subject belongs is difficult. Is a believer in Unitarianism a Christian? He follows the ethical teachings of Jesus but denies him any special divinity. In this case obviously the question of classification will depend on the definition that we make of Christianity. Is a man who serves the state in legislative or judicial capacity and at the same time writes novels to be called a statesman or a man of letters? Governments have fallen into difficulty with each other over such things as contraband of war, there being great doubt at times whether a particular thing is properly contraband or not. The question is sometimes doubtful-you will be inclined to say, "I don't know what to call this," but in making a definition call it you must. The United States Government, facing the problem of discovering the proper class for frogs' legs, in determining customs duties after much perturbation placed them under the heading "poultry." Ordinarily you will find slight difficulty in determining the class; but in every case you must patiently search until you have found some class into which your subject naturally fits. Until you have done this you obviously cannot set it apart from other members, because you will not really know what the other members are, you will be forced to run through the total list of human ideas and things. Until you know that oligarchy is one form of political society you cannot know whether to set it off from democracy and monarchy or from Christianity and Buddhism. First, then, however difficult, discover the class to which your subject belongs. In the following definition of a clearing-house, you will find that in the course of time the class to which the subject belongs has changed, has come to include more space, needs a larger fence to surround it, and therefore the definition has been changed.

What is a clearing-house? The Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania has defined it thus: "It is an ingenious device to

simplify and facilitate the work of the banks in reaching an adjustment and payment of the daily balances due to and from each other at one time and in one place on each day. In practical operation it is a place where all the representatives of the banks in a given city meet, and, under the supervision of a competent committee or officer selected by the associated banks, settle their accounts with each other and make or receive payments of balances and so 'clear' the transactions of the day for which the settlement is made."

But we must go farther than this, for though originally designed as a labor-saving device, the clearing-house has expanded far beyond those limits, until it has become a medium for united action among the banks in ways that did not exist even in the imaginations of those who were instrumental in its inception. A clearinghouse, therefore, may be defined as a device to simplify and facilitate the daily exchange of items and settlements of balances among the banks, and a medium for united action upon all questions affecting their mutual welfare.1

The second step in the logical process of definition is to show how the subject for definition differs from other members of its class. Once I am told that the piano is a musical instrument I must next learn wherein it differs from the violin, the kettle-drum, and the English horn. The surname Tomlinson partly defines a person as a member of the Tomlinson family, but the definition is not complete until the name is modified and the person is distinguished by George or Charles or whatever name may belong to him. A skillful shepherd knows not only his flocks but also the characteristics of the different members of the flocks, so that he can say, "This sheep is the one in X flock that is always getting into the clover." Here "X flock" is the class, and the quality of abusing the clover is the distinguishing individual tag. Since the desire in this part of the process of defining is to set individuals apart, no mention will be made of quali

1 Francis M. Burdick: The Essentials of Business Law. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright 1902, 1908, by D. Appleton & Co.

ties that are shared in common but only of those that are peculiar to the individual. These qualities that distinguish individual members of classes from each other are called the differentia, just as the class is commonly called the genus. For convenience in keeping the list of differentia reasonably small, to avoid unwieldiness of definition, care must be exercised in choosing the class. When a class which itself contains other possible classes is chosen, a long list of differentia will be necessary. It is well, therefore, to choose a relatively small class to begin with. For example, if I put the piano into the large class of musical instruments, I shall then be under the necessity of amassing sufficient differentia to set it apart from wind instruments whether of brass or wood, from instruments of percussion, and from other stringed instruments that do not use metal strings. If I restrict the class to stringed instruments, I thereby exclude the differentia of both wind instruments and instruments of percussion. If I further restrict the class, at the beginning, to instruments with metal strings, I need then to employ only such differentia as will set it off, perhaps, from instruments that do not have a sounding board for their metal strings. Such restriction of the class is advisable chiefly for purposes of economy of effort in discovering the differentia, and is usually accomplished, in expression, by preceding the class name with a limiting adjective or by using a limiting phrase. This adjective or this phrase is likely to be the expression of differentia among smaller classes, the differentia among individual members being stated more at length later in the definition.

The process of definition will be complete, then, when the subject of definition has been assigned to a class, which for convenience should be relatively small, and the qualities that distinguish the subject from other members of the class have been found.

The Two Main Classes of Definitions

Two main classes of definition exist: first, the rigidly logical, scientific kind such as is found in dictionaries, textbooks, and other such writings which are not concerned with emotional values; and second, the less rigid, more expanded, more informal kind which aims to please as well as to instruct, and which is found in essays and all forms of writing with a strong human appeal. The two kinds are alike in the presence of both genus and differentia; they' differ chiefly in the presence, in the less formal, of the qualities of pleasingness and stimulation as opposed to the quality, in the formal, of scientific impersonality, cold intellectuality. For example, the Standard Dictionary defines a correspondent as "one who communicates by means of letters; specifically one who sends regular communications from a distant place to a newspaper or a business house." The author of the volume entitled Famous War Correspondents 1 defines, with much the same fundamental ideas, if not indeed exactly the same, a war correspondent as follows:

1

The war correspondent is a newspaper man assigned to cover a campaign. He goes into the field with the army, expecting to send his reports from that witching region known as "the front." He is a special correspondent commissioned to collect intelligence and transmit it from the camp and the battle ground. A non-combatant, he mingles freely with men whose business it is to fight. He may be ten thousand miles from the home office, but he finds competition as keen as ever it is in Fleet Street or Newspaper Row. He is engaged in the most dramatic department of a profession whose infinite variety is equalled only by its fascination. If he becomes a professional rather than an occasional correspondent, wandering will be his business and adventure his daily fare. Mr. A. G. Hales is of the opinion that the newspaper man who is chosen as a war correspondent has won the Victoria Cross of journalism.

1 F. L. Bullard: Famous War Correspondents. By courtesy of the publishers, Little, Brown Co., Boston. Copyright, 1914.

For the making of a first-rate war correspondent there are required all the qualifications of a capable reporter in any other branch of the profession, and others besides. Perhaps it is true that the regular hack work of the ordinary newspaper man is the best training for the scribe of war. The men who had reported fires and train wrecks in American cities proved themselves able to describe vigorously and clearly the campaign in Cuba. William Howard Russell had been doing a great variety of descriptive writing before he was sent to the Crimea. The prime requisites for a satisfactory war correspondent are those fundamental to success in any kind of newspaper work, the ability to see straight, to write vividly and accurately, and to get a story on the wire.

Occasionally a brilliant workman appears from nowhere, the happy possessor of an almost uncanny intuition of movements and purposes. Such a man was Archibald Forbes. But Forbes, no less than the average special, had to have the physical capacity to march with the private soldier, to ride a hundred miles at a clip at top speed over rough country, to sleep in the open, to stand the heat of the desert and the cold of the mountain height, to endure hunger and thirst and all the deprivations of a hard campaign. Every correspondent at times must keep going until his strength is utterly spent. He must have the tenacity which does not yield to exhaustion until his messages are written and on the way to his paper. When the soldier ceases fighting, the correspondent's work is only begun. He needs also to have a degree of familiarity with the affairs of the present and the history of the past which will secure him the respect of the officers with whom he may associate. Along with the courage of the scout he should possess the suavity and tact of the diplomat, for he will have to get along with men of all types, and occasionally, indeed, his own influence may overlap into the field of international diplomacy. British correspondents, having covered many wars, small and great, since 1870, usually are acquainted with several languages, and often have acquired a knowledge of the technicalities of military science. Of the two kinds of definition - formal and informal you will more often have occasion to write the second. You must guard against the danger, in such writing, of allowing