When he found one day that the gold had been stolen, he began to tear his hair and loudly lament.

But a neighbor, seeing him, said, "Pray do not grieve so. Bury a stone in the same hole and fancy it is the gold. It will serve you just as well, for when the gold was there you made no good use of it."

Exercises

1. Enlarge this story, working out the details of each of the three paragraphs into a more descriptive story, of a page or more.

For example: What sort of place would he select in which to bury the lump? Describe his actions when he came back each day to examine it. How did it happen that the thief discovered his secret?

2. The connective words used in this story are: and, when, that, but, for.

3. Observe that this story may be told in simpler sentences as follows:

A poor miser had a lump of gold.

This he buried in the ground.

Every day he came to the spot to look at it.

One day he found that it had been stolen.

Then he began to tear his hair and to lament loudly.

A neighbor saw him and said:

"Pray do not grieve so.

Bury a stone in the same hole.

Then fancy it is the gold.

It will serve you just as well.

When the gold was there you made no good use of it."

4. Compare the two ways of telling the story. What are the differences? Which gives the better statement of the story?

What words are omitted and what are added in the second way of telling it?

We commonly use the longer sentences in telling or writing a story.

In making these longer sentences, we use connective words, such as, and, that, for, but, in binding the words and phrases together.

Without looking at the first story, combine the shorter sentences into longer ones with proper connectives.

5. A proper use of connective words is important in the construction of single sentences and also in the closer connection of sentences in a paragraph.

Connective words in the following paragraphs are in

italics.

Write sentences of your own correctly using these connectives.

The chair in which Grandfather sat was made of oak, which had grown dark with age, but had been rubbed and polished till it shone as bright as mahogany. It was very large and heavy, and had a back that rose high above Grandfather's white head. This back was curiously carved in openwork, so as to represent flowers and foliage, and other devices, which the children had so often gazed at, but never could understand what they meant. On the very tiptop of the chair, over the head of Grandfather himself, was the likeness of a lion's head, which had such a savage grin that you could almost expect to hear it growl and snarl.-Hawthorne's "Grandfather's Chair."

STUDY 8

FOREIGN LANDS

Up into the cherry tree

Who should climb but little me?

I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad on foreign lands.

I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.

To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,

Where all the children dine at five,

And all the playthings come alive.

-Robert Louis Stevenson.

Exercises

1. Read the poem through carefully and tell:

(a) What you think of the age of the child who climbed the tree.

(b) What he really saw.

(c) What he might see from a higher tree.

(d) What part did the imagination play in the child's seeing and thinking?

2. Learn the two verses that describe what the child really saw.

Think of the child as being in the tree. You ask him what he sees and he replies in rhyme describing things as he does in the poem. Would it be necessary to change any of the words if the answer was in the present?

Write the two verses making the necessary changes. 3. Copy the following sentences, filling the blanks: the garden with many flowers.

I

I have

I

other gardens.

where the river slips into the sea.