stantly ask themselves, Do I get any meaning? or, Is that the right meaning? To be sure, all troubles do not vanish when you have grouped correctly, but this is certain: Grouping helps to locate the difficulty, and that goes a long way towards remedying it. Let the following illustrations serve as models. The first shows how impossible it is to get the idea unless we proceed group by group. There is little trouble in the words, thought, or style, but the sentence is long and contains so many ideas that we get no meaning unless we group carefully.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In the following passages you may get a wrong meaning unless you are particularly careful in your grouping.

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. (Parse "him" after "make.")

With farmer Allan at the farm abode

William and Dora.

The fox was seen three nights running in the barn

yard.

We can hardly believe there are such villains in the world; but the fact that there are such shows that we must always be on our guard.

No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
The ship was as still as she could be;
Her sails from heaven received no motion,
Her keel was steady in the ocean.

O Jimmy, and Johnny, and Willy, friends of my youth! O noble and dear old Elias! how should he who knows you not respect you and your calling.

Moses was the daughter of Pharaoh's son.

Everything depended upon the weather, and although the rough autumn was not come yet the prime of the youthful year was past.

LENGTH OF GROUP IN SILENT AND ORAL READING

No absolute rule can be laid down for the length of groups. When you read you probably find that your eye takes in clauses and whole sentences at one sweep. The more familiar the words and ideas and the simpler the text the longer will be your groups; but no matter how easy the text, the group seldom exceeds ten to fifteen or twenty words. And contrariwise, the more difficult the text the shorter your groups. You keep saying to yourself, What does this mean? and find yourself breaking the difficult sentences up into small and smaller groups. Of course, after the difficulties are removed-of words, style, ideas, and the like-the hard passages become comparatively easy, and as a consequence you can

In

take in larger and larger units of thought. Lowell's beautiful address on Our Literature he says:

That nation is a mere horde supplying figures to the census which does not acknowledge a truer prosperity and a richer contentment in the things of the mind. Railways and telegraphs reckoned by the thousand miles are excellent things in their way, but I doubt whether it be of their poles and sleepers that the rounds are made of that ladder by which men or nations scale the cliffs whose inspiring obstacle interposes itself between them and the fulfilment of their highest purpose and function.

There are some hard words in this passage, but even after you get their meaning you still find yourself making many groups in order to get the sense. And when it comes to reading aloud (which is only a half or a third as rapid as silent reading), again there is no absolute rule for the length of groups. All that can be said is that in reading aloud the groups become shorter; just how short can be determined only by the difficulty of the text and the nature of the audience. When you read silently you scarcely recognize that you are making groups; but in oral reading the groups are clearly separated by pauses of varying lengths. Such a sentence as the following is so simple that, reading it silently, our groups would be rather long; but if we were reading it aloud there would probably be twice as many groups, marked off by pauses.

One night when he was climbing the stairs of his lodging, thinking what he would do the next day, he

heard the angry voices of two men in the room he was about to enter, and he recognized one as that of an old man from Paris who shared the room with him and George.

"Yes," the man from Paris was saying angrily, "I am sure that somebody has broken open my trunk and stolen the three francs which I had hidden in a little box; and the man who did the trick can only be one of the two companions who sleep here, unless it is Maria, the servant. This is your business as much as mine, since you are master of the house; and I will hale you to court if you do not let me at once go through the valises."

Read first silently and then aloud the following to be sure you understand the principle we are discussing. You will see that because the excerpt is hard you make many groups in your silent reading, and that, in your oral reading, you make still more.

But if our relations with the East are in the future characterized by sympathy, tact and fair dealing, if we are not stampeded or unduly agitated by special pleading on either side, we may be able practically to demonstrate our good-will both for China and for Japan, and our readiness to cooperate with other Powers interested in the maintenance of peace in Eastern Asia.The New Republic.

To put the matter briefly: In silent reading we naturally make more and shorter groups where the text is difficult than when it is simple; and, whether the style is easy or hard, we make more groups in oral reading than in silent.

There are two reasons why there are more groups in vocal expression than in silent reading. The first

is that we stop for breath. This does not mean that we do this consciously; but since we cannot read on and on without pausing for breath, we form the habit of breaking up sentences into groups shorter than we should make in silent reading. And this is true, of course, whether we read aloud for ourselves or to others.

And secondly, as we read aloud to an auditor we come to see that, since he has no text before him, he cannot grasp the meaning as rapidly as he does in silent reading, and we therefore more or less unconsciously use the shorter group. It is essential to bear in mind that as the reader becomes familiar with the text there is danger that he may forget that the audience is not familiar with it. This he must never do. He should decide where is approximately the best place to pause and then not forget it. Here is a humorous illustration of the need of much more frequent pausing when reading to another than when reading silently:

Esau Wood sawed wood. Esau Wood would saw wood. All the wood Esau Wood saw Esau Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esau saw to saw Esau sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And oh the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood! But one day Wood's wood-saw would, saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood's wood-saw would saw wood. Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esau sought a saw that would saw wood. One day Esau saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood. In fact, of all