Читать книгу A First Book in Writing English онлайн

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There is no more delightful art than that of writing, if the writer finds words for his own fresh impressions. In order to learn the mandolin, a new player will train his wrist till it aches. But thrumming music is doubtless small pleasure compared with writing music; and writing English is in a way like writing music,—a fine, high, creative process, which, in the hands of a master, results in a permanent, not a fleeting, product.

A teacher of English recently said that, in a certain sense, if a student likes any study at all he can be brought to like composition also.[6] She was right. If he cares for mathematics, and the beautiful precision by which everything in mathematics falls exactly into its place, he will enjoy showing the exact relations he conceives to exist between the parts of his sentence. If a girl likes music she will care for the music that is in prose. She will perceive that a good sentence is free from ugly sounds, and has furthermore a music of rhythm, a finely modulated rise and fall that a keen ear readily perceives. A lad declares himself interested in inventing or in building machinery. If so, why should he not enjoy building a theme? To think out a new mechanical device requires much the same kind of ingenuity, sense of proportion, perception of cause and effect, that are required in thinking out the logical framework of a composition.