taken from the sources consulted, but also taking enough from these sources to represent their true spirit.

Closely connected with accuracy in the use of printed sources is thoroughness. Of course, thoroughness is a relative matter, and the conditions under which writing is done affect the degree of thoroughness which is essential or even possible. We cannot expect a feature story in a Sunday newspaper to be prepared as thoroughly as an article in an authoritative reference work. But it is important for the writer to remember that the reliability and the permanent value of his work depend largely on the completeness with which he collects his material. He may not be able to use all that he collects, but if he has any ambition to produce a real work of scholarship, he must have the patience to consult all sources that could possibly yield anything significant, whether they be few or many, easily accessible or accessible only with special exertion. The following paragraph from Parkman's introduction to his Pioneers of France in the New World' may serve to bring the inexperienced investigator to a realization of what thoroughness in authorship means: "With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer's aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to more general preparation . . . he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true." We are told, too, that one of Huxley's chief reasons for learning Greek was that he might be able to see for himself whether Aristotle really said that the heart had only three chambers. In fact, it is a commonplace of scholarship that a writer must learn a language, visit a foreign library, exhaust every possible expedient, rather than fail to consult any important source. But the young writer will wonder whether thoroughness 1 Copyright by Little, Brown, and Company.

which involves such enormous labor can ever be harmonized with the demands for prompt or frequent writing. Can one who aims at thoroughness, and yet cannot devote all his time to research, ever hope to produce more than one or two books in a lifetime? Must one who is obliged to turn out a theme, a report, or a magazine article in a short space of time be inevitably superficial? Nothing is impossible in this demand. Thoroughness is neither forbidding nor wasteful if the investigator knows how to strike a nice balance between thoroughness and economy. Experience shows many ways of saving time and energy, many perfectly legitimate short cuts. For the most part, these economical methods are purely personal; each writer who is obliged to consult printed sources soon develops ways of working which are suited to his own habits of mind. Nevertheless, some suggestions can be offered from the common experience of many literary workers.

For instance, it is a great advantage to know the standard works of reference, not only the general encyclopedias and dictionaries, but also the principal volumes dealing with special subjects; to know just what kind of material each contains and how it is arranged. Thus a writer will lose no time in searching promiscuously. He can also save himself much effort by using all available indexes and bibliographies, such as Poole's Index to Periodical Literature and lists of select references on special topics. Then, besides this intelligent familiarity with the apparatus of reference work, certain short cuts in reading are useful. The writer ought to know how to take full advantage of the information given in the table of contents and the preface or introduction of the book consulted. He ought to turn his own skill in writing to account by picking out the topic sentences, the summary paragraphs, and the transitional passages which "put in a nutshell" what has been said and what is to follow. He ought to learn to read rapidly through the pages, concentrating his attention closely on those parts alone which give him important material. Intelligent browsing is a real art. He ought also to keep putting the question

ART WRIT. ENG. 5

to himself as he reads, in order to make sure that he is not slipping off the main line of his search and burdening himself with irrelevant matter. Finally, he must practice economy in taking his notes. Most people waste much energy in entering up data from their reading. A writer ought not to take down more than he needs; and ordinarily he can avoid copying long extracts from his sources verbatim. Moreover, he ought by all means to take his notes in such permanent form that he can keep them for possible reference at a later time without copying them. As an aid in this direction, he ought to develop some plan of his own, systematic yet flexible, which he can use without stopping again and again to worry over some new point of form or policy. In all these ways and in many others that every writer will learn from experience, it is possible to economize time and effort in using printed sources without in any sense compromising standards of accuracy and thoroughness.

One other suggestion may be made about the use of printed sources: the writer must be careful to discriminate between valuable sources and sources of questionable value. In the first place, he must remember that facts and opinions are not the same, and that ordinarily facts are much more useful than opinions. What is actually true is almost sure to have some significance; but somebody's thought about what may be true can have but little importance unless the somebody be an eminent authority. Hence any book or article which gives facts is likely to be an important source; but not necessarily so; for much writing is done under conditions of haste or by prejudiced authors, and for this reason will not stand thorough scrutiny. We know, for instance, that in the very nature of the case much newspaper writing must be less accurate and thorough than writing done for monthly or quarterly magazines; that many magazine articles are correspondingly less reliable than books, since books need not be published until their authors are absolutely sure of their facts. Then, too, the character of the periodical or publishing house concerned must be taken into account. Some editors and publishers have so good a reputation that

their name gives some assurance of the reliability of whatever they print, whereas others pursue no consistent policy, or are content with very low standards. Likewise, in consulting any work, it pays to investigate the author, in order to discover who he is and what his qualifications for writing really are. He may be a man who has devoted years to the study of the given subject, or he may be a man with no solid training at all, merely skilled in facile and plausible writing; he may be admirably fair-minded and free from entangling alliances, or he may be obviously affected by some personal interests or party affiliations. Similarly with works which contain ideas rather than facts. They also are very unequal in value. And anyone who goes to them for stimulus and guidance in his own writing must exercise all possible vigilance in detecting special bias or tricks of reasoning. The writer who searches for material in printed sources of any sort, then, must be just as strict in demanding soundness and interest in what he finds as he is in testing the availability of his own information and ideas. He must realize that appearance in print of itself guarantees nothing at all.

3. From field work. - Printed sources, occasionally, do not supply the necessary material. A writer may want to study some tendency in contemporary life which is too new to have been discussed much by others, or he may want to present a subject which is so close to human activities that the best material about it will come not from books but directly from people. Suppose, for instance, that he becomes interested in certain conditions which seem to threaten the health of his community, or in the attitude which his fellow citizens take toward child labor in his state. The best way, if not the only way, for him to gather material will be to go out into actual life. Thus the writer often becomes a field worker, observing characteristic scenes, interviewing influential men, mixing with all sorts of people and going into all sorts of places, working from house to house or shop to shop, perhaps traveling many miles from city to city or through the country, all in the endeavor to am

plify and support his germ idea with facts. Nor is this field work any simple matter. The same accuracy, thoroughness, economy, and discrimination which mark the skillful use of printed sources are imperative here. But they are more difficult to attain, because of the active opposition which field investigators are likely to encounter and the confused or even contradictory facts which they are sure to gather. In addition to these things, too, the field worker must have abundant human sympathy and resourcefulness. As one editor has put it, the writer who depends on his efforts as a field investigator for his material must possess the knowledge and patience of the sociologist together with the human instinct of the newspaper

man.

IV. GETTING MATERIAL FOR ESTHETIC

COMPOSITION

For many students of composition it is much easier to find material for instrumental writing than for æsthetic writing. In the former, if the occasion does not supply or suggest the material, there are outside sources to aid one, or if need be, one can meet the demand by settling down to earnest thought. But in the latter, where the writing is not done to serve a definite practical end, mere industry or even sheer intellectual power avails but little. So it happens that many a young writer, upon learning the essentials of good material for æsthetic pieces, at once gives up hope of having anything worth while to say. Material of the right sort is, he thinks, altogether impossible for anyone without literary genius. There is poor chance, he is sure, of his getting an idea for a sketch or a story which would work up into anything of value. And yet those who are writing their impressions of life seem not to find material scarce. Quite the contrary. As one of them says, "Hope and the world are full; and he who drags into bookpages a phase or two of the great life of passion, of endurance, of love, of sorrow, is out wetting a feather, in the sea that breaks