everything. The problem of the writer of exposition is to make as wide an appeal as he can.

Interest in reading is of two kinds: satisfaction and stimulation. And each of these may be either intellectual or emotional or both. The interest of satisfaction largely arises when the questions which the reader brings with him to his reading are answered. A reader who desires to know what is done with the by-products in a creamery, where the skim milk goes to, will be satisfied - and interested - when he learns the complete list of uses, among them the fact that skim milk is largely made into the white buttons that make our underclothing habitable. The reader who leaves an article about these by-products with the feeling that he has been only half told is sure to be dissatisfied, and therefore uninterested. In the same way, when a reader picks up an article or a book with the desire to be thrilled with romance or wonder, to be taken for the time away from the business of the world, to be wrenched with pity for suffering or with admiration for achievement-in other words, when a reader brings a hungry emotion to his reading - if he finds satisfaction, he is interested.

The interest of stimulation may include that of satisfaction, but not necessarily. It is the interest that drives a person to further thinking or acting for himself, that loosens his own energies and makes him aware of desire for satisfaction that he did not know he had. A reader may, for example, peruse an editorial in a daily paper and find a complete array of facts, setting forth in detail the subject, and may be satisfied about the subject. He may read another editorial which will not leave him cold, indifferent, but will set his brain to churning with ideas, or may even make him clap on his hat and start forth to change things in the world. The second editorial has given him the interest of stimulation.

Writing that makes the interest of stimulation is the writ

ing of power: to the mere satisfaction of hunger, such as one can get from eating dry oatmeal, it adds the stimulation, the joy in life that a fragrant cup of coffee would add to the oatmeal. Exposition that satisfies is adequate; that which stimulates is powerful. Obviously, some expository writing would suffer from being filled with the power to rouse the reader. Much legal writing must be addressed to the intellect alone; often the entrance of stimulation, the rousing of the emotions, will destroy the chance for justice. Obviously, again, some subjects can be treated to contain both kinds of interest: an account of the devastation of northern France may be as cold as a ledger in its array of facts which are to be added; it may also be so treated as to rouse a vitriolic hatred for the government that caused such devastation to be made. Each treatment is allowable, and each necessary for a perfectly proper purpose.

Let us admit, without debate, that much expository writing is stupid. Why is it thus? Largely for two reasons: the writer has not made his material mean anything to himself, and he has not made it significant for his reader. In writing exposition there is no place for him who draws his pen along like a quarry slave who is soon to be scourged to his dungeon and does not care for anything. A person who finds no interest in his subject should do one of two things: consult a physician to see if his health is normal so that he may expect reasonably vivid reactions to life and things; or choose a new subject. Interest, in other words, enters at the moment when the writing becomes related vitally to human beings, and not until that moment. Why do students enjoy reading the writings of William James? Simply because the author made his facts relate to himself and to everybody else. If a writer feels like saying, "I don't see anything interesting in this!" and yet he feels duty pointing a stern finger at composition, he should examine the subject more nearly, should see if it does not in some way affect him, does not present a

front that he is really concerned with. Suppose, for example, that the task presents itself of accounting for the use of skim milk, and suppose that the writer thinks skim milk of all things the stupidest. Well, buttons, they say, are made from it but who cares what buttons are made from; their purpose is to hold clothes together, and that's all! But wait a bit: here are some hundreds of gallons of skim milk, from which thousands of buttons can be made. Without the milk, the buttons will be cut from shells, perhaps, at a much larger cost. Ah, the pocketbook is affected, is it well, let's have the milk used, then. And when one stops to think of it, is it not remarkable that from a soft thing like milk a hard thing like a button should be made? Is n't man, after all, rather ingenious? Who in the world ever thought of milk buttons? Some such process the mind often passes through in its approach to a subject. At length it finds interest, and then it can write and not before.

Here is the difference, then, between being a dumb beast of a reporter of facts, and a free agent of an interpreter. Some facts, to be sure, are in themselves so startling that mere report is sufficient. Slight comment is needed to horrify an audience at Turkish atrocities in the war. Perhaps comment would even weaken the effect. The terrible poignancy of such facts so fires the imagination that more is perhaps positively harmful. Many facts are not thus immediately translated into human experience. At first thought the fact that a new hotel will be supplied with indirect lighting seems a mere fact of trade: instead of ordering hanging chandeliers of one kind, the builder will order another kind. But thought of more fully, this fact takes on both the interest of satisfaction and that of stimulation: why did the builder decide to install the indirect system? and what will the effect be? Imagining one's self in that hotel at the end of a long and bewildering journey, with nerves on edge and eyes aflame with dust, will relate the fact of choice at

once to human feelings and needs and the subject is interesting. A reader can be made to understand the workings of the engine in a super-six automobile, and also to feel the power of it; to understand a cream separator and also to thrill to the economy of time and strength which it brings; to understand a clarinet and also to rouse to the beauty of its voice; to understand an adding machine and also to marvel at the uncanny weirdness of the invention. The writer interprets as soon as he brings his subject into relation with human life and shows its real value.

As already mentioned, care is to be exercised to use the treatment which the subject demands. An explanation, for practical purposes, of a machine lathe will be dangerous if it attempts too much imaginative stimulation: there would lurk too great a danger to material fingers. An essay, on the other hand, such as those of Lamb and Stevenson, depends largely on its imaginative interpretation, on its appeal to the interest of stimulation. For a neutral newspaper account of a football game the following heading was used: "Yesterday's game between the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago resulted in no score for either side." That is a bald report of the facts, for a neutral audience. The interpreting spirit, as it appeared at the two universities, colored the tale: "Fighting Illini tie Maroons 0-0"; and, "Maroons hold Illini to 0-0 score." These two headings, if expanded into complete articles, would color the story with interpretation for a specific audience that is vitally interested. The accounts would probably be more interesting than that of the newspaper, but they would also run the chance of being less fair.

For Webster's New International Dictionary art is defined as follows: "Application of skill and taste to production according to æsthetic principles; an occupation having to do with the theory or practice of taste in the expression of beauty in form, color, sound, speech, or movement." George

Gissing, making a definition of the same subject for his book, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, writes as follows:

It has occurred to me that one might define Art as: an expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest for life. This is applicable to every form of Art devised by man, for, in his creative moment, whether he produce a great drama or carve a piece of foliage in wood, the artist is moved and inspired by supreme enjoyment of some aspect of the world about him; an enjoyment keener in itself than that experienced by another man, and intensified, prolonged, by the power which comes to him we know not how - of recording in visible or audible form that emotion of rare vitality. Art. in some degree, is within the scope of every human being, were he but the ploughman who utters a few would-be melodious notes, the mere outcome of health and strength, in the field at sunrise; he sings or tries to, prompted by an unusual gusto in being, and the rude stave is all his own. Another was he, who also at the plough, sang of the daisy, or the field mouse, or shaped the rhythmic tale of Tam o' Shanter. Not only had life a zest for him incalculably stronger and subtler than that which stirs the soul of Hodge, but he uttered it in word and music such as go to the heart of mankind, and hold a magic power for ages.1

Of these two definitions obviously the first attempts merely to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of the reader, is a mere report of facts, and the second is interested in making an interpretation, in stimulating the reader. For most readers the words of Gissing would be more interesting; though, since a dictionary is not primarily an amusement, it is a bit unfair to mention the fact.

Interesting our expository writing must be; it must also be truthful. Nothing worse can be imagined than the kind of writing that forgets the facts, that remembers only the desire to please. Under the pleasing phraseology of any bit of expository writing there must be the firm structure of

1 George Gissing: The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.