should he? He might just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes, leather, or gutta-percha, or whatever else lasts longest, so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same figure in the world that he himself does.'" HAWTHORNE : The House of the Seven Gables.

1. "Fal. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

"Host. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone downstairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath: deny it, if thou canst."

SHAKESPEARE: 2 King Henry IV. 2. In the following passage, what kinds of evidence are in conflict and which seems to you the more convincing? "I'm a very poor man, sir.'

"I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.'

"A very poor man, indeed I am,' said Mr. Barkis.

"Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes, and with a purposeless, uncertain grasp took

hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed.

"Old clothes,' said Mr. Barkis.

"Oh!' said I.

"I wish it was money, sir,' said Mr. Barkis. "I wish it was, indeed,' said I.

"But it ain't,' said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could.” — DICKENS: David Copperfield.

3. What is the proposition to be proved in the following excerpt and what kinds of evidence are used to prove it? Put material in form of a brief.

"Where, as is often the case on the sea-board or in the glaciated districts of the interior of this country, the trench of the roadway is bottomed in soft sand, some hardening of the surface is necessary, else the roller will churn the sand and broken stone together, until the mixture, which has no value whatever in the road structure, has absorbed, it may be, half of the materials reckoned on for the hardened way. To hold the stone and the sand apart it has been the usual practice to cover the sand with a layer of pebbles of conveniently large size before the bottom layer of broken stone was laid down. This is an expedient which is often costly and sometimes impracticable from lack of fit materials. An experimental inquiry into the conditions of the movement of sand under pressure led to the conclusion that an arrangement which would prevent the sand from mingling with the stones, for the brief time required for the

ARGUMENTATION - IO

passage of the roller in its first traverses over the road, would attain the desired end. It is not at all needful that the partition should be enduring, for as soon as the lower layer of stones has been forced into contact, and has become bound together, there is no further danger of the mingling of the bits with the sand; thus the speedy decay of the fabric is a matter of no consequence. As the result of careful tests made by Mr. Charles Mills, the chief engineer of the Massachusetts Highway Commission, and with the assistance of Mr. W. P. McClintock, the engineer member of the board, it appeared that ordinary cotton cloth of the cheapest quality, such as goes under the name of cheesecloth, if spread upon the sand after the road is shaped to receive the broken stone, will serve to keep the stone and sand from churning together. This method was carefully tried in macadamizing the state road between Cottage City and Edgartown, Massachusetts. The cloth was spread in strips lengthwise of the way; the stone for the bottom layer was shoveled from the sides upon it with no unusual care. When the roller came to be used it was found that the stone acted essentially as if it was on an ordinary firm foundation; it at once united with the usual number of passages of the roller over it. At the present price of cotton, cheese-cloth can be had in large quantities at a cost of about three cents per square yard on the road. This for a hardened way fifteen feet in width amounts to about seven hundred and fifty dollars per mile, which is often much less than the cost of any other effective means of attaining the object, and may be less than one third that due to the loss of the broken stone which would occur if it were allowed to come directly in contact with the sand. A section through such a "petticoat road," as it has been termed, shows that the stones do

not tear through the cloth. It is indeed probable that material of even slighter texture and of much less cost would serve. Various kinds of strong paper were tried but found worthless."-N. S. SHALER: American Highways.

4. Bring to class a good example from literature of a priori reasoning, a posteriori reasoning, the argument of analogy, the argument of authority.

5. Reduce to brief form the following argument and expand the derived brief:

66 Here, on the other hand, the women are the real supporters of the ideal endeavors: in not a few fields, their influence is the decisive one; in all fields, this influence is felt, and the whole system tends ever more and more to push the men out and the women in. Theatre managers claim that eighty-five per cent of their patrons are women. No one can doubt that the same percentage would hold for those who attend art exhibitions, and even for those who read magazines and literary works in general. And we might as well continue with the same arbitrary figure: can we deny that there are about eighty-five per cent of women among those who attend public lectures, or who go to concerts, among those who look after public charities and the work of the churches? I do not remember ever to have been in a German art exhibition where at least half of those present were not men, but I do remember art exhibitions in Boston, New York, and Chicago where, according to my actual count, the men in the hall were less than five per cent of those present. As a matter of course, the patron determines the direction which the development will take. As the political reader is more responsible for the yellow press than is the editor, so all the non-political functions of public life must slowly take,

under these conditions, the stamp of the feminine taste and type, which must have again the further effect of repelling man from it more and more. The result is an effemination of the higher culture." MUNSTERBERG: American Traits.

REFUTATION

So far we have considered only the building up of an argument, but when one argues, one must take account of objections that have been expressed or that are likely to arise in the reader's or hearer's mind, and tear down such counter arguments. The overthrow of opposing arguments is called refutation.

It is not always necessary to overthrow all opposing arguments. It is conceivable that, conceding some contentions against your view to have weight, the argument you can make to support a theory, though not perfect, is still strong enough to convince you. Your audience is probably as open to conviction as you are. Certainly the frank admission of a doubt would count less against your cause with any intelligent hearer than a specious argument or a "bluff."

Indeed it must often be the case that a true searcher after truth will communicate to others his hypothesis for the very reason that it has a flaw in it. He will wish to make clear his reasoning so far as he has gone in order to make others interested in working out the unsolved point. The flaw he makes the