In writing your compositions, put your rhetoric
behind you and tell what you feel and know, and describe what
you have seen.
All writers come sooner or later to see that the great thing is
to be simple and direct; only thus can you give a vivid sense of
reality, and without a sense of reality the finest writing is
mere froth.
Strive to write sincerely, as you speak when mad, or when in
love; not with the tips of the fingers of your mind, but with
the whole hand.
A noted English historian [Freeman] while visiting Vassar College
went in to hear the rhetoric class. After the exercises were over
he said to the professor, "Why don't you teach your girls to spin a
plain yarn?" I hope Miss Lawrence teaches you to spin a plain yarn.
There is nothing like it. The figures of rhetoric are not paper
flowers to be sewed upon the texture of your composition; they have
no value unless they are real flowers which sprout naturally from
your heart.
What force in the reply of that little Parisian girl I knew of! She
offered some trinkets for sale to a lady on the street. "How much
is this?" asked the lady, taking up some article from the little
girl's basket. "Judge for yourself. Madam, I have tasted no food
since yesterday morning." Under the pressure of any real feeling,
even of hunger, our composition will not lack point.
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