph about each day’s weather. Here are
some suggestions that may help to make your diaries
interesting and useful to you all through this unit.
1. Notice the conversation of older people about the
weather. If they make interesting comments or use new
words, you may want to use them in your diary.
2. Watch for stories and reports about weather in the
newspapers. You will find that you are becoming interested
in weather in all parts of the country and the world, and you
will begin to put sentences in your diaries comparing your
weather with that of some other place.
3. Observe the weather more carefully yourself. Notice
the temperature at different times of the day. How was it
affected by the sun? If it was a windy day, did the wind go
down when the sun went down? Can you describe a cloudy
or gray day in interesting words?

New Words
As you learn more about the weather, the new and
strange words that you meet will arouse your curiosity.
By this time you already know some of the words
in the following list. But can you tell what they
54 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

mean in words of your own? For instance, can you

explain precipitation or prevailing — two words that
are often used in talking about the weather? Here
is a list of words for your weather vocabulary.

altitude Fahrenheit prevailing

annual forecast register
atmosphere humidity revolution
barometer hurricane rotation
blizzard mercury thermometer
bureau nimbus tornado
condensation orbit vacuum
cumulus oxygen vapor
cyclone precipitation velocity
evaporation prediction westerly
expands pressure windward

Practice 2 — Using the Dictionary

[Handbook, Section 77, Using Book Tools']

The meaning of the words just listed will become

clearer to you as you study about the weather. In
order to understand the new words better as you come
upon them in your reading, look up in your dictionary
those you do not know the meaning of.

A WEATHER BIBLIOGRAPHY
There are many sources of information on the
weather — books, magazines, newspapers, bulletins,
films, and pictures. Every member of the class should
report where he has found information on the weather.
If all these sources are listed either on the blackboard
or in a special book for that purpose, you will have a
class bibliography.
Another way to list references is to place each one
 MOODS OF THE AIR 55

on a separate card. If there are many cards, it might

be a good plan to keep them in a box, like the cards in
a library catalog.

Practice 3 — Making a Class Bibliography

Make a class bibliography on Weather. You may
organize it into parts, like this:
1. The air 4. Clouds
2. The sun 5. Rain, fog, sleet, and snow
3. The wind 6. Forecasting weather

THE AIR
To see and touch something does not mean to know
about it. Do you know that there is something which
you use every day and feel as you swing your arms
back and forth, but which you do not really know
very well? There is. It is the air that you breathe
and that always surrounds you.
To understand the weather and its many changes,
we must find out what men have discovered about
the ocean of air in which we live. At first men thought
that the air was just nothing at all. Then they noticed
that some things were lighter than air. From this
they knew that air must have weight. They dis¬
covered by sending men high above the earth in bal¬
loons that the air becomes thinner and lighter, the
farther above the earth one goes. They discovered,
when they removed the air from a large glass con¬
tainer, that where there is no air, there is no sound.
From this they knew that air can carry sound waves.
So men have found that air has other uses than just
for us to breathe.
56 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

The following is a report made by a committee who

searched and found many interesting things on their
topic.
WHAT IS IN THE AIR?

There are many things in the air which we do not see. Of

course, we cannot expect to see the oxygen, nitrogen, and
other gases, because when they are clear they are invisible.
But we learned that there are millions of particles of dust in
the air. These are so small that we can’t see them. We
noticed that when a ray of sunlight came into a darkened
room, we could see some of the dust particles in it.
We also found that the air is filled with tiny drops of water,
too fine to see. We noticed that the water on the sidewalks
dried up. This water went into the air. We also watched
the steam from the teakettle on the stove disappear into
the air. This proved to us that the air holds water. In
still another way we discovered that there is water in the air.
We put a glass of ice water on a table. We noticed that
drops of water began to appear on the outside of the glass.
These drops, of course, didn’t come through the glass. They
came from the air around the glass. John Kramer’s father
told us that the water in the air had condensed on the outside
of the glass.

Practice 4 — Making Committee Reports

There are so many things to find out about the air
that it may be best to divide your class into committees
and ask each committee to report on one topic. Here
are some good questions about the air for committee
members to study and report on to the class.
1. How far above the earth does the air go?
2. What is in the air?
3. What makes the colors in the sunset?
 MOODS OF THE AIR 57

4. What is fresh air?

5. How does heat depend upon air?
6. How is air weighed?

Your bibliography will be most helpful in this work.

If you do not already have these books on your list,
try to locate them and use them.

Britannica Junior — “Air”

Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia — “Air”
Craig and Hurley — Pathways in Science, Book IV — “The
Earth and Living Things”
Hayes, Elizabeth — What Makes Up the World
Spencer, Gans, and Fritschler — Thought-Study Reader,
Book V
Tappan, Eva M. — Wonders of Science
World Book Encyclopedia — “Air”

THE SUN
There is one other thing just as important as the
air in its influence on the weather. This is the sun.
All light and practically all heat come from the sun.
Through many millions of miles, light and heat travel
from the sun to the earth.
The white light that we get from the sun may be
thought of as a mixture of light waves of all colors —
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. When this light
shines through certain objects, like glass or tiny drops
of water, it breaks up so that it shows these various
colors. This is why we see a rainbow when the sun
shines through many drops of water.
When the sunlight strikes the dust particles in the
air, the blue waves are turned aside, or scattered. It
is because of this that the sky looks blue to us.
58 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Aurora
In this beautiful painting by Guido Reni, Apollo, the sun god, is
driving his chariot across the heavens. Before him is Aurora, the
dawn, with rosy-tipped fingers. His chariot is escorted by a band
of the hours, and a cupid with his torch flies over the horses to light
the way.

Practice 5 — Giving an Oral Description *

Describe a rainbow you have seen either after a

rain or in the spray made by the sprinkler on the lawn.
You can make one with a glass prism, if the sun is
shining, and give your description as you look at it.

THE RAINBOW

If all were rain and never sun,

No bow could span the hill;
If all were sun and never rain,
There’d be no rainbow still.
— Christina G. Rossetti

Sun Myths
Without the sun’s rays neither plants nor animals
could live. The earth would be a cold, barren place.
It is no wonder that in ancient times men were sun
 MOODS OF THE AIR 59

worshipers. They thought of the sun as a great god

from whom all the good things of the earth came.
They built temples to the sun and burned sacrifices
on the altars, that the sun might be kind and bring
them good fortune. Different peoples had different
names for their sun god.
The Greeks called their sun god “Apollo.” They
believed that Apollo crossed the sky each day in a
golden chariot, driving four beautiful horses. The
Egyptians called their sun god “Ra,” and he was one
of their most important gods. The Indians told stories
of the sun and of the brave Indian warriors who
hunted it and brought it back to the people.

Practice 6 — Reporting on Sun Myths

You will find in many different books the stories
that men told years ago about the sun. Report to
your classmates the story that you find most interest¬
ing. Here are some of the books in which you will
find these stories. Here is a chance to use the Table
of Contents and the Index properly.
Cooke, F. J. — Nature Myths
Couzens, R. D. — Stories of the Months and Days
Hyde, L. S. — Favorite Greek Myths
Mabie, H. W. — Norse Stories, “The Making of the World”
Wells, M. E. — How the Present Came from the Past

THE WIND
To the men of olden times the wind was also a
mysterious force. They could not understand where
it came from or where it went. So they made up
stories to explain these things. The Greeks called the
60 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

god who ruled the winds “Aeolus.” They said that

he lived on an island in the ocean, where he kept the
winds shut up in a cave, and that he only let them
out when he pleased or when other gods wranted them.
We do not make up stories about the winds, because
men have discovered what causes them. They have
found out that the sun, with the heat that it brings,
really starts the winds blowing.

THE WIND

The wind has a language I would I could learn;

Sometimes ’tis soothing, and sometimes ’tis stern;
Sometimes it comes like a low, sweet song,
And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along;
And the forest is lulled by the dreamy strain;
And slumber sinks down on the wandering main;
And its crystal arms are folded in rest;
And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast.
— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Practice 7 — Writing a Paragraph to

Explain the Wind
[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs]

How the winds start to blow is a very simple matter,

but can you write a paragraph explaining it so clearly
that the one who reads it will understand? Here
are some of the phrases you may use. Make sen¬
tences out of five or six of these phrases explaining the
wind. Make your sentences clear and not too long.
Warm air light
Cold air heavier
Warm air rising
Low-pressure areas
 MOODS OF THE AIR 61

Air rushing in
Earth warming and cooling
Ocean and lakes cooler than land in summer
Air at mountain tops cooler

Wind Speeds
On a warm day in June a gentle breeze comes in
through your open window laden with the fragrance
of flowers and growing things.
The ‘Tight breeze” is air
moving at the rate of about
ten miles an hour. If air
moves faster, say at twenty-
five miles an hour, it is called
a “fresh breeze.” If it should
get up to thirty miles an hour,
it is called a “strong breeze.”
When the wind blows forty-
five miles an hour, it is called
a ‘ ‘ fresh gale. ” “ Hurricanes ’ ’
go as fast as a very fast auto¬
mobile — eighty to ninety miles an hour. In the “tor¬
nado” — the most terrible of all storms — air reaches
its greatest speed. Men have estimated that the air
in the whirling funnel of a tornado reaches a speed of
four hundred to five hundred miles an hour. That is
faster than any airplane has yet traveled.
Tornadoes are often spoken of as “cyclones,” but
cyclones are not necessarily storm winds. When the
air moves around a low-pressure area, the weather man
calls that movement a cyclone. Such a general move¬
ment of air can cover an area of five hundred miles
or more, but the wind speed may be low.
62 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Wild storms and wants and dangers

Will thrill a poet’s heart,
And free his viking spirit
Far more than feeble art.
So welcome to the storm wind!
The Northers I invoke.
Here’s to the strong, gray weather
That makes the heart of oak!
— William Lawrence Chittenden

Practice 8 — Giving an Illustrated Talk

Make a collection of pictures of the work of the wind.
Divide your class into two parts. One group will look
for stories and pictures showing the value of wind, and
the other of harm done by wind. Newspapers have
many stories and pictures of storms. Try to find others,
too. Plan exactly what to say to explain your pictures.

WET WEATHER
There is water in the air at all times. It is only
when we see this water as fog,
rain, sleet, or snow that we
realize that it is there. Wet
weather sometimes seems to be
gloomy weather, and we are
glad to see sunshine afterward,
but we know that the rain is
very necessary in order that
plants and animals may live
and grow. The desert is an
example of what our country
would be like if it had no
ram.
 MOODS OF THE AIR 63

CITY RAIN

Rain in the city!

I love to see it fall
Slantwise where the buildings crowd,
Red brick and all.
Streets of shiny wetness
Where the taxis go,
With people and umbrellas all
Bobbing to and fro.

Rain in the city!

I love to hear it drip
When I am cozy in my room
Snug as any ship,
With toys spread on the table,
With a picture book or two,
And the rain like a rumbling tune that sings
Through everything I do.
— Rachel Field

Practice 10 — Making Committee Reports

Divide the class into committees and, with the aid
of the bibliography, let each committee look up and
report on one of the following subjects:
1. The difference between fog and a cloud
2. Where rain comes from
3. How hail and sleet are made
4. What causes snow
5. Why snowflakes fall in beautiful shapes, like stars
and flowers

Practice 11 — Telling a Story

Fog, rain, sleet, and snow are four forms of water
in the air. Tell of some experience you have had
64 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

with one of these. You may have been lost in the

fog at some time, or been snowbound, or have seen
a cloudburst or a sleet storm. If you have heard or
read of an experience more exciting than your own,
you may tell that.

Practice 12 — Writing a Poem *

Watching cloud shapes in the sky, hearing wind

blow, or watching rain or snow falling on trees and all
about, makes us contented, happy, or sad. These feel¬
ings are often expressed in poetry.
Look back over the poems in this unit. Read them
all aloud if you like. Then let each member of the
class write a little poem about some kind of weather.
If you have many good poems, you may want to bind
them into a booklet and call them “Our Weather
Poems.”
It isn’t only flakes that fall
On the street and roof and all,
All the day and evening hours,
But white and shining stars and flowers.
A million, million tiny stars,
Dropping from the cloudy bars,
Falling softly all around,
On my sleeve and on the ground.
A million, million flowers white,
Falling softly day and night —
But not a leaf or stem at all —
It isn’t only flakes that fall.
— Annette Wynne

FORECASTING THE WEATHER

The weather is so important to us that our govern¬
ment has a Weather Bureau at Washington and about
 MOODS OF THE AIR 65

two hundred weather stations in all parts of our coun¬

try. The men in these weather stations know much
about the air and the weather, both from study and
from experience. With special instruments they meas¬
ure the temperature and weight of the air, the direction
and speed of the wind, and the amount of rainfall or
snowfall. Twice a day these weather men report their
measurements to the Washington Weather Bureau,
and there a weather map of the entire country is
made from them. If a bad storm is moving across
the country from the west, the map shows it. If freez¬
ing temperatures are approaching, the weather men can
warn the people whose crops will be harmed by frosts.
Sometimes the weather forecast in the newspaper
contains just a statement like this.

Fair tonight and Thursday. Colder tonight.

Temperature about 25 degrees Thursday
morning. Fresh northeast winds. Sun rises
6 : 44. Sun sets 4 : 46.

At other times, especially when the weather is very

unusual, a report of the temperature or rainfall from
the weather station in another part of the country is
given. The newspapers of the large cities usually print
on their market page an “Official Weather Forecast,”
containing reports from all sections of the country.

Practice 13 — Preparing an Exhibit for

the Bulletin Board
Clip from the newspapers as many different types
of forecasts as you can find. Also clip stories about
66 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

the weather. Mount them on heavy paper and write

a brief explanation of them below. Tell where they
are from, date, location, purpose, etc. Then make an
exhibit of them on your bulletin board.

Practice 14 — Writing Letters *

If there is a weather station near you and if you

would like to visit it, write a class letter asking per¬
mission to make a visit. If you cannot visit a weather
station, you can write to the Weather Bureau at Wash¬
ington and ask for several weather maps of the country,
or of your section of the country. The Department
of Agriculture also sends material on weather and the
protection of crops, upon request.

THE WEATHER AND OCCUPATIONS

The man who stays indoors all the time will probably
not be very much affected by the weather. But most
persons do go outdoors every day, and the weather
means much to them. To many, it means only how
they will clothe themselves. But to some, it may mean
loss, with its hardships and disappointment; and to
others it may mean profit and plenty. For some
occupations unfavorable weather means great loss or
hazard.

Practice 15 — Writing a Paragraph

Pair off one of the kinds of weather and one of the
occupations listed on the next page (as, hot and dry
weather and grain merchant) and describe briefly the
effect of the first upon the second. Make your para¬
graph as interesting and complete as possible.
 MOODS OF THE AIR 67

Weather Occupation
Hot and dry Grocer
Very cold Coal dealer
Hurricane Fruit grower
Steady, warm rain Grain merchant
Early frost Baseball manager
Heavy snow Bus driver
Sleet storm Airplane pilot
Hail Doctor
 UNIT VI

IN THE BOOKSTORE

Just about Christmas time a bookstore is an interest¬

ing place. Many beautiful new books are on display.
Crowds of people are in the shop selecting books as
gifts for their friends.
If you receive a lovely book as a gift, you sometimes
ask your parents to let you take it to school to show
your classmates. There is something about books that
makes everyone want to share the pleasure of them with
others.

Practice 1 — Discussing the Choice of Books

Why did you decide to read the book that you just
finished reading yesterday or last week? To find out
what makes most people choose certain books and not
others, ask that question of everyone in your class.
You will hear such reasons as:
“Because Peter said he liked it.”
“Because I saw it in the library and liked the pictures.”
“Because we had it at home.”

Probably more of you will give a reason like the first

than any other. We like to read the same books that
68
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 69

our friends read because we enjoy talking about them

together. We do not always like the same books, just
as we do not always like the same friends. That is why
a good library has many different kinds of books in it.

SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF BOOKS

If you are going to talk about a book, you must be
able to give the main idea of the book in a few sentences.
You must also be able to pick out certain very interest¬
ing parts to tell in detail. Here are summaries of three
books for children. Do you know from these few
sentences what each book is about and whether you
would like it?

The World We Live In and How It Came to Be, by Gertrude

Hartman
This is a different sort of history book. It traces the
history of the world from the very beginning. The important
discoveries and inventions of each age are described. The
book makes us realize how each invention has changed the
lives of people.

Airways, by F. E. Engleman and Julia Salmon

Mr. Engleman was a flight officer in the United States
Naval Flying Corps. The book tells the story of some
children who visit an airport and see airplanes, gliders,
weather balloons, and many other thrilling things. They
even take a ride over their city in a plane and find what
air bumps and tail spins are like. There are many inter¬
esting pictures. ^

Something Perfectly Silly, by Marni and Harrie Wood

This book is nothing but nonsense. It is full of ridiculous
poems that are ideal for reading aloud. The many colored
illustrations add to the attractiveness of the book.
70 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 2 — Discussing Books You Like

Perhaps five or six of your classmates like animal
stories. You might draw your chairs into a circle and
talk over your favorite animal book. Try to make
the book that you liked sound so attractive that the
other children will all want to read it.
Always know the exact title and, if possible, the name
of the author of the books you are discussing. Other
children cannot find the book in the library unless they
know the title. Story books are placed on the library
shelf alphabetically by the last name of the author.
If you give your friend the name of the author, he will
be able to go right to the K shelf for Rudyard Kipling’s
Jungle Tales. On what shelf would you find Louisa
Alcott’s Little Women?

A TRIP TO THE BOOKSTORE

A trip to the bookstore will give you much infor¬

mation about new books and about the books which are
favorites with boys and girls.
A small committee, perhaps
three or four pupils, can plan
to visit a bookstore. Later the
committee will report to the
class.
Choose for your committee
to visit the bookstore those
pupils who are the most
thoughtful and businesslike in
their manner.
The manager of the book¬
store will be glad to have
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 71

you visit his store if you are courteous and quiet and
treat his books carefully. You will remember that a
new book is easily damaged. If you handle the books
at all, be very careful of them.

An Interview with the Manager

While you are in the store you may be able to talk
with the manager or a clerk about books and book¬
selling. This will be an interview. When you are ask¬
ing information of a stranger in an interview, you
should be very polite and very thoughtful not to waste
the other person’s time.

Practice 3 — Dramatizing an Interview

Play that one pupil is the store manager, another the
clerk, and three others the committee that go to the
store. Let your committee members introduce them¬
selves to the clerk and ask for the manager. When
you have met the manager, tell him what you wish to
know.

Standards for an Interview

1. Tell immediately who you are and what you want

to know or do.
2. Listen carefully, if another person is introduced, so
that you will understand his name.
3. Ask your questions briefly and courteously.
4. Listen closely to the answers. Ask another ques¬
tion if you do not understand.
5. Thank the other person for his kindness in giving
you information.
72 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 4 — Getting Information at the Bookstore

Some things you can learn in your visit to the book¬
store are listed here:

What some of the newest books for children are

How new books are displayed to attract attention
How the books are arranged on the shelves
Why books are sometimes put out on tables
What kinds of books boys buy most often
Which books girls buy
Whether children’s tastes in books have changed lately
How expensive children’s books are
Why one edition of a story is sometimes more expensive
than another
Whether a bookstore ever sells books that are not really
worth owning

Make a list of the points that you want to find out

about. At the store take notes on what you learn.
Remember when you leave to thank the manager for
his attention to you.

Practice 5 — Reporting an Observation

Each member of the committee may report on one of
these topics or on some other topic that is interesting.
Keep to your topic and report exactly what you learned
on your visit.

The Cost of Children’s Books

The Titles of Favorite Books
Making Books Sell
What Children Like in Books
The Arrangement of Books in the Store
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 73

A BOOKSTORE OF YOUR OWN

The visit to the store may make you want to have a
bookstore in your classroom. You can bring to school
some of your own books. You can also use library
books and your schoolbooks for your bookstore.
Arrange them on tables, as you saw them in the store.
Put animal stories together in one group, poems in
another, history stories in another, and all books of
short stories in still another group.

Practice 6 — Skimming a Book

In order to group the books in your bookstore, you
may need to skim through some of the books by read¬
ing a few pages here and there,
looking at pictures, and decid¬
ing what each story is about.

Preparing for Business

After you have arranged
the books, you will need to
put a price on each of them.
Decide upon a reasonable
price, considering what you
learned at the store. Fasten
the price tag on the book with
a clip or slip a piece of paper
with the price mark just inside the cover. Do not mark
any book.
Make the signs that you need for the tables in your
store. Will you use any of these?
BOOKS FOR GIRLS
ADVENTURE STORIES
STORIES ABOUT GREAT MEN AND WOMEN
WILD ANIMAL TALES
74 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Decide upon your clerks. They should become ac¬

quainted with the books; then they can answer ques¬
tions that the customers may ask.

Letters to Publishers
Publishers of children’s books will send you catalogs.
Some of these catalogs are illustrated and will be in¬
teresting to you.
To find the name and address of a publisher look at
the bottom of the title page, or on the back of the title
page, of some story book.
Your letter may be written like this one:

1428 Canal Street

New Orleans, Louisiana
January 27, 1935
The Macmillan Company
Dallas, Texas

Gentlemen:
Please send me a catalog of your books for children.
Very truly yours,
Robert Orr

Practice 7 — Writing a Letter

[Handbook, Section 111, Letter-Writing^

Each of you may choose your own publishing com¬

pany. Write to the nearest office, if there are several
office addresses given. Make your letter short and po¬
lite. Be sure to write plainly.
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 75

Advertising Books
Many bookstores have little folders printed describ¬
ing the new books. They give these folders away as
advertisements. You can make some advertisements
for the books in your store. If you cannot have several
copies made, you can fasten your one copy on a bulletin
board, where customers can see it. An advertisement
is different from a review because an advertisement tells
only the good things about a book, while a review tells
what the reader really thinks about the book.
Here are advertisements of some books, both old
and new, written by pupils who had a play bookstore.
Gay-Neck; the Story of a Pigeon, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
This is a story of a pigeon from India that was taken to
France during the war as a message carrier. Maybe you have
seen pigeons with beautifully colored feathers on their necks
as Gay-Neck was colored. The experiences of this clever
bird until the time that he returned to his master in India
make an unusual story.
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field
A little wooden doll carries you through one hundred years
of adventures in pioneer America. You almost forget that
Hitty is a doll because her story seems so real.
Smoky, the Cowhorse, by Will James
You will feel that you are out on the range or in the corral
as you read this story supposed to be told by a real cowboy.
You will not mind that the cowboy uses poor English because
you will be so excited about the round-up and the rodeo as
Smoky, the cowhorse, tells his story.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, by Alice Hegan Rice
You’ve never met anyone like Mrs. Wiggs, but you have
always hoped you would. She has a welcome for everyone.
76 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

She and her amusing family make a delightful story. The

Cabbage Patch is a group of poor little cottages, or shanties,
near the tracks in a Kentucky town.

Practice 8 — Writing Advertisements for Books

[Handbook, Section V, Capital Letters, and Section VI, Punctuation]
Write some paragraphs that will make people want
to read the books in your store. Give just a hint of
what the book is about. Tell a little about the main
character, as you would introduce one good friend to
other friends. Be sure to give the title and the author’s
name, as in the advertisements just given. You want
the customers to remember what books you are urging
them to buy. You may underline the title.

Book Posters
For a corner in your classroom bookstore you will
want some attractive book posters. You can find
pictures in magazines to illustrate certain stories, but
better yet, you can draw pictures for your posters.

Practice 9 — Making Posters *

Work out posters in your art class, using crayons,

paints, or paper cutting, whichever you prefer.
Make a title for your poster. Do you like any of
these?

Buy a Book a Month

Every Page a Thrilling Adventure
Follow the Animal Trail through Books
Read One of Dr. Dolittle’s Books and You’ll Want to
Own Them All
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 77

Practice 10 — Playing Bookstore

It will be fun to play bookstore, to have some of the
pupils serve as clerks while others are customers.
Courtesy is important in business. The clerks should
try to answer all questions and to please the customers
if possible. Customers, too, should be thoughtful, po¬
lite, and reasonable.
When your bookstore fun is over, you will know much
more about books, and you will probably have decided
upon some new ones that you want to read as soon as
you can.
Be sure to return all books to the owners. Many
persons are careless about borrowed books, but you
will want to see that every book is returned.
JUDGING BOOKS
When you were at the bookstore, you saw many
books that you would not care to own. Some of them
were not especially interesting; some of them were
poorly written; some were so cheaply made as not to
be worth the price you would have to pay for them.
The manager himself probably told you that he would
like to sell only good books, but that people sometimes
want to buy poor books. If everyone who bought books
had good taste, stores would sell only the best books.
It is very important for you to learn to tell good books
from poor books in order not to waste your time and
your money. Books differ in value, just as much as
apples or shoes or houses do.

Practice 11 — Discussing Good and Poor Books

Usually you have told in your class about books you
liked. You sometimes read books that you think are
78 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

not good stories and that you cannot recommend to

other boys and girls. Tell the class about some books
that you did not like and that you would not care to
own.
One boy reported: “I’ve been reading some of those
Boy Scout adventure books, but I don’t think they
are very good. They tell about things that aren’t
possible, and the characters certainly aren’t like real
Scouts. I’m a Boy Scout myself, and none of those
things ever happened to me.”

A RECORD OF YOUR READING

It is always worth while to keep a record of the books
that you read. You can use your list in discussions or
in making up a class list to suggest to other children.
A pupil’s card catalog makes a very good place for
recording your reading. Each of you has a card on
which you write the titles and the authors of the books
you have read. On the back or on another card you

What: Are We Reading?

Animal Stories
Travel Stories H.
Hi story Stories
Fun Stori

FairyTales
 IN THE BOOKSTORE 79

may wish to write the names of books that you want

to read sometime. It is easy to forget titles if you do
not write them down.
One class made an interesting chart that showed
what kind of books the children were reading. They
used squared paper and filled in one quarter-inch square
for each book read by anyone in the class. A glance
at the chart showed whether the children in this class
were reading many kinds of books or only a few kinds.
Different colors could be used for the different kinds of
books.

Practice 12 — Making a Record of Reading

Decide in what way you wish to make a record of
your reading. Plan to keep your record for the rest
of the year.

DRAMATIZING STORIES
We remember better the things that we see as well
as hear or read. That’s why we like motion pictures
and pictures in our geographies. If you can make your
classmates see the persons and the happenings in a
book, you may make them want to read it.
When four or five of you have read a certain book,
you can plan a dramatization of an interesting scene,
practice it, and give it before the class. Do not try to
remember the words of the book, but give the ideas in
your own words.
The scene between Robin Hood and the Friar in
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood makes an excellent
play with few words. It may be almost a pantomime,
because it can be played with only three or four short
speeches, the orders that each player gives to the other.
80 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Acting out stories in this way can become a regular

part of your work. Monologs (dramatizations by one
person) or dialogs (dramatizations by two or more
persons) may be given by one or several pupils each
week. Here is a monolog that was given by a girl who
had just read the old Greek story, Pandora's Box.
Pandora : (Holding the cord on the box between her fingers
and wondering whether or not to undo it)
Let me see. I wonder how that knot was tied anyway.
I can pull it a little without really untying it. Even if it came
open, I could fasten it again.
Of course, I wouldn’t really open it unless Epimetheus
told me that I could. He’s so silly when he insists on our
obeying orders.
I wonder if it’s heavy. Not so very. But what can be
in it to be so precious and to be tied so tightly? I’ll bet I
could undo that knot.
Oh! It’s unfastened, and now what will Epimetheus
say? He’ll never believe that I did not look in. I’ll take
just one little peek!
(Opens the box and covers her head as the troubles fly out.)

At the end of six weeks ask how many in the class

have read the stories that you chose to dramatize.
Were your reviews a success?

Practice 13 — Playing Scenes from Stories

Choose a character or a scene from some book that
most of the boys and girls know. Play it in pantomime
or as a monolog. See whether your classmates can tell
what story you are playing.
 UNIT VII

ELECTRICAL MESSAGES

If a Rip Van Winkle who had gone to sleep one

hundred years ago should wake up today, what do
you think would surprise him most in this modern
world? Some might say the railroad train, others the
automobile, and possibly others the airplane. He
would probably be surprised by many things, but
wouldn’t the way we send messages and speak over
thousands of miles in the fraction of a second seem really
the most mysterious to him?
Since one hundred years ago electricity has come to
be the fastest, and probably the most important,
message-bearer for men.
Have you ever stopped at the telegraph office and
listened to the clicking of the instruments as the
messages came over the wires from distant cities? You
will be interested to know how this method of sending
and receiving messages was invented.

THE INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH

For many years men had known that electricity
would travel along a wire with amazing speed. What a
81
82 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

marvelous message-bearer it would be if it could only

be made to take a message! Benjamin Franklin tried
to find a way, but the electric battery had not been
invented and he had no method of keeping an electric
current going through the wire. This difficulty was
overcome by an Italian, Volta, who discovered the
electric battery. Later an American inventor, Joseph
Henry, discovered that when an electric current went
through a wire wound around a piece of iron it made a
magnet of the iron. This was an important discovery.
It made possible the telegraph, as well as the electric
motor.
It was another American, Samuel F. B. Morse, who
made the first practical telegraph by using this electro¬
magnet. By turning the current on and off the magnet,
he arranged the instrument to make dashes or dots
with a sort of pencil on a moving strip of paper. Later
it was found that the trained telegrapher could “read”
the dots and dashes just by listening to the click-clack
of his instrument.
The first public message, “What hath God wrought? ”
was sent over a line between Washington and Balti¬
more in 1844. After many trials and much discourage¬
ment, Samuel Morse had made electricity our swiftest
message-bearer.

The Morse Code

It was now just a question of having the telegraph
make signals that would have meaning. This question
Mr. Morse answered by working out a set of dashes
and dots for each letter. Here is the Morse Code used
in the United States and Canada. The dot stands for
a short click, the dash for a long sound.
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 83
A — N —
B - 0 • •
C •• • P
D- Q
E • R
F •— S
G-- T
H •••• U
I •• V
J - W
K- X
L — Y
M- Z

Practice 1 — Writing with the Morse Code

Write a sentence, using, instead of words, the dots
and dashes of the Morse Code. Here is such a sen¬
tence. The vertical marks separate the letters.

When you change this sentence from the Morse Code

into words, it reads: “The Indians are coming.” Make
your first sentence in the telegraph code a short one,
so that it will not be too hard for someone else to read.
After you have written your code sentence, exchange
papers with a classmate and change his code message
into a written sentence.

WRITING A TELEGRAM
Writing a good telegram takes thought and a little
practice. A good telegram is brief and clear. If you
use more than ten words, you must pay extra for each
84 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

additional word. It is therefore a saving to make

your message a short one, if possible, just ten words.
Here is a message written by letter.

34 Cold Spring Street

New Haven, Connecticut
October 14, 1935
Dear George,
I have just received a letter from Uncle Bob telling
me that he has two extra tickets for the football game
next Saturday. I had wished that you and I could go,
but I hadn’t expected this good luck. I’ll arrive at the
Grand Central Station at 11:30 Saturday morning.
Meet me at the information booth, and we’ll go over to
Uncle Bob’s office from there.
Sincerely yours,
Frank

Frank’s letter could be changed to this message if it

were to be sent by telegraph:

GEORGE MORRISON
462 FOURTH AVENUE
MOUNT VERNON
NEW YORK

UNCLE BOB HAS TICKETS FOR GAME STOP

MEET ME NEW YORK GRAND CENTRAL STATION
INFORMATION BOOTH SATURDAY ELEVEN
THIRTY
FRANK
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 85

Practice 2 — Writing a Telegram

Select one of the following situations and write the
telegram that is necessary. Remember that you must
pay extra for each word over ten, but also remember
that your message must be so clear that it will be easily
understood by the person receiving it. A misunder¬
standing might also be expensive.
1. You are on your way to your home city in an automo¬
bile. You had planned to go to a party with your sister or
brother when you arrived home that evening. You have had
an accident and cannot get home until the next morning.
Notify your sister or brother by telegram.
2. You are on your way to spend a week’s vacation at your
uncle’s ranch. Telegraph him telling him when and where
you will arrive, so that he can meet you.
3. You have arranged to go on a camping trip with a
friend, but because of the illness of a member of your family
you will have to postpone the trip one week or possibly
longer. Telegraph your friend, who was planning to come
to your city to meet you, that your plans must be changed.

MESSAGES ACROSS THE OCEAN

When the telegraph had proved to be a very useful
instrument for sending messages across the country
from one city to another, it was natural to think of
using electricity to send messages across the ocean from
one country to another. To do this the wire had to
be protected from the water. A thick cable was made
with the wire in the center of it, insulated so that the
electricity could not go out into the water. The first
successful cable was laid on the bottom of the ocean
across the English Channel from England to France
in 1851, seventeen years after the telegraph was in-
86 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

vented. An American merchant, Cyrus W. Field, was

fired with the idea of laying a cable across the Atlantic
Ocean. The newspapers on both sides of the ocean
made fun of him, but after several attempts in which
he spent millions of dollars, he succeeded. The first
electrical message across the Atlantic came from Queen
Victoria of England to President Buchanan of the
United States.

Practice 3 — Making an Oral Report

[Handbook, Section 77, Using Book Tools]

Make a report on the laying of the first Atlantic

cable. You will find the story of it in your encyclopedia
or in any of the following books:
Faris, J. T. — Makers of Our History
Gould, F. J. — Heroes of Peace
Kaempffert, W.—A Popular History of American Inventions
Tappan, E. M. — Heroes of Progress
Webster, H. H. and Powers, E. M. — Famous Seamen of
America
Williams, A. — Engineering Feats

THE TELEPHONE
The telephone is so generally used today that it
seems to you a common and ordinary thing. At one
time it seemed very thrilling and mysterious to make
one's voice heard over a wire. The story of this won¬
derful invention is most exciting.

THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE

During the time that the telegraph was being invented

and put into service, a young lad named Alexander Graham
Bell was growing up in Scotland and England. When Alex-
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 87

ander was a young man, the Bell family came to live in a

small Canadian town, where he taught a tribe of Mohawk
Indians for a year.
There were two tasks he had set his heart upon, and for a
long time he hardly knew which he thought the more im¬
portant — the teaching of deaf-mutes or the invention of a
musical telegraph. He said, “If I can make a deaf-mute
talk, I can make iron talk.” He dreamed of replacing the
telegraph and its sign language of dots and dashes by a new
machine that would carry the human voice. How he would
do this, he did not know. At first he thought of sending the
voice through a speaking trumpet to be received by the
strings of a harp at the other end.
He spoke of these things to a doctor friend of his. The
doctor said, “Why don’t you use a real ear?” and he gave
Bell a part of a dead man’s skull to work with. The young
inventor worked earnestly with this ear. He whispered, sang,
and shouted into it and studied the resulting marks on a
smoked glass touching the eardrum. From this dead man’s
ear he really learned how to make the speaking telephone.
He thought, “If this tiny membrane (the eardrum) can
vibrate a bone, then an iron membrane, or disc, could vi¬
brate an iron wire,” and he set about to build a machine
made of two iron discs connected by an electrified wire.
Even then it took some time before the infant telephone
was brought to life. It was on a hot June afternoon in 1875
that its first cry was heard. Perhaps no ear but Bell’s could
have heard it, but he had been expecting it for months and
to him it was loud. His eyes blazed with joy, and he sprang
into the next room, where the young mechanic who was
helping him had snapped the clock spring on one of the
machines. “Snap that reed again, Watson,” he cried.
Watson did, and the same twang was again heard on Bell’s
machine. That was the cry of the baby telephone.
It was nine months more before it talked. On March 10,
1876, it said clearly, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
88 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Watson, who was in the basement, rushed excitedly up

three flights of stairs. “I can hear you!” he shouted
breathlessly. “I can hear the words!”
When Bell applied at the Patent Office for a patent on his
machine, it was so new and different that there was no name
for it and he had to ask for a patent on “an improvement in
telegraphy.” Of course it was no such thing. It proved
to be as different from the telegraph as great oratory is from
sign language. On Bell’s twenty-ninth birthday he received
his patent — “the most valuable single patent ever issued”
in any country. — Adapted from The History of the Tele-
phone, by Herbert N. Casson

Practice 4 — Summarizing
[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs']

Each paragraph in this story of Bell’s invention of

the telephone develops one point. The first tells when
and where Bell lived. The second tells of his two great
ambitions. What are the topics of the remaining
paragraphs? When you have listed them, you will have
an outline of the story.

Practice 5 — Comparing References

The story of the birth of the telephone is also found
in these books. Use the index or the table of contents
to find the pages to read.
Beeby, D. J. — How the World Grows Smaller
Kelty, Mary G. — The Growth of the American People and
Nation
McGuire, Edna and Phillips, C. A. — Building Our Country
Stone, G. L. and Fickett, M. G. — Famous Days in the
Century of Invention
Webster, H. H. — The World’s Messengers
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 89
When you find two or more reports about the same
topic, you have an interesting chance to compare them.
As you read the references, ask yourself these questions:
1. Are the same main points brought out in the five
books? What are the points that all the authors thought
important?
2. What new ideas did you find in each book?
3. Are there any points upon which the books do not
agree? If so, you will probably want to find even more
references to read, in order to see what other authors think.
4. Which book gives the story most completely and
clearly?

Practice 6 — Discussing the Telephone in Our

Life Today
How important is the telephone in our fife today?
Can you find figures about the number of telephones, or
of conversations, or of the miles
of wire used? What advan¬
tages does the telephone give
us? "What would happen if
all telephones were done away
with? Which is more impor¬
tant, the telegraph or the tele¬
phone? Give your reasons.
Are there any disadvantages
in these swift means of sending
messages?
Using the Telephone
When a person whom you
have not met talks with you
by telephone, he decides what sort of person you are,
just by what he hears. How important it is, there-
90 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

fore, that you know how to talk and what to say over
the telephone. You will find rules for the use of the
telephone in your telephone directory. How to make
a call, how to report trouble with your telephone service,
and how to make a long-distance call are all told there.

Practice 7 — Improving Your Use of the Telephone

Read the rules in the telephone directory and discuss
the reasons why the telephone company has given you
these rules.
Here are some good standards for telephone conver¬
sation. Check yourself by them.

Standards for Talking by Telephone

1. Speak in a natural and pleasing tone.

2. Speak clearly and directly into the transmitter.
3. Speak courteously at all times.
4. Do not drag out your conversation. Someone else
may be waiting to use the telephone.

Dramatizing the Magic of the Telephone

How much fun it would be to show Rip Van Winkle
our way of getting messages by telegraph and tele¬
phone! One class did this very thing in a play they
wrote. In this play Rip went to sleep in 1855, awoke in
1935, and wandered into a schoolhouse. Here are some
of the lines the class wrote.
Rip: Yes, I must have been asleep for eighty years.
(Children nod.) I hope you won’t think me rude if I ask you
a question.
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 91

Teacher: Ell be glad to answer any questions that will

help you solve your problem.
Rip : What was that black thing that you were talking to
in the other room?
Teacher: Oh, that w^as a telephone.
Rip: A telephone. What is that? Could it understand
you?
Teacher : It is a little instrument that we use in speaking
to people at a distance.

Later, when Rip hears about the perfection of the

telegraph, which had been invented before he went into
his long sleep, the following discussion takes place:
Rip : That’s quite an improvement. I wonder when some¬
body is going to invent a way of sending money and flowers
and other things in that way.
Marilyn: Oh, that has already been done.
Rip : What? How funny it must look to see money and
flowers dangling over the wires. Now I’m afraid you’re
fooling me.
Marilyn: Oh, no; that’s not the way it’s done. First
you go to the florist and select the flowers you want the
person to have . . . etc.

Practice 8 — Writing a Play *

Write a play showing Rip Van Winkle’s surprise at

the inventions of today. Notice how the speaker of
each line is shown on the left. In a play the exact
words of the speaker are given, but quotation marks
are not needed.

MESSAGES THROUGH THE AIR

The nations of the world have been brought closer
together, ships at sea have been made safer, and millions
92 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

of homes have been able to receive information and

entertainment every hour of the day by the discovery
that electricity can bring messages through space with¬
out having to stretch a wire from the sender to the
receiver. If Rip Van Winkle were to return today
from a fifty-year sleep, his greatest surprise would come
when he sat before the radio and heard the voices of
people speaking from thousands of miles away.

The Wireless Telephone

In 1901 the first wireless message came across the
ocean.
For several years wireless messages were only in
Morse code; they were wireless telegrams. Each large
ship was equipped with wire¬
less sets and carried an operator
who could send and receive
code messages.
It was ten years after Mar¬
coni had received the first wire¬
less code message across the
Atlantic that the human voice
was first carried by wireless.
Now any person could receive
a message. In time people were
able to place receiving sets —
radios — in their homes. To¬
day much of our news, music,
and entertainment comes to us by radio. By 1927 the
radiotelephone became so well developed that commer¬
cial service was opened between New York and London.
Short-wave sets have now brought into the home
music and messages from far-distant countries.
 ELECTRICAL MESSAGES 93

Practice 9 — Reporting on a Radio Program

[Handbook, Section IV, Good Usage]

Report on a radio program that you have heard

recently. If you enjoyed it, tell why. Adventure serials
for children are broadcast each evening. Select one
that is approved by your teacher and have a short
daily report on it for several days. Can you make the
pupils who failed to hear it understand and enjoy it
from your account of it?

Practice 10 — Discussing Electrical Messages

You have been reading about the telegraph, the tele¬
phone, and the radio — methods of communication
that connect the smallest town with the whole wide
world. How important these three kinds of electrical
messages have come to be! Which do you think is the
most important? That is a question that will lead to
an interesting discussion.
Choose a committee of three members to present to
the class the importance of the telegraph, another com¬
mittee to show the value of the telephone, and a third
to present the benefits we receive from the radio.
In presenting your ideas, use examples that will make
your points clear. One committee might say that the
telephone helps to make living safer. What example
could be given to prove that?
After your committees have presented their points,
give them a chance to answer your questions. This
is not a debate in which one side wins. It is a discus¬
sion that brings out important points. Every member
of the class may take part.
Summarize the main points of your discussion.
 UNIT VIII

HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — SPRING SEMESTER

WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY
This year on our first president’s birthday you will
study the beautiful city that wras named in his honor,
our national capital, Washington. It is on the banks
of the Potomac River, in the District of Columbia,
which belongs to the entire United States and is not a
part of any one of the forty-eight states in our country.

Practice 1 — Finding Information

[Handbook, Section II, Using Book Tools]

Geographies and encyclopedias will tell you many

interesting things about Washington. You may find
something by looking under any of these words:

cities District of Columbia Washington, D.C.

These are key words with which you find the pages
to read. Can you think of any other key words
to use?
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — SPRING SEMESTER 95

Make note of the pages upon which you find informa¬

tion about Washington. You can do it in this way:
Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia, Volume 15, pages 22-28
World Book Encyclopedia, pages 7636-7644

After you have located the pages to be read, put the

books on your library table. Each of you will want
to read as many of the books as you can.

Practice 2 — Taking Notes

As you read, you will need to put down on a card or
small piece of paper some of the points to remember.
Put down also anything that you do not understand
and wish to have explained in the class.
One pupil put down in his notes, "Residents of
Washington cannot vote in a national election.” He
asked to have that explained.
Study a map to find out where the city is.
If you find the answers to these questions, put them
in your notes:
1. How large is the District of Columbia?
2. Does Washington have a mayor? How is the city
managed?
3. How large is Washington?
4. Who planned the city?
5. When was the city first built?
6. When did it become the national capital?
7. What are some of the important buildings?
8. How far is Washington from where you live?

Practice 3 — Reporting on Your Reading

Use your notes in reporting to the class what you
have learned. Make your statements in clear sentences.
Do not repeat what someone else has told.
96 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

If your notes do not agree with something reported,

which of these things will you do?

1. Say nothing about what you found.

2. Tell the other pupil that he is wrong.
3. Courteously say that you found something different,
and report what you found, so that the class can discuss
the differences.

When such a thing happens, you will often want to

go back to your reference to see whether you took notes

correctly and completely. You may bring your book

to the class discussion to help settle any questions that
arise.
In one class, a boy reported that the District of
Columbia covers 100 square miles, and a girl reported
that it covers 70 square miles. Can you find out which
is right, and why both numbers were given in the
reference books? It is always important to read ac¬
curately and completely.

Enjoying the Beauty of Washington

If any of you are fortunate enough to have been in
Washington, you know that it is a beautiful city.
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — SPRING SEMESTER 97

Pictures will help you to enjoy its beauty if you cannot

actually see the marble buildings, wide streets, and
carefully kept parks.

Practice 4 — Arranging and Explaining

an Exhibit
Postcards and magazine pictures will make an in¬
teresting collection for an exhibit. Mount your pictures
and arrange them well on your bulletin board. Can
you find pictures of any of these beautiful buildings and
scenes in Washington?

The White House The Capitol

Washington Monument Library of Congress
Lincoln Memorial Supreme Court Building
The Treasury Building National Museum
Arlington Memorial Theater Patent Office
The Japanese Cherry Trees Rock Creek Park
The Washington Cathedral Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

A sentence of explanation beneath each picture will

make your exhibit more interesting. This sentence was
written beneath the picture of the Pan-American Union
in one exhibit:

The Pan-American Union was built by the twenty-one

republics of the Americas to promote trade and friendly re¬
lations.

Practice 5 — Writing Sentence Labels

[Handbook, Section VII, Sentences]

Write one clear sentence to be printed or written

beneath each picture.
98 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Reports about Washington

Any of the beauty spots of Washington will make
a good report. Study the pictures, read your books,
and talk with anyone who has been in Washington.
No two reports should be alike. You do not enjoy
hearing ideas repeated. Even though two of you
choose to talk on the same topic, you should plan to
tell different things in order to please and interest your
listeners. Plan your talk so that you can tell some¬
thing interesting in a few sentences.
Do you like this report about Mount Vernon?

MOUNT VERNON

About sixteen miles from Washington, overlooking the

Potomac River, is the home where George Washington lived,
Mount Vernon. It is a large, rambling, white house with
pillars along the side that faces the river. Visitors always
enjoy seeing the furniture and the rugs that Martha and
George Washington had in their home. The gardens are
kept as nearly as possible as they were when the Washing¬
tons lived there.

Practice 6 — Criticizing a Report

Read carefully the report just given to see whether
you can make it better. From your reading can
you tell other things about Mount Vernon that are
more interesting than the things in the report? Would
you like to have heard about Washington’s tomb at
Mount Vernon, the old kitchen, the other rooms, the
lights, the old-fashioned beds, rather than the things
told in the report? Criticize it by the standards on
the next page. After criticizing it, give a better report
on Mount Vernon if you can.
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — SPRING SEMESTER 99

Standards for an Oral Report

1. Did the speaker make clear to the listeners just

what his topic was?
2. Did he choose interesting, worth-while things to
tell about his subject?
3. Did he use clear, complete sentences?
4. Were his statements all true?
5. Was he prepared with enough information to be
interesting?

Practice 7 — Making a Report

Choose a subject and plan a report for your class.
Try to meet all the standards. These topics will be
interesting. Select another if you prefer.
The Building of the White House
The Paintings in the Library of Congress
Famous Pennsylvania Avenue
The Capitol at Night
The Washington Monument
New Buildings in Washington
The Homes of Foreign Ambassadors — Embassies
The United States Treasury Building
Statues of Famous Americans

Practice 8 —Discussing Changes

in Washington *

You learned from your reading that the city of

Washington today is very different from the city in
1800 when the national government was moved there.
If George Washington could see it now, he would be
very proud of the beautiful city that he helped to design.
100 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Talk over together some of the changes in the city of

Washington in this period of more than a hundred
years. How is the city a more comfortable place in
which to live? The original plans for the city streets
and for the architecture of the buildings have been
carried out. Why was that a wise thing to do? What
buildings that are now in Washington were not needed
a hundred years ago? Do you think our first president
was wise in his choice of the location and plans for the
capital city of our nation? There are many memorials
to him throughout the country, but the city of Wash¬
ington has been called his greatest memorial.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY

How everyone enjoys a good joke! We like the per¬
son who can tell a funny story and who laughs easily
even when the joke is on himself. April Fool’s Day is
a good time to have fun. You can begin by telling
jokes on yourselves.

Funny Experiences and Funny Pictures

Practice 9 — Telling Funny Experiences

In telling about your own funny experiences save
the surprise until the very end. Do not tell unim¬
portant happenings that have nothing to do with the
point of the story.
You may tell about fun that you have had at home,
on birthdays or on holidays.

Practice 10 — Making Up Titles

Magazine covers and newspapers often have funny
pictures and cartoons. A collection of these on the
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS —SPRING SEMESTER 101

bulletin board on April Fool's Day will entertain your

class. Writing titles under the pictures will add to
the fun.
Each of you may be responsible for finding one
funny picture or cartoon and bringing it to school for
your April Fool's Day collection.
Select your pictures a few days before April 1, trim
them, and mount them neatly. During language class
suggest titles for each of them. Print the cleverest
title under each picture.
You can make a booklet of these pictures to send to
some absent pupil after April Fool's Day.

Nonsense Poetry
Poems that are full of ridiculous nonsense are always
fun to read aloud. Here is one you will enjoy:

CONTRARY MARY

You ask why Mary was called contrary?

Well, this is why, my dear:
She planted the most outlandish things
In her garden every year.
She was always sowing the queerest seed,
And when advised to stop,
Her answer was merely, “No, indeed —
Just wait till you see the crop!”

And here are some of the crops, my child

(Although not nearly all):
Bananarcissus and cucumberries,
And violettuce small;
Potatomatoes, melonions rare,
And rhubarberries round,
With porcupineapples prickly-rough
On a little bush close to the ground.
102 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

She gathered the stuff in mid-July

And sent it away to sell —
And now you’ll see how she earned her name,
And how she earned it well.
Were the crops hauled off in a farmer’s cart?
No, not by any means,
But in little June-buggies and automobeetles
And dragonflying machines!
— Nancy Byrd Turner

Be sure to pronounce your words clearly because

your listeners will miss the fun if they cannot hear.
Like many nonsense poems, this one is full of odd words
that are hard to pronounce, but they make part of the
fun. You will have to practice to read them easily.

Practice 11 — Locating Poems to Read

[Handbook, Section II, Using Book Tools]

Ask five or six of your class to find funny poems for

you to read. Look through the table of contents in
poetry or reading books. Can you find any of the
poems below? Bring in any other funny poems for
your class to read. Notice how the titles are written.
“The Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee,” by Mildred Plew
Merryman
“The Jumblies,” by Edward Lear
“The Bottle Tree,” by Eugene Field
“Neighbors,” by Sonia Ruthele Novak
“Radiator Lions,” by Dorothy Aldis
“The Walrus and the Carpenter,” by Lewis Carroll

Practice 12 — Dramatizing a Poem *

Select for dramatizing three of the poems that you

have read aloud. Choose your characters. They may
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS — SPRING SEMESTER 103

act in pantomime without speaking while someone else

in the class reads the poem aloud.

Humorous Stories
For several days before April 1, you can be hunting
for amusing stories. Look through your readers. These
are some of the writers of humorous stories and poems.
Do you find any of their stories in your readers or
library books?
Hugh Lofting Dorothy Aldis
Edward Lear A. A. Milne
Lewis Carroll Rachel Field
Carolyn Wells Hilaire Belloc
Mark Twain Gelett Burgess

Practice 13 — Reading Aloud

Choose a funny incident, or happening, in the story
you found to read to the class. Make your selection
short, but read enough so that the class will enjoy
the fun.
A Program of Nonsense
From your stories, poems, and jokes make up a
program for April Fool’s Day. Choose an announcer
and five or six persons to take part in the program.
Your announcer will need to speak clearly. He will
use notes, so that he can tell the titles and the speakers’
names exactly. His writing should be legible, so that
he can read it without mistakes.
When you have prepared your program, send an
invitation to another class to come and enjoy your fun
with you.
104 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Just for Fun

We invite you to Room 204, Monday, April 1, at

2:30 o’clock, for an hour of nonsense.

Admission — One hearty laugh to be paid during

the hour.

Practice 14 — Writing an Invitation

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing]

You may either write a letter or send an invitation

something like the one shown. Should your invitation
be different if you are writing to smaller children?
Why?

Entertaining Your Guests

On the day your guests arrive, have several pupils
ready to greet them and show them where to sit during
your program. Try to make your visitors feel at home.
They should expect to enjoy themselves on April Fool’s
Day, especially.
MOTHER’S DAY
Mothers and fathers are always interested in what
their children are doing at school. Sometimes you
probably wish they wouldn’t ask so often, "What did
you do in school today?” Perhaps if you invite them
to visit your room, you will not have to answer the
question so often, because they will know what you do
in school. Fathers usually work during your school
 HOLIDAY PROGRAMS —SPRING SEMESTER 105

hours, but mothers can often plan to spend an after¬

noon visiting at school. Mother’s Day is on the second
Sunday in May, but you can entertain your mothers
on the Friday afternoon before Mother’s Day.

Planning Your "At Home”

When you invite guests to visit you in your home,
you say that you will be “at home” to your friends.
On this Friday you will be "at home” to your mothers
in your schoolroom.

Practice 15 — Making Plans

Talk over the questions that your mothers usually
ask. Aren’t most of them about your school work?
Decide which subjects your parents would be most
interested in seeing. Which would you like best to
show them? With your teacher, plan your program
for the day. Your mothers will want to see your
regular work, not a special program. Some of these
suggestions may help you:
1. Dramatizing a story in reading
2. Reading interesting parts of stories aloud with the
class as an audience
3. Locating in different books the information on some
topic that you are studying (using the table of contents and
the index)
4. Taking a silent-reading test
5. Discussing some problem in history or geography class
6. Reporting on some topic that you have studied
7. Correcting your own arithmetic papers and discover¬
ing your mistakes
8. Doing committee work
106 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Inviting Your Guests

Your mothers would like to have written invitations.
You may each write your own invitation. That will
please your mother.

Practice 16 — Writing an Invitation

Write your invitation in the form of a letter. Study
the letter-writing section of the Handbook for correct
form and punctuation.
Read your invitation to the class for suggestions.
Then copy your letter neatly and take it home to your
mother a few days before your “At Home.”

Receiving and Introducing Your Guests

When your mothers come to school, you will intro¬
duce them to your teacher. You will get up quietly
when you see your mother enter the door and greet
her. She will feel at home right away if you do that.
You will introduce your mother to your teacher in
about this way:
Donald : Miss Gray, this is my mother.
Miss Gray: How do you do, Mrs. Snider. We are glad
that you could come this afternoon.
Mrs. Snider: Thank you, Miss Gray. I am very much
interested in Donald’s work; so I am also glad that I could
come.

Practice 17 — Dramatizing an Introduction

Play that you are introducing your mothers. Let
certain children play being your guests. You will find
it easier to introduce your mothers after this practice.
 UNIT IX

WILD ANIMALS

Not so many years ago wild animals crept down

forest trails where now we hear the honk of automo¬
bile horns and the screech of brakes on paved streets.
These animals of the forest have become fewer as the
number of people has become larger, as farms, villages,
and cities have grown and covered the land. Now,
unless we visit a zoo or one of our national parks, it is
almost impossible to catch a glimpse of the larger wild
animals that used to inhabit our forests.
Still we like to know them, to hear stories about
their life in the great outdoors, and the adventures of
men who hunted them in order to get meat for their
families.

Practice 1 — Conversing
Have any pupils in your class seen a bear or a deer
or any other animal running wild and free in the
forest? If you have, tell the class about it. Many
of you have seen wild animals at the circus, the zoo,
or in cages somewhere. Tell about these experiences.
107
108 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Make a list of wild animals that members of your class

have seen.
THE BEAR
Of all the wild animals of the forest, the bear seems
to be the best known to us. Do you think it is because
he is bigger than the others? Is it because he is easier
to see, being seldom in a hurry? Or is it because he
is one wild animal that is not so afraid of men as
other animals are? When we come along the road, the
bear will take his time getting out of sight, while we
catch only a glimpse of other animals as they leap into
the underbrush of the forest.
If you have not seen a bear in the forest, you have
probably seen one in captivity. “In captivity” means
captured by man and kept in a cage or tied to a chain.
If bears are well fed and cared for, they do not seem
to mind being kept in a cage. They seem to enjoy good
food more than anything else.

Practice 2— Telling about Bears

Tell about the bears you have seen when you were
on an auto trip, at the zoo or the circus, or in any
other place. What kind were they — black, brown,
polar, or huge grizzly bears? What did they do?
Here is an opportunity to exchange interesting informa¬
tion and stories of your experiences. If you will follow
good standards for conversation, you will enjoy telling
one another your experiences with bears.
Someone who has not seen real bears can tell what
he has read about the habits of bears. Do you think
the make-believe stories about bears that are told to
little children give them ideas that are not true?
 WILD ANIMALS 109

Standards for Conversation

1. Listen quietly when some other pupil is speaking.

2. If you don’t understand or would like more infor¬
mation, ask questions when the speaker pauses or
has finished what he has to say.
3. If you do interrupt without intending to, stop speak¬
ing as soon as you realize it. Say quietly, “I am
sorry,” and wait until the speaker has finished what
he was saying.
4. When you speak, make your remarks interesting
and to the point. Don’t ramble along so that
your listeners tire of waiting for you to say some¬
thing of interest.

A BEAR IN OUR AUTO

How would you feel if you should start to get into your
automobile and should find a
good-sized bear in it? That is
what happened to us last summer
when we were driving through
Yellowstone Park.
We had all got out of the car
for a cool drink of water from a
mountain stream. We rested for
a few minutes in the shade of
some pine trees and then started
back to the car. My sister was
the first one to reach it. She had
put her foot on the running board
just ready to step in when she
gave a scream and jumped back.
110 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Then a chubby brown bear jumped out of the car, blinked

sort of sheepishly, and ran off down the hill. It is needless
to say that the bag of candy that sister had left on the back
seat had disappeared with the bear.
— John F.

Practice 3 — Writing a Paragraph

[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs']

Possibly you have seen a bear on a summer auto

trip, or have watched the bears at the zoo or circus.
It may be that someone has told you a story about
an experience with a bear. Write a paragraph telling
the experience or story you have selected.

The Grizzly
The grizzly is the largest and the most dangerous of
the bears living in our country. But even these huge
beasts become peaceful under certain conditions. The
following story told in Seton’s The Biography of a Grizzly
shows that this may be true.
WAHB, THE GRIZZLY, ON VACATION

Wahb was a mighty silvertip grizzly who had ranged the

Big Horn Basin and the Little Piney Valley for many years.
Several hunters had trailed him to their sorrow. They had
not returned to tell the story of their hunt. He was the
most dangerous grizzly on the range. But it became known
that Wahb disappeared from his range each year during the
heat of the summer, as completely as he did each winter
during his sleep.
One day the owner of the ranch on the Little Piney came
through Yellowstone Park and stopped over night at the
Fountain Hotel. The bears are especially numerous about
this hotel. In the woods, a quarter of a mile aw^ay, is a
smooth open place called the Bears’ Banquet Hall, where
 WILD ANIMALS 111

The Bears’ Banquet Hall

the waste food is put out daily for the bears. It is a common
thing to see a dozen bears feasting there at one time. They
are of all kinds and come from all parts of the vast surround¬
ing country. All seem to realize that in the Park no violence
is allowed, and, although they sometimes quarrel among
themselves, not one of them has ever yet harmed a man.
The ranchman watched the bears eating at their banquet
hall. There were several black bears feasting, but they made
way for a huge silvertip grizzly that came about sundown.
“Thar,” said the man who was acting as guide, “is the
biggest grizzly in the Park; but he is a peaceable sort, or
Lud knows what’d happen.”
“That!” said the ranchman, in astonishment, as the
grizzly came hulking nearer, and loomed up like a load of
hay among the piney pillars of the Banquet Hall. “That!
If that is not Wahb, I never saw a bear in my life! Why,
that is the worst grizzly that ever rolled a log in the Big
Horn Basin.”
“It’s not possible,” said the other, “for he’s here every
summer, July and August, an’ I reckon he don’t live so far
away.”
“Well, that settles it,” said the ranchman; “July and
August is just the time we miss him on the range. Now I
112 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

know where he puts in his summers; but I did not suppose

that the old reprobate would know enough to behave him¬
self away from home.”
The big grizzly became very well known at the hotel in
the summers that followed. Only once did he really behave
ill, and that was the first season he appeared, before he fully
knew the ways of the Park.
He wandered over to the hotel one day, and in at the front
door. In the hall he reared up his eight feet of stature as
the guests fled in terror; then he went in to the clerk’s office.
The man said: “All right, if you need this office more than
I do, you can have it,” and leaping over the counter, locked
himself in the telegraph office to wire the superintendent
of the Park: “Old Grizzly in the office now, seems to want
to run hotel; may we shoot?”
The reply came: “No shooting allowed in Park; use the
hose.” Which they did, and, wholly taken by surprise, the
bear leaped over the counter too, and ambled out the back
way, with a heavy thud-thudding of his feet, and a rattling
of his claws on the floor. He passed through the kitchen
as he went, and, picking up a quarter of beef, took it along.
This was the only time the big grizzly was known to do ill
in the Park. _ ^ 0
— Ernest Thompson Seton

Practice 4 Reporting on What

—

You Have Read

Can you answer these questions after reading the
story of Wahb?
1. When was Wahb away from his range each year?
2. Where did the Park bears eat?
3. What did the ranchman say when he saw Wahb?
4. How large did the grizzly seem to be?
5. What reply did the Park superintendent make when
the clerk asked permission to shoot?
 WILD ANIMALS 113

THE BUSY BEAVER: AN ANIMAL ENGINEER

Among the animals of the forest the beaver seems
to be the cleverest in several ways. In the first place,
he can cut down fairly large trees. Then, using the
branches of these trees, together with rocks and mud,
he can make a dam in a flowing stream — a very un¬
usual piece of building for an animal. On the edge of
the pond made by damming up the stream, he makes
his house. This house, or'‘ lodge, ” as it is usually called,
has one large room and an entrance that is under
water. In the water just outside the lodge the winter’s
food supply of tender branches and twigs is stored.
Here is a story that gives you some idea of what a
wonderful worker the beaver is.
BUILDING THE BEAVERS’ LODGE

Ahmeek, the beaver, swimming slowly with only his eyes

and the tip of his nose above the water, came to a stop where
the shores of the stream were low and flat. He was soon
joined by his mate, and the two clambered out upon the
bank, where they looked about with satisfaction.
It was an ideal spot for a beaver settlement. Poplars,
yellow birches, and willows on the banks offered material
for a dam and assured plenty of winter food; the low banks
114 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

would enable the stream to spread out, making a pond deep

enough to prevent freezing to the bottom in winter; best of
all, it was a lonely place where there was no evidence of man.
The darkness had fallen when the beavers began their
work. Ahmeek selected a poplar to his liking, not far from
the bank of the stream. Grasping the trunk with his hand¬
like paws and turning his head to one side in order to bring
his great cutting teeth into play, he bit out a huge chunk,
following it with another and another until the tree swayed
and crashed to the ground. Then both beavers set to
work to strip it of branches and lay the foundation for
the dam.
The dam, when finished, was a work worthy of a trained
engineer. The twigs and trunks of trees Ahmeek and his
mate laid lengthwise with the current. On the upper face,
where the force of the water would but drive it the more
tightly, the moss was plastered and bound together with a
cement of mud and stones, which in the freezing days of
winter would become as hard as a rock. Here again the
beavers showed their wisdom by leaving several low places
over which the water could trickle, thus relieving the pressure
that otherwise would have broken the dam. Now the stream
overflowed its low banks, making a deep pond, soon to be¬
come the home of pickerel and trout and of a great colony
of water-lilies, delicacy for the beaver larder.
The next work was the construction of the lodge, a hollow
mound of mud, sticks, and stones, twelve feet in width and
four in height, within which was a dry room, its floor safely
above the high-water mark. The entrance was cleverly
hidden beneath the roots of a great tree which had fallen
across the stream.
Ahmeek and his mate were soon joined by other beavers
who built their dwellings, and by spring the beaver city was
swarming with sleek brown youngsters.
— From Followers of the Trail, by Zoe Meyer
 WILD ANIMALS 115

Practice 5 — Making an Oral Report

The animals of the forest have different kinds of
homes. Some animals use just the shelter of trees.
The beaver has one of the finest homes. Make a list
of the forest animals that you know. Divide them
among the members of the class and have each pupil
or committee report on the home which that animal
uses or makes for himself in the forest.

THE HAZARDS OF THE FOREST

The forest is not so dangerous for a man unarmed
as we are sometimes led to think. Forest animals will
not hunt a man. They will attack him only when they
think he is trying to harm them or when they are
starving. It is not man who needs to fear the dark forest,
but rather the animals that are sought for food by
other animals. The following story shows how the
deer must always be watchful for danger.
A LUCKY ESCAPE

One night, as the two deer were lying at the foot of the
hill, they heard a strange noise in the valley. Both raised
their heads and listened. Again the sound came, this time
a long, low howl. The mother well knew what this meant;
it was the cry of a pack of wolves who sometimes came there
to hunt. She sprang quickly to her feet, and, closely followed
by the young one, she dashed through the bushes. The
howling of the wolves became louder. The pack were on
the trail, coming closer and closer.
Faster and faster the deer ran, leaping over rocks and
bushes, bounding over ditches and fallen logs; but nearer
and nearer came the hungry pack of wolves.
The young one began to grow tired. He had not the
strength of his mother and could not endure the long run.
116 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

She saw that he was going more slowly, and that the leader
of the pack was almost up to him. Unless she could save
him, she knew that in a moment the cruel teeth of the
leader would be fastened into his sides.
Suddenly she turned and ran straight toward the river.
The young one followed, and close behind came the greedy
pack.
A few more leaps and the mother had reached the sandy
shore; then she gave a great bound that took her far out into
the water. A moment more, and the young one was with
her, swimming toward the other side; while behind, on the
river’s bank, a pack of hungry wolves howled at them and
snarled at each other.
— From In the Animal World, by Emma Serl

Practice 6 — Telling an Animal Story

Have you heard someone tell a thrilling story about
wild animals? Have you read a good story about life
in the forest? Choose one of the stories you have
heard or read, and tell it to your classmates. To
have them agree that it is a good story, you must know
it thoroughly, decide beforehand just how you will tell
it, and make it really interesting.

CONSERVING WILD ANIMAL LIFE

As the number of people living in our country has
increased from year to year and the forests have been
cut down to make way for the farm lands, the wild
animals have become fewer. In order to protect the
animals and prevent them from disappearing com¬
pletely, the national government and many of our
states have set aside large tracts of forest land and have
passed laws that prevent the shooting of wild animals
except during a short period each year.
 WILD ANIMALS 117

You can learn about the work that your government

is doing by writing a letter asking for information.
Here is a letter like one you may write.

Hawthorne School
St. Cloud, Minnesota
May 1, 1935
Conservation Commission
State of Minnesota
St. Paul, Minnesota
Gentlemen:
Our class are interested in learning of the work
that our state government is doing to conserve the
wild animal life of the state. We should appreciate
any information on the subject that you may send
to us.
Yours truly,
Dorothy Lang
For the Fifth Grade

Practice 7 — Writing a Letter *

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing]
Write a class letter to the conservation department
of your state government for information on their work,
or a letter to one of the departments named here, asking
for one of the publications listed.

1. Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C.

a. Fauna of the National Parks (Fauna Series No. 1,
published by National Park Service)
118 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

b. Improving the Farm Environment for Wild Life

(Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1719)
2. Emergency Conservation Committee, 3548 Tyron
Avenue, New York City
a. A Crisis in Conservation
b. The Antelope’s SOS
c. The Tragic Truth about the Elk
3. Department of Forests and Waters, Harrisburg, Pa.
a. The Deer Problem in the Forests of Pennsylvania
4. School of Forestry and Conservation, Ann Arbor, Mich,
a. Foods of Some Predatory Fur-Bearing Animals in
Michigan (Bulletin No. 1)

FOREST TRAILS
Whether we live in the country or city, we all enjoy
a hike through the woods. The more we know about
the forest and the animals that
make their home in it, the
greater fun we have on our
hike. Even though we may
not see many of these animals,
if we are able to read the signs
they have made, if we know the
meaning of their tracks, if we
recognize their burrows, and
notice where they have rested,
where they have eaten — then
the forest will mean more to us
than just so many trees grow¬
ing close together. It will make
us feel that we are right in the
home of our fellow creatures. The Indians who roamed
the forests years ago must have had that feeling toward
the wild animals about them.
 WILD ANIMALS 119

hiawatha’s brothers

Of all the beasts he learned the language,

Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid,
Talked with them whene’er he met them,
Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”

Practice 8 — Making a Booklet

In this unit you have learned much about the wild
life of the forest. A record of what you have learned
will be of interest and value to you. The stories you
have written about animals, the description of an animal
home, pictures, and information you have obtained
about conserving animal life you can bind together in
a booklet. This booklet you may call “Stories of the
Forest” or “Wild Animal Tales.”
 UNIT X

OUR SCHOOL

THE FIRST DAY IN SCHOOL

When the school bell rings for the opening day of
school in September, there is considerable excitement
for certain children. These are the girls and boys who
are going to enter school for the first time. Do you
remember your first day in school, how large the school
seemed to you, and how many strange faces there
were?
Older persons like to tell about the days that have
gone by. Grandfather usually starts by saying, “Once,
when I was a boy,” and then he tells of some exciting
experience he had years ago. Even Father likes to tell
of the things that happened to him when he was a lad.
It has now been about five years since the day
when you started to school. It seems a long time ago,
but you can still remember how you felt that day and
how you gradually began to feel differently about
leaving home and going to school each day.
120
 OUR SCHOOL 121

Practice 1 — Telling an Experience

Recall how you felt when someone at home said:
“Well, in a few days you’ll be starting to school.”
How did you feel about it when that first morning
came? Who helped you when you first came into the
school building? Were you afraid or was it easy for
you? What school was it? These are some of the
questions you may answer when you tell the story of
your first day in school.

CHANGING TO A NEW SCHOOL

Changing from one school to another is seldom an
easy thing to do. There are so many new children
to meet, and the ways of each school are so different
that you are likely to feel strange and uncomfortable
for a time. But it is usually much easier to be a new
pupil in a school now than it was years ago. With a
kindly teacher and schoolmates who are ready to help
and make you feel at home, it doesn’t take long to get
settled in the new school.
In the schools years ago this was not always true.
The following story, taken from The Hoosier School Boy,
by Edward Eggleston, shows how different was the
old school and how hard it was for the new pupil.

THE NEW PUPIL

The village schoolhouse was a long one built of red brick.

It had taken the place of the old log building in which one
generation of Greenbank children had learned reading, writ¬
ing, and Webster’s spelling book. There were long writing
tables down the sides of the room, with backless benches, so
arranged that when the pupil was writing, his face was turned
toward the wall — there was a door at each end, and a box
122 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

stove si|pod in the middle of the room, surrounded by four

backless benches. These benches were for the little fellows
who did not write, and for others when the cold should drive
them nearer the stove.
When the school had settled a little, the master struck a
sharp blow on his desk for silence, and looked fiercely around
the room, eager to find a wrong-doer on whom to vent his
ill-humor. Mr. Ball was one of those old-fashioned teachers
who gave the impression that he would rather beat a boy
than not, and would even like to eat one, if he could find a
good excuse. His eye lit upon the new scholar.
“Come here,” he said, severely, and then he took his
seat.
The new boy walked timidly up to a place in front of the
master’s desk. He was not handsome, his face was thin, his
eyebrows were prominent, his mouth was rather large and
good-humored, and there was that shy twinkle about the
corners of his eyes which always marks a fun-loving spirit.
But his was a serious, fine-grained face, with marks of suffer¬
ing in it, and he had the air of having been once a strong
fellow; of late, evidently, shaken to pieces by the ague.
“Where do you live?” demanded Mr. Ball.
“On Ferry Street.”
“What do they call you?” This was said with a con¬
temptuous, rasping inflection that irritated the new scholar.
His eyes twinkled, partly with annoyance and partly with
mischief.
“They call me Jack, for the most part,” — then catching
the titter that came from the girls’ side of the room, and
frightened by the rising hurricane on the master’s face, he
added quickly: “My name is John Dudley, sir.”
“Don’t you try to show your smartness on me, young
man. You are a newcomer, and I let you off this time.
Answer me that way again, and you will remember it as
long as you live.” And the master glared at him like a
savage bull about to toss somebody over a fence.
 OUR SCHOOL 123

The new boy turned pale, and dropped his head.

“How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Have you ever been to school?”
“Three months.”
“Three months. Do you know how to read?”
“Yes, sir,” with a smile.
“Can you cipher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In multiplication?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Long division?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve been half through fractions.”
“You said you’d been to school but three months!”
“My father taught me.”
There was just a touch of pride in his voice as he said
this — a sense of something superior about his father. This
bit of pride angered the master, who liked to be thought to
have a monopoly of all the knowledge in the town.
“Where have you been living?”
“In the Indian Reserve, of late; I was born in Cincinnati.”
“I didn’t ask you where you were born. When I ask you
a question, answer that and no more.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a touch of something in the tone
of this reply that amused the school, and that made the
master look up quickly and suspiciously at Jack Dudley,
but the expression on Jack’s face was as innocent as that of
a cat who has just lapped the cream off the milk.

Practice 2 — Discussing the Hoosier School

In what ways was the schoolroom described in The
Hoosier School Boy different from yours? Do you think
the schoolmaster was a good one? How would you
like to have such a person as your teacher?
124 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 3 — Writing a Paragraph

[Handbook, , , ,
Section VII Sentences and Section VIII Paragraphs]
Those of you who have had to change from one
school to another can write about your experience in
coming into the new school. Tell about the things that
were difficult and how you were helped. Those of you
who have never had to change schools can write a
paragraph telling how the pupils in a school can help
a new pupil.

EARLY SCHOOLS
Long, long ago there were no schools to which boys
and girls could go. Unless their parents were rich
and could hire a tutor, or private teacher, for them,
children grew up without learning to read or write,
to say nothing of all the other things pupils learn in
school today.
In America the first schools for children were called
“dame schools.” They were called this because the
fathers of several families got together and employed
a woman (dame) to take care of and teach their
children. The school was often held in this woman’s
home, and the pupils were usually all very young.
When the children became as old as you are, if their
fathers were well-to-do, they had private tutors or
were sent away to a boarding school. The children
from the other families received no more schooling.

Learning about Earlier Schools

When you want to get information from a person,
you go to see him and ask him questions. It is best to
ask for an appointment before the time of your inter-
 OUR SCHOOL 125

view. It is a good plan, in ||||HKI—

order to save the time of the 1
|®| f naraill
III
person you are interviewing,
to have your questions written \ j WV
Ml
on a small piece of note paper. 1
During the interview, after |^H|lf|[ mrTmi
you have repeated briefly the
reasons for your coming, ask
your questions. You will find
it advisable to make a few ^//rja§
notes on your paper as each l(ff
question is answered. After rrf
the interview write out your
report as soon as possible, while the information is still
fresh in your memory.

Practice 4— Telephoning
[Handbook, Section IV, Good Usage~\

There are sure to be persons in your school or in your

community who will be glad to tell you what they know
about the schools of long ago. If you call one of them
by telephone to arrange for an interview, it is im¬
portant that you be able to explain in a courteous and
pleasing way the reasons for your wanting to see him.
Rehearse in class what you would say over the tele¬
phone. What would your first words be? How would
you explain why you wanted to see Mr. Superintendent
or Mrs. Old-Resident or Mr. Schoolboy-of-Fifty-Years-
Ago? Do not make this telephone conversation too
long. Remember this is to be a request for an interview
and not the interview itself.
After your practice select one or two pupils to tele¬
phone for the interviews you want.
126 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 5 — Interviewing
When you have arranged appointments for your
interviews, decide on the questions you believe should
be asked. Members of the class can help the pupils
who are to make the actual interviews by suggesting
the points that they think should be covered, such as:
1. What was your first reading book like?
2. Did you have “spell-downs”?
3. Did you recite pieces at Friday afternoon exercises?
4. What did your schoolhouse, your schoolroom, and
your desks look like?
5. Did you study geography and history?

When the interviewer returns, he can read to the

class the notes he made on the answers to his questions.
The class can then help in writing the report of the
information he has gained.

Practice 6 — Reporting on Early Schools

You want, however, to know more about early schools
in our country than you can learn from interviewing
three or four persons. From the information you get
from encyclopedias and other books, write a paragraph
report on one of the following topics:

Early New England Schools (Dame Schools, Charity

Schools)
An Early Plantation School in the South
Where George Washington Went to School
Mission Schools in the West
A Pioneer School

You can find some information on early schools in

the Work-Play Reader, Book IV, by Gates and Huber,
 OUR SCHOOL 127

and in the Learn to Study Readers, Books III and IV,

by Horn and McBroom. Adventuring in Young Amer¬
ica, by McGuire and Phillips, has some material on
pioneer schools. Find the pages to read by studying
the Table of Contents in each book.

YOUR SCHOOL BUILDING

The school buildings today are very different in their
appearance from the Hoosier school and other pioneer
schools you read about. There are also many different
sizes and kinds of schools today. Some are small one-
room schools in country districts. Others in cities
are large brick buildings with many rooms. Whether
a school building is large or small does not determine
whether it is a good school. The important things are
the boys and girls who are pupils in it, the teachers,
the materials they work with, and the healthfulness
of the building.

Practice 7 — Reporting on Observation

Make a tour of your building, if it is a large one, and
talk with the janitor about how it is kept warm and
clean and filled with pure air. If it is a small building,
notice the way in which it is heated and whether the
children are well provided with books, maps, a globe,
and other materials to use. Report on your observa¬
tion. If you have an opportunity to visit another
school, do so. Compare your school with it or with
one you attended before you became a pupil in your
present school.
SCHOOL CITIZENSHIP
If the people of a community do everything they can
to make their town a clean, safe, and healthful place in
128 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

which to live, we say they are good citizens. So pupils

who help to make their school a better school by keep¬
ing it clean and attractive and safe for all the children
are good school citizens.
One fifth-grade class, after discussing what it means
to be a good school citizen, decided to divide into two
committees; one they called the Clean-Up Committee,
the other the Safety Committee. Once each month
these committees made a report. Here are some of
the reports made by committee members.

jean’s report

I should like to suggest that paper on the floor is a very

hard thing to contend with. Many children are not care¬
ful where they throw old papers. Some forget to hold their
paper over the wastebaskets when they punch holes in it.
The janitors tell us how hard it
is to sweep up these tiny pieces
of paper. The committee be¬
lieves that if a special drive were
made, the paper problem would
soon disappear.

peter’s report

Mr. President, our committee

would like me to bring out a few
facts about safety. All of us know
that after wTe have done some¬
thing dangerous to our own safety
or that of somebody else, we feel inside of us that something
has been wrong. We realize that we haven’t used our heads.
We realize that we have acted quickly without thinking.
Since our brains often are too slow to save us, we simply
will have to learn our rules of safety now, so that they will
come to our rescue even before we have a chance to get into
 OUR SCHOOL 129

a dangerous spot. Because we often are careless, the com¬

mittee wishes to suggest the following safety rules:

1. Be careful when crossing streets.

2. Walk in your room, in the halls, and on the stairs.
3. Walk quickly but carefully during a fire drill.
4. Reduce accidents by obeying your parents, your
teachers, and your Patrol Boys.
These are our four most important rules for safety. Be
sure you learn them.

Practice 8 — Making a Committee Report

Divide your class into committees who will try to
make your school a better place in which to work and
play. You may need other committees than the
Clean-Up and Safety committees. Arrange to have
them make a report each month. If they do their
work well, you should have a better school because
of it.

CHANGES IN BOOKS
When you see an automobile that is ten years old,
you notice how different it is from the model of this
year. Automobiles change in appearance even from
year to year. Schoolbooks change, too, but not so
rapidly as automobiles. In fact, it is not until you see
a schoolbook that was used in a school fifty years ago
that you realize how much books have changed. If
you see a still older book, the changes are very sur¬
prising. Notice the page taken from a hornbook, which
was a kind of reader that children used some two
centuries ago, and the page from the New England
Primer first printed in 1688. How do these compare
130 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

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A Hoknbook
This was a sort of primer in which the printed sheet of paper was
fastened to a thin board with a handle and then protected by a sheet
of transparent horn.
 OUR SCHOOL 131

with the primer or first reader that is used in your

school?
In Jtiam'i Fall
We Sinned all.

Thy Life to Mend

This Booh Attend.

The Cal doth play

And after flay.

A Dog will bite

A Thief at night.

An Eagles flight
Is out of fight.

The Idle Tool

Is whipt at School.

A Page from the “New England Primer”

Notice the size and quality of the illustrations, the poorly made
type, and the curious material that was used to teach little children
to read.

Practice 9 — Arranging an Exhibit *

Make a collection of schoolbooks that were used
long ago. It may be that your grandmother has one
of the books she read as a schoolgirl. Possibly a
neighbor would be willing to lend you an old school¬
book. How interesting it will be to see who brings the
book with the earliest copyright date. Make an exhibit
of these books on a table in your schoolroom.
132 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 10 — Giving a Talk

Give a talk about old schoolbooks and new. If you
have a variety of books in your exhibit, one committee
can take readers, another spelling books, and so on.
Then they can illustrate their talks by pointing out
the differences between the old and the new, holding
up the books for the class to see. You may invite your
mothers to hear unusually interesting talks.

Practice 11 — Writing an Invitation

Write a letter inviting your mothers to visit school
and see your exhibit of schoolbooks. Make your invi¬
tation so interesting that they will want to come. Here
is shown a letter written by one fifth-grade class.

Orrington School
Eoanston, Illinois
January 18, 1936
Dear Mothers,
We have been studying about schools and
books during the past two weeks. We have
made an interesting collection oj the school¬
books used many years ago. You will be sur¬
prised to see how different they are from those
we use. Next Friday afternoon our committee
on Changes in School Readers will give a num¬
ber oj talks. You are invited to come to hear
them and see our exhibit oj old schoolbooks.
Sincerely yours,
Fijth Grade
 OUR SCHOOL 133

NEW SCHOOL SUBJECTS

Look at the illustration of the page from the horn¬
book. At one time that was the only book used by
pupils in learning to read. How would you like to have
to read pages like that over and over again, and have
nothing else to read that really interested you? And
suppose that you turned from that book to copying
this line fifty times:

cyj^

/yp'~‘

\y

And after that, you did “sums” in arithmetic for an

hour or so.
The three R’s — Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic
— were all that the pupils in the early schools studied.
Is it any wonder that most of them disliked their school
and left it to go to work as soon as possible?
Gradually, our schools, like our books, have changed.
No longer do pupils spend hours on work that is of no
interest to them and of little value. Not only have
schools changed the ways in which children learn to read
and write and do arithmetic problems, but they have
also added new subjects that interest pupils and are use¬
ful to them. Today school is a much better place in
which to work and to learn than it was years ago in the
days of our parents and grandparents.
134 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 12 — Conversing about School Work *

List all the subjects that are taught in your school.
Which of them were in the first American schools?
Can you find out which of them have come into the
work of the school most recently? How is life today
different from life in colonial times? Do these differ¬
ences explain why the newer subjects have been added?
 UNIT XI

THE GROWTH OF CITIES

ENTERING A BIG CITY

Jimmy pressed his face against the window of the
railroad car to get a better look at the view ahead. He
was getting a bit nervous, for this was his first long
trip, and his father had just told him that in ten minutes
the train would arrive in the big city. The landscape
that had been fields and farm homes was changing now
to groups of houses closer and closer together. Small
stations appeared oftener, with lumber yards and coal
sheds clustered around them. Switch engines and
freight cars stood on sidings near sprawling factory
buildings. The air became darker with smoke, and
street lights were burning although it was not yet sun¬
down. On all sides were hurrying autos and trucks.
Then appeared tenement houses, rows upon rows,
with people sitting on back porches three floors above
the ground. The train roared as it passed over wider
streets streaming with autos. Now the buildings began
to tower high, shutting out the little light that re-
135
136 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

mained. Lights in the car went on. The trainman

called the station, and “Don't leave any articles in the
car!" Jimmy and his father gathered their coats and
baggage, and the train came to a slow stop in the great
train shed.

Practice 1 — Discussing Cities

Have you had the experience of going by train or
automobile into a large city? Have you wondered, as
Jimmy did, how the city came to be, why so many
people live in the same place, how many years it took
to build this city? Talk over your experiences, and
your impressions of cities that you know.

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE CITY

When the aviator flies high above the city, how
different it looks to him from the way it did to Jimmy
coming into it by train. As the aviator looks down
below him, he sees all parts of the city at a glance. The
tall buildings of its business section look like small
structures built with children’s blocks. A haze of
smoke hangs over the factory chimneys. The streets
are like threads. The river or the harbor is seen more
plainly. The residences are just the roofs of many
houses, and the parks are mostly the dark green tops
of trees. When one is high up in the sky above them,
it is hard to believe that thousands of persons are living
in this city he sees below him.

Practice 2 — Labeling Pictures *

From geography texts and magazines, and the pic¬
ture sections of Sunday newspapers, collect views of
cities taken from the air. Make an exhibit of them,
 THE GROWTH OF CITIES 137

placing the books on a table and the pictures on a

bulletin board. For each picture write a sentence that
tells the name of the city and, if possible, when the
view was taken.

Practice 3 — Writing a Description

[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs]

If you have ever been up in a tall building in a city,

write about what you saw of the city from there. If
you have not had that experience, take one of the pic¬
tures in your bird’s-eye view collection and describe
the city in it.
From a city window, ’way up high,
I like to watch the cars go by.
They look like burnished beetles black,
That leave a little muddy track
Behind them as they slowly crawl.
Sometimes they do not move at all,
But huddle close with hum and drone
As though they feared to be alone.
They grope their way through fog and night
With the golden feelers of their light.
— Rowena Bastin Bennett

New Words
As you start out on your study of cities, get a “city
vocabulary” to begin with. You are going to read in
books and magazines and to write for information about
cities and how they came to be as they are. Are you
going to recognize certain words in the books? Are you
going to ask intelligent questions? Here is a list of
words that will help to “citify” your vocabulary.
artificial census export
by-products delta factories
138 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

foreign levees settlements

harbors location shipping
immigration manufacturing skyscrapers
import metropolis suburb
industries navigable tenements
interior occupation textiles
lake port pioneer transportation
landlocked raw materials utilities

Practice 4 — Using Your Dictionary

[Handbook, Section II, Using Book Tools~\

Look up all the words in the list that you are not
sure about. Study their meanings until you can use
them all one hundred percent correctly, because this
will be a big help to you in your work.
WHY DO GREAT CITIES GROW SO LARGE?
There is a very good reason why every great city is
located where it is. The reason may be a fine harbor
on the seacoast. Perhaps a city grew in a certain loca¬
tion because river boats could bring supplies there
for the people living on the broad plains. A city may
grow up near coal and iron fields, where these raw
materials can easily be brought together for use in
factories. Often cities grow where electric power can
be made cheaply. The natural center of a great farming
country may become a city with railroads coming there
to bring farm machinery and equipment and to take
away the food supplies. These and other good reasons
explain why our large cities are located where they are.

Practice 5 — Making an Oral Report

Divide your class into groups of two pupils each.
Each pair of pupils may select one of the twenty largest
 THE GROWTH OF CITIES 139

cities in the United States listed in Practice 6. Search

for the reasons why the city you selected is located
where it is, and report them to the class. You can
divide the job of reporting between the two members
working on each city. Remember that there is likely
to be more than one reason why the city has come to
be one of the twenty largest in our country.
In making your report, do you meet the following
standards for a good report?

Standards for a Good Oral Report

1. A good oral report starts with a sentence that is

interesting and informs your audience about the
general topic you are about to report on.
2. Your voice should be loud enough to be heard by
all your listeners, and at the same time not be
harsh or unpleasant.
3. Your words should be pronounced distinctly, so
that they will be easily understood.
4. Your report should progress from one point to the
next without useless repetition or long pauses.
5. You should close your report while your listeners
are still interested.

Cities in the Old and in the New World

The cities of the Old World have been great centers
of population for centuries. Some are even thousands
of years old. But many of the cities of our country
were only small villages one hundred years ago. And
two hundred years ago even our two oldest large cities
— Boston and New Orleans — were not much larger
140 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

than villages. When you see the skyscrapers, the fac¬

tories, the streets of houses and apartments, and the
many other features of a great city, you wonder how
it is possible that so much has taken place in so short
a time.
Practice 6 — Discussing Causes
of Rapid Growth
From the list of cities that follows, showing the
population for 1930 and 1880, select the ten that have
grown the most rapidly during the last fifty years.
What in your opinion made them grow so rapidly?
Why did the others grow more slowly?
City 1880 1930
New York 1,206,299 6,930,446
Chicago 503,185 3,376,438
Philadelphia 847,170 1,950,961
Detroit 116,340 1,568,662
Los Angeles 11,183 1,238,048
Cleveland 160,146 900,429
St. Louis 350,518 821,960
Baltimore 332,313 804,874
Boston 362,839 781,188
Pittsburgh 156,389 669,817
San Francisco 233,959 634,394
Milwaukee 115,587 578,249
Buffalo 155,134 573,076
Washington 177,624 486,869
Minneapolis 46,887 464,356
New Orleans 216,090 458,762
Cincinnati 255,139 451,160
Newark 136,508 442,337
Kansas City 55,785 399,746
Seattle 3,533 365,583
 THE GROWTH OF CITIES 141

Getting Information
Here is one way to find out more about the cities
you want to study.

Powell School
Birmingham, Alabama
November 5, 1935
The Secretary
Association of Commerce
Los Angeles, California
Dear Sir:
We are studying the cities oj the United
States, how they have developed and the advan¬
tages they offer. If your Association publishes
any information in regard to the city of Los
Angeles that would help our class to know about
its history and its growth, we should be very
grateful if you would send it.
Very truly yours,
Elmer Morgan
For the Fifth Grade

Practice 7 — Writing a Letter

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing']

Divide your class into committees and have each

committee select one of the cities that have grown
most in the last fifty years. The duty of the committee
will be to get as much information as they can about
the city they choose. Each committee will write a
letter similar to the one above, asking for information.
142 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

CITIES PROTECT THEIR PEOPLE

In order to prosper, a city must take care of its
citizens. Every great city, as it grew, had to provide
protection for its people from thieves and robbers by
organizing a police department, and from fire by a fire

department. One of the first and most important

things a city does for its citizens is to provide clean
living conditions through a "sanitary district,” or
sewage system. This is also a health measure, as it
does much to prevent sickness and the spread of conta¬
gion. The safety and health of many people depend
upon the protection that the city gives them.

Practice 8 — Arranging a Visit

The departments of a city that protect the people
will be very glad to help you know about their work.
Write or telephone to one of these departments in
your city, or in a city near your school, telling of your
interest and requesting permission to interview the
department superintendent or to visit the department
offices.
 THE GROWTH OF CITIES 143

Practice 9 — Preparing for an Interview

When you visit a city department, you will save time
and find out the things you want to know if you prepare
a list of questions for your interview. Here are ques¬
tions that you might ask the health department of a
city.
1. How many persons are employed in the department?
2. What are their duties?
3. How do you keep contagious diseases from spreading?
4. What do you do to make sure that the water, milk,
and food are pure?
5. How do you take care of people who cannot afford to
go to the hospital when they should?

If the department you plan to visit is one of the

others that give protection to the people — the police,
or fire, or sanitary department — make out a list of
questions that you will ask.

Practice 10 — Writing a Report

When you return from your visit to the city depart¬
ment, write a report on the work that you saw or
learned about, and the ways in which it protects the
people of the city. Make a booklet, giving a page in it
to each of the branches of work in the department.

Practice 11 — Writing a Courtesy Letter

[Handbook, ,
Section III Letter-Writing]
It is a matter of everyday courtesy to thank a person
who has been kind and thoughtful toward you. Write
a letter to the person who conducted your class through
the city department, or whom you interviewed, thank-
144 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

ing him for his kindness. Possibly you can send him
one of the best booklets to show him how much you
learned about his department.

CITIES SERVE THEIR PEOPLE

When many people live in one place and, as the city
grows, live closer and closer together, it becomes im¬
possible for them to do things for themselves as people
do in the country. It would
be difficult to have a well in
each city back yard. It would
be impossible in the city for
each family to go out and chop
wood for cooking and heating.
So the city must care for these
needs. It therefore has a water
department to furnish its
people with pure water for
drinking and all household
purposes. The city arranges
either to furnish, or to have a
private company furnish, gas,
electricity, and transportation. The city serves the
citizens, young and old alike, by providing day schools,
evening schools, places for meetings and entertainments,
and recreation centers. A carefully planned city also
provides many parks and playgrounds to promote the
health and pleasure of its citizens.

Practice 12 — Making a Survey *

How many services does your city or the city nearest
your school provide for its people? Make a list of them.
 THE GROWTH OF CITIES 145
The New Year edition of the city newspaper may help
you. Your teacher can be your secretary and from
your lists write on the blackboard a class list of these
city services.

Practice 13 — Making a Committee Report

Divide your class into as many committees as there
are different services provided by your city. Each
committee will select one of the services on the class
list. They will then investigate this service, first, by
reading the annual reports of the departments and
newspaper accounts of their work; second, by talking
with parents and older people who know about it.
When the committee has made the investigation, they
will make a report to the class.

Practice 14 — Writing Paragraphs

[Handbook, Section VIII, Paragraphs']

Look through the material that you have received

from the associations of commerce of the various large
cities and see what you can learn of the services pro¬
vided by their city governments. Do the booklets tell
how many parks and playgrounds and schools Los
Angeles has? Do they tell anything about the size
and work of the water or transportation departments?
Look in other places, too, as in geographies, the World
Book Encyclopedia, the Junior Britannica, or Compton’s
Pictured Encyclopedia. Then write short paragraphs on
what you learned of the services given by each large city.

HELPING YOUR CITY

Knowing as much as you can about your city is a very
good way to be a good citizen, for the person who knows
146 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

what is being done is sure to want to help make things

even better. Since so many of our cities are very young,
perhaps you will be surprised to learn that many cen¬
turies ago the young men of Athens, that ancient and
beautiful city of Greece, swore this inspiring oath when
they came to manhood:
We will never bring disgrace to this our city, by any
act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for the
ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with
many. We will respect and obey the city’s laws and do
our best to make those above us, who may forget or
disregard them, do likewise. We will try always to
make people realize their duty toward the city. Thus
in all ways we will pass on this city — not only not less,
but — greater, better, and more beautiful than it was
given to us.

Practice 15 — Writing Your Own Citizen's Oath

After talking about the Athenian oath, write an
oath that you think would be appropriate for your¬
selves. You may each write one and put your ideas to¬
gether later, or write it as a class. What are the ideals
and sacred things of your city? What acts would be
dishonest or cowardly toward your city? How can you
make older persons feel greater loyalty and responsi¬
bility toward the city that they are to pass on to you?
How can you make the city greater and more beau¬
tiful?
 UNIT XII

PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES

Tom: Oh me! Oh my! What a job! Whitewashing a

fence when I wanted to go fishing! (Whistles a little tune.)
IPs hard work too. Makes my back tired. (Sits down on a
box, head in his hands.) Well, well, it just doesn’t seem right
for one fellow to have to work so hard. (As Tom looks around,
he sees Ben coming. He jumps up with his brush and starts
to whitewash.)
Ben: (As he enters, makes believe he is a steamboat.)
Choo — Ding-dong-dong! Ding-dong! (Slows up.) Stop
her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-
ling! Come ahead on the starboard! Stop her! Out with
the headline! Lively now! Done with the engines, sir!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh! Sh! (Steam escaping)
Tom: (Pays no attention. Goes on whitewashing.)
Ben: Hi-yi! I see youWe up a stump.
(No answer)
Ben: Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?
Tom: (Turns suddenly.) Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t
noticing.
Ben: Say, I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you
147
148 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

wish you could? But of course you’d rather work, wouldn’t

you? Course you would!
Tom: (Turns slowly.) What do you call work?
Ben: Why, ain’t that work?
Tom: (.Returns to whitewashing.) Well, maybe it is, and
maybe it ain’t. All I know is, it suits Tom Sawyer.
Ben: Oh, come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you
like it.
Tom: Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it.
Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?
(Works on carefully.)
Ben: Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.

And so Tom Sawyer gets his fence whitewashed.

Tom and Ben are puppets, but they seem very much
alive in this puppet show.
But what is a puppet show? Puppets are doll-like
figures that are made to act on a little stage. They
are operated either from below or from above by a
person standing behind the stage. Marionettes are the
kind of puppets that are operated from above by
strings or wires.
When we speak of puppets, however, we almost
always mean the little cloth figures that are slipped over
one’s hand. By placing your forefinger up into the
head you can turn it in any direction — from side to
side, or up and down — while with your thumb and
second finger you move the arms as you wish. In this
way, as you stand hidden back of the little stage, you
can make your puppet seem almost alive. With every
word, which you speak for him, you can move his head
and arms, so that to the children who are watching
and listening in front, the puppet seems to be doing
the speaking. (See the pictures farther on.)
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 149
You can operate two puppets at one time — one on
each hand. In this way, by changing your voice to
suit each of the two characters represented by the
puppets, you can carry on a lively conversation between
them. This can be very entertaining to the audience,
and it is certainly great fun for the boy or girl who has
made the puppets and who gives them their words and
actions from behind the scenes.
Puppets have many uses. Sometimes they are used
to illustrate such short and terrible tales as “Punch
and Judy.” Just as often they are used to teach some
little fable or lesson. Perhaps you will think of new
and different uses for them.

Practice 1 — Discussing What to Do with Puppets

Talk over all the things you could and would like to
do with puppets. Would you like to use several in
health talks as one school did, to emphasize brushing
of teeth or promoting a clean-hands campaign? Per¬
haps your room has been discussing safety or school
citizenship rules. If you use a puppet or two with a
talk of this kind, it will be remembered longer. Puppets
can illustrate the quaint dress and manners of a foreign
people you are studying in geography, and someone is
sure to want to do a little scene from a history lesson.
When all your suggestions have been written on the
board, talk them over and decide on a number of the
best ones to carry out. Then read the following direc¬
tions carefully:

HOW TO MAKE PUPPETS

The first step in making a puppet is to design it on
paper. You do this by drawing with a pencil around
150 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

the thumb and first two fingers of your hand spread

out as is shown. Tuck the last two fingers back into
the palm, so that they will not show. Draw all the
way down to your wrist, because your hand will repre¬
sent the puppet’s body and the legs will be sewed on
about where your wrist begins. Since the first finger
becomes the puppet’s head and the other two his arms,
the head will of course be made a little larger and
filled in with cotton or other stuffing. Sometimes a
head and hands are carved of
wood and slipped on the fingers
separately. You had better
make several of these draw¬
ings, keeping the best one for
a pattern and sketching on one
of the others the clothes you
plan to dress your puppet in.
Then from your pattern cut
out the puppet from an old
stocking or other cloth. Sew
it up and turn it inside out.
Stuff the head a little, but
be sure it moves easily when your finger is in it. Paint
the features or sew them on. Legs can be stuffed
and stitched to the front of the body if you need them.
Dress the puppet simply. Now you will want to prac¬
tice making it move about and gesture.

THE PUPPET THEATER

The puppet theater is simple to make, but you will
have to figure out which is the best way to have one in
your room. If you should happen to have an open
window-like space between two rooms, or a Dutch door
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 151
(half-door), you have an ideal theater right there, be¬
cause you can so easily conceal yourself behind the
door or window while you
march the puppets around
upon the ledge.
In this picture you see John
and Sally, two fifth-grade pu¬
pils, giving a puppet show.
Their puppet theater is a wood¬
en frame covered with cloth.
The stage is high, so that John
and Sally can stand without
being seen while they speak
for the puppets and make
them “act.” Sally is looking
at the “lines” her puppet is
speaking.
Here are a few books that will be helpful to you
in making your puppets and your theater.
Ackley, Edith Flack. — Marionettes
Buffano, Remo. — Be a Puppet Showman
Mclsaac, F. J. — Tony Sarg Marionette Book
Walters, Maude Owens. — Puppet Shows for Home and School

Practice 2 — Making Puppets and a Theater

Now the time has come, after all the plans are made,
really to make the dolls themselves and the stage for
them. Divide your class into committees to do this
work. You will need only one committee to arrange
for the stage, but you will need several committees to
make puppets. Choose a chairman for each committee
to guide the work of the members and to see that the
work is done on time.
152 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Here is a sketch written by a fifth-grade boy after he

had heard his teacher tell how the clean-faced boy
looked at the dirty-faced boy and decided to wash his
own face, while the dirty-faced boy, looking at the
clean-faced boy, decided he didn’t need to wash his
face.
PUPPET SKETCHES AND PLAYS

CLEAN-FACE AND DIRTY-FACE

There are two puppets, Clean-Face and Dirty-Face, who

have just come in from recess. They come on the stage, and
both start to sit down at their desks. Clean-Face looks over
at Dirty-Face and is horrified (jerk him suddenly, throwing
up his hands, to show horror).
Clean-Face: My goodness, I didn’t know faces could
get so dirty during recess. I must hurry and wash mine
before the class comes to order. (He hurries off the stage.)
(Dirty-Face looks at his hands, wiping them on his trousers.)
Dirty-Face: Humph, dirty hands. Maybe I should
wash them before we start our language lesson. (Re-enter
Clean-Face.) Here comes Clean-Face; he looks O.K. I
guess I don’t need to wash. (He settles back in his seat.)
Clean-Face: (Coming slowly to his seat and muttering.)
Well, look at him, still dirty. He needs a face-wash if any¬
body does, but I’ll bet he doesn’t know it. (He takes a small
mirror from his coat and sticks it up in front of Dirty-Face,
who gives the same horrified jump that Clean-Face did when the
play opened. Clean-Face makes a pleased bow to the audience
and the curtain closes.)

Practice 3 — Writing a Puppet Play

You can see from this little sketch that a puppet
play requires two kinds of planning. It needs directions
for actions — the part printed in italic type in the
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 153
sketch — and it needs conversation. In writing your
plays remember to get plenty of both of these into
them.
Of course you do the speaking for your puppets.
Your "lines” should be fastened up before you where
you can read them as you operate the doll. Soon you
will know the lines and will not need the paper any
longer. One person can sometimes handle two pup¬
pets, one on each hand, changing his voice for the
speaking parts. If more than two puppets appear in
the play, it is better to have one operator for each
puppet.
Committees can read their plays to one another before
acting them to get criticisms and suggestions on them.
After polishing them up and rehearsing them, you will,
of course, want to show them to other grades or to
visiting mothers.

JACK, THE PUPPET

Clickety, clack, clickety, clack!

That’s the sound of a puppet named Jack.
He gestures so grand
With each little hand
For he’s the best actor in many a land.

His head is of wood and so is his brain,

He doesn’t much look as if he were sane,
But when he starts walking and turning and running
His body and brain take on a shrewd cunning.

He twists and turns and bows and flops

And now and then completely stops.
And all he has is magic strings
With which to do these marv’lous things.
154 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Clickety, clack, clickety, clack!

That’s the sound of a puppet named Jack.
With a body so neat
And two tricky feet
He gives us a show that he oft must repeat.
— Carrie Rasmussen

MARIONETTES
Once you have put on a successful puppet perform¬
ance, both you and your audiences will be enthusiastic
about these small people who come to life the minute
you move them, and you will want then to see what
you can do with marionettes. These will be somewhat
more difficult to make. For this reason you will want
to get additional help and advice if you can.

Practice 4 — Writing a Class Letter

['Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing^

Often there is someone in a school system or in a com¬

munity who has had experience in making marionettes
and putting on shows. If there is such a person in
your community, write a class letter asking him or her
to come and visit you and tell you about the making
and operating of marionettes. He will be able to
give you much valuable advice. You might suggest in
your letter that he bring along one or two of the dolls,
so that you can see how they are made and worked.
If there is no one whom you can get to advise you
in this way, you might try to get a marionette show to
visit your school or town. Write a letter to your school
principal asking whether he will arrange to have a
marionette performance given so that you could see
it and inspect the figures and the stage afterward.
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 155

Making Marionettes
If you cannot see a performance or hear a speaker,
you will proceed to make your marionettes according
to instructions you find in books.
Here is one way of making them. First you make
patterns for them, just as you did for the puppets.
Next stuff the marionettes completely as you would
rag dolls, except the joints — arms, knees, and hips.
The marionette must be free to move easily at these
points. Stuff the head tightly (unless it is carved of
wood, like “Jack’s”), but let the neck be a loose, un¬
stuffed piece just the right length so that the head will
move easily in all directions. Weight the hands and the
feet with small pieces of lead, and sew a lead weight to
the seat of the doll, so that it will sit down easily. Hair
can be made of yarn, embroidery floss, velvet, or wool.
Features that are sewed on show up better than those
that are painted. Clothes can be sewed right on the
stuffing, since marionettes do not change their clothes.
Bright colors help to make them showy, particularly in
electric light. Avoid large hats and use soft materials
because stiffness of any kind will hinder the free move¬
ment of the figures.

Stringing Them Up
In stringing up your marionettes, it will help you to
look from time to time at the drawings that follow. /
is a strip of wood about a foot long and an inch wide.
II is a strip about five inches by a half-inch, which is
fastened to one end of I. Ill is a strip about nine inches
by a half-inch nailed to I just a little back of II. IV is
about ten inches by a half-inch and is held in the right
156 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

hand by itself. Small holes or slits are made in both

ends of II, III, and IV, and in the free end of I; two
holes are drilled side by side in I just about at the
middle.
If you string your marionette with wires, it will be
best to sew small metal rings at the proper places on
the doll first. If you use black thread or fish line, take
small stitches at the proper
points, tying strong knots
after you take off the
needle. Give your fasten¬
ings a good jerk each time
you finish one, so that they
will surely be secure.
Dangle the doll in front of
you, with your hands at a
comfortable height — not
too high — before cutting
each wire or string; then
cut several inches above
your hand. The head
strings are fastened to the
ends of III. The shoulder strings are passed through
the two holes near the center of I. The seat string
runs to the back of I. The strings from the hands go
to the ends of II, and those from the knees to the
ends of IV. The main control is held in your left
hand and the leg control in your right. Have a loop to
slide your hand under about the middle of the control,
so that it will hang there without your lifting it and
you will be free to move the strings with your fingers.
Your forefinger is used to lift the arm strings, while
another finger is hooked under the shoulder string and
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 157

pushed down to make the head move forward. Try

tipping the control different ways and see what effect
these various movements have on the doll. You will
enjoy practicing, and of course you will improve im¬
mensely with practice.

YOUR FIRST MARIONETTE PLAY

For your first marionette play you had better select
a very simple scene or story, because there will be so
many things to think of at one time. The fairy tales
that you have known ever since you were in the first
grade make very good marionette plays. You can choose
scenes from such stories as “Little Red Riding Hood,”
“Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The
Sleeping Beauty,” or “ Cinderella,” and make little plays
of them. You will need to write out the speaking parts
for the characters and plan some of the actions and
gestures. Here is the beginning of a scene from Heidi
to show you how it may be done.
The Grandmother is seated on the stage when the curtain
opens. Heidi comes in.
Heidi: How do you do, Grandmother. Here I am. It
is Heidi. (She holds out her hand.)
Grandmother: (Lifting her head and reaching for Heidi’s
hand.) How did you get here, little one?
Heidi : My grandfather brought me down on his sled.
Grandmother: (Still touching Heidi’s hand.) Is it possi¬
ble? And how did you keep so warm? Your hands are not
the least bit chilled.
Heidi: (Moving away to look around the cottage.) My
grandfather wrapped me up.
Grandmother: To think the old hermit wrapped the
child up and brought her down here!
Heidi: (At the window.) Oh, Grandmother, there is a
158 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

loose shutter. If Grandfather were here, he would drive a

nail in it for you. . . . .
{And so on)

Practice 5 — Writing the Lines

Choose the story or scene that you will have your
marionettes act first and write the lines and stage direc¬
tions for it. If it is a short scene, you will enjoy working
as a class while your teacher writes the lines on the
blackboard. If you are to have several scenes or a
complete story, you will need to divide the work among
committees.
Inviting Guests
When you have rehearsed until you are satisfied
with your performance, the next thing you will think
about is inviting someone to see it. Probably the most
appreciative audience you could have for these fairy
tales is the kindergarten or the first-grade or the second-
grade children. Here is an invitation to see “Jack
and the Beanstalk” performed.

Dear Second Grade,

Have you ever wished you could see Jack
really climb a real beanstalk? Have you wanted
to hear the giant roar and then see Jack escape
right under his nose? We have been getting
this play ready for you for several weeks, and we
invite you to come to our room next Thursday at
two-thirty to see our marionettes perjorm it.
Be prepared for a lot oj jun.
Sincerely yours,
The Fijth Grade
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 159

Practice 6 — Writing an Invitation

[Handbook, Section III, Letter-Writing]

Write an invitation to one of the classes in your school

to see your first marionette play. Perhaps besides in¬
viting one of the other grades, you will also invite your
principal or a supervisor.

Making Up a Play of Your Own

Perhaps there are some children in your class who
will think it is more fun to make up plays of their own
than to rewrite fairy stories. Of course, you will en¬
courage these children, because they may be able to
give you something very worth while. One fifth-grade
girl, after she had read the story of Pinnochio, got the
idea for the following little play, which she wrote and
called “The Brave Petro.’’
THE BRAVE PETRO

Petro has run away from home and is lost in a forest.

Petro: Hi-yah! Hi-yah! Well, I guess this is pretty
fine. What if I am lost? I don’t care. No more work for
me at home. I’ve run away for good this time. I’m free
now, and I’ll do what I please. Nobody’s going to boss me
any more. (Struts around.)
Owl: (Flies down and rests on branch of tree.) Oo-oooo!
Oo-oooo!
Petro: {Jumps around, startled; sees owl.) Oh-ho!
Thought you could scare me, eh? Well, you’re fooled this
time, old bird. I’m my own boss and a very brave man.
Nobody can scare me. {Keeps turning around until owl flies
away.)
Old Man: {Bent over, limping in.) Kind sir, I’ve walked
all day and have had nothing to eat. Kind sir, will you give
me a piece of bread from your basket?
160 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Petro: My lunch is for myself. I have nothing to spare.

Old Man: But, sir, I am near dead of hunger, and I have
walked many a mile without food.
Petro : Then you can walk some more miles till you find
some. I have none for you.
Old Man : But, sir —
Petro: No, I said, and go along.
(Old man limps off. Petro is tired and sits down on a log,
but the log springs up and frightens him. He whistles to keep
up his courage. It grows dark rather quickly. There is light¬
ning and thunder, at first faint, then louder and more often.
Petro gradually becomes more and more frightened; he stops
strutting and finally begins to cry.)
Petro: Oh! Oh, dear! I shouldn’t have run away. I
don’t really want to be my own boss. If I were home now,
I’d do everything I was told.
Old Woman: (Dragging herself in weakly.) Sir, can you
help me? I am so tired and drenched.
Petro: (Going to her at once.) I’ll be glad to help you.
It’s a terrible storm. What can I do? Tell me.
(He helps the old woman sit down. He is about to take off his
little cape and wrap it around her, when her own cloak falls off
and shows that she is a shining fairy. The thunder stops and
it grows lighter as Petro stands looking at her in amazement.)
Fairy: You see, Petro, I’m the Golden Rule Fairy. I
want to be kind to people who are kind to me. What would
you like me to do for you?
Petro: I — I — Oh, thank you! I see now. It’s because
I said I’d be glad to help you. Oh, Fairy, can you take me
home again?
Fairy: Certainly, Petro. Come, I’ll show you the way.
(She slowly rises and floats off.)
Petro: (Dancing about joyously.) Now I know! Now I
know! And when I get home, I’ll tell mother about it. I’ll
be a smart boy and a good boy too! (He dances off, following
the fairy.)
 PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 161

Practice 7 —Planning and Writing

an Original Play *

Have your class talk over ideas that any of the mem¬
bers may have for writing plays of their own. Anyone
having such an idea will probably be glad to get sugges¬
tions before actually producing his play. Give him your
help and encouragement, for you will all be very proud
of a play written by a pupil in your own grade.

Practice 8 — Making Posters and

Writing Advertisements
Making the posters and writing the advertising for
a play are sometimes almost as much fun as writing the
play. After you have rehearsed your marionettes and
have seen how funny and clever they are, you will want
to tell others about them.
On your posters show your marionettes in their color¬
ful costumes and in their best poses. In your notice be¬
side the picture, write what it represents, as: “This
is the Brave Petro as he looks when the log springs out
from under him! ” Then go on to tell just enough about
the play to make everyone curious and interested in it.
Perhaps you will have the picture of the marionette
speak for itself, as: “I am the Brave Petro. Come and
see me in the play that’s named after me. You will
think I’m quite a fellow. The play will be given in the
Fifth-Grade room, Friday, at three o’clock.”
One of the pupils in your grade may write a review
(or preview) of the play for publication in your class
paper. Notices for the bulletin board or for other class
papers should state clearly the time and place of the
performance.
ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Good-Bye
 Part II

YOUE HANDBOOK
 This pari of jour language book is full of
suggeshons and praciices lliai will improve jour
wnhng and speaking. Someiimesjouwill siudy a
pari iogeiliei; because diere are many new things
for fifili-gVade boys and girls io learn. Often jou
will iurn io a seciion ofjour Handbook for help
wiib something ibaijou are doing bj yourself
Someiimes jou will review^ rules jou have for—
gohen and work oui praciices on fliem.
Look through jour Handbook now so ihaf
you will knowr jusi whai help jou can find in
if Use fhe index and iable of conienfs in
locaiing fhe mforinaiion jou wank
 SECTION I

FORM OF WRITTEN WORK

CHANGES IN STYLE
There are fashions in books and writing, just as there
are in clothes. If you wish to see how much change
there has been in fashions in books, find some old
books, printed about fifty years ago, and examine them.
You will notice that the print is small and that the en¬
tire book is different from your latest attractive story
book. If you are fortunate enough to find some old
letters and diaries also, you may notice differences in
writing. Some old papers have very elaborate capital
letters and designs in pen and ink around the edge.
Here is an old-fashioned calling card, for example.

Everyone wants to be in style. The pages that

follow give you suggestions on arranging your papers
in what is considered good style today. These styles,
like others, will change as the years go by. There is
165
166 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

seldom just one good style. That is why in this book

you are sometimes given a choice of several acceptable
forms. You are old enough now to use your judgment
in deciding which form you wish to use. You should
know what forms are not considered in good taste,
because you will want to avoid using those. Certain
forms that are used in modern advertising and magazine
writing are not yet considered by the best writers to
be good style, as, for instance, the practice of using all
small letters in titles.

MARGINS
The width of the margins depends upon the size of
the paper and the length of the message. It may vary

One LncA "margin on a /arge 5Ineet

 FORM OF WRITTEN WORK 167

from one-half inch to two inches, but the usual margin

kept on the left, and as evenly as possible on the right
side of the paper also, is one inch wide. Wider spaces
are often left at the top and the bottom.

In the lower grades, when you were just learning

about margins, you were always asked to keep a margin
one inch wide on the left. You are now able to use
judgment in deciding how wide a margin to leave. You
can also try to keep an even margin on the right. This
is not easy to do.
In the illustrations of children’s writing on the next
page, notice that these boys and girls have kept the
right margin even in several ways.
168 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

1. By crowding the letters and writing smaller at the

end of the line.
2. By dividing a short word at the end of the line.
3. By leaving wider spaces between words.

The last is the best way. Can you tell why the
others are not satisfactory?

THE PLACING OF THE TITLE

Examine books to see how titles are placed. They
are usually evenly spaced between the right and left
sides of the page. This is called centering the title.
There is also a space, or margin, at the top of the page.
Estimate how much space you can leave at the left
before beginning to write your title. Place a light
pencil mark in the center. That will help you to place
your title well. If you are printing your title, you can
place it exactly by counting letters, as typists do, and
beginning to print from the center to the left and right.

Practice 1 — Criticizing Arrangement

On the next page are three examples of the placing of
titles. The second is the only acceptable one. What is
wrong with the others?
 FORM OF WRITTEN WORK 169

Whenever papers are written in your class, have them

held up before the class, so that the placing of titles
and the width of margins may be inspected.

Practice 2 — Arranging Titles

Practice estimating the spacing of titles by writing
the titles below, keeping the width of margins equal
on the left and the right.
The Bear Cub
Why the Kangaroo Hops
Sambo
The Best Game the Fairies Play
The Challenge of the Gallant Knight
170 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

RULES FOR ARRANGEMENT

1. There should be a margin all around the story or

paragraph.
2. The left-hand and the right-hand margins should
be the same width.
3. Margins should be wider on larger paper.
4. The story should be placed as nearly as possible
in the center of the paper.
5. The title should be placed in the center of the first
line with a suitable margin at the top of the paper.
6. When the paper is to be put into a notebook, or
bound into a booklet, an extra half-inch margin should
be allowed on the left for the fasteners or for the sewing.
 SECTION II

USING BOOK TOOLS

There are so many things to learn that no one can

possibly know and remember all of them. However,
you know that in some book you can find the answer
to almost any question. So, if you know how and
where to search in book-land, you will always be able
to learn just what you want to know.
You can save time in finding material in libraries if
you learn about the guides that help you to locate what
you are looking for.
The card catalog contains at least two cards for every
book in the library. By using the catalog, you can
find books that you need.
In each book there is a table of contents and in many
books there is an index that tells you what is in the book.

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

The table of contents is usually found just before the
first chapter of a book. The contents page lists the chap¬
ter titles in the order in which they appear in the book.
It also gives the page upon which each chapter begins.

Practice 1 — Using the Table of Contents

See if you can find in this language book suggestions
for making puppets. On what pages will you find them?
Through the tables of contents in your language or
171
172 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

your reading books find poems, stories, or suggestions

for one of the following:
1. Current Events 3. A Program on Animals
2. Book Week 4. Early Mail Service

Let each pupil in a small group take a different book

for this work. See how quickly each one can discover
whether or not his book contains any material on the
subject. Do not take time to read the pages. This is
an exercise in finding your own way in books. The
reading can be done later.
You will want to look through the entire table of
contents, because the topics are arranged there in the
order in which they are found in the book, not in
alphabetical order.

THE INDEX
Most books that are not story books contain indexes.
The index is usually placed at the back of the book.
On these pages are listed the most important topics or
subjects in the book. These topics are arranged in
alphabetical order.
Here is a sample of what might be found on the index
page of a language book.
Learning a poem, 55-56
Letter-writing, 17, 35, 78-96, 101
Library, making rules for use of, 19-20; public, 21-22
Listeners, standards for, 4-5, 27, 46

Magazine, listing, 58; making a class, 62-68

Making a record, 123, 137, 148
Margins, 22, 25, 36
Memorizing, 55-56
Moon Song, Hilda. Conkling, 67
 USING BOOK TOOLS 173

Motion picture show, 15; criticizing, 27; making a toy

movie, 18-20

When a number is followed by a comma, material

on the subject can be found on only the page of that
number. Where there is a dash between the numbers,
material can be found on all pages between the first
and second numbers. After “letter-writing” in the
sample just given, you see five numbers with dashes be¬
tween two of them. This means that on page 17, page 35,
and page 101 you will find something about letters; also
on page 78 and all the following pages through 96.
Titles are printed in italics (underlined or put in
quotation marks when typed or written). There is a
title in the sample index page. What is it?
The alphabetical arrangement saves time for you
and makes it possible for you to find references more
easily.

Practice 2 — Using the Index of this Book

Study the index pages of this language book.
1. On what page can you find an example of a business
letter?
2. On what page is there a practice exercise on using seen
correctly?
3. On what pages can you find poems? What are their titles?
4. If you wanted help on paragraphing, could you find
any in this book?
5. If you wanted to know how to write book reviews,
could you find directions and examples by using the index?

Practice 3 — Using the Index of a Geography

Look through the index of your geography book and
make a list of all the pages on which you can find any
174 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

information about your state. Include the map on

which your state is shown.
What is the principal industry in your state? On
what pages can you find more information about that
industry in the United States?

SECTION HEADINGS
Many times in history, science, and other books each
chapter is divided into sections, and each section is
named so that you can find material quickly. In this
book, for instance, this section on Using Book Tools is
divided into a number of parts. What are the headings
for each part? Form the habit of looking at the titles
of sections within a chapter when you are hunting for
information.
Sometimes these section headings are printed at the
side of the page, even out in the margin. They are
called sideheads when they are placed in that way.
They are sometimes printed in heavy type or under¬
lined, so that you can locate them quickly.
You could outline a chapter by listing these sections
or sideheads, in order. They are very helpful if you
are skimming through a chapter to find information
on a certain subject. Don’t overlook them.

Practice 4 — Using Section Headings

Choose a chapter of your geography book to outline
by section headings. Notice whether the section head¬
ings are in the center or on the side of the page. Per¬
haps you will find both. If you do, the center headings
are the main topics and the side headings are subtopics
under each main topic. Subtopics are usually in smaller
type than main topics.
 USING BOOK TOOLS 175

Your chapter outline may be arranged like this part

of an outline:
The Southern States

I. The Cotton Belt

A. Where cotton is raised
B. Cotton plantations
C. Shipping cotton
II. Work in the Southern Forests
A. Southern forests
B. Lumbering in the Coastal Plain
C. Products of the forest
III. Southern Oil Fields
A. Three oil fields
B. Oil wells

The center headings in the book are the topics

marked I, II, and III, while the side headings are the
topics that are lettered A, B, etc.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Many books like histories or geographies have a list
of illustrations, or pictures, in the front, or sometimes
in the back, of the book. This will be useful to you
when you want to use pictures in illustrating your talks.

Practice 5 — Using the List of Illustrations

In your geography book see if you can find any pic¬
tures to use in making a report on one of these topics.
Put down the number of the page on which you find
the illustration.

1. Cotton Growing 4. River Transportation

2. Lumbering in the West 5. Meat Packing
3. Our National Parks 6. Ranch Life
176 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

LIST OF MAPS
There is also a list of maps in most geographies.
Find the one in yours. How many maps does the book
have? Find the map that shows your own state.
What is the title of that map?

THE CARD CATALOG

You have probably learned where the card catalog

is in your public or school li¬
brary. Every book has an
author card and a title card.
Some books have subject cards,
too.
On the author card the name
of the writer is given at the
top of the card with the last
name first. When locating a
book by the author’s name
look in the catalog under the
first letter of the last name.
If there are two authors, you will find a card for each.

591 Bianco, Mrs. Margery.

B47

More about animals, by

Margery Bianco. Illus¬
trated by Helen Torrey.
New York, The Macmillan
Company. 1934.

An Author Card
 USING BOOK TOOLS 177

Practice 6 — Alphabetical Arrangement

Here are the names of some writers of children’s
books. Arrange them in alphabetical order according
to the last name of the author, as the cards would be
found in the catalog.
Johanna Spyri Elizabeth Coatsworth
Kathryn Dopp Rachel Field
Virginia Olcott Lewis Carroll
Rose Fyleman Lucy Fitch Perkins

Do you know any of these names of authors? Per¬

haps you can name some of the books that these authors
have written.

More aBout animals

591
B47 Bianco, Mrs. Margery.

More aBout animals. By Margery

Bianco. Illustrated By Helen
Torrey. Hew York, The Macmillan
Company . 1934.

A Title Card

On the title card the name of the book is placed first.

The card is placed in the catalog under the first letter
of the title. (If the title begins with A or The, the
second word is used.)

Practice 7 — Locating Books Alphabetically

Number to 10 on a piece of paper. Put down the
two letters in the card catalog under which you would
178 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

look for these ten books. One letter will show the
alphabetical location of the author card and the other
that of the title card.

Example: Travel by Air, Land and Sea, by Hanson Hart

Webster
Title card — T Author card — W

1. Viking Tales, by Jennie Hall

2. East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon, by G. W. Dasent
3. Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting
4. Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie
5. The World We Live In and How It Came to Be, by
Gertrude Hartman
6. Jataka Tales, by Ellen C. Babbitt
7. Just-So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling
8. Northward Ho, by Vilhjalmur Stefansson
9. Little Maid of Bunker Hill, by Alice T. Curtis
10. Docas, The Indian Boy of Santa Clara, by Genevra
S. Snedden

Other Information on the Card

Besides the author’s name and the title, the card
usually tells the name of the publisher of the book.
That is the company to whom you would write if you
wanted to order the book.
The card gives the copyright date, too. That tells
you how old the book is, because it is the date when
the book was first published.
In the upper left corner of the card is the number of
the book, by which you can find it on the shelves.
In most libraries story books are not numbered.
They are just placed on the shelves according to the
first letter of the author’s last name.
 USING BOOK TOOLS 179

Practice 8 — Using the Card Catalog

If you have a school library, or if you are near enough
to a public library so that you can use the catalog,
find the answers to these questions:

1. Who is the author of Black Beauty?

2. What is the title of a book of poems by Eugene Field?
3. What is the name of the publisher from whom you
would order The Pioneer Twins, by Lucy Fitch Perkins?
4. There are several collections of Robin Hood stories.
Find the author of one.
5. What is the copyright date of The Little Book of the
Flag, by Eva M. Tappan?

BOOK LISTS
Whenever you have to make a book list, or bibliog¬
raphy, you should give the title and the author’s name.
If there are two authors, give both names. You may
put them down as these books are listed:

1. MacDonald, Rose M. Then and Now in Dixie

2. Waddell and Perry. Long Ago

There are two authors for the second book. The

last name of each has been given.
If you wish to put the title first you may write it in
this way:

1. Then and Now in Dixie. Rose M. MacDonald

2. Long Ago. Waddell and Perry

When the author’s name is listed before the title, the

last name is put first. A comma then separates the first
and last names. When the title is given first, the first
name of the author is given first.
180 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 9 — Arranging a Book List

Arrange these books in a list with the author’s name
before the title. Put the last name first and place a
comma after it. Put the list in alphabetical order.
1. All About Pets. Margery Bianco
2. Rootabaga Stories. Carl Sandburg
3. King of the Golden River. John Ruskin
4. Heidi. Johanna Spyri
5. Picture Tales from the Japanese. C. W. Sugimoto
6. Gulliver’s Travels. Jonathan Swift
7. How the World Rides. Florence Fox
8. Star Myths from Many Lands. Dorothy Renick

Many times this year you will need to make a book

list. You may refer to this section each time to see how
the lists are arranged.

YOUR DICTIONARY
You may know how to use your dictionary fairly
well, but you can probably find in it new sections and
more help than you realize.

Practice 10 — Discussing the Use of

the Dictionary
Without looking at your dictionary, talk over with
your class some of these questions:
1. Besides the main word list, what other sections are
there in your dictionary?
2. What general information, like tables of weights and
measures, weather signals, or the history of our language,
is given in your dictionary?
3. How does your dictionary help you with pronuncia¬
tion?
 USING BOOK TOOLS 181

4. Does your dictionary show the syllables for every

word, so that you will know how to divide it at the end of
a line if necessary?

You will probably discover that you really know

very little about this interesting book.
Turn to the contents page of your dictionary and
find out how much information it gives.

Keys to Pronunciation
You can learn from your dictionary exactly how to
pronounce a word. You will have to learn:
1. How accents are marked in your dictionary.
2. What the “key line” is and how you can use it.
3. What “diacritical marks” are and how they show
pronunciation.

If your dictionary has a “Guide to Pronunciation”

in the front, study it carefully.

Accents
Some words have two accents, a strong {'primary)
accent and a weak {secondary) accent.

Practice 11 — Marking Accents

Look up the following words to see how the two
accents are marked. Pronounce the words clearly,
showing the difference in accent.
architecture communication graduation
automobile congratulation pronunciation

Locate the accent in these words:

address horizon mischievous
equator impudence recess
182 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Pronunciation Symbols
The marks used to show how letters should be
sounded are called diacritical marks. The ones below
are probably in your dictionary. Look up in your own
dictionary the “Guide to Pronunciation” and know
what marks are used there.

Diacritical Marks
a — ate, labor 1— it, hill
a — add, cat o — open, cold
a — far, calm 8 — not, bob
a — path, ask oo — food, room
a — rare, care 66 — good, wool
e — equal, eve u — use, tube
e — desk, let u — ciip, trust
e — never, other u — turn, curl
i — nice, light th — then, that

Usually words are rewritten in parentheses to show

just how they should be pronounced. Does your dic¬
tionary do that?
lounge (lounj) union (un'yiin)
soldier (sol'jer) education (ed'u ka'shun)

Practice 12 — Using Pronunciation Symbols

What are the words for which these are the sound
symbols?
ther mom'e ter re'jiin
a pre'shi at kre'tur
them selvz' a perd'

In looking up a word you may have to check back

several words to get the complete pronunciation.
 USING BOOK TOOLS 183

Words that come from the same word are often given
as follows:
leg'is-late (lej'is lat) . . .

leg'is-Ia'tion (-la'shun)

Here the hyphen at the beginning of the second word

shows that the first part of it is pronounced just like
the word above.
The Key Line
At the bottom of every two pages in your dictionary
is a line of key words to help you with pronunciation.
They are always simple, familiar words that you are
sure to know how to pronounce. When you find other
words spelled and marked the same, you can use these
simple words as a key. Study the key line in your own
dictionary.
Syllable Division
Knowing how a word should be divided is important
when you need to break a word at the end of the line.
The dictionary shows the syllable division. Syllables
are separated by a short mark or by a dot. A hyphen
is a longer, heavier mark. Notice the difference in
the words below.
jack'—o’—lan'tern
jus'ti-fi-ca'tion

Practice 13 — Using the Dictionary for

Syllable Division
Look up the syllable divisions for the words on the next
page. Pronounce them clearly to show each syllable.
184 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

absolutely convenient important positive

appreciate development interesting recognize
candidate government paragraph satisfactory

Alphabetical Arrangement
Words are arranged in alphabetical order in the dic¬
tionary in order that you can turn quickly to any word
that you want to find. It is worth while to know the
alphabet thoroughly. You can use a telephone direc¬
tory, an index, or a letter file, as well as the dictionary,
more easily if you know the alphabet. This does not
mean just knowing it from a to z, but knowing also
whether s is before or after t, whether w is before or
after v, etc.

Practice 14 —Arranging Pairs of Words

Alphabetically
Consider not only the first letter, but also the follow¬
ing letters of each word, in putting them in alphabetical
order. Which word within each pair of words comes
first? For example, does why or does where come first
in alphabetical order?
1. allow — almost 6. would — wood
2. accent — accidental 7. drain — dreary
3. obey — oral 8. fence — fancy
4. why — where 9. more — monkey
5. absent — arrange 10. written — wreck

Practice 15 — Arranging Groups of Words

Alphabetically
Arrange in alphabetical order the words in each of
the five groups on the next page.
 USING BOOK TOOLS 185

Example: never, new, nearly, nice, numb

nearly, never, new, nice, numb
1. dead, dazzle, dirty, do, daughter
2. lot, letter, little, ladder, laugh
3. bribe, bring, bright, bought, bond
4. address, answer, attitude, account, accent
5. mountain, many, mild, mouth, main

Guide Words
So that you can locate words quickly, two words are
printed at the top of each dictionary page. They are
called guide words. They are always the first and the
last words explained on the page, or on the two pages
that face each other. Find the guide words in your
dictionary.

Practice 16 — Using Guide Words

Here are five pairs of guide words from a dictionary.
1. fiction ... fig
2. flock . . . flow
3. ingratitude . . . injury
4. manor . . . marble
5. may . . . meaning

Between which of these five pairs of guide words will

you find each of these words?
field floor initiate maybe
fierce flour injure meadow
fifteen inhabit mansion meal
flood inherit mantel mean

Practice locating words in your dictionary by the use

of the helpful guide words.
186 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

A Test of Book Tools

Copy these fourteen sentences, filling in each blank
with a word or words from the list at the end.
1. When words are in a, b, c, d, e, f, etc., order, they
are in__
2. The person who writes a book is its_
3. The name of a book, story, or magazine is the_
4. A list of books named by title and author is a_
5. The company that sells the book is the_
6. A list of the chapter titles in the book, arranged in
order, is the_
7. The pictures in a book are the_
8. A list of all the topics in the book, arranged in alpha¬
betical order, is the_
9. A case in which cards for every book are kept in al¬
phabetical order is a_
10. The titles of parts of chapters are called_
Sometimes they are in the center and sometimes at the side
of the page.
11. The mark that shows which part of the word should
be pronounced with emphasis is the_
12. When you divide a word at the end of a line of writ¬
ing, you need to know its_
13. The list of words at the bottom of the dictionary page
to help with pronunciation is the_
14. Two words at the top of each dictionary page, which
help you to find words, are_

accent index
alphabetical arrangement key line
author publisher
bibliography section headings
card catalog syllabication
guide words table of contents
illustrations title
 SECTION III

LETTER-WRITING

HOW IMPORTANT ARE LETTERS?

Letters help to make history. We usually think of
letters only as pleasant messages between friends.
Years after they have been
written, some of these mes¬
sages tell readers about the
lives and ways of people of the
time. Then they are making
history, for history is a record
of the lives of people. Some¬
times letters are the only his¬
torical record of an event.
From letters like this one
by John Winthrop, the first
governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony in New England,
we have learned of the hard¬
ships of the Pilgrims. This part of Governor Winthrop’s
letter to his son in 1646 tells of one of the storms that
they often had:
Mr. Haynes is come safe to us, but in great danger to
have perished in the tempest, but that beyond expecta¬
tion, wandering in the night, God brought him to an
empty wigwam, where they found two fires burning and
wood ready for use. There they kept two nights and
187
188 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

a day, the storm continuing so long with them, with

much snow as well as rain.

Later in the letter he wrote:

At Salem the Lady Moody’s house being a flat roof
and but nine feet high, the roof was taken off, and so
much of the chimney as was above it, and carried in two
parts six or eight rods off. Ten persons lay under it,
and knew not of it till they arose in the morning.

We are very glad that such letters have been saved

for us to read, because they give us real pictures of the
lives of people.
Today letters are kept even more carefully than in
early days. Letters between countries are kept as his¬
torical records.

YOUR LETTER FILE

Your letters this year will be a record of some of the
things your class has done. Business men keep a copy
of every letter they send. Whenever you write a class
letter, have someone in the class make one copy for
your letter file. A letter file is a folder in which letters
are kept. They are arranged alphabetically by the last
name of the person to whom the letter is sent or by the
first word in the name of a company. Letters that
come to your class can be kept in your file, too.
Choose someone in your class as your secretary to
keep your letter file in order and to see that a copy of
every letter is made for your file.
Later in the year take out your letters and arrange
them by dates to see if you have improved in your
let ter-writing.
 LETTER-WRITING 189

Practice 1 — Arranging Letters for a File

If you have letters from the following persons, under
what letter of the alphabet will you place them in the
file?
Sarah Anderson Helen Young
Lillian Ormond Stanley Peterson
Marks Book Store Modern Publishing Company

A LETTER EXCHANGE
Letters from different parts of our country will tell
you about the different ways in which people live and
work and think. What your geography book tells
would seem very real to you if you were to get a letter
from a fifth-grade class in the part of the country you
were studying. Probably letters from you would be
interesting to the children in other places, too.
You can arrange a letter exchange with classes in the
schools of other places if you wish. You should not
expect that all of your letters will be answered. Some
schools may not wish to exchange letters. It will be
fun to see how many answers you do receive. Of course,
the more interesting and attractive your letter is, the
more likely you are to have it answered.
Your letter can be addressed in care of a teacher if
your teacher knows the name of a teacher in the town
to which you are writing. The person in charge of all
the public schools in a town or city is usually called the
superintendent. Your letter can be sent in his care.
He will probably be kind enough to send it to some
class to answer. Your letter can be sent to a school if
you know the name of a school in the city to which you
are writing.
190 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

If your letter is addressed like one of those that follow,

it will probably reach some class and be enjoyed. It
may be answered, too. The sign c/o, written in that
way, means in care of.

Room 205
Public School Number 50
250 East 88 Street
New York City

Fifth Grade, Hawthorne School

clo Miss Ceda Lawrence
Houston
Texas

A Class Lettee Addressed in Care of a Teacher

Garfield School
Lima, Ohio

Fifth Grade, Roosevelt School

Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania

A Letter Addressed to a Class in a School

Forwarding
A letter addressed in care of the superintendent of
schools will probably be forwarded to some school. The
 LETTER-WRITING 191

address is changed, the letter is dropped into a mailbox

again, and delivered to the school.

A Letter Forwarded from the

Superintendent’s Office

Practice 2 — Discussing a Letter Exchange

Talk over this idea of a letter exchange. Would you
like to plan one? To what places do you wish to write?
Pick them out on your map of the United States.
What can you tell about your part of the country
that will be new and interesting to other children? To
whom will you address your letters?

Practice 3 — Writing Addresses

Put on the blackboard the addresses of several classes
to whom you are going to write. Decide in whose care
you will send the letters.
Notice how the address is placed. The name of the
state should always be written alone below the name of
the city.
Be sure to put your return address in the upper left
corner.
192 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Committee Work
Your class may be divided into committees to write
these letters. One committee may write to Seattle,
Washington; another to Springfield, Illinois, or to Salt
Lake City, Utah, perhaps. One member of the com¬
mittee will be the writer. The others will dictate the
letter. You can take turns in suggesting sentences,
so that everyone does part of the work.
After your committees have written their letters,
they will read them to the class for suggestions and ap¬
proval. The standards below will help you to judge
the letters.

Standards for Letters

1. Will the letter be interesting to children in another

part of the country?
2. Is the letter courteous? Have you asked for a
reply in a polite way?
3. Have you written a complete, correct heading, so
that the answer can be addressed properly?
4. Is the letter neatly arranged and written? Is the
signature legible?
5. Is every word spelled correctly?

Practice 4 — Criticizing a Letter

Use the standards in judging the letter that follows.
Is it neatly arranged? Do you think this letter would
be answered? Is it courteous and pleasant? Would
you suggest any change in it?
 tv, teas'
yj^oA/
(fi-CtAy sC^ZUZd/'JLzsiZs /&A^yczZz^£s2/ts(&^ -tzdvzcJ?’
-^yZAsywzsid^ zrty AyS^jjUsl£s)^ j&oAs&y Z^zy zZZyAyy-
^%yy aza£ yzAyy&z^ ^uzzAo y^£a*zZe<zy
aav /£*£c, /cyy^&Tzy -^yyxzz^vz^ zAc<z£t4^z&, -c^zs yAyzy^f-.
, yzyizz>6 zzzy
/U^uryUy. %/& zzz£n</z£ zAZa^- zz^czz^y ^ At<z^C
/m&oo yyy~to&s yb' zz<2y zz^znso^ yt^zz zzy^yzuy^ ^zazzczz
v*
ytZLO / /) /ZL "

($yzJz£<3stzy>£ Zg/ sUZstfA/ y^lz^ty '&^zZsiyzzyzy<?< <ez

ozaukus zy<y;
AZy2y^- ZZ^triz/ Zy£z>

‘^^yLyfhttJ'C^ziy6' Ayh ^ztzz^cc.

(jlz£zzrny
si^jzzisty azjy /
^^/yzAzyy /izyyiZty^ oa^ ^tzzzzf'^tzzt^izzy ^zzzcy

A^hyzAyy^o o^zaC aybz<zzty£<ty.

<^fyyy zza£ z^yynz^ ■^zzz^cztezy'

^ Jyyy^zyiz^. zz^uz^ yyyrzyz^iz^ /Tzz-ZsL' y^ACy

^{/& a2^zz£6 ~rfyy y^y ^#1z Zz£y^

sU4/ yzJlflvl zZj/frtZ/l/ A^dy^j

Q^AzyAXA/^j^
194 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 5 — Writing Letters to Exchange

Your committees should be able to write their letters
for the class now. Be sure to ask in your letter what
you would like to know about. Don’t forget to put in
something interesting about your own city. Ask very
courteously for an answer.
When your letters have been approved by the class,
copy them neatly, address and mail them. If they are
answered promptly, when can you expect replies? Will
some letters take longer to come than others? Why?

Letter Courtesy
There are certain letter courtesies that everyone
should know and follow. The letters that your class
writes to another class may be read aloud and en¬
joyed by all the children. Letters that one person
writes to another person are not like that. They are
meant for the eyes of the person to whom they are
written.

Practice 6 — Discussing Courtesy

Talk over the situations below. What is the courteous
thing to do? What should not be done? Why?
1. If a letter is delivered to your home by mistake and
opened before you notice that it is for someone else, what
should you do?
2. If a letter that has been received and opened by the
person to whom it was written is lost on the street, what
should the finder do with it?
3. If you find a letter unstamped but all addressed for
mailing, what should you do with it?
4. If a letter for someone else is put into your mailbox
by mistake, what should you do with it?
 LETTER-WRITING 195

5. If a letter to someone else in your family comes while

you are alone at home, should you open it?
6. If letters to others in your family are left about the
house, should you read them?
7. After you have opened and read a letter from a friend,
what should you do with it?
8. Is promptness a part of courtesy in letter-writing?
About how soon after receiving a gift would you be expected
to write a thank-you note? If you have been visiting, when
should you write a letter of appreciation to your hostess?
Do you like to have your letters answered promptly? Do
you answer letters as promptly as you should?

Practice 7 — Making Courtesy Rules

Make a list of rules about good manners and letters.
The questions you have just discussed may give you
ideas for rules. Make your sentences short and clear.

GOOD FORM FOR LETTERS

The form that follows shows you where each part of
the letter is placed and what belongs in each part:

1692 Park Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland
September 6, 1935

Dear Roddie,
By the time. . . .

Sincerely yours,
Harold
196 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 8 — Reviewing the Arrangement

of a Letter
You would be surprised if someone said “Good-by”
to you before saying “Hello.” It would be queer to
meet someone who began talking to you without any
greeting. It would seem almost as odd to get a letter
that did not have the parts placed in the usual way.
Arrange these seven parts in the order in which you
would write them in a letter:
date signature
city and state greeting
complimentary close body or message
street and house number

Practice 9 — Reviewing the Arrangement

of the Heading
Write these headings in the best arrangement:
1. January 9, 1935 Birmingham, Alabama 308 Pow¬
ell Avenue
2. St. Paul, Minnesota June 8, 1935 502 Grand
Avenue
3. 706 Thirty-fifth Street February 2, 1935 Wash¬
ington, D.C.
4. Your own address and the date
5. Your school address and the date

INVITATIONS
Invitations should always tell the time of day, the
date, and the place of the party or program. The guests
will have to know when and where to come.
You will want to write invitations often this year.
The first example is from a class to parents and friends;
the second is from one class to another class.
 LETTER-WRITING 197

1
The Fifth Grade of Marquette School invites you to
its school exhibit during Education Week, November
12-16. The regular work of the school will be going
on with a special program at 3:00 p. m. each day in the
auditorium.
2
December 16,1935
Dear Second Grade,

Will you come to our Christmas party on Thursday

afternoon at 2:00 o’clock in the gymnasium? We hope
you can come.
The Fifth Grade

A Letter File of Invitations

Practice 10 — Writing Invitations

1. Write an invitation form that your class might use
when inviting another class to your room for a program.
This form can be used several times during the year,
just as you use the examples in this book. It can be
kept in your class letter file.
2. Write an invitation form that your class might use
when asking parents to visit school for a program.
Keep this invitation in your class letter file as an ex¬
ample.
3. Write an invitation form that you might use at
home when inviting friends to a party. Your invita¬
tions will not all be the same. Read them to the class
for criticisms. When you write a real invitation at home
sometime, this example will help you. Keep it in your
own letter file.
198 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Invitations to Be Written This Year

The work of many of the units in Part I calls for
invitations to be written. You may want to write other
invitations although they have not been suggested.
You can see how important it is to be able to write a
good invitation.
1. For your holiday programs you may want to invite
your parents or another class as guests.
2. You will surely wish to invite someone to see your
puppet show.
3. When you finish studying about electrical messages
you can send an invitation in code if you send the key to the
code with it.
4. Perhaps you would like to invite your first-grade
teacher, who taught you to read, to come to your bookstore
in Unit VI and to see how much you have learned in four
years.
5. Your principal, too, would like to receive a carefully
written invitation to enjoy some of your work.

LETTERS ASKING FAVORS

You will need to write letters to speakers or to ar¬
range for trips. Sample letters 1 and 2 on the pages
that follow will suggest how such class letters may be
written. Why was it a good idea to put the teacher’s
name in the first sample letter arranging a trip?

Practice 11 — Writing a Letter to Ask a Favor

1. During the summer many people visit our national
parks. If you have not been there, the next best fun
is to hear about such a trip from someone who has gone.
Find out if a father or mother or a school friend has
 LETTER-WRITING 199

been in Yellowstone Park, Glacier Park, or in some other

beautiful place this past summer. Write a letter ask¬
ing this traveler to tell you about the trip. Perhaps
the speaker will bring pictures to show you.

Webster Street School

Manchester, New Hampshire
January 7, 1936

Dear Mr. Sanders,

Our geography class would like to visit your mill to

see how cotton cloth is woven, if you are willing to let
us come. We understand the danger of getting too
close to the machines and will promise to obey the
guide and be very careful. Our teacher will come
with us.
If you will allow us to come, we should like to have
you telephone to our school and suggest a convenient
time for the visit.

Very sincerely yours,

The Fifth Grade
Miss Lucy Hodgins, Teacher

2. If you are interested in gardens, you would like

to see some attractive ones. Some of your parents
or neighbors who live near your school will be glad to
let you see their gardens and to tell you about them.
Write letters asking these friends if you may come for
an hour.
3. There are many interesting clubs for boys and
200 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

girls in different parts of the country. There are 4-H

clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Reserves, Girl Scouts, hiking
clubs, and bird clubs. Find out what clubs there are
in your community. You will soon be old enough to

Froebel School
Gary, Indiana
May 16, 1935

Dear Miss Rathburn,

Our class has been studying about early schools

in this part of the country. We should like to have you
tell us about the building in which you taught your
first school. We read in the paper that you began
teaching thirty years ago. Will you tell us how our
schools are different from the schools at that time?
Lester Barr, who is bringing this letter to you, will
plan with you the time for your talk. We surely hope
that you will come.

Sincerely yours,
Lowell Roche
Secretary, Fifth Grade

join some of these. Learn who their leaders or directors

are. Invite some of these men and women to come to
your room to explain the work of their clubs and the
rules for joining them.
In all these letters be careful to find out exactly
how to spell the name of the person to whom you
are writing. It is only courteous to be careful about
 LETTER-WRITING 201

pronouncing and spelling names correctly. The city

and telephone directories will help you with this.

Other Letters of This Kind

During this year you will have many different kinds
of letters to write. You may want to write letters for
these units:
Carrying Messages. If you know of someone who worked
in the post office twenty years ago, you may want to ask him
to talk to your class about the differences in the mail
service now.
Transportation. Someone from a travel bureau or from a
railway company will talk to you about some interesting
trips if you invite him.
Bookstore. You will want to visit a bookstore. You may
make arrangements for your visit by letter.
Cities. There will be several interesting places to visit in
studying about your city. You may write a letter to the
water department or to your health department to arrange
for a visit.

LETTERS OF APPRECIATION
We always remember to say “thank you” to our
friends, but we sometimes forget to write our thanks to
those who do things for us.
Whenever you have a speaker or someone who does a
favor for you this year, you should write a “thank-
you” letter. The letters asked for in Practice 12 will
help you when you want to write real letters of appre¬
ciation.

Practice 12 — Writing a Letter of Appreciation

1. Imagine that the father of one of your classmates
has sent some pumpkins to your room to be used in
202 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Saratoga School
Omaha, Nebraska
March 18, 1935

Dear Jlr. Fairmont,

Our class enjoyed your talk about Norway.
IFe appreciate your taking time to come and
tell us all about the mountains, the jjords, the
midnight sun, and the fishing. We are going
to save our money so we can have a trip like
that some time. Thank you very much jor
talking to us.

Sincerely yours,
Edwin Larson
Secretary, Grade Five

A Thank-You Letter from a Class Secretary

to a Speaker

making jack-o’-lanterns for your Halloween party.

Write a letter of thanks for the class.
2. Pretend that you have been to the railroad station
with your class to see freight cars, mail cars, passenger
cars, Pullman cars, and refrigerator cars. Write a letter
to the station agent to thank him for showing you all
about the station and through the different cars.
3. Imagine that someone who has just been travel¬
ing in Mexico has given a talk to your class. Write
the letter to thank him.
You will need to write many letters of this kind dur¬
ing the year.
 LETTER-WRITING 203

BUSINESS LETTERS
Sometimes you need to write letters about business.
You write a business letter when you order a book or
magazine, when you answer a radio advertisement,
when you send for free booklets or advertising folders
about trips or manufacturing, or when you send a
money order in payment of a bill.

Finding Out for Yourselves

Business firms that send many letters can teach you
many things about good business-letter writing. Each
of you should try to find at home a business letter that
you can bring to school to study. Your father can give
you several if he works in an office.

Practice 13 — Discussing Business Letters

Study the letters that you brought for answers to
these questions:
1. What size of paper is usually used for business let¬
ters?
2. About how wide are the margins? Are they alike on
all letters?
204 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. What is given in the heading? How is the heading

arranged? If you find only the date in the upper right
corner, where is the address of the company? Why do firms
often have their letterheads printed?
4. What extra part do you find that is not in letters to
friends?
5. What kind of greetings and closings are used?
6. How many different things are talked about in each
letter?
7. Business letters should always be polite. Read cer¬
tain sentences that might be called “ courtesy sentences. ”
8. Are there any sentences that are not necessary? Busi¬
ness letters are usually as short as possible.
9. Are the letters written in paragraphs? How many
main thoughts has each paragraph? How is the beginning
of a new paragraph shown?
10. Where are commas used in the letters?
11. How many of the letters are typewritten?
12. Is the signature written by hand? Is it clear? Is the
name of the writer printed or typed in any other place on
the page?

You will find that all letters are not alike on these
points. They may be different and still be in good
form. Some business firms use few commas and others
use many. Some firms mark off a paragraph by in¬
denting, as you do when you write. Others begin the
paragraph at the margin line, but separate the para¬
graphs by leaving a double space between them. Do
you find examples of these? On one thing they are
probably alike. Look at the signatures. Every letter,
whether typed or pen-written, should be signed in hand¬
writing, because that makes the receiver certain that
it comes from the person whose name is at the
bottom.
 LETTER-WRITING 205

A Letter to Study
Below is an example of a business letter. It may be
different in some ways from the letters that you have
been studying, but it is a good letter and one that you
can use as a model.

Room 203
Larchmont School
Norfolk, Virginia
February 26, 1935
General Electric Company
Schenectady, New York

Gentlemen:
Our class has been studying about the famous elec¬
trical expert, Steinmetz. We have learned that your
company has a booklet about his life and work. We
shall be glad to have you send us any free pamphlets
or articles about him.
Very truly yours,
John Trumann

Practice 14 — Testing Your Knowledge of

Business Letters
After studying the letter to the General Electric
Company and other letters, take the following test on
writing business letters. Choose the best ending for each
sentence. Write the ten sentences correctly.
1. A business letter should have a margin
all around the page,
on the left side only,
at the top and left of the page only.
206 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

2. Abbreviations should be used

as often as possible,
in no place in the letter.
for only a few words that are seldom written out.
3. A business letter should be
courteous but brief.
short and rude.
long and full of friendly news.
4. The words used in a business letter should be
very unusual,
hard to understand,
clear and simple.
5. The lines in the heading should
be crowded in the upper right corner,
all begin about the center of the page,
begin at the left margin.
6. The address of the receiver and the salutation should
be written in the upper right corner,
all begin about the center of the page,
begin at the left margin.
7. In the heading the writer should capitalize
all the words,
some of the words,
none of the words.
8. A business letter usually tells about
many different things,
one main thing.
9. A good ending for a business letter would be
“ Lovingly yours/7
“ Yours truly,”
“ Affectionately yours,”
10. Paper for a business letter should be
smaller than for a social letter,
larger than for a social letter,
the same size as for a social letter.
 LETTER-WRITING 207

Practice 15 — Writing Business Letters

Your state and national governments print many
bulletins that are free to people who want to read them.
If you are interested in these topics, write for some of
these bulletins.
1. The United States Department of the Interior at Wash¬
ington, D.C., will send you without charge a 66-page booklet
named Glimpses of Our National Parks. It gives descrip¬
tions and illustrations of the twenty-two national parks.

Sometimes a small charge is made for a bulletin. For

those you will have to write to the Superintendent of
Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington,
D.C.
2. If you are interested in studying birds, you may want
to send for the bulletin called Food of Some Well-known Birds
of Forest, Farm, and Garden. (Farmers’ Bulletin, Number
506, 5 cents.)
3. If you have a garden or live on a farm, you may want
the bulletin called Weeds: How to Control Them. (Farmers’
Bulletin, Number 660, 5 cents.)
4. In a health unit you may be studying the harm done
by flies and ways of keeping them out of your homes. You
can send for a bulletin called The House Fly and How to
Suppress It. (Farmers’ Bulletin, Number 1408, 5 cents.)

Practice 16 — Writing for a Catalog

It often saves time to write for a catalog. The letter
on the next page will show you how to do that.
Write to some publishing company for a catalog of
their books on something in which you are interested.
You can find the names and addresses of publishing
companies on the title pages of your books.
208 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

If several addresses are given, write to the nearest

one. Can you tell why? Why do some companies have
several addresses?

Arlington School
Lexington, Kentucky
September 10, 1935

Superintendent of Documents
Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir:
Will you please send me a catalog of your bulletins
on health?
Very truly yours,
Mary Lisson
For the Fifth Grade

Practice 16 —Writing an Order Form for

Your Letter File
It will be very useful for you to have in your letter
file a form for an order. Some pupil may want to order
something for himself, or the class may want to order a
book or other article during the year.
Tell clearly what it is that you want to order. Put
in a sentence like this one about the money that is
being sent:
“I am enclosing fifty cents in payment.”
 SECTION IV

GOOD USAGE

Language grows and changes all the time. The

English language is hundreds of years old and is used
now in many parts of the world. You would not
expect a language that has been spoken so long and in
such widely separated countries to stay just the same,
would you?
You have read in the Bible such expressions as “he
saith unto them,” “for unto everyone that hath shall
be given,” and “verily, I say unto you.” You have
read stories of colonial days and have noticed that the
Quakers said “thee” and “thou.” An old book tells of
the houses being “neat to admiration” and of the
“spoon-meat” (hash) that was served. These are not
like our expressions today.
In your daily use of English you want to use the
expressions that the people in our part of the world
consider good English. You would not want to attract
attention by using words that would embarrass you
and your friends. If you have the habit of using any
expressions that are not good, you will want to learn
better ones.

Practice 1 — Discussing Usage

Talk over with your class some expressions you
should avoid. What do you think of “they ain’t,”
“we didn’t have nothing,” “they seen us,” or “I ain’t
209
210 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

done it”? Are those expressions used by the educated

people about you? Put on the board a list of poor
expressions. Beside this list, write the words that would
be good usage for each of these poor expressions.

WORKING FOR BETTER USAGE

Wouldn’t you like to try this year to use the best
language possible? No one can really teach you good
usage. You must form your own word habits. Your
teacher and your friends can help, but the real respon¬
sibility is yours.
Mistakes in words are just like the measles or any
other contagious disease. People may work hard to
get rid of all the illness in a community and almost
succeed. Then if they stop working, the illness breaks
out again. Incorrect expressions are like that. You
have to watch your speech habits all the time or you
find some careless mistake among them.
Here is a test of the good speech habits that you tried
to master in the third and fourth grades. Can you
make a perfect score on it?

A Review Test
Number a paper to 25. If all the words in the
sentence are correct, put C after the number. If one
word is incorrect, write the correct form after the
number.
Examples:

1. Wilson has written a book. 1. C

2. He ain’t my cousin. 2. isn’t

1. Father has went to the garage for the car.

2. The Wright brothers done much for aviation.
 GOOD USAGE 211

3. They seen the Edison workshop at Dearborn near

Detroit.
4. This is the heaviest snow what we have had.
5. The spare tires came with the car.
6. My father and I saw the animals in the Field
Museum.
7. Why ain’t the chairman here to welcome us?
8. The car thro wed mud all over the people at the
curb.
9. My! Hasn’t he growed fast!
10. The cows have ate leaves from the trees during the
drought.
11. I wouldn’t believe that a six-year-old child had wrote
the letter.
12. They have taken corn stalks to burn for fuel.
13. The ice has broke the thin glass.
14. The children begun practicing weeks ago.
15. We just run over from Atlanta for a few hours with
you.
16. Aren’t we lucky to have so many lovely books?
17. Those flowers in the shade ain’t blooming well.
18. You are welcome in our school at any time.
19. Where was you when the siren sounded?
20. The officer asked us if we had seen the car with that
number.
21. Franklin knowed about many different things.
22. There is more boys on the team than girls.
23. I don’t like to read out of them old books.
24. Don’t you wish that sailboat was yourn?
25. Why does he care if the sled isn’t hisn?

RECORDING YOUR OWN DIFFICULTIES

AND YOUR IMPROVEMENT
From the review test and from the suggestions of
your teacher, put down five expressions that you will
212 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

try to say correctly. You may keep a page in your

notebook for this list, or perhaps your class will have
a catalog of small cards that can be kept as a Prog¬
ress File. Different pupils will have different words on
their lists, although a few expressions may be found on
many cards. Molly Silver’s card shows what expres¬
sions she is trying to learn.

Molly Silver

he isn’t
I broke it
they have done
he had taken
we asked them

After you have studied the practice lessons for your

list, you will take a test on the words. If you pass it
correctly, your teacher will check off those expressions
unless she has heard you using them incorrectly.
As soon as you master one expression, write another
on your goal card. How many can you master this
year?

COURTESY IN CRITICISM
Working together is more fun than working alone.
You can help one another to correct poor word habits
if you are very careful to be courteous in offering sug¬
gestions.
 GOOD USAGE 213

Practice 2 — Discussing Courtesy

Talk over these questions in your class:
Do you like to be interrupted during a report by someone
who corrects your use of some word?
Do you think you should ever criticize an old person’s
speech? Why not?
How can you offer suggestions to one another without
making your corrections too noticeable? One class worked
out a plan for putting the incorrect expression on a little
slip of paper that was handed to the speaker after his talk.

REVIEW PRACTICES ON GOOD USAGE

Several of you can work together on a practice lesson
if you have the same mistake. You can test one another
with the practice lists, too. Do not write in this book.

Practice 3 Reviewing the Use of

—

Gone, Done, and Seen

Read these questions and complete the answers.
Write the answers, filling the blank space with the
correct word. Remember that a helping word, have,
has, had, was, is, are or were, is needed with each of
these three words you are reviewing.
1. What have you seen in the woods? I have_
2. How often have you gone to the library this month?
I have _
3. What have you done to get rid of your sunburn? I
haven’t_
4. Have you gone hiking this fall? Yes, I have_
5. Had the deer seen our lights? Yes, they must
have_
6. Have you done fractions yet in arithmetic? We
have_
214 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

7. The pine and cedar trees will be gone before long,

won't they? Many of them are_
8. Will the knitting be done by the women? Yes, it is
always_
9. Were the paintings seen by many? They were_
10. Will you see if the neighbors have gone? Yes, they
must have_

Practice 4 — Reviewing the Use of Eaten,

Written, Taken, Broken, and Frozen
Read these questions and answers aloud. Fill each
blank with the correct expression. Remember that a
helping word is needed with these five words you are
reviewing.

1. Have you ever taken a long trip by bus? No, I have

never__ a trip longer than six hours.
2. We ate scallops for lunch. Have you ever eaten them?
Yes, I have_them often.
3. Howt many Christmas cards have you written? I have
_all of mine.
4. Was the plate broken when you saw it? No. It must
have been_afterwards.
5. Isn't that the best pie you have ever eaten? Yes, I
have_too much of it.
6. Was the letter written lately? Yes, it was_a
week ago.
7. All of the band instruments were taken, weren't they?
No, the drums were not_
8. Could the dog have broken the window? He has
never_anything before.
9. The paper hasn't announced that the lake is frozen,
has it? No, it is not_yet.
10. Has the ice cream frozen yet? Yes, it has_
hard.
 GOOD USAGE 215

Practice 5 — Avoiding the Use of Ain’t

Ain’t is often incorrectly used for isn’t, aren’t, or
haven’t. I ain’t is sometimes used for I’m not.
Each of these sentences needs one of the correct
forms just given. Read the sentences aloud with the
correct forms in the blank spaces.
1. A soldier_allowed to be late to meals.
2. They_members of the club.
3. I_too tired to go to a movie.
4. Newspapers_always correct in their reports.
5. _they got their tickets by this time?
6. We_as thrifty in farming as the Germans are.
7. A football player_afraid of bruises.
8. I_going to be tardy if I can help it.
9. The captains_received their orders yet.
10. Music_hard for me.

Practice 6 — Reviewing the Use of Are

and Were with You
The words are and were, not is and was, are correct
to use with you.
Try a little guessing contest for practice on you are.
Choose one of your classmates and say, “You are four
feet six inches tall.” If you guess the height correctly,
you may have another turn. If not, you lose your
turn to the one whom you choose, and he tries to guess
someone else’s height.
Another contest for practice on you were is guessing
a book character. Call on one person in the class.
He will write down, where you cannot see it, the name
of some familiar character from a book such as Penrod,
Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood, or Heidi. Then you will
216 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

say, “ You were thinking of_” You may have

three guesses before losing your turn.

Practice 7 — Reviewing the Use of You

Are and You Were
Copy these sentences, filling each blank with the cor¬
rect word. Are and were are the words to use with you.

1. You _playing quietly last night.

2. _you having a party?
3. _you using these books right now?
4. You_elected while you_absent.
5. Where_you going when we telephoned to you?
6. How old_you on your last birthday?
7. When_you weighed last?
8. You_n’t as excited as I was.
9. Why_n’t all books made with lots of pictures?
10. You_willing to send the gift, weren’t you?

Practice 8 — Reviewing the Use of Knew,

Grew, and Threw

In these sentences use the word that fits the mean¬

ing. When you have written the sentences, read them
aloud until the correct expression sounds familiar to
you.
1. Our plants_faster than the others.
2. The pitcher_a curve to the batter.
3. We_about the storm because of the radio news.
4. The beacon_a strong light into the sky.
5. As he_older, he liked to play baseball.
6. We_everyone who lived in our block.
7. All of the club boys_up together.
8. His mother_what he wanted for Christmas.
 GOOD USAGE 217

9. The hollyhocks_well along the fence.

10. The janitor_just when to ring the bell.

NEW WORD HABITS TO LEARN

A Pretest
This is a test of the new words to be mastered during
this year. If you can make a perfect score on the test,
and if you use these words correctly when you speak,
you will not need to study the practices.
Read these sentences carefully. Each one has an in¬
correct expression in it. Number your paper from 1 to
15. After each number write the sentence correctly.

1. The boys haven’t had none yet.

2. He said he didn’t want no reward.
3. There isn’t nothing left.
4. The man give his name and address.
5. A salesman says to Mother, “Did you order this?’9
6. The firemen painted the toys theirselves.
7. He wrote the letter hisself.
8. The cold weather brung snow.
9. The dog drunk all the cat’s milk.
10. The team busted two windows in a week.
11. Was we supposed to meet you?
12. They was intending to go swimming.
13. Mother, may I have a apple?
14. He don’t always play fair.
15. The books is new and interesting.

When you know which exercises your class needs to

practice first, you can work on them. What words will
you put in your notebook or on your card for your
own study?
218 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Double Negatives

Practice 9 — Avoiding Two Negatives:

An Oral Drill
Not, none, no, never, and nothing are called negatives.
If you use one negative in a sentence, you do not
need another. Say these six sentences aloud until they
sound natural:
1. He hasn’t any friends.
2. She doesn’t know anyone here.
3. They didn’t want any more.
4. There isn’t any use in complaining.
5. There weren’t any crayons left.
6. You can’t do anything about it.

The next six sentences have the same meaning as

the six just given. Notice that there is just one nega¬
tive in each one. Say these aloud.
1. He has no friends.
2. She knows no one here.
3. They wanted no more.
4. There is no use in complaining.
5. There were no crayons left.
6. You can do nothing about it.

Tell which word is the negative in each sentence.

Practice 10 — Avoiding Two Negatives

Answer the questions by filling in the blanks. Make
the answer say “No,” but be sure that there is only
one negative.
1. Did anyone telephone? There wasn’t_call
while I was home.
 GOOD USAGE 219

2. Will you send us some books? We haven't_

just now.
3. How much paint is there? There isn't_left.
4. Can't we help you? You can't do_to help.
5. Isn't there someone to carry the basket? There
__no one here.
6. Will you read a poem today? There_no poems
in this book.
7. Why didn't you bring lettuce? The grocer didn't
have_
8. Where are your mittens? I have_mittens.
I lost them.
9. Have you seen the boys? I haven't seen_yet.
10. Did you give the tramp food? He said he didn't
want___ food. He wanted money.

The Use of Gave and Came

Practice 11 — Using Gave and Came
He gave a large amount of money to the church.
He came early in order to get a seat.

In these sentences we are telling of something that

has already happened. That means we are telling about
past time. Sometimes give and come are used incor¬
rectly in sentences like those. If you pronounce the
words clearly, you will probably always write them
correctly.
Copy these sentences, filling in the blanks with gave
or came. Then read the sentences aloud, pronouncing
the words distinctly.
1. The officer g_the driver clear directions.
2. We c_through deep snow.
3. They g_three long blasts of the whistle.
4. The old lamp g_a clearer light than the new.
220 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

5. The letter c_in the morning mail.

6. His friends g_him good advice.
7. The storm c_during the night.
8. I thought they all c_together.
9. What g_you that idea?
10. The beacon g_a queer light.

The Use of Said

Practice 12 — Using Said Correctly:
An Oral Drill
Sometimes says is used incorrectly in place of said.
When you stop talking, you have said something.
Read these sentences aloud.
1. The newsboy said, “Extra! Extra!”
2. The clerk said that the package had been sent.
3. We could not hear what he said.
4. The children said the pledge.
5. We said the poem together.
6. He said we would meet on Tuesday.
7. Who said it was too late?
8. She said, “That isn’t my coat.”

The Use of Themselves and Himself

Practice 13 — Saying Themselves and
Himself Correctly

Themselves and himself are words that are sometimes

written incorrectly, but more often spoken incorrectly.
Pronounce them clearly. Be sure you sound the m
in themselves and in himself.
Read these sentences aloud with the right word in
the blank space.
1. Did the first-grade children build their house t_?
2. He didn’t do his work h_
 GOOD USAGE 221

3. They wrote the invitation t_.

4. He wanted the book for h_
5. Give them a chance to do it t_
6. He told me so h_
7. They took care of their garden t_
8. He wrote the check h_

The Use of Doesn’t

Practice 14 — Using Doesn’t Correctly
Doesn’t is the negative, or no form, of does.
Don’t is the negative of do.
You would say he does, she does, or it does; so you
should say he doesn’t, she doesn’t, or it doesn’t.
You would say I do, they do, you do, or we do; so
you should say I don’t, they don’t, you don’t, or we don’t.
Use doesn’t when you are speaking of one person or
thing. Use don’t when you speak of more than one,
except when you say I don’t and you don’t.
The pen doesn't write well.
One bird doesn't hunt for worms.
The room doesn't need cleaning.
The dog doesn't like being teased.
The flowers don't last long.
Those boys don't play fairly.
The children don't understand.
Pines don't lose their leaves in winter.

A. Make each of the following sentences negative

by using doesn’t.
Example: The newspaper tells a great deal about the storm.
The newspaper doesn’t tell a great deal about
the storm.
1. The baby gains weight as he should.
2. She likes the book we chose.
222 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. He reads very fast.

4. It makes much difference.
5. The captain wants to decide it.
6. The driver realizes how far it is.

B. In the ten sentences that follow put doesn’t or

don’t in each blank. Remember that doesn’t is used with
one and don’t is used with more than one. You can
use the do and does test on these sentences, too.
1. The circus_come often.
2. Mail pilots_take dangerous chances.
3. Wild animals_ever grow very tame.
4. The lake_freeze very early.
5. Bluejays_go south for the winter.
6. Eskimo dogs_mind the cold.
7. Our car_start easily.
8. Some churches_have pipe organs.
9. The children_read very fast.
10. The house_need painting.

The Use of Brought

Practice 15 — Using Brought Correctly:
An Oral Drill
A. Say these sentences several times:
1. The cold weather brought the snow.
2. We brought you the flowers.
3. The truck brought our furniture.
4. My uncle brought me a Japanese kimono.
5. The newsboy brought in an extra.

B. Answer these questions:

1. Did you bring the sandwiches?
2. When did he bring the news?
 GOOD USAGE 223

3. Didn’t you bring matches?

4. What did they bring in their baskets?
5. What did Dad bring for me?

The Use of Is and Are

Are is used when you are speaking of more than
one. We and they both mean more than one. Words
like brothers, books, chairs, people, and lamps mean
more than one. They are plurals, as explained in
Section VI on ^Punctuation.?? Are is used with plural
words.

Practice 16 — Using Is and Are Correctly

A. Say these sentences aloud several times:
1. The campers are glad to be home.
2. The Smiths are good neighbors.
3. When is Father going to start?
4. Why are the players so slow?
5. The children are sleepy already.
6. Aren't the boys playing soccer?
7. Where is the President going for vacation?
8. Why is the pilot afraid to try?

B. Use is or are in these sentences. Write out the

sentences and read them to the class.
1. We_giving a program on Memorial Day.
2. The clowns_always acting silly.
3. The magazine_very interesting.
4. My eraser_lost.
5. They_learning to print.
6. Pencils_supplied by the school.
7. The tickets_very cheap.
8. My wish_sure to come true.
224 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

9. The bus_waiting for you.

10. We _very grateful to you.

The Use of Broke and Broken

Broken is used only with a helping word, is, was, has,
have, or had. Busted is not good usage.

Practice 17—Using Broke and Broken:

An Oral Drill
Say these sentences several times aloud:
1. The wings on the plane must have broken.
2. The ball has broken the windshield.
3. Is the glass broken?
4. The record has been broken.
5. Who has broken the spring in the clock?
6. The lock was broken by burglars.
7. He has nearly broken the rod in two.
8. He must have broken his leg when he fell.

The Use of Drank and Drunk

Drank is another word that is used without a helper.
This is another of those words that has changed through
the ages. Long ago drunk was used without a helper,
but now the up-to-date form is drank.
The dog drank water thirstily.
All the children drank milk.
In the story the giant drank up the ocean.
The traveler drank tea in the Japanese home.
The camel drank only once in several days.

The older word, drunk, is still used with have, has, had,
or has been.
He has already drunk four glasses of lemonade.
The whole quart of tomato juice has been drunk.
The waiter spilled the water before I had drunk any of it.
 GOOD USAGE 225

He had drunk salt water while swimming in the ocean.

The children have drunk their chocolate milk.

Practice 18 — Using Drank and

Drunk Correctly
Copy these sentences, using the right word in the
blank space. Read the sentences when you have writ¬
ten them.
1. The car just_up gasoline on our trip.
2. The natives_fruit juices instead of water.
3. Even children_tea and coffee rather than water
in colonial days.
4. She thought the clown had_a gallon of water.
5. The cattle had_at the spring all summer.
6. When water gave out they_melted snow.
7. In Alaska we_condensed milk in our coffee.
8. The children had_a pitcherful of orangeade.
9. The hot sun_the little streams dry.
10. The birds_from the bird bath.

The Use of A and An

Sometimes in writing you may be careless about the
use of a and an. Usually you will not make the mistake
if you read aloud what you have written, because you
notice what is wrong when you hear the sounds. Be¬
cause words are easier to say in that way, an is used
before any word that begins with a vowel. You have
learned that a, e, i, o, and u are vowels. These eight
words all begin with vowels:
an eagle an address an ice box an object
an equal an offer an index an umbrella

A is used before all words beginning with consonant

sounds.
226 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 19 — Using A and An Correctly

Which word is the right word in each blank space?
1. Send_older boy when you send_message the
next time.
2. There was_odor of burning brakes.
3. garden is interesting hobby.
4. Ross is always_good sport and_unselfish friend.
5. careless mistake is annoyance.
6. For breakfast do you want_orange,_grapefruit,
or_apple?
7. It is only_little while since we had_ice storm.
8. _book is_friend during_illness.

A Final Test
When you have studied your own problems and all
the practices you need, take this final test.
Number your paper from 1 to 25. If there is an in¬
correct expression in the sentence, write the correct
form on your paper. If the words are all correct, write
C after the number.
1. You can come even if he don't.
2. They haven't none of the green ones left.
3. I think he give ten dollars to the Red Cross.
4. The doctor says, “Have you ever been vaccinated?”
5. The dogs took care of theirselves during the storm.
6. Each member brung a friend.
7. How much milk has been drunk by each child?
8. The hot water busted the glass dish.
9. Shall I take that as a offer?
10. They was too young for such hard play.
11. The chickens have ate all the feed that we put out.
12. The class have wrote a note of thanks.
13. This must be the road they took.
 GOOD USAGE 227

14. Was the lock broke yesterday?

15. School began the first Monday in September.
16. Has the lake been froze long?
17. The rabbit run into his hole.
18. The traffic rules ain’t very hard to remember.
19. Was you at the hobby show?
20. The boys knowed their poems well.
21. There is two copies of the book on the desk.
22. Can you believe the fault is ourn?
23. I don’t believe them stories.
24. The soldiers have saw horrible things.
25. I don’t believe he could have did it.
 SECTION Y

CAPITAL LETTERS

Capital letters are like markers. They mark a cer¬

tain person’s name, a certain city’s name, a certain
holiday, or a certain day of the week. We write about
four months or next month without capitals, but when
we write about March or December, we begin the name
with a capital letter. We write about a long river or
high mountains without capitals, but when we write
about the Tennessee River or the Blue Ridge Mountains
we use capital letters at the beginnings of the names.
You have already learned a number of rules for using
capital letters as markers. They are all listed for you
below. You will also find a test that will help you to
discover which rules you need to review.

REVIEW RULES FOR CAPITAL LETTERS

1. Begin the names of persons with capital letters.
We saw Ronald Harrison at the game.
The manager of the store is Mr. Lambert.

2. Write the word I always as a capital letter.

That is the best story I know.

3. Begin the names of the days of the week with capital

letters.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
228
 CAPITAL LETTERS 229

4. Begin the names of the months of the year with

capital letters.
January May September
February June October
March July November
April August December

5. Begin every sentence with a capital letter.

The game was over. The noisy crowd of boys and

girls rushed outside. They formed a long line and
marched down the street to celebrate their victory.

6. Begin the names of streets with capital letters.

The new church is on Central Street.

The traffic light on Jefferson Avenue and Fourth
Street is out of order.

7. Begin the names of states with capital letters.

The largest state in our country is Texas.

8. Begin the names of holidays with capital letters.

Armistice Day Flag Day Labor Day

Christmas Fourth of July Memorial Day
Easter Halloween Thanksgiving

9. Begin the names of countries with capital letters.

Young people from China and Japan come to our
country to go to school.

10. Begin the names of rivers with capital letters.

They camped near the Columbia River.

11. Begin every line of poetry with a capital letter.

Grasshopper Green is a comical chap;
He lives on the best of fare.
230 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

12. Begin the name of the people or the language of a

certain country with a capital letter.
Many English people speak German and French as
well as their own language.
13. Begin the first word of a quotation with a capital
letter.
The principal said, “ There will be no school on
Friday.”
14. Begin the names of cities with capital letters.
We drove from Chicago to Detroit in a day and a
half.

Review Test — Rules for Capital Letters

In the fourteen sentences that follow, capital letters
are needed. Each sentence breaks one of the fourteen
rules just given. Copy the sentences, using capital
letters where they belong. After each sentence write
the number of the rule that tells which word in the
sentence should be capitalized.
1. The traffic is always heavy on Saturday and Sunday.
2. Our school is on morrison street.
3. She invited nancy rand and lucy barrett to the party.
4. We drove from Chicago to Philadelphia.
5. Is ohio as large as Pennsylvania?
6. We always have programs for memorial day and
armistice day.
7. Schools usually begin in September and close in may
or june.
8. The grandparents of many americans have come
from england, france, italy, or germany.
9. Who sent the book that i received?
10. Did you see the pictures in the art room? they were
beautiful.
 CAPITAL LETTERS 231
11. The poem begins:
fluffy, fluffy snowflakes,
falling softly down,
looking like the feather bed
that grandmother stuffed with down.
12. Washington is on the bank of the potomac river.
13. The captain said, “everyone off! Boat leaves in five
minutes.”
14. Most swiss people speak the german, italian, or french
language.
PLANNING WHAT TO STUDY
From the test that you have just taken, and from
your other written work, you can find out just what
you need to study. You can find out which rules your
class should review and which rules each pupil needs
to study.
You can make a chart, either on the blackboard or
on a large sheet of paper. Down the left side of the
chart, list the pupils. Across the top list the sentences
and the rules. For every rule on which a pupil makes
a mistake in the test put a check mark on the chart.
Each sentence must be correctly capitalized and the cor¬
rect rule number given, or the sentence is marked wrong.
The record chart on the next page was made by the
pupils in one fifth-grade class and shows the rules that
they needed to study after they had taken the test.
The median, or middle score, made by this class was 10.
Can your class do better?

Practice 1 — Discussing the Review Test

Which sentence in the test might show this class that
they needed to study Rule 1, Rule 2, Rule 3, Rule 4,
or any of the other rules?
232 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Which rule do most members of this class need to

study? Which pupils need to study and practice on
Rule 7? On which rule does the class not seem to need
much more study?
Sentence, Ndvnb&rs
no. of
mis fo rtf
) 2- 3 4 5- (c 7 5 9 10 (1 12- f3 K
zit-h
pupd.
PupiU tiulel Vale (c T?ulel Fi/fetl f?u/e7 ffule B ?uM tfulet 1?ulez fPuleS ffuleil fk>ule/o ^ulel3
Ks. X X X X X X 7
n.H. X X X X 4
CM. 0
t>.D. X X X X 4
L\U. X X X X X 5
F.B. X X X X 4
By. X X 2
Zf X X X X X 5~
J.S. y 1
m. * X X X X X X X X 7
T.n X X X X 4
PC. 0
B.S. X l
J.lV. X X
v.s. X X X X X X X 7
wr 0
m X i
on
K X X 3
F.S. X X X X X X X X 9
X
dF X X X 4
X
riW. X X X X
X X X X X 9
M X /
KS. 0
PS. X X X V X X (?

% X 1
u X X X 3
M.5. X X X X X X X X X 9
jr
EEr X X X X X
d.U. V X X 3
(xP. V X X X X y X X X 9
No. of
errors or) L 4 10 2 11 7 2 II vT JZ ■2 7 If 10
?aci\ rule

CUss Record of h-rovS cvjTest

Rules that should be rei/ieuied by the class*. i3,1lt 7, I, 14

In what way besides the test do you think the class

might find out which rules they need to work hardest
on?
When you have taken the test, make a chart like
the one shown. Each pupil can put his own check
 CAPITAL LETTERS 233

marks on the chart below the rules he needs to study.

He will look at his test paper. If he has missed Sen¬
tence 1 in the test, he will put a check mark under Rule
3 on the chart. Which rule will he check for Sentence
7? For Sentence 3? Do you think it a good idea to
use initials, so that each pupil will know about only
his own mistakes?
Study your other written work to see whether or not
you use all these rules correctly.

REVIEW PRACTICES
When you have discovered which rules you need to
study, turn to the drill lessons that you need and work
hard upon them. You can make practice exercises for
one another in the way that will be suggested to you.
Not so much practice is given on some rules as on
others because boys and girls usually master some of
these rules perfectly by the time they reach the fifth
grade.

Practice 2 — Writing Names with

Capital Letters
Copy the five sentences that follow, using the right
capital letters for the beginnings of the names.
1. A famous children’s poet is_ames_hitcomb_iley.
2. _ichard_yrd has spent many months near the South
Pole.
3. One of the first men to explore this land was —aniel
__oone.
4. When he landed in America, _hristopher_olumbus
thought he was in India.
5. The man who made the first successful steamboat was
_obert_ulton.
Make other sentences like these for your classmates.
234 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Fill out these sentences with names that make the

sentences true. Remember to begin the names with
capital letters.
1. My favorite poet is_
2. The governor of our state is_
3. The president of our country is_
4. The author of a book I like is_
5. A classmate who lives near my house is_

Make five more sentences of this kind for your class¬

mates to complete with names.

Practice 3 — Writing I as a Capital Letter

Write short sentences answering these questions:
1. How old are you?
2. Where do you live?
3. What color eyes have you?
4. How tall are you?
5. How many brothers and sisters have you?

You needed to use the word I in answering most of

these questions. Did you make the mistake of writing
it as a small letter in any sentence? This is a rule on
which fifth-grade boys and girls almost never make
mistakes. This one short practice on it will probably
be enough to prove that you have the capital letter
habit for I.

Practice 4 — Writing the Days of the Week

with Capital Letters
Copy this paragraph, capitalizing the names of the
days of the week:
Our puppy has been lost since a week ago thursday. We
did not miss him until friday. Then when we began to look
 CAPITAL LETTERS 235

for him, we found that he had not eaten his supper thursday
night. We inquired of the neighbors and hunted for him all
day Saturday. On Sunday father said that if he had not re¬
turned by monday, we could put an advertisement in the
paper. The notice was run on tuesday, Wednesday, and
thursday. It was not until friday that we had a telephone
call from someone who had found him.
There were ten capital letters needed for the names
of the days. Did you make a perfect score?

Practice 5 —Writing the Names of the

Months with Capital Letters
Copy these sentences, filling in the blanks with the
names of the right months. Remember to begin the
names with capital letters.
1. The President is elected in_but he takes office
the next _
2. The first day of the winter season is in_
3. Labor Day is the first Monday in_
4. Our school year begins in_and ends in_
5. We have our coldest weather in_
6. The birds begin building nests in_
7. Roses usually bloom in_
8. The eighth month of the year is_

Write more sentences of this kind for your classmates

to complete with the names of months.

Practice 6— Beginning Every Sentence

with a Capital Letter
It would be easy to follow this rule perfectly if we
were always sure just where each sentence thought
began. Read the following paragraph to yourself.
236 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Pause after each sentence thought. Then copy it, using

periods and capital letters where they belong.
Many states in our county have celebrated their three
hundredth birthday they count their birthdays from the
time of the landing or settlement of the first white man
some Canadian cities claim to be much older than our cities in
1934 Quebec celebrated its four hundredth anniversary they
count the birthdays from the time when the Frenchman,
Jean Cartier, came to their part of the country.

Practice 7 — Writing the Names of Streets,

Cities, and States with Capital Letters
Every time you address a letter you need to remem¬
ber these uses of capital letters. Correct the addresses
below:
Mrs. J. L. Sears Mr. Henry Lamson
1629 drexel boulevard 5098 nineteenth avenue
Chicago kenosha
illinois Wisconsin
Miss Winifred Giel Miss Frances Mason
1502 eastern parkway 2 hathaway road
Schenectady Cambridge
new york massachusetts

Practice 8 — Writing the Names of Holidays

with Capital Letters
Copy the following sentences, completing each with
the name of a holiday. Remember to begin the names
with capital letters. Place a period at the end of each
sentence. You can make more sentences like these.
1. The first Monday in September is_
2. We always have a party on October 31 because that
is_
 CAPITAL LETTERS 237

3. The World War ended on November 11. That is

4. The President proclaims the last Thursday in No¬

vember as_
5. December 25 is_
6. January 1 begins the year; so it is called_
7. A Sunday in March or April each year is_
8. We plant trees and flowers on_
9. The fourteenth of June is celebrated as_
10. Our country’s birthday is the_

Practice 9 — Writing Holiday Greetings

Choose your favorite holiday and write a holiday
greeting to be sent to some friend when the day comes.
Your class can plan to write messages for every holi¬
day during the year. You can send these messages to
other classes. Each one in the class can send a greet¬
ing to someone, too. It can be in rhyme if you wish.
Remember the capital letters for the names of holidays.
Here’s a plant for Arbor Day,
It will bloom sometime in May.

Practice 10 — Writing the Names of Countries

with Capital Letters
Begin the names of countries in these ten sentences
with capital letters.
1. The famous canal between the Atlantic and the Pa¬
cific Ocean was built through panama.
2. In argentina wheat is raised. The climate is like that
of the united states.
3. Canada and england are parts of one great nation.
4. Buildings that have been standing more than two
thousand years can be seen in greece and italy.
238 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

5. Everyone who goes to egypt wants to see the pyra¬

mids.
6. Many musical instruments from germany are sold
in england and the united states.
7. We buy silk from japan and the people of japan buy
cotton from us.
8. Perfume made in france is sold all over the world.
9. Many factories are being built in russia.
10. Fishing is an important business in norway.

Practice 11 — Writing the Names of Rivers

with Capital Letters
Copy the following paragraph, beginning the names
of rivers with capital letters:
In pioneer days rivers were the principal highways of
travel. When the Erie Canal was built to make a waterway
from the hudson river to the Great Lakes, there was much
excitement and rejoicing. Flat boats and rafts carried goods
down the ohio river to the mississippi riv'er. From the West
goods were carried down the missouri river to the mississippi
river in the same way. Cities grew up along river banks
because of trade, like Pittsburgh, where the monongahela
river and the allegheny river meet to form the ohio river,
Washington on the potomac river, Albany and New York
City on the hudson river. Today river travel is not so im¬
portant because we have other swifter ways of traveling.

Practice 12 —Using Capital Letters in

Writing Poetry
You probably have a notebook in which you write
down favorite verses. A good plan is to copy into
your notebook one poem each week. Be sure to ar¬
range the lines as they were arranged by the poet and
to begin each line with a capital letter.
 CAPITAL LETTERS 239

Practice 13 — Writing the Names of the

People of a Country and of their
Language with Capital Letters
Fill in the blank spaces with the correct words. Be
careful to begin each word with a capital letter.
1. A person from Norway and the language he speaks
are both called_
2. The people of Denmark are called_and their
language _
3. The people of the United States are often called_
Their language is the_language. Canadians also
speak the_language.
4. The people of Switzerland are called the _
Their languages are those of the nations nearest them. The
people of the southern part speak_because they are
near Italy. In the northern part_ and_are
spoken because France and Germany are so near.
5. The people of Holland are called the_

Practice 14 — Writing Quotations Correctly

Copy these sentences, completing them by adding
the exact words that the speaker said. Be sure to begin
each quotation with a capital letter. Put quotation
marks at the beginning and again at the end of the
quotation.

Example: The conductor said,_

The conductor said, “Don’t forget your pack¬
ages.”

1. The traffic officer said to the driver,-

2. The newsboy called out,_
3. The radio announcer said,_
4. The chairman introduced the speaker by saying,-
240 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

5. The captain said to the team, __

6. At the garage the mechanic asked,_
7. When we stopped for gas, the attendant asked,_
8. The grocer replied,_

Practice 15 — Using Several Rules of

Capitalization Correctly
Copy this paragraph, using capital letters where they
belong.
The visitors from the united states who arrived in panama
on the day before Christmas were uncomfortably warm. It
was hard for them to believe that the grass could be green
and the flowers so beautiful in december. they walked down
front street, where there were many little shops full of Chinese
and Japanese handwork. Many of the people whom they
met spoke both english and Spanish. Suddenly one of the
tourists said, “look at the statue of columbus! Now i feel
as if i were back home in Chicago.”

Did you put in seventeen capital letters? There were

that many needed.

NEW RULES FOR THE FIFTH GRADE

In your geography study you will find many other
words that are capitalized, the names of mountains, of
lakes, of oceans, and of continents. The rules that
follow will cover all of those.
Rule 15. Begin with capital letters the geographic names
of certain parts of the world, like mountains, lakes, bays,
oceans, and continents.
We drove around the edge of Lake Champlain and crossed
the Adirondack Mountains.
Europe and Asia are really one big continent. Together
they are called Eurasia.
 CAPITAL LETTERS 241

On one side of Florida is the Gulf of Mexico, and on the

other side is the Atlantic Ocean.

Rule 16. Begin with capital letters the names of parks

or other famous places.

A bear put his paw through our tent in Yellowstone Na¬

tional Park.
Flowers were placed on the graves in Arlington Ceme¬
tery.
Did you see the airplanes in the Grand Canyon?

Rule 17. Begin with capital letters the words norths

south, east, and west, when they mean sections of the
country.
There are many winter resorts in the South.
Most of the largest cities in our country are in the
East.

Rule 18. Begin with capital letters all the important

words in the title of a book or magazine.

The hard part of using this rule correctly is to decide just

which are the important words. The first word is certainly
important. Little words like and, the, a, of, for, and to are
usually not the main words in a title. Notice in the titles
that follow which words are important enough to need capi¬
tal letters. They are the words that have real meaning, the
key words.
Sometimes all words are important.

The House on the Hill Hansel and Gretel

The Golden Windows A Letter to the King

Rule 19. Begin with capital letters words meaning God

or Heaven and the word Bible,

On the first Thanksgiving the Pilgrims thanked God for

caring for them.
242 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Let us ask the blessing of our Heavenly Father.

There is some musical poetry in the Bible.

Practices on the New Rules

Here are some practices on each of the new rules for
the fifth grade. Work on them until you are sure you
understand and can use the new rules.

Practice 16 — Writing Geographic Names

with Capital Letters
Copy these sentences, writing the names of rivers,
lakes, mountains, bays, oceans, and continents with
capital letters.
1. Early explorers sailed into the Chesapeake bay and up
the potomac river and thought they were finding a new way
to asia.
2. There is a waterway from Minnesota on lake superior
through lake huron, lake erie, and lake Ontario down the
st. lawrence river to the atlantic ocean.
3. The Great Divide is the high point in the rocky moun¬
tains from which some streams flow east into the branches
of the missouri and mississippi rivers and others flow west
to the Columbia and the Colorado rivers.
4. We followed the old Boone Trail in crossing the appala-
chian mountains on our trip east.
5. north america and south america are separated from
europe by the atlantic ocean and from asia by the pacific
ocean.

Practice 17—Writing Geographic Names in

Your State with Capital Letters
Write a paragraph about your own state, describing
the rivers, lakes, or mountains that are in it. Remem¬
ber to use capital letters for the geographic names.
 CAPITAL LETTERS 243

Practice 18 — Making a Geography Test

A committee of your class can make up a geography
test to give to the class. Make sentences telling clearly
about a certain mountain, river, lake, or bay, but leave
the name blank. See if the class can fill in the names,
always remembering the capital letters. Your sen¬
tences will have to be made so that only one name will
be correct in the blank. You can use your map in mak¬
ing this test.
Examples :

A large lake in Utah with no outlet is the_

(Answer: Great Salt Lake)

The only part of South Dakota that is not level plain is

the region of the_in the western part of the state.
(Answer: Black Hills)

Practice 19 — Writing the Names of Parks

and Other Famous Places with
Capital Letters
Copy these eight sentences, capitalizing the names of
parks or other places of interest that are mentioned.
1. We saw both the grand canyon and the petrified forest
while we were in Arizona.
2. There are many huge redwood trees in yosemite na¬
tional park.
3. At the foot of pikes peak in Colorado is the famous
beauty spot called the garden of the gods.
4. The Confederate memorial is carved on the side of
stone mountain near Atlanta.
5. In mammoth cave there are more than a hundred miles
of tunnels underground.
244 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

»6. People in New Hampshire will tell you to see the great
stone face in the White Mountains.
7. The huge dam on the Tennessee River is at muscle
shoals.
8. We drove into Virginia to see the rock called na¬
tural bridge.

Practice 20 — Writing North, East, South,

and West Correctly
When these words mean directions, they should be
written with small letters. When they mean parts of
the country, they should be capitalized.
Copy these sentences, using capital letters when they
are needed.
1. Many of our oranges come from farms in the south or
the west.
2. The first white people in this country settled in the
east.
3. Winter comes earlier in the north than in the south.
4. Irrigation has made rich farming land in the south¬
west.
5. We spent two months traveling through the east.

Practice 21 — Capitalizing Titles Correctly

Divide your class into three committees. One com¬
mittee can make a list of the animal stories in your
readers. Another committee can make a list of fairy
tales. The third committee can make a list of poems in
your readers. Check the lists to be sure that all im¬
portant words in the titles begin with capital letters.
Then put each list of stories on the board where the
other children can use it when they are looking for
stories and poems to read.
 CAPITAL LETTERS 245

Practice 22 — Writing Titles with

Capital Letters
These are the titles of different parts of a class book¬
let on “Farming in the United States.” Copy them,
using capital letters correctly.
1. truck and dairy farms
2. cotton plantations in the south
3. fruit farms of the southwest
4. the great wheat fields
5. sheep and cattle ranches

Practice 23 — Writing the Words Meaning

God or the Bible with
Capital Letters
Copy these sentences, capitalizing the words mean¬
ing God or the word Bible.
1. Moses said that god had sent him the Ten Command¬
ments.
2. They learned the lord’s Prayer in Sunday School.
3. The bible has been written in every language.
4. The prayer began, “Our father who art in heaven.”
5. The bible is often called “the holy word of god.”

Testing What You Have Learned

When you have studied all the capital letter rules,
you will be ready to take a test in capitalizing.

Capital Letter Test

In the ten sentences given, capital letters are some¬
times used where they are not needed and sometimes
left out where they are needed. The number at the
246 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

end of the line shows you how many changes you must
make to correct the capitalization in the sentence.
Copy each sentence, using capital letters correctly.
Example: The guide Said, “this is the road to mt. ver-
non.” (4)
The guide said, “This is the road to Mt. Vernon.”

1. There is a book of Poems called for days and days. (4)

2. we went across the english Channel by airplane to
paris. (3)
3. Glacier national park is in the rocky mountains. (4)
4. by november the Leaves have all fallen from the
trees in michigan. (4)
5. The Treasury Building in Washington is on Pennsyl¬
vania avenue. (3)
6. The President of the united states calls upon us to
give thanks to god for our Harvests on each thanksgiving
Day. (5)
7. We sang america, the beautiful on armistice Day. (3)
8. “we will go to lake placid when we are in new york,”
said the driver. (5)
9. There is always a Football game in pasadena, Califor¬
nia, on new year’s day. (6)
10. The early Spanish settlers in the west Built mis¬
sions. (3)

The highest score for this test is 40. What was your
score?
 SECTION VI

PUNCTUATION

Alice was reading the night letter that her mother

had just received from Uncle Todd. “How funny he
is, Mother! Why did he put
all those stops in a tele¬
gram?” she exclaimed.
“Those are periods. You
see a telegram is not divided
into sentences by using capi¬
tal letters and punctuation
marks as a letter is. Some¬
times the meaning would not
be clear without something
to show when each thought
is ended. Look again to see
if each stop doesn’t mark the
end of a thought. Uncle
didn’t make whole sentences because he was saving
words. Extra words in a telegram are expensive.”
Alice took the message and read:

HAVE RESERVED ROOM FOR YOU AND ALICE

AT PALMER HOUSE CHICAGO STOP DELAYED
IN ST LOUIS STOP ARRIVING SATURDAY
STOP WE LEAVE.FOR NEW YORK SUNDAY
EVENING AT SIX

247
248 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

“It certainly looks queer without any punctuation

marks and all in capitals that way,” said Alice.

REVIEWING PUNCTUATION RULES

You have already learned several rules for using
punctuation marks correctly. Before you learn the
new rules for the fifth grade, review the ones you
learned last year! The twelve rules that you should
know follow next.
Sentence-Ending Marks
1. A period belongs at the end of every declarative, or
telling, sentence.
The white fur of polar bears protects them because they
are not easily seen against the snow.

2. A question mark belongs at the end of every inter¬

rogative sentence, or question.
Why didn’t Byrd go to Little America in a steamboat?

3. An exclamation mark belongs at the end of every

exclamatory, or very exciting, sentence.
Why, the snow has hidden the road!

Abbreviations
4. A period should follow every abbreviation and all
initials.
Dr. S. L. Mr. Mrs. a.m. R.F.D.

Contractions
5. An apostrophe is used in place of omitted letters in
a contraction.
couldn’t isn’t I’ll he’d we’ll
could not is not I will he would we will
 PUNCTUATION 249

Possessives
6. An apostrophe is used to show that something be¬
longs to someone.
dog’s collar Mother’s wish child’s fault

Quotations
7. Quotation marks are used before and after the exact
words that someone speaks.
8. A comma separates the speaker’s words from the
rest of the sentence.
“That is the best football game I ever saw,” said Dad.
The clerk answered, “We do not have your size.”

Commas
9. A comma belongs between the names of a city and
its state.
Miami, Florida Baltimore, Maryland
Spokane, Washington Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
St. Louis, Missouri Sacramento, California
Remember Rule 9 in writing letter headings.
10. A comma belongs between the numbers of the day
of the month and the year.
February 6, 1937 July 4, 1776
11. A comma follows the greeting of a letter to a friend.
My dear Marvin, Dear Frances,
12. A comma follows the closing in a letter.
Sincerely yours, Lovingly yours,

A Review Test
Copy these sentences and the letter parts, putting
punctuation marks where they belong. There are two
250 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

sentences in the test for each of the twelve rules just

given.
1. Who thinks up all the funny things clowns say
2. We would have waited but we hadnt had lunch.
3. The big envelope was addressed to Mr J S Harris.
4. Pull hard! Wowee! That’s the biggest fish we’ve
hooked
5. Ice floats on water
6. Lindbergh worked in St. Louis Missouri.
7. The Panama Canal was opened August 15 1915.
8. (.Letter greeting) Dear Dad
9. This must be the babys birthday.
10. The man said, Will you let me work for my lunch?
11. (Letter closing) Your old friend
12. The conductor said “This is your station.”
13. The train leaves at 9:35 p m on Sunday.
14. What a blinding light that car throws
15. (Letter heading) Osage, Iowa
August 7 1937
16. (Letter greeting) Dear Mother and Dad
17. 111 take his books to him.
18. Are these Fathers fish poles?
19. Federal highways are always kept open, said the man.
20. There is a great temple at Salt Lake City Utah.
21. The announcer said “Tune in at 6 o’clock for the
news.”
22. Palm trees grow in warm climates
23. Is the library open on Sunday
24. (Letter closing) Very sincerely yours

When you have taken the test, decide which rules

your class needs to study. Each of you should pick
out the rules that you need to practice, too. Some
review practices are given on the pages that follow.
 PUNCTUATION 251

Review Practices
Practice 1 — Using Sentence-Ending Marks
Copy these sentences, using the right ending marks.
1. Thirty-five miles is the city speed limit
2. Is the Empire State Building the tallest building in
the world
3. How far can one see from this hill
4. The homes of the colonists were often cold
5. It is dangerous to touch an electric light switch with
wet hands
6. Do you know why a vacuum cleaner picks up dirt
7. Artificial silk is made from wood
8. Stop! That’s the police siren
9. Very fine linen cloth is made in Ireland
10. Does sugar cane grow in your state

Practice 2 — Using Sentence-Ending Marks

This paragraph needs to be separated into sentences.
When you copy it, put the right ending marks after
each sentence and begin each new sentence with a
capital letter.
A* thermometer shows differences in temperature because
of the liquid in it in the long glass tube and the bulb at the
bottom is mercury or some other liquid that expands when
warmed it also shrinks when it cools if the room is hot the
liquid has to rise in the glass tube because it has no other
place to go the hotter the temperature the higher the liquid
rises marks along the side of the tube show just how warm
the air is
Practice 3 — Writing Abbreviations
You need to know only a few abbreviations, because
most words are now written out completely.
252 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Write these sentences, using abbreviations for the

underlined words. If you do not know the abbrevia¬
tion, find it at the end of this practice or in your dic¬
tionary. Remember the period after each abbreviation.

1. The train leaves at 4:35 in the afternoon.

2. This flag was given to us by members of the Daughters
of the American Revolution.
3. Send a letter to your senator in Washington, District
of Columbia.
4. The package was mailed collect on delivery.
5. The letter was sent to Mister Lester Bardeen.
6. Put Rural Free Delivery 6 on our letters.
7. He lives in Saint Joseph, Missouri.
8. Superintendent J. L. Martin has charge of our schools.
9. The building belongs to the Young Men’s Christian
Association.
10. Doctor Dunn called on us.

The underlined words in the ten sentences are usually

abbreviated as follows:
p. m. or p. m. Mr.
D. A. R. St.
C. 0. D. Supt
D. C. Y. M. C. A.
R. F. D. Dr.

Practice 4 — Writing Abbreviations in Arithmetic

You may use abbreviations in your arithmetic prob¬
lems. Learn to write them correctly and to use periods
after them.

ounce (or ounces) — oz. pint — pt.

pound — lb. quart — qt.
ton — T. gallon — gal.
 PUNCTUATION 253
minute — min. dozen — doz.
hour — hr. inch — in.
month — mo. foot — ft.
year — yr. yard — yd.
peck — pk. square foot — sq. ft.
bushel — bu square yard — sq. yd.

The abbreviation is the same when there are more

than one; for example, 6 qt. or 7 bu.
Be ready to write from dictation the abbreviations for
these measures:

45 minutes 1 peck
7 dozen 5 inches
2 hours 3 pounds
2 months 4 ounces
8 square feet 6 tons

Practice 5 — Understanding Other

Abbreviations
You will often see abbreviations that you need to
understand, although you may not use them often
yourselves. Bring to your class a list of abbreviations
that you see about town or in papers and magazines
and do not understand. Talk them over in the class.
You may have in your list some of these:

A. A. A. — American Automobile Association

A. F. L. — American Federation of Labor
Assoc, or Assn. — Association
Co. — Company
F. O. B. — Free on Board (price placed on freight car, but
with transportation to purchaser not paid)
M. D. — Doctor of Medicine
R. R. — Railroad
254 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

U. S. A. — United States of America

U. S. S. R. — Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
Your dictionary will tell you the meaning of other
abbreviations.

Practice 6 — Using the Apostrophe

in Contractions
Copy these five sentences, changing the underlined
words to contractions. They will sound more natural
when you have changed them. Remember the apostro¬
phe. If you do not know the right form to use, find
it in the list after the sentences.
1. Rob said, “ If Howard Mason does not stop teasing my
dog, I am going to give him a great big black eye.”
2. “It is a long way from here. You would save time by
telephoning,” said the officer.
3. “We are not members,” Joe said.
4. “They do not intend to stay, so they need not pay,”
said the man.
5. “You will not forget, will you? I did not make a note
of it',” she said.
doesn’t I’d haven’t shouldn’t
I’m I’ll needn’t isn’t
won’t it’s you’d aren’t
don’t didn’t you’re hasn’t

Practice 7 — A Dictation Lesson in

Contractions
Write these sentences as your teacher reads them
with the contraction that is needed in each blank
space.
1. He_see well (does not)
2. _you go? (could not)
 PUNCTUATION 255

3. The bell_rung, (has not)

4. Why_the boys written? (have not)
5. The train_late, (is not)
6. You_as tall as I. (are not)
7. _give her my book. (I will)
8. Those bears_harm anyone, (do not)
9. _like to see a real Eskimo. (I would)
10. _been chosen captain, (you have)

Practice 8 — Using Quotation Marks

Correctly
Copy these sentences, putting quotation marks be¬
fore and after the words of the speaker.
1. The postman said, There are three cents due on this
letter.
2. The clerk asked, How many yards do you want?
3. What number did you call? asked the operator.
4. The President said, Thank you for my birthday
party.
5. The librarian answered, That book has just come in.
6. The referee called, Out on third!
7. Use the large map, said the teacher.
8. Let me stay up a little longer, begged the little boy.
9. Turn right at the next corner, said the man.
10. The directions said, Keep cover on tight.

Practice 9 — Writing Quotations Correctly

There are three things to remember in writing quo¬
tations :
1. Begin the quotation with a capital letter.
2. Put quotation marks before and after the words
quoted.
3. Use a comma to separate the quotation from the rest
256 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

of the sentence (unless a question mark or an exclamation

mark is needed).
Complete these eight sentences by adding quotations:
1. The little boy at the door said, “Wouldn’t you like to
buy a magazine?’7
The woman answered_
2. “You look lost,” said the old man to the little boy.
“Where do you live?”
_said the little boy.
3. “You dropped your glove. Here it is,” said the clerk.
The woman said_
4. “Will you mail this letter for me, please?” asked
Mother.
_answered Ralph.
5. “What is your favorite book, Esther?” asked her
cousin.
Esther answered quickly_
6. “Oh! I’ve spilled it. I’m so sorry!” said the guest.
_the hostess said.
7. “Just how much do you weigh?” my father asked.
__ I said.
8. “Boys and girls like different books, don’t they?”
asked Uncle.
Dan said_

Practice 10 — Using Commas in Letters

First see if you can remember the four rules for
commas in letters. Think what words belong in the
blanks in these two sentences:
Commas are used between the names of the-and
the-, and between the-and the- They
are also used after the-and the-
Next copy the following letter, using commas where
they belong.
 PUNCTUATION 257

728 Cherry Street

Grand Rapids Michigan
April 14 1935

Dear Mr. Maxwell

The boys and girls of our class want to thank you
for talking to us last Tuesday about furniture. The
things you told us helped us to understand the indus¬
tries of our state. That is what we are studying about
just now.
Yours sincerely
Georgia Farrell

NEW THINGS ABOUT QUOTATIONS

Divided Quotations
The quotations that you have been writing have had
the speaker’s name either at the very beginning or at
the very end. Sometimes the speaker’s name is given
between parts of the quotation, like this:
“I’m sure, very sure, that he won’t go,” said Mr. Albright,
“but I’ll ask him.”

Leave out said Mr. Albright and read the quotation

as a sentence. That is the part that needs quotation
marks around it. The marks after go and before but
are needed to separate the rest of the sentence from
the quotation. This is called a divided quotation. What
divided it? Because the last part of the quotation is not
the beginning of a sentence, this part begins with a
small letter.
258 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 11 Putting Quotation Marks

—

in Divided Quotations
In these eight sentences put quotation marks where
they belong. The capital letters and the other punctu¬
ation marks are given correctly in the sentences.
1. Thank you, said the newsboy, for giving me a ride.
2. I wouldn’t go, said Father, if I were you.
3. We can push it, said the driver, until it starts.
4. There is much danger of accidents, said the officer,
when cars back up quickly.
5. What a surprise, exclaimed Mother, to find it raining!
6. Don’t go that way, the man directed, because that
road is rough.
7. This is only a food shop, said the clerk, not a restaurant.
8. In just a few minutes, the announcer said, you will
hear the orchestra.

Quotations Several Sentences Long

Sometimes in stories several sentences make up one
quotation. If all these sentences of the speaker are
quoted together, only one set of quotation marks is
needed, like this:
The agent said, “Your train leaves Chicago at 1:00 p.m.
You will arrive in New Orleans the next morning. That is
the new Panama Flyer.”

Practice 12 — Writing a Story with

Conversation
You will need to use quotation marks most fre¬
quently when you are writing stories. Copy this story
about the robin, putting quotation marks where they
belong.
 PUNCTUATION 259

a robin’s experience

One day I was sitting on the edge of a bird basin. I was

singing happily to myself when a woodpecker flew down
where I was. I was angry when I saw him, for I had found
that bird bath first. I said, You go away. This is my place.
The woodpecker answered, It’s no more yours than mine.
I’ll stay now that I’m here.
So we began to fight. Now neither of us wanted to get
wet. All we wanted was to sit and sing. While we were
fighting, we both fell into the water. As we shook our w^et
heads, we both said at the same time, All right, you can
stay, but I’m all through.

NEW THINGS ABOUT THE COMMA

The Comma with the Name of the
Person Addressed
A comma is used to set off the name of the person to whom
someone is talking.

We sometimes call this the name of the person ad¬

dressed. That is a new meaning for the word addressed.
You may say that you address your mother when you
speak to her.
1. Isn’t there a beautiful view from this hill, Dad?
2. Operator, you must have rung the wrong number.
3. I want two quarts of milk today, Mr. Kennedy.
4. It can’t be true, Darrell, or I would have heard it.

Notice that in Sentence 4 two commas are needed

because the name is between parts of the sentence.

Practice 13 — Using the New Comma Rule

Copy these eight sentences. Separate the name of
the person spoken to, or addressed, from the rest of the
260 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

sentence with a comma. In which sentences will you

need two commas?

1. Let me see the book Jean.

2. Is it colder outside now Father?
3. Your car will be hard to start Sir if you leave it out in
the cold.
4. Just leave the bags here Porter.
5. Is the next corner Van Buren Street Conductor?
6. Mr. Gilbert have you any work for me?
7. Paul lend me your knife, please.
8. Can you tell me Miss Larson where I can get the
flowers?

Practice 14 Using the Comma with the

—

Name of the Person Addressed

Make sentences in which the first person mentioned
speaks to the second person mentioned. Be sure to
use in your sentence a name for the second person. Use
commas where they belong.
Example : shoe clerk (speaker) — customer (spoken to)
Yes, Madam, we do have shoe cleaner.

1. doctor — patient 6. patient — dentist

2. little girl — school nurse 7. pupil — janitor at school
3. teacher — school visitor 8. boy — playmate
4. driver of a car — officer 9. girl — uncle
5. boy — dog 10. radio speaker — audience

The Comma with Yes and No

A comma is used to separate the word yes or the word
no from the rest of the sentence.

Yes, we have lived here seven years.

No, that book is not in the library now.
 PUNCTUATION 261

Practice 15 — Using the New Rule for the

Comma with Yes and No
Copy these sentences, using the new rule.
1. Yes we are having a play in the auditorium.
2. No the lake has not frozen over yet.
3. Yes there are real sea horses in the aquarium.
4. No Eskimo children do not have milk to drink.
5. Yes scenes in the movies look very real.
6. Yes I can see the deer’s tracks now.
7. No real Oriental rugs are not made by machinery.
8. Yes we are selling Christmas seals at our school.
9. No it doesn’t pay to drive too fast.
10. Yes the mail plane stops here every day.

Practice 16 — Using the Comma with

Yes and No Again
Write the answers to these questions. Begin every
sentence with yes or no. Remember to put the comma
after yes or no each time.
1. Do you have any brothers?
2. Do you read the newspaper every day?
3. Are you ten years old?
4. Do you get ten hours of sleep every night?
5. Can you swim?
6. Do you like to drink milk?
7. Are there ever good reasons for being tardy?
8. Do you listen to concerts over the radio?
9. Would you like to spend a whole summer camping?
10. Can you play baseball?

A NEW PUNCTUATION MARK

You need to know another mark, a hyphen (-).
When you haven’t room to write all of a word at the
262 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

end of a line, you may divide it between syllables and

put the end of the word at the beginning of the new
line. A hyphen is used to show that the word is not
complete.
Example :

Every year the Junior Red Cross sends corre¬

spondence from the children of America to those
in foreign lands.

The word should be divided only between syllables.

If you do not know how the word is divided into sylla¬
bles, look it up in the dictionary. The dictionary shows
four syllables for correspondence (cor re spond ence).
How else might the word have been divided in the
sample sentence?
A word of one syllable should never be divided at the
end of a line.

Practice 17—Using the Hyphen When

Dividing Words
Look over the last paragraphs or stories that you
wrote. Did you divide any words at the end of the
line? See whether you have divided them by syllables.
Put a hyphen after the first part. See whether you
wrote one-syllable words all on one line.

Practice 18 — Using the Dictionary to

Find the Syllables
Use the dictionary to find out how these words might
be divided. Write the words in syllables. Can you
tell by pronouncing a word how many syllables it has?
received terrify
little understand
 PUNCTUATION 263
appreciate pioneer
enjoying kingdom
elephant editor

POSSESSIVES

The Apostrophe with Possessives

These two sentences mean the same thing:

The orders of the doctor must be followed.
The doctor’s orders must be followed.

They are different ways of showing that something

belongs with, or belongs to, someone. This is called
possession. The word doctor's is called a possessive be¬
cause it names the person to whom something belongs.
The orders are the orders of the doctor. Notice that
an apostrophe and s have been added to the word
doctor to make it possessive.

Practice 19 — Making Sentences

with Possessives
Change each of these eight sentences so that the
word underlined will be a possessive. Copy the second
sentence of each pair of sentences, filling in the blank
with a possessive. Use ’s when you change the sentence.

1. The voice of the announcer was husky and low.

The_voice was husky and low.
2. The address of the President was printed that night.
The_address was printed that night.
3. The prediction of the weather man was right.
The_prediction was right.
4. The rules of the librarian keep the reading room quiet.
The_rules keep the reading room quiet.
264 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

5. Election of the chairman is the main business today.

The_election is the main business today.
6. The care of the baby is very important.
The_care is very important.
7. The bedtime of a small child should be early.
A small_bedtime should be early.
8. The telephone number of every child is in the office.
Every_telephone number is in the office.

SINGULARS AND PLURALS

All the possessives that you wrote in Practice 19
are of the same kind. The word that you made pos¬
sessive meant one person. It was singular because it
meant one. You can remember that from the word
single.
Words that are not singular mean more than one.
They are plural words.
Here are three lists showing the singulars and the
plurals of some common words.
1 2
Singular Plural Singular Plural
year years story stories
teacher teachers baby babies
car cars penny pennies
cousin cousins fairy fairies
inventor inventors library libraries
lake lakes lady ladies
girl girls 3
boy boys Singular Plural
reporter reporters box boxes
flag flags grass grasses
playmate playmates glass glasses
toy toys loss losses
word words tax taxes
 PUNCTUATION 265
Look at List 1 and make your own rule for writing
the plurals of most words. You can add to List 1 by
suggesting other words that belong to it.
Rule 1. The plurals of most words are formed by simply
adding_to the singular word.

Look at List 2. What is there alike about the end¬

ings of all these words? Something that you proba¬
bly did not notice is that just before the y ending in
every word is a consonant, r, b, n, d, etc. In List 1
there are words ending in y, but the letter before y is a
vowel, not a consonant.
The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. All
other letters are consonants.
Rule 2. To form the plural of a word ending in y with a
consonant just before it, change the y to i and add es.

Look at List 3. Those words end in a hissing sound

made by x or s. To make it easier to say these words,
another syllable is added for the plural by the es ending.
There are other words that add es for the plural: po¬
tato— potatoes; tomato — tomatoes. It is easier* just to
memorize the plurals of the words in List 3 than to try
to make and remember another rule.
The spelling of the plurals of the eight words that
follow should be learned, also.
Singular Plural Singular Plural
child children deer deer
woman women sheep sheep
man men ox oxen
foot feet mouse mice

You will need to know these singular and plural spell¬

ings in order to write the possessives correctly.
266 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Your Dictionary Helper

If at any time you cannot remember how the plural
of a word is spelled, your dictionary will help you.
You will find plurals given in this way:
Es'ki mo . . pi.—mos.
de liv'er y . . .; pi. —eries.

You add the plural ending given to the first part of

the word. Learn to use your dictionary whenever you
are not certain of the spelling.

Making Singular Words Possessive

The rule for making a singular word possessive is
very simple:
To form the possessive of a singular word, add an apos¬
trophe and s (*s) to the word.

Practice 20 — Writing Possessives of

Singular Words
Write these sentences correctly, using the possessive
form of the word given in the parentheses at the end of
each sentence.
1. The_horns are shed once a year, (deer)
2. A_shell is his greatest protection, (turtle)
3. A telephone_voice should be clear, (operator)
4. The_skis are too long for him. (boy)
5. Every_work in school is important, (day)
6. Accidents are the car_responsibility, (owner)
7. Crowds made the traffic_work hard, (officer)
8. In early days taxes were the_property, (king)
9. A good education is every_right, (child)
10. The pony knew the little_voice, (girl)
 PUNCTUATION 267

Making Plural Words Possessive

There are two rules for making plural words posses¬
sive:
1. To form the possessive of a plural word that ends in
s, add an apostrophe only (’).
2. To form the possessive of a plural word that does not
end in s, add an apostrophe and s (’s).

The hard part of using these rules is to decide just

how the plural word is spelled when it is not possessive.
As you say the sentence, the possessive s sound may
confuse you.
The players’ suits were covered with mud.
The plural form is players; so Rule 1 is used.
Most plural possessives follow Rule 1, because most
plural words end in s.
The children’s wishes should be followed.
The plural form is children; so Rule 2 is used.
Put the men’s wraps in the other room.
The plural form is men; so Rule 2 is used.

Practice 21 — Making Possessives of

Plural Words
Change these ten sentences by making possessives
of the underlined words. Write the sentences with
the possessives. Be sure you use the right rule.
Example : The expenses of the musicians were paid.
The musicians’ expenses were paid.
1. The names of the authors are Smith and Jones.
2. The manes of the horses were braided for the Horse
Show.
268 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. The caution of the drivers prevented accidents.

4. The help of the farmers was asked for work on the
highway.
5. Much of the time of the janitors is spent in heating
the schools.
6. Have you written the names of the men in alpha¬
betical order?
7. I often wonder at the patience of telephone operators.
8. Pilots always listen for the reports of the weather men.
9. The dolls are being dressed at the club meetings of
women.
10. The invitations of the children were sent to their
parents.

Practice 22 — Writing from Dictation

As your teacher reads the sentences with the posses-
sives in them, write them correctly.
As you write the sentences, ask yourself these ques¬
tions: (1) Does the plural of that word end in s?
(2) Where shall I put the apostrophe?
1. The_bags were left at the station, (travelers)
2. Our_suits are blue, (players)
3. All of the_skates were rusted, (children)
4. We did two_work in one. (years)
5. All car_licenses are on record, (owners)
6. That is the factory_clubhouse, (workers)
7. The inspector visited the_barns, (farmers)
8. The cooking will be the_work, (women)

A Punctuation Test
When you have finished studying all the new rules
and reviewing all the old rules, take this test.
Some of these sentences need quotation marks, com¬
mas, hyphens, apostrophes, or sentence-ending marks.
 PUNCTUATION 269
The number at the end tells how many marks are
needed. Quotation marks go in pairs and are counted
as one mark.

1. A monument to war pigeons was built in Brussels

Belgium. (1)
2. Please Mother may I go to camp with Lorrie? (2)
3. Will you be here when I come back asked Perry. (2)
4. The President said the Red Cross will help the
drought sufferers. (2)
5. Yes we expect to send the fifth-grade pupils letters
to Japan. (2)
6. “Why can’t we sell the papers here” asked the
boy (2)
7. No children I havent time for a story now. (3)
8. Rev Oscar Ruell talked at the Boy Scouts meet¬
ing. (2)
9. (A letter heading) Crouse North Carolina
April 18 1936 (2)
10. Dear Mr Grayson (A letter greeting) (2)
11. (A letter closing) Yours very truly
Edward L Lamson (2)
12. We cannot understand the chairmans direction (2)
13. The elephants are kept inside during the winter said
the keeper. (2)
14. Yes the boat sailed December 19 1934 (3)
15. Wouldnt you like to visit the painters home (3)

When you have taken the test, decide which rules

you need to review again. A perfect score on this test
is 32. What was your score?
 SECTION VII

SENTENCES

Read this report of a telephone conversation and

decide what is wrong with Don’s part of it:

Don: Hello, Mother. This is Don. Would you — don’t

you think — I mean, may I ask Larry to go to the movies
with us this afternoon? You said, don’t you know, you said
I could if I wanted to, sometime.
Mother: Why, yes, Don, ask him if you wish. Or perhaps
you’d rather wait until Friday and have him stay all night
with you. Then you could both play in your workroom on
Saturday morning.
Don: He can’t then. Anyway, I’d rather — this is a good
show. I guess — wouldn’t you — I guess we’ll go tonight.
Mother: You mean that you and Larry will both meet
me then at four o’clock?
Don: Yes, that’s it. Good-by, Mother.

CLEAR AND COMPLETE SENTENCES

Do you really know when a sentence is clear? Some¬
times speakers do not tell enough in their sentences to
270
 SENTENCES 271
make themselves understood. They leave out a word
or two that may be important. Which of these sen¬
tences is better?
Wouldn’t ride if it weren’t raining so hard.
I wouldn’t ride if it weren’t raining so hard.

Sometimes a speaker starts his sentences in one way,

hesitates, and then finishes in another way. Which
of these sentences is the clearer?
That isn’t the — this way is shorter than that.
This is the shortest way.

If you take time to think what you are going to say,

you will use clearer sentences.

Practice 1 — Dramatizing Conversation

Do you ever have trouble understanding what
people say to you over the telephone? If someone
starts a sentence, stops, and then begins in a different
way, the meaning is not clear. Clear sentences are
necessary in all conversation and writing, but they are
especially important in telephoning.
1. Let two pupils in your class play that they are
Don and his mother. Give a conversation between the
two, using clear sentences. Notice how much better
and more quickly Don can make his meaning clear if
he does not repeat and change his sentences.
2. Play that you are returning to the grocery store
a bottle of sour cream that has been delivered to
your home as sweet cream. Let one person play the
child who returns the cream and another the grocery-
man.
3. Let one pupil be a railroad station agent. Let
272 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

another be someone who is asking the time of trains to

a neighboring city. Ask the price of the ticket, also.
You can make up many other little scenes to show
how important it is to be able to speak and write in
clear sentences. Here are some scenes to play:
Explaining to your teacher why you were absent
Giving a policeman your name and address if you are lost
Asking a librarian where to find a book
Answering a stranger who asks directions of you in the
hall of your school building

Practice 2 — Making Clear Sentences

These sentences were taken from the paragraphs that
boys and girls wrote in criticizing their school paper.
They are not clear and complete. Make them so.
Example: Some of the sentences, the way they began, I
don’t like.
I don’t like the way some of the sentences began.

1. The spelling, some of the spelling has not been so good.

2. There were some, a few mistakes in spelling, not as
many as last time.
3. Improved in language and writing.
4. My criticisms for this issue are because we have better
stories and more interesting words used.
5. Be careful try to write better by thinking before you
write.
6. Book reports so short and always complimentary.
7. To make our stories more interesting we’d better try.
8. Poems should be our own or else not use them.

Sentence Puzzles
Sometimes sentence puzzles will make us realize how
important it is to make the meaning of a sentence clear.
 SENTENCES 273

Notice how the meaning comes out clearly in the fol¬

lowing sentence when it is put in order:
frost warns weather fruit growers bureau the of
The weather bureau warns fruit growers of frost.

Practice 3 — Working Out Sentence Puzzles

Put the words in these ten puzzles into clear sen¬
tences. Remember to capitalize the first word and
to use a period at the end of each sentence.
1. states grows in the northern wheat
2. climate a trees orange warm need
3. dangerous a storm is flying in
4. leaves the red and frost yellow turns
5. in beautiful are bloom plants cotton
6. woods the rangers forest fire protect from
7. desert marked the was the road across
8. France raised perfume are in flowers for
9. western used on are tractors farms some
10. Denver is miles of many east Chicago

OTHER SENTENCE FAULTS

Younger children sometimes leave their sentence
thoughts unfinished. Then their sentences are in-
274 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

complete. Another fault that they have is joining too

many thoughts together. That makes a rambling sen¬
tence. You have been working hard to make your
sentences clear and complete and to have just one
main thought in each one.

Practice 4 — Reviewing Sentences

This is a review exercise to see if you know good sen¬
tences. There are fifteen sentences — some good, some
incomplete, and some rambling.
Number a paper from 1 to 15. If the sentence is not
complete, write N after the number of the sentence.
If it is a good sentence, write G after the number. If
it is a rambling sentence with two thoughts in it, write
R after the number.

Examples: 1. Because the water was cold

2. The spring rains make the river rise
3. Glass is made from sand and the leaves made
the soil rich
Answers: 1. N
2. G
3. R

1. While cleaning the fish

2. Seeing Andy’s cabin ahead we went on
3. Because I have business to attend to
4. You are to be given riding lessons by the stable keeper
5. Animal stories are my favorites and I like to go to the
movies, too
6. A museum is full of interesting things and I have some
Indian arrowheads
7. At the back of the house, in our garden
8. Do you know how rayon is made
9. When airplane travel is as cheap as travel by train
 SENTENCES 275

10. I discovered a bird’s nest and there are some baby

rabbits in the cage
11. The teams are waiting for the whistle
12. In Crystal Cave we saw queer-shaped rocks
13. Where the shadow of the tree falls
14. At first the horse was frightened
15. The score was nothing to nothing and Bill was play¬
ing in his first big game that day

PUNCTUATING SENTENCES
When you know just where each sentence begins and
ends, you can easily put the capital letters and periods
where they belong.

Practice 5 — Showing Where Sentences

Begin and End
Read this paragraph. Decide where the different
thoughts begin and end. Copy the paragraph, dividing
it into sentences. Begin each sentence with a capital
letter and put a period at the end. There are five sen¬
tences in the paragraph.

the early Greek people did not understand what made an

echo they heard their voices come back to them from the
hillsides they thought that a wood nymph was mocking
them we know that sound waves bounce back from a flat
surface as a rubber ball does these returning waves strike
our ears and make us hear again the words we spoke a second
or so before

Proof-Reading
Whenever you write a story, read over your paper
carefully to be sure that you have capitalized and
punctuated each sentence correctly. Everyone is likely
276 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

to make mistakes in his first writing. If you read it

again, you may find careless little mistakes that you
can easily correct.

A FOURTH KIND OF SENTENCE

You know how to write and punctuate three kinds
of sentences: those that tell something, those that ask
something, and those that show excitement or surprise.
Each of these sentences has a name.
The words declare and tell mean almost the same
thing. A telling sentence is called a declarative sentence.
We all use many more declarative sentences than any
other kind. A declarative sentence is followed by a
period.
Interrogate is a long word that means ask. An asking
sentence is called an interrogative sentence. An in¬
terrogative sentence is followed by a question mark, or
interrogation mark.
Exclaim means speak with excitement. That is why a
sentence that expresses surprise, fear, great joy, pain,
or some other kind of excitement is called an exclama¬
tory sentence. It is followed by an exclamation point.
Notice the different ending punctuation marks in
the following examples:

Declarative Sentence:

Sound is made by air waves striking against our ears.

Interrogative Sentence:

Were people traveling in automobiles fifty years ago?

Exclamatory Sentence:

A parade! Hurry or wTe’ll miss it!

 SENTENCES 277
There is still another kind of sentence that you hear
and use often. It is the sentence that is an order, a
command, or a direction. This is called an imperative
sentence. It is followed by a period. It is really just
another kind of telling sentence.
Your mother may say, “ Answer the telephone and take
the message for me, please.”
Your teacher often says, “Put your books away.”
You read on a box of matches: Keep in a dry, cool place.
The directions for your fire drill are:

KNOW WHAT EXIT YOU ARE TO USE.

WALK, DON’T RUN, IN LINE.

These are all imperative sentences. They give some¬

one directions or orders.

Practice 6 — Making Imperative Sentences

Say the imperative sentence that would probably be
spoken or written in these situations:
1. The fans watching a ball game call out to the pitcher.
2. Mother comes into your room and finds your clothes
lying on the floor.
3. A road has been blocked off for repairs. Directions
have been put up to send drivers on a road a block to the
right.
4. In a traffic jam the officer gives orders to drivers.
5. In telephoning a grocery order, your mother gives
directions about leaving the groceries if she is not at home.
6. A class posts a notice giving other children directions
for bringing food for Thanksgiving baskets.
278 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

7. The chairman of a safety club reads to the class the

rules for playground safety.
8. A pupil gives a school visitor directions for finding the
principal’s office.

We speak many more imperative sentences than we

write.

Practice 7 — Writing Imperative Sentences

In writing imperative sentences we need to remember
the capital letter at the beginning and the period at
the end.
Here are some places where imperative sentences
will probably be needed. Write one of the paragraphs
suggested:

1. Directions on how to build a fire out of doors

2. Directions that your class should follow during fire
drill
3. Instructions for finding a book in the library
4. Directions for the use of your library table during
school hours
5. Directions for the courteous use of a telephone
6. Directions for Christmas mailing
7. Rules for your class baseball games
8. Safety rules for crossing streets

Practice 8 — Recognizing Four Kinds

of Sentences
You need to be able to recognize the four kinds of
sentences in order to use the correct ending mark after
each one.
Copy these sentences, using the correct ending marks.
Write the kind of sentence after each one. Notice the
 SENTENCES 279

spelling of these four words: declarative — interroga¬

tive — exclamatory — imperative.

Example: Who sent that new book to our class? (inter¬

rogative)

1. Give mo six books for our first grade, please

2. Did you see the bulletin board notice
3. The Indians in different parts of our country had
different ways of living
4. What! There isn’t a single piece left
5. Why is cotton grown only in the South
6. Trained glove cutters settled in the northern part of
New York where Gloversville now is
7. How serious and important those penguins look
8. Trains, houses, hotels, and theaters are now air-cooled
during the summer
9. Do mail planes average one hundred miles an hour
10. Books, books everywhere! What a big library

BUILDING CLEAR, COMPLETE SENTENCES

OF YOUR OWN
It is much easier to recognize mistakes in sentences
and correct them than it is to write or speak good sen¬
tences. The practices that you have had should help
you to build good sentences of your own. Begin your
work with this practice in finishing sentence thoughts.

Practice 9 — Completing Sentences

Finish these sentence beginnings in such a way that
the thoughts will be clear and complete:

1. The leaves fall from the trees when_

2. Many animals stand perfectly still when hunted be¬
cause
280 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. Early American cities were built on rivers because

4. Birds fly south in the winter so that_

5. We have snow rather than rain whenever_
6. Railroads are making their new cars of steel because

7. Long-distance telephone rates are cheaper at night

because_
8. Cotton will not grow in the North because_
9. Trees are useful to man because_
10. The American Red Cross helps wherever_

SUMMARY SENTENCES
In your reading of geography or history, you often
want to tell in one sentence what you have read in a
paragraph or two. Such a sentence is a summary sen¬
tence. It should tell the important thought of the
paragraph.
Paragraph:
When lightning strikes in sand, it does a peculiar thing.
The heat melts the little particles of sand. They run together
until they make a rock of glass. Sometimes the melted sand
makes a long icicle of crystal down in the ground.
Summary Sentence:
If lightning strikes sand, the heat melts the particles of
sand and forms glass.

Practice 10 — Making Summary Sentences

Make summary sentences for these three paragraphs:
1
Most Eskimos light their winter homes with lamps. The
lamps are made of cup-like stones. The wicks are fiber from
 SENTENCES 281

plants. The wicks burn in the stone lamps filled with seal
oil. Such lamps do not give much light.
2
The DO-X was a very large airplane. It had twelve big
motors on its top wing. Several of the motors could stop, but
the great flying boat would still go. The plane could carry
more than a hundred passengers besides the crew.
3
The game of donkey baseball is very amusing. The
donkeys are trained for the game. Each ball player rides
a donkey around the bases. Of course, the donkeys are not
so eager to make home runs as the players; so they take their
time. Sometimes the donkeys even carry the players in the
wrong direction, away from the bases. The player coaxes
and guides the donkey until they get around the diamond
and make a score.

Using Summary Sentences for Outlines

If you are making a report on what you have read,
you will find your summary sentences useful as an
outline. These sentences will help you to make a report
in a clear, understandable way.
In a study of farming in our country a report was
made on the topic “ Different Types of Farms in Our
Country/7 These four summary sentences were used
for the different parts of the report.
1. The large plantations of the South, often covering
more than a thousand acres, grow cotton, tobacco, and sugar
cane.
2. In the hills or the dry plains of the land just east of
the Rocky Mountains large ranches produce sheep, cattle,
and horses that feed on the land not suitable for growing
crops.
282 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

3. Near all large cities are truck farms, every small spot
of which is used for growing vegetables and small fruits that
can be sold in the city.
4. Another type of farming that is profitable near cities
is the dairy farm, from which the butter, cream, and milk
can be taken into the city fresh each day.

After each summary sentence the speaker went on to

explain in an oral paragraph more about that type of
farm.

Practice 11 Making an Outline of

—

Summary Sentences
Using your geography or your history book, make
an outline of three good summary sentences for a re¬
port to your class.

Choose a topic of your own, or use one of these topics:

Colonial Schools Travel in the Mountains
Making Shoes Growing Fruit in California
Growing Wheat Travel in Pioneer Times
The Desert Explorations in the Northwest

Using your summary sentences, give an oral report

to your class. It will have three parts because you
have made three topic sentences.

JUDGING YOUR OWN SENTENCES

Whenever you write a letter or a paragraph, read
over what you have written to see that you have used
good sentences. If you read your sentences aloud, you
will easily discover any poor sentences. Your ears are
usually better detectives than your eyes.
Ask yourself the five questions in the chart of stand¬
ards given on the next page.
 SENTENCES 283

Standards for Good Sentences

1. Have I used one sentence for each idea?

2. Is the meaning of each sentence clear?
3. Is each sentence complete, not just part of a
sentence?
4. Have I begun each sentence with a capital
letter?
5. Have I used the correct ending mark after each
sentence?
 SECTION VIII

PARAGRAPHS

As you drive along the main highway, do you notice

that when you come to a place where the highway
number changes you see a sign giving the new route
number or name clearly? If you watch the signs
closely, you can travel anywhere in the country with¬
out losing your way.

In writing a story or a report, you should mark your

highway of thought just as clearly. Each change of
thought should begin a new paragraph. The indenta¬
tion marks the change in your thought highway.
Just as the first sign on a new highway is very clearly
marked, so the first sentence of a new paragraph should
be a guide to tell clearly what the thought of the
paragraph will be.

PARAGRAPH SIGNS
These two paragraphs are. from a letter written to a
friend in Wisconsin by someone who was visiting in
284
 PARAGRAPHS 285

Panama at Christmas time. Notice how the thought

changes when the second paragraph begins. The in¬
dentation marks a new thought and a new paragraph.
My geography lessons on climate in the tropics seem very
real to me just now. The day after the boat left New Orleans
the air felt warm. Almost over night we seemed to run into
summer. It was queer to see everyone in dark, heavy clothes
one day and on the next day to see the same people on deck
in light suits and dresses. We were all just like chameleons
and had to look twice to recognize each other. While we
enjoyed the warm air and tried to avoid being sunburned,
we received radio messages about your zero weather.
Imagine seeing the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean
in the same day! It is only forty-three miles across the
Isthmus, and trains cross several times a day. The trip
through the Panama Canal takes seven hours. We left our
boat at Cristobal on the Atlantic side and took the train
across to Panama City on the Pacific side. Queerly enough,
we traveled south instead of west to cross the continent.

PARAGRAPH DETOURS
When you are driving, you like to go as quickly and
directly as you can to your goal. You do not like de¬
tours because you feel that they take you in a round¬
about way. Detours in your paragraphs are just as
annoying to your listeners. Keep on your main thought
highway.

Practice 1 — Recognizing Detours in Paragraphs

In each of the four paragraphs that follow there is a
detour that takes the reader off the main highway of
thought. Which are the sentences that do not belong?
Remember that you want to stick to the main thought
of the paragraph.
286 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

1
As we shot up in the elevator to the top of the Empire
State Building in New York, I began to realize how high one
hundred two stories are. We walked out upon the balcony
from which we could look in all directions over the great city
below. I caught my breath because of the distance I could
see, and because the air seemed thin away up so high. I
marveled at the huge tower of steel and concrete under me.
We went aboard an ocean liner while we were in New York.

2
The Indians were friendly toward the earliest settlers in
America. They taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and
how to hunt the deer for food. If the Indians had been hos¬
tile, they could have destroyed the tiny settlement, but they
allowed the pioneers to build their homes and plant crops on
the land that had been their hunting ground. King Philip
later became the enemy of the whites.

3
A simple test will tell you whether or not silk has been
wroven with lead or other metals to make it seem of better
quality than it really is. Flowered silks are pretty. Burn a
sample of the material. If the silk burns up completely as
if it wrere paper, it is probably pure silk. If a hard substance
is left in the ashes, the material is not pure silk.

4
On our way home from the picnic Oliver stumbled and
sprained his ankle. He could not walk, and wre had to get
to the nearest farmhouse to telephone for a doctor. We had
taken bacon and eggs for our lunch. We made a chair for
Oliver by crossing our hands and taking hold of each others’
wTists. Our progress was slow, but we were able to reach
the farmhouse and secure a doctor’s services before the pain¬
ful ankle had swollen badly.
 PARAGRAPHS 287

Making Paragraphs without Detours

You know how much easier it is to find the mistakes
in what others do than to do something just right
yourself. You have been finding the detours in other
highways of thought. Now, try making some para¬
graphs that have no detours.

Practice 2 —Writing Paragraphs That Keep

on the Thought Highway
Choose one of the exercises suggested here or write a
paragraph on a topic of your own choice. Be careful
to have no detours.

1. Imagine that you are writing a letter to your uncle.

You have just seen a motion picture that you liked. Tell
him what it is and why you liked it.
2. In a geography class you might have a paragraph re¬
port to make on one of these topics:

Gathering Sap for Maple Sugar

Cutting Granite Blocks
Tanning Hides for Shoes
Loading an Ocean Liner

Write a paragraph so that you can read it to the class.

3. A citizenship club in school has many class problems.
Sometimes the members give talks to the class on certain of
these subjects. Plan paragraphs for a talk on one of the four
topics that follow. Remember that detours would keep
your listeners from getting your main thought clearly.

Being Saving of Materials

Keeping the Halls and Grounds Clean
Taking Care of New Books
Welcoming New Pupils in the School
288 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

KEEP MOVING
On a trip you like to keep moving right along. You
are impatient if you miss a sign and have to go back
over part of the road to get on the main highway.
Paragraphs, too, should keep moving. Readers and
listeners do not like to have ideas repeated. They
want to keep moving on the thought highway.
When we talk, we are more likely to put in sentences
that do not keep the thought moving than we are when
we write. Sentences that repeat ideas are tiresome.
Learn to say things clearly, so that you will not need
to repeat.

Practice 3 —Locating Sentences That Do

Not Keep Moving
In these three paragraphs find the sentences that
slow up the main thought by just repeating ideas.

1
We noticed that Iowa roads are marked to show drivers
where they should not pass other cars. Before a curve there
is a sign NO PASSING FOR 700 FEET. In the center of
the pavement is a yellow line for the distance that you are
not supposed to pass. You are not supposed to pass for that
distance. Those signs are a big help in preventing acci¬
dents.
2
You can go behind the waterfalls if you visit Niagara
Falls. After being dressed in raincoats, hoods, and boots,
you get into an elevator that takes you down a long way to
a tunnel. You go down a long way. You follow the guide
through this rocky hall until you come to an open space
 PARAGRAPHS 289

where a large window has been cut through the rock wall.
From there you can look out at the great shower of water
that comes dashing down from hundreds of feet above you.
Yet there you are safe and fairly dry behind the waterfall.

3
Since pine and cedar trees are getting scarce, we decided
not to buy Christmas trees every year but to plant our own.
We bought two small cedar trees and planted one on each
side of the front door. We put them on each side. Each
year we string them with colored lights that we turn on
every evening between Christmas and New Year’s. We
like them better than our old Christmas tree inside the house
because other people seem to enjoy these trees with us.

Practice 4 — Giving Oral Paragraphs That

Keep Moving
Plan to talk to your class on one of these six topics
or on one of your own. If you have the habit of re¬
peating ideas, try hard to keep your main thought
moving.
When we were not dressed for the weather
When I was glad I was on time
A surprise party that I did not like
An unnecessary illness
Warned just in time
The letter I forgot to mail

JUDGING PARAGRAPHS
You have learned many things about making good
paragraphs. Can you use what you have learned? To
show that you can, you must be able, first, to write or
give orally a paragraph that meets all the standards,
290 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

and second, to judge your own and your classmates’

paragraphs by these standards:

Standards for a Good Paragraph

1. Every paragraph should have one clear main

thought.
2. The first sentence should tell clearly what the
paragraph is about.
3. Every sentence in the paragraph should be about
the main paragraph thought.
4. Every sentence should add to the paragraph topic
in some way, not just repeat the thought of an¬
other sentence.

Practice 5 — Using the Standards in

Judging Paragraphs
Here are four paragraphs. The first is a good para¬
graph judged by the standards just given. The second
fails to meet one of the standards, and the third another.
Can you tell which standard is not met by each of them?
The fourth paragraph is poor on two of the standards.
Which are they?
1
Usually white people do not go into the very hot or the
very cold regions of the earth unless there is some valuable
thing there that cannot be found in temperate lands. Traders
went into the jungles of Brazil to get rubber before rubber
plantations had been developed. Ivory and precious hard¬
wood are brought from the jungles of Africa. Men go into
the cold Arctic lands to get furs from animals that cannot
 PARAGRAPHS 291
live in warmer lands. The difficulty of living and traveling
in such places makes the products more costly and profit¬
able than products that are found everywhere.

2
Block printing was used in bookmaking before real print¬
ing from type began. Each page of the book had to be
carved on a wooden block, so that the letters or pictures
would stand out. The Egyptians carved pictures on the
walls of their pyramids. Ink was then rubbed over the
block and a piece of paper laid upon it and pressed down
carefully. In this way many copies of each page could be
made from one biock. We think this was a slow process
because of the long time spent in carving each block, but it
was better than copying each book by hand as earlier people
had done.
3
Many cotton mills are being built in the South. As we
drove over the miles and miles of concrete highway in North
Carolina, we noticed how many of the farmhouses were
covered with rambler roses. They made even the shabbiest
homes look beautiful. You can go by bus from Raleigh up
and down hills until you reach Asheville in the Blue Ridge
Mountains. Asheville is a famous pleasure resort in both
summer and winter.
4
I can hardly wait for Christmas morning to see what
gifts I have. Just before Christmas the firemen in our town
ask the school children to bring to the fire station all their
toys that are broken or that they do not want. They ask
for broken toys. The fire station looks like Santa Claus’s
workshop. The firemen are busily hammering, carving,
and painting wagons, trains, and other toys until they look
like new. They look shiny and new. These playthings are
292 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

delivered on Christmas Eve to hundreds of poor children

who would not have gifts if it were not for the kindly, busy
firemen.

There follow several topics. Pick out the best topic

for each of the three good paragraphs just given. For
which paragraph are you unable to choose a topic be¬
cause the paragraph does not have one main thought?
Cotton Mills
Block Printing
Hunting Elephants in Africa
Modern Ways of Making Books
Products from the Arctic
Copying Books by Hand
Roses in the South
My Christmas Gifts
Santa’s Helpers — the Firemen
Christmas Dinner for Poor Children
White Men in the Hot and Cold Regions of the Earth

CRITICIZING YOUR OWN PARAGRAPHS

Whenever you have to write a paragraph, look over
your first copy of it to see whether it meets all four
standards for a good paragraph.
Your oral reports should be good paragraphs, too.
If you prepare carefully what you plan to say, you will
find it easier to speak in good paragraphs. When you
do not know what you want to say, you are likely to
repeat sentences or wander from your main thought.
Can you meet all the standards in your reports?

PARAGRAPHING CONVERSATION
Find in your reader a story that has much conversa¬
tion in it. Study the paragraphing. Answer these
 PARAGRAPHS 293

questions by finding out for yourself just how real

authors paragraph their stories.
1. Does a paragraph have more than one person’s con¬
versation in it?
2. If a person has a very short speech, even one word, is
there a new paragraph for that, too?
3. If the same person says two or three sentences, are
they usually in the same paragraph?

Practice 6 — Making a Rule

Make your own rule about conversation paragraphs.
State very clearly and simply the rule you and your
class will follow.

Practice 7 —Using the Rule about

Paragraphing Conversation
Rewrite these two jokes in paragraphs as they should
be written.
1
The parents were showing off their three-year-old son
for visitors. They said to him, “What animal brings milk,
Junior?” Promptly Junior smiled and answered proudly,
“The Manley Dairy Horse.”

2
A little boy watched his father getting ready to go to band
practice. Finally he said, “When I grow up I’m going to
play in the band, too.” “You are! What are you going to
play — a drum?” asked the father. The little boy did not
answer. “A flute?” Still there was no answer. “Maybe
you will play a big horn,” said the father. “No, I’m just
going to play the tune,” said the little boy.
294 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 8 — Writing Conversation

in Paragraphs
Write the conversation suggested by one of these
five situations. Be sure to make a new paragraph for
each person’s speech.
1. A class newspaper reporter talks with the principal
about news to be written for the paper.
2. One player on a team objects to a ruling of the referee.
The other players explain to him why he must obey the
referee.
3. A girl finds a little boy lost in a department store.
She talks to the floorwalker about what to do with him.
4. Two children talk about a motion picture as they come
out of the theater.
5. A clerk and a child discuss what book to select as a
gift for a child who is ill.

TELLING THINGS IN ORDER

Telling things in order is a valuable habit if you ex¬
pect listeners or readers to follow your thoughts. Two
good rules that will help you to write your paragraphs
in order are these:
Tell things in the order in which they happened.
Make general statements first and give examples later.

Practice 9 — Deciding on the Best Order

Rearrange the sentences in these two paragraphs in
the best order. Read each one as you think it should
be written.
HOW TO USE THE RADIO

Adjust the amount of sound by moving the volume control

button. Swing the dial to the number of the station that
 PARAGRAPHS 295

you want. Turn on the switch. Wait until the radio warms
up and the sound comes.

PREVENTING SICKNESS

Some persons take cold because they do not dress properly

for the weather. They let little colds go until they become
serious. Many illnesses are unnecessary. Children often
play with other children who have contagious diseases like
measles or whooping cough. Some persons eat too much or
get overtired and then become sick because of these things.

Practice 10 — Putting General Statements First

Make paragraphs by giving examples that might
follow these general statements in a clear, complete
paragraph.
1. Carelessness causes many accidents.
2. People are sometimes deceived by advertising.
3. The farm products of the South furnish much of our
winter food.
4. The World’s Fair in Chicago showed a century of
progress in many things.
5. Animals supply us with much of our clothing.

PARAGRAPHS AND OUTLINES

Some reports make two or three paragraphs because
that many points under the main topic are discussed.
For a report that will make more than one paragraph,
an outline is very useful. It reminds you to keep on
the main thought and to tell things in order.
In a report on Benjamin Franklin you might have
three paragraphs, one on each of these points:
1. His training and work as a printer
2. His inventions and discoveries
3. His work for his country
296 ELEMENTARY ENGLISH IN ACTION

Practice 11 — Making an Outline for

Your Paragraphs
Suggest topics for two or more paragraphs on each
of these subjects. Number your topics 1, 2, and 3 for
an outline, as in this example:

Yellowstone National Park

1. The springs and geysers

2. The wild animals in the park
3. Hotels and camping places

Subjects:
Supplying a City with Milk
Modern Ways of Heating Homes
What Children Can Do in their Leisure Time
The Values of an Education

Talk over your outlines. Does each point you have

given belong to the main subject? Is each point differ¬
ent from the others, so that the paragraphs will not be
alike? Change your outlines until the class is satisfied
with them.

Practice 12 —Giving a Report from a

Paragraph Outline
Choose one of the subjects mentioned in Practice 11
and prepare a report on it of two or three paragraphs.
Each point in your outline should make a paragraph
of four or five sentences. Be sure that each sentence
in the paragraph is on the topic for the paragraph in
your outline.
Give your report to the class. They will discuss how
well you followed your outline.
INDEX
 INDEX
Abbreviations, 248, 251-254 “Building the Beavers’ Lodge,”
Accent marks, 181 113-114
Addresses, writing, 189-191; ex¬ Business letters, writing, 44, 74,
amples of, 190, 191 117-118, 141, 207-208; ex¬
Ain’t, 215 amples of, 44, 74, 117, 141,
Air, the, 55-57 205, 208; standards for, 45;
“Air Mail, The,” 14-16 discussing, 203-204; study¬
Alphabetical arrangement, 177— ing, 203-205; test of, 205-
178, 184-185, 189 206
An, 225-226
Animals, wild, 107-119 Came, 219-220
Announcements, writing, 36-37, Capitalization, 228-246; rules
161 for, 228-230, 240-242; in
Apostrophe, in contractions, names of persons, 228, 233-
248; in possessives, 248, 263- 234; of word /, 228, 234;
264 in days of week, 228, 234-
April Fool’s Day, 100-104 235; in months, 229, 235;
Are, 215-216, 223-224 in sentence beginnings, 229,
Authors, cards for, 176; names 235- 236, 278; in names of
of, 177 streets, 229, 236; in states,
229, 236; in holidays, 229,
“Beginning of Halloween, The,” 236- 237; in names of coun¬
22-23 tries, 229, 237-238; in names
Bibliography, making a, 42-44, of rivers, 229, 238; in poetry,
54-55, 57, 179-180 229, 238; in languages, 230,
Book reviews, 69, 75-76 239; in quotations, 230, 239-
Booklet, making a, 51, 101, 119, 240; in names of cities, 230,
170 236; test of, 230-233, 245-
Books, locating information in, 246; in geographic names,
8, 12, 24, 26, 27-28, 42-44, 240-241, 242-243; in names
54-55, 73, 86, 88, 94-95, 102, of parks, 241, 243-244; of
126-127, 145, 151, 171-186; north, south, etc., 241, 244;
list of, 12, 27-28, 57, 59, 86, in titles, 241, 244; in sacred
88, 95, 179-180; learning names, 241-242
about, 68-80; judging, 77-78; Card catalog, using the, 176—
test of use of, 186 179; cards for, 176, 177
Bookstore, 68-80 Chairman, a committee, 46-47
Broken, 214, 224 Chittenden, William Law¬
Brought, 222-223 rence, 62
299
300 INDEX

Christmas, 27-29 Eaten, 214

Cities, 135-146 Exhibit, preparing an, 17, 21-
Citizens, being good, 16-17, 22, 65-66, 97, 100-101, 130
127-129, 145-146 Experience, telling an, 100, 108,
“City Rain,” 63 121, 124
Code, Morse, 82-83 Explanation, giving an, 23, 24,
Comma, with city and state, 60-61
249; in dates, 249; in letters,
249, 256-257; in quotations, Field, Rachel, 63
249, 255, 257-259; with per¬ File, letter, 188, 189
son addressed, 259-260; with “First Royal Post, The,” 3-4
yes or no, 260-261 Frozen, 214
Committee work, 14, 41, 44, 45,
46-49, 56-57, 63, 70-71, 128- Gave, 219-220
129, 145, 192, 194 Gone, 213-214
Contents, table of, 59, 88, 102, Grew, 216-217
171-172 Guide words, 185
Contractions, 248, 254-255
“Contrary Mary,” 101-102 Halloween, 22-24
Conversation, 4, 13, 107, 134; “Hiawatha’s Brothers,” 119
standards for, 109; writing, Himself, 220-221
292-294; see also Discussion Holidays: Labor Day, 18-22;
Courtesy, about letters, 194- Halloween, 22-24; Thanks¬
195; in criticism, 212-213 giving, 25-27; Christmas, 27-
Criticism, giving, 212-213 29; Washington’s Birthday,
Current events, 34-35 94-99; April Fool’s Day,
100-104; Mother’s Day, 104-
Description, writing a, 6-7, 137 106
Diacritical marks, 182 Hyphen, 261-262
Diary, keeping a, 53
Dictation, 254-255, 268 Illustrations, using list of, 175
Dictionary, using the, 13, 54, Imperative sentences, 276-278
138, 180-186, 262-263, 266 Improving your work, 39, 90
Discussion, 5-6, 8, 19, 23-24, 31, Index, using an, 59, 88, 172-174
39, 49-50, 68-69, 70, 77-78, Indian messages, 5-6
89, 93, 99-100, 123, 136, 140, Information, getting, 8, 42-44,
149, 180-181, 191, 194, 203- 54-55, 70-71, 72, 86, 88, 94-
204, 209-210, 213, 231-232; 95, 124-125, 127, 141, 154
standards for, 50 Interviews, 26, 71, 126, 143
Doesn’t, 221-222 Introducing, a committee, 48;
Done, 213-214 guests, 104, 106
Dramatizing, 26-27, 71, 79-80, Invitations, writing, 104, 106,
90-91, 102-103, 271-272; 132, 158-159, 196-198; ex¬
with puppets, 152-153; with amples of, 104, 132, 158, 197
marionettes, 157-158, 159- Is 223-224
160 “It isn’t only flakes that fall,”
Drank, 224-225 64
 INDEX 301
“Jack, the Puppet,” 153-154 Outlines, using, 41-42; making,
45-46,174-175, 281-282, 295-
Key line, 183 296
Key words, 94
Knew, 216-217 Pantomime, 79-80
Paragraphs, 284-296; writing,
Labor Day, 18-22 4-5, 6, 10, 19-20, 53, 60, 66-
Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 60 67, 110, 124, 145, 146, 287,
Letters, writing, 15, 29, 44, 66, 289, 293, 294; examples of
74, 104, 117-118, 132, 141, pupils’, 19, 33, 109, 290;
143-144, 154, 159, 189-190, topics for, 88; study of, 284-
192, 194, 198-199, 201-202, 296; faults in, 285-287, 288,
207-208; to secure informa¬ 290-292; judging, 285-287,
tion, 15-16, 44-45, 74, 117- 288-292, 294-295; standards
118, 141, 205; examples of, for, 290; conversation, 292-
16, 44, 74, 84, 117, 132, 141, 294; order in, 294-296; out¬
193, 199, 200, 202, 205, 208, lines for, 296
257; standards for, 45, 192; Pictures, writing by, 5; in news
asking favors, 67, 154, 198- reports, 5-6; collecting, 17,
201; of invitation, 105, 107, 62, 96-97, 100-101, 136-137
132, 196-198; importance of, Pilgrims, 25-27
187-188; file for, 188-189; Plans, making, 24, 30-32, 105,
addressing, 189-191; ex¬ 142, 161
changing, 189-191, 192, 194; Play, writing a, 159-161
forwarding, 190-191; criti¬ Plurals, forming, 264-266; pos-
cizing, 192-193; courtesy sessives of, 267-268
about, 194-195; arrangement Poems, reading, 58, 60, 62, 63,
of, 195-196; of appreciation, 64, 101-104, 153-154; writ¬
201-202; business, 203-206 ing, 64
“Lucky Escape, A,” 115-116 “Pony Express, The,” 8-10
Possessives, 249, 263-264, 266-
Mail service, 6-17 268
Maps, list of, 176 Postal system, beginnings of the,
Margins, 37, 166-168, 170 3-5, 6; English, 6-7; Amer¬
Marionettes, 153-162; making, ican, 7-17
155-157 Posters, making, 77, 161
Messages, sending, 3; electrical, Program, planning a, 21-22,
81-93 103-104; a radio, 30-39, 93
Messengers, Indian, 5-6 Pronunciation, 181, 182-183
Meyer, Zoe, 113-114 Proof-reading, 275-276
Mother’s Day, 104-106 Punctuation, 247-269; rules for,
248-249; of sentence endings,
Negatives, double, 218-219 248, 251, 275, 278; of abbrevi¬
“New Pupil, The,” 121-123 ations, 248, 251-254; of con¬
News, giving programs of, 30- tractions, 248, 254-255; of
39; standards for, 33 dates, 249; of possessives,
Notes, taking, 95 249, 263-264, 266-268; test
302 INDEX

in, 249-250, 268-269; of ing, 282-283; standards for,

quotations, 249, 255-256, 257- 283
259; of city and state, 249, Serl, Emma, 115-116
256-257; in letters, 249, 256- Seton, Ernest Thompson, 110-
257; of person addressed, 112
259-260; of yes or no, 260- Singular words, 264; possessives
261; of divided words, 261- of, 266
262 Standards, for telling a story, 13,
Puppets, 147-153; making, 149- 51; for a short talk, 21; for
150; books about, 151 news flashes, 33; for a busi¬
ness letter, 45; for a report,
Quotations, 249, 255-256; di¬ 49, 99, 139; for discussion,
vided, 257-258; conversation, 50; for an interview, 71; for
258-259 using the telephone, 90; for
conversation, 109; for letters,
192; for sentences, 283; for
Radio, news, 30-39; programs, paragraphs, 290
93 Stories, telling, 11-12, 28-29,
“ Rainbow, The/’ 58 50-51, 59, 63-64; standards
Rassmussen, Carrie, 153-154 for, 13, 51; reading, 104
Record, keeping a, 53, 78-79, Summaries, making, 35, 88, 280-
211-212 282
Reports, making, 8, 11-12, 14, Sun, the, 57-59; myths about
26, 27-28, 35-36, 37-38, 46- the, 58-59
48, 56-57, 59, 63, 72, 86, 93, Syllables, dividing, 183-184
95-96, 98-99, 112, 115, 126-
127, 129, 138-139, 143, 145; Talk, giving a, 21, 23, 47-48, 62,
examples of pupils’, 38, 47- 69, 132; standards for, 21;
49, 98, 128; standards for, see also Reports
49, 99, 139; criticizing, 98 Taken, 214
Rossetti, Christina G., 58 Telegrams, writing, 83-85; ex¬
Rules, making, 24, 195, 293; for ample of, 84
arranging written work, 170 Telegraph, story of the, 81-84
Telephone, story of the, 86-88;
Said, 220 using the, 90, 125
Schools, 120-134 Telling stories, 11-12, 28-29,
Sechrist, Elizabeth H., 23 51, 59, 63-64, 100, 108, 116;
Seen, 213-214 standards for, 13, 51
Sentences, 270-283; topic, 4-5; Tests, 186; of business letters,
beginning, 6; writing, 24, 97, 205-206; of word habits, 210-
136-137; summary, 35, 280- 211, 217, 226-227; of capi¬
282; complete, 270-272, 279- talization, 230-233, 245-246;
280; puzzle, 272-273; clear, making capitalization, 243;
272, 279-280; faults in, 273- of punctuation, 249-250, 268-
275; test of, 274-275; punc¬ 269; of sentences, 274-275
tuating, 275, 278; four kinds Thanksgiving Day, 25-27
of, 276-277, 278-279; judg¬ Themselves, 220-221
 INDEX 303
Threw, 216-217 Were, 215-216
Titles, making, 100-101; plac¬ “Wild storms and wants and
ing of, 168-169 dangers,” 62
“Tom Sawyer,” 147-148 Wind, the, 59-62
Topic sentence, 4-5 “Wind, The,” 60
Travel, the story of, 40-51 Words, new, 13, 53-54, 137—138;
Trip, taking a, 14, 70, 142-143 key, 94; guide, 185; using
Turner, Nancy Byrd, 101-102 good, 209-227; changes in,
209
Usage, good, 209-227; improv¬ Workers, 18-22
ing, 210, 211-212; test of, Writing, a paragraph, 4-5, 6, 10,
210-211, 217, 226-227; see 20, 60, 66-67, 110, 124, 145,
also Words 146, 287, 289; a description,
6-7, 137; a report, 14, 48-49;
Vocabulary, 13, 53-54, 137-138, a letter, 15-16, 29, 44, 66, 74,
209-227 104, 117-118, 132, 141, 143-
Voting, 31 144, 154, 159; news notes,
32-33, 34, 37-38; announce¬
“Wahb, the Grizzly, on Vaca¬ ments, 36-37; a diary, 53; a
tion,” 110-112 poem, 64; a telegram, 83-84;
Washington, birthday of, 94; an invitation, 104, 106, 132,
city of, 94-99 158-159; a play, 159-161
Weather, 35-36, 52-65 Wynne, Annette, 64