198. The Use of Series in Type I. While both of the methods mentioned in the preceding section occur in paragraphs belonging to Type I., the use of material of one kind is the more common. We may thus have 'a paragraph made up of a series, either of causes or effects, or definitions, and so forth. Sections 199–208 treat of the different kinds of series that the first type of the expository paragraph may employ.

199. A Series of Instances or Examples. The following paragraph belongs to the first type and is made up of a series of instances or examples. Many examples of this type may be found in literature.

Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as children? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of life.

- OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

Exercises

I. How many examples are here given? Make a diagram of this paragraph showing sentence relation.

II. Write an expository paragraph of the first type, using as material a series of instances,

200. A Series of Repetitions. The following quotation is an example of Type I., in which the leading thought is restated in a number of ways:

The habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you, instead of raising you, 'keeps you down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from others restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides outpace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to imbecility.

- CHARLES Lamb, Essays of Elia.

Exercises

I. What is the thought repeated? How many times is it repeated? Make a diagram of this paragraph showing sentence relation.

II. Write a paragraph following the above model. Choose your own subject, and obey the laws of unity and emphasis. Prove by a diagram that the paragraph you write belongs to Type I.

201. A Series of Analogies. One of the strongest methods of developing a thought into an expository paragraph is by the use of a series of analogies organized according to the coördinate type. The following is an example:

All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay find yourself

in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES,

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

Exercises

I. How many analogies are used in this quotation? Make a diagram of this paragraph showing sentence relation. Find examples of parallel construction in the above quotation.

II. Write an expository paragraph according to Type I., composed of a series of analogies. Choose your own subject, and observe the laws of paragraph structure.

We define a term

202. A Series of Definitions. by giving first the class to which it belongs; “Man is an animal" (here the word animal is the class name); and, secondly, by giving the essential attribute which distinguishes the term defined from others of the class, "Man is a reasoning animal." The class name used in the definition is called the genus. The attributes are called the differentia. A definition may be represented by the following diagram:

Here line I represents the term to be defined.

Line 2 represents the genus.

The figure marked 3 represents the attributes or differentia.