After you have prepared your score card let some member of the class or the teacher represent the employer and certain ones chosen by lot apply for the job agreed upon. The others in the class should rate the applicants and select the boy or girl for the job. Act out the scene with as much reality as possible. If the teacher chooses to make a composite rating of each applicant who fails, and to give this to him privately to show how in the judgment of his classmates he needs to improve in certain particulars, you may gain a great deal of insight into yourselves. Nobody's feelings should be hurt.

Instead of acting out the scene, you may each choose your ideal job and tell how you would apply for it in person.

EXERCISE 4

CAPITALIZING PROPER NOUNS

For several years you have doubtless been held to account for the capitalizing of proper nouns. Failure to capitalize⚫ the name of a place or a person is almost as gross an error in writing as "I seen" is in speaking. Now that you are studying grammar it is time to make sure of knowing proper nouns and of capitalizing them correctly.

Nouns are divided into two classes, common and proper. Most nouns are common nouns; that is, they are names shared in common by many different individuals of a kind, such as cat, dog, elephant, lawyer; or they are names of characteristics, such as kindness, beauty, anger, misfortune; or of material or stuff of some sort, such as sugar, wood, earth, lime, steel. Most common nouns are names of kinds or classes of individuals. Dog, city, child, book, might apply equally well to many different dogs, cities, children, and

books

as many as exist. Each name makes think you of certain characteristics which all individuals of that kind share in common.

A proper noun is a name given to one of a class or kind to distinguish that from all others of the same class; as, Bingo, Charleston, Mary, Cuore. Of course there are a good many individual girls or towns by the name of Mary or Charleston, for example. We may have to add other words to make certain of identifying the person or place in mind, but the fact remains that Mary is the proper or own name of that particular child. Proper names do not suggest the characteristics common to any group; there is no special kind of place called Charleston.

Rule E. Begin with a capital every proper name.

NOTE I. Names of seasons, subjects of study, and diseases are never capitalized; as, spring, arithmetic, or measles. (Of course English, Latin, etc. are capitalized, but that is not because they are names of subjects of study.)

NOTE 2. If several words are necessary to make a proper name, the important ones are capitalized, as in the title of a book or picture or of a business house or other corporation.

NOTE 3. East, West, South, and North, etc. are considered proper nouns only when they refer to sections of country.

NOTE 4. Most words derived from place-names are capitalized; for example, Indian, French.

NOTE 5. The word Bible is a proper noun and should be capitalized.

A. Write five proper names distinguishing individuals of each of the following classes: book, dog, boat, river, state, corporation, month (can you pronounce the name of the

second month and spell it correctly?), hero, president, author, inventor, college, day, picture.

B. Use East, West, North, and South as proper nouns in three sensible sentences for each.

C. Why are the common nouns straw, coal, and bean considered proper nouns in the story on page 23? What other instances do you recall where things or animals are personified and their names written as proper nouns ?

D. A title used with the name is really part of the proper noun; as Miss Addams, Captain Smollett, Doctor Livesey. When used without the name but as a proper noun a title is occasionally capitalized; as, "The President delivered his message." It is not often felt to be a proper noun; usage differs. Give or find some examples of titles with and without the names.

E. Explain the use of the capital letters in these items:

1. In a recent issue of the Companion there appeared in this column a paragraph that mentioned the modest amount of knowledge of the Bible henceforth to be required of students who seek to enter Columbia University. An interested reader sends us a newspaper clipping that amply justifies the decision of the university. The reporter, describing the achievement of two men who walked from Chicago to New York, said, "Their sojourn in the wilds was just a few hours longer than the memorable migration of the Children of Israel." Evidently he thinks that Moses and his people made the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land in forty days instead of forty years. No doubt what he had in mind was Christ's going to the wilderness for forty days. - Youth's Companion

2. Cher Ami is only a pigeon, but one day last year he flew into his cage behind the American lines in France, carrying in an aluminium holder attached to his right leg a message from the "Lost Battalion" of the 308th Infantry, which had been

surrounded by Germans in the Bois de Beuge. And on October 27 he rose from Grand Pré, carrying the news that the Americans had crossed the Meuse, and, with his breast bone pierced by a bullet, with one leg all but shot away, he passed through a cloud of phosgene gas and flew forty kilometers to his destination. Every American will be glad to know that he has come safe to the land he served so well in war and that he has been awarded the D.S. C.-Youth's Companion

3. On June 15 Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant A. W. Brown, two British aviators flying in a Vickers-Vimy biplane, landed safely at Clifden, Ireland, having made a successful flight from Newfoundland in sixteen hours and twelve minutes. They are the first to cross the Atlantic by air without a stop.— Youth's Companion

4. Some species of birds among the migrants to the West and South do not depend upon their wings alone to speed them on their journey. According to Mr. John E. Sexton, a Nevada railway official, whom the San Francisco Chronicle quotes, various birds, especially sparrows and linnets, have adopted a less fatiguing method of transit than that which we usually consider as their natural one, by riding on the brake beams of trains.. Mr. Sexton described an incident in which some hundreds of birds, riding on a Southern Pacific train that was passing through Nevada from the East, suddenly flew from their perches beneath the coaches when the train passed over a rough crossing. Youth's Companion

5. The principal holidays are New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Christmas. When Christmas comes on Saturday, so does New Year's Day.

EXERCISE 5

APPLYING FOR A JOB BY LETTER

Let the class select one of the jobs advertised for boys and one for girls and apply for the positions, with the understanding that the best letter of application gets the job; or let each of you choose a different job to apply for according to his interest. Write a letter telling all that the employer wants to know, and no more. Plan carefully what details to include and what order is best, and then write as legibly, neatly, and correctly as you can. Be sure that the sentences are properly divided, that all proper nouns are properly capitalized, and that every word is correctly spelled. Make no mistakes in the use of verb or pronoun forms.

A study of the two letters of application given below may show you how to get a job and how not to get it. Compare and discuss these in class before you write your own letters; perhaps it might be well to write the good letter from dictation or to copy it for practice.

Bolivia, Ill.

June 21 1918

Mr. Henry Adams, Dear sir, I seen your Ad in the paper for an Ofis Boy and as I am finushing the seventh grade soon I think I cold do the work satisfactrly to you but as I can not come at the time you said in youre ad I thot I would wright and tell you so I am foretten years age and strong I can not do Arithmetic very fast but I can sweep and do errungs very good and I wold always be polite and clean as your ad says I will work this sumer for six dolars a wk. if that is satisfactry to you. Plese let me no at once as I am ansering too other ads also.

Yours Respectively

Tom Rollins